Perhaps you stopped by Reading Terminal last Friday and saw the pop up bookstore on Filbert Street? Ulises is the name of the store, and Gee Wesley and collaborators are the founders. The alternative/experimental bookstore project will open a more permanent home in October in a converted garage space at 31 E. Columbia Ave. Phila 19125.
Read MoreFrancis Kéré is a Burkina Faso-born, Berlin-based architect known for his adaptive use of vernacular materials in structures like schools and other gathering places, especially in his native land. The Artblog video shows Kéré’s passion for community participation in his projects.
Read MoreEarlier 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 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 More2015 was an especially eventful year for the artist, who shows her work at Bridgette Mayer Gallery. Rutstein, whose work is inspired by science and the natural world, spent 6 weeks last summer as an Artist at Sea, painting and working with scientists mapping the ocean floor on Robert Ballard’s ship, The Nautilus. This year, she also completed her first public art piece, “Sky Terrain,” at 11th and Montgomery on the Temple University Campus.
Read MoreThe two University of the Arts schoolmates and friends (they’re not a couple) began collaborating on projects while they were in school. After graduation, they decided to find a shared studio space to continue their collaborations, and set up shop in a storefront at 2020 South St. And in 2010, they asked themselves, “Why not start a gallery?” They already had a good space and a friend they wanted to show, so they just went ahead and did it.
Read MoreCanadian sculpture artist Jess Perlitz recently opened “Chorus,” a moving audio work comprised of recordings of incarcerated men and women throughout the U.S. She asked them, “If you could sing one song, and have that song heard, what would it be?” She layers the results into a “choir” triggered by a visitor’s arrival into a cell at Eastern State Penitentiary. We interviewed Jess a couple of years ago about the emotions and processes that inform her work, and why it is that you can so often interact with her pieces.
Read More
