Red and blue totems-in-business-suits battle for the nation's soul in Bunk News Arts Collective's installation, including Tao Twin Blue, Tao Twin Red, and Mandala, 2011, acrylic and india ink on wood, Tao Twins each 141" x 72" x .5", Mandala 90" x 90" x .5"

The show here. at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts is full of lively art that reimagines the nation’s old myths in terms of current realities. And the resulting show is a festival of Americana that dares to dream in big new ways that recreate and revitalize the nation’s creation myths and self-images. So the important here-ness of the show is not so much about particular regions of the country, although there’s some of that. It’s about who we are as Americans. Here’s some of what I admired:

Sue Chenoweth, Wouldn't He Remember his First Home? What Passed for Wisdom There?, 2011 Gouache, acrylic, ink, graphite, Letraset and Flocked paper on paper 80” x 80”

Sue Chenoweth’s map-like renderings recall Native American maps on deerskin and the trek across the Candyland gameboard! The central, non-Western orientation in these landscapes turns each of these works into a creation myth. Each piece suggests that what you are seeing is the entire world.

Scott Hocking, Hephaestus and the Garden of the Gods, Snow from the series: Garden of the Gods, 2009 – 2010, 2010; Archival pigment print / Mixed media installation Print: 33” x 49.5” Courtesy the artist and Susanne Hilberry Gallery

Another artist creating his own mythic tale of the place where he lives is Scott Hocking. His Garden of the Gods series of devastated landscapes plus landscape interventions are like archaeological digs into he glories of the past.

Chido Johnson, my pink caddi, 2009, Video installation

Chido Johnson’s video of a man (the artist I presume) walking the outline of a car on a leash is a poignant testament to imagination, yearning and the American Dream reduced to a pet car. This reminds me of South African video artist Robin Rhodes interacting with his chalk drawings as if they were the real thing.

Abigail Anne Newbold, Homemaker series, 2010 – 2011 A collection of found and custom fabricated objects. Linen, cotton, hickory, sheepskin, and leather were used to fabricate with. Dimensions variable

Abigail Anne Newbold’s Homemaker series summons visions of Westward, Ho! all tidied up with Shaker tastes and green values. Newbold finds transcendent glory in her tidied homestead on wheels at the same time that she inserts neediness and making do into the romance of the camping home on the range that’s no longer limitless.

Postcommodity, Gallup Motel Butchering, 2011, Four channel video installation with sound, Dimensions variable

A video of a Native American ritual lamb slaughter in a motel bathtub, by Postcommodity, is a jolting displacement. In a way, this gory ritual elevates the seedy motel and its anonymity into a sacred place. At the same time the artists confront our (and PETA’s ? ) squeamish and romanticized misinterpretation of native peoples and their relationship to the earth and our fellow beasts.

Aaron Storck, Poetry and Music in Kansas Bush, 2011, Video, Running time: Approx. 12 minutes

I did not stand for the full 12 minutes in front of Aaron Storck’s loopy video Poetry and Music in Kansas Bush. Another video, nameless, also by Storck (I don’t know the title), was hilarious and riveting. In both the artist stars, bringing a stoner-movie affect to his mix of magician and medicine show huckster. He rants and chants, combining hippie spaciness with talk TV and reality TV. I’m sure there’s more to say and more to see, but I gotta tell you, I loved my little glimpse of his paradise.

Erika Nelson, “SCOUT” Daily Driver Art Car, 2003 – Present Mixed media on 1995 Toyota Pickup

Whether it’s Erika Nelson’s romance with road trips and the kitsch of roadside attractions, or Jennifer Levonian’s battle between lower class and middle class taste, or Guy Michael Davis and Katie Parker’s kitsch descendants of discredited values, the show excavates the the things we treasure as a nation and rewrites newer, truer stories for the 21st century. Here are some more pix:

Guy Michael Davis and Katie Parker, Hy-que Monkey in Captivity, 2011, Porcelain, china paint, hand printed wallpaper, detail from 5 monkeys on sconces, Each 48” x 24” x 7”

Stacy Lynn Waddell, Aarkaydea , 2011, detail, Mixed media installation consisting of framed works, photo-lithographic, wall-sized paper panels, and miscellaneous items like string and fabric. 100” x 498”

Jennifer Levonian, The Oven Sky, 2011 Cut-out animation using watercolor and collage, with music by Rachel Mason, Video, Running time: 4 min. 45 sec.; one of the new residents gentrifying the neighborhood

Tim Portlock, Sundown, 2011, Ink jet print 54” x 72”; Tim is the Ansel Adams of the rubble, glorifying Philadelphia as an imagined dystopia

Others in the show are: Megawords, Paul Coors, Terence Hammonds, Liz Cohen, Lewis Colburn, elsewhere, Harrison Haynes, Michael Krueger, Aaron Rothman, Gregory Sale; Glenda Wharton and Whoop Dee Doo (all that was left of Whoop Dee Doo’s performance was a plastic tent).

In some sense this is the perfect PAFA show, contemporary reimaginings of history paintings–mythic, grandiose, and wonderfully dreamy. I’m sorry the show ends the 31st. I’d like to see it again and give it more time.

PAFA Curator of Contemporary Art Julien Robson and five guest curators–Christopher Cook, Director and Curator at the Salina Art Center, Salina, Kansas; Mark Harris, Director of the School of Art at the University of Cincinnati; Rebecca Hart, Associate Curator of Contemporary Art at the Detroit Institute of Arts; Claire Schneider, Independent Curator; and Teka Selman, Assistant Director of the MFA in Experimental and Documentary Arts at Duke University–each selected work from their regions.  With them, plus 24 artists or presenting groups, the show is huge, and its catalog is a welcome addition.

Levonian (BFA William and Mary; MFA RISD) first assisted on video animations as a child, with her father and sister. She is currently in the “here.” show at PAFA (closing Dec. 31, 2011) and was in the Art Museum‘s Live Cinema program last year. The music in many of Levonian’s videos are original work by Nathan Parker Smith (brother of Adam Parker Smith). She shows at Fleisher-Ollman Gallery.

Jennifer Levonian in her studio in her Kensington rowhouse home.

Below is a short clip from the interview. Click “read more” for the full interview on the jump page.

Download audio file (LEvonian_promo2.mp3)

Right click to download Jennifer Levonian 35-second sample

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Right click to download full 16:12 min. interview with Jennifer Levonian
The YouTube slide show:

This episode is edited by Peter Crimmins. The music is by Eric Biondo. The slide show is edited by artblog Intern Alison McMenamin. Thanks to the Knight Foundation for helping us get the ball rolling on this project. Thanks also to J-Lab‘s Enterprise Reporting Fund and William Penn Foundation for additional support and to our partner WHYY NewsWorks for their ongoing support and for sharing artblog radio episodes on the arts & culture page of their community news site NewsWorks.org. You can subscribe to artblog radio on iTunes

Nina Katchadourian, Mark Tribe and Steven Matheson ‘Car Park’ still from a video (1994)

Spaid defines Antic Art as work that engages the ordinary passersby, who become unwitting participants in humorous and surprising situations and acknowledges that exposing this genre in the context of a “museum survey” risks eliminating the volatility characteristic of the genre.  The context certainly compromised the humor (if not volatility) of a number of pieces, which like so much humor, was dependent upon the element of surprise or the unexpectedness of the situation. For other works which were presented as documentation, the problem was rather like reading restaurant reviews: they give you an idea of the food, but none of the actual pleasure of eating it.  Still, in a period when many curators take the easy way out and organize one monographic exhibition after another, it is refreshing to find a someone willing to take on a thematic exhibition, even when she’s well aware of the risks. And it was a good introduction to a lot of smart work.

Rob Pruitt detail of ‘Kitlers’ (2010)

Some pieces were intended to be viewed in galleries or as filmed documentary and successfully brought all their humor indoors. Nina Katchadourian worked with Mark Tribe and Steven Matheson, MFA students from UCSD, to arrange  Carpark at Southwestern College. On a specified day they directed all the drivers on campus to park in separate lots, designated by the color of the cars. The film of the event recorded the earnest or amused compliance of most drivers,  annoyed resistance of a few, and the nightly tv news coverage of the project, which  brought humor as well as a rare measure of aesthetic interest to one of the blights of the modern environment.

William Powida ‘Why You Should Buy Art’

Humor in other works arose from the tension between believing the artist’s description and questioning it, or the assumptions upon which it was based. Did Rob Pruitt really find all those photographs of cats sporting Hitler mustaches on the internet? Could he have been obsessive enough to have set up all those photos himself? And why would anyone do that? Gimhongsok toyed with the liberal political leanings of his audience for Bunny’s Sofa; the label stated that  the Harvey-sized rabbit on the couch was actually a costume being worn by an illegal North Korean immigrant paid sub-minimal wages to appear before us. We might guess there wasn’t a large pool of illegal North Koreans in Baltimore, but the bunny was certainly large enough to conceal a man. Did it?

Gimhongsok ‘Bunny’s Sofa’ (2007) as installed at an earlier venue

Two short animations by Jennifer Levonian were as delightful as all of her stop-take animations created with articulated watercolor drawings. Buffalo-Milk Yogurt was a send-up of food-obsessed yuppies who find  self-righteousness in their shopping choices at Whole Foods.  The nude woman meditating in a cross-legged, yoga position as she sits on a pile of pumpkins in front of the store was only a tad more absurd than the reality.

Jennifer Levonian still from ‘Buffalo-Milk Yogurt’ (2010)

My hands-down favorite was the video of a performance by the Russian collective Chto Delat? (What is to be Done? The term is from Lenin).  Tower; a Songspiel (a songspiel is a musical theater piece) is a bitter satire about former Soviet power brokers forced to adapt their rhetoric to the changed situation of an ostensibly democratic and capitalist Russia.  It shows a group of the elite examining the model of the Gazprom tower, planned for St. Petersburg and slated to be the tallest building in Europe.  Anticipating resistance, one of the group cautions not to suppress the journalists (as in the past) - it’s better to buy them off, he cautions.

Chto Delat? still from ‘Tower; a Songspiel’ (2010)

The madcap video, part Brecht and part Monty Python, skewers the idea of a nationalist art and the Romantic notion of artistic production as well as the eternal mendatiousness of Russia’s leaders.  The visuals are high-concept and the production standards thoroughly professional; this is not Samizdat art cobbled from scavenged materials. These artists are fighting for their lives and the soul of the Russian people – if it still exists, which gives their work a bitter but extremely compelling edge that nothing else in the exhibition matched.

Chto Delat? still from ‘Tower; a Songspiel’ (2010)

Also included in the exhibition were: Kendall Bruns, Kahty Chen Milstead, Patrizia Giambi, Larry Hammerness, Jonathan Horowitz, Katie Kehoe, Larry Krone, Ryan Mulligan, My Barbarian, Dan Perjovschi/Nedko Solakov,  David Schafer, Alysse Stepanian/Philip Mantione, Joey Versoza and the Yes Men!

Jennifer Levonian, still images in this post from animation Rebellious Bird come from www.jenniferlevonian.com/

The new video, Rebellious Bird, grew out of Levonian’s one-year artist-in-residence gig at the Library Company of Philadelphia where she explored the collection and  found stories and images of women who fought disguised as men during the Civil War.

That germ of an idea inspired her video, which is part of a small exhibit of cross-dressing and gender issues expressed in historical printed matter. The exhibit is an addendum to the Library Company’s current exhibit of printed materials from the John A. McAllister collection–John A. McAllister’s Civil War: The Home Front.

Jennifer Levonian, portrait of Wendy Ramsburg, dressed for her role

Levonian, who has an MFA from Rhode Island School of Design, said her father’s hobby was stop-motion animation, and he and his daughters collaborated on claymation films. She showed a picture of how she created the animations, with a camera focused down on the table where she laid out her drawings.

And she talked about her journey through the collection during her residency. When she began doing her research into the collection, she opened an accordian binder with a noose inside. The tag said it was a rope used to hang a rebel soldier. “I felt overwhelmed,” she said. Levonian said she was interested in the uncanny in everyday life.

Jennifer Levonian, image from her trip, for her animation Rebellious Bird

Then, looking through periodicals, she became interested in ads–and how the more things change the more they remain the same. One headline read “To the nervous. Dr. Adam Laurie’s Life Pills.” She said,”I could use one right now.” She didn’t seem at all nervous to me. Other ads promised to cure bunions or promised beautiful wavy hair–snake oil  for hopeless causes.

For a while she focused on the illustrations for news articles. Portraits of missing men struck her as ironic–”absence turning into presence” in the historical record.

But then she found the stories about ladies who passed as men. Sarah Emma Edmonds became Frank Thompson. Albert Cashier, born a woman, kept his gender secret until he was 67 years old. One woman in disguise reported on the thrill of having voted. Another reported her delight in being able to eat alone in a restaurant.

Civil War reenactor Wendy Ramsburg as Craig Anderson, a role she invented based on historical information about women soldiers

Coincidentally, Levonian found a mention of these Civil War women soldiers in the first few lines of Stieg Larsson’s The Girl Who Kicked the Hornets Nest. Why aren’t these stories more widely known?, Levonian wondered. She was pregnant at the time, and during an ultrasound at 20 weeks, the discussion in the room was all about what color to paint the baby’s room. She found the locked-down gender-defining comments surprising. (Levonian was well-along in the pregnancy on the night of the talk).

On the internet she found a cross-dressing Civil War re-enactor, Wendy Ramsburg, who lives in the same city where Levonian was born, in West Virginia. A visit ensued, which became the centerpiece of the video.

Ramsburg, who developed the role of the cross-dressing Civil War soldier “Craig Anderson,” came up from West Virginia to talk after Levonian. She appeared in costume. Civil War re-enactors didn’t much welcome cross-dressing women infiltrating their ranks, she said. People back in the 1800s just didn’t know what hoop-skirted women looked like in trousers, so women were able to pass, especially as very young men. She talked about their varied motives, from patriotism, to unemployment, to the desire stay by their husband’s side. Ramsburg put their numbers between 600 and 1,000, a number hard to pin down because many who died on the battlefield were never identified by name, having shed their identities with their hoop skirts.

The 9-minute video–on Levonian’s video page– is charming and autobiographical–the story of Levonian and her husband’s visit to Ramsburg. Based  on her watercolor drawings, her animation technique is similar to Martha Colburn’s. But her subject matter is more personal–a window onto our times based on the artist’s own life.

Jennifer Levonian, Rebellious Bird still; the artist listens as her husband tell his father (and us) about Albert Cashier

Levonian is interested in how culture colors gender definitions. She places all the events against the backdrop of her own marriage and its roles. Levonian drives. Her husband talks on the phone (he’s Mexican and he speaks Spanish–subtitled). Levonian’s eye for the relevant odd detail comes out when she spots a snowman with breasts. The rather quirky Ramsburg is specific, and hard to pigeonhole in person and in the video. The 20-week ultrasound gets replayed in the video. And Levonian’s husband tells the tale of Cashier, who ultimately is put into an asylum and forced to wear a dress–after which his mind deteriorates along with his health.

Levonian is a humanist and a sharp observer of the details of the everyday. She is comfortable enough with the contradictions and self-delusions to present them all with a humorous touch. Recognition of her accuracy is one of the pleasures of watching. Murray and I both liked this.

The exhibits run to Dec. 9, 2011.

Jennifer Levonian video still

The talk
More immediate is the April 12 talk there by Jennifer Levonian, the stop-action animation video artist who charms while pointing out our culture’s crazy disconnects. Her talk is noon-1 p.m. at the West Collection at SEI, 1 Freedom Valley Drive, Oaks, PA 19456 (for navigation and mapquest search 250 Cider Mill Rd., Collegeville, PA 19426). Open and free to the public. RSVP by Monday, April 11 to Lee Stoetzel, lee@westcollection.org

Easier climb to Tiger Strikes Asteroid
Tiger Strikes Asteroid is moving May 1–downstairs to the second floor of 319A N. 11th St., right nearby Grizzly Grizzly and Marginal Utility. For a grand opening, they will have a one-night-only show of all the collective’s members on April 15, 5-10 p.m. in the new space, and a simultaneous reception for the Theresa Saulin show in the tiny old 4th floor space. Even more simultaneity–this all coincides with Philadelphia Gallery Night. We didn’t much like hiking up to the 4th floor, so we’re totally thrilled.

Ai Weiwei and Slought
We got an email today from Slought Foundation deploring the arrest of Chinese artist and activist Ai Weiwei. The Sloughties had “just begun working on a project about cultural dialogue” with the artist–hence their plea for people and institutions to advocate on Ai Weiwei’s behalf. Full text is on the Slought site.

Jennifer Levonian, Her Slip is Showing (left) and Buffalo Milk Yogurt (right) installed at Fleisher/Ollman

Her Slip is Showing is one of two videos Levonian has on view in her first solo show of the same name at Fleisher/Ollman Gallery this month. The other video, Buffalo Milk Yogurt, has a wonderful image of a young man dousing his hair above the vegetables during a “produce spraying is about to begin” moment at a Whole Foods-like market.

Levonian’s movies are like silent films, visually jumpy, the action sometimes explicated with titles or text, and no dialog. In Her Slip, the background music is provided by Nathan Parker Smith with titles by poet Polly Pauley. The music in Yogurt is by Corey Fogel. But the throw-back to silent movies is misleading. The work is utterly contemporary and timely. The titles in Her Slip are written on iPod screens advanced by the push of a finger.

The videos capture the the ludicrous quotidian in things we take for granted in our daily lives. In Her Slip, she skewers the conventional pre-wedding world, from the future bride’s chorus line of girlfriends sniffing the scented candle gifts; to the fruit cut-outs on sticks, arranged like a bouquet, at the wedding-shower buffet; to the bride kicking her feet with pleasure as she unwraps the shower loot. Likewise in Yogurt, Levonian skewers the self-righteous consumers of crunchy-granola specialty foods, blind to their own foibles, including driving gas guzzlers to pick up their no-steroids no-chemicals all-natural foods.

But the videos go beyond mere slices of life. They are ah-hah moments crystallized in a fairly innocent illustrational style and low-tech look of the animation–very Martha Colburn– that seduces with its apparent safety at the same time that it pulls the rug out from under societal assumptions. Whether it’s the metaphor of the raccoon trying to climb in the window at the shower, or the nude yoga practitioner among the cantaloupes, Levonian always goes somewhere slightly surreal to question the values and organization of a society that has lulled itself into complacency.

The watercolor cutout shapes Levonian uses to create her videos are also on display. Levonian is also at the Philadelphia Museum of Art to May 31, with her new video Take Your Picture with a Puma in the Live Cinema program. (Colburn’s Join the Freedom Force video comes next, in June; Philadelphia artist Joshua Mosley’s new sculpture-based stop-action animation, International, is scheduled for July).

Also at Fleisher/Ollman Anthony Campuzano has his third solo show All Right-Still! at the gallery. Campuzano has made a successful career exploring the familiar media of our lives–daily newspaper headlines and stories, phrases, media images and now coloring book pages–but his approach is the exact opposite of Levonian’s. Rather than soothe with the imagery before pulling out the rug, he removes the familiar, creating a threatening landscape of agitated marks and spatial disruptions, a world of static and jumpiness, where the normal unsettles. He virtually fills Fleisher/Ollman’s large gallery space with 15 works–10 drawings and two sculptures.

Anthony Campuzano, Collide (left) and Collide, Weather-Related Version (right), diptych, 2009-2010, colored pencil, graphite, ink, photographs on board, each 40 x 30 inches.

In the diptych Collide and Collide, Weather-Related Version, the glamor of photos from romance novels is disrupted by lines and dots that bring to mind film, lenses, television test patterns, champagne bubbles and the good life–gone bad. The fate of the original Collide, which was damaged (these two pieces are a re-creation and on the right a re-creation incorporating photo details of the original), becomes a metaphor for all the threats that can destroy art, romance, myth-making and life. And just as an fyi, the diptych is hung next to a drawing of the studio where the original Collide met its dismal fate.

Anthony Campuzano, AM/PM

In the drawing AM/PM Campuzano notes the different ways two news stories get played in the AM and PM editions of a paper, another vagary in the value-laden world of textual communication. Weighting with scale two versions one against the other becomes an exercise in nonsensical meanings and meaninglessness and futility.  In Campuzano’s existential search for meaning in the scratchings of his fellow humans, Campuzano keeps coming up against the craziness of it all.

Anthony Campuzano, detail, For Alexander Girard, 2009-2010, plexiglas with colored pencil on found coloring book pages, 41 x 43 x 10 1/2 inches

In the center of the gallery, the plexi bookshelf construction For Alexander Girard, Campuzano undercuts the prescriptive lines of coloring book pages with atypical use of color and unexpected matings of shapes. The disruption creates a group of jittery products that compete with themselves and each other (Modernist textile designer Alexander Girard wiki page here). The ultimate effect is somewhere between annoying and charming–more of an exercise in bad boyness, in coloring outside the lines (well he doesn’t really). The awkward plexiglas structure is at once furniture-like and store-displayish. The and standard plexi picture frames are arranged in coy family portrait pairings. This goofy pairing ultimately (and surprisingly) lifts what I take as a mere exercise into something that annoys me enough to interest me. It screams for attention and promises with glittery surface and hokey display something it ultimately refuses to deliver–a safe, familiar place. This frustration is classic Campuzano and although I wanted to reject it, I ended up finding myself signed, sealed and delivered in its favor, although I surely wouldn’t want to spend more than 3 minutes in its presence.

Anthony Campuzano, Juan Gris Portrait of Max Jacob 1919 Via Elena Sisto Circa 1997, 2010, colored pencil, graphite, photographs & ink on board, 20 x 20 inches. Sisto was Campuzano's drawing teacher

On the other hand, I was deeply moved by Juan Gris Portrait of Max Jacob 1919 Via Elena Sisto Circa 1997, that in recreating a portrait of poet Max Jacob on a postcard over and over, Campuzano creates a portrait of himself and his own driven mark making. In typical Campuzano mode, he makes you fight your way through the words and imagery, but this time he hands you the rationale on a silver platter, tips his hand on who he is.

Anthony Campuzano, Unpainted Painted Sculpture

Gallery director Amy Adams mentioned to me that the word sculpture Unpainted Painted Sculpture was fabricated by the high-tech machinery at Next Fab. Like the Juan Gris Portrait…. piece, the work is about art history as well as present-day art making.  Adams explained that after David Smith died, Clement Greenberg expressed his distaste for the artist’s painted sculptures by leaving them outside to be stripped bare of color by the elements. Campuzano’s barely readable words say: Clement wanted all of the paint to all fall off David Smith’s sculptures. (Campuzano’s piece offers one unpainted surface for Greenberg, the rest coated in honor of Smith; clearly, Smith comes out the winner).  This piece, which though fragile in feeling, like a giant Mark Mahosky, is the height of a person and made of metal. Whether that fragility refers to Greenberg, that bastard who now is much maligned, or to Smith, whose work was threatened, I cannot say, but the piece has a great presence.

Campuzano also has another gig, Summer Studio, coming up this summer at the ICA, where he will transform the second floor into an studio and classroom space beginning July 1. Dead of Summer sounds more like art than instruction, but it also sounds like fun, plus it’s free and open to the public.

These two exhibits run through June 12, 2010.

Anne Seidman (2008 fellow), Untitled, 2006, water based paint, 15”x13” Photo courtesy of Pew Fellowships.

Melissa Franklin of the Pew called us up to give us the scoop.

“We’ve thought about this for a while. We’ve had it on our minds that there has to be a better way to review materials. We want to put into place a more thoughtful and thorough review process” She also said the context for the grant making has changed because the art has changed.  We asked her if applications were down and she said they were down slightly and we think that has to be a concern.

Franklin said the grant criteria will remain unchanged.  Pew will award grants on the basis of artistic excellence, artistic commitment and on the impact of the grant on the artist and impact of the artist’s work on society.

The traditional categories into which they forced artists to define themselves have been given the heave-ho.  ”The categories have always been problematic for a lot of artists. We have artists who have to squeeze themselves into categories. Others work in ways that defy the categories. Now we’re looking at any artistic discipline this year.

Jennifer Levonian (2009 fellow), still from You, Starbucks, Watercolor and White-Out on found map, size varies. Photo courtesy of Pew Fellowships.

As for the application, it’s been changed as well.  ”Our old questions are not very good. For example, we don’t need to know what people will do with the money.  But what we do need to know is what they’re thinking about and where they want to go with their art.

“Another thing, in the past we’d give $60,000 and say ‘See ya.’ And that’s not good enough. We need to engage more deeply with the recipients. We’re going to work out what each artist needs, whether it’s to make connections or introductions or technical assistance.”

The nomination process.

In the new nomination process, 30 nominators will select 2 artists each. The artists who are nominated are invited to apply. The categories will be literature, visual arts, dance and music, etc. (see all the categories on the Pew website).  The nominators — who Franklin said will be people with deep knowledge of the arts in the region — will change every year and they will be anonymous to protect them from undue influence and pressure from their friends. The nominators will have to write the reasons for their selection and that narrative will become a part of the information about the artist as they go through the selection process. ”An outside person can often talk about the work better than the artist.”

Charles Burwell (2008 fellow), Red Line with Three Figures, 2006, oil on canvas, 36”x36” Photo courtesy of Pew Fellowships.

After the nominated artists apply they will be evaluated by  experts around the country, who will look at the materials. Only those artists ranked high enough will go to the final interdisciplinary panel (same as now).

“The old open application assumes it’s more egalitarian and it also assumes people know about us. But some people may not even apply to us.”  (Pew historically had a 97% rejection rate of all applicants –that gets around and people who ought to be applying sometimes get discouraged).

Now the 60 nominated applicants have a 20% shot.

“This new method gives us the freedom to be proactive about people doing interesting work right now.” We asked if she could give us an example of who that might be and she mentioned King Brit and young artists in general.

We asked if the names of the 60 artists nominated would be made public each year and the answer was no. When the 12 grants are announced Pew will release the 12 names and the names of the final evaluators.

Anthony Campuzano, Pew Fellow. Photo courtesy of Pew Fellowships

Franklin told us she’d been working for a year on this overhaul. She said she worked with Cynthia Mayeda, head of external affairs at the Brooklyn Museum on the review. Franklin also said she consulted with USA Artists, Creative Capital and artists who had been on the Pew panels in the past like Amy Sillman and Kevin Young.

Over their 18 years in operation, Pew Fellowships has had 7,900 applications and has given grants to 237 artists.

“We hope people will welcome this change,” Franklin said.

For more information about this big change check the Pew Fellowships website which has a FAQ page and other information.

And now for the medium of the season, cut paper!! Three exhibits exploring the limits of paper as a medium are ripping up the town– Paper[space] at the Philadelphia Art Alliance, Thanks to Mom and Dad/The Chain of the Worlds at Pageant Gallery, and a cleaner heart a do it at Fleisher-Ollman Gallery, which dips into paper along with some other work.

All three shows are worth the effort to get there in this sweltering heat!

I find myself wondering about the passion for paper. This work is mostly incredibly fragile. Are we at such a state that the long haul seems not worth worrying about? Or is it that compared to pixels, paper looks like a powerful material?

I am mostly stunned by the effort it takes to produce this work, the time spent cutting something that with a flick or a move can be destroyed. Yet it is bravura work, remarkable for the most part, with the amount of labor and delicacy of hand required.

Jin Lee, detail, White Landscape 2, 2007; paper, 56 x 72 inches.
image courtesy the artist

Paper[space] at the Philadelphia Art Alliance is a wonderful show, with work from eight artists, some familiar to Philadelphia art lovers, some not. From Jin Lee‘s frothy cut-paper landscape installations (talk about delicacy and bravura cutting!) to Natasha Bowdoin’s powerful paper incantations which mix words and sculpture and magic, to Nami Yamamoto’s cool, glow-in-the-dark plant forms, this show pushes our expectations of paper in surprising ways. (I just want to say that the installation of Yamamoto’s piece in a dark room is the first time I’ve seen this work presented properly, and it’s a wow).

Sarah Julig, Untitled, 2007, paper and fishing line, dimensions variable.
image courtesy the artist

I also loved how Sarah Julig’s fold-up, torn improvisations resemble fold-up medusa jellyfish and humans on wobbly stilts. There’s a conversation going on between between Julig’s towers and Leslie Mutchler’s building system of standard building-block cards. They back-and-forth about portability and pack-and-go architecture seems just right for a time when Ikea furnishes our homes and people are nomadic, circling the globe looking for a better life.

Leslie Mutchler, Reconsidered, 2007; hand-recycled paper panels; variable dimensions. image courtesy the artist

In this context, Dawn Gavin’s map-inspired works make a lot of sense. Besides X-marks-the-spot map pins, she has excised backgrounds of maps to reveal the roads as a web for survival. Hunter Stabler’s psychedelic cut-paper tankas seem like the perfect escape from what’s happening here. Also in the exhibit, Donna Ruff makes lacy burnt pinhole drawings, many of which call to mind Rorschach tests and icons. The vitrine-like frames turn them into relics. I’d have liked them better laid bare, open on a shelf.

Hunter Stabler, Saint Vitus Architeuthis Manalishi with the Seven Tentacled Crown, photo by Roberta

Stabler also has a solo show right now at Pageant Gallery, and his magical mystery tour of dreamy mandala-like images in cut paper this time also includes some equally dreant ink on paper works. The labor involved, either in cutting paper or in inking the negative spaces, looks daunting. Stabler’s work is nothing short of hallucinatory, and this is a show not to be missed! (More on Stabler here). The exhibit will be up until August 3).

Jennifer Levonian, still from Holy Donuts! video

And over at Fleisher-Ollman, there’s a changing of the guard, with Amy Adams taking over William Pym‘s spot (he moved to New York). Adams is the whirlwind who’s been executive director of Vox Populi since 2005 (plus she’s the second-in-command at the Esther Klein Gallery). (Anyone know some great art fundraiser out there to take over at Vox? Just saying…)

This show is from the Pym era. A cleaner heart a do it features work by Jennifer Levonian, Casey Watson, Matthew Rich, and Bill Walton. It’s another winner, and three of the four artists showing there are using paper in interesting ways.

a cleaner heart a do it installation shot showing work by Casey Watson (two pieces on the right), Matthew Rich (far left, large circle in back, and on floor to right rear), and Bill Walton (on floor in front and back wall two items on left)

Levonian, who showed previously in Street Button (see post), the gallery’s 2007-8 emerging artist exhibit (post on her work here), uses paper-doll-like cut-outs for her stop-action animations–vignettes that deliver the icons of the culture with a dollop of cheerful cynicism and a sharp eye for human behavior. In this one, a young girl survives the boredom and weirdness of a plein-air Sunday service by observing the parishioners as they eat doughnuts and then by transmogrifying the doughnuts into holy symbols. Levonian’s drawings are charming. The animation technique is witty and I’m a big fan. Levonian is also exhibiting some of the drawings from her process.

Matthew Rich, Ring, 2008, latex paint on cut paper, 51 x 53 inches

Casey Watson’s baroque ink-and-paper cutouts inspired by foliage and birds have an ecstatic lushness tempered by an almost casual presentation in which detailed drawings and collages float off kilter on the white page. Watson was one of the artists in F/O’s 2006-7 emerging artists show, Morgellons. Matthew Rich’s cut-paper collage paintings, multiply basic shapes, some of them to great effect, as in Ring, a sort of abstracted still life on steroids.

Also in this exhibit are some great chunky sculptures from Bill Walton, blocks of wood on the wall, concrete boxes on the floor, austere and mysterious poems of dense materials that suck the light and air into their cores. Walton’s work is not cut paper.

Post Christmas is a slow time for gallery sales–which explains why some galleries go to emerging artists shows at this time of year, testing the waters to see who’s got the right stuff. Since the New Acropolis show in Jan. 2004, we have been looking forward to the annual melange of new and surprising art at Fleisher-Ollman to brighten up our post-holiday-season blues.

This year,the exhibit is named Street Button.

Jennifer Levonian, You, Starbucks, 2006
stop-motion animation using watercolor and collage

I especially enjoyed the videos by Jennifer Levonian, using a stop-action animation technique similar to Martha Colburn‘s in Don’t Kill the Weatherman (posts here and here) in her installation at the Rosenbach. The moving elements in the drawings are herky-jerky, and the subject matter is a little loopy. One video has to do with Philadelphia’s Colonial reenactments, and one uses the dialog (monolog) from the film Last Year in Marienbad to accompany a video about Starbucks love. Pretty funny. I like Levonian’s technique, and am looking forward to see where she goes with it.

Andrew Gbur, untitled collage, 21 1/2 x 27 1/2 inches

Andrew Gbur‘s modest mix of cut paper and drawings and mysterious use of symbols–familiar and not–intrigued me.

Andrew Gbur, ( left to right) Burned CD, 2004, white out and ink on paper, 9 3/4 x 7 3/4 inches; 2004 (cut shape), 2004, ink on paper, 9 3/4 x 7 3/4 inches; Sunflower Ashtray, 2004, white out and ink on paper, 9 3/4 x 7 3/4 inches

Gbur seems to be mining some of the same territory as Richard Tuttle without leaving the picture frame. He’s also using sincere materials from the past–the old school paper, the misbegotten alphabet–to contextualize rather arch imagery from the present.

Because the rest of the exhibit showed familiar work, however, the show lacked some of the edge of its predecessor Fleisher-Ollman emerging artists exhibits–New Acropolis, Junto, Meatball, and Morgellons.

Yvonne Lung, Chinese-out detail, with The Color of my Flesh, in background

Eva Wylie‘s full-blown installation at Moore College trumped her smaller effort here. Jamie Dillon‘s deadpan pedestals? Saw them at Vox. Except for her wonderful F-word take-out boxes, Yvonne Lung‘s two installations loudly echoed work by Janine Antoni, Byron Kim, and Felix Garcia Torres.

Perhaps I was just feeling jaded that day. I did enjoy everything. but I was looking to have my Street Button pushed a little harder.

Andrew Brehm‘s low-tech/high-tech assemblage installations, had funny moments; Gregory Brellochs‘ biology-science-inspired drawings ratcheted up the gross meter with faux gross matter, taking a material step beyond his recent Fleisher Challenge exhibit; Stephanie Beck‘s lovely cut paper Dencity, echoing a piece she showed at Tower Gallery, showed some denser thinking. And Ryan P. McCartney‘s minimal materialism expressed some roughness in a genre that’s often precious.

And in case you were wondering (we were)–
The exhibit, curated by Claire Iltis, Heather Shoemaker and William Pym, is named Street Button because Fleisher-Ollman is in 1616 Walnut Street, a building that uses the European system for numbering its floors. Iltis emailed us this explanation after we groused in the Liberta Awards post that we just weren’t getting the names of the F/O shows:

We’ve been of the opinion that it’s better to have fun with the titles than attempt to draw false relationships between the work, or settle for something banal like “Fleisher/Ollman Gallery’s Annual Winter Invitational.” Instead, we’ve picked buzz words or themes from our lives in and and around the gallery.

“Street Button” refers to the button on the elevator here at 1616 Walnut, which delivers you to the street. “1″ is the button which takes you to the gallery. 99% of first-time visitors to 1616 do not see the “street” button, they simply hit “1″ to get out, and by my calculations the phrase, “push the street button” has been uttered in the gallery somewhere around 10,000 times in the last five years.

For more images from the show, here’s my Flickr set.