Tag Archive "penn-mfa"

Student post, Part 2

Here are some pictures of work we liked in the graduating student shows. We spent some time with and interviewed some of these graduates but mostly our observations are from seeing the works in the shows. Look for some of these artists to pop up around town because we know some of them are staying around and for sure they’re going to hook up with some alternative spaces and get themselves shown.

Student explosion of navel-gazing, survivalism and home sweet home

As in every year, we have seen most of the graduating student shows at the major institutions.  We’re going to distill this down to some broad impressions in this post and run a stream of photos with a comment or two in the next post. There was low energy everywhere, almost.

Philadelphia art schools–some of the exhibits

The art schools spring a passel of students on the world every April, May and June. I’ve seen a lot of stuff. But here are a few things and moments that stood out in my mind– The Penn MFA thesis show at the Crane, curated by Fleisher-Ollman’s William Pym, had its share of work that stuck to where it was hanging on the walls, but a few things caught my attention: Damon Reaves, Entertaining, video, TV I got lucky when I arrived. The gallery sitters that day was Damon Reaves. I stopped to talk to him. Turns out Reaves, who ...

Graduation time

Caitlin Kuhwald and her Boy Book (still with some blank pages for the next phase in her life, I suppose) of portraits of her friends. I like this idea of archiving a social circle. The exhibits of graduating seniors have their pluses and their minuses. They reward students who already know what they want to say and have a developed a way to say it. They can be pretty demoralizing for those who just stayed the course, did their homework and at the ripe age of 20 or 22 still are without a clue. These latter are of course the ...

It’s that student time of year

Libby and David in Temple Gallery trying out Tyler MFA student Asuka Goto’s checkerboard floor installation. Libby and I ran into Temple Gallery last week with David Kessler to shoot a new video episode of Look! It’s Libby and Roberta. (Look for that soon and see some more photos at my flickr set). Temple is just one spot where you’ll be seeing art by graduating MFA students this Spring. Watch for these exhibits since they’re a good way to spot interesting young talent. Over at Penn, the MFA students are organizing an open studios event this month that looks to ...

Penn MFAs hold the space