This in from Gallery 339: Sarah Stolfa, in a two-artist exhibit, Patrons, at Silverstein Photography, was short-listed in the Jan. 8 New Yorker Chelsea art listings–which are juried in some sense. Not everything gets in there. Also her photograph of Jesse Schnabel is featured on the page, another big deal.

Stolfa has been wowing Philadelphia since she burst on the scene in 2005 with her photographs of bar patrons, taken from the bartender’s point of view, with their Rembrandt lighting and their respect for their subjects. Stolfa came out of Drexel University’s photography program that year, and she hasn’t stopped showing since.

Way to go. The local dealer for her work is Gallery 339.

And in Dayton–

Douglas Witmer and Chris Ashley worked together on this phone directory page.

Friends of Artblog Douglas Witmer (from around the corner from me) and Chris Ashley (from Oakland, CA) have been collaborating on works of paper–really. What’s with all the collaboration? I mentioned a pair of sisters at Carbon 14 this First Friday…and you know that Roberta and I have been collaborating on paintings for years. But here are two guys, in two different cities. And their showing somewhere in the middle–right, Dayton, Ohio. “Across the Borderline–collaborative works by Chris Ashley and Douglas Witmer,” runs Jan. 11 to Feb. 10, Rike Center Gallery at the University of Dayton.

You can get a taste of the work and the process here.

And in sunny Southern California–

by Carol Es

Another FOA, San Pedro, CA, artist Carol Es, has a show of her sewing and sewing-pattern-inspired work at the Torrance Art Museum, a Girl Apart, opening tomorrow.

This from the museum’s press release:

At a time when most kids her age were in junior high, Carol Es worked in the family business as a pattern cutter in the apparel industry. The environment in which she labored was filled with neglect and abuse. As a teenager, Es had the strength and wisdom to extricate herself from these circumstances. However, the memories remain.

As a visual artist later in life, Es has allowed patterns and implements of garment manufacturing to re-enter into her works. Intrigued by the shapes and forms of cut fabric, she has reclaimed pattern making as a visual motif. She incorporates sewing pins, fabric, and thread into her compositions, often stitching directly through canvas or the stiff manila cardstock commonly used to cut patterns, and crafting each art element with the same hand tools she used as a child.

Investing her artistic pattern making with candid narratives, Es revisits her childhood and searches for pieces of identity. Through the means of storytelling, she reenacts the past in order to transcend it. By taking possession of dark memories and refashioning those to better suit her, she believes she can mend her life. Through this redemptive art making process, Carol Es hopes to transform a difficult past into a positive and hopeful present.

–and in Philadelphia

There’s a fundraiser for Darfur at Qbix, for the month of February with portraits of Africans by Debra Kapnek coming up Feb. 1. A portion of proceeds will go to the Darfur Alert Coalition.