NEWS
Did you know that a community art project has been brewing for a while at the PMA? Renowned Dutch artist Jeanne van Heeswijk has been working in the community on “Philadelphia Assembled” and will give a FREE public talk on Wednesday, Jan. 25, 2017, at Fleisher Art Memorial, as part of their Sanctuary Series.
The first exhibition of its kind at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia Assembled joins art and civic engagement. Initiated by van Heeswijk, together with hundreds of collaborators from across the city, the project explores Philadelphia’s changing landscape and tells a story of active resistance and radical community building. Challenging, inspiring, and as expansive as the city, Philadelphia Assembled asks: how can we collectively shape our futures? More information at Fleisher’s website.
Jeanne van Heeswijk talks about Philadelphia Assembled
Date: Wednesday, January 25, 2017
Time: 7:00pm – 8:30pm
Venue: Fleisher Sanctuary,
Address: 719 Catharine Street
Philadelphia, PA 19147
Vox Populi chooses new Executive Director, James Merle Thomas
Vox Populi is pleased to announce and welcome its next Executive Director, James Merle Thomas. Joining the organization after recently moving to Philadelphia, Thomas currently designs and teaches a Global Contemporary Art curriculum at the Tyler School of Art at Temple University, while furthering an already distinguished career of independent and internationally recognized curatorial and publication projects.
…Formerly based in San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Washington D.C., Thomas is an art historian and curator who brings over a decade of expertise in modern and contemporary art, publications management, and experimental and performing arts to Vox. His doctorate in Art History from Stanford University—a study of the abstract art, experimental architecture, and radical design of the 1960s and 1970s avant-garde as it related to NASA’s aerospace research—has led him to numerous research- and curatorial based fellowships, among them a Chester Dale Predoctoral Fellowship at the Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts at the National Gallery of Art, and a Guggenheim Fellowship at the National Air and Space Museum at the Smithsonian Institution. Most recently, Thomas was a Provost’s Postdoctoral Scholar in the Humanities at the University of Southern California, where he co-directed, along with the USC School of Cinematic Arts, a restoration and screening project dedicated to the countercultural filmmaker Fred Engelberg. His 2015 exhibition of Robert Rauschenberg’s NASA-commissioned artworks of the late 1960s, Loose In Some Real Tropics , was produced in collaboration with Stanford University’s Cantor Center for the Arts and the Robert Rauschenberg Foundation…
Artblog favorite Miguel Luciano invites you to Ride or Die, new commissioned works dealing with the Nuyorican bike culture and the 100-year relationship between the US and the island.
I hope this finds you well. I would like to invite you to the opening reception of Ride or Die – a solo exhibition at BRIC HOUSE featuring several newly commissioned works that engage Nuyorican bicycle culture and the complicated relationship between Puerto Rico and the United States. The work explores the current economic and political crisis in Puerto Rico and its relationship to the diaspora, at the centennial mark of U.S. citizenship for Puerto Ricans. More information at Luciano’s website.
Ride or Die
A solo exhibition featuring newly commissioned works by Miguel Luciano
February 2 – March 2
Opening Reception: February 1, 7-9pm
BRIC HOUSE
647 Fulton Street
Brooklyn, NY 11217
The video shows Miguel Luciano serving shaved ice at the Icebox in 2008 as part of his Pimp my Piragua (shaved ice cart), during a global warming-themed exhibit. Here’s Artblog’s write up on that piece.
Artist, poet, and Artblog favorite, Ditta Baron Hoeber, writes about a poem of hers included in the new volume of the American Journal of Poetry. Congratulations, Ditta!
I am very pleased to tell you that my poem, Cakes and Emily, is now online in volume two of the American Journal of Poetry. Cakes and Emily is written as a series of letters to Emily Dickinson about making her cakes. The poem is about process at least as much as it’s about cake and about a progress as well. The editor of American Journal of Poetry, Robert Nazarene wrote me, “If anyone thinks your poem is just a recipe–they need to put on a diver’s suit and let me show them how many depths your poem works on!”
In anniversary news, Drexel is celebrating 125 years with a show that displays some historic geeky objects, like the Mac computers (image above) that the school used over time. More information here at the show’s website. The exhibit is up now through March 19 at the Leonard Pearlstein Gallery.
Little Berlin turns 10! Celebrates with members show and reception with performances.
Opening Reception
Saturday, January 28th, 7-9pm
Performances at 7:30 and 8:30
Little Berlin
2430 Coral Street
Philadelphia, PA 19125Please join the Members and Alumni of Little Berlin as we celebrate 10 years as an artist-run collective. Throughout the past decade more than 40 people have worked to make Little Berlin an inclusive art space that offers Kensington an expansive variety of programming. From virtual reality sculptures, poetry jams and dinner parties with a wood chipper, to exhibitions featuring international, local and outsider artists, Little Berlin has grown and evolved with our community. Over the years our neighborhood has seen many changes and so has our organization. We would like to take this opportunity to welcome all of you into our space to show you who we are, what we do as artists, what we dream about as curators, what we hope for as a community and most importantly, to learn about you, your interests, your favorite moments at Little Berlin and what you would like to see happen in the next 10 years of an undefined exhibition space.
Artists/Current Members Include:
Luke Leyden
Ethan Patrick Sherman
Rebekah Flake
Eric Preisendanz
Terrill Warrenburg
Eric Anthony Berdis
Will Owen
Alyssa Kreilick
Amalia Wiatr LewisWith Performances by:
Eric Anthony Berdis
Amalia Wiatr LewisThe exhibition will be on view through February 20th. Gallery hours will be held on Sundays 1/29, 2/5, 2/12 and 2/19 from 1-4pm and by appointment.
A Good Read
Internet art afficionados and you know who you are…this week’s New Yorker has a piece on Brad Troemel, controversial internet artist, whose Tumblr, the Jogging, created strong negative feelings among some who participated. Read excerpt below by Adrian Chen and the full article here at the New Yorker site.
Troemel is best known as co-creator of the Tumblr blog the Jogging, an online art factory that produces thousands of strange images that blur the line between art and meme. He started it in 2009 with Lauren Christiansen, a fellow art-school student and his girlfriend at the time. The Jogging attracted widespread coverage both inside and outside the art world. To Troemel, its success “proved that making art on social media, at the pace of social media, was a new way to achieve an old goal of conceptual art: producing art that does not just reflect society but is a part of it,” Chen writes. Troemel is well known but divisive in the art world. Nick DeMarco, a former contributor to the Jogging, told Chen, “It became very clear that Brad would not tolerate dissent and it was not a group. . . . Brad was the boss, and we were his employees.” Christiansen said, “To be honest, I want to be as distant as possible” from the Jogging. She referred to Troemel as a domineering narcissist who exploited her and the rest of the Jogging contributors for free labor to advance his own career. “He just puts himself out there in this cocky way, and I think people either love or hate it, and ninety per cent of people hate it,” the curator Lindsay Howard told Chen. “He embodies the white male artist to such an extreme degree that he is just a perfect enemy.”
UNITY, the semi-annual Philly Art Schools show, opens with a reception on Friday, January 27 at Moore College of Art and Design. Go and see what students from Tyler, Moore, PAFA and UArts are doing at this cooperative show!
OPPORTUNITIES
Via The Week Here at Tyler…4-week artist residency at Glacier National Park, Montana. DUE JAN. 31.
The Glacier National Park Artist-in-Residence program offers professional artists four weeks of focused time to creatively explore the natural and cultural resources of this astounding landscape while pursuing their artistic goals. It also allows artists the opportunity to share their work with an international audience through educational programs and exhibits. The Artist-in-Residence program continues a long history of Arts in the Parks.
Glacier is currently accepting applications for the 2017 season. The deadline to apply is January 31, 2017.
…Housing
The lodging for the artists during the summer (June, July and September) is a historic cabin on the shores of Lake McDonald. It has a full kitchen, bath, one bedroom, and a studio space overlooking the lake. The October artist will be lodged in a house at park headquarters. Bed linens, towels, pillows and basic kitchen supplies will be provided. Artists are expected to provide their own art supplies, food and transportation. Artists are also responsible for the upkeep and cleaning of the house. Internet and cell phone service is not available. This housing is only available for the artist. Family members, significant others and friends will not be provided with housing.
Two from the Icebox – #1 – The 2017 20/92 Video Festival Call
The Icebox Project Space is pleased to announce the 20/92 Video Festival Call for 2017
The Icebox Project Space is one of the largest exhibition spaces in the city at nearly 5,000 sq.ft, and has a dedicated projection system which allows for a continuous image to be cast upon its eastern wall, at a maximum size of 20’ x 92’ with a resolution of 3646 x 768. Submissions will be juried by Icebox directors Timothy Belknap and Ryan McCartney. We are accepting video entries with no category restrictions.ALL SUBMISSIONS ARE DUE BY SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 12th. CHOSEN SUBMISSIONS WILL BE NOTIFIED BY MONDAY, FEBRUARY 19th.
There is a $15 Entry Fee for all submissions (non-refundable).
For more information, please visit the Icebox Project website.
#2 from the Icebox – FUTURE PERFECT – a Twitter community project
The Icebox is pleased to announce Future Perfect, an ongoing project with exhibition, performance and publication on display February 2017.
The Icebox collects and publishes an annual manual of predictions. It will be comprised of submissions from our greater community. Each individual prediction text is a reflection of where we are, and where we are going.
All predictions submitted in 2017 will be featured on the Icebox’s official Twitter account, @IceboxProjects.
Feel free to direct your predictions towards us across all social media platforms by using the hashtags #futureperfect, or email your prediction directly to us at iceboxprojects@gmail.com.
Please keep your entry to a maximum of 420 characters (3 tweets long).
DEADLINE: January 30th
