Earlier this year, I was invited to curate a week of content on Curate This, the peppy new online arts publication whose mission — like Artblog’s mission — is to tell the whole wide world that the Philadelphia art scene has great art and artists. Curate This, started by writers/artists Amanda Wagner and Julius Ferraro, is now almost one year old, and I sat down with them recently to talk about how their publication is coming along and what they’re excited about. Curate This is a platform for artists and writers to speak their minds about issues involved in the arts (yes, there is some complaining).
Read More2016 Pew Fellow Tiona McClodden makes documentary films and videos and sculptural environments. She’s also made music videos and her work is political, exploring gender, race and under-known history. In our talk she tells me about selecting Philadelphia as a place where community she found a community of black working artists. The interview was recorded live at the Galleries at Moore’s radio booth on July 7, 2016.
Read MoreRoberta interviews Pap Souleye Fall about his unique body suits, stitched up while he is wearing them. Pap is also a wonderful maker of sculptural installations, and he’s a dancer. Give a listen!
Read MoreJamar Nicholas wears a number of hats, as do many artists. He’s a teacher — he teaches narrative storywriting at Drexel and has taught at Moore College of Art and Design and Arcadia University; he is Fine Arts Curatorial and Administrative Assistant at Arcadia University Art Gallery, and he makes his art — drawings of narratives that become comic books about superheroes, like the Hip Hop Cop Detective Boogaloo, which ran — daily — in the Philadelphia Metro in 2015.
Read MoreWhen Daniel de Jesús performs he looks just like a painting of the Virgin Mary or a statue of a saint come to life. He wears a blue silk robe and his blue and purple eye make-up runs down his cheeks like tears. His voice resounds in unison with the cello between his knees; a drum machine may keep time or offer up haunting sounds.
Read MoreEd Bronstein’s brushy, expressionistic paintings capture scenes — au plein air — that include buildings, parks, dogs (lots of dogs), trucks (lots of trucks) people and more. Ed was instrumental in founding Art in the Open, and if you visited that festival recently you may have seen him out there with his paints and easel chronicling the beauty that inspires him.
Read MoreArtblog contributor and editor, Flora Ward, talks with me about her recent reviews of two exhibitions that intrigued her greatly. We also talk about her journey to Philadelphia from South Carolina, Toronto and elsewhere. Listen to the 18-minute conversation we had at the lovely Radio booth at the Galleries at Moore.
Read MoreActivating the unique Kensington industrial warehouse annex with sound, Botello and other sound-artists-in-residence are filling the Icebox’s white cube with unusual sounds during the year of 2016. In contrast to Jane Carver’s analog performance, Botello and the others are “painting” multiple sound images in the Icebox using digital computer software and electronic voices. Echo, feedback, movement, and tonal reduction in the high-ceilinged cinder-block and concrete space make sound almost physical, palpable, synesthetic.
Read MoreMost rooms in The Colored Girls Museum are dedicated to women of color; their names are framed in the doorways. This is a museum of Herstory told through art, through shout outs to accomplished and heroic women, and through everyday stories about ordinary and extraordinary lives.
Read MoreJennifer Zarro talks with photographer Shawn Theodore, alias _xST, about his work–including why he shoots in large-format and how people react to his photos.
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Support for Artblog has been provided by The Philadelphia Cultural Fund.