In a sprawling interview with Roberta, Barbara Bullock shares her experiences with dance, music and spirituality, three hallmarks of her bold and passionate works. Sun Ra and his Arkestra members used to visit Barbara when they were in town and she got to travel to Haiti with the Arthur Hall dancers. Lots more and pictures in the post!
Read MoreHi, this week we share sad news in the passing of architect Rafael Viñoly, designer of the Kimmel Center. Events happening soon can be found in the memorial to artist Bill Hutson. As well as in Philly Celebrates Jazz, an annual celebration featuring live jazz music, jazz-inspired block parties, jazz poetry events, jazz walking tours, and more. Philadelphia artist Odili Donald Odita opens a solo show, Windows, at Stevenson in Amsterdam. Some interesting gallery shows are soon to open in the form of the List Gallery hosting Conflicting Truths by Melissa Joseph and Automat exhibiting Centennial Rust by Christine McDonald. I hope you’ll find this week fruitful and possibly visit some exhibitions and events.
Read MoreOur new contributor Lauren Whearty writes that Eleanor Conover’s paintings are body-referencing in size, and the abstractions on shaped canvases, while slippery in meaning, have rich and dense materiality including in some cases a saw blade and wooden blocks.
Read MoreNatalie Sandstrom visits the List Gallery at Swarthmore College and analyzes the two exhibitions on display: Henry Bermudez’s Tattooed Nature and Michelle Marcuse’s Holding Absence, which both close tomorrow, February 23, 2020.
Read MoreMichael visits “Piece Together: The Quilts of Mary Lee Bendolph,” an important retrospective of quilts and prints by one of the most prolific and well-known of the Gee’s Bend quilters of Boykin, Alabama. Part of a tradition that stretches back to the era of slavery, Bendolph makes works that elicits comparisons to the spontaneity of jazz and the masters of modernism. If you’ve never had the pleasure of viewing her stunning work in person (or even if you have), make sure to visit Swarthmore’s List Gallery before they come down on October 28.
Read MoreIn this broad survey of the 89-year old artist and educator’s oil paintings, the figurative works capture ordinary domestic things. In many but not all cases the images depict snapshot-like captures — a ladder leaning against a house; a window and the ice boulders seen through its glass; a red drape partly obscuring a pink window as it billows in the wind. All of these images are partial views, details of a larger whole — Instead of entire windows you see parts, instead of whole houses you see less than a whole. But the works don’t feel incomplete.
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