Tag Archive "uarts"

Young Country at Rosenwald-Wolf

The exhibit Young Country at UArts‘ Rosenwald-Wolf Gallery is as slippery as its title. Are we talking deep South? The Wild West? Our dreams as a baby nation only 225 years old? Either way, we are talking about something American in the bone, a kind of iconic ur-culture exaggerated by movies and stereotypes to they point that they have become our reality of the imagination.

White Columns director tells life at UArts

Matthew Higgs was there! When it happened! It changed his life! “It” was Joy Division, the pioneering post-punk band. And the Brit, who is now director of White Columns, the influential alternative space in New York, says his experience as a 14-year-old, from following, hanging out with, and listening to Joy Division even before they were BIG, was LIFE-CHANGING for the working class lad who grew up in Manchester.

Cosmic bodies and cosmic country at UArts

The best art opening party ever from our point of view was at UArts last Wednesday–a confluence of two shows, with people crossing Broad to get from one to the other. The big-ticket half of the party was at Rosenwald-Wolf for Young Country, a traveling exhibit organized by DCCA’s Maiza Hixson. It’s exuberant and national in its draw.  The show launched in Louisville, and after its Philly run (it ends July 29) Young Country travels on (we forget where but will put that info in here when we get it).

Uarts students mix it up at PhilaMOCA

Once in a while we teach. So that’s how we got involved in [re]Mix, a blink-of-the-eye show of work by UArts seniors at a new space in town–PhilaMOCA or Philadelphia Mausoleum of Contemporary Art.

Studio visit with Tiago Carneiro da Cunha

Brazilian artist Tiago Carneiro da Cunha is working in a small studio at University of the Arts, near the end of a fall-semester artist’s residency. He is creating a new version of Mudman, one of his stock characters the appear and reappear in his work. This version, a clay figure, is about 2 feet tall, about double a previous version, and too large to fit in the typical Brazilian kiln.

Who are you? a wary Laylah Ali asks at UArts

Laylah Ali, untitled, 2005, gouache on paper paintings, all images here provided by Ali Layla Ali gave a talk a couple of weeks ago, part of the University of the Arts Food for Thought lecture series organized by the Summer MFA program. I’ve been thinking it over for this long because she’s a bit elusive. Ali placed her work in the context of self-portraiture, part of her undergraduate practice at Williams College (BFA 1991). Of her early self portraits, she said she was trying to do them with Nat Turner’s vision, and that family memories of slavery are part of ...

Sit up straight, stop frowning

Birch Bark Ass, by Matt Fisher A show of paintings and drawings of modest size at UArts Gallery 817 (upstairs from Rosenwald-Wolf) is definitely worth attention. The show called “Posture and Expression” was curated by artist Rob Matthews. The title lets you know right off the bat that the show has some lessons to teach; it also lets you know that this show reflects some of Matthews’ own art-making concerns. It’s old-fashioned didacticism made me think of all the injunctions from my mother to sit up straight and stop frowning. I still slouch and I still frown. Can’t help it. ...