Frank Bramblett and Katrina Mortorff. Frank is wearing the sequined baseball cap Katrina made for the show. Photo by Austin Lee.

Over the last 38 years, Bramblett taught a lot of painting students to think. Delivered deadpan, in an Alabama country drawl softened by years of living in the north, Bramblett’s critiques were deep, almost like having a sit-down with your shrink. And while the focus was on the art, his commentary was invariably elliptical—about art, life and the interweaving of the two. Occasionally, students wouldn’t quite get the gist of what Frank had told them until years later. Post-epiphany, they would write to tell Frank they finally understood.

Elkins Mansion, with its grand atrium of chandeliers and caryatids, the location of Thanks. Frank. Photo by Austin Lee.

Situated in the glorious Elkins Estate, a Versailles-like mansion in Elkins Park that was once the summer retreat of railway magnate William L. Elkins, this homage to a beloved teacher offers works that range from abstract to cartoony to word pieces riffing on Frank’s volubility. Lauren Whearty’s untitled painting of Frank in a room with a large landscape painting and a dog that’s bigger than Frank, is a comic take on the artist in the studio. Christopher Ulivo’s “Fatty, Frank and Fannie” is a caper painting of what looks to be a highly improbable burglary stakeout. Trenton Doyle Hancock’s cut-paper “TO BE FRANK” teases language—a reminder of how frank Frank could be.

Trenton Doyle Hancock, To be Frank. Photo by Austin Lee.

Katrina Mortorff’s “Phranks,” a sequin-encrusted baseball hat with the letter F emblazoned on the front, is—like many of the works in the show—both homage and quip. Not only does the work refer to the artist’s penchant for hats, it frankly nails the man himself as an icon. And, it refers to the larger world we all live in, where Phillies fever and NASCAR fever can reside in the same person who can talk a blue streak about Damien Hirst’s diamond-encrusted skull.

Rebecca Saylor Sack, Untitled. Vitamin P...paint scraps in a bottle. Photo by Austin Lee.

The show is installed in the balcony overlooking the grand entryway to the Elkins Mansion. Viewing the contemporary works between gawking at the caryatids, crystal chandeliers and celestial ceiling painting is a head-spinning experience, asking you to remember the past of unbelievable grandeur and the today of lives lived and touched by a respected teacher.

Bramblett, a painter of juicy cosmic abstracts (for which he won a Pew Fellowship in 2000), says he’s happy to be back in the studio, working on his own things. Few teachers have poured more of themselves into their students than Frank. He already misses the students. But it’s great that after all this time, he gets to practice what he preaches. Happy retirement, Frank.

Thanks.Frank
Through Sept. 21.
The Elkins Estate
1750 Ashbourne Rd.
570.906.0766
Gallery hours: Saturday, 10am – 1pm Tuesday, 5pm – 8pm
info@thanksfrank.info TEL 570-906-0766

Read this article at Philadelphia Weekly.  Check out Austin Lee’s flickr set for more pictures.

Frank Bramblett, photo by Roberta

Frank Bramblett, who recently retired from Tyler, is just such a person. And so, in honor of him, some of his students got together to do what they do best thanks to him. They threw him an art show.

Austin Lee and Katrina Mortorff, who organized the team that put on the show

Thanks.Frank organizers Austin Lee and Katrina Mortorff, corralled work by 33 artists (themselves included), all Frank alums, including art luminaries Trenton Doyle Hancock and Anthony Campuzano. The Lee-Mortorff production got help from their Tyler friends, too many to mention individually, but you can see the list of other participating artists at the end.

Anthony Campuzano, Double Frank, resting on a pediment at the Elkins Estate

The object of everyone’s affection, Frank, himself, was blown away, touched beyond belief. He said he was nervous when he arrived. He still looked nervous a couple of hours later. Wherever he stood on the night of the opening, Aug. 27, a receiving line of well wishers and admirers formed to hug him, shake his hand, and let them know how much he matters to them.

The opulent Elkins Estate where the show hung, on the balcony.

The show is at the barococco Elkins Estate, which is worth a visit in and of itself. The ladies who volunteer there stood watch at the drive and the door, being helpful. They told us Tuesday night was a good one for docent-led tours.

Lineup of Frank's soda cans

I liked that the tables of nibblies included Frank’s sodas–of course. Megan Bartley Matthews, who had a piece in the show, said the soda brand, which used to be a Philadelphia supermarket staple, was not so easy to track down.

Megan Bartley Matthews, who told us about the Frank's sodas

Megan was one of our students when we taught a class at Tyler with Frank. Well, really Frank taught the class, and graciously carried us when we were unsure of ourselves, which was most of the time. He never let on that we might need some help. The mix of learning from him and just being around him and seeing how his mind worked was an incomparable experience. What comes out of his mouth is elegant, complex and straight to the core of things. He could speak calmly about the encoded sex or race or violence implied in a student’s work without raising the young artist’s hackles.

Austin Lee, Face, one of the pieces in the show

So sure enough, just in case you thought he was retiring quietly, he popped one of his classic post-length comments  August 31(on Andrea’s post about art fakes at the National Gallery in London), just a four days after the Thanks.Frank opening reception. Now we know at least one of the things Frank will do in his retirement.

Katrina Mortorff, Phranks

The show runs to Sept. 21
1750 Ashbourne Road, (input 750 Ashbourne Road when using a GPS or online mapping service), Elkins Park, PA
Saturdays, 10 a.m.-1 p.m., Tuesdays 5-8 p.m.

Here’s who else was in the show:

3axap Bakc, Amy Lincoln,Alngela Washko, Arden Bendler Browning, Bridget Purcell, Christopher Ulivo, Colleen McCubbbin Stepanic Dorian Dean, Dustin Metz, Esmeralda Montes Joe Piconi, Jonathan Allmaier, Joy Payton, Julia Schwadron, Kelly McRaven, Lauren Whearty, Liz Markus, Maanik Singh, Maggie Van Scoyk, Maria Walker, Michael Ambron, Rebecca Saylor Sack, Robert Goodman, Sarah MD Kohn, Sean McBride, Stephen Pentak, Thomas Vance, and Tony Lopez. UPDATE: A couple more artists joined in last minute. They are Ryan McCartney and Liz Atzberger (per comment from Austin Lee below).

Annette Monnier, illustration from One Review a Month blog. Annette takes a wish.

Annette Monnier’s post on Rivanne Neuenschwander at the New Museum is up on One Review a Month.  Besides being the usual thoughtful writing,  Annette illustrated the post with her own drawings, which are hysterical and charming.  The post is all about her participation in the interactive art exhibition and so the act of illustrating this particular post is very appropriate.

Scratch your virtual itch at Austin Lee and Katrina Mortorff’s Exclamation Gallery.  This is the first time we’ve seen a virtual scratch-off and we love it.  The show — with the mystery artist (scratch the virtual scratch off and get an inscrutable clue) opens Friday.  If anyone figures it out let us know.

PEI’s video shows artist Thomas Nozkowski and Yale School of Art Dean Robert Storr pondering the issues of curating. Edited down to some tasty and digestible soundbites.

Austin Lee, Rose, 2010, acrylic on wood, 40 x 40 inches

The small group show, at Seraphin Gallery, has a number of delightful works from the six artists (3 from Philly). And it’s the Philly work that delights with surprises.

Thomas Vance, Niwaki Series No. 2, 2010, acrylic, ink on paper, 59 x 60 inches

Surprise one–Sculptor Thomas Vance goes 2-D with a pair of wonderful 60-inch drawings. Vance’s drawings suggest airplane fly-overs as well as abstracted architectural garden plans, with tree canopies and paths. But the trees are cartoon spaceballs, floating in otherwise super-flat space. The flat space is defined by paths of woven lattice or lumber, and by miniature doodles (ground cover?) in the interstices that remind me of Jonathan Lasker.

The wood theme is carried over into paintings on 3-D wood-collages by Austin Lee and by Marina Borker. Does two people working this way in one city equal a trendlet? And maybe we should up it to three, since Vance himself has used similar techniques in straddling the second and third dimensions.

Marina Borker, Tulips, 2007, acrylic on luan, 16.5 x 21 inches

Borker is surprise number two–just to see her making gallery art again is the surprise. (She’s now in the stained glass window business). In these two pieces, one older, one recent, she captures the faded ambiance of a grandmother’s summer home, including deck and decorative objects. One piece evokes granny’s seashore house; the other piece, a leafy wreath, evokes August at granny’s country house. These works, without being beautiful, call up old-fashioned ideas of beauty, suggesting how transformative time and culture can be.

Austin Lee, Ohhh! 2009, paper on wood, 10.5 x 39.5 inches

Pop artist Austin Lee, also working on layered wood, captures a splashy dive into a swimming pool in Ohhh! Very David Hockney! Lee’s abstracted rosebush is proud and flouncy. And if you want to see Onwards, his animated gif of himself on horseback, click on over. Or maybe I should say you really really should click on over. Pop influences in Lee’s work make it deceptively digestible, but he’s always gnawing at ideas as he deconstructs the iconography of the world around us. He’s playful and thoughtful, without resorting to kitsch.

Eric Zimmerman's 2008 drawing of the historic Iron Bridge, Graphite on paper, 9 ¾” x 11 ½ inches

Of the more traditional work in this show, an uber-representational graphite drawing by Eric Zimmerman (Austin, TX) evokes a panting, Wuthering Heights romanticism. I emailed Zimmerman to ask about the title of this piece, The Historian & the Astronomer, The Iron Bridge, Shropshire, England , 1781, and he wrote back that the Iron Bridge was the very first cast iron arch bridge. He also wrote that he is interested in how differently historians and astronomers think about time, distance, place, and velocity–thoughts inspired by George Kubler’s The Shape of Time. I am not sure the drawing communicates all this, but it does suggest via its extreme representational romanticism some sort of hiccup in values over time and space. His companion drawing Places (Where), is an austere, no-nonsense drawing of the word “where” floating on otherwise blank paper. Although this offers a bit of language, it succeeds at being less communicative.

Also in the show, most of the sketchy drawings of threatening, grassy growth by Emmy Mikelson (New York), look incomplete, but they do seem to explore something that’s worrying her. Paintings uniting architecture and nature by Timothy Callahan (Cleveland) are too familiar.

The show was curated by Seraphin regular, artist Robert Goodman, and The Smart Set editor Jesse Smith.

Two artists selected for the Bambi Biennial came from as far away as New Orleans and Oklahoma City. And both of them flew in for the opening. Hugh Meade, from Oklahoma City, was looking to meet artists with whom he could talk about exchanging shows between Philly and his city, which he says is full of great art and lots of artists. The other flyer, Alissa Eberle, recently moved to NOLA from New York, so she took a detour to the Big Apple before showing up in Philadelphia.

Candace Karch, Bambi proprietress, dressed for a prom--or art opening--gets a hug from gallery assistant, Joel.

We learned that Austin Lee (accompanying girlfriend Katrina Mortorff whose work was in the show) had auditioned for the reality tv show Work of Art; and we learned that sometimes work intended for a show doesn’t make it for the opening — it happened to Marie Perrin McGraw whose abstract ceramic creatures were tied up in some package delivery warehouse and haven’t yet made it to the gallery (we hope they’ll arrive this week). Here are snapshots of happy folks. We hope you enjoyed your weekend, too. We had fun playing hooky.

John Woodin (his photos are in the show), with his wife, artist Amy Orr, and their handsome pooch, Beau

Hugh Meade, posing with his wooden shoes. Meade flew in from Oklahoma City and hoped to meet folks and instigate some Philly/Oklahoma City art exchanges

Katrina Mortorff (with her $1M broom) and Austin Lee. Lee's in a show at Seraphin Gallery right now.

Michael Bednar is posing with Photoshopped doppelgangers that deserve an Oscar for world's funniest self-portraits.

Alissa Eberle from New Orleans who is the cat photographer. We told her all about the Kat Culchur show at FLUXspace this month.

Bobby Gonzales also has a couple of pieces in the show.

Emily Ledieu gets a kiss from Joel, while Jay Walker's art looks on.

Justin Rubich just graduated from UArts. He couldn't be happier about getting into the show! His word-art piece, all in sequins, is behind him, but it's virtually invisible here.

Phil DiWilliams, whose paintings are in the show

Montana Torrey and her boyfriend perched on her sculpture, Widow's Watch. They are decked out in their July 4th finest.

Tim Eads and Tiernan Alexander stopped in to see work by friend Marie Perrin McGraw, whose work alas was orbiting in shipping company hell.

Crowd watching The Art of the Steal on the big screen tv in the Piazza right outside Bambi Gallery.

Apart from one accident with a viewer knocking into the artwork and damaging it, a great time was had by all. But what about the scene out in the Piazza, you may want to know. Well, imagine our surprise when we discovered people sitting on chairs watching what the Friends of the Barnes call a documentary. We call The Art of the Steal bald-faced propaganda.

If you want to see some of the work, you can find it on libby’s and roberta’s flickr sites.

Liberta takes a meeting with Barack Obama.

In other news, Pew changed its M-O for how artists can apply for fellowships.  Much unhappiness was expressed on facebook and in our comments among some disgruntled artists. But keep your eyes on the prize — the Pew money is still there.  On the other hand, PA Council on the Arts canned its grants to artists program due to PA budget cuts — recession era blues.

A Junto at P’unk Ave about art criticism is still stirring up some energy.  Even artblog got a few theoretical posts (more to come in 2010!).

First Friday at 319A N. 11th St. Music in the hallway, 4th floor

In architecture news, 319A N. 11th St. became the new First Friday destination with nine galleries now and room for more!  Gotta love it.  And Philly continues to get respect outside the city limits. Alternatives FluxSpace and Vox Populi in the red-hot X-Initiatives festival in Chelsea; the PMA gets the Golden Lion for Bruce Nauman at the Venice Biennale; and NY Times writers are all over what’s happening here.

The Libertas

Jayson Musson has fun with Obama, in his show at the Last Drop

Fun with your presidents award — Tie!!!
Jayson Musson for his Obama-has-superpowers show at Last Drop Coffee Shop and Maira Kalman for her I-love-Abe-Lincoln project at Rosenbach Museum.

Supersize award
books so weighty they beg to be put down — Cezanne and Beyond catalog (9 lb.) and Shape of Things to Come (10 lb.)

Inexplicable Omission Award
New Museum for not including Kalup Linzy in Younger than Jesus

Austin Lee portrait of Shaun Baer, from the My Face in Your Space show at Nexus

Risky Business award
–Nick Cassway gets out of his comfort zone and networks to create some excellent projects at Nexus — Nexus Radio, My Face in Your Space (props to Austin Lee and if you missed this show eat your heart out) and Supergirl — still time to catch this good one.
–Runner-up–Michael Kalmbach takes a chance on Willmington and transforms its art scene (post coming soon)

Best show we had no expectations for
ICA’s Dance With Camera

James Johnson, solid gold on the wall at Arcadia U's Works on Paper show

Ahead of the Curve Gold Award
We saw a lot of gold in Miami but we saw James Johnson‘s solid gold art manifesto first (Arcadia Works on Paper show).

Best Double Bill Ever Award
MOMA for Pippilotti Rist and Marlene Dumas

The Not Marijuana Potted Plant Award
Chris Golas‘ chewing of dieffenbacchia leaves in his homey karaoke performance at Exclamation raised new awareness of that plant’s possibilities.

John Gibbons and Isobel Sollenberger, from their solo show at Rebekkah Templeton earlier this year

Pew Wish List
Joe Boruchow (repeat) Chris Davison (repeat), Phil Jackson, Jennie Thwing (repeat), Sarah Stolfa, Martina Johnson-Allen, Bruce Wilhelm, Danielle Bursk, Gabriel Boyce and Preston Link, John Gibbons and Isobel Sollenberger

Dead Tree Media Award
Machete and New Asshole, two print publications on theory launched this year in Philadelphia. They’re occasional publications so they won’t kill that many trees.

Lance Winn and Simone Jones, Knock, Script by Hope Thompson. Made Possible by the Banff Art Center 2007

Fast Forward Award
Video break-throughs knock our socks off. Steve Coss‘ animated portrait paintings in Vox V and Lance Winn and Simone Jones, Script by Hope Thompson robotic projections on three walls and the floor at University of Delaware Gallery keep the viewer in motion to keep up with the scenario. The level of interactivity seemed new and excellent.

Meanwhile

Tim Gierschick, with a piece in his solo show at Tiger Strikes Asteroid

Gallery Openings
Little Berlin reinvents itself as an 8-person collective. Slingluff renames itself and relocates to E. Girard. Breadbox was Esther Klein Gallery and moved up the street. All these opened: Grizzly Grizzly, Marginal Utility, Philadelphia Photo Art Center, AHN/VHS, Tiger Strikes Asteroid, Progressive Sharing, Mt. Airy Contemporary, 919 Gallery, 12 Gates…and this just in, Sweatshop in Port Richmond, Part-Time Studios in Frankford. We know there are more–put your name in the comments if we forgot you.

Gallery Closings
Bye Bye to Pifas

Ashley Flynn, installation at Knapp Gallery

Artists to watch
Ashley Flynn, Amir Lyles, Matt Savitsky

R.I.P.
Tom Chimes, Jeanne-Claude (Mrs. Christo), Andrew Wyeth, Philadelphia art critic R. B. Strauss.  Of course Michael Jackson died, too, a huge hole in the pop culture canopy.

A shout-out to our design and tech team
Kelani Edmondson, Beth Heinly, Howie Ross for design; Nick Paparone and Jamie Dillon for logo and branding.  We love you guys!

Also, a shout-out to artblog reviewers who make us look good
Stefan Zebrowski-Rubin, John Vick, Corey Armpriester, Kelani Edmondson, Judith Stein, Lauren Whearty, Elisa Ludwig, Sue Spaid, Brandon Joyce, Debra Miller, Matthew Rose, Michael Andre, Jacob Hellman, K-Fai Steele, Annette Monnier (who also writes the new blog one review a month), Max Mulhern, Jennifer Zarro

Next year’s a whole new ballgame.  See you then!  xo xo Liberta

Installation shot showing a sampling of the work peopling my face in your space

I don’t know how many works are in the exhibit in all. I do know I spent a really long time looking.

my face is a rare, successful example of a concept show in which someone asks artists to make new work on a theme. Fortunately, the theme here is incredibly broad and an evergreen–portraits. People and their faces are irresistable.

Austin Lee, Portrait of Shaun Baer

The concept also had a network theme (perfect for a gallery called Nexus) that reflects a little of the Facebook phenomenon. Nexus asked several artists to draw portraits of their friends and acquaintances under the agreement that their portraitees would reciprocate and do the same.

The most energetic of these artists who seeded the network was Austin Lee, and he practically–but not totally–ran away with the show. To put it another way, Austin created about 20 portraits, and everyone who posed then submitted a portrait of Austin. At $9.95 each, any subject could afford to snap up Austin’s portrait. Most of the other work in the show was pricier, but nearly everything was affordable.

Austin Lee, Portrait of Brian Jeitner

Austin’s portraits are spectacular, reductive gems. Most of them have the super-flat, poster-y use of bright, candy-colored paints typical of his work. The small portraits, mostly framed in bright plastic junky frames, are almost caricatures–but always something more, something extreme enough to provoke, as in his portraits of Shaun Baer and of Ted Houtaling. Then in a portrait of Brian Jeitner, he adds a layer of lines that add pattern, contour, texture and surface. This one is amazing! It is not alone in its amazingness however.

Nike Desis, Portrait of Austin Lee; I stood in the gallery reading every single word of this fanzine spoof

Austin himself is well represented as a subject, thanks to the rules of the exhibit. What variety–in vision and materials. And yet they all capture some essence of Austin.

My favorite of these is by Nike Desis, who has been mining the insanity of popular magazine culture, especially magazines marketed to teen girls. Desis depicts Austin as the hottie subject of Tiger Beat, reducing Austin to a sex object for teen drooling while elevating him to an unreachable celebrity. The descriptions of his assets are spot-on parodies. That Austin gets the star treatment is stellar, the portrait here less about Austin and more about the absurdity of fan-fanaticism being whipped up by the culture. It’s all about consumerism and the capitalist economy!

Joe Piconi, Portrait of Nathan Krisunda

One of the other hyper-productive contributors to the show is Joe Piconi, whose meticulous small portraits on panel reimagine people as mythic forces.

Amy Lincoln, Portrait of Caetlyn Booth

At the other extreme of art taste, there’s a monastic looking portrait by Amy Lincoln of Caetlyn Booth that seems as if it is inspired by deadpan Medieval Flemish portraiture and early American itinerant portrait painters.

Nick Cassway, Portrait of Aram Aghazorian

Show curator and Nexus Exec. Director Nick Cassway’s fierce takes on Aram Aghazorian and of Asya Livschitz on some kind of plastic-y smooth surface reminded me of the high-contrast photos of LP and CD covers, but Cassway’s markings keep their hand-made cred as they wrestle with and overcome slick commercial-art values.

Ted Adams, Portrait of Meredith Edlow

The exhibit includes a number of photos. That there weren’t more is a bit of a surprise to me, given the speed at which the contributors had to produce works. But this photo by Ted Adams of Meredith Edlow is one of the standouts among the photographic portraits, capturing a personality in a snap second.

The show has a Where’s Waldo quality, where I kept hunting for the reciprocating partner, or for the point of comparison between portraits of the same subject by different artists or portraits by the same artist of a variety of subjects. There is so much work to admire in this show, I snapped away; more photos can be found on my Flickr set.

The exhibit, which is wildly entertaining at the same time that it’s thought-provoking, runs through Oct.2.

The huge, 29-artist exhibit attracted 500 people to Saturday’s opening at the Ice Box at the Crane Arts Center. There is a second opening tonight, at The Crane’s Second Thursday, 6-9 p.m.  that will include some more performances. So it would be a good time to go if you missed the opening, since performance was a key part of so many of the pieces.

Much of the show was about the body, fashion and performance. Here's Gregory Labold hitting all three notes!

Juried by Sarina Basta, a curator at SculptureCenter in Long Island City, N.Y., the show is exuberant and full of unexpected takes on what it means to be human and what it means to be categorized as sculpture, with a sharp emphasis on art about the body and fashion. It’s an exhibit that would be comfortable anywhere in the contemporary art world.

Basta also chose the prize winners:

1. First prize $1,500 Josh Kerner, Chris Golas and Joseph DiGuiseppi for their piece “The Plebeians.”
2. 2nd Prize $1,000  Susanne Gieske for You Can’t Help Yourself
3. 3rd prize $500  Tim Belknap, The Future is now a Shade of Grey

The money comes from a grant from Temple University’s Alumni Association.

Taking first and second prize were artists associated with FLUXspace–

Joseph DiGiuseppe, Josh Kerner, Chris Golas, "The Plebeians," What ever it takes, we must make it to the top. Performance, 18 x 15 x 15 feet, 2009; Photo with Sir Question Mark and the Trusty Steed pushing up Prince Charming, with Mr. Art Shark holding the fort (photo by Marianne Bernstein)

“The Plebeians,” which won prize numero uno, casts its creators  DiGiuseppe, Kerner and Golas as three of four actors in an art fairy tale–an attempt to climb an 18-foot mountain installation set in front of a sky blue corner of the room. A shark guards the top of the mountain, a Botticelli reproduction hanging in the sky behind him–the mythical ogre guarding the treasure. He cooks and heaves waffles down and blows “snow” confetti down at Prince Charming, his Trusty Steed, and Sir Question Mark who are trying to climb art’s heady heights to steal the treasure. The piece has a loveable storybook and DIY affect, and is of course in part about the artists’ personal ambitions, but it invites broader readings. The go-for-broke scale plus the energy and charm of the Perils of Pauline performance make this piece a big surprise as well as a good-natured challenge to the institutions of the past.

Susanna Gieske, You Can't Help Yourself. The family here is eating in the middle of the exhibition.

Numero dos went to FLUX’s program coordinator, Susanna Gieske, for her dining-in-the-gallery piece, You Can’t Help Yourself.  This performance piece–an enormous table and chairs set in the center of the enormous Ice Box space, decked out with settings and a full meal–also dominated the room. This amazing reimagining of the role  of the gallery space also challenges the family. The title is an ambiguous accusation or perhaps an ambiguous anti-invitation. The invitations were hand-written letters, a mix of passive-aggressive expressions of disappointment and love.

Susanne Gieske, detail of letter to one of her uncles, inviting him to dinner, part of her performance piece You Can't Help Yourself

The family was a little shocked that the gallery was where they would be eating, but once they got the picture, they gamely dug in!!! The individualized invitations hung on the back of each diner’s chair. This turning of the tables so that the audience becomes the performer, the personal becomes the public, is pretty amazing.

Tim Belknap, The Future is Now a Shade of Grey. Third prize at Victory.

Prize number 3 went to Belknap for his installation, The Future is Now a Shade of Grey. Belknap’s piece recycles his Fleisher Challenge exhibit last year bringing the narrative story of that installation forward.  Mr. Pineapple’s now-grafitti-scrawled truck has seen some battles.  It’s propped up on yoga balls and pulling (if it could pull) a small flatbed holding a severed hand.  When asked early in the evening about his options to win a prize, the artist (who also has ties to FLUXspace, having curated shows there) quipped that if we saw him later passed out from too much beer that meant he’d won, because the prizes were probably beer tickets!  

Laura Hricko, Interface(ing), performance using antique sewing patterns and hand-made garments, dimensions variable, 2007

The overwhelming focus of the show was bodies in motion, bodies in clothes, and bodies as symbols for survival. We saw Laura Hricko‘s models floating around the room in “antique” hand-made garments based on “antique”–ahem 1950s–sewing patterns posted on the wall. The body as shaped by clothes was a reminder of how fashion reflects the values of a culture.

Just for the record, we learned the juror didn’t know that Hricko was related to Ice Box co-founder Richard Hricko.

Gregory Labold, Mr. Green is Very Mean in This Scene, fabric, silscreen, Nikes, spray paint, plaster, 6 feet 6 inches, x 4 feet x 6 feet, 2008; next to Mr. Green stands Mr. Labold.

Gregory Labold arrived in costume– his own handmade suit and matching black-and-white stripes makeup–a blood borther to his sculpture “Mr. Green is Very Mean in This Scene.” Mr Green, or Moldman, is half Joker, half Ferengi. Labold stole the show from his own golem. And his little coloring zine, which we were happy to accept, invited readers to draw their own mold in the pictured petri dish. We laughed out loud.

Candy Depew, Ode, performance and mixed. Odalisque with swanky decor and blood on the floor.

Also wearing a home grown outfit was the young model in Candy Depew’s installation “Ode,” a very fashionable work, with a clothed odalisque nodding to Manet, Ingres and all other art historical ladies on couches surrounded by pillows and drapery.  The faux blood on the floor beside the couch is an oddly satisfying touch, reminding of how gansters have molls who often are fashionistas!

Ianthe Jackson, Purifyer, animation, life size projection 2007

Elsewhere, saving us from Labold’s Moldman and his killer mold is Ianthe Jackson’s terrific Purifyer, a stop action animation of people on an assembly-line conveyer belt undergoing some kind of irradiation or germ detection process. The conveyer belt looks like a bicycle chain kind of gizmo–all DIY herky-jerky–so when one of the people gets vaporized (not pure enough we suppose), it comes as a shock. Simple in concept and broad enough to apply in all kinds of ways, it’s political and it’s a throwback to early special effects in early sci-fi movies. The timing of the action as well as the style is serio-comic and retro.  (There’s a nice old-fashioned clanging bell that signals the entrance of another human taking a ride on the belt.)

Gene Hracho, Ride 'em. A helicopter made from scavenged kitchen utelsils and household stuff.

Gene Hracho’s endearingly-low tech helicopter, sited around the corner from Jackson’s conveyer belt video, is a great oversized toy that came together in a garage over the last three years, said Hracho’s parents who hovered proudly near their son’s creation (he was expected but not there yet when we talked with them).  

Hracho's use of the four-slice toaster is so unexpected and funny we laughed.

Aluminum jello molds, tin cans, cranks from egg beaters and, the piece de resistance, two, four-slice toasters, try to bridge the gap between kitchen and aerospace-engineering.  The labor of love is not for sale but Hracho pere has been encouraging his son to get in touch with helicopter manufacturers who might just like to display his ur-machine in their lobbies.  

Francine Gintoff, Cassius (left), Ayn (center) and Gort (right), acrylic on hand, approx. 7 inches each. Hand??? What an odd material!

In another take on body and fashion, Francine Gintoff’s hands sport tattoo-like portraits of an unlikely trio–Cassius Clay, Ayn Rand, and Gort (the robot from the film When the Earth Stood Still). We wondered if Gintoff was a student of Susan Moore, whose paintings of tattooed people (real tattoos on real people) are showing at LaSalle College right now. Gintoff’s off-putting hands seem to be about skin and skin color and the future of humankind–we’ve got a dark brown hand for Cassius (aka Cassius Clay aka Muhammed Ali), a tan hand for Ayn, and a silver hand for Gort. All three subjects, not to mention tattoos, can be interpreted as threats by some, but the hands are not in threatening poses.

Sarah O'Donnell, Untitled video installation. The tvs are on their sides and "sitting" in seats.

Faces and extreme attitudinalality are Sarah O’Donnell’s m-o in her untitled video installation with televisions “seated” on theatre chairs, each one showing an arms-crossed young person staring blankly ahead.  A movie theatre audience is suggested but the blank stares and crossed arms also call to mind a room of high schoolers being lectured or individual teenagers receiving some bad news from mom.  Like Andy Warhol’s screen tests, these static vignettes focused on faces are slow-cooked and pretty great. 

Roxana Perez-Mendez, New Espacio, multi-media

And speaking of sci-fi and clothes making the woman, Roxana Perez-Mendez’s New Espacio, a video of herself as the first Puerto Rican space walker, seemed to reach a wonderful new level of visual immateriality and unmoored floatiness in its presentation. The floaty version reflected off a visible video screen–which explained how she created the more immaterial version and somehow doubled the pleasure.

Austin Lee, Impulse Artwork, lowest of the low, a modest charmer.

Finally, Austin Lee’s minimalist Impulse Artwork, red and blue “worms” snaking through holes in the Icebox and Grey Area walls, should win the wallflower prize.  If you didn’t look closely you’d miss this piece sited far below eyelevel and dangling, modestly suggestive.  The piece’s charms lie in its subtle evocation of nature (worms), candy (licorice twists), people (girl and boy) and technology (that mass of electrical cords and cables that are lifelines to grids of electricity, fiber optics and other miracles of contemporary plugged-in-ness.)

The show is up to April 26, 2009.

222 Gallery
Big Kids, Little Kids, curated by John Freeborn

Jesse Goldstein, Stripes, screenprint, 18 x 24 inches

The first gallery, 222, and the first piece I saw was Stripes, by Jesse Goldstein, and what a great beginning. It was beautiful and struck me as a reverse UPC code!

Speaking of commerce and upc codes, the exhibit is filled with bargains. Check it out. Plus show curator John Freeborn’s book, Big Kids, Little Kids, is for sale, with a pair of limited edition silkscreen dustcovers made especially for show by Todd St. John and Andrew Jeffrey Wright.

Thom Lessner, 8.5 x 11, acrylic on wood, 2007

As usual, Thom Lessner made me laugh with one of his fan paintings. This one, if you couldn’t tell, is of Twisted Sister.

Andrew Jeffrey Wright, Rainbow Bright’s First Period, 10 x 8-inch screen print

The show was chock-full of great stuff. I found a pair of pieces by Andrew Jeffrey Wright hysterical–a perfect mix of gross-out and sharp cultural observation.

3rd Street Gallery
Marjorie Grigonis

We got a shot of Marjorie posing with a couple of her paintings, Yellow Cloud and another work of hers reflected in the glass. Plus there’s a shadow of me in there, not to mention the lights.

The FUEL Collection

Stan the Box Cutter is almost cute at this jumbo scale–a tool as a toy. Or is it a terrorist tool?

Here’s the best thing we saw at FUEL. The name of this piece (36″ x 12″ x 4″) is Stan the Box Cutter, and it’s made of carved and painted high density foam. It’s hung above a mantel, looking just great in the architectural setting. I don’t know the artist, but if someone writes in who, I’ll add it to the post.

Here’s the additional info on Stan the Box Cutter (see comments below the post): The artist who created the box cutter is Ken Parris III, who works in Brooklyn. He’s also the painter whose work is featured on the first floor at FUEL. But it was the box cutter that interested me.

Austin Lee, The Big Fight, acrylic on board, 10 x 10 inches, 2007

We also hunted around and found couple of small pieces by Austin Lee there, upstairs.

Vox Populi
Fact and Friction

My Barbarian, a shot of one of the two facing videos in The Golden Age. On the opposite wall, the video is of a dancing audience, often moving in unison.

The evening ended with a bang, too. Fact and Friction, curated by Geir Haraldseth and Ruba Katrib, is a terrific show of videos, books, painting, objects, even an internet web site. It’s a conceptual show, packed with ideas about culture, fact, fiction and our misinterpretations of what is in front of us. The art is from around the world and quite interesting. (One of the videos, having to do with the Berlin wall, wasn’t working when we were there.)

The two-channel video The Golden Age, by My Barbarian (an LA based performance troupe), takes on race and slavery. It is hysterical, riveting, and definitely fits into the paradigm of new, exciting video mentioned by Holland Carter in the New York Times, yesterday. It’s fun to watch and pretty weird. Andrea, who was with me Friday, immediately whispered Shirin Nishat, because of the facing screens and the synchronized group action. We both laughed.

The exhibit included a number of books that challenged the authority of books and history and newspapers and the police and everything else. People were scattered around the gallery reading the books and playing with an internet site, wikiality, inspired by Stephen Colbertian truthiness. You can see this online part of the show by never leaving your computer.

This is Scott Hug’s JFK, with the photo reflected on the left in a black mirror. Kennedy’s glasses also reflect a bunch of stuff. The image reflects the slipperiness of identity, and the more we know about Kennedy, the less we know him as the president we thought he was.

Aramis Gutierrez II, Lemon Road (this is large, maybe about 5 or 6 feet wide)

Aramis Gutierrez II‘s lurid history-sized painting, Lemon Road, tells the tale of four teenage girls who killed a 12-year-old girl in 1992. I had to put this up for the obvious comparison to Rob Matthews’ Knoxville Girl.

Screening Gallery
Adam Putnam

For our last stop, at Screening Gallery, I sat for a while in front of Adam Putnam’s shadowroom II, a movie with no movement other than the static-y flicker of the pixellated image of a dark, empty room that looks just like the room in which I was watching.

I almost didn’t have this photograph because I saw a dark image, thought it was just nothing and put it in the trash. Fortunately for you, I realized me mistake and retrieved it before I permanently vaporized it! As a viewer in the gallery, I got to reflect on Andy Warhol, movies, and the mind (Putnam’s, my own, etc.). That’s where the movie (the stillie?) forced me to go.