Midweek News, Pee-Wee doc, BBC Earth, Philly 2026, Collective Futures, artist residency, PhotoLounge NYC trip, Charming Disaster

Roberta: Hi everyone, it’s Roberta.

Ryan: And this is Ryan and this is the Midweek News

Roberta: on Art Blog Radio. Okay, so hi Ryan. How are you today?

Ryan: Good. Did you get caught up on emails?

Roberta: Oh my god. Email. Never-ending email. But I remember being thrilled with getting my first emails. You know, on a little Mac machine with the keyboard plugged in, whatever they were called back then. It was amazing. And now look where we are.We hate it.

Ryan: Yeah.

Roberta: But we can’t live without it.

Ryan: Sure. I remember dial up and all those things.

Roberta: Do you modems?

Ryan: Yeah. All the noise and the slow connection.

Roberta: Yes. Yes. But thrilling when you could finally connect.

Ryan: Yeah. I remember I had a Netscape, so like the pre- it was Mozilla project, so before all Firefox and all that stuff, but it was, I remember, I can remember some exciting update.

I forget what the update was all about. Probably nothing at this point, but it took overnight. Updated overnight. It was like 30 megabytes or something. I had to leave it running all night to get it to update because the night before I had like shut down and so it didn’t complete the thing and it wouldn’t restart from where it was.

Oh. Oh, the good old days. Days, wow. Yeah. Yeah. It’s tough times.

Roberta: But actually thrilling, right? Because it was all new and they were learning that, you know, the tech companies and now I feel like back then, they were scrappy and sort of on our level, it was a more of a flat playing field..

And now it’s like they’re on the mountain and we’re down here and they’re just dropping these bombs on us and we have to deal with it.

Ryan: yeah. It, felt like pirate radio or that flat..like you were expressing that flatter vibe, like you could find anything like going to the library, just stumble upon whatever.

Yeah. That was the beauty of it. Now is like everything’s funneled to six entities.

Roberta: Right. And you have to pay for everything.

Ryan: Sure. And even if you don’t, everything’s sponsored ads and you only get so much and it’s just TV all over again, just in a different format. It feels like you’ve enjoyed something, but here’s an ad just in case, you know.

Yeah. How it has to go.

Roberta: Yeah. Yes. Advertising. Over the last couple of days, I watched the Peewee Herman documentary. The new one that just came out. Mark Wolfe, I believe, is the director of the documentary.

Ryan: Yeah. I watched the first episode of that.

Roberta: Very powerful.

Ryan: Yeah.

Roberta: I totally did not get Peewee at all, back in the day when Peewee was a thing.

Ryan: Sure.

Roberta: And I always poo-pooed it and thought he was kind of nutty. Well, it turns out he was nutty.

Ryan: yes.

Roberta: But also he was an artist. I missed the boat on that. It was art. He worked with artists. He was an artist. He actually went to art school.

Ryan: It’s interesting.

Roberta: Yeah. He had problems. He was, you know, an artist. He had an artistic temperament.

Ryan: Yeah.

Roberta: He was like Andy Warhol – secretive.

Ryan: Yeah. And yeah, he met Andy Warhol. I remember in the first episode they talked about that. Seemed like Andy Warhol was an iconic figure for him.

Roberta: Absolutely. That and the Ringling Brothers circus.

Ryan: Apparently being a circus performer anyway.

Yeah. I didn’t realize he was from Sarasota, you know, lived in Sarasota for a while.

Roberta: Do you know Sarasota? I think you lived in Florida?

Ryan: But it just, he doesn’t seem like someone from Florida. I always think of him much more Californian,

Roberta: Yeah. Peewee was Californian. I guess Paul was not,

Ryan: yeah.

Hard to say. But yeah, it was interesting.

Roberta: Anyway, highly recommended. Yeah, it was good. Made me sad.

Ryan: Yeah. It’s interesting watching posthumously as well.

Roberta: Because he died in 2023 before the filmmaker was done filming him. It was interesting. And he hadn’t shared that he was dying.

Yeah, that was an interesting part.

Ryan: Yeah. Yeah, that was an interesting part. They had 40 hours in and they, he never told the filmmakers that he was fighting cancer for six years or whatever they said.

Roberta: RIP Peewee.

Ryan: Yeah. You know, I’ve only seen that first episode, but I thought was pretty interesting story.

Roberta: A very interesting story of his, you know, how he became Peewee?

And shut out his personal life. Nobody knew Paul. Except for very few people. And he kept it that way. He wanted it that way. He wanted Peewee to be the person that got all the glory. And then at a certain point he decided that was not what he wanted anymore. And then it became problematic.

Ryan: Yeah.

Roberta: And he had to come out of his Peewee shell and become who he was.

Ryan: That’s interesting.

Roberta: That very interesting. Very hard to cover that up. I mean, Warhol never got there. He had his mask on to his dying day. But Paul Reubens had to take off the Peewee mask, and he survived that. Although it could be argued, maybe he didn’t.

Ryan: Yeah, maybe. I was going to say, depends on what you mean by survive.

Roberta: Yeah. Yes. Anyway. It’s good. We won’t give the whole plot away. But if you missed out on Peewee and what he was doing back in the day, it’s a really well done documentary.

Ryan: It really is.

Roberta: You know, lots of face time with the 70-year-old Paul recollecting and being very peppery. You know, very feisty. I have done a lot of interviewing of artists over my period with Artblog, and I’ve never had anybody be really peppery and refuse to answer me. But Peewee was peppery.

Ryan: He was, yeah.

Roberta: He just refused. He dug in and, and he toyed with the filmmaker and wouldn’t answer his questions and or taunted him. Well, he gave taunting answers.

Ryan: He’s the perfect untrustworthy narrator of his own story. It’s like they had video montage and. There’s visual record of some of the things he was telling in his story, but some of it, anything personal life, he could just have made up and it could go anywhere and be anything.

So yeah, he’s an interesting character.

Roberta: Yes. No, he was a control freak, and that’s what this was about. He wanted to control his own documentary, but he couldn’t. He knew that intellectually, but he didn’t behaviorally act that way.

Ryan: Yeah. He signed the papers with HBO, but then behaved otherwise.

Yeah, he’s an interesting character. I was, you know, so I just saw the first episode, but I was surprised how many times he was on David Letterman when he was just starting out.

Roberta: It apparently was a good match.

Ryan: Yeah. Apparently,

Roberta: you know, David Letterman is this sour puss, deadpan kind of affect and Peewee was the opposite of that.

Ryan: That was a surprise, which tells you that he (Letterman) was probably having a tough time getting guests at the beginning too. PeeWee’s on there all the time.

Roberta: Maybe so. Or Peewee was drawing audience, I would think. Peewee maybe made audience for him.

Ryan: Sure. Can’t hurt. A little spectacle.

Roberta: Yeah. Yes. A lot of spectacle. Anyway, that’s what I’ve been doing in my spare time, I watched it. It’s two episodes. It’s a documentary split into two. Oh, okay. Each one is like an hour and a half, or close to two hours long. So, you know, sit through it and it’s slow enough that you can absorb it. It’s a lot of color to absorb.

But it is slow paced enough that they interview Pee-Wee. You see a lot of FaceTime of Paul, and then bim bam boom, you see all the documentary evidence of him as Peewee, and before that and after that. So it’s nicely managed.

Ryan: Yeah. With my kids, we’ve been watching BBC Earth, which has been around for a while now, but they have new versions, so BBC 3, or BBC Earth three and whatever, so that it’s seasons as episodic.

It’s really interesting, you know, because we can’t always agree on what we’re going to watch, but nature usually is fairly innocuous and agreeable and doesn’t offend and so we…

Roberta: and enjoyable, enjoyable.

Ryan: This latest stuff that we’ve been watching, the video that they’re capturing is incredible. It’s really remarkable.

I mean, it’s taking months and months and years and years to get this video that they have. I mean, the time, the time to give us a five-minute clip is months. It’s an incredible thing.

Roberta: So they had to go back many times to get the one thing that they knit together into one clip.

Ryan: Yeah. And just how they’re in the right place at the right time to like.

The story can’t be written until they go back and look through these hours and hours and hours, hundreds of hours of video.

Roberta: True. It’s remarkable.

Ryan: Like they, and there’s this other series that they have with like the first segment that is like these vines that are trying to find their way to the sun in a rainforest.

And so they’re like fighting each other, but it’s time lapse over months and the the leaves are developing. It’s just like, and you’re, we’re seeing it in extremely fast motion, like a year of time in. Two minutes of our attention. Yeah. It’s just wild.

Roberta: Does this spin out of David Attenborough?

Ryan: It’s, yeah.

It’s all part of, he’s still narrating.

Roberta: Ah, David Attenborough. Yeah. He works with good videographers. Yeah. filmmakers. They do amazing work.

Ryan: Yeah. One article or one interview I was seeing with one of the camera people who spent 17 days in a cave. Without coming out.

Roberta: Yuck. For bats? What were they studying?

Ryan: And like everything that’s happening in this cave is one of the largest caves they had to go in at certain time. Yo, it’s wild.

Roberta: That is hard-bitten naturalists. Yeah. That’s really great. That’s, and that the B, B, C. So funded by the government in part.

Ryan: Yeah, in part the BBC is paying for it. I think there’s a French group that’s also paying for it. There’s a few other groups that are kind of splitting the bill. Love that. Plus HBO is putting it on so it’s available there.

Roberta: Aha. So BBC Earth.

Ryan: BBC, Earth. All right.

Roberta: Check it out everyone.

Ryan: Yeah. I guess those are both on HBO, the Peewee Herman and the BBC Earth stuff.

Roberta: Yeah. Yes. Max as it’s called.

Ryan: I thought they changed their name back to HBO Max.

Roberta: Did they?

Ryan: Didn’t John Oliver do a spoof on, I saw, I think I saw something on Instagram. They can’t make up their mind on and because he got taunted, didn’t he get taunted on Instagram by HBO saying, let’s see how funny you can be about this name change back to the old name or something like to that effect.

Roberta: I guess I missed that part. That’s wild.

Ryan: Yeah. So anyway, they can’t decide who they’re going to be. HBO is, it’s fine. It’s home box office. It’s funny. Yeah. Its what? It’s max. It’s fine.

Roberta: So meanwhile, back in the real world, should we talk about the news?

Ryan: Let’s talk about the news.

Roberta: All right. In Philadelphia. We all know that looming in 2026 is the celebration of the 250th anniversary of the founding of this country. It’s a big whopper coming up, and there’s a lot of people organizing a lot of different activities to celebrate, and some of this will involve art.

ArtPhilly is putting together a bunch of headliners who, I don’t know the names right off the top of my head, but that’ll be coming up. But then, in traditional Philadelphia DIY fashion, there’s an underground scene putting together its own program, and they’re calling it Collective Futures.

It’s being managed more or less by Vox Populi Gallery, but it involves a lot of the alternative galleries and alternative projects, like Fortune, which we’ve covered on Artblog before — A group of artist-activists that publish things collectively, and Ulysses, a book collective, which also publishes, and now has a space at Ray Philly, Grizzly Grizzly Pink Noise, Automat,  BYO print, Gravy Gravy, DVAA, Big Ramp and Peep — are all on board with this.

They have proposals for doing things such as a printmaking workshop, come on one and all, and let’s make some prints, and all kinds of other projects. They need money for this, so they’re out fundraising for it because you know, you can’t put these things on for nothing because even if you have volunteers who are volunteering their time, you still have materials costs, and you should pay artists — artists need to be paid for their work. I’m looking forward to seeing what happens in 2026, and if there’s anything more that we can tell you about or links that we can put in, we’ll put it in the transcript so you can follow this down yourselves and, and prepare for what’s coming up. So that’s number one.

Number two, and I’m excited for this too. There’s a Celebration of Life for University of the Arts that has been organized in the former home of the University, that’s now under the ownership of Scout, which is the company that put together the successful arts-focused Bok building, making it into a wonderful incubator for art. Scout is putting together a celebration of life for the University of the Arts. Anybody that was ever affected by University of the Arts, went there, taught there, saw an exhibition there, neighbors, friends….they’re welcome to come June 4th through the eighth, one to 7:00 PM daily, to Hamilton Hall, which is the big atrium building on the west side of Broad street at Pine. And if you want to participate by doing poetry or music or performance, tell a story, show some art. You know, whatever you want to do, they have a form and we’ll put a link to that form in that you can sign up to participate and they’re going to create an altar of University of the Arts — with memorabilia, I guess, for want of a different word.

And then it’ll all be available to take away if you want to have a piece of it. So you could donate something to this altar that’s going to be built and leave it there or take it home or take someone else’s piece home. Or whatever. It sounds like a really wonderful hodgepodge of community-making over this now gone institution.

So bravo to Scout for doing this and I hope a lot of people do go, I’m going to stop in. That’s again, it’s the fourth through the 8th of June, one to 7:00 PM daily, free. So that’s fun. Yeah. So the third thing I have is Pink Noise, which is one of the galleries in the Vox building the so-called Vox Building, 3 1 9 North 11th Street.

They have a call for artists in residence. They need two people in the summer, one for June and July and one for August. So we’ll put a link in. You can apply for that. They give you the run of their space. You can do events, performances. It’s all written out in their website, which we will link and please apply to make use of the space.

Those are my things, Ryan, only three this time.

Ryan: Great. Way to keep it simple. One thing that’s come up that I noticed that I wanted to shout out that was not necessarily an event, but something that’s going on, coming up on June 17th, Photo Lounge, who’s a sponsor of Artblog, as well as a friend of Artblog, is taking a road trip to New York and they have tickets.

It’s going to be an all-inclusive, with a charter bus, stop for lunch, and they’re going to the Build Expo at Javits Center, which is part of B and H Photo + Video company. They’ve been doing this for years amongst other groups, and they have keynote speakers. They have, it’s basically for like photographers, filmmakers, now, content creators and those types of people.

That’s who it’s focused on and towards. That’s happening June 17th. Tickets are available now. They have coupons if you have a group of four or more, but that looks like a lot of fun. Be outta town. But otherwise that would be something really fun to go to. So they’re going to go to, I think, the Met as well.

So they’re going to the expo, they’re going out for lunch, guided walking tour, and going to the Met as well. And everything’s inclusive. Round trip there.

Roberta: Chartered bus. You cannot make it better than that.

Ryan: Spend the day in New York. Nothing to think about, worry about. Just show up and have a good time.

So that’s Photo Lounge. So that’s coming up on the 17th, so I wanted you to be aware of that. Opportunity slash event, that’s kind of fun. The Center for Creative Works, Philadelphia is having an open studio sale coming up on May 31st from 11 to 5:00 PM This is both a sale and fundraiser for them. This is an all studio sale from artists within the studio.

You’ll see their artists and all their works including screen printed t-shirts, ceramics, drawings, scarves, paintings, et cetera, et cetera. Lots of things for sale there. And if you don’t know, center for Creative Works, it’s a professional art program serving adults with intellectual disabilities. It’s a program we’re supporting.

And if you didn’t know about that, that’s coming up May 31st from 11 to five.

The Science History Institute has an interesting show that I’m curious about. There’s a, I don’t know how you would describe them. I guess they’re, you would kind of describe them as a goth-type duo. They’re from Brooklyn.

They’ve been around for a decade and change. It’s called Charming Disaster, and they have a new album, which I haven’t actually listened to, but apparently it’s science-y related and a lot of nature with some magic, which is less surprising, but they’re combining it with the Science History Institute, so they’re putting on a show.

The Science History Institute is 315 Chestnut Street and the show is coming up in July, but I thought it looked really interesting and so I thought I would mention it. July 23rd, and that’s from six to eight 30. At the Science History Institute and it’s going to be Charming Disaster with some specific show in combination at the institute, which could be really interesting.

Roberta: I’ve never been to the Science History Institute, have you? Have you been?

Ryan: They do some First Friday things. Okay. But they’re generally, they close early. So like if I’m doing a first Friday and they’re having opening, it’s the first one I go to.

Roberta: Is there actually…what is on display?

Ryan: There’s a lot of different…It’s different science-related things, not, it’s not anywhere as big as like the Franklin Institute, but it’s that kind of I think, but it, so it’ll be interesting. But they have like a botanical stuff as well, like a nature, nature of things as well as just science. Where I guess as you think of technology and things of that nature, when you think science but botanical collections that are interesting.

So, and that’s kind of my jam. I have no, no idea going in. So then I’m just surprised the whole time.

And then my theater pick of the week is Billy Gets a Bloody Nose. This is a staged reading and I do enjoy readings. This is coming up June 13th and 14th. That’s Friday, and Saturday is Friday evening. And then Saturday a matinee show.

This is at Arden Theater Company. The show is 90 minutes, no interruption, which is fine. I think it was really interesting. They had a content advisory, which is explicit discussion of a sexual activity, strong language, alcohol and drug use, and kinky kink shaming, which I, I’m not sure I’ve seen kink shaming as a content advisory, which I thought it’s particularly good.

So Billy Gets A Bloody Nose. I haven’t seen it, so I’m excited to see I’ve read the writeup of it, but…

Roberta: So it’s a play. It’s a play, but they’re not acting. They’ll be reading, sitting at a tble

Ryan: Yeah.

Roberta: On chairs and on a stage.

Ryan: Yeah. So I think some, what I like about readings is they often get a little ad-lib-y, they just kind of take advantage of it a little bit more improv.

They’re still reading and performing, but they actually are like trying out different movements and seeing how it feels and it’s interesting because it’s just two up two shows, you know, you’re, you’re putting on your best show both times. So you’re giving all you got and you don’t have to think about your, your lines because they’re right there.

You’re just kind of thinking about how you are filling the space as your character. So they’re a lot of fun, but it should be, it should be a lot of fun. And just a couple days. That’s June 13th and 14th. So those are my three plus the photo lounge event. Alright. Yeah, so a lot of good things coming up in June.

Summer gets a little bit slower in the city. I’ve definitely noticed that Temple, all the schools are out like I’d ride by Temple on a regular basis and that’s nice…

Roberta: Crickets.

Ryan: They’re gone. It’s like, yeah, it’s a lot easier on bike. There’s a lot less people. Yeah.

Roberta: I think Penn in West Philly is probably good too. Done. Penn is done. You can probably find a parking spot in West Philly these days.

Ryan: I’m sure you could. I’m sure you could. Yeah. I went out for dinner the other day and there was like nobody there. I’m like, oh, this is wild. I guess everybody’s gone home or gone back to where they’re from or going on vacation or school’s out.

So maybe even like Chi (One of Artblog’s interns this year), she’s going to Europe. That’s right.

Roberta: That’s right.

Ryan: You people are packing up and getting out

Roberta: better for us. If you stay home, it’s good for us.

Ryan: Yeah. But there’s still plenty of things coming up. June. I give you one in July, so there’s still plenty of things coming up. No, I think those are, those are good things.

I, I’m sure we’ll have more coming up in June. And we’ll have some things to talk about next week as we wrap up. Yeah. That’ll be good.

Roberta: We, today we put up our last at feed from Sarah Kaisar, the climate news parody  I guess you would call it, AT Feed.

Ryan: But with facts, which is interesting.

Yes. So it’s not quite a parody. I’m not quite sure what you would call it. because it’s not a spoof exactly. It’s not,

Roberta: But it’s sort of.

Ryan: but it is kind of, yeah.

Roberta: It’s kind of a spoof with facts. It’s critical. It’s art criticism. Yes. Climate criticism. Very well done if we do say so ourselves.

Ryan: It’s almost ironic.

Roberta: Totally ironic.

Ryan: Yeah. It’s like with Voltaire. It’s a great piece. That’s on Artblog now.

Roberta: Yep. Just went up this morning. We have a piece by Joyce Chung coming up. There was a movement piece that took place in West Philly at Studio 34 by Jungwoong Kim, and 10 performers, and Joyce was there, so she took pictures and did a writeup and we’ll get that up as soon as we can.

Ryan: Great.

Roberta: That’s the end. The end of it for today. That’s all I meant. I didn’t mean to sound too final here. It’s Roberta, thanks for listening and this has been Artblog Radio.

Ryan: And this is Ryan and this is Artblog’s Midweek News. Thanks for listening everyone and we’ll talk to you next time.