Seripop, the Montreal screenprinting duo, blows into Space 1026 with a load of 400 rock band posters, books and zines to show and sell. Seripop, founded in 2002 by Chloe Lun and Yannick Desranleau, is the Space 1026 of Canada—an alternative print studio whose products have a funky, psychedelic vibe. The duo has won awards for their “gigposters” for underground music phenoms including Wolf Parade, Chinese Stars and their own band, AIDS wolf.

Seripop poster. Space 1026

Seripop’s bold graphic style and use of monsters, skulls and cartoon characters channel high school sketchbook art. The colors are a surprise—’50s-era pastels with weirdly non-complementary shades of orange, ochre, brown and lots of black. The text is almost unreadable in letters that seem to be melting, burning or twisting themselves into knots. But like rock posters from the 1960s, these contemporary works are less about the information than they are about commemorating the moment.

Nick Paparone. Vox Populi

There’s lots of great stuff at Vox Populi this month but Nick Paparone’s swansong installation is funnier, edgier and odder than anything else you’ll see. The Vox Pop member and co-founder of Black Floor, Copy and Print Liberation is headed to graduate school. Known for being secretive, Paparone doesn’t share what his installations look like before they’re hung but he’s known for his iconic representations of the human condition—usually made with common materials and gag props and sometimes involving performers. Previous works used black trash bags, rubber fried eggs and Mountain Dew in nauseating excess.

Two Together: Craig Kane and TImon Meyer at Mt. Airy Contemporary

Queens artists Craig Kane and Timon Meyers mine pop culture, mythology and personal history at Mount Airy Contemporary. Kane’s tiny, delicate sculptural installations in boxes, on the floor or on the wall use found materials—such as photos and tree branches—with hand-carved words to whisper about the ephemeral nature of life and human vulnerability. Meyers’ easel-sized digital photos merge appropriated television images from daytime tv with appropriated online images of mythological creatures like centaurs, the minotaur and elves. Television’s garish colors and harsh lighting make a great backdrop for beast-on-beast fighting scenes and close-ups of elfin-eared ladies.

Robert Scobey. Projects Gallery

Twenty-six young artists debut in Projects Gallery’s “Fresh,” a roundup that continues the gallery’s annual exploration of work by recent graduates who are relative unknowns. Gallery director Helen Meyrick says this year’s group is less focused on the body than in the past. Notable in a show that spans a wide range of materials, subjects and styles is David Solan’s futuristic installation in the gallery’s front window with spaceships suspended from the ceiling, exploding animals, pods and other sci-fi trappings all from recycled materials and metal. And watch out for Robert Scobey’s First Aid, a carved book that turns a first aid manual into a sexy collage of mouth-to-mouth resuscitation and hands touching skin.

Seripop IBU400 x 2”: Through Sept. 15. Reception: Fri., Sept. 4, 7-10pm. Space 1026, 1026 Arch St., second fl. space1026.com
“Two Together”: Through Oct. 16. Reception: Fri., Sept. 4, 6-9pm. Mount Airy Contemporary Artists Space, 25 W. Mount Airy Ave. 215.764.5621. mountairycontemporary.com
“30 Days in the Hole”: Through Sept. 27. Reception: Fri., Sept. 4, 6-11 pm. Vox Populi, 319 N. 11th St., third fl. 215.238.1236. voxpopuligallery.org
“Fresh, 2009”: Through Oct. 31. Reception: Sun., Sept. 6, 6-9pm. Projects Gallery, 629 N. Second St. 267.303.9652.projectsgallery.com

Meiro Koizumi's video Craftnight, 2008

Given the greed and militarism that is dominating the news these days, I found myself especially interested in the videos about cruelty and detachment and invisible forces in control. Videos by Meiro Koizumi, Sung Hwan Kim, and Anna Molska include performance, stark interiorscapes, and psychological tension. Harold Pinter’s Dumbwaiter or Beckett’s Waiting for Godot both come to mind.

Koizumi’s Craftnight is a 15-minute video focused on a man made up in Goth whiteface, black eye makeup and a red drip of “blood.” He is trying to copy a sculpture out of a wad of clay as a voice-over asks probing questions about his relationship with his father. The agitation of the unhappy, inept craftsman increases as the questions probe and repeat. The clay is hopelessly lumpy, yet Freudian in its forms. (I also liked Koizumi’s Snow White images, with acrylic on magazine pages highlighting overwrought draperies. The printing peeks through what is essentially an acrylic mask (some of it looked kind of like it might be collaged, but I wasn’t sure), and the results are disjunctive and surreal and uncomfortable–yet beautiful).

Sung Hwan Kim, Dog Video, 2006

Sung Hwan Kim’s Dog Video includes a performance of two men in masks playing a man and a dog. The domination/subjugation in this video too is unhappy and weird, isolated in a virtually empty space.

Anna Molska, Tanagram, 2006/07, video

And Molska’s Tanagrama shows a couple of buff guys in padded g-strings and padded helments pushing around furniture-size tangram-like foam blocks. When they are done arranging the tangrams into shapes, they take a self-congratulatory rest, lying down on the floor in classic sunning style. The outfits (or lack thereof) veers between video game gladiators and homosexual domination games. We are put into a governmental control environment–a cross between military discipline and educational methods gone wrong. Even without the context of the source material, the film stands up as an indictment of the totalitarian state.

These three videos of people in bizarre costumes performing required but nonesensical tasks make a nice grouping, and the human theatrical presence in them makes for good watching.

The show also includes more literal work by Alex Hubbard, Sara VanDerBeek, Steve Roden and Lucy Raven.

Jay Rhee, clip of her series of videos Swan, Polar Bear, Niagara

Rhee’s video looks like it’s about nature, but it’s really about how people imagine nature.

The videos are set in a bathhouse with kitschy murals of hackneyed and romanticized natural scenes. In front of each mural, live people are added as if they are in the mural.

The preposterousness of the insertions are charming and Quixotic. A woman wearing a polar-bear-like helmet swims back and forth in the bath/pool in front of the Arctic landscape. A woman wearing a swan-like headdress does the same action in front of a scene of swans in a lake. A tourist group in plastic raincoats shuffles in and gazes at a mural as if it’s the real thing–a scenic overlook of Niagara Falls.

I don’t know the location of the bathhouse, but it and the people in it look Asian. The landscapes are arguably a mix of Western and Eastern. And the tone of the video mixes poignant longing for natural beauty with deadpan hipster. Rhee, born and raised in Korea, has a BFA from the Art Institute of Chicago, and that dual-nation background comes across.

Vox Members Shows

Julianna Foster’s From Morning On

Julianna Foster’s From Morning On continues the artist’s exploration of narrative through serial photography. This group of photographs shows gorgeous misty landscapes, decrepit mystery interiors that are also misty; claustrophobic backyard mists and more. It’s like the misty moors of Wuthering Heights come to the American Northeast farmland. The actor is a woman who performs ambiguous and rather static actions (listening through a wall; blowing dust off a box; staring out a window). And, maybe it’s because he just died, I’m thinking about Andrew Wyeth’s dreamy, romantic and nostalgic Americana. Of course, Eileen Neff’s tres post-modern photos of anthropomorphized clouds who dance with trees and have a lovely existence in the woods and inside houses also come to mind. Foster’s work intrigues by remaining ambiguous at its core, but its lyricism and beauty draw you in. This series is open enough to let all minds wander around and claim the territory for their own.  And let’s not forget we’re in Oscar season.  What kind of movie would this be?

Juliana Foster From Morning On

Several of the photos are framed but not under glass and those pieces become more palpably real — like objects — in a way the glass-framed pieces aren’t. It’s the same non-glass framing Zoe Strauss used for her recent show at Silvertstein and the strategy gives the photos immediacy and plays up their sensuality.

James Johnson, Break, view through the glass door.

James Johnson’s Break is a breakout piece. The artist used to work in small boxes, putting dollhouse-sized photos in spaces accessible through a peephole or other voyeuristic device. Break is a life-size box (a whole room in the gallery) separated from the viewer by a locked, glass-panel door (the artist selected the door, he says, for its resemblance to Maurizio Catalan’s The Wrong Gallery door.)  Outfitted like it’s a small office this big box has a desk, easy chair, books and slippers. At the opening and at other times during the show’s run it will also have the artist, in residence, sitting, reading, writing and cogitating in the space. Johnson says it’s not a performance piece, but when the artist puts his body in the picture I read it that way. The theatrical aspect pushes into rich territory and I am excited to see where the artist goes next. Artist trapped in a box? I can see that going far.

Eva Wylie, A Continuous Shuffle of Earthturf

Eva Wylie’s A Continuous Shuffle of Earthturf is a continuous shuffle of imagery in the artist’s virtuoso silkscreen-on-wall method.  From afar the piece looks like an asymmetrical array of candy-colored floating toys or balloons. Up close, the images come into focus as a profusion of women’s hair pieces:  long plaits — thick, double-braidings and solitary ropes — mostly upside down.  Something about the shape of the plaits and their relation to the crown of the head gives them a topsy-turvy jellyfish look, which I quite like. I have no idea what the work is about–whether it’s celebratory or wry — but the image, screened right onto the pristine wall, is dazzling.

Eva Wylie, A Continuous Shuffle of Earthturf (detail)

Vox Alumni show

It’s great that the alternative space continues to showcase its alumni members which allows you to catch up with the artists, or in some cases, meet them for the first time.

Merilee Challiss

Merrilee Challiss‘ delicate white on black works on paper with pinking sheer edges and what appear to be embroidery hoop frames are Edward Gorey-delightful. The work nods to arts and crafts and book illustration and is a nice mix of old, new, high and low.

John T. Lange

John T. Lange’s mini landscape projection via two clattery old film projectors has a hobby shop charm.

Anne Schaefer.  Photo by Libby.

Anne Schaefer’s little tower of patterned boxes is elegant and seems like it walked in from the AiA Bookstore — meta-architectural blocks for kids to play with.

Video Lounge

In the video lounge, David Tinapple’s Scatter Square translates a seascape into a series of digital rows and columns of tiles which it then flips around reconfiguring the landscape like one of those old-fashioned tile games that you can now get for your keychain. There’s a solitary soul on the beach and it’s funny to think of the person being shuffled around willy nilly not even knowing what’s happening. But I guess that’s life for you.

Vox Populi’s December members’ show is a conceptual outing that—with the exception of Amy Adams’ sparse but evocative “Our Boat That Is Made of Flowers”—is totally puzzling.

The newly married Adams is the former executive director of Vox and now works as the director of Fleisher-Ollman Gallery. Her installation is about power, love, war and peace, triggered by her recent honeymoon to Europe where she saw many old paintings of battle scenes and power brokers. Adams’ installation has two parts: a video animation of ocean waves abstracted from a maritime battle painting, and two portraits comprised of words from emails between the artist and her then-fiance.

The animation extracts the ships, smoke, guns and combatants from the original scanned painting and leaves only the waves that she set in motion. Because her source material is a scanned book plate of a painted sea and lacks color, the waves feel unreal – more like a sea of oatmeal than water. But the undulations still invoke seasickness. The idea of a woman editing the Old Masters, grabbing power from the powerful, is irresistible.

Amy Adams, Our Boat That Is Made Of Flowers pair of portraits of the bride and groom. Photo by Libby.

Adams’ two word portraits, framed and leaning against the wall, are clearly the products of laborious attention to detail. The task of cutting and pasting the words from each email into a “his” and “hers” Word document then sorting the words alphabetically seems an almost crazy thing to do. You can’t boil down a conversation between two people in love to the sum of its parts and have it make sense, can you? Shockingly, the portraits do seem to work that way. The bubbly Adams’ portrait is twice as long as her husband’s and who’s to say that’s not capturing some kernel of truth.

While Adams’ pieces are very straightforward in their meaning, the rest of the show provides a challenge for casual viewers.

Corey Antis, Herman Street, 2008
Arylic, flashe on paper
18 x 24 inches

Corey Antis’ small works on paper circle the first room. The pieces look similar to sketches, plans or architectural drawings. Washy and with surprising colors—salmon and black in one piece—the series suggests ongoing research. Ultimately, the works are puzzles too personal to be compelling.

Anna Neighbor, Hold Me Like You Mean It, 2008
Archival inkjet print
33 x 50 inches

Anna Neighbor’s large photo-based works also allude to something more. One photo is almost entirely black. Former Voxers Justin Witte and Olivia Schreiner’s collaboration in the guest gallery is a disappointment compared to their past outings, and Rebekah Tolley’s slow-motion videos projected on objects are reminiscent of lava lamps. Meanwhile, Mark Lewis’ video North Circular in Screening has cinematic chops that create a sense of mystery, beauty, suspense and denouement. (View it at his website).

“Vox Populi December Members Show.”
Through Dec. 28.
Vox Populi, 319 N. 11th St., third fl.
215.238.1236.

Amy Adams, Our Boat That Is Made Of Flowers pair of portraits of the bride and groom

You may have missed the news of Amy Adams recent marriage, but she’s letting the world know in her exhibit Our Boat That Is Made Of Flowers, at Vox Populi Gallery. The exhibit may include only two pieces, but they capture a lot.

Amy Adams, Our Boat That Is Made Of Flowers, detail

One piece is two large portraits of Amy and her new husband. They are side-by-side print-outs of the last year’s personal emails between them, with all the words placed in alphabetical order. The pronouns (I, you, we, me) have a powerful visual presence as some of the most used words, which create stripes across the printout. Love is another biggy. I am reminded of the buzzy stripes of tv interference screens. Adams herself expressed sadness at the limited vocabulary of daily language, and laughed at her own verbosity (her printout is almost twice as long).

Amy Adams, Our Boat that is Made of Flowers, sea video projection, 11 second detail

The labor of hand alphabetizing, looking for meaning, reminds me of computer data mining, as if we only had a big enough picture, we can find the hidden message!

The other piece is a video project of waves taken from maritime paintings of Dutch maritime painters, Willem Van de Velde, the younger and the elder, whose work the couple had seen in Holland, while on their honeymoon. Adams loved the paintings but was provoked to remove the battleships and the nationalism and war and greed that they represented. Left with just waves, she pieced and animated them. The result is a storybook idyll of love.

Also at Vox are Corey Antis’ show of works on paper, Anna Neighbors’ installation, and Rebekah Tolley in the Video Lounge. Also, still hanging on from last month, a collaboration between Vox alums Justin Witte and Olivia Schreiner.

This was one of the kazillion pieces for the live auction tomorrow at Space 1026. I don’t know anything about it, but I loved it!!! [the piece is by James Ulmer. Thanks for letting me know, James!--Libby]

At Space 1026 was the preview for tomorrow night’s auction. There was plenty of great stuff, including, ahem, a donation from Libby and Roberta. The prices were reasonable, with merch selling in the $25 range, some of it really great, and with auction items asking $100 range. Plus there’s the ebay auction for prints. Donors include Shepard Fairey and Jason Hsu and more.

Tomorrow we’re off to New York, so Roberta and I won’t be posting.

It’s all I got! I’ll have to get back later on with some of what we saw during the day Friday.

I saw several other exhibits, somewhat uneven, but with some gems. Here’s why:

William Lamson–Hunt and Gather, at Vox Populi (video of the video provided by Roberta)

I saw two art pieces involving the Philly fave practice of hanging shoes from an electric wire on the street. The piece I wanted to take home with me was William Lamson’s Hunt and Gather at the Vox Populi Video Lounge.

Lamson provides a video of himself (I presume) hunting down hanging shoes with a bow and arrow, and then (this would be the spoiler, so perhaps you should skip the rest of this sentence) exchanging his own shoes for the ones he shot down.

The process also involves bicycling around his Brooklyn neighborhood and climbing a ladder modified for bicycle transport. The ladder is on display at Vox, too. The process is presented as deadpan and serious, and the modified ladder matches.

But when the artist climbs the ladder, shoots his arrow and switches the shoes, the comedy comes out. I couldn’t help but think about the mock-heroic tone of Harold Lloyd!

The shoes hanging off a clothesline at Nightmare on Wood St.

The other shoe art (well, maybe not art so much as a salute to the local custom) was hung on a clothesline in the studios on Wood Street, aka the Compound Warehaus, located through the Wood Street entrance of the same building as Vox.

The rest of the show there, Nightmare on Wood St., was chockablock with art–48 pieces in all– mostly works on paper. The show was organized by the artists who use the space. I don’t even know how long the show will remain up. And after talking briefly to Miriam Singer, who said she worked on this one, I have to wonder how long they can keep up doing this, since it’s a side-line for all of those involved. She said it was a lot of work.

Gerick Forston, 42; I take this image to be of 42 little guys vomiting. It charms by tranforming its scary contents into something comic, ridiculous, and lovable.

The work was horror-movie related, by in large, or at least Halloween related.

Derrick Wesley McNew, Fuseli’s nightmare vomits glass, another vomit-theme drawing.

Derrick Wesley McNew took a comic turn, reimagining the nightmare in the Fuseli painting into a contemporary-looking comic figure.

There were a number of other great pieces, including a great Bill McRight piece (here’s a link to the picture on Jason’s flickr set) with Day of the Dead Mexican print styling. Here are a few more:

Jason Andrew Turner’s Freddy vs. Jason II best friends

This one also reminded me of the bff piece upstairs in the Collections show at Copy. But this one would be my choice.

Dirt Palace

Over at Space 1026, there’s a girl-group art collective from Providence, RI, Dirt Palace, strutting its collaborative art-making and installation chops. As in all the collaborative installations that sweep through Space 1026, this one had its highlights. The best in this exhibit, Secret Rooms of the Dirtpalace – Volume 3, was a quilt draped on a sofa that lives in the exhibition space at 1026. The quilt was covered with sparkly breasts–or maybe the little mounds of Dots candy on a scroll of paper. Either way, they looked like you could actually sit on them without pain–kind of those funny, fashionable shoe insole bumps—for the whole body.

Dirt Palace pizza box! Pretty funny.

In general, the show had some expected witchiness and female body celebration to it. Also on display besides some other quilts, some swell drawings and posters with flocking and sparkles that seemed like they were inspired by Oriental rugs, Indian miniatures, Aubrey Beardsley and gothic fantasies.

Dirt Palace.

I don’t know who made what at this show, so I’m crediting the collective.

And speaking of female body parts, the giant birth canal installation overcame my personal discomfor with its pristine quality and with its peepholes, one accessible, one not.

Dirt Palace, Andrea in the birth canal installation, taken through the one accessible peephole.

Andrea and I scooted in (through a hole made for a child-size person), and walked its length to the exit. The inaccessible peephole, up against the wall at the far end, was either unusable in this particular space or perhaps it was a little joke — i.e. are the neighbors looking in from the next building? I liked that idea.

Ed Ruscha at the Fabric Workshop last Friday night

Ed Ruscha was looking like a little leprachaun in front of a packed audience at the Fabric Workshop’s new space last Friday.  The 2nd floor gallery space — which makes a great lecture hall — was certified for only 200 people with a live feed downstairs for the big spillover crowd.  

Ruscha and his slide of the Barnyard Rembrandt

According to Ruscha, who was showing slides of his influences and a few of his own work, Barnyard Rembrandt Chuck Byers (sic–it’s really Clark Byers, see obit) said, “‘I never passed up a good roof.’”

Ruscha went on to say of Byers’ work, “It reminds me of those wraparound videos on buildings today”  (referring to moving billboards and the moving news ticker around Times Square).

We had a great time laughing at Ruscha’s wry humor.  He was full of notable quips including:

Jasper John’s Flag was my atomic bomb.

Muhammed Ali. My hero, he was outrageous in almost every way.  He’s worth getting choked up about.

Harold Edgerton’s photos are frozen still lives.

Renato Bertelli’s endless [Head of] Mussolini.  That’s my Mona Lisa.  It says everything about our time.

I like the ambiguity of monosyllabic words.

Maybe I’ll live in a Standard [gas] station.  Park the car and just go in.

Accidental Ed Ruscha. Outside the FWM on Arch Street.

This light box on Arch St. caught our friend Susan’s eye.  She immediately dubbed it an “Ed Ruscha.”

Jamie Dillon’s Monomelon at Copy

We heard it moaning like a beached whale before we saw it–Jamie Dillon’s Monomelon at Copy Gallery.  It’s a sound installation following up his sound installation last month at Vox.   People loved this melon.  They were hanging out trying to hear what the oracle had to say next.

Trevor Reese, installation at Space 1026, has audio and video and plants!

Space 1026 has a terrific show by two artists, Trevor Reese of Brooklyn and Sighn (aka Matthew) of Chicago.  Words, wood, plants and video.  It’s one of the best shows we’ve seen there in a while — unexpected and provocative.  Fun, too.

Sighn at Space 1026. 

Sighn’s “ITSOK” wall.  Hand-cut bass wood.  1,000 pieces, cut with a jigsaw, which explains Sighn’s aching back.  Individual units of ITSOK in bamboo or bass wood available for $20!

Marisa Olson’s video at Vox Populi

We made a video of Marisa Olson’s video at Vox to try to give you a sense of the action in the subtle piece.  Well, YouTube rejected our video as “content inappropriate.”  So here’s a photo. The action is:  this woman is tied with pink strings.  She’s wiggling to get out of her predicament.  Over time you see she’s got a razor in her hands.

Xiang Yang’s installation at Vox Populi.

Xiang Yang was at the opening, showing a new body of work — deconstructed chairs.  He scavenged the chairs from the streets of New York where he lives and lovingly sanded them to new abstract beauty.  Zhang also has an installation opening Oct. 17 at the Liao Collection piece –a room filled with Chinese furniture.  It reminds us of Mari Shaw’s encounter with some Chinese art in Germany.  

Gossip

William Pym, former gallery director at Fleisher-Ollman Gallery,  is now living at Jersey City with his girlfriend and writing for Village Voice and Artforum. We got this from John Ollman, who told us while juggling a glass of wine and a copy of the PMA’s hot-off-the-presses James Castle catalog. Fleisher-Ollman’s upcoming Castle show is running in conjunction with the upcoming PMA exhibit. Ollman, by the way, is featured in the Castle documentary movie that’s part of the PMA’s exhibit.

Anthony Campuzano is having a solo show at ICA’s project space, opening Jan. 16. We heard this from Ollman and then ran into Anthony at Vox and he confirmed. He seemed calmer than us. We’re very excited about this. He’s working with ICA’s new curatorial assistant Kate Kraczon. Anthony told us another Philly art star, video and clay animation virtuoso Josh Mosley, will be in the large upstairs gallery at the same time.

Pepon Osorio told us he’s in a great-sounding group show opening October 19 at PS I in New York. NeoHooDoo: Art for a Forgotten Faith is co-organized by The Menil Collection Many of the artists in the show we’ve followed for years and love — including Philadelphia artist Terry Adkins. Here’s who else is in the exhibit:

Janine Antoni, Radcliffe Bailey, José Bedia, Rebecca Belmore, Sanford Biggers, Tania Bruguera, James Lee Byars, María Magdalena Campos-Pons, William Cordova, Jimmie Durham, Regina José Galindo, Felix Gonzalez-Torres, David Hammons, Michael Joo, Brian Jungen, Kcho, Marepe, Ana Mendieta, Amalia Mesa-Bains, Adrian Piper, Ernesto Pujol, Dario Robleto, Betye Saar, Gary Simmons, George Smith, Michael Tracy, Nari Ward

It’s a wonder no one thought of this before–art that’s shown simultaneously around the world, based on the idea that technology can circulate digi art works faster than a speeding bullet.

The show, PDF, which will be held simultaneously in 14 cities, from Tokyo to Oslo, and in each of the 5 boroughs of New York City, also has a Philly venue–Vox Populi, for the one-night-only event–Saturday, July 19, 6 to 8 p.m.

The art, commissioned work from Fia Backström, Bozidar Brazda, Brian Clifton, Paul Ramirez Jonas, Rachel Mason, Sean Raspet, and Jordan Wolfson, and a contribution from Dexter Sinister, is online and will be downloaded and produced by each venue. You can take a peek at some of it at this online site:

In the cooperative spirit of the venture, the show was co-curated by Summer Guthery, Lumi Tan, and Nicholas Weist. And the participating galleries are all working in partnership with New York gallery Why + Wherefore, where you can find a few of the works available online for download (not to mention a list of participating galleries).

The samples were a mixed bag–you can check them out yourself if your computer is up to the task of handling such big files. The ones that interested me most were the most elusive, thanks to their size. Many of the works in the samples are word-based art. You’ll have to wait until July 19 to see the rest.

Check out the show itself to see if the art measures up to this really great concept.

Oliver Herring task night at FLUXspace last year. This is a shot from the blue room in the elevator. There was a video camera trained on the room and a live feed to a monitor downstairs where you saw the people merged with a background image previous taken on the streets of the neighborhood.

FLUXspace, that wild and wooly place in the northern reaches of Kensington is planning its second project with New York-based artist Oliver Herring. The first task project last Dec. 15 included a screening of the dreamy short videos Herring made of the FLUX artists and their neighbors performing feats of Cirque du Soleil-ian acrobatics; and it included a great Sesame Street by way of Andy Warhol’s Factory task party with glamour (well, glitter at least) and ambition to save the world. If you want to see artblog’s giddy enthusiasms about the first FLUX/Herring event last year see this this and this and this. And see the video trailer made by FLUX’s Joe DiGiuseppe.

FLUX is looking for funds to stage fluxTASK2 — the event will be September 6, 2008 during the Fringe Festival (this will be a Fringe Festival event). In addition they’re running a poster design contest on their website and are looking for in-kind support (food, beverages, help with planning and other volunteering) for the event. You can contribute easily online. Of course checks and cashola are welcome too. We at artblog are firmly in the corner of this young organization.

See their new website to contribute and find out more about the poster contest and volunteering.

Vox Populi is celebrating its 21st year and instead of a pub crawl the excellent coop gallery has a panoply of events and projects they’re producing–all of which you can contribute to to help out this pillar of the Philadelphia art scene. contribute at the website.

Here’s from Vox’s Micah Danges:

We have a great deal of projects underway that we are very excited about.  Including an exhibition with Swedish artist Annika Eriksson and Vox Alumni, publishing our first book, press an LP, site a public art project with local national artists in our neighborhood and throw a big block party with special guest DJs to launch this exciting season.

Vox has a special deal going for a $250 gift but I am sure any level of support will be greatly appreciated.

We at artblogare huge supporters of Vox Populi as you know.