Rubens, Peter Paul The Rape of the Daughters of Leucippus c. 1618 Oil on canvas 88 x 82 7/8 in (224 x 210.5 cm) Alte Pinakothek, Munich

Nowadays, erotic art is more of a niche player and the art market (the closest thing to a royal court that we have) prefers its sexy in air quotes. Marilyn Minter uses hard core porn photographs and transforms them into glittering, wet-and-wild bauble-fests. They are not so erotic when she’s done with them but way “sexy,” hip and commercially viable.

Marilyn Minter, Split, 2003, C-print

When I emailed a bunch of Philadelphia artists recently to ask what was the most erotic art they’d seen and why, mostly I got no responses. One artist, Christopher Davison, demurred. Davison makes pretty darned sexy works himself, (his drawings of male and female nudes interacting in dark, eerie forest settings were a staple at the former Jenny Jaskey gallery). “While it would seem like I would have something meaningful to contribute on this topic I am actually not the best person to provide feedback,” he said, adding “Strange but true!”

They're On Their Way Flashe, watercolor, acrylic ink, gouache on Rives BFK 22" x 30" 2009

Gabriel Martinez, a mischievous artist known for his autobiographical works — and for a recent series of sexually-charged masturbation photos featuring anonymous men’s legs and feet at moment of orgasm — wrote back “I will think (hard) about this one…” Then he slipped away into the ether never answering the question. But Proximity Gallery owner and artist Janel Frey responded immediately and directly naming Philadelphia artist, Pete Checchia who, she says, “captures women in a very sensual and complex way.”

Gabriel Martinex, Self Portraits by Heterosexual Men (Anonymous), 2007. c-print

Artist and FLUXspace co-founder, Chris Golas, sent in an anecdote from his own life. While a student at Tyler he did a performance that was arguably erotic. He stood behind a shower curtain half-naked while a woman slapped him after her hands in different colored paints. Golas said “My intent was not to make erotic work but as I reflect on the experience it clearly had meaning that bridged into a certain eroticism for me. This particular performance could border on fetishism as well.”

Pete Checcia, Photo collage

Chris Golas, photo from a performance

Artists now don’t seek to titillate per se, but still the erotic will out especially in work by those who court the unconscious mind, like Louise Bourgeois, Lisa Yuskavage, Pipilotti Rist, Patty Chang, R. Crumb, Paul McCarthy, Philadelphia artist Tony Ward, Andy Warhol (films) and Marcel Duchamp (Etant Donnes) for starters. There are more of course.

Louise Bourgeois, photo by Robert Mapplethorpe, 1982

These artists all work in a narrative tradition and use figures or figure fragments (Bourgeois) and their works might give off a pleasurable erotic charge along with whatever other message is there. Warhol is in a class all his own with experimental movies that are sensual (Blow Job, Sleep) and those that are sexually explicit and close to porn (Blue Movie).

Andy Warhol, Blowjob

But postmodern erotic art usually has a conflicted sexuality. Pleasure is subsumed under oozing gooey messes (Paul McCarthy, Santa’s Cholocate Shop); or it’s accompanied by embarrassment (R. Crumb). In the case of Duchamp’s Etant Donnes — on view in the Philadelphia Museum of Art’s permanent collection — the erotic is tempered by a dose of pure weirdness as you look through a peephole at the work and what’s portrayed — the lower half of a nude woman on the ground, her legs splayed, one hand holding aloft a lantern and an eerie waterfall in the background — is creepy and inexplicable.

R. Crumb drawing

Artists now might deny the erotic in their art. Louise Bourgeois said “I wouldn’t say my work is erotic, even though this side of it seems obvious to many people.” Tony Ward, on the other hand, in an interview with Corey Armpriester on artblog, embraces sexual imagery as a way to put human sexuality into the art history canon. But even this artist — who shows with Sande Webster Gallery — seems to waffle on the erotic charge of his works saying he’s “looking for a means to express the art of it (human sexuality) not the sex of it.”

Photo by Tony Ward

Feminism took some of the sexy out of art by attacking the male gaze and by empowering women to make works about their own sexuality. Many early feminist works are angry, and while graphic, not sexy. The Visible Vagina at Francis Naumann Gallery which Andrea told you about recently, exposes many feminist works focused on the female sex organ. But as with much feminist work eroticism wasn’t the point of it and it doesn’t seem to be the byproduct.

Marcel Duchamp, Etant Donnes

But even before feminism, abstract expressionism and minimalism — both about as sexy as Benjamin Moore paint chips — put eros on the shelf.

Lust Caution, Ang Lee's movie about the Japanese occupation of China has scenes that feel like they're based on Japanese Shunga drawings

Photography went where painting and sculpture wouldn’t go and nude photography is our latter day erotic art. But more than that, today’s erotic art is the movies. Films may be the closest thing we have to Rubens, Boucher, Caravaggio, Bronzino. Movies use narrative– often extremely over the top dramatic — and add romance and the erotic scene or two. Art house movies are full of that mixture. These movies deliver erotic content without irony. It’s seriously sensual stuff, just like the old masters used to provide.

So if movies are how we get our erotic art it’s not a bad thing. It’s just another example of pop culture taking over what used to be in art’s domain — or art ceding something it didn’t want to deal with to pop culture, which very much wants to deal.  Hollywood sells sex because sex sells.

>>Etant Donnes, on view at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, Gallery 183, Modern and Contemporary Art, first floor. 26th Street and the Benjamin Franklin Parkway Adults: $16 Seniors (ages 65 & over): $14 Students (with valid ID): $12 Children (excluding groups) ages 13–18: $12 ages 12 & under: Free First Sunday of each month: Pay what you wish all day.

>>The Visible Vagina, to Mar 20. Francis Naumann Gallery, 24 W. 57th St., Suite 305. NY NY 10019. 212 582 3201.

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.

TOPSTITCH

Beth Brandon‘s show at Topstitch was our first stop. Her small eco-drawings showed a seriousness of purpose with their intense mark-making. The woodsy iconography floating on a sea of white is familiar (Justin Witte, Ben Volta, Robyn O’Neil, etc) but the dreaminess and the fashion sensibility (a series of drawings show a line of balaclavas made from leaves) give it a little surprise. Brandon will be in a two-person show at Copy Gallery in September. That show’s curated by artblog pal Annette Monnier.Topstitch Boutique is at 311 Market Street.

TOPSTITCH OUTTAKE

By the way when we were searching for a link to Justin Witte we saw that he and Olivia Schreiner are have a two person show at Vox in November!

SEGUE

We trotted over to Snyderman to catch some work by Sienna Friedman, Christopher Lawrence and Kat Moran. Chris, who worked for us as an art handler for our show Dig at H&F Fine Arts, is going to Penn for an MFA. His large colorful paintings show a post-disaster world. We picked up a little bit of a Neo Rauch vibe although the style is Ben Day Dot Lichtenstein. We liked Moran’s Llama (sold) especially in its Rococo-aspiring frame. Friedman’s collages embedded in epoxy had a paper doll quality. We also stopped in at Rodger LaPelle for a group show of gallery artists where Rodger told us July’s solo show of his own drawings — done at age 71 — was a big success. He sold 33 works!!

VOX AND COPY

At Vox and Copy we ran into a ton of people we knew. And we’re going to show you some pictures of them.

Becky Suss’s father and Damian Weinkrantz. Both Suss and Weinkrantz have work up at Copy. More on that below.

Maggie Van Scoyk at Vox. She told us she will be in a three-person show with Sara Stenger and Alice Tippit at Little Berlin in September.

Chris Golas sporting a new issue Obama as superhero t-shirt. He’s selling them. Get in touch at info@fluxspace.com. Chris also told us that Flux got a Pa. Council on the Humanities Grant for Oliver Herring’s upcoming Task 2 on Sept. 6. They are also getting some help from City Councilwoman Maria Quinones Sanchez.

Rob Swainston’s installation at Vox. That’s Andrew Jeffrey Wright on the right looking in.

Now we’ll tell you a little about the art, starting with Vox Populi.

Kate Stewart from her show Flash & Duck at Vox

Kate Stewart has an installation that’s both interior and exterior. On a high-falutin’ wallpapered wall she’s got paintings of …explosions in the night sky; burning buildings; and other disasters, all looking beautiful. Her paintings used to include the room with the disasters out the window implying some shelter from the storm, but now the disasters are the central image. And because of the sheer numbers of paintings of fires and explosions they feel like a collection, like someone’s documenting disasters. Ironically for all the fire and sparks these have a cool affect.

Band Wagon Band Wagon at Vox in the video lounge

Band Wagon transforms the video lounge and goes a long way with a single joke. By inserting themselves into rock concert film footage they are living their rock star fantasy. We love the swelling soundtrack of the crowd roaring. They went all out on the installation of a performance stage on wheels and at least three or four video projections and monitors.

Rob Swainston’s installation (see photo with AJW in the people section of this post) puzzled us with its prints and ribbon of paper on a metal armature taking up most of the room.

Dustin Sparks. Part two, Modulate Take one, an air-conditioned paraffin yellow paperboat serenaded sleep filled with pyramid dreams aboard the last eastbound train.

And Dustin Sparks’ installation — which we smelled the moment we walked in the door of Vox (urinal deodorant pellets on a pedestal) — puzzled us as well.

COPY

Isaac Schell at Copy

The three artist show of Isaac Schell, Becky Suss and Damian Weinkrantz at Copy was our favorite of the night. The exhibit was curated by Damian and organized by Dave Dunn. While the combo of works is surprising the show works pretty well. Schell’s photos are portraits of buildings and of people and they’re beautiful and heartfelt. He’s in love with the city and its denizens.

Becky Suss

Becky Suss’s paintings are outsidery and painted with enormous freedom and confidence. Her portraits are of cultivated hills climbing up to the sky. Here’s our artblog bon voyage to Becky who’s going to UC Berkeley this fall for an MFA.

Damian Weinkrantz at Copy

Damian Weinkrantz’s drawings surprised us with all the words. There’s politics and a mix of past and present in the sketchbook-like pages on the wall.

Oliver Herring, 43, was having one of those flush-of-success moments in the world of art–celebrating his exhibit at Max Protetch Gallery–when Philadelphia FLUXspace organizers, Joe DiGiuseppe and Chris Golas walked in, recognized the artist, and blurted out a request.

The two younger men are recent graduates from Tyler School of Art. They started a gallery and studio space in one of the rougher parts of town. DiGiuseppe ran with the moment and asked Herring to use his art magic to help build some bridges between FLUXspace and the local residents.

Oliver Herring, Howard St. (Airborne), showing the FLUXers and Kensington neighbors.

They got lucky. Earlier that day, Herring had decided he wanted to change the way he made art. “So I decided at the beginning of the show to say yes to everything.” Chris and Joe were the first people to give him an opportunity to put his new resolution into action.

So a willingness to fail is the explanation, fundamentally, for what brought artist Oliver Herring this time to Philadelphia (he’s been here before, including at the Philadelphia Museum of Art and at Basekamp). Herring was willing to take a chance, and so were Chris and Joe.

“Failure is highly undervalued in contemporary art,” Herring said at a preview of the two videos that grew out of the FLUXspace request. “You have to fail all the time. You don’t see it [the failures] in contemporary art galleries.”

The end result is an exhibit of two Philly-made videos by Herring, coming to FLUXSpace Dec. 15. to Dec. 22 from 6 to 10pm. The reception is the 15th, and it will include the Kensington neighbors plus a cross between a game and art orchestrated by Herring.

Oliver Herring, Waterloo St., with FLUXers and Kensington neighbors

The videos, “Howard St (Airborn)” and “Waterloo St.” are transcendent collaborations between Herring, De Giussepe, Golas, and some of those neighbors.

Roberta and I saw the videos at a press preview Tuesday, and I can’t say enough about how much I loved them. They are something special, about the power of creativity and community, the limits of the human body, the forces beyond the individual and the forces of the individual in the environment. It’s man (or boys) vs. the universe and its laws on two little streets in Kensington. Spectacularly entertaining and beautiful, the videos pack an emotional punch that took me by surprise.

There’s a lot of mundane social work that’s been passing itself off as art projects all around the city, but this project, which bypasses the do-gooder institutions and channels of power and misspent money, is everything that they wish they could be but aren’t.

That success brings me back to the importance of failure (am I really still nattering on about how foundations completely miss the forest for the trees because they are so stuck in their risk-averse requirements?). This particular success required not only risks taken by Oliver, Joe and Chris, but also the people in the neighborhood who put aside their fears and reticence and revealed themselves to the camera and one another. The embarrassment potential was high here, but what happened instead was an intimate picture of peoples’ imaginations and mutual trust.

On a somewhat different note, when upstart gallerist Jenny Jaskey (she’s pretty close in age to Chris and Joe) snagged a group of Philadelphia’s older big name artists– Sidney Goodman, Ben Kamihara, Tina Newberry…–for her show Finding a Form: Influences in Figurative Painting in the spring, people asked her how she enticed them to her barely hatched venture. After all, most of them were represented by other galleries, and didn’t have much need to be in the exhibit.

Her answer was, “I asked.”

In Philadelphia, which is known for its risk-averse approach to everything, this is the way that the art world here is changing. It’s a good thing.

Herring sometimes in his art asks people to take similar risks, to act outside their sphere of comfort and cross boundaries. For the videos he asked Chris and Joe to jump and spin around a fire hydrant. “I had these guys make fools out of themselves,” he said. The young Kensington residents who joined in and became partners in making the video also took a risk and broke their reserve.

At the opening reception for the videos, Herring will once again ask people to step out of their usual roles. “I’m not treating this so much as an art opening, but more like a game.” But it’s a game that requires trust and the ability to make leaps beyond usual behavior.

Herring will be passing out slips of paper with tasks for people to perform. He’s not confident this will be a success. In fact, he doubts it. He’s willing to face the possibility of failure. It’s the only way to succeed.

Andrew Jeffrey Wright

Space 1026 founder, AJW, was selling his work and his girlfriend, Crystal Kovak’s work. Here he’s holding one of Crystal’s drawings and wearing a shirt with one of his images on it. He said he never counts the money til the end of the day….it makes it kind of like Christmas he said.

Nick Kripal

Kripal, Temple faculty and co-founder with Richard Hricko of the Crane Arts Building, said they were very happy with their new outside landscaping/finishing project in the back patio space. They can use the space for events like this, and for parties and other summertime soirees (a possible revenue generator for the Crane). Also, stay tuned for news about the Stable, the Crane’s little out-building, which will become the home soon for a high-end architectural restoration company now based in Chadds Ford. The company will actually be restoring the building! Cool.

Ashley Peele Pinkham and Kim Kindelsperger.

Peele Pinkham is Assistant Director of The Print Center, Kindelsperger is with the Arts and Business Council.

Leslie Kaufman

Kaufman, President of Philadelphia Sculptors, is gearing up for PS’s 2008 big exhibit on the theme of Global Warming, which will be held in the Crane’s Icebox. Right now, PS has a call out for work for a November, 2007, show “Tip of the Iceberg” billed as a “warm-up” for the Global Warming show. Iceberg will be at the Schuylkill Center for Environmental Education. Interested in being in Iceberg or Global Warming? email Leslie for the information at lesliekaufman@verizon.net

Gina Triplett and Matthew Curtius, husband and wife collaborating artists.

We’ve seen their work and written about it but never met them. Since they collaborate on painting they were interested in how we collaborate on our paintings.

Genevieve Coutroubis

Coutroubis of Center for Emerging and Visual Artists (CFEVA) also stopped by for a chat. Look for Flicker: A Group Exhibtion at Tower Gallery starting May 31, featuring work from CFEVA members Joelle Jensen, Mark Khaisman, Matt Neff, Binod Shrestha, Amy Stevens, and Jeffrey Stockbridge.


Joan Phillips

Phillips is a Uarts grad and founding member of the student gallery there, Gallery 1.

Dolores Poacelli

Poacelli’s table was right next to ours. The artist was doing a good business with her small colorful affordable collage and painted works. People were buying them by the gross–well a small exaggeration. They were buying more than one at a time, though.

Rebecca Rutstein, Mike Stifel and 7-month old Oliver

Rutstein is a recent Pew fellow who shows at Bridgette Mayer Gallery. Stifel has a show of sculpture at 201 Gallery.

Susan Fenton, Olivia Murphy and John Murphy.

Wiggly kid, wiggly dad, wiggly picture. The place was full of baby strollers and dogs…and their parents….it was like being at a park! Fenton, a photographer whose work is on exhibit at Schmidt-Dean Gallery now has competition from her son, Raphael Fenton Spaid who is in the Nexus Selects show (down the hall from the Icebox.) Murphy is the inLiquid exhibitions director.

Tim Belknap

Belknap is one of the Belknap brothers who performed under those big bobble head doll’s heads last week at Flux Space. Great to meet him–we loved the performance. He said they’re working on a new piece. See post.

Joe DiGiuseppe and Chris Golas

Speaking of Flux Space, these two are two of the three founders of Flux Space and AMMS. They were going back there for the Big Art Show taking place from 6-9 pm.

Becky Wright and Vince Brough

Wright is the owner of Saturn Club hair salon in West Philly. She also was a member of the board of the University City Arts League for many years.

Andrea Kirsh, our artblog pal, writer and art historian extraordinaire, was volunteering at the food concession both days. The sweetheart bought one of our paintings!

Also seen but we’re sorry we don’t have pictures: Richard Hricko, another Crane Arts founder, David Kessler, video guy extraordinaire, photographer Robert Asman, Peregrine Arts Managing Curator Jordan Rockford, Ellie Brown, artist Joanne Bosack who was with ex-curator Debbie Allen (she’s moved on and now is making ceramics), and artist Bobbie Rosen.

We both had a great time last semester teaching a senior painting studio class at Tyler. The students were great, and sooo interesting and talented. So when some of them let us know they were having amazingly brief exhibits to mark the end of their BFA, Roberta went to see part of the group, and I went to see another part. Friday, Murray and I headed out to the wilds of Kensington (see picture below of young man and his snake) and found this really huge, amazing gallery space plus 20 artists studios there, in an old textile mill.

When we arrived, a local snake charmer was showing off his pal, the python, around the corner from the studio. A little later, the two of them came into the gallery. When we left, the python was draped around the neck of an art lover–of the female persuasion.

The gallery is FLUXspace, and the studios are named Art Making Machine Studios. And best of all, there’s a huge space that’s a shared woodshop, kind of like the shared woodshop that the guys over at the Church Studios have.

One of the studios

The exhibits at FLUXspace are only a week long, so you can’t afford to blink if you want to catch them. The one up now, “when a verb becomes a noun,” runs to May 10, and includes Alana Bograd, Dustin Metz, and six other artists. The guys behind this venture are Chris Golas, Joseph di Giuseppe and Josh Kerner. Golas and DiGiuseppe are Tyler grads (if you went to the Victory for Tyler exhibit, you saw work by each of them–see photos here).

The stretchers play peek-a-boo in Dustin’s painting.

As for our students in the exhibit there–Joy Payton, Jen Packer, Dustin Metz and Mike Ambron–they were looking good, and so was their art work and so were their proud families. Here’s my set with all the photos.