(Inaccurate information has been removed from this post).

ICA appoints new curator

Anthony Elms. Photo by Erin Leland.

The Institute of Contemporary Art has appointed Anthony Elms as a new Associate Curator. Elms has worked as an  independent curator and writer, and he was Assistant Director of Gallery 400 at the University of Illinois at Chicago for six years. He replaces Jenelle Porter who has taken a position at ICA Boston.

Is Going to College Worth It?
President Obama just announced his plan for student debt relief. Many artists are college educated and in debt. Many readers of this blog are likely strapped with student loans too. University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School of Business recently published an article questioning just such a system: “While more U.S. students are enrolled than ever before, a perfect storm of soaring costs, rising student debt and shrinking job prospects have led critics to increasingly challenge whether college remains a worthwhile investment.”

Phone cameras vs. point-and-shoot

Comparison between an 8 megapizel digital camera (left) and iPhone 4S (right). These images were taken at the same time and distance at Chinatown Coffee in Washington D.C. (Mallory Benedict and Cristina Fletes/NPR)

An article on NPR also raises some value questions. With the advancement of technology in smart phones marching steadily forward, is it cost effective to purchase a separate camera? For amateur photographers, the choice may become more and more clear as smart phone technology develops and the convenience of quickly sharing images trumps the need for a point-and-shoot camera.

Josh Mosley video art history lecture at PAFA

Bill Viola, "Ocean Without a Shore", 2007, video and sound installation, running time: approx. 90 minutes.

As part of its Art at Lunch series, the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts will be holding a lecture about the history of video art on November 2 at 12 noon. The speaker will be Joshua Mosley, artist and Associate Professor of Fine Art at UPenn. The lecture anticipates the arrival of one of PAFA’s newest acquisition – video artist Bill Viola’s “Ocean Without a Shore” to be installed more or less permanently in the Morris Gallery, according to Curator of Contemporary Art, Julien Robson.  Look for regular Morris gallery programming to continue, but in other parts of the building.  (It might cost to get in to see it, too, whereas trips to the Morris Gallery itself previously were free).

Fleisher Wind Challenge trick-or-treat closing reception
The 34th season of the Fleisher Wind Challenge Exhibition Series closes on October 30 with a reception from 4 – 6 PM. Artists Alana Bograd and Jennie Thwing will premiere a painting exhibition and a stop-motion animation completed with teens from Fleisher’s Youth programs. Halloween costumes are encouraged and the artists will have plenty of candy available for all!

Knight Foundation gains tech guru board members
Facebook is coming to the Knight Foundation.  That is, Chris Hughes, Facebook co-founder will now be on the board of trustees of the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation. The foundation’s tech coup for its board also includes Joichi Ito, director of MIT’s Media Lab and John Palfrey, professor at Harvard Law School and co-director of the Berkman Center for Internet & Society.

Opportunities

Performers wanted for… City Hall? That’s right, the Office of Arts, Culture and the Creative Economy is now seeking talented performing artists and organizations for City Hall Presents, a new series of free concerts highlighting Philly’s rich performance offerings.

InLiquid membership applications are due by October 30. That’s right around the corner, but worth the consideration. A membership promotes and supports the work of visual artists with an extensive online artist portfolio page including credentials, statements, contact information, and exposure.

The egg theory.

Late architect Cedric Price theorized that cities are like eggs – boiled, fried, or scrambled – but Philadelphia doesn’t quite fit the bill. Hidden City is hosting a contest to find a better theory for Philly’s formation. Visit the contest page to learn more!

The Delaware Center for the Contemporary Arts is seeking artists for solo shows in 2013. You must be a DCCA member and you may not have had a solo show in the past four years. Visit their opportunities page for more info.

F&N Gallery at 2009 Frankford Avenue seeks submissions for a juried art show.  The show will open on January 6 and run for one month. The show will highlight Women artists exhibiting a theme of Cultural Awareness and/or Social Enlightenment. Interested artists should submit five images of their work to fngallery.coh@gmail.com for consideration.

Artist News

Jayson Musson‘s alter-ego Hennessy Youngman will enter the hallowed halls of PAFA to hilariously critique the collection of art by dead white guys. The snarky show is called The Grand Manner and opens on November 5.

Matt Bollinger, "Locker Room", flashe and acrylic on cut and pasted paper, 60" x 48", 2011.

Matt Bollinger, a former Philly artist that showed at the Rodger LaPelle Gallery now has a solo show in NYC at Galerie Zürcher.

Barry Parker, "Etruscan Places IV", 2009.

Barry Parker, retiring head of the sculpture department at UArts has a solo show at Medialia in New York that opens on November 5.

Gerard Brown who is the head of foundations at Tyler School of art and the scholar in residence at the Center for Art in Wood has an upcoming show at Tiger Strikes Asteroid starting on November 4.

Brandon Cox is a UArts grad now living in NYC. He recently had a solo show at UArts and he’s definitely on a roll!

Kaitlin Pomerantz had a recent DIY curating project “Wish You Were There” at Green Line Cafe that has been picked up by the University City Arts League.

Miss Rockaway Armada at the Philadelphia Art Alliance. Photo by Libby

And in fact, it seems to me that what’s on display right now at ICA in not one but two exhibits, is a very big look at the crafting of objects.

Charline von Heyl’s abstract paintings downstairs and Bill Walton’s Studio in the Project Space upstairs present works that are highly crafted. And in the case of Walton’s Studio, the presence of the studio and the works is a kind of gift. It’s not possible to think about crafting without thinking about the artist doing the work. To see the studio (even though the artist is not in it) allows a way into the thinking process of the artist, something crucial when talking about art.

Charline von Heyl, Alastor, 2008, acrylic on linen 82x48"

Many of Von Heyl’s abstract works include graphical elements in the midst of gestural abstraction. The artist talks about her works as places for erasures or obliterations. Her painting process builds up and subtracts from the surface with brushing, scraping, rubbing with rags — and printing in the oldest printing process known, handprints and finger marks on the surface.

Charline von Heyl, Alastor, det., 2008, acrylic on linen 82x48"

Throughout, the paintings and works on paper broadcast an air of decoration, reinforced by several repeat motifs that, while added seemingly haphazardly, actually create unity out of the presumed chaos. In particular, the use of handprints, darts (like egg and dart motifs without the eggs), grids  and zig zag lines unify the paintings both within each one and amongs the group of works on display.   These elements might be abstract but they refer to elements easily recognizable in the real world and provide a way in to the artist’s thinking.

Charline von Heyl, P., 2008 acrylic charcoal and crayon on linen 82x74"

The more you look at these paintings, and the highly worked and highly designed black and white works on paper, the more you can see the world in them.

Charline von Heyl, Big Joy, 2004, oil and charcoal on canvas, 82x78"

Some of von Heyl’s paintings are more swooshy and abstract, and others are more tightly scripted and decorative. What they all have going for them is their generous size (most are 82×74″ or 7x6ft) which allows you to stand close and have them take over your field of vision. It’s there that the colors and surface details become the main elements –and her heavily-orchestrated and interesting process — shines.

Charline von Heyl, Solo Dolo 2010 oil and charcoal on linen 82x74"

While she is a painter’s painter, for sure, I think that the artist’s real world references and her interesting surfaces and colors transcend the usual insularity of abstract painting. Gestural painting emits a kind of bravado and while these works have plenty of bravado (and bravura) you will find their bold graphic sensibility something to grab on to — something entertaining, almost. All those darts; the black and white diamond patterning that  is so pleasingly familiar (decks of cards? kitchen floors?); the cave-wall handprints; the grids; all are things that are in the human experiential memory bank. We know them, we feel them.

Charline von Heyl, Time Waiting, 2010, acrylic and oil on linen, 82x78"

This is work that will grow on you. And if you are smitten, as I am becoming, grab the catalog which has great full color reproductions of all the works, which unfold to poster size so you can get a big eyeful. The essays by Jenelle Porter bring up great points (although I have to quibble with the idea that the painting titled Big Joy is joyful — it might be a big sorrow instead, despite the title). And that brings up the whole issue of titles of abstract works leading to an interpretation. These works are for the most part titled. The seduction of reading meaning into a work from the title is great in any abstract piece and while it helps the viewer to have something to hold on to, it’s also a kind of trap that may limit interpretation by offering one.

Bill Walton’s Studio

Bill Walton's Studio, upstairs in the Project Space at ICA

To see the late artist’s ship-tight studio installed, with room left over, in the corner of the Project Space is to know this was an artist of compactness. His works, which are carefully-made, tiny charged chunks that sit unassuming on a wall or shelf  are like the Chinese scholar’s rocks — things to be reflected on; things that take you on an inner journey.

Bill Walton's art, a small wood piece that suggests a hinged box propped open but a small tooth-like chunk

This studio view without the artist allows you in to the back space in which the magic happened for the artist. Everything is orderly as you would expect of this artist of the exacting moment, but the sheer number of things in the work space is astonishing. From all this stuff the artist whittled down his ideas into just the right chunk of wood, at the exact right size and feel, held in precise relation with another object.

Bill Walton's Studio, detail

In a similar way, poets live with the clutter of their virtual word studios — jars of vocabulary; boxes full of phrases heard and stored for rumination; drawers jammed with verbs — everything ready to make just the right tight little poem.

The beauty of Walton’s and von Heyl’s works is revealed slowly.  The consideration of materials and making are integral to understanding and appreciating.

Robert Pruitt, Brother From Gleise 581C (Gleise is a planet); The figure, wearing a Dogon mask, is in a B-boy pose. The nice images are from http://www.robert-pruitt.com

Pruitt’s 50-inch-ish conte crayon, charcoal and mixed media drawings on Kraft paper (and more recently paper dyed with tea) pair gorgeous drawing technique with ideas about contemporary culture, especially about fashion and race and identity. He has also made video, animations, sculptures and is part of Otabenga Jones and Associates, a collective of African-American artists with something to say about race in the art world and its institutions.

The first time I saw work by Robert A. Pruitt--A picture I snapped in 2005 at the Studio Museum in Harlem. CEO, conte crayon on Kraft paper

I saw Pruitt’s work in the 2006 Whitney Biennial, in 2005 at the Studio Museum in Harlem, and this year at the Fabric Workshop and Museum (he was in their New American Voices exhibit). His residency at the FWM plus a visiting artist gig at Penn are part of what brought him to the ICA here.

Robert Pruitt to the left. A photo by Edward Curtis of a Navajo dancer on the screen. You can see the Curtis image up close here: http://www.windows2universe.org/mythology/tonenili_rain.html

The audience on the night of his talk was filled with students, and some strays like myself (I’d guess more than 100 attended).
The first slide Pruitt flashed was of an Edward Curtis photo of a Navajo dressed in the costume of the water god. “It’s an alternative way of living and being. I’m interested in how that existed.”

Robert Pruitt, Two Sisters

He said his drawing technique grew out of his love for Marvel Comics and copying them, as a boy.

This internet image Mr. T has animated bling in the original.

His work, mash-ups of exotic cultures, and of historical eras with today,  reflects interests in how fashion expresses ideas about being human, and how those ideas vary in science fiction, pop culture, and other cultures past and present. For inspiration he spends a lot of time scouring the Internet with no set idea of what he’s looking for. That’s how he stumbled on the Native American dancer, and that’s what set him thinking of the oddity of Mr. T ‘s “post-’60s and -’70s bravado” with its relationship to hip-hop bling and African kings’ adornment (check out the original image of Mr. T with his animated bling).

Pruitt asks about rapper T-Pain, How does he walk out of the house?

Some things that set Pruitt wondering include the leopard skirt on a dark-skinned character from an alien planet in Star Trek, and singer-songwriter T-Pain in full regalia. Pruitt, on seeing T-Pain’s look, wondered, “How does he walk out of the house?” In the context of Pruitt’s drawings, these images, which we just accept as part of our culture’s visual landscape, look weird and wonderful, indeed–delivering a National Geographic sort of ethnographic fascination once you take them out of context.

Sun Ra, shareable image from http://www.last.fm/music/Sun+Ra/+images/68802646

Pruitt said he hopes to capture the way Sun Ra and Miriam Makeba each used Egyptian styles to grab their audiences’ imagination. “I’m looking for a place that’s outside to fit in.”

Robert Pruitt, Vasimr1. He said Vasimr, tattooed on the woman's neck, is the name of a rocket ship.

Eventually Pruitt veered away from his discussion of the drawings. “It’s troublesome for me to say too much about them.”

Pruitt photos of Pruitt garments made during a residency at the Fabric Workshop and Museum

During his residency at the Fabric Workshop, he first made some drawings of some objects. “Drawings are the meat and potatoes of my process,” he said. Then he made the ideas into sculptures and photographs. For the photographs, he used different cameras from different eras. The things he made were bankrolled by the FWM. “It’s more fun when someone else in paying for the materials,” he joked, and said, “I’m still trying to see how I feel about these images.”

Garments and ornaments created by Robert Pruitt at the FWM

Lately he’s been making African sculptures covered with aluminum foil. “I really like them.”

Robert Pruitt, Male Figure, tin foil over wood. A comic book alien made by an African tribesman, perhaps.

Then he turned to living in Houston and Otabenga Jones and Associates. “Someone asked me, Why do I stay in Houston? It’s sort of the place I know. If I want to respond [to a culture and place], I need to know it.”

Ota Benga is the name of an African pygmy who was displayed at the Bronx Zoo. Besides Pruitt, the group includes Jamal Cyrus (who has a Penn MFA) as well as Dawolu Jabari Anderson, and Kenya Evans. Among the group’s activities were picketing a Houston’s Museum of Fine Arts show of a collection that was “limited in scope,” i.e. Euro-centric. It was Pruitt’s first ever demonstration, and he carried a sign that said, “My Blackness is Bigger Than Your White Box.” The group also curated an exhibit at the Menil Collection–selecting objects from the collection mixed with the artists’ own objects. “We tried to create an equalization of values.” Saturday teach-ins were a part of the exhibit. They were modeled after historic Black Panther education sessions.

He said he thought that the action at the MFAH and the show at Menil had some degree of impact on how the institutions deal with blackness in their exhibits.

Robert A. Pruitt, All Day I Dream About Senegal; photo I took at the 2006 Whitney Biennial

His animations reflect his attraction to the militancy of Black Power proponents of the past–it’s “the same issues that oppress the black community now,” he said, and added that Obama and other contemporary powerful black men were not discussing those issues now. He was unhappy showing the animation at the scale of the auditorium screen. “My video doesn’t belong on a museum wall,” he said, preferring YouTube and the small screen. The sound track was from a speech by Amiri Baraka. The animation, he said,  “can liberate that speech from the moment it was made.”

Robert Pruitt, South Park (South Park is tattooed on figure's arm)

The Q&A that followed the talk was lively. Someone asked about the link between science fiction and history. Pruitt said he was interested in utopic space and “radical histories contemplating the struggle to get rid of structures like slavery.”

He said comics are a romantic way of seeing the world, and “for me, they are a way of re-imagining the human condition.”

Robert Pruitt, Glass Slippers, at the 2006 Whitney Biennial

Someone wanted to know about who he imagined was his audience. Although his work appeals to an art audience, Pruitt said he also wanted it to reach a black audience, and appeal to people of color in general. “How can I make drawings of great blackness?” he said, parallel to the way that art museums display images of great whiteness.

Then he returned to the subject of whether museums have a broad enough perspective. “Any project a museum brings us (Otabenga Jones), is suspect. The museum just has a different goal.” Then he said,  “I am trying to do a couple of projects in which I give the work away, so people could, if they want a piece, take it away.”

Temple Gallery leads the charge.  The new Director of exhibitions and programs, Rob Blackson and his 28-person Advisory Council brainstormed a number of socially-themed issues, and Blackson developed the programs and commissioned some new art. On tap — sustainability, shale-oil drilling; toxic waste, AIDS and more.  There will be 2 programs a week, Blackson says, everything from Monday morning coffee hours (in the gallery with lectures and free coffee and snacks, coFREE Mondays, beginning Sept. 12) to dinners in the gallery with foraged greens from the neighborhood (are they kidding? No.  Feast of Forage, Sept. 21).  Other programs: True Bloodmobile and discussion of historic buildings as haunted houses (think Eastern State Penitentiary) Oct. 28; The Big Shale Teach-In, Nov. 3 and 4.

A piece lurking at Temple Gallery. Is it art or is it not? (hint, it is art) Tyler Held, "Repair" Photo courtesy Temple Gallery

This month, British artist Sara MacKillop takes charge of the gallery’s welcome desk, a white desk with an abnormally-high and unwelcoming wall on the front end (Blackson calls it “The Iceberg”).  Turning the chilly desk into something interactive, the artist will fill the desk drawers with subversive art created with post-it notes, pens, clips and other standard office supplies.  Viewers are encouraged to riffle through the drawers and interact – move stuff around, reorganize, add some, take some.

An on-the-job training project, Project Shift, also begins this month in the gallery and runs to Feb, 2012. Workers from the Village Workshop will learn building skills and create a series of temporary wood shed-cum-corral structures — designed by artists, architecture students and others.  The corrals will be used for programs and activities.

Alex Klein, ICA's new program director. Photo courtesy ICA

ICA launched its Whenever Wednesday programs in 2006, a series that includes everything from lectures to parties, to workshops.  What’s new is that the Institute just created the position of Program Director and hired West Coaster, Alex Klein for the job.

Excursus logo, courtesy of ICA

Klein launches a programming discussion nook called Excursus in ICA’s mezzanine on Sept. 14.  With tables, chairs and book carts, Excursus will allow people to come, sit, browse written materials and chat.  The first Excursus program is a talk by Penn Rare Books Curator Lynne Farrington, about Centaur, a Philadelphia radical bookstore/hangout from the 1920s. Reception to follow. Andy Beach, designer and blogger, guest-curated this first round of Excursus.

The Sept. 21 “Free For All” event has everything in one package – a lecture on contemporary art by Senior Curator Ingrid Schaffner, a screen-printing workshop, and a party with music and snacks.

Bill Walton's Studio, Photo by Aaron Igler, courtesy of ICA

Don’t miss “Bill Walton’s Studio” — the late artist’s actual studio, brought into the ICA’s Project Space and re-created even down to the weathered floor boards. Programming involves a “sharing” day, Dec. 4, in which artists who knew Walton will share stories about the artist; and everyone will receive an ephemeral giveaway object.  Check out ICA’s blog, Miranda, for behind the scenes tidbits and pictures, and give them some feedback—you know you’re dying to.

Open call for juried show

On the alternative front, things are often interactive, if not programmed.  Grizzly Grizzly, one of the very best of the new spaces, will have its first open call juried exhibit Nov. 4-26, and viewers will be asked to vote on their favorite work.  The artist receiving the most votes will be awarded a solo exhibit at the gallery.

Image from PPAC's current exhibit, The Greater Area

Philadelphia Photo Arts Center has its second Philly Photo Day Oct. 28.  All snapshot-shooters are invited to take a picture within the city limits and upload it to the PPAC website for this non-juried, come-one-come-all event with an exhibit of all submitted works opening November 10.  Last year almost 350 people participated and they hope to double that number this year. (Reality check:  artblog was a sponsor last time and we are a sponsor this year because we really believe in this community-spirited event and exhibit)

Jenny Sabin's Greenhouse, the finished pavillion. Photo by Brent Wahl, courtesy of APS Museum

The APS Museum commissioned art, design, music, a play, and a lot of programming for its Greenhouse Project, in conjunction with its exhibit “Of Elephants and Roses.”  “Greenhouse and the Cabinet of Future Fossils” by architecture and design guru Jenny Sabin (Cornell prof with a design studio at Crane Old School) sits in the APS Museum’s Jefferson Garden, an ancient and futuristic-looking edifice resembling the bleached bones of Moby Dick washed up at 4th and Chestnut and bedazzled.  More than 100 colorful green, orange and blue cold frames with plants and vines pepper the piece, and all objects in the project (except a few ceramic pieces) were made using the latest design and fabrication tools (3D printers; laser cutters). Don’t miss the science talk on the chili pepper by molecular researcher Joseph Rucker (Sept. 12 at National Mechanics); and the talk and greenhouse walkthrough with Jenny Sabin (Oct. 20).  The free programs require an RSVP.

Jordan Griska's Grumman Greenhouse, model. Photo courtesy PAFA

Speaking of greenhouses, Jordan Griska’s Grumman Greenhouse in PAFA’s new Lenfest Plaza (with the Oldenburg Paint Brush) will be an eyeful.  A complete cold-war era airplane, installed nose down and tail up with plants in the nose cone, the piece will be nice counterbalance to the slick Oldenburg piece.  Meanwhile, inside PAFA, “here.” a group show about the regions outside the big art centers promises lots of programming about this pithy current issue.

Jennie Thwing. Buried but Breathing, screen shots from Buried but Breathing installation and "Woodshop" video, 3.2 minutes, 2011. Photo courtesy Fleisher Art Memorial

Other great-sounding art events include Tim Belknap’s solo exhibit at Rebekah Templeton opening Sept. 8 (to Oct. 22); September’s group show at Tiger Strikes Asteroid with a robotic piece by Belknap (to Oct. 2); and the Fleisher Wind Challenge exhibit with Jennie Thwing, Alana Bograd and Sarah Steinwachs.

MENTIONED IN THIS ARTICLE
>> Sara MacKillop, coFREE Mondays and other programming, Ongoing to Feb. 2012.  Temple Gallery, 12th and Norris Sts.
>>Tim Belknap: Ordnance, Sept 8-Oct 22. Rebekah Templeton, 173 W. Girard Ave.
>>Bill Walton’s Studio, Sept. 7-Dec.4.  Institute of Contemporary Art, 36th and Sansom St.
>>Excursus, Institute of Contemporary Art, 36th and Sansom St.
>>Jenny Sabin: Greenhouse and Cabinet of Future Fossils, Sept. 9-Dec. 14.   American Philosophical Society, Jefferson Garden, 4th and Chestnut. Free reservations are required for events. To register, contact museum@amphilsoc.org or 215.701.4421
>>”Other Possible Titles, juried group exhibit, Nov. 4-26.  Reception, Fri. Nov. 4, Grizzly Grizzly, 319 N. 11th St., 2nd floor.
>>Philly Photo Day, Oct. 28. Exhibition Nov. 10-__. Reception Thurs. Nov. 10, 6-9pm.  PPAC Crane Arts, 1400 N. American St.
>>Tim Belknap, William Blackhurst and Carolee Schneeman, Sept 2-Oct 2.  Tiger Strikes Asteroid.  319 N. 11th.
>>Wind Fleisher Challenge, Sept 16 – Oct. 30.  Reception Fri, Sept. 16, 6-8pm.  Fleisher Art Memorial, 719 Catharine St.
>>Jordan Griska, Grumman Greenhouse, temporary installation.  Opens Sat. Oct 1, noon-7pm. PAFA Lenfest Plaza, Broad and Cherry Sts.
>>here, Oct. 22-Dec. 31.  Hamilton Building, PAFA, Broad and Cherry

Sheila Hicks Bamian (Banyan) (1968-2002) wool and acrylic 102 3/8 x 102 3/8", private collection

The spaces of the ICA have never looked better; the unadorned, brutalism of its concrete interior is warmed by Hicks’ intense colors and  soft, tactile forms. In the lobby, two works  suspended above the door have been fashioned from white, cotton hospital garments for newborns; they’ve been stitched together to form pierced, white banners that move gently with the air currents. Past the entrance to the first floor galleries are floor pieces, wall hangings and installations that fairly scream Touch me! Touch me! and the only disappointment of this exhibition is that one can’t touch. I was immediately attracted to the glowing, golden pile of bound yarn that constitutes Banisteriopsis (1965-66). It’s one of three free-standing sculptures which sit together, each made of piles of linen thread bound into skeins which have been piled one upon another, without armatures;  in fact, each work can be be laid out differently on different occasions.  The title of the yellow piece refers to a hallucinatory plant extract, so the headiness I felt made sense. I wanted to crawl into the soft, fuzzy and seductive, golden pile.

Sheila Hicks ‘Fenêtre II’ (2009) cotton, bamboo, linen and silk, 10 3/4 x 10 1/4", private collection

Hicks was trained as a painter at Yale where she took a course with George Kubler, historian of pre-Columbian art and influential art theorist. She studied weaving independently with Anni Albers, wrote her thesis on Andean textiles, and would ultimately travel around the world to study textile traditions. Her study of worldwide weaving techniques, many of them practiced by tribal peoples, could be interpreted as a form of primitivism; in fact it was the opposite. Rather than looking for a simpler art, untouched by modernity, Hicks was recovering the remains of  sophisticated  textile making whose artistry was being lost in the rush towards industrialization.

Sheila Hicks ‘La Clef’ (1988) rubber bands and metal key, 9 ½ x 6", private collection

Hicks has been well-known internationally among architects and designers and has received international commissions for public buildings (among them the Ford Foundation Building, New York, the Banco de Mexico Headquarters, Mexico City, and the Fuji City Cultural Center, Japan) as well as teaching appointments worldwide. Yet, the fact that she’s lived in Paris since 1964, and the divisions of art versus craft have allowed her work to be under-represented in American art museums. Although she has had solo exhibitions in  museums devoted to craft and decorative arts, university galleries and art centers, her last solo exhibition in a major American art museum was in 1963. She has had numerous museum exhibitions in Europe, Japan and Israel.

Sheila Hicks ‘Prophecy from Constantinople’ (2008-10) linen and wool, 236 1/4 x 70 7/8", private collection

Considering Hicks’ study of weaving history, only a small amount of work in the exhibition involves weaving. These are mostly the series of more than sixty small, framed pieces, which Hicks calls miniatures, that she creates on a small, portable wooden frame; in their experimental variety and materials, which range from silk to paper, human hair, bamboo and steel wool, they constitute a sort of ongoing sketchbook of ideas.  A group of the miniatures were assembled in 2006 for an exhibition at the Bard Graduate Center for Studies in the Decorative Arts, Design and Culture, titled Sheila Hicks; Weaving as Metaphor.  I know the exhibition through its extraordinary catalog; designed by the major Dutch graphic designer, Irma Boom, it is a work of art itself, with a range of textures on the cover and roughly-cut pages that perfectly expresses its subject. A case in the ICA’s exhibition includes it and several other of Hicks’ publications, as well as several hand-made book-works and other pieces that yearn to be held in the hands.

Sheila Hicks ‘Vanishing Yellow’ (1964-2004) cotton, 9 1/2 x 8 1/4", private collection

During the walk-through before the exhibition’s opening, Hicks declared that if she had made any work that needed an explanation, she apologized. She doesn’t need to. While visitors steeped in textiles may recognize specific techniques and understand just how unconventional her art has been within the field, anyone can appreciate the work which is made mostly of yarns by straightforward techniques of stacking, wrapping, draping, hanging, looping and weaving. The six-year old I took on my second visit responded enthusiastically; she was as captivated as I was by the floor pieces made of piled skeins of yarn, delighted by pieces made of crumpled paper and knotted rubber-bands, and curious about a vitrine filled with wrapped spheres, called Trésors et Secrets. Each contained a hidden object, destined to be forever secret. Hicks’ work reminds us of the endless, overlooked interest offered by the world around us, and as such, is a lesson in looking with a spiritual edge.

Sheila Hicks ‘Wrapped and Coiled Traveler’ (2009) bamboo, cotton, wool and silk, 8 7/8 x 5 1/4", private collection courtesy Cristina Grajales Gallery

The exhibition was organized by Joan Simon and Susan C. Faxon for the Addison Gallery of American Art, Phillips Academy, Andover, MA and was brought to the ICA by Jenelle Porter (now curator at the Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston). It will travel to the Mint Museum in Charlotte, N.C. in October. The exhibition is accompanied by a luxurious and copiously-illustrated catalog (ISBN 978-0-300-12164-3), which includes an essay by Whitney Chadwick as well as one by each of the curators.

All images ©Sheila Hicks, All photographs ©Bastiaan van den Berg

Guy Tillim ‘Administration Building, Antsirana, Madagascar’ (2007) pigment print.

Friday, March 25 at 6:30 pm Sheila Hicks will speak about her work at the Philadelphia Museum of Art (more information here).  The lecture is in connection with the retrospective Sheila Hicks 50 Years March 24 – August 7, 2011 at the Institute of Contemporary Art, U Penn. Hicks is a sculptor and installation artist whose original training in fiber arts, and residence in Paris,  is probably the reason that her distinctive and ambitious work has not been sufficiently exhibited in U.S. museums. She has done many large installations commissioned for permanent view.

Sheila Hicks ‘La Clef’ (1988) rubber bands, metal key; 9 1/2 x 6'’ private collection

April 16 at 5 and 7:30 pm, International House will show a two-part program: Independent Artists Movement in Cinamatography; Origins in Avant-garde film, including work by Alberto Cavalcanti, Marcel Fabre, Hans Richter and others.

Hans Richter still from ‘Race Symphony’ (1928)

April 21 at 7 pm, International House, will screen Monument of Sugar: How to use artistic means to elude trade barriers, Lonnie van Brummelen and Siebren de Haan’s intervention in the EU’s trade barrier on sugar imports in the form of sugar sculpture.

April 28-30 Pop Cinema: Art + Film in the UK and US 1950s-1970s, at International House, includes three screenings and a panel discussion.  The April 28, 7 pm  screening focuses on UK pop and includes work by Lindsay Anderson, Karel Reisz, Ken Russell and others; April 20, 7 pm will be US filmmakers including Robert Breer, Stan Vanderbeek, Bruce Connor; April 30 will have a panel a 2pm with artist Derek Boshier and several film historians then at 7 pm films by Boshier and Peter Whitehead with Nikki de Saint Phalle.

Robert Breer still from ‘Recreation’ (1956)

Saturday, May 14, 8 pm at International House Nadia Hironaka, Matthew Suib and C Spencer Yeh present a multimedia event that revisits the spectacle  of Expo 67. It will include performance, text and lecture in addition to projected imagery.  The subject centers on the role of the artist and revolutionary relative to historical developments in global politics and media.

Nadia Hironaka and Matthew Suib, cropped detail from 'The Soft Epic or: Savages of the Pacific West' (2008)

Anne Tyng's double helix installation

The exhibit is spare, with some small architectural models and some enormous geometrical forms large enough to step into–all below an enormous hanging double-helix, spiraling around the overhead gallery. Entering into the space is dramatic and physical. In contrast, Tyng herself is a tiny nonagenarian, erect in comfortable pants topped by a shawl.

Large forms based on Tyng's drawings of Platonic solids dominate the gallery space.

You may or may not be aware of Tyng, a Philadelphia architect whose presence in the popular culture is mostly tied to her role as Louis Kahn’s mistress. This exhibit aims to correct this wrong. Her ideas about geometric forms and her collaborations with Louis Kahn were groundbreaking. As was typical in the ’50s and ’60s, the man took all the credit for what was truly collaborative work; and Tyng’s ideas had a life-long influence on his later work, as well as on architecture theory.

Anne Tyng, notes and sketches for ICA installation, 2010. Courtesy of the artist.

The groundbreaking nature of Tyng’s mathematical and geometrical approach is confirmed in letters (one from Buckminster Fuller, in case you’re thinking, Big deal, how’s this different from a geodesic dome?) and displayed in numeric calculations, drawings and architectural models–all drawn from the University of Pennsylvania’s architectural archives.

Anne Tyng, Four Poster House. In the background is a model of the house's framework.

The elegance of the small models, also drawn from the archives, is equally convincing. My favorite, The Four-Poster House, is shown in four phases of construction, in which each of the geometric layers adds to the strength and beauty of the first core layer.

In an art world that’s enamored with Fibonacci sequences and obsessive drawing practices, Tyng’s architectural explorations look perfectly at home.

Open Video Call

Jeroen Nelemans, How to disappear Completely, 2008, video, color, sound, 3:02 minutes. A faux sunset.

Also at the ICA, Open Video Call is a loop of 11 videos, many of them from new faces (to me), and all of them worth some time. The theme of real and not real weaves through all the selections, from Alex DaCorte’s playful and troubling special effects in Chelsea Hotel to tiona.m’s politically loaded but exuberant Americanly Speaking. Performance kicks in with Ted Cary’s a jackhammer is so real (it was in Vox’s Solid Gold show in 2008) and Leslie Rogers’ The Meeting. There’s also a lot of virtual landscape here, including two from Lee Arnold (these would have looked better larger) and one brief one from Jeroen Nelemans. Also in the selections are work by Ted Knighton, Jared Dyer, Lindsey Martin, and Sam Belkowitz with Tyler Kline (beautiful but kind of long). A national call followed the original Philadelphia call for submissions, but the jurors–Claire Iltis, (Fleisher/Ollman Gallery), Kate Kraczon (ICA), Jesse Pires (International House Philadelphia); and Adelina Vlas (Philadelphia Museum of Art)–stuck pretty close to their original choices, Kraczon mentioned opening night. So it’s 10 from Philadelphia, and only one from out of town–Chicago artist Nelemans.

The Illuminations Project

Shary Boyle, Soldiers Aren't Afraid of Blood, 2005, ink and gouache on paper, 18 x 24 inches. Courtesy of the artist.

In the Project Room, Shary Boyle & Emily Duke’s The Illuminations Project explores feminist rage and vulnerability amid male cruelty and mysogyny through a series of drawings by Boyle paired with text by Duke. The long-distance, multi-year collaboration interested me, and Boyle’s drawings are stunningly beautiful with jewel-like colors. The images are the female counterpart to Hernan Bas–only better.

Shary Boyle, I Want to be Afraid of Nature, 2003, ink and gouache on paper, 18 x 24 inches. Courtesy of the artist.

But for all its beauty, I had a mixed reaction to this. The 21st century visceral rage of the piece is weakened by overused conventions–the outpourings of menstrual blood, wolf-pack male cruelty, pro-forma witchery and pretentious archaic locutions.

This exhibit in this space is in keeping with an overall sense of new work and new people breaking down the barricades to redefine art. The video is fresh. Anne Tyng is a long-overdue reconsideration. And Illuminations, organized by ICA’s 2010-2011 Whitney-Lauder Curatorial Fellow Virginia Solomon, brings in a distinctly female queer viewpoint.

The three shows are up through March 20, 2011.
Held over through Feb. 13 are Virgil Marti’s wonderful, theatrical Set Pieces (objects selected from the Philadelphia Museum of Art’s storage), and also the hot-button David Wojnarowicz video ejected from the National Portrait Gallery’s Hide/Seek show.

Virgil Marti’s “Set Pieces” at the ICA, including Marti’s shadow play

The first object in Marti’s arrangement is a table-top sized model of the Fairmount Waterworks and the reservoir behind it, now the site of the PMA; like all models, it alludes to something else, and the themes of referentiality and illusionism run throughout Set Pieces, where a candlestick refers to a Caryatid; basalt-ware ceramic passes for stone or, when lustred, for metal; and the inlay of a writing-desk features a trompe l’oeil shelf of books.

Model of the Waterworks, c. 1875

Circling counter-clockwise, Marti has arranged a group of works illustrating his interest in the uses of artistry to fool the eye. The first is an Austrian porcelain coffee-pot (1795) painted in unlikely imitation of wood, as if it’s exterior were the paneled walls of a room.  Affixed to the knotty paneling are two engraved, Italianate landscapes, rendered in such detail that the artists’ names and engravers’ initials are legible, and a slight tear is revealed along the lower margin of one of the prints.

On the wall beyond the coffee-pot is a still life by Abraham Pietersz. Van Calraet of a bowl of peaches. The seventeenth-century painting was certainly intended as a reminder of the fleetingness of life, but the highly realistic fruit and small bug crawling on one peach will also remind some viewers of the earliest writing about painting, Pliny’s Natural History, in which the painter, Xeuxis, demonstrated his skill by rendering grapes so life-like that they fooled the birds.

l to r: Oldenburg, anonymous, Duchamp-Villon, as Marti found them in storage

In a vitrine to the left of the entrance, Marti demonstrates the mute abjection of a group of sculptures as he found them: Claes Oldenburg’s Miniature Drum Set (1969) and Raymond Duchamp-Villon’s Aesop (c. 1906) flank a marble Head of St. John as a Boy (purchased as fifteenth-century by John G. Johnson, but now considered a nineteenth-century fake), brought together by nothing more than their common size and storage requirements.

A delightful arrangement of small bronzes in the second area evokes another story from Pliny.  Marti has placed table-top versions of classical statuary and various animals by Barye on a high platform, and lit them so they cast dramatic shadows on the walls behind. These looming shadows are the stuff of children’s games and grade-B horror movies, but the tableau also recalls Pliny’s tale of the origin of painting, when Butades of Corinth’s daughter traced her beloved’s silhouette on a wall, to remember him by.

Virgil Marti’s “Set Pieces” at the ICA, including basalt ware (center) and multiple George Washingtons at left, against wall

Marti has found marvelous stuff in the store rooms that are certain to delight any visitor, none more spectacular than Dorothea Tanning’s Rainy Day Canapé (1970), lovers that merge with the couch on which they dally; why the PMA allows this extraordinary work to languish in storage is beyond me.  Marti’s free-ranging imagination has animated a group of 18th-century, tilt-top tables that surround the couch, discreetly turning their backs upon the couple en flagrante, while mirrors on the wall behind remind us that we are the voyeurs.

detail of “Raid the Icebox with Andy Warhol” (1969-70) at the RISD Museum, with entire collections shown as Warhol found them in storage

Daniel Buren, in a famous article published in Artforum in 1973,  described the Museum as the single viewpoint (cultural and visual) from which works can be considered, an enclosure where art is born and buried, crushed by the very frame which presents and constitutes it. Over the past forty years museums have turned to artists to give new life to their entombed collections, and I freely admit to an enthusiasm for these artist-curated exhibitions. I wrote about the subject, from Andy Warhol at the Rhode Island School of Design Museum (1969-70) and Scott Burden at the Museum of Modern Art (1989) to Joseph Kosuth at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum (2003) in a post on Jan. 3, 2009.  Some artists have used these opportunities to explore museums as sites for artists’ education, others to look at the museum as institutional frame. In 1989 the PMA invited Andrea Fraser to present Museum Highlights: A Gallery Talk and Fraser, acting as a docent, chose to highlight the museum’s social functions and rhetoric, rather than its collections.

Andrea Fraser’s “Museum Highlights: A Gallery Talk” at the PMA (1989)

While Marti emphasizes the imaginative possibilities of work in the PMA’s store rooms, his exhibition at the ICA makes another point: that the identity these objects assume in the museum setting is not their natural one but rather, as Buren might put it, a posthumous identity.  In their original incarnations, the objects Marti selected (with the possible exception of the Waterworks model) were domestic accouterments, produced for a middle class wealthy enough to afford them. Their original placement and context would not have been determined by their makers or by the disinterestedness of history (the museum’s usual assumption), but by their owners.  They would have been selected according to the purchaser’s taste, wealth and living space (hence the multiple busts of George Washington, in various sizes), and arranged according to the fashion of the day.  Marti’s selection is a reminder that, counter to our usual assumptions, we are witnessing the artificial afterlife of such works when we see them in museums.

The ICA has produced a handbook-sized catalog to the exhibition: Set Pieces curated by Virgil Marti from the collection of the Philadelphia Museum of Art (ISBN 978-0-88454-119-6). It contains humorous and urbane comments on the selected works by PMA curator Joseph Rishel, articles by ICA curator Ingrid Shaffner, Tom Devaney and Lia Gangitano, and an interview with Marti by art historian Richard Meyer.  The design by Purtill Family Business, with its wonderfully blind-stamped frames for each page, poetically suggests Marti’s exhibition as an imaginative frame for the objects and includes numerous details and installation views of this memorable project.  The ICA is to be congratulated for its rare habit of producing such catalogs after exhibitions have opened, so that they become serious records of the exhibitions as installed.  When the exhibition is itself an artist’s work, this is particularly pertinent.

artblog, the Philadelphia region’s oldest and most complete source of online reviews, discussion and opinion on the visual arts, has been awarded a grant by the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation.

A recent photo of libby (left) and roberta (center) participating in a reading of Maira Kalman's childrens books at the ICA. Also pictured, event organizer and ICA Senior Curator Ingrid Schaffner (right).

“Philadelphia is now one of the hip visual arts towns in America. You have Los Angeles and New York and Miami, where I live, but Philly is one of those towns, too,” said Dennis Scholl, program director for the Knight Foundation, which is based in Miami.

“artblog makes sure that anybody anywhere anytime can find out what’s happening in Philadelphia. Blogs are easy to do, but the question is which ones are special, which are more than just one person’s meditation. artblog is special.”

artblog was begun in 2003 by two collaborating artists, Roberta Fallon and Libby Rosof.

“This money will give us a chance to reach a broader audience for Philadelphia’s fabulous art scene,” said Fallon and Rosof. “We will be using new technologies on artblog to help art lovers navigate to galleries and art events around town. We also will create a new series of podcasts modeled on our favorite radio talk show,‘Fresh Air.’”

Fallon and Rosof also share English literature and writing backgrounds. They met in the mid-1980s and began working together as painters and sculptors. Despite grants, commissions and accolades, Fallon and Rosof were frustrated with how few people their art was reaching. So they took the art out onto the street where they gave it away. One of these giveaways is documented in Academy-award nominee Wendy Weinberg’s film “Art of Activism” (excerpt here):

That same activism spurred them to create artblog to fill a growing gap between the burgeoning art scene and the shrinking art coverage in the print media.

The Knight Foundation also recently gave grants in Philadelphia to the Galleries at Moore College of Art and Design, the Institute of Contemporary Art and Vox Populi Gallery.

The Philadelphia Foundation participated in the issuing of the Knight grant.

Nick Kripal 'Swarm,' terra cotta installed at Philadelphia International Airport

Flying to the CAA meeting  after big snow and just before another meant delays, so I was happy to have Jenelle Porter’s catalog to Dance with Camera (ISBN 978-0-88454-118-9) for airport reading.   She gives a particularly clear idea of the development of film technology, the background in Hollywood musicals and the influence of John Cage’s ideas on the form she calls dance with camera (or cine-dance): dancing choreographed to be filmed, rather than films of dances choreographed for the stage.

Kelly Nipper 'Interval' (2000) one of four color photographs in 'Dance with Camera'

Porter also describes succinctly the circumstances of each of the films’ creation, something not always obvious to the viewer. I’d have liked more analysis, but then it might have been a textbook rather than a catalog, and she did re-print a number of important earlier essays (by Edwin Denby, Yvonne Rainer and Arlene Croce, among others) and interviews with Charles Atlas, Sharon Lockart and Shirley Clarke, all of which discuss ideas around the films.  The well-illustrated catalog also includes a bibliography.

The exhibition, Dance with Camera, continues through March 21 at the Institute of Contemporary Art, and the catalog will certainly send me back (for the 4th time) to see films I missed and re-view some I saw.  I love dance in any form: live, filmed or music videos (twenty years ago I presented a program on the art of music video), and have seen almost all the Hollywood musicals to which Porter alludes and some of the films and/or dancers; but even for the less dance-inclined viewer the exhibition will be in turns fascinating, funny, challenging, exhilarating, and provocative.

Michael Leja of Penn and Jenelle Porter, ICA, arriving late to the CAA meeting because of snow

Any national meeting held in February is asking for weather problems somewhere, but this year was surprisingly bad with massive delays from most of the East Coast.  I ran into Janelle Porter (author of the catalog I’d just read) and Michael Leja (Penn), who had just arrived when I saw him Thursday afternoon (missing a full day).  Still, the conference was well- attended and participants seemed happy with the events.

detail of 'The Rapids, Hudson River, Adirondacks,' showing where Homer scraped away color to create white foam

Full disclosure: I’m on CAA’s  board  – which, as I told all who asked, meant I was there to answer questions,  field suggestions or complaints and be helpful; it also meant that I spent too much of the conference in meetings.  But one of the highlights for me was a workshop, sponsored by the American Institute of Conservation and held in the Print and Drawings Study room of the Art Institute of Chicago (AIC). Curator Martha Tedeschi and conservator Kristi Dahm had a dozen Winslow Homer watercolors laid out for the group of thirty artists, art historians and curators who attended – we were able to examine them without glass!  Tedesci and Dahm explained that their investigations of Homer’s virtuosic technique was prompted by the many artists who visited and would ask Tedeschi how Homer achieved those effects. I reviewed the catalog of the exhibition they organized here ; the AIC has a website which allows users to examine their research and “correct” the colors on watercolors which have faded.

Watercolor box owned by Winslow Homer, Bowdoin College Museum of Art

The book and trade fair is always an indication of trends in the field. Two new journals on graphic novels and comics are forthcoming: Studies in Comics and Journal of Graphic Novels and Comics; someone thinks the need is great!

There was also an evident interest in artists’ studios despite many years’ discussion of post-studio practice.  I saw a number of books on the subject (one of which I reviewed here ) and two exhibitions on the subject were in Chicago: Production Site: The Artist’s Studio Inside Out at the Museum of Contemporary Art, which I missed, and Picturing the Studio at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC), which was smart, lively and varied (from self-reflective to humorous, videos to installations, and artists from Rodney Graham and Bruce Nauman to Ivan Brunetti and Amy Sillman);  sorry I didn’t have more time.  It was partially supported by CAA. and was the site for a festive reception which I attended Friday night.

Rodney Graham,' The Gifted Amateur, Nov 10th, 1962' (2007) in the SAIC's 'Picturing the Studio'

Three young artists were manning a booth for a nation-wide, participatory project Threadless; they run competitions for tee shirt designs and the winners (voted on by 900,000 on-line members)  are printed and available on the site.  Some illustration and graphics design teachers use the competitions as class projects, so they have a pedagogic aspect as well as a populist one. When they told me of an upcoming museum exhibition of their tee-shirts I mentioned Philadelphia artists’ active interest in screen-printing and suggested they look for a venue here.  The booth also showcased a zine they produce, Faesthetic, which can be seen on their website.

A winning design from Threadless: 'Space Needs Color' by Alvaro Arteaga Sabaini

Faesthetic's current issue on Ghost Stories

The CAA annual conferences have recently seen increasing organized activity among the younger artists and scholars. The Students’ and Young Professionals’ Committee had a lounge with wi-fi where they met and organized a series of  practical exercises in job interviewing, resume-writing and associated professional skills.  Jobs were scarce, but they were making good use of their time to network. Seeing colleagues has always been the major reason I attend the meetings. I’d met Barkley Hendricks at the recent symposium connected with his exhibition at PAFA, and saw him intermittently at the Art Institute, looking at paintings, and at the conference, where he was awarded a prize.

Barkley Hendricks won CAA's prize for a Distinguished Body of Work

New York Times critic, Holland Cotter, was also at the conference where he won the Distinguished Lifetime Achievement Award for Writing on Art. He amused the convocation audience when he said the award surprised him since it implied that he had a life;  he told us he writes and re-writes slowly and painstakingly, which means he works all the time.

winner of CAA writing award, Holland Cotter

PMA Director Timothy Rub spoke on museums and new standards for archaeological objects