News

Hopefully this signature winged tree ornament by Beth Beverly will induce you to get to the Philadelphia Alt Taxidermy Competition tonight. Photo courtesy of Diamond Tooth Taxidermy. — Hopefully this signature winged tree ornament by Beth Beverly will induce you to a) get started on your presents and b) get to tonight’s taxidermy competition! Photo courtesy of Diamond Tooth Taxidermy.

If you not only love the taxidermic arts but want to hear stories behind some taxidermists’ macabre masterpieces, join the Philadelphia Alt Taxidermy group tonight for a competition like no other. Judged by Beth Beverly, Adam Wallacavage, and Autumn Keitponglert, and with collective thirsts slaked by complimentary cocktails from Hendrick’s Gin, competitors are bringing their most treasured and unusual pieces of taxidermy (created or collected), and presenting in front of a live audience (that means you). Doogie Horner is the emcee for the evening, and expect live entertainment as participants narrate their most colorful stories attached to each piece.

A rendering of what the Reading Viaduct will look like, courtesy of Friends of the Rail Park.

Reading Viaduct lives! Two upcoming events are an affirmation of that, beginning with November 21’s panel discussion at the Locks Gallery. 1. Beginning at 6 PM, Trestletown artist Sarah McEneaney, Councilman Mark Squilla, and landscape architect Bryan Hanes get down to business about the redesign of the Reading Viaduct, moderated by Center City District CEO Paul Levy. Accompanying the panel, The Print Center is supplying visitors with McEneaney’s Viaduct Park Print, a recently completed silkscreen print whose proceeds benefit the Reading Viaduct Rail Park. 2. This week culminated in a major milestone for the Reading Viaduct Rail Park, which is now “well on its way to Phase 1” after ardent support from The City of Philadelphia, private foundations and many dedicated volunteers. Their September block party fundraiser had over 600 attendees and raised close to $25,000 towards a maintenance budget for the park, and their next step is a fundraiser on December 4 at Union Transfer! With food provided by 13th St Kitchens, a fashion show of Philly designers organized by Melissa D’Agostino, and a music line-up that includes the likes of the The Walkmen, Sun Ra Arkestra and Spank Rock, there are so very few reasons not to go. Click here to purchase your tickets to the fundraiser.

The upcoming Whitney Biennial has a bumper crop of Philly artists, some of which we’ve already heard of and some of which are news even to us. In addition to Anthony Elms, curator at ICA, there are four Philly artists of note included – there’s Ken Lum, the new head of the UPenn BFA program, Josh Mosley, head of UPenn’s MFA program, Dona Nelson, long-time and beloved teacher at Tyler, and Jacolby Satterwhite, graduate of the UPenn MFA program. Big names on the roster, drawn from artists living and deceased, include Robert Ashley, Sheila Hicks, Louise Fishman, Sherrie Levine; Sarah Charlesworth, Gretchen Bender and Tony Greene; dancers Miguel Gutierrez, Taisha Paggett and Yve Laris Cohen, and sound artists Kevin Beasley, Charlemagne Palestine and Sergei Tcherepnin, Mr. Ashley in collaboration with Alex Waterman, and performance pieces by Ei Arakawa, Carissa Rodriguez, and the performance group known as My Barbarian.

“Me and Earth,” the last exhibit at Pile of Bricks before they close for renovations over the next six-months-to-a-year is a vivid one one: tonight is the opening reception, held from 6-10 pm at 2537 Frankford Avenue. A group show including mixed media work by twenty Philadelphia artists, there is a video installation by Jesse Groham-Engaard, an off-site installation by Jen Brown, paintings by Kaitlin Pomerantz and Samantha Mitchell, furniture by Jay Haon and more. Pile of Bricks’ renovations begin after this show is over, and plan to reopen in 2014 as a gallery with studio space for about 6-9 artists.

Opportunities

Entries are being accepted for the 2014 Aperture Portfolio Prize for roughly another couple weeks. The first-prize winner of this competition for outstanding contemporary work receives a cash prize and an exhibition at Aperture Gallery; the deadline is Wednesday, November 27 at 12:00 pm EDT.

One for the ages: presented by the Women’s Committee, the Philadelphia Museum of Art is holding a photography contest, promising six winning photographs entrance into the permanent collection. Juried by photographer Larry Fink, publisher and gallery director Darius Himes, and Peter Barberie, Philadelphia Museum of Art curator, each winning artist receives a cash prize of $1,000 and a 5% commission on the sales of their prints, sold individually by the museum in a limited edition of fifteen. The exhibition of winning images runs from June 10 to July 6, 2014 at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. For prospective entrants, the entry fee is $45 per submission of 10–15 images, and the deadline is January 10, 2014.

Artist News

From David Lynch's "Naming" exhibition. Photo courtesy of Kayne Griffin Corcoran. — From David Lynch’s “Naming” exhibition. Photo courtesy of Kayne Griffin Corcoran.

via e-flux – Kayne Griffin Corcoran in Los Angeles is getting ready to present a solo exhibition of work by David Lynch. Naming, opening November 23 and running through January 4, 2014, is premised on “the complex relationship between objects and their names” in Lynch’s work; e-flux cites The Alphabet, the second short film he made when he was student at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Art in 1968, as a jumping-off point for this characteristic of Lynch’s work. Not bad, PAFA! There is an opening reception on November 23 from 6–8pm.

Peter Rose is showing old and new work at Microscope Gallery in Brooklyn tomorrow, Saturday, November 16 at 7 PM. Pieces screening include Incantation (as film), an excerpt from Secondary Currents, Pneumenon, Odysseus in Ithaca, Studies in Transfalumination, The Indezerian Tablets (new version), Solaristics and possibly more.

Michael Andre, artblog contributor is one of the readers lined up so far for Lunar Chandelier’s “Kennedy (Necrosis) Jubilee”, a commemoration of the assassination 50 years ago of John Fitzgerald Kennedy, with readings and a screening capped by a dance party. Held at performance space La Sala (in the back of the Cantina Royale on North 3rd Street near the East River in Williamsburg) on Friday, November 22, the event is scheduled to run about two hours, with a 7:30 screening of Sam Truitt’s “Dick: An Oblique Kennedy Conspiracy Countdown” projected as a triptych on three walls, readings starting about 9:45, dancing commencing at about 10:45 and continuing until closing. To set the mood, they’ll be playing music from the peak Kennedy years arranged by the mixmaster KDP.