studio visits/interviews
Interview – Sarah Stolfa on making your own opportunity and printing for Zoe Strauss
For the Daily News article on the Philadelphia photography community I talked with a number of artists and others in that community. Here’s the first of several interviews I’ll put up in the next week or so. Others coming up are Martin McNamara, Stephen Perloff, Grisha Enikolopov, Al Wachlin, Jr and Harris Fogel. Note: this post is a re-publish of one that was somehow vaporized in our recent blog transition. The day I talked with Sarah Stolfa of PPAC, their website had briefly crashed from all the traffic they were getting from Living Social, a coupon site, where they had ... More » »
Tim Belknap, next up on our podcast series, artblog radio
In early December Tim Belknap set up a small, brightly-lit open-walled cube inside Temple Gallery that was an almost-convincing replica of a space capsule. The cube, no longer there, was called the Destiny Module, a reference to the US Space Station’s Science Lab, and was part of Belknap’s project to beam Astronaut Tim via Skype video into a Philadelphia 4th grade classroom for a science talk. Tim — who is not a scientist or astronaut but an artist and Fleisher Challenge winner with a mischievous sense of play — harnessed himself to a cable attached to heavy metal beams ... More » »
Group hug – Togetherness in Philadelphia’s photo community
Stephen Perloff is plugged in to Philadelphia’s photo world via his esteemed quarterly publication, The Photo Review. A self-taught photographer with a graduate degree in history, he made himself invaluable to photographers and photo lovers, covering all aspects of photography in his journal and turning that publication into a virtual Philadelphia photo center — a place to read about exhibitions; read interviews with artists; and find the latest opportunities. Perloff launched the Photo Review in 1976, and he characterized that era in Philadelphia as a golden age for photography. As for the current photo scene, “We’re getting back to the ... More » »
Scot Borofsky – from street art to gallery, an interview
Scot Borofsky started as a graffiti artist in the East Village (NYC) and eventually made his way into the museum and commercial gallery art world. His work can be found in the Metropolitan Museum of Art and The Brooklyn Museum of Art, a rare accomplishment for a graffiti street artist. Borofsky’s art combines the depth of tradition with the uncertainty of the contemporary, linking the ages with a sacred line. The work (@Jules Goldman Books and Antiques) may appear to be simple abstractions but Borofsky is giving you the ARCHETYPE, layered. God knows what these images are doing to viewers’ ... More » »
Studio visit with Rupert Mair
The Italian artist Rupert Mair recently exhibited at the Pixie Gallery in Paris. His show was entitled “Enjeux”. It was a showcase of the delicate and seemingly tentative and yet it was affirmative in its silent insistence that there could be mass to nothingness. All you need is a hint. Many of the pieces assembled in the space resembled the parts of familiar games and yet neither the pieces nor the games they suggested became whole or playable.
Peter Funch’s scenes of the hive – an interview
Peter Funch‘s photography project titled Babel Tales merges documentary photography with manipulated photography. Peter stands and waits on street corners for days on end in the same position, photographing individuals walking down the street and then merges each individual within an a concept-driven collective (the neo-collective). The individual is forced into hive consciousness, fact and fiction collide to create a clever series of photographs that smartly uses image manipulation technology.
Hannah Price on photographing men on the streets in Philadelphia – a new podcast
Hannah Price is the youngest artist included in the Philadelphia Museum of Art’s exhibit of local artists, Here and Now. Now 25, Price graduated in 2009 with a BFA in photography from Rochester Institute of Technology. She’s had remarkable success for such a young artist. In addition to the current museum show she’s in she won an award in the Philadelphia Photo Art Center’s first emerging artist exhibit, Next, and has exhibited her works in group shows at Gallery 339, the city’s premier commercial photography gallery. Price’s color photos, shot in film and printed digitally, show street scenes and people ... More » »
Zoe Strauss on what matters, on artblog radio
Artist Zoe Strauss was preparing for her important mid-career retrospective, Zoe Strauss: Ten Years, when we talked to her at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. The exhibit opens at the PMA Jan. 14, 2012, but Strauss was hard at work in August, getting ready. As excited as she was about the upcoming show, she was even more excited about the part of the show that was going to go up on billboards around Philadelphia, where the general public could see the photos. Her populist spirit and loyalty to community is behind all of her work and behind her fabled series ... More » »
Soft-spoken Andrew Jeffrey Wright talks stand-up comedy, family and making it on $500 a month
Andrew Jeffrey Wright is known for his humorous drawings and prints, psychedelic pattern paintings, and most recently his stand-up comedy routine, which he performs regularly Tuesday nights at the Barbary. Wright, who is a founding and current member of Space 1026, made his first splash with The Manipulators, an animated film he co-produced with then-girlfriend, Clare Rojas (see the 1 and a half minute video –hilarious). That fashion-lampoon, done with magazine pictures altered with whiteout, won Wright and Rojas the top prize for animation at the New York Underground Film Festival. In our talk with Wright we learned that he supported himself ... More » »
Studio visit with two Los Angelenos in Philly – Fabian Lopez and Shanna Waddell
Fabian Lopez got in touch recently about a show he curated at the old Nexus space at Crane Arts. Lopez is a recent Tyler MFA, and the 7-person exhibit includes his work and work by some friends of his. The show fills the space well — it’s mostly painting and works on paper but there is one sculptural installation. I met Lopez and his studio-mate, Shanna Waddell, who is also in the exhibit, and after looking at the show we went upstairs to their shared studio space (they are renting Susan Moore’s large studio – plenty of room for two) ... More » »
