Tag Archive "nick-paparone"

After the storm at Abington

Meetinghouse Road was closed thanks to fallen trees after this week’s violent storm. I almost turned around and went home. After all, I’ve been lost before around the Abington Art Center.But feeling like I hated to have wasted my time getting there, I went to the next corner and voila! I knew where I was and I knew I could get there after all. The Art Center had suffered the loss of a number of trees. I took a bunch of pictures of the broken trunks and branches. As usual, when I tried to follow the map I was flummoxed. ... More » »

Born to Be Wild and a Public Service Announcement

Nick Paparone and Jamie Dillon on “Born to Be Wild”, which will be part of the Abington Sculpture Park for at least two years. On Sunday I helped fellow Copy gallerists Nick Paparone and Jamie Dillon christen their new outdoor sculpture, Born to Be Wild at Abington Art Center’s Sculpture Park. Born to Be Wild is a great hairy mound of dirt and grass with a bell on top of it that brings to mind games like “king of the hill” or that weird sense of achievement you get from walking up an incline of some sort. The bell works ... More » »

Wandering and wondering at Vox Populi–Paparone, Abrams and Wylie

Nick Paparone, The Wonder Wander, torchiere lamp, polystyrene, alumnium foil, paint, motor The cheerful boyishness that permeates Nick Paparone‘s work is always a little slippery. He is one of the trio of Vox Populi artists up for the month of May, plus a couple of guest artists, and he almost steals the show with one of his pieces–The Wonder Wander. The piece, a sort of portable den, consists of a globe spinning slowly on the axis of a lamp pole. The gizmo on the wall that turns the globe is a small motor that spins a small rubber cylinder. The ... More » »

Banana twins–Nick Paparone and Andria Bibiloni

Nick Paparone, 400 Horsepower #1, airbrushed, laminated Cindy Crawford poster, poster hangers Andria Bibiloni’s self-portrait as banana-weilding muchacha My favorite coincidence this month is a pair of images by two very different artists with very different intents, both of them playing off the same kind of pop culture imagery. On the top we have Nick Paparone‘s rejiggering of a Cindy Crawford poster, merging Carmen Miranda as Chiquita Banana, Cindy Crawford as Cindy Crawford selling Cindy Crawford, her swim suit and her look, and phallic symbols turned rasta hair in case you missed the message. The image under Nick’s is Andria ... More » »

Art in the age uninvented

A couple of Art in the Age products, hanging in the shop at Copy Gallery. The shirt on the left features art by Andrew Jeffrey Wright. I’m not sure whose work is on the right. Art in the Age, the upstart little business that sold t’s and other screen-printed items imprinted with images by artists, has just lost its founding leaders Nick Paparone and Tim Gough; or to put it another way, the upstart little business, which was dreamed up by Paparone and Gough, had its financial backing from local PR group Gyro Worldwide, which decided a change in leadership ... More » »

First Friday with limits

Adam Cooper on guitar in the one-night performance/installation Breakfast at Tiffany’s, at Copy Gallery Hey, First Friday was great–at least all that we saw of it, which wasn’t much given Roberta has the sniffles and I was plain old tired. Here’s what we saw:Copy Gallery had a pretty funny one-night performance. Adam Cooper, tented in a hilarious costume by Elsa Shadley, was on guitar; the gallery was decorated in piss-elegant splendor, a lit-up nightclub with reflective mylar and floral sconces, hanging stuffed plastic bags from the ceiling, blue draperies, and clothes strewn across the floor, implying either earlier debauchery or ... More » »

Weekly Update 2 – Spring art emerges and looks good

This week’s Weekly has my Spring art roundup. Below is the copy with some pictures. More images at flickr here. And see some “before” shots of the new Vox Populi and new Black Floor/Copy, sill under construction when I visited a couple weeks ago.Be Still My Aching ArtPhilly’s scene retools for spring. The emerging artist scene is, well, emerging this season, with big changes at several venues. Vox Populi moves, while Black Floor assumes a new name. Art Syndicate loses its space but will partner with Jinxed for an upcoming show. Meanwhile, at the institutions and established venues, life goes ... More » »

Home on the DIY range

Oil Rugs in Themescapes, an installation by Paul Coors, Jamie Dillon and Nick Paparone Romantic notions of the American landscape, American optimism, suburbia and relentless home decoration meet in a sometimes hilarious installation by Paul Coors, Jamie Dillon and Nick Paparone at 222 Gallery in Old City. The installation, Themescapes, includes wallpaper that looks like siding, fabric that looks like bricks and cardboard fashioned into faux wood house framing. But where the work takes off is where it no longer looks quite like anything it’s imitating. The oil rugs, which suggest a fabulous griminess, are shaped like puddles with subtle ... More » »

Magic mountains

Nick Paparone and Jamie Dillon standing in front of Everest Mountains and boulders of papier mache are everywhere, it seems. In the past year Roberta and I have seen four. The first was Everest, the hilariously diminutive, comic-booky version of a white-out mountain at Space 1026 by Nick Paparone and Jamie Dillon. A deadpan rendition of the grandeur of nature, including a white rug beneath, it came straight out of Miss Dingle’s kindergarten’s stage-set building project. It made a mockery of the ambitions of mountain climbers and the eagerness of travellers and their tourist snapshots at the same time that ... More » »