Donald E. Camp, Man Who Hears Music, Andre Raphael Smith, Earth pigment and casein mono-print, 22” X 30”, 2006

I don’t want to say much more about the ideas in there (so many more I can hardly believe it) because if you go, the show will reveal itself to you in ways you won’t expect. And you should go.

Here are some more reasons why:

Photographer Donald Camp’s elemental, giant portraits of African American men dominate the show. If you have never seen these one-offs printed with earth and casein, you owe it to yourself to see them now. These portraits tell a tale of self-invention and gravitas that overwhelms the popular culture’s focus on African American men as gangsters and gangstas. Camp is a former photographer for the Philadelphia Bulletin who manages to indict even the crappy newsprint and its quick and dirty printing methods in these masterpieces of material and social depth.

James Mundie, Portrait of a Big-fingered Boy, Pen and ink, 8” x 6”, 2004

James G. Mundie’s small ink drawings of circus freaks–another group of outsiders reimagined, dignified, and preserved by portraits that borrow art historical compositions–stand up well, even next to Camp’s gorgeous ultra closeups. Mundie and Camp are both on a mission to reestablish into the mainstream the rejected, without tampering with the subjects’ self-images and their control of their own destiny.

Matthew Fisher, The Ocean, Pencil on paper, 10 1/4” x 9 1/8”, 2009

Two other drawing wizards–Matt Fisher and Rob Matthews–are still more reasons to see this exhibit. Fisher’s 18th Century soldiers are vulnerable and awkward, even when they cavort or daydream. The delicate drawings are everyman in costume, playing a role and yet not quite inhabiting the clothes,  adult boys who are confused about how they could possibly be who they are and where they are–models of self-doubt as modern as they are antique. The deadpan drawings are delightful and quite like the soldiers–dreamy storybook figures that leap off the page into your heart.

Rob Matthews, Steve, Graphite on paper, 9” X 9”, 2008

In contrast to Fisher’s figures who exist as universal soldiers of any time, Rob Matthews’ portraits are documents of this time–ordinary family and friends depicted with art historical allusions that preserve the subjects in the continuum of history, that place them in that collective memory that erases most mortals in a couple of generations. Matthews said he thinks of these as memorials, and therefore has written on the back the subjects names and particulars. The context of this show highlights all the thinking and complexity that has gone into this seemingly deadpan take on social circumstances that nearly consume individual identity.

Joshua Mosley, Commute, Still image from mixed media animation, 2003

Out on his own moon, Joshua Mosley’s claymation cyber-video Commuter uses the cell phone as the opening metaphor for journeying beyond concrete physical circumstances to some place in the imagination or the mind. The mind’s world here is futuristic, an adventure down the wormhole of technology where physical and genetic facts seem almost beside the point! The journey is playful, defying nature, gravity, and other limits–and highlighting how technology is a magical mystery tour where we can escape who we really are where we really are.

Laura Graham, Forrest, 40” x 60” inches, Archival pigment print from 4x5 film, 2006

In the context of these complex works, Laura Graham’s large, introspective photos of women seem too large, their hints of psychological depth and mythic underpinnings not fully realized.

Beautiful Human, curated by Shelley Spector, is up to Oct. 9, 2009.Bea

Kathryn Pannepacker in New York
Kathryn Pannepacker will speak in New York at the Museum of Art and Design Thursday, April 16 at 6:30 pm in an artist’s talk co-sponsored by the MAD and their magazine American Craft. The talk is free with Thursday night pay as you wish admission. The magazine features Philly’s intrepid multi-culti guerrilla weaver on its cover this month!!!

Kathryn Pannepacker in front of her wall of rugs mural at Broad and Lehigh with artist friend Alli.

We met Kathryn, who is also a mural painter, at her new mural at Broad and Lehigh a while back. She’s a one-woman community experience getting ideas and plastic bags for her weavings from passers by. There’s lots of energy in Kathryn’s work and we love her spirit.

Kathryn Pannepacker's weaving at Broad and Lehigh last November. It's made of plastic bags donated by passers by. Some people actually stop and help her weave. Recently she inserted a tag guerilla weaving onto a security guard's stool at the Philadelphia Museum of Art before it got discovered and removed.

Lee Stoetzel in New York

Lee Stoetzel, Big Fall, at Mixed Greens.

Master conceptual pecky woodworker, Lee Stoetzel, whom we are now claiming as ours because he lives nearby now, is having a solo show at Mixed Greens, April 23-May 23.  Opening is Thursday, April 23, 6-8 pm.  
Mining suburbia, Stoetzel’s new project includes gutters and downspouts blocked by fallen leaves.

Hunter Stabler in Los Angeles

Hunter Stabler, in a show of paper works at L.A. Space.

On the other coast, Hunter Stabler appears in an all-paper show at L.A. Space, organized by Scion and curated by Giant Robot. Looks like a fun show with paper robots and Stabler’s elegant paper cuttings and lots more. Here’s who’s in the show:  Ana Serrano, Annie Vought, Brian Dettmer, Hunter Stabler, Peter Callesen, Polly Verity, Richard Sweeney, Mu Pan and Ryohei Tanaka.   Show’s up til May 2.

James Mundie in Los Angeles

James Mundie, in the show Shock and Horror, at Todd Browning Gallery in L.A.

James Mundie‘s sideshow-driven freaks and ….eeks will be in a small group show at Todd Browning Gallery, LA.  The show, Shock and Horror, runs through May 9.  In addition to Mundie, Charles Eisenmann, Hugo Zeitner and others are in the show.  This show comes with a disclaimer: Images are considered too disturbing for children ….and some delicate bloggers (ahem).

James Mundie recently posted a work of his Prodigies series on eBay. I know this because I got an email from him Monday that he cast far and wide, which said:

Okay, I’m giving y’all just one more chance to acquire one of the most popular drawings from “Prodigies”, The Marriage of Emmitt the Alligator-skinned Man and Percilla the Monkey-girl.

…This is the first time I’ve ever offered one of these drawings on eBay, so don’t miss your chance to snatch up a bargain. …

Clearly Mundie is giving a serious try to internet sales and self-promotion of his work. Look at the list that’s on his emails of his other internet promotion ventures–

http://www.mundieart.com
http://www.missioncreep.com/mundie/
http://www.myspace.com/jgmundie
http://mundieart.blogspot.com

Hmmm. I wondered, does this really work???

So I called to ask.

L. Do you have anything up on eBay right now?
J. I have the second one up now.

L. But what happened to the first one?
J. It was such a roller coaster of an emotional ride. After the first auction didn’t reach its minimum bid, I tried to relist it. Then I woke up the next morning and saw woohoo it sold. And then I found it was a scam from this guy trying to run a scam on behalf of his “client in Africa.” I hope to get that other auction back up. Meanwhile, I thought, hey I’ve got some momentum [so he posted the second item].

L. With the scam, do you feel it was a waste of time?
J. The work got 300 views, so that’s 300 people who haven’t seen the piece before.

L. How’s the second one doing?
J. That one is up through Dec. 7. It’s already ahead by 68 views. I’ve got two people watching it [i.e. waiting to see how the bidding goes before they put their bid in--a typical bidder strategy to keep the price down].

The Marriage of Emmitt the Alligator-Skinned Man and Percilla the Monkey-Girl, the first drawing Mundie tried to auction off on eBay

Meanwhile I’ve gotten a commission and sold a woodcut. The commission is from a fellow, a performer who lives in the UK. He’d seen that the auction was supposedly successful, was disappointed and asked if I could do this thing for him.

The other was a woman who basically surfed into my website and fell in love with a couple of drawings and a woodcut. The woodcut is what she could afford to buy now, but she is saving her pennies for a drawing.

When you show in galleries, it’s hard enough to get in there, and then you have to split your commission, 50 percent to them, 50 percent to you.

L. How did the woman who bought the woodcut get to your website?
J. She had seen the eBay site, and she followed the link, and that’s how she found the other piece.

I’ve had greater success selling work on the net lately than other ways.

L. Who is buying you on the web?
J. Last year, a major collector in California. The Prodigy series [of circus freaks] appeals to people who like circus memorabilia. So my market includes those people. Other people are bargain hunters, or they live where they don’t have access to galleries or good galleries.

L. Is it a problem showing the work on the Web?
J. So far, I haven’t had anybody disappointed.

L. Where have you been selling the art?
J. The Prodigy series is off the Mission Creep website.

Kate [James' wife, Kate Kern Mundie] and I share a website . The very first month that I launched the site, Kate sold a painting almost immediately without having posted any prices or anything–to a collector in Oregon.

L. Who set up the site?
J. mundieart I did myself. For the redesign of missioncreep, I hired a designer. They built a template that I can alter, and taught me a little so I could do it myself. I used that, what they taught me, to build mundiart. I sort of wanted a showcase for my non-freak work.

[from earlier in the interview: One thing my wife--she's a painter--she's right now in that mode of trying to get her work out as much as possible. She has a couple of paintings up at Muse Gallery tonight. She's trying to sell some work. I'm putting a web page together. We've got tons of work sitting there in the studio that I'm not going to show locally anymore.]

L. How many hits do you get at mundieart?
J. 2,000 to 3,000 hits a day. I’m well-indexed by Google with the use of key words.

L. Like meta tags?
J. Words in meta tags have to appear on the same page [or it works against you with Google]. The more often the word appears, the more relevant, and the higher it will appear in the search criteria.

Mission Creep gets outrageous amounts of traffic [thanks to Mike Walsh's old publication that has some porn words in it, and also artistJudith Schaechter].

L. How did you learn all this?
J. I took a design class that was strictly about online marketing. I took it on behalf of Fleisher Art Memorial–I manage their web page. The class was arranged through the Arts and Business Council for Philadelphia for non-profits, and taught by Susan Sweeney.

Do you know about the daily painting movement?

L. No.
J. The way that you become a good painter is to constantly paint, and do a small painting a day for a small price. If you Google “daily painting” this site comes up of this guy who does 4″ x 6″ still lifes. He started selling on eBay at $100/apiece. Some weeks he’d sell four, sell five. It became a nice revenue stream for his family–his wife and his child. After a while, he began to realize that most of the traffic–he was looking through his web stats–most were coming through his blog and his website. So he decided to cut out eBay and sell it himself.

You can insert Paypal shopping cart software onto your web page and let Paypal do it for you.

He’s raised his prices to $150, seems to sell seven out of 10 of them.

L. What’s his name?
J. Christopher Pew.

And you know about MySpace. I thought MySpace was just for teenage girls and sexual predators. Then I ran into a friend; he has a band. He said are you on MySpace? He’s gotten gigs from it.

Since then, I’ve made connections with all these people on MySpace, including this Christopher Pew person. If people aren’t using it, they’re foolish. I’ve noticed a lot of museums and galleries are on there.

I think on NPR they were talking about it, that MySpace is mostly people 35 and over and professional people, bands plugging their album, their film whatever. There are a lot of artists on there.

As artists you’re supposed to be a businessman. You go to art school, nobody’s talking about that aspect. So you do it on the fly. I wish I had somebody else to do it for me.

I find myself wondering how did we all sell art before the internet?