Lectures and discussions
Temple Gallery is offering a lecture with Philadelphia resident and Creative Time curator Nato Thompson on Thursday, Feb. 23 at 7:00 PM. Thompson will speak about his latest book Seeing Power: Art and Activism in the Age of Cultural Production. We at artblog would love a Creative Time organization in Philly, and as it turns out we have the curator right here! Reserve a seat for Nato Thompson’s lecture at
http://www.eventbrite.com/event/2826019701 or call 215 777 9138.  And in West Philly, artist and independent curator Matheiu Copeland speaks at Kelly Writers House Thursday, Feb. 16, 6pm, about his efforts at subverting curatorial practice.

Mark Tribe, The Liberation of Our People: Angela Davis, 1969/2008, Port Huron Project, 5-minute video based on a 10-minute speech, Photograph by David Jung; Courtesy of the artist

[NOTE: We just learned that this discussion has been POSTPONED until Mar. 17.] Meanwhile, this weekend Marginal Utility is hosting a discussion at Vox Populi on the structure, imaging, and personal affects of protest.  The talk, Saturday, Feb. 11, at 6pm, Sat. Mar. 17, at 6pm features Naeem Mohaiemen and Mark Tribe, curator Yaelle Amir, and Slought Foundation’s Aaron Levy and is in conjunction with the MU show Five Acts: Chronicles of Dissent.

Ward Shelley at Pierogi

Ward Shelley, "Teenagers", 2012, Oil and toner on mylar, 61 x 34.5 inches.

Ward Shelley’s show of trippy timeline paintings opens Feb. 17 at Pierogi in Williamsburg. We’re fond of this gallery, and we love Shelley’s work, which traces musical and counter cultural movements (among others) throughout history using colorful, sinewy patterns.

Leo diCaprio teams up with La Colombe
Philadelphia-based coffee roaster La Colombe is joining forces with Leonardo DiCaprio to sell his new coffee line LYON.  All proceeds from sales go to environmental charities supported by the Leonardo DiCaprio Foundation. Thanks to Ms. Stella Kimbrough for this tasty tidbit.

Kutztown University installation

Onishi Yasuaki, "Reverse of Volume" at Kutztown University Art Gallery

A while ago we brought you the news about the residency applictions f0r Kutztown University, well the last installation is now on display. The resident artist is Onishi Yasuaki, and his work is entitled “Reverse of Volume“. There are no more residency opportunities, according to Kutztown, but you can still submit to the gallery your proposals for solo or group exhibitions. The installation is on view until March 2.

Philadelphia Jewish Film Festival poetry slam
A poetry slam and a screening of the documentary Louder Than A Bomb are part of the Jewish Film Festival at the Gershman Y this Sunday, Feb. 12 at 2:30 pm. The Poetry Slam is courtesy the Philadelphia Youth Poetry Movement.

Coldhearted
Get a peek at the new Philadelphia Sculpture Gym while perusing the Valentine’s arts and crafts fair, Coldhearted, Saturday, Feb. 11, from 11am-5pm.  The Sculpture Gym is Darla Jackson’s Knight Arts Challenge project.

Opportunities

Ladies and gentlemen, but especially, we think, ladies, this is for you. Casting calls are over, but all you beautiful and tool-savvy people can still apply to the upcoming HGTV program All American Handyman until February 17. Email HGTVamericanhandyman@gmail.com with some information about your handiness and telegenic qualities.  We think ladies should apply to this politically-incorrectly titled show.

The Studios of Key West have an open call for 40 month-long residencies for artists, writers, composers, performers, and interdisciplinary artists (via Wooloo.org). The deadline for applications is May 15.

Eastern State Penitentiary is accepting applications for site specific artist installations for the upcoming 2013 season.  The deadline for proposals is June 13, 2012. Find all the details on the program here.

The Siddhartha Arts Foundation has a call for artists for the second annual Kathmandu International Art Festival. Climate change is the topic of this year’s Earth|Body|Mind festival. The application deadline is February 29. You can find the application form here.

Via Leeway –  CalArts is seeking a digital media teacher/artist. You can find more details about the position here.

3rd Ward is seeking innovative and compelling work and will be giving out $15,000 in prizes. More information on the open call page.

Little Berlin is looking for people who want to participate in FLASHFLooD, a “semi-secretive mass public exhibition of rapidly-distributed hidden flash drives containing downloadable exhibitions.”  If you are as intrigued as we are, check out the website for more information.  And if you participate in the FLASH distribution (juried by Little Berlin members, extraextra members and others), you’re also invited to show your work at a BYOBEAMER event First Friday, Mar 2 at Little Berlin.  Apply before Feb. 23.

Writers and editors, this one’s for you. College Art Association has two positions available: an editor-in-chief position for The Art Bulletin and a reviews editor for the Art Journal. The deadline for both is April 2.

Artist News

Andrea Packard from Vista and Strata

Andrea Packard, Director of the List Gallery, Swarthmore College, has an upcoming solo show at The Painting Center in New York entitled Vista and Strata. The opening is on February 28.

Susan Myers has a solo show of her metalwork at the Society of Contemporary Craft in Pittsburgh in a show entitled All Consuming. The exhibit opened on February 3 and runs until June 30.

Daniel Heyman, "Do You Remember This Night?"

Daniel Heyman presents Bearing Witness at St. Lawrence University in Canton, NY. The show is up now through February 29. On display is Heyman’s Istanbul Portfolio of the Abu Ghraib Detainee Interview Project.

David Kettner, "The Prodigal Son - Rapture"

David Kettner is retiring after 43 years of teaching painting and drawing at University of the Arts — Kudos!!  David’s retirement show, at the UArts Hamilton Hall Galleries, opens on February 24 with a reception on the 29th from 5 – 8 PM.

Philadelphia Museum of Art highlights ten local artists
Starting September 10, the PMA will host Here and Now: Prints, Drawings, and Photographs by Ten Philadelphia Artists.

Left: Disco Mosul, from the Amman Portfolio, 2006 by Daniel Heyman. Right: Walking from CVS, West Philly by Hannah Price

The local artists include Astrid Bowlby, Steven and Billy Blaise Dufala (who operate in collaboration), Vincent Feldman, Daniel Heyman, Isaac Tin Wei Lin, Virgil Marti, Joshua Mosley, Serena Perrone, Hannah Price, and Mia Rosenthal. They range in age from 25 to 50 and exercise a broad array of pictorial strategies in their work.

Kansas governor eliminate arts funding
Over Memorial Day weekend, Republican governor Sam Brownback of Kansas eliminated state funding for the arts. The move to privatize the arts in Kansas effectively makes it the only state to return to pre-National Endowment for the Arts legislation. The state’s art commission had been established in 1966.

Museums provide free admission for active military personnel, families
From Memorial Day (May 30) until Labor Day (September 5) 2011, Blue Star Museums across the country will provide free admission to active service military personnel and their families. There is a map of all the participating locations. The PA list can be found here.

Faux taxidermy makes its way to Art Star!

Jordan with some of her not-quite-taxidermy

Instead of stuffing and mounting real animals, artist Jordan Elise Perme creates creatures of her own called Horrible Adorables. The one-of-a-kind foam and felt animals (with real glass taxidermy eyes) are often mounted like actual hunting trophies, but with colorful, patterned exteriors. Read more in Jordan’s interview with Art Star!

Enlivening abandoned buildings and Reading Viaduct
The long empty Goldtex on 12th St. just north of Vine is showing signs of new life. The south face of the building is now dominated by a giant, fluttering green arrow, and plans to include a nighttime video projection on the east face of the structure are right around the corner. An arrow is always intended to point something out, and in this case that something is the Reading Viaduct – the abandoned elevated train track nearby. The groups Reading Viaduct Project and VIADUCTgreene are working to draw attention to this disused urban gem with the goal of renovating it.

Art + Soul Food in Brewerytown
On June 11th in Brewerytown there will be a celebration entitled Art + Soul Food from 5 – 8 PM.

Opportunities

DesignPhiladelphia – the largest design celebration of its kind nationwide – has opened a call for submissions. The festivities will take place October 13 – 23 2011, and submissions are due by July 15.

To coincide with her April 2012 show at the PMA, artist Zoe Strauss is seeking 10 Philadelphia teachers who would be interested in having her speak to their students. Email Zoe at info@zoestrauss.com.

Portrait by Zoe Strauss

On Saturday July 30 from 12-6, Arts Garage will host its first Art in Your Junk flea market. Registration for this indoor/outdoor event is $20 and they are seeking trinkets and art items of all types and mediums.

The theme of Projects Gallery‘s September show Máscara (Mask) juried by Henry Bermudez is the use of masks in contemporary society. The deadline for applications is July 25 and the full prospectus can be found here.

Carnegie Museum in Pittsburgh is seeking short films for its 2-Minute Film Festival whose theme is The Labor Party. The deadline is June 20. If you have any questions, contact 2minutefilms@carnegiemuseums.org

FLUXspace will host an Art Swap on Saturday, June 18 from 2-6 PM (setup starts at 1). Have extra stuff in your studio that you don’t use? Come join the swap meet for some beer and art haggling! To register (for free!), contact info@artmakingmachine.com

Artists

Caleb Weintraub‘s show entitled The Good Old Bad Old Days is up now at Eggman & Walrus in Santa Fe.

From Caleb's show in Santa Fe

Kip Deeds is part of a group print exhibition at IPCNY from June 9 – July 29.

Stephen Talasnick will be showing his works at the Katonah Museum of Art from June 5 – September 18.

Justyna Badach is part of a group photography show at the Center for Photography at Woodstock from June 11 – August 28.

Diedra Krieger will be displaying Plastic Fantastic at Figment NYC on Governor’s Island from June 10 – 12.

Alex da Corte is part of the Nicole Klagsbrun show Spirit of the Signal from June 9 – July 28 as well as Team Gallery exhibition Re: Empire from June 30 – August 5, both in NYC.

Ditta Baron Hoeber has nine poems that were selected to be part of the May/June issue of The American Poetry Review.

Drawing by Ditta Baron Hoeber

Henry Bermudez has a painting on display at the Dick Blick art supply store on Chestnut St. and a print in the Philagrafika 2011 invitational portfolio. He is also hanging a cut paper assemblage at the airport on June 10!

Lesley Mitchell and 31 artists in the Guild of Book Workers participate in a show at the Athenaeum from June 3 – 30. The show travels to Venice in the fall to the Scuola Internationale di Grafica, Oct 5-28.

Daniel Heyman, Disco Mosul, Amman series, drypoint, 22 x 27 inches

Heyman is not the only artist with a Philadelphia connection, and all things considered, not so many fine artists got named–only 23 of them from across the country. So being among them is a great honor! Others with Philadelphia connections are painter John Zurier, a Californian who shows here at Larry Becker Contemporary Art, and Philadelphia-based choreographer Rennie Harris!

I asked Heyman, whose moving print portraits bear witness to atrocities and injustices, what project he had planned for the fellowship. Here’s what he emailed me:

The project was to continue to work with issues related to the war, civil rights and torture, both here and overseas if the opportunity comes up.  I am following a case of US service women who were raped by their male counterparts while stationed in Iraq and Afghanistan (see Helen Bennedict’s book The Lonely Soldier) and also about to start a portrait project with the noon-time aids and lunch ladies in the Philadelphia school system.  My brother, who is a union organizer, works with them and they sound like they could really tell a story!

Daniel Heyman, installation of stories from war victims in installation at The Print Center in Philadelphia.

Heyman’s portraits, with their compressed stories inscribed in the background of the portraits, is the antithesis of Zurier’s calm colorfield paintings.

John Zurier, Verge, image taken from http://www.artnet.com/lbecker.html

Also of note is 2010 Fellow Anne Chu, whose dramatic sculptures mix folklore and myth-making, humility and awe.

Anne Chu sculptures at the Puppet Show at the ICA in Philadelphia

So it’s not surprising that these were thoughts I had when I went to Wimpel! Wrapped Wishes, a small fiber-based show of 12 works at the Philadelphia Museum of Jewish Art in Rodeph Shalom Synagogue on North Broad Street.

Polly Apfelbaum, detail, 5 wimpels in one 2009, magic marker on synthetic rayon silk velvet, 43 x 87 inches, courtesy artist and Locks Gallery

Curators Matt Singer and Wendi Furman invited 11 artists–from the internationally acclaimed Polly Apfelbaum to the Philadelphia-based Lance Pawling–to make contemporary art wimpels inspired by the traditional German-Jewish ceremonial cloth, a sort of scarf talisman used at life ritual events like circumcision ceremonies, bar mitzvahs and weddings.

Polly Apfelbaum, 5 wimpels in one, 2009, magic marker on synthetic rayon silk velvet, 43 x 87 inches, courtesy artist and Locks Gallery

Apfelbaum’s 5 wimpels in one anchored the back wall and thereby the whole exhibit with its explosion of color and velvety texture. The gorgeous lineups of marker colors and patterns–each mark a mini-Rothko–reminded me of knitted winter scarves, perfect for the gray wintry day that I stopped by. The out-of-line edges turned the “scarves” into well-used objects or people with quirks. They had a tenderness to them as well as a joy in their exuberant, saturated colors.

OK, so it’s easy to love Polly Apfelbaum, you say. What about the others in the show?

Esther Kessler Yarinsky, Dor L'Dor--From Generation to Generation, 2009 fiber, printed stitched appliqued and embellished, 7 x 84 inches

Well, since you really want to know, Estelle Kessler Yarinsky’s Dor L’Dor–From Generation to Generation, has an utterly different art historical background. Whereas Apfelbaum’s explosive colors and repetitive lines bring a feminist conversation to art historical traditions like Minimalism and Post-Minimalism, Yarinsky is working both in Judaica and women’s craft traditions–sewing, applique, decorations. She has created a wimpel that names her grandchildren and their individual accomplishments, represented in buttons, pins, images, embroidery, all held together with a sculptural stuffed red tube that becomes a cartoon thread or artery reaching across the generations.

Esther Kessler Yarinsky, detail, Dor L'Dor--From Generation to Generation, 2009 fiber, printed stitched appliqued and embellished, 7 x 84 inches

At the top, sits the grandmother admiring her handiwork. She’s a stuffed doll well-dressed in a skirt and high heels , at once chic and grandmotherly, doting and smiling. This wimpel, teeming with life and love, begs to be fingered and pored over. And the Hebrew, indecipherable to most of us mere mortals, seems like no impediment to understanding what this piece is all about.

Leslie Sudock, detail, Seyag ha'shoshanim (Hedge of Roses), 2009, knitted and fulled wool and mohair, china silk and silk organza, 10 x 31 inches plus cords approx. 75 inches long uncoiled

A very different craft tradition generated Leslie Sudock’s Kamia Lilith (Lilith Amulet) and Seyag ha’shoshanim (Hedge of Roses). These felt wimpels, which look like torah bindings (a traditional wimpel function), are also from a craft and clothing tradition–the making of felt. But where Yarinsky’s wimpel is ebullient and juicy, Sudock’s are austere and stern, with their raised Hebrew lettering and thorny sculptural shapes challenging to fates to be kind. Again, tactility and beauty and mystery won the day–these had both.

Leslie Sudock, Kamia Lilith (Lilith Amulet), detail, 2009, knitted and fulled wool and mohair, china silk and silk organza, silk cord and thread, red coral, copper wire, 9 1/2 x 40 inches

Again, it seemed to hardly matter that words here were in Hebrew, although the wall labels did translate.

I wasn’t so intrigued by the more literal interpretations of wishes and Biblical passages. Nor was I intrigued by fabric that seemed so separate from bodies.

Daniel Heyman, Tender Wrapping, 2009, Sheep casing, 10 x 15 inches

Daniel Heyman sidestepped fabric altogether by using strips of sheep casing. In so doing, he avoided the necessity of making fabric objects that are touchable. Yet he implies touch and vulnerability in his terrifying Tender Wrapping. The skin quality of the material refers to the lost bit of tender skin taken at circumcision as well as to a diaper (wimpels were often sewn from circumcision swaddling cloths) and the Torah, written on sheep skin. The piece was the surprise of the show, using its hands-off framed presentation to emphasize the sense of something precious being taken. The coherence of this piece (I could barely look at it because it is so effective) is shocking.

P. Timothy Gierschick II, Quiver, 2009, block print, latex, enamel on canvas, 7 x 70 inches

Others in the show are P. Timothy Gierschick II, Kym Hepworth, Tristin Lowe, K. Pannepacker, Lance Pawling, Alexander Stadler, and Jane Trigere.

Tristin Lowe, The Wimpel Effect 2009 silkscreen on Felt 63 x 21 inches. This draws on Kabala cosmology and contemporary cosmologies

Marianne Bernstein, one of the photos she took of people who participated in Shelter, which opens tonight at the Painted Bride.

Bernstein, who moved here from New Haven about eight years ago, has finally gotten her Philly sea legs; she’s now moving full steam ahead.

Just a little background first. Bernstein has had a career that has included film and photography in New York and then New Haven. She has worked as a commercial photographer for the Muppets, the Maysles Brothers and more. Esquire and the Atlantic Monthly published her work, and she has received grants from the Honickman and Leeway foundations, and was co-director (with Judy Gelles) and producer for the award-winning documentary “From Philadelphia to the Front.”

I spoke to Bernstein back in July, when Tatted–which documents some of the tattooed people she encountered on South Street–was in the middle of production.

“I’m Interested in people and their stories in whatever form it takes–photos, words, whatever.”
She wanted to photograph people on South Street, near where she lived. But she needed some kind of excuse for approaching people and decided on tattoos.

Marianne Bernstein, one of the images from her forthcoming book Tatted.

“I started about two years ago, and even in the last two years, saw a huge rise in the number of people with tattoos.

“When taking a picture, there are two dialectics, the tattoo and the person. There’s a duality. Heaven and hell, all the big themes, Blakian themes, on every person.

“I would walk along South Street and pick a person. They always said, yes. All the photos are taken on street level, right there. If you walk along South Street, there’s so much going on, the cars, the signs, the people. I’m a purist. I also have some commercial photography training. It helped because it was hard because of all the cars and crap.

“I couldn’t have done the series anywhere else. There’s a vibe there on the weekend. People aren’t in a hurry. They are completely open, and they are excited when I ask them. And then the veil got lifted [the public persona once she started talking with them and taking their picture].

Marianne Bernstein, the subject's tattoo reads Heaven.

“I really had to feel centered in order to do this. The interactions took no more than 5 minutes.”

Bernstein said she is pretty much self-taught, but clearly she knows a little of what’s what.

“Portrait of these kinds are not in vogue.  They remind me more of some old portrait photographs from the early 1900s.”

I asked, what do the photos remind you of and why. “August Sander. The subjects are in the frame, documented in some way.”

In the forthcoming book of these photos, the pictures are accompanied by notes the subjects wrote in a little book Bernstein carried around with her.

Marianne Bernstein--a portrait and explanatory note (by the subject) for the book Tatted.

LR: What did you ask people to write in the notes?
MB: I didn’t just want a literal description. I would tell them, this note is going right next to the portrait. What would you like to say? I found ways to be less and less direct about what could go in there. I got better at it.

LR: What kind of equipment do you use?
MB: I used to work in film 4 x 5, Hasselblad. But I switched to digital; I used a Canon 30D.

Doing the photos–it was almost like being an interior decorator, finding the background that would work with them, their clothing. I’d say, Let’s take a walk, and they’d follow me like ducks. Then I would calm down. I didn’t tell them how to pose. I just told them to relax as much as they can, and to look at the camera as if it’s someone you really care about.

Sometimes, it was so intimate. One of the subjects, Bobby Vanity–he’s going to be added to the book–is covered with tattoos. He’s charming. But the tattoos are all about Satan. He wrote in his note that God is Satan. Sometimes I was literally touching the tattoos and they let me! It’s almost as if people can put down their guard more easily with a stranger than with someone they know.

Marianne Bernstein in Love Park, during her Welcome House installation there.

Bernstein told a story about  a young man–skater, artist, homeless guy–who she met early one morning while trying to get a shot of South Street for the book. He’s going to be in the book and his drawings are going to be in the show at Gallery Joe.

MB: You never know how you’re going to touch people, and they’re going to touch you. The interactions are everything.

LR: Is there anything unique about Philly tattoos?
MB: Philly people use more words. It makes sense since the first printing press was here. In Hawaii, Anna (a local tattoo artist) told me people liked rainbows and fish for their tattoos, but in Philly, people like a lot of words. I made poems from the tattooed words on the people I photographed.

Maybe the tattoos here are so individualistic and artistic because more and more people graduate from art school and need a job, so they become tattoo artists.

Photo by Marianne Bernstein, part of her series of people and their tats on South Street.

LR: How do you pick what’s in the book?
MB: It’s a process of elimination. It’s important what goes next to what. It’ like a poem, an experience looking at them. Doing this is about piercing stereotypes (my own stereotypes, too). Like the Shelter project. I’m trying to go beyond my own comfort zone whenever I can. In the end you find people are pretty much the same.

LR: when you started, were you planning on a book?
MB: I did not go out and try to get a book. I met the designer–I walked into Silica Glass Gallery and saw a nicely designed book. I had been working with Ruth Perlmutter and the Jewish Film Festival, and their design stuff was not so good. So I called him about designing for the Philadelphia Jewish Film Festival. So we became friends. He knew about my tattoo images, because he was with 215 magazine, it’s now only on the internet, which ran some of the photos. Then he began working for Grit City Books. Grit was doing a Philly related series of books, all ending in -ed–Smoked, Tatted, Bounced (about Bouncers).
He asked if I was interested in doing a book and if I was still taking photos. I was.

I think it’s funny that all four people working on the project are Jews, and it’s about tattoos.

LR: Why is that funny?
MB: Jews are not comfortable with tattoos–concentration camp numers were tattooed on people, and also it’s against Jewish law.

Daniel Heyman's portrait of Lonnie Bowen, for the exhibit Shelter

Back to tonight’s show–another venture that brings artists out of their comfort zone, forcing them to confront the private lives of vulnerable people who are having a hard time keeping food on the table and a roof overhead. Shelter features the work of 17 Philadelphia artists–Phillip Adams, Marc Bernstein, Adam Carrigan, Joan Wadleigh Curran, Judy Gelles, John Broderick Heron, Daniel Heyman, David Kessler, Dierdra Krieger, Danielle Lessovitz, Damon Reaves, Ricardo Rivera, Nicholas Santore, Matthew Savitsky, Zoe Strauss, Katie Tachman, and Eva Wylie. They collaborated with 10 Philadelphia households whose homes were restored by volunteers from Rebuilding Together Philadelphia.

The exhibit opens 5-7 p.m.

Big news this First Friday: A new gallery, Marginal Utility , is opening in the Vox building. The six-story former factory building already houses Vox Populi , Copy , AHN/VHS , Progressive Sharing , Jeffrey Stockbridge Fine Art and Tiger Strikes Asteroid . With the addition of Marginal Utility on the second floor, the alternative art scene truly has a new center of gravity.

Ronnie Bass, still from The Astronomer, at Marginal Utility opening Nov. 6

Founded by Basekamp ’s David Dempewolf and Yuka Yokoyama —who also launched the recent art theory zine Machete—Marginal Utility has 700 square feet of space including a 500-square-foot gallery and a separate work space for artists in residence.

First up in the new space is “The Astronomer, Part 1: Departure From Shed , ” a nine-minute video projection and sculpture project by New York artist Ronnie Bass . The video—still in production—is a yarn about oppression and a better future acted out by a small cast which includes the artist. The piece is rooted in 19th-century French philosopher Charles Fourier’s writings on utopian societies.

Ronnie Bass, The Astronomer

Still images show the actors highlighted against a black background giving a sense of disembodiment and foreboding. Bass’ sculpture project, which will grow and change during the show’s two-month run, is a water fountain made with garage sale and dollar store 
purchases—highly un-utopian.

P. Timothy Gierschick, Golem, from his show at Tiger Strikes Asteroid

P. Timothy Gierschick ’s abstract paintings at Tiger Strikes Asteroid whisper like Morse Code tapping a quiet but insistent message. The works in ”Patch and Plot” subvert universal signs and symbols like rainbows and geometrical shapes twisting them into new designs that suggest something familiar without being clear. Is the rainbow edge around a cloverleaf pattern happy? Geirschick — a member of Tiger Strikes Asteroid collective — uses spray paint, house paint, enamel and collage on found furniture, scrap wood and cardboard.

Daniel Heyman, from the Shelter show at the Painted Bride

From the impresario of ”Welcome House , ” the recent temporary public art project in Love Park, comes ”Shelter , ” at the Painted Bride Art Center . Marianne Bernstein , an artist and activist, organized the group show to foster a dialog between artists and the public about social issues. Before the show, 14 artists were paired with 10 Philadelphia families to make art dealing with issues of family crisis and homelessness. The photography, painting, video and drawings that resulted are art as social activism by artists known for great empathy in their art. Printmaker Daniel Heyman created word-and-image portraits of veterans in transitional housing. Ricardo Rivera of the Klip Collective made a documentary video of a dying and bedridden woman, Gloria, and her devoted husband.

Bernstein, a filmmaker and photographer, also has great empathy for people.  Her new photo book, “Tatted,” shows tattooed strangers she photographed in the alleyways behind the South Street tattoo shops.  The works capture the personalities of the tattooed men and women with great care and love. Tatted, published by Grit City Inc, launches Dec. 4 at Pure Gold Gallery.

Jeffro Kilpatrick's The Nearness of You, in the Creature show at Brave New Worlds

Need more Halloween imagery? Check out ”Creature Double Feature” at Brave New Worlds . The show features original works by 20 artists who are affiliated with the Philadelphia Cartoonist Society. Concetta Barbera and Christian Patchell curated the show which will have small scale prints, drawings and books at reasonable 
prices

Ronnie Bass: “ The Astronomer, Part 1: Departure From Shed ,” Through Jan. 10. Reception: Fri., Nov. 6, 6-9pm. Marginal Utility, 319 N. 11th St., second fl. 917.355.4487.

Philadelphia Cartoonist Society: “ Creature Double Feature ,” Through Nov. 25. Reception: Fri., Nov. 6, 6-9pm. Brave New Worlds, 45 N. Second St. 215.925.6525.

Peter Saul‘s exhibit at PAFA was the excuse for an all-day symnposium there on political art earlier this month. But Saul wasn’t the only headliner participating. We also fell for Art Spiegelman‘s bon mots, Laylah Ali’s sometimes veiled wait-wait-don’t-tell commentary about her own work, and Enrique Chagoya’s conflation of art and cartooning. The day also included insights from Philadelphia artists Daniel Heyman and Jane Irish, scholar David Carrier, New York artist/activist Sue Coe and moderator Patricia Hills.

Two political posters by artists. On the right is Richard Serra’s poster which appeared on the back cover of The Nation magazine.

PAFA Curator of Modern Art Robert Cozzolino spoke about the seriousness of content in Saul’s work and said [his] “Vietnam paintings are the most brave anti-war statements of the 20th Century.” Placing Saul in the tradition of 19th century history paintings from PAFA, Cozzolino also invoked the names of 20th century political artists like Ed Kienholz, Faith Ringgold, Leon Golub, Nancy Spero and PAFA’s own Irving Petlin.

Peter Saul, Bush at Abu Ghraib, 2006; Acrylic on canvas 78 x 90 inches (198.1 x 228.6 cm); Hall Collection.

Cozzolino cleared the art historical record behind Saul’s Bush at Abu Ghraib painting, saying Bush is putting his finger in the victim’s mouth (not in his nose—as stated in the show’s catalog). Saul’s work quotes a Jean-Léon Gérôme painting, The Slave Market. There, a prospective buyer puts his finger in the naked female slave’s mouth to check her teeth. “It’s a classic iconographic symbol of debasement….it widens the [Saul] picture. It’s more than a good joke.”

Gérôme’s The Slave Market.

But Saul himself was not going to let seriousness rule the day. He gave a puckish talk about his career, with deadpan disclaimers about the seriousness of his own motives.

Saul, who came out of ’60s Pop, has the look of a leprechaun, with a twinkle in his eye and a self-deprecating, ironic charm. He said “I’m just a normal person with the usual frailties. (He has three kids, two wives and the second one has been his wife for 35 years.)

His talk was a litany of slippery statements meant to provoke. To wit, he suggested he was lazy, boring, an opportunist, a liar and a shameless self-promoter whose paintings quoted from other artists (DeKooning, Duchamp et al.) to call attention to himself. He posited that his inflammatory Vietnam paintings were a toss off — a career-saving move to grab attention when he saw the war was “on his tv.” And at one point, sounding a little peeved, he challenged the audience to give him better questions to answer!

Peter Saul, Columbus Discovers America. Look at all that blood!

SOME FAVORITE SAULISMS:

“My work is riddled with sexual problems. I think I have the normal sexual problems that people have. I just exaggerate it like I do everything else. I did it to get noticed, then realized it’s why I didn’t get noticed. So what? I still enjoyed making the picture.”

Peter Saul, airing his “usual sexual problems.” The woman is saying, “Your sexist jokes make me puke.” The man is holding a sign saying, “I’m sorry.”

“[Art dealers] all look the same—52, suits, speak two foreign languages. …The one I met, he plopped into my life. He supported me for 27 years…in spite of disappointment and nay saying. …People think art dealers are only interested in money. My feeling is he’s 98 percent of the time a rich person…What he wants is for the artist to create excitement for him. I realized the art dealer wanted some excitement and I just did it. That’s my imagination of them. But I’ve only known four or five.”

“…I’m glad business people control the art world .  …intellectuals never gave me anything. The intellectuals are dead as soon as they graduate.”

Peter Saul takes on the racially fraught issue of OJ Simpson’s murder trial here.

And, our favorite moment: He compared himself to the faux memoirist excoriated by Oprah Winfrey (whose name he pronounced Opera). The artist of homicidal nightmare paintings has never seen a dead body and cried buckets when his cat was put to sleep! But he’d defend himself on Opera because, “What if a person’s never been to war or is not black…it’s not fair to restrict an Anglo-Saxon person to harmless pictures.”

Thomas Nozkowski Untitled (8-44) 2002, oil on linen on panel, 16 x 20 inches, image at http://www.artnet.com/artist/12692/thomas-nozkowski.html, Courtesy Max Protetch Gallery

Scholar David Carrier was pithy no matter what he said and provided some surprise content — several quotes from painter Tom Nozkowski, who in his writings apparently praises Saul’s work for many reasons, including its formal properties. Nozkowski wrote that even Saul’s worst painting is like no one else’s. To this, Saul, surprised, piped up his thanks and said he wasn’t aware Nozkowski said such nice things about him.

Carrier put Saul in great art historical company (Manet, Daumier, Poussin) and compared the artist’s figures to Oldenberg’s soft sculptures or Dali’s melting clocks, saying at one point, “How do these people have sex?”

Peter Saul’s take on Nude Descending a Staircase.

Jane Irish and Daniel Heyman each spoke about truth in art and about the importance of words. Irish said that art has the power to create myth. Heyman spoke about the role of words in his portraits of survivors of Abu Ghraib, whom he interviewed in the Middle East in conjunction with a law suit (see posts here and here). “It doesn’t matter what the picture looks like; it’s the importance of the words…

Two issues seemed to rivet people’s attention – the truthiness or falsiness and the function of political art; and the chicken or egg question of what came first, the text or the image. Is art with text a bastard stepchild of the real thing, or a thing of value, in and of itself?

Afternoon panel with Laylah Ali, Art Spiegelman, Sue Coe, Enrico Chagoya

Art Spiegelman, who was named one of the 100 most influential people by Time Magazine in 2005, began his career as a designer of packaging and of Garbage Pail Kids. But his talk went even further back, to some of what led him to underground comics and political art, namely Mad Magazine, which he said he studied the way some kids studied the Talmud. He credited Mad with changing his life. “I believe it must have changed Peter Saul’s life too.” (See Basil Wolverton image from Mad Magazine, below, which Spiegelman showed in his slide show and which is also in the Peter Saul catalog).

Garbage Pail Kids. Look at that Saul-esque baby!

Spiegelman, a gray-haired but boyishly scruffy chain smoker who sucked on an empty pipe and needed a cig break at one point, looks quite the opposite of the sweater-and-slacks man Saul. Spiegelman has the scholarly air of a New York intellectual. Earnest and passionate, he said things like, “Mad showed us the underbelly of Norman Rockwell America, that monolithic culture. …These were powerful lessons for me.”

Basil Wolverton’s Mad Magazine cover, which influenced both Spiegelman and Saul.

New York artist Sue Coe, dressed in overalls, her hair in braids, was born in England, next to a slaughterhouse. It was her personal story and her sense of outrage—for abused animals and for abused women prisoners—that dominated her talk.

Laylah Ali, slide of some of her new work combining lists of words with imagery.

But Laylah Ali took a quieter approach, hiding her physical presence in unremarkable clothing – actually we remarked how she was dressed like her characters in the Greenheads series—sporty casual. The Williamstown, MA artist, who showed a group of drawings in PAFA’s Morris Gallery in 2006, told us that she wrote her notes for the talk on a vomit bag on the airplane coming into Philly. She held up the bag for show and tell.

Ali doesn’t give a lot away in her work. “Narrative is important in my work but I trust the viewer 70 percent and I give 30 percent.” She admitted her much admired but cryptic Greenheads paintings from the ’80s were personal, political and loaded with family dynamics.

A slide of Laylah Ali’s work, loaded with the personal and political and family dynamics. The figure on the right looks sort of like Ali herself.

“I come from a family where domestic violence was a big part…my father grew up in the Jim Crow south…but it was a family secret. I didn’t know that. I thought my father grew up in Chicago. There were lots of secrets in my family.”

In school she made works reflecting her family’s darker secrets (an uncle who murdered his wife and was executed) but got weird feedback about the works and took a giant step away from the personal. Her newest works involve lists of words to which she adds drawings.

Enrique Chagoya slide. Chagoya and Saul appropriate Superman in their works. We think the right side of the panel shares something of Laylah Ali’s highly costumed characters in her show at PAFA in 2006.

The last speaker, Enrique Chagoya, a former political cartoonist (well, in some sense he still is!), came to the U.S. from Mexico in 1977, with an engineering degree, but then earned degrees from the San Francisco Art Institute (BFA) and Berkeley (MFA). He merges pre-Columbian and Western imagery from art history and popular culture in his politically inflected art work.

Most interesting revelation Chagoya spit out – his father was a very successful detective at the Mexico mint and Chagoya spent a lot of time looking at the collection of confiscated forgery plates of pesos and dollars! “If I can’t make it as an artist, I can make it as a forger,” he said.

Enrique Chagoya. Nose Job — Ronald Reagan as Pinnochio. “I wasn’t intending to make art, just a cartoon, but I got lots of exhibitions. I didn’t expect to be popular but I got popular.”

We loved his geopolitical take on things. He calls his works – which reference everything from Mayan culture to Goya and Mickey Mouse – “reverse anthropology.” And he explained his MM fixation: “I grew up with Mickey Mouse. I thought he was Mexican. Then I saw the Mickey Mouse Club and said, Oh, I guess he’s not Mexican.”

Chagoya slide of Enrique Chagoya work. In this one, you can see the influence of another mouse besides Mickey Mouse–Speedy Gonzalez.

The most ad hoc exchange of the day was between Saul, sitting in the last row of the audience at that point, and Spiegelman, then at the front table:

Saul: Art, do you ever feel when your art is rejected by a magazine…do you want to kill them?

Spiegelman: I hate the word it’s called — “submission”…I quit every six weeks; then I get called back in.

Saul: You seem pretty calm.

Controversial New Yorker cartoon by Barry Blitt that Spiegelman referred to in his anecdote about his own Obama cover idea being rejected by the magazine.

Spiegelman: I’m on Quaaludes…I have a picture for a New Yorker cover of a dirty White House with blood…mud…and Obama walking in at night, like a janitor. But The New Yorker got freaked from the last Obama cover [by Barry Blitt, so the magazine turned Spiegelman's down].

Finally, Coe brought real commerce into the discussion, saying she’d brought prints she was selling to benefit the Farm Sanctuary. We perked up at this and bought the last two available for $20 each.

Two exhibits at the Print Center are not the sort of thing you can glance at and breeze through. They are work by two artists intent on telling stories, so you need to slow down and listen.

Daniel Heyman’s stories are notable for their grip on reality, for their political juice, and for the method of installation. They are part of Daniel Heyman’s Abu Ghraib prisoner interviews. Heyman witnessed the interviews with former detainees of Abu Ghraib when he traveled to Amman, Jordan this year as part of a team pursuing a class action suit on behalf of these prisoners. We saw a portion of the results last summer at the Ice Box, in Heyman’s Clean Up America Instllation.

This installation at the Print Center, the Abu Ghraib Detainee Interview Project, gets some of its visceral juice from the words stenciled on the floor–excerpts from the interviews arranged in a house-like shape, but this house is not a home. Trampling the words at the same time as reading them is harsh and difficult, and the words are so loaded with horror that even small tidbits of them have impact.

Floor detail of Daniel Heyman’s installation at the Print Center

This is how Heyman did the portraits (from a press release to the previous show at the Ice Box):

Heyman traveled to Amman at the invitation of Philadelphia law firm Burke Pyle LLC to participate in interviews that the firm, along with the Center for Constitutional Rights, Human Rights Watch, and Detroit law firm Akeel and Valentine PLC, were conducting as they gathered evidence for a class action lawsuit on behalf of former detainees at Abu Ghraib. All of the Iraqi clients were tortured by their American captors and/or the translators working with the Americans, and none of the clients were ever formally accused of any crime. They have all been released.

Heyman was invited to witness the interviews in a visual medium. He created portraits of the Iraqis, and in cases when the clients feared to be identified, their interviewers. Working quickly by hand in the drypoint technique on copper plates used in printmaking, Heyman not only made portraits but transcribed parts of the translated testimonies by writing backwards on the plate. When he ran out of copper plates, Heyman switched to watercolor as his medium for the portraits.

Installation shot

The portrait subjects, some missing limbs, others of men just telling their tales, come across in all their humanity and dignity, but ultimately this is an exhibit about the stories they have to tell–and of our nation’s human rights failures and of all of our failures to take care of eachother. So slow down and take a look, especially if you haven’t seen his other exhibit of this work. This iteration is quite simple and straightforward in its approach, and the end result is quite moving.

Installation shot of some of Hoeber’s books on pedestals with cradles to keep the books from lying flat.

Also at the Print Center are a group of artist’s books by Ditta Baron Hoeber. Hoeber’s installation of her books of photographic stories is pristine and elegant; the pedestals and the books atop them have a monumentality that made me think of stele and Oscars all at once. The exhibit also includes a book of self-portrait drawings.

A page of Story, by Ditta Baron Hoeber

Hoeber, a photographer and artist, uses photographic books to tell double tales–actors acting or rehearsing scenes. But we are separated from the scripts; only Hoeber’s sequential photographs remain, with actors interacting with others outside the frame. The result is a bit mysterious and distanced, leaving room for us to imagine what’s going on within the frame, outside the frame, and between the frames.

A bit of gossip–Hoeber’s books include Hoeber’s L.A. art-meteor son, Julian Hoeber, filming. And I should add that Ditta’s a friend.

Of the photographic books, my favorites were Story, Movie and Begin, Begin Again.

There’s also a Vince Romaniello video with Daniel Heyman about Daniel’s journey to Jordan to draw the Iraqi prisoners of war who were being interviewed for a human rights lawsuit against the US government and its prisons.

artblog covered Heyman’s work last July. Here’s my Weekly Update piece and my Q&A with the artist who at that time was fresh home from his journey. Now he’s got a great show of the works at the Print Center. I’m so glad to see Heyman’s work get all the coverage it deserves.