Changes for Warhol Museum
The Andy Warhol Museum has announced Eric C. Shiner as its new director. A curator, professor, writer and translator, Shiner has had an academic emphasis on contemporary Asian art – specifically that of Japan. He aims to continue the museum’s plans of traveling its collections around the world and working with Pittsburgh’s business community on an international level.

Also released by the museum is its new Warhol D.I.Y. Pop app. In the past, visitors to The Andy Warhol Museum could create silk screen prints in the museum’s Weekend Factory. This app allows people anywhere to learn about the process and create Warhol-style digital prints from their own pictures. The app is available at a debut demo price of $0.99 in the iTunes store.

Arts jobs are growing in number!
Some great news for the creative community: The National Endowment for the Arts recently released an analysis which projects healthy growth in the arts sector through 2018. The highest projected growth rates? Museum technicians and conservators. But not to worry artists. Although they rank among the lowest, the category of jobs for painters and sculptors is still expected to grow by as much as 9%.

ITE open studio

International Turning Exchange, all about wood

On July 16, the Center for Art in Wood (Wood Turning Center) will host its International Turning Exchange open studio day from 10 am – 4 pm. The cost is $10 and lunch will be provided. Contact Lori at lori@woodturningcenter.org to register.

Prospect.2 announces artists and venues
There was some question about whether there’d be a second Prospect New Orleans, but they must have worked out the finances because the New Orleans Contemporary Art Biennial – Prospect.2 – has released its list of participants and locations. The biennial will last from October 22, 2011 – January 29, 2012. Visit their website for all of the details.

New gallery director at Moore
Kaytie Johnson has been selected as Moore College of Art and Design’s new gallery director and chief curator. Formerly the director of galleries, museums, and collections at DePauw University, she is expected to bring a fresh new programming perspective to the college when she begins in late August.

Opportunities

author-LESS-ity deadline July 25
Help join in a publicly curated exhibition inside City Hall! All you have to do is contribute an image of art that you find to be quality. The artwork will be displayed in the Little Berlin‘s Department of Alternative Affairs office in City Hall and then be compiled into a book. Send your image to berlin.little@gmail.com or upload pictures to the Flickr page.

Utrecht Local Arts Series
Utrecht Art Supply on Chestnut Street will be showcasing one artist or theme every month beginning on Second Friday. The first artist showcased is Steve Cleff through August 8. If you are interested in having your work considered, contact the store at store28@utrecht.com.

Dialogo 365 call for artists
In celebration of the 200th year of Venezuela’s independence, The TRUST Venue will host Dialogo 365. The themes of the exhibition are freedom/liberty/independence and the intent is to tap into the Northeast’s rich Latin, Latin American, and Caribbean artistic production. To apply visit the call for artists or e-mail at curator@dialogo365.com.

Call for documentary photos: hard economic times
A show of documentary photography concerning tough economic times will begin on September 8 as part of 5-part series called Class Warfare in Philadelphia. This show will be held at Robin’s Books and Moonstone Arts Center and is currently accepting work. Submit low-res images to Ted Adams (tedadams@verizon.net) and Eric Mencher (emencher@hotmail.com) by July 31 for consideration.

Pterodactyl BIG ART SHOW
Pterodactyl Creative Project Space is seeking submissions for their BIG ART SHOW – a one night art party where you can show off your stuff in an unpretentious environment. The catch? There is no catch! No judging, no applications. Contact them at BIGARTSHOW@pterodactylphiladelphia.org if you have any questions or just to let them know you’re coming!

Academy of Natural Sciences seeks artists
To celebrate their bicentennial, the Academy of Natural Sciences is requesting artists to submit ideas for installations or performance that celebrate the inter-relation of science and art. Artists of any medium are welcome, and are asked to submit a short paragraph explaining their idea. The deadline is August 12. Contact Karen Spiro at project200@ansp.org if you have any questions or ideas.

Artist News

Andrew Jeffrey Wright recently made some episodes of a children’s show on Comcast with buddies Rose Luardo, Ted Passon and Thom Lessner. To find the episodes go to: On Demand > Kids > Activity TV > Summer Joke School.

As we mentioned before, Henry Bermudez has an installation up at Philadelphia International Airport, but check out the picture (detail above) we just received!

Lee Stoetzel, wood motorcycle, from his show at Mixed Greens in 2007

You may know Lee Stoetzel as the director of the West Collection, but do you know his art? Watch this Ted x event video to hear more.

Artist Serena Perrone has a lot coming up around the bend including a group show, “Here and Now” at the PMA, as well as her solo show at Cade Tompkins Projects, Providence, RI.

The Wind Challenge announced the nine artists for its series of 2012 juried shows. Through a blind jury selection process, the artists were chosen out of a pool of nearly 200 applicants. This year will mark the exhibition series’ 34th year.

Anita Allyn, Alana Bograd, Astrid Bucio, Christopher Hartshorne, Laura Ledbetter, Erin. M. Riley, Nora Salzman, Sara Steinwachs, Jennie Thwing

Moore’s president Happy Fernandez to step down in 2012

President Fernandez

Happy Fernandez, the president of Moore College of Art & Design, announced her plans to resign effective May 2012. Since her inauguration in 1999, Fernandez has been a progressive leader of the institution, increasing the enrollment at Moore by 29% and completing a successful $30 million capital campaign. “I feel it is the right time to make this transition with the college in such a strong position,” stated Dr. Fernandez.

Philly artists out of town

Judith Scheachter will participate in the 54th annual Venice Bienniale as part of Glasstress, an exhibition of glass work by contemporary artists, from June 4 through November 27 2011.

Judith Schaechter, Nature, 28” x 45”, stained glass

Silver Eye Center For Photography‘s first ever Pennsylvania Photography Biennial opened at the Pittsburgh gallery on May 24th. Half of the participants highlighted are Philadelphia-area artists: Donald E. Camp, Edward McHugh, Amie Potsic, Nadine Rovner, Amy Stevens, Jeffrey Stockbridge, Sarah Stolfa, and Lori Waselchuk.

Sarah Stolfa, Clarksdale, MS, photograph

Andrew Jeffrey Wright has a solo show Down For Whatever Forever at THIS Los Angeles from June 3 – 23.

New gallery in town!

Fourth Wall Art Salon announces the opening of the Fourth Wall Art Gallery. The gallery is having a reception with founder and curator Keir Johnston on Friday, June 3rd from 5 – 8 PM at 158 North 3rd St. for a celebration of their visual artists.

Mel Kadel, Personal Trophy, 2009, Pen, ink wash and collage

L.A. artist Mel Kadel’s exhibit Spacing Awake, a handful of illustrative drawings in the hallway at Moore College,  is more what I imagine a woman superhero would be like. She meets dream-world perils with a feisty determination and a flare of rainbow colors. She can be a little lumpy or dumpy–or not. But never does she look like a bimbo, or pout. Dora the Explorer grows up.

Mel Kadel, Water Island, 2009, pen, ink wash and collage

The imaginative work is obsessively made. Kadel stains her paper with coffee, and uses hand-mixed ink washes, along with micron .005 pens, pencils, and blades for collage. (Here’s a link to an interview with her on Fecal Face). The meticulous attention to detail supports the repetitive deco patterning that recalls fabrics and wallpapers–a traditional woman’s world. But the little heroine that could is also the star student of her own self-improvement project. And she shares her adventures and insights with women who are just like herself in a sort of self-contained consciousness-raising group.

Mel Kadel, Small Escape, 2009, pen and ink wash

It has been about 40 years since the feminist movement of the ’70s. And here’s something that has changed. Kadel’s delightful survivor (who makes me think of Joy Feasley’s campfire girl persona) doesn’t seem to care whether you think she’s sexy or not. Kadel does care, maybe a trifle too much, whether you and I like the drawings, however. That’s my only reservation.

Spacing Awake will be up until April 16, 2011. Kadel, a Moore alumna, has a show in L.A. now until March 5 at Merry Karnowsky Gallery.

Jessica Herzfeld, dirty limerick giveaway at Pafa's BFA and Certificate show.

PAFA BFA/Certificate — Jessica Herzfeld’s giveaway of a hand-colored zerox cartoon (click to read the limerick) was a high point in a show that could have used more energy and wildness.

Itsuki Ogihara, Islamic in White. Ogihara often uses the Minimalist strategy of multiples, but stretches the concept, here, to wallpaper, print, and decoration, just for starters.

PAFA BFA/Certificate — We paid Itsuki Ogihara a visit at her PAFA studio last January and the Japanese artist impressed with her street performance piece (she had used a stencil of cars and trucks in a line to create a pattern on the grimy walls under the Market St. bridge. What she did was wash the walls through the stencils creating a whitish pattern of cars and trucks on the very dark walls). A mural by subtraction, we thought–how clever! Mural Arts should hire her. Ogihara’s a materials girl and her piece in the PAFA show was a nice stencil of joint compound on two book-ended walls that was a stealth charmer. It reminded us of Islamic grid patterns and because it was white on white and book-like, it referenced books with exquisite content like the Koran, the Bible, or illuminated manuscripts.

Manya Scheps, holding her Poached Pack book at Penn's BFA show.

Penn BFA show — Manya Scheps met us at her show to step us through her imaginary creation, the Poached Pack. PP is a fictitious collective. The young artist, who belongs to PP is also a PIFAS collective member (a real collective) and she told us she’s not poking fun but studying the phenomenon of young artists hanging out, doing stuff like organizing shows, having openings, making zines. For her piece, Scheps aka PP organized a real group show of Philadelphia artists. She also produced a book/zine about the PP, a website for them and a video with a faux interview of one of the members. The art show within the art show was actually pretty good and the whole thing is a pretty perfect project for the times.

Nicholas Salvatore's installation at the Penn BFA show.

Penn BFA show — Nicholas Salvatore’s self portrait piece– an array of me-me-me videos around a dentist’s chair — plays with the pleasure, torture and mania of self-revelation in our digital age.

Cecelia Post, You Made Me, video, at Penn MFA show.

Cecelia Post, infrared video of mother possum with baby on its back foraging at night for food.

Penn MFA show — Cecelia Post’s videos are dreamy explorations about the self in the world. Above she is sewing what looks to be a life-sized doll that sits on her body and becomes one with her, in effect creating a new self. Her other video of a possum and baby possum rummaging for food at night captivated not only for its color and its nocturanal voyeurism but also for its evocation of mothers and offspring in general (we speak here as mothers with offspring).

Kurt Freyer's video at the Penn MFA show.

Penn MFA show — Kurt Freyer’s video mixes psychedelia, surrealism, and dream narrative about “Them” and “Us” for something spooky, riveting in parts, and peculiarly wonderful. The crude shed he built to watch the piece in was a claustrophobia chamber that went very well with the paranoia on the screen.

Nicolas McMahon does a star turn in front of his own camera, as a phone-sex provider

Penn MFA show–Posing as a variety of societal rejects and otherwise forlorn or beset characters, Nicolas McMahon stars in his own videos and photos. It’s not a pretty picture. He undercuts the stereotypes we see daily in the media–the poor emphysema victim, the sexy phone-sex purveyor. We gave McMahon a shout-out for outstanding work a year ago, (in the small student photography show accompanying the Through You exhibit at Penn), and we’re still shouting.

Elizabeth Hoy's construction suggests a makeshift survivalism.

Penn MFA show–Elizabeth Hoy’s decaying wall is the metaphor for the whole world and the people in it going to hell in a hand basket. Creaky, crumbly, rickety, leaky, slapdash and makeshift, it looks like urban survivalism to us. Move over. We need to get under that shed, too.

Angel O, Adam: 19 years in utero; the video is situated in an installation that's much like a doctor's waiting room, with gruesome pamphlets for deperate patients. The video loop is about 11 minutes.

Moore BFA show–The big news at Moore is video. Of the two that knocked our socks off, one comes out of the new photography and digital arts department, which is graduating its first group of students. The other, from Angel O, comes out of 2-D fine arts. In Angel O’s Adam: 19 years in utero, the artist plays all the roles, from the baby to the mom to the father, and each of them is horrifying at some level. The scenario of permanent pregnancy and permanent fetal dependency seems perfect for this day of the real-life OctaMom.

Moore BFA show–Megan Jensen’s video, I Live Here, from the photography and digi arts program, uses digi wizardry to cast a loving, yet skeptical, eye on home and on the suburbs, with pop-up hills and dales and houses and signs. The video hits its stride immediately after the first few interior scenes. We get a terrific sense of space and rhythm as we tour the real and the not-so-real Our Town — the ideal delivered with some gentle, questioning commentary. You can catch it here on YouTube.

Moore BFA show–Kelsey Costello (image in introductory post), using humble, low-tech clay and paint, imbues buildings with warm feelings for places from her past. The yearning for a remembered place is palpable.

All three of these Moore artists made us think of the rush of college students returning home instead of setting out on their own, thanks to a shaky economy and a really scary world out there.

Mike Trefehn's installation in his Tyler MFA show. Detail.

Mike Trefehn in front of his word wall in his history museum-ish installation.

Tyler MFA show — Mike Trefehn’s installation looked like something out of a small historical society museum. The artist is mining his family, studying the town his German grandparents settled in and in one case literally walking the perimeter of the town to feel it in his bones. Part performance, part narrative about immigration, work, social class, and all rumination about his own place in the world, Trefehn’s piece actually transforms the currently rampant phenomenon of navel-gazing into something serious and forward-moving.

Nick Barbee, detail from his Tyler MFA show. Pocahantas in the foreground and General Robert E. Lee and his horse in the back.

Tyler MFA — Nick Barbee charmed us with his painted clay figurines that were cruder than kitsch gift shop souvenirs but treading on the same nostalgia for history territory. Barbee’s questioning what heroism is really all about and like Trefehn, Barbee is mining his own past. He’s a Virginia native and all the material in his show was about Virginia. The artist inserted himself into the tabletop arrays of Pochahantas, Gen. Robert E. Lee, John Smith, Mr. Bojangles, Arthur Ashe and the rest by placing painted rainbows, lumpy white clouds and images of himself throughout. He explained that he’s always loved rainbows and clouds and that as a Virginian, he belonged on the table too. Like we say, charming.

An Erin Riley weaving; she also dyes her own yarns.

Erin Riley, from her series of car weavings

Tyler MFA — Erin Riley, whose BFA is from Mass Art, emailed us in early winter to tell us about her work–hand-woven tapestries of cars and car crashes. We looked, we liked and we scheduled a studio visit. We loved the costumed little girl in front of her family car–a childhood that Riley’s own childhood didn’t quite measure up to: “A lot of people died in drunk driving accidents in my life. …I always joke if I don’t make it, I could always sleep in my work, or use it to stay warm. I’ll be fine.”

James Zeske, view of his installation Nomad

University of Delaware MFA — James Zeske, in his Nomad installation, crocheted strips and strung them vertically to frame the walls of his temporary campsite, and he recycled molded styrofoam packing material to deliver a touch of home– niches hung on the wall. The shifts in scale and materials are surprising–a trophy deer head sculpture (I’m not sure if it was plaster or styrofoam) is miniature and unabashedly crude. A sentimental figurine looks store-bought, but the music come out of the fiddle is a small abstract sculpture of lightening-bolt-like pieces. (It’s not easy for an MFA program in Delaware to catch someone’s eye. But here it is, at the Crane, shouldering its way in. This alone is worthy of notice). If Elizabeth Hoy and Penn are urban survivalism, Zesko and Delaware are her deep-woods counterpart.

There was low energy everywhere, almost.

University of Pennsylvania MFA show at the Icebox. Channeling the underbelly.

Students seemed obsessed with hearth and home–looking for safety from the disaster around them. Eco disaster and urban deterioration were all over the place, channeling the apocalypse and implosion of life as we know it. The relief came in dark humor, and anti-consumerist themes.

Body imagery was all over the place–it was about not feeling well, not looking good, feeling wounded, feeling threatened, feeling absurd. Architecture is crumbling–we saw a lot of beautiful decay. None of these are new themes or strategies, but they do seem to be obsessions permeating the work we saw.

Humor appears! Tyler MFA show, piece by Dustin Campbell. The artist as Sisyphus.

We saw tracks of Web 3.0 all-about-me art all over the place, with the artists featured as the stars of their own videos and photographs. But it’s depressed–the youthful outpourings of Facebook and webcams and blogorrhea. Some of it, although self-focused, still managed to say something big. Some of it, not.

Craftsmanship was off the charts both ways–fabulously crafted and fabulously anti-craft. There were good things in both extremes.

Kelsey Costello's clay buildings are a mix of imagination and memory--at Moore College.

Moore College went high on craft. Penn MFA videos were awesome–when they were functioning. The Penn BFA videos were fine the day we came. Tyler MFAs looked fantastico in their new space, which lent an aura of professionalism and razzle-dazzle that some of the other shows didn’t have. PAFA’s show was more conservative than last year’s show and was actually more conservative than the other college shows we saw, reflecting its more conservative tradition with the focus on still life, figures and landscapes–although we did notice a giveaway–a xeroxed cartoon drawing with a dirty limerick–that broke the mold.

We noticed only one image of Obama–as a superhero–we expected more. We also saw a video and a facsimile of a doctor’s waiting room, touching on issues about our health-care system that we’re all thinking about right now. Boy, was this dark. And all in all, there was not a lot of joy passing around these shows. The kids may not be talking about the economy, but they do seem to be affected by it.

So here’s a short picture post of some highlight from what I’ve seen.

Moore College of Art and Design’s graduating seniors show, at the Galleries at Moore, up until May 18, is great, and the illustration students rock the gallery. I admired every one of them. Here are a short sample just to give you a sense of the quality and the wit.

Kristen Travers’ pickle people look like the next generation heirs to the California raisins.

Lauren Albert with her video Like a Pen

The video Like a Pen by illustration student Lauren Albert follows an ordinary girl who becomes a supergirl shark of the sea and swallows and friend. Love and hate become confused and the imagery is delicious. You can see it on Albert’s website here.

Other illustrators who caught my eye were Katie Glisson, Angelina Wakely, and Ebony H. Segers, the latter drawing portraits of African American heroes for a retelling of history.

The fine arts were not as strong as a group, but here’s some of what I thought was great–

Stacia Eve Paul, Synthetic Experience installation

Stacia Eve Paul’s installation of black-light glowing hair and fabric turned a space into a funhouse. I don’t know that I got much out of this on the level of ideas, but it made great looking, and Stacia herself donned a dress that also glowed. I enjoyed the synthetic hair piece–it’s the 3-D ribbon painting update on the right, and it takes the girl identity thing into the zone of entertainment and light shows.

Donna Blichasz, My Mind Bridges the Gap Between Us, oil on canvas

Donna Blichasz’s large painting, My Mind Bridges the Gap Between Us, is German Expressionism with a sense of humor. She and her friend Kellyann Catenacci, whose painting was sort of similar, but not, and also pretty great, made some wonderful collaborative drawings together under the name BlinchiCat. Natch, I had a soft place in my heart for the collaborators. Besides, they made good work!

Here are a couple of Victoria Senseny’s what-is-it sculptures:

Senseny commanded the front space by the windows near the guard desk. Other work I admired was by Samantha Hill (she’s in a show we’re curating for Projects Gallery, so I don’t want to say more, right now), Cat Badger, Taryn Brooke Holloway and Krista Rothwell.

I was impressed by how well-organized the exhibit was. Each student stood next to her work on opening night, with business cards mounted on the wall for the taking. Very professional.

I also stopped at one of the Tyler School of Art exhibits of senior work in an enormous raw space at Broad and Cecil B. Moore.

Here’s some info sent us by Marilyn Holsing about the show, which is put on by the Department of Art & Art Education:

Tower Investments very generously loaned our department a huge raw space at the corner of Cecil B Moore and Broad Streets (1600 N. Broad St, second floor) for our 40th annual student show and our Senior Seminar Show which we have combined this year. Pepon [Osorio] and a small crew of students transformed the space into a first class temporary exhibition space by building walls. It was a huge undertaking.

Not only is the space spectacular but so is the student work which includes everything from traditional painting and drawing through digital work and sculpture.

The tone here reflected the tone of the school–hey, kids, let’s put on a show! Here are a few samples of work I especially liked.

Nicole Roche‘s suite of paintings about her friends partying hearty capture the wildness–and seediness–of drunken bar scenes. No one else’s work looked anything like these (one of the problems with this show overall were lots of class groupings with assignments flattening the individuality of the students).

Sarah Lu, The Urban Environment, 2008, series of 5, reduction print and lithography on newspaper with collage, 22 x 12 inches

I liked Sarah Lu‘s prints in which the newspaper page becomes the urban grid itself, and the way the print appears works kinds of the way that in real life the eye settles on something in the larger context and sees it in color while all else fades back.

Benjamin Tellie, Four Lonely Cabins, two color reduction print

Benjamin Tellie‘s prints interested me for how his ghostly outline style of drawing matched the ghostly, non-photographic quality of his subject matter–depictions of his grandfather’s experiences in WW I. The scenes look rather unlikely to me, with soldiers and the injured and men with guns all milling around–but that’s part of their charm and mystery.

There was lots more there worthy of mention, but I’m stopping here. The Tyler show will be up today and open until 6 and Thurs May 1 and Fri May 2 and Mon May 5 from 12 to 6. However part of the show may be taken down on Monday due to a time crunch.

Now, check out this review by Roberta Smith…
HOLY FUCK!!!!!

Just putting out there that I saw Roberta Smith and Jerry Saltz at my show on opening day and I was so star struck that after I spoke to them I had to go in the back and lay down on the cool concrete floor in the gallery. I am a really big Roberta Smith fan.

And on a more local note–

The savior of Fairmount Park’s public art works, Penny Balkin Bach, received an honorary degree from Moore College of Art and Design May 14. That would be Doctor Penny from now on.

Speaking of which, the upcoming Fairmount Park Art Association dedication of Mark di Suvero’s sculpture Iroquois for Philadelphia is Wednesday, June 27, 4 p.m. at the Benjamin Franklin Parkway at Eakins Oval and Spring Garden Street. It’s open to the public. di Suvero will address the members of the organization at the annual meeting that follows. For more information, contact the Fairmount Park Art Association.