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Live at the Dump, a new series of programs by our friends at RAIR (RECYCLED ARTIST IN RESIDENCY)! RAIR has two movie nights planned, Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome and Wall-E!  I can’t think of better movies to watch at the recycling center.

“We chose these films both for their entertainment value and because they each depict dramatic future scenarios with scarce resources that call attention to our choices as a society—themes that resonate with our setting and our mission,” says RAIR Co-Founder, Billy Dufala.

In early June, artist Martha McDonald will premiere, in four iterations, her most recent site-specific vocal performance that features handcrafted costumes and objects. McDonald’s commissioned narrative piece will investigate the site as stage setting and incorporate found materials and their complex histories.
Live at the Dump will conclude in late June with Talking Trash, a symposium held onsite amongst the bounding piles of recycling waste. The discussion will be led by Creative Time Chief Curator Nato Thompson, the event will explore the role that artist interventions like RAIR can play in initiating change by bringing new perspectives to social and environmental issues.

“Our hope is that audiences will come to the site and get an exciting behind-the-scenes look at the industrial operations at a recycling center, along with a sobering realization of the sheer magnitude of .materials discarded every day,” says RAIR co-founder Billy Dufala. “By showing the site as an art space we want to inspire people to reflect about the waste stream and the potential role artists can play in reclaiming these materials.” Visit the RAIR Website.

EVENT SCHEDULE
Sunday, April 17: Movie Night: Wall-E
Sunday, April 24: Movie Night: Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome (Movie Night rain date: Sunday, May 1)
Sunday, June 5: Martha McDonald Performance: Songs of Memory and Forgetting
Sunday, June 12: Martha McDonald Performance: Songs of Memory and Forgetting (Performance rain date Sunday, June 19)
Sunday, June 26: Symposium: Talking Trash

Live at the Dump is supported by The Pew Center for Arts & Heritage and encompasses an interdisciplinary set of programs. In April, RAIR will turn the outdoor site into a screening venue, with showings of the movies Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome and Wall-E. RAIR invites the general public, including the facility workers and their families, to witness this exciting temporary transformation and enjoy the center’s new function as community gathering place.

About RAIR:
RAIR (Recycled Artist In Residency) builds awareness about sustainability issues through visual art. Situated inside a construction and demolition waste recycling company in northeast Philadelphia, RAIR offers artists studio space and access to more than 350 tons of materials per day. Since 2010, RAIR has provided a platform for creators to work at the intersection of art, industry and sustainability, while producing content that challenges perceptions of waste culture.

Trailer for David Kessler’s “The Pine Barrens” movie is out. Take a look at this gorgeous piece of film. The movie is still in progress.  We will keep you posted.  David is an amazing artist and friend of Artblog.

The Pine Barrens – trailer 01 from David Scott Kessler on Vimeo.

Big change at Philly auction house, Freeman’s, as the management team takes over ownership, with approval of the founding family.

Freeman’s, established in Philadelphia, PA in 1805, is a world class auction house with an established international presence. It is the oldest auction house in the United States and one of the oldest in the world. Freeman’s maintains a strong focus on client service built on the experience of its specialists in 13 departments including fine arts, antiques, jewelry, books & manuscripts, Asian arts, and 20th & 21st century design.

“We have held the proud distinction of being a family-owned and operated business for six generations, which is unheard of in today’s age,” said Beau Freeman. “Passing Freeman’s on to Hanna, Alasdair, and Paul, who have led the business for the past 16 years, feels as though we are keeping the business in the family and I am confident they are the right team to continue to lead the company into the future.”

…About Freeman’s: As America’s oldest auction house, Freeman’s has been a constant throughout the auction world for seven generations. Founded in 1805 by Tristram Bampfylde Freeman, the company’s tradition of excellence have benefited many new generations of private collectors, institutions, estates, and museums. Freeman’s holds more than 25 auctions a year in the following categories: 20th Century Design; American Art & Pennsylvania Impressionists; American Furniture, Folk & Decorative Arts; Asian Arts; Books, Maps & Manuscripts; English & Continental Furniture & Decorative Arts; European Art & Old Masters; Jewelry& Watches; Modern & Contemporary Art; Musical Instruments; and Silver & Objets de Vertu. Freeman’s marketing alliance with Scotland’s Lyon & Turnbull—Scotland’s oldest auction house—has extended both firms international reach with offices across the US and UK. Additionally, Freeman’s offers Trusts & Estates and Museum Services. For more information, visit:www.freemansauction.com.

Museum News 1 – Cool online community project by Ann Hamilton and The Fabric Workshop and Museum needs literary texts having to do with textiles (very broadly).

We invite you to contribute a literary fragment from your reading that refers to cloth in some way. In making your contribution, select excerpts from published writing—a single line of a poem, a paragraph from a book, a clipping from the newspaper—and submit as a snapshot of a page, typed-in text, or text copied out by hand and photographed. Copyright conditions apply to the length of a fragment and image authorship. Therefore, please submit only those photographs of text that you yourself have taken. Please also include an attribution (author, title, etc.) for your submission, which will be formatted into a Chicago Style citation like this:

William Faulkner, The Sound and the Fury (New York: Vintage International Press, 1984), 133.

HOW TO SUBMIT: Click the menu at the top left of the submissions form and choose ‘Photo’ to submit images or ‘Quote’ to submit text. For both images and text, please include in the Caption/Source box (in Chicago Style if possible):

-author (and translator, where appropriate)
-title
-publisher
-location and date of publication
-page number (if known)
-your name (optional)

Or if you prefer to submit via email or mail…

E-mail submissions:
layla@fabricworkshopandmuseum.org

Mail submissions:
Attn: Layla Muchnik / Education Department
Cloth ∙ A Commonplace
The Fabric Workshop and Museum
1214 Arch St
Philadelphia, PA 19107

Thank you for your participation!

Museum News 2 – Nari Ward gets mid-career survey, Sun Splashed, at the Barnes Foundation this summer from June 24-August 22, 2016!

Sun Splashed is the most significant exhibition of Ward’s work to date, bringing together over 30 works from 1990s to the present. The exhibition offers a close look at the artist’s ongoing investigations, both material and intellectual, that have guided his practice for more than 20 years. Traveling from Pérez Art Museum Miami (PAMM), where it was organized by Associate Curator Diana Nawi, the exhibition reveals the ambitious scale of Ward’s work and his continued experimentation with new materials.

Animated by flânerie (the artistic leisurely strolling, window-shopping, and people-watching of the bohemian artist/poet) that was an important strategy of the French Impressionists, and making reference to African tribal art, Ward’s oeuvre resonates with the Barnes collection and speaks with penetrating insight and imagination to a broad range of subjects, including black history and culture, the dynamics of power and politics, and Caribbean diaspora identity…

Nari Ward (b. 1963, St. Andrew Parish, Jamaica) received his BA from Hunter College, City University of New York, and his MFA from Brooklyn College, City University of New York. He has had solo presentations of his work at institutions including the Savannah College of Art and Design Museum of Art; the Louisiana State University Museum of Art, Baton Rouge; Museo d’arte contemporanea, Rome; the Fabric Workshop and Museum, Philadelphia; the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art, North Adams; the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston; the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; and the New Museum, New York. He is the recipient of the Rome Prize from the American Academy of Rome; the Willard L. Metcalf Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters; the Bessie Award in Visual Arts from the Dance Theater Workshop; and the John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship.

Museum News 3 – PAFA acquires works by a group of great artists, including Artblog favorites Anne Minich and Theodore Harris!

…Ranging in date from 1856 to 2015 and acquired through both purchase and gift, these new additions include more than 40 paintings, sculptures, mixed media, and works on paper.

Highlights of the new additions include David Johnson’s finely detailed and grandly panoramic landscape The Hudson River from Fort Montgomery (1870); Harriet Hosmer’s neoclassical marble sculpture Puck on a Toadstool (1856); Theodore Harris’ mixed-media collages Vetoed Dreams (1995) and Cotton, Blood for Sonia Sanchez (2002); Emil Lukas’ threaded work Contracting Hum (2015); Brian Tolle’s mixed media sculpture No. 1 (First Inaugural Address) (2012); and a large collection of found object, mixed media and works on paper by pioneering artist and PAFA alumna Anne Minich spanning from 1978 to 2010.

…Adding diversity to PAFA’s contemporary collection are acquisitions of work by two Philadelphians: Theodore Harris, a poet, author, key developer of Philadelphia’s Mural Arts Program, and visual artist whose collages broach issues of oppression, racism, and political injustice; and a large body of work by Anne Minich, whose abstract mixed-media paintings on wood are inspired by architectural and building elements.

“We often talk about artists in our community who deserve more recognition, and Theodore and Anne both are under-recognized,” says Jodi Throckmorton, Curator of Contemporary Art. “Theodore Harris takes the idea of collage as a vehicle for political activism, and Anne Minich makes exquisite drawings that, while autobiographical, pull from her love of Philadelphia and deep interest in art history.”

OPPORTUNITIES

Reminder: The Woodmere Annual: 75th Juried Exhibition, The Condition of Place, juried by Odili Donald Odita, is open for submissions until March 20. More information here. The exhibition will run June 4 – August 28, 2016.

ARTIST NEWS

Photographer and Director of University of the Arts’ Sol Mednick and 1401 photo galleries, Harris Fogel, was interviewed in Q&A magazine. Read the long and very good interview here.