The art and airplane trend

We’ve told you  before about Jordan Griska’s “Grumman Greenhouse“, the repurposed submarine bomber turned sculpture/community greenhouse that was recently installed in Lenfest Plaza.

Jordan Griska, "Grumman Greenhouse"

Well artist Matthew Day Jackson also has part of a plane – the cockpit of a B-29 – on display in London as part of his exhibit at Hauser & Wirth. The piece is entitled “Axis Mundi”, and while it is cool, it isn’t a greenhouse, so we think Griska wins this round.

Matthew Day Jackson, "Axis Mundi"

In the media:

Virginia Maksymowicz has an article on Philly.com about her exhibit “Previously Occupied:  Wall Street Works 1984-1988“.

Fairmount Park Art Association and Fairmount Park have been named among the “10 great sculpture gardens across the USA” by USA Today.

Rick and Ruth Snyderman, founders of the Snyderman-Works Gallery, have been featured on the American Craft blog.

University of the Arts has its new first-year curriculum featured in an article with The Chronicle of Higher Education.

Tyler Green just launched his Modern Art Notes Podcast series. The first one was aired yesterday with interview of artist Chris Burden and Baltimore Museum of Art curator Kristen Hileman.

Military Discounts at Phillyfunguide.com

Just in time for Veteran’s Day, Phillyfunguide.com has launched discounts for active military personnel/veterans and their families.

One-day Art Fair at the Free Library

Lesley Mitchell, "Fire", Printmaking & collage with canvas cover.

Thanks to Lesley Mitchell for tipping us off about the Book Paper Scissors art, book, and craft fair at the Free Library of Philadelphia on November 19 from 10 AM – 4 PM. Come get some paper, book, and origami work by numerous artists including Mitchell!

A rather Printeresting guest editor

The California Printmaker had its most recent publication guest edited by the fine people at Printeresting. It’s a 32-page exploration of the relationship of print to internet including original writing, original print-related comics, and artist profiles.

Lindsay Baker and 8 Mile covers

At PhilaMOCA on November 27 at 7 PM there will be a screening of Eminem’s 8 Mile with amateur covers of the rap songs in the film. This is the conclusion of Lindsay Baker’s thesis, so come out and show your support!

Opportunities

Philadelphia Art Hotel has just opened its call for 2012 resident artists. The residency goes from May 1 – September 30 and the application deadline is January 31. You can find the application form here or e-mail philadelphiaarthotel@gmail.com for more info.

Artists Wanted invites you to participate in its EXPOSURE 2011 photo competition. There are over $50,000 in prizes available as well as a solo exhibition at the Aperture Foundation!

Markeim Arts Center in Haddonfield, NJ has an open call for its show Eye of the Beholder which begins on January 31, 2012. Photographers are asked to submit photos directly to the director by e-mailing him at norm@creongallery.com before January 13.

University City’s Close At Hand Directory encourages artists to submit their information to their directory of artists and services. Send all inquiries to closeathand@pressreview.net for  more information.

Artist News

Odili Odita created his largest (150-foot) mural for a commission by the New Orleans Museum of Art.

Tyler Held brings us news that he is moving to NYC to become the head painter of sculptures by Jeff Koons.

Bruce Reinfeld will have his photos at a reduced price during his pop-up show at his High Fidelity Disco studio this weekend, November 12, 9 AM – 9 PM and November 13, 10 AM – 7:30 PM.

Christian Patchell, the Chestnut Hill artist, has overcome cancer and put together a colorful cartoon book about the experience entitled “I Put the Can in Cancer: A Journey Through Pictures”.

Christian Patchell

Amanda Wolf – costume designer at Walnut Street Theatre – won the costume competition for Dancing With the Stars. She flies out to LA on the 13th of November to see her costumes live on Dancing With the Stars.

Simone Jones, "All that is Solid", 2011, four-screen 3D animation with stereo sound

Simone Jones has a pair of installations on display at Ronald Feldman Fine Arts, one of which is in collaboration with UDel professor Lance Winn.

Marcia Wood Gallery presents the opening reception of Kate Javens's For the Wolves.

Atlanta is been graced with two Philly artists right now: Caroline Lathan-Stiefel has her installation “Ocean” at flux projects and Kate Javens has a solo exhibition For the Wolves. Thanks to the lively arts blog BURNAWAY for the info!

Liberta takes a meeting with Barack Obama.

In other news, Pew changed its M-O for how artists can apply for fellowships.  Much unhappiness was expressed on facebook and in our comments among some disgruntled artists. But keep your eyes on the prize — the Pew money is still there.  On the other hand, PA Council on the Arts canned its grants to artists program due to PA budget cuts — recession era blues.

A Junto at P’unk Ave about art criticism is still stirring up some energy.  Even artblog got a few theoretical posts (more to come in 2010!).

First Friday at 319A N. 11th St. Music in the hallway, 4th floor

In architecture news, 319A N. 11th St. became the new First Friday destination with nine galleries now and room for more!  Gotta love it.  And Philly continues to get respect outside the city limits. Alternatives FluxSpace and Vox Populi in the red-hot X-Initiatives festival in Chelsea; the PMA gets the Golden Lion for Bruce Nauman at the Venice Biennale; and NY Times writers are all over what’s happening here.

The Libertas

Jayson Musson has fun with Obama, in his show at the Last Drop

Fun with your presidents award — Tie!!!
Jayson Musson for his Obama-has-superpowers show at Last Drop Coffee Shop and Maira Kalman for her I-love-Abe-Lincoln project at Rosenbach Museum.

Supersize award
books so weighty they beg to be put down — Cezanne and Beyond catalog (9 lb.) and Shape of Things to Come (10 lb.)

Inexplicable Omission Award
New Museum for not including Kalup Linzy in Younger than Jesus

Austin Lee portrait of Shaun Baer, from the My Face in Your Space show at Nexus

Risky Business award
–Nick Cassway gets out of his comfort zone and networks to create some excellent projects at Nexus — Nexus Radio, My Face in Your Space (props to Austin Lee and if you missed this show eat your heart out) and Supergirl — still time to catch this good one.
–Runner-up–Michael Kalmbach takes a chance on Willmington and transforms its art scene (post coming soon)

Best show we had no expectations for
ICA’s Dance With Camera

James Johnson, solid gold on the wall at Arcadia U's Works on Paper show

Ahead of the Curve Gold Award
We saw a lot of gold in Miami but we saw James Johnson‘s solid gold art manifesto first (Arcadia Works on Paper show).

Best Double Bill Ever Award
MOMA for Pippilotti Rist and Marlene Dumas

The Not Marijuana Potted Plant Award
Chris Golas‘ chewing of dieffenbacchia leaves in his homey karaoke performance at Exclamation raised new awareness of that plant’s possibilities.

John Gibbons and Isobel Sollenberger, from their solo show at Rebekkah Templeton earlier this year

Pew Wish List
Joe Boruchow (repeat) Chris Davison (repeat), Phil Jackson, Jennie Thwing (repeat), Sarah Stolfa, Martina Johnson-Allen, Bruce Wilhelm, Danielle Bursk, Gabriel Boyce and Preston Link, John Gibbons and Isobel Sollenberger

Dead Tree Media Award
Machete and New Asshole, two print publications on theory launched this year in Philadelphia. They’re occasional publications so they won’t kill that many trees.

Lance Winn and Simone Jones, Knock, Script by Hope Thompson. Made Possible by the Banff Art Center 2007

Fast Forward Award
Video break-throughs knock our socks off. Steve Coss‘ animated portrait paintings in Vox V and Lance Winn and Simone Jones, Script by Hope Thompson robotic projections on three walls and the floor at University of Delaware Gallery keep the viewer in motion to keep up with the scenario. The level of interactivity seemed new and excellent.

Meanwhile

Tim Gierschick, with a piece in his solo show at Tiger Strikes Asteroid

Gallery Openings
Little Berlin reinvents itself as an 8-person collective. Slingluff renames itself and relocates to E. Girard. Breadbox was Esther Klein Gallery and moved up the street. All these opened: Grizzly Grizzly, Marginal Utility, Philadelphia Photo Art Center, AHN/VHS, Tiger Strikes Asteroid, Progressive Sharing, Mt. Airy Contemporary, 919 Gallery, 12 Gates…and this just in, Sweatshop in Port Richmond, Part-Time Studios in Frankford. We know there are more–put your name in the comments if we forgot you.

Gallery Closings
Bye Bye to Pifas

Ashley Flynn, installation at Knapp Gallery

Artists to watch
Ashley Flynn, Amir Lyles, Matt Savitsky

R.I.P.
Tom Chimes, Jeanne-Claude (Mrs. Christo), Andrew Wyeth, Philadelphia art critic R. B. Strauss.  Of course Michael Jackson died, too, a huge hole in the pop culture canopy.

A shout-out to our design and tech team
Kelani Edmondson, Beth Heinly, Howie Ross for design; Nick Paparone and Jamie Dillon for logo and branding.  We love you guys!

Also, a shout-out to artblog reviewers who make us look good
Stefan Zebrowski-Rubin, John Vick, Corey Armpriester, Kelani Edmondson, Judith Stein, Lauren Whearty, Elisa Ludwig, Sue Spaid, Brandon Joyce, Debra Miller, Matthew Rose, Michael Andre, Jacob Hellman, K-Fai Steele, Annette Monnier (who also writes the new blog one review a month), Max Mulhern, Jennifer Zarro

Next year’s a whole new ballgame.  See you then!  xo xo Liberta

Lance Winn and Simone Jones, Knock, Script by Hope Thompson. Made Possible by the Banff Art Center 2007

Best of all is Lance Winn and Simone Jones’ murder mystery video Knock with a deadpan script by Hope Thompson and a surreal bare bones set of a door, a chair that never gets used, a 4-tier birthday cake on a plant stand props right out of Clue. This piece — projected on 3 walls and the floor with looping action where all the actors kill and get killed and magically appear again in what is a horror movie lowbrow farce.

Abby Donovan, These the Heavens of my Brain: an Orrery of Sorts (Oh I think I know where the green ray goes) 2009

What’s new about this projection is how the image moves via robotic arm and so do you trying to keep up with the action taking place all around you. It’s a refreshing change from standing statically in front of a screen or series of screens.

This is a great new direction for art video. It solves the problem of the static screen and the static viewer in the gallery space.

Other gizmos that we admired for their electronic chops as well as their aesthetics are Abby Donovan’s motorized assemblage using clay, string, mirrors and colored lights to suggest a cosmos connected by string, if not by string theory.

Ashley Pigford and Troy Richards, Vanishing Point 2009

Ashley Pigford and Troy Richards’ Vanishing Point Rube Goldberg machine with a moving Lego car careens across a track causing a reaction, an explosion, a growl of sound and finally a juicy hyper-saturated explosion of color on a video screen that reminded us of an outtake from a Pippilotti Rist video. We had to wait too long for the roughly ten-second event to occur but we apparently the wait was dictated by techno-reasons.

Rene Marquez, Home Again 2009

Rene Marquez’s Home Again is a tricky projection piece using slide carousels and other projection devices to comment on old-school technology…and old-school life. It took us a while to figure it out and we’re sure not going to give away the trick here. Marquez uses material from his own past in the projections. The piece is loaded with emotion. Also in the show are Colette Gaiter and Amy Hicks.

More about another techno wonder at the Crane coming up in another post.

Information Translated
UD/ART Selected University of Delaware Faculty 
October 21st – November 29th, 2009

Lance Winn, War Ship as seen at the To Be Or Not To Be exhibit at Rutgers earlier this year.

Then he turned up in a panel at “To be or not to be,” the painting symposium I moderated one day at Rutgers.  I liked what he had to say. And his  work in the Rutgers show grabbed my attention–a stand-out for treading a very different path from the other work in the exhibit.

I also wanted to know more about UD’s jumping into the Philadelphia art scene at the Crane–a bold move that immediately signaled an interest in bringing the Delaware program into a now flourishing contemporary art world here in Philadelphia.  So we met a little over a month ago over coffee at the Green Line.

James Zeske, detail from his mega installation at the UD MFA show. This little trophy deer's head is about half-a-hand big.

Winn, BFA RISD and MFA Cranbrook, came to the University of Delaware at a time when a number of simultaneous retirements meant the UD art department was able to reinvent itself. Part of that reinvention was to find a way to take advantage of Philadelphia’s contemporary art scene and art-critical eyes.

Winn gives credit for bringing the MFA show to the Crane to a number of people with Fishtown, Crane, and UD ties–especially Justyna Badach, who was on the faculty for a while. Their first MFA show opened there three years ago, taking advantage of the timing of the Penn MFA and other shows’ foot traffic. The concept was to bring the work into a contemporary and critical setting.

Jennifer Dillner's medusa jellyfish, made of fabric, invites entry into the stage-like space beneath its canopy; also at the UD MFA exhibit 2009

To build on the concept of bringing top-notch criticism and savvy eyes and ideas to the students, Delaware invites big-name art speakers already headed to Philadelphia for talks and critiques. “The train is the stream,” Winn said. For example, all Julie Heffernan had to do was jump on the train to get to Delaware. Plus the UD students attend the guest artists lectures at Penn and the ICA.

Francine Fox painting at the UD MFA exhibit

Winn came here from teaching at Carnegie Mellon. He also coordinated the graduate program Cranbrook, as a replacement for a faculty member of sabbatical. “I was younger than everyone in the program.”

The Delaware program, now recreated as studio-based and interdisciplinary, has already seen the pay-off–more applications, and more apps from out-of-state and international students. With only 10 slots, the program has become more selective and in the swim of things.

Then I asked Winn about his own work.

Lance Winn, Car Bomb, positing the car as a box and an explosion as formlessness, a reaction to the war in Iraq; photo provided by artist

“I’ve been obsessed with the idea of the form and the formless (relating it to the war in Iraq). The car bomb is an almost perfect representation of the formless. The Ford assembly line is a model of the West. I was thinking of the car as a box. And then the explosive car struck me as a way to think about a lot of things in the world.”

Lance Winn, The Flood, photo courtesy the artist

He also has been thinking about paintings, even about Bob Ross‘ how-to-do-it, one-stroke flower painting technique, where you dip the brush into two colors and wiggle the brush to get a flower–doing “something paint does really well–how it creates a path and how it blends.

“I start with a stable text (a word or phrase) or image, and I use it to become something else. The paintings are degenerative, so that, by the end, the starting point becomes irrelevant. The painting is a performative object; if the way it’s constructed is not relevant to its meaning, there are so many other ways to make images.

Lance Winn, detail, Flood, photo courtesy artist

“I’ve been thinking about Jasper Johns a lot. I’m not proud of the fact (he laughs). I like …the way the American flag in John’s work loses its ability to mean.”

Then Winn went on to talk about 9/11, and the repeated tv images. “For most of us, we experienced it through an image. It had a very real emotional impact but also it was very distanced. So I wanted to cope with these things in art, but I was concerned about the danger of the experience becoming aestheticized.

Lance Winn, Chaos, photo courtesy the artist

“In the paintings, I’m contemplating something by tracing it, …tracing the plane as a caligraphic mark until it becomes something else. I’ve been looking at fluid dynamics and the way one thing impacts another. The paint and the image—the ripples in a stream hit a small rock, then hit something else and you’re in a state of chaos.

“It’s a small world, and one thing impacts another in a way it never has before. …During the Bush era I wrote the words American flag until it turned black and nothing was there. So that one needs a tag.

Lance Winn, Life on Mars, laser cut; photo provided by artist

“Life on Mars, by tracing the letters it turned into a piece about the virtual and the computer screen as escapism–it was never touched by my hand but created (from computer output) by a laser.”

Life on Mars, by Lance Winn, as installed at the To Be Or Not To Be exhibit.

Then Winn went on to talk about a couple of experiences that went into his thinking about high versus low art as a false dichotomy. One was Cranbrook, where there were no preconceptions about design versus art. He said something about the insidious nature of design and how we are not even aware that it’s acting on us. The other experience was a job he had working for an architecture firm. “I listened to them talk about the meaning of space. They have whole days when they talk about the threshold!”

Lance Winn's plane sconce, photo courtesy the artist

That conflation of high and low is not only in his paintings. It’s in his sculptures–kitschy, horrific objects like an airplane crashing into a wall–a sort of lit-up wall sconce in an edition of 10, or a lit up Buddhist monk lawn ornament, about 3 or 4 feet high. “They are small public sculpture,” he declared. “It’s the domestic as a form of public expression.”

Lance Winn's burning man, photo courtesy the artist

Then he returned to his beginning topic–form becoming formless. Chicken wire, a grid, can get stretched to a sort of formlessness. And then if he coats it in foam, as he did in his exploding car lawn ornament, the underlying form disappears altogether. And from there he went on to talking about an emptiness in the middle–in the paintings, in the sculptures. Then he worried. “If the residue of an action can’t be contained in a discrete thing, then where can we go?”

James Zeske, detail Nomad installation at UD. The giant backpack Winn mentions is in the post we did on student thesis exhibits

Then he was back on the students and how the program nurtures whatever it is they do. “If you collect stuff, how can you collect stuff better? Jim Zeske–he’s one of the students–will bring up [for the MFA show] his entire installation in a giant canvas backpack. He’s a wanderer, and he’s in a band on the basement circuit on the East Coast, with no money.

“Philadelphia is more affordable. People can take risks. Like Providence. That’s why those groups (of artists) came out of Providence. There were all those empty indsutrial spaces and all those creative people. All they needed was to make $100 a month. Philly has always felt that way, with a diversity of ways to get by.”

Lance Winn's jittery Martian landscape at the Stedman Gallery

The symposium, To be or not to be, went on for two days, but I was there to moderate only day one of what was a passionate discussion. I also took the opportunity to look at the two exhibits associated with the symposium–one at the Stedman Art Gallery at Rutgers, and one at Hopkins House in Haddonfield. They will go on to April 25.

The symposium, the brain child of Rutgers faculty member Margery Amdur, and the exhibitions, curated by Amdur and Hopkins House Curator Bruce Gerrity, grew out of Amdur’s personal concerns, as a painter who materials include cut mylar and resin as well as a faculty member who teaches students who seem to have concerns that differ from her own.

What I heard and what I saw at the symposium and galleries set my mind working.

Amy S. Kauffman's rug in a show about painting, made from folded Tootsie Roll wrappers, installed in Hopkins House

Among those speaking during the two day symposium were some local people, including installation artist Amy S. Kauffman, traditional painter Scott Noel, stained glass phenom Judith Schaechter and University of Delaware Assistant Professor Lance Winn, who is coordinator of the MFA program there. I loved the willingness of this conference and exhibition to tackle the range of what can be included as paintings–sculpture, video, drawings, photos, prints, cut paper, lenticular moving images, comics, collage, whatever.

I didn’t hear Schaechter or Noel, both of whom were scheduled for Saturday, but I did hear Kauffman, who presented a wonderful film about her art practice, and Winn, who wonders just where we stand on earth–expressed through works that explore language and terrain and the position of the body.

Liz Brown's Battleship, at Stedman Gallery

Some of the symposium speakers I heard were focused on the art historical record and the continuity of the human desire to make art. But there was a lively discussion on the day I was there about whether there had also been a sea change in what the young were making and whether it was a challenge to the art historical record. Panels on day one epresenting the youthie view were Winn, Kauffman, graffiti and trash memorializer Steve Pauley and Brooklyn artist Liz Brown.

All this set me thinking about just what it is that makes art of today different than art of 50 years ago. And it certainly is different–and not. Ah, creativity; there is always room for change.

Steve Pauley rubbing of his own granite graffiti carving (you can see a corner of a granite piece lower left), the graffiti traced from a real wall of graffiti on the Lower East Side. This rubbing is on a wax-coated paper. This is at Hopkins House. He has litter on granite at Stedman.

The generations that grew up with grinning family snaps at the Grand Canyon, Sesame Street, Super Mario Brothers, MYST, graffiti and Scarface have incorporated all those experiences into what they are making. Their current world includes YouTube and multiple photos transformed through Photoshop, stored–for now–on line only to vaporize some day, constant computer input, and if you’re looking for what’s real in the lives of urban artists crowding into cities to work together and live together, it’s sidewalks–gray, graffitied, littered with trash and signage. It’s 9/11 seared into the television screen so frequently that the after-image remains there, a permanent scar casting a cloud over our viewing pleasure.

Pam Langobardi's paintings are a response to environmental disaster, this one at Stedman.

That’s what kids have seen the most of. So paintings of nature seem quaint and kitsch. Instead, we get paintings of paintings of nature and paintings of illustrations of nature with crystals and Rainbow Brite! Nature is where we go camping for a different experience; it is not where we live.

Suzanne Slavick, collage, one of several dark photo-based works about world affairs, at Stedman Gallery

If you’re just looking at art history, you’re not looking at today’s visual reality–which includes images galore of Britney Spears and Brangela, Tron and King of the Hill, WWE SmackDown and surfing the big wave on WII. It’s not that nature observed by previous painters is irrelevant. But it’s got a lot to compete with.

Hugo Bastidas, a photo-based painting of nature, at Stedman

The two shows associated with the symposium ran the gamut. I did pick out some of the younger artists as younger–Brown (she’s got a sharp sense of humor about the images of advertising, cinema, and promotion that litter the landscape) and Winn. But I would not have picked out Pauley’s somber graffiti- and trash-based works as youthful. They are somber memorials, carved in granite and made into rubbings. And I assumed from her dreamy, eco floating worlds that Pam Langobardi was younger than she was. The students at the symposium were deeply interested in what she had to say.

Patricia Bellan-Gillen, painting at Stedman gallery (detail)

There was plenty of other stuff there that was great to look at, and not just from the youthie contingent. From the meticulous Carol Prusa were strange LED embellished, obsessive drawings on smooth plaster domes. From Dennis Farber, who teaches at MICA, came a crusty, materials-influenced painting of a mountain (a self-portrait?). I also enjoyed work by Elin O’Hara Slavick and Suzanne Slavick (they are sisters) , Patricia Bellan-Gillen, and also eco floating worlds from Pam Longobardi that the students in the audience really related to.

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Matt Bollinger, Starched shirt. I'm not sure if this was at Hopkins House or Stedman. Bollinger had work at both galleries.

Vis a vis local connections–Kauffman and Rebecca Saylor Sack for starters. Since the Symposium was organized by Amdur, who shows at Projects Gallery, there were several provocative pieces by some other Projects Gallery artists–Henry Bermudez, Frank Hyder, and Caleb Weintraub–all of whom challenge a definition of painting as just pigment on canvas. And from Rodger LaPelle Galleries, a number of moody paintings by former Philly-ite Matt Bollinger, painting blurry video frames with odd compositions of  threatening scenarios. What’s happening here, as in painting in general, is not exactly clear.