Roberta
Hi everyone. It’s Roberta, and this is Ryan, and this is the midweek news at Artblog radio. So how was your weekend? I haven’t seen you. So did you have a good weekend?

Ryan
I did. Now I had to pull up my calendar and make sure I remember what

Roberta
I did exactly me too. Oh, I feel so good now because I thought I was the only one that needed to do that.

Ryan
So this weekend, I think, I think there was something about slightly warmer weather that made me feel like it was fall again and winter was over. So I enjoy redecorating my home. Like moving things around to make sure it still feels cozy, because I we have a tendency to build up in spaces, and it just becomes overwhelming with stuff. So then he’s just like, It’s not dirty, it’s just stuff. And so I’m like, it’s too much in my my eye range. There’s too much happening here, so we have to thin this down and move this somewhere else. So there’s a lot of rearranging, a lot of moving around, and it feels better, good. And, yeah, I’ve created a new crafting space, which is very exciting, wow. And I have some permanent setup for my lights, for my photo studio thing. So I’ve always envisioned in this book that I want to make. I don’t want to spoil it yet, until I get a draft for y’all to see and then. But it’s something I’ve been dreaming about for quite some time, so now I have a space to hopefully make that happen come to fruition this year. So this weekend was the beginning of those kind of those kind of things. I went to go see the quilt show.

Roberta
Oh, I forgot about the quilt show. How was it? It was good.

Ryan
The weather was a little bit brisk, a little bit windy. You know, I’m on bike, so it’s my gloves are doing the trick, which is nice. But the weather was, wasn’t raining, so that was nice. And they there was a good turnout, a good showing of people. Yeah, it was a fun time. They had some like, they had a DJ, which was interesting. So your DJ and your quilting, it kind of weirdly went together for whatever reason. So that was fun. And then I also went to the Bach. This was Weaver houses. I think I also mentioned this last week. This is their second annual, and I went last year. Went again this year, and just really fun, creative pieces and seeing different I love labors of love. I love seeing people crafting and doing some really fun, interesting things. So were

Roberta
they actually crafting there, or it was all completed projects that they were selling. These

Ryan
were all completed projects. There were some pieces that you could have made right then and there, like clothing that they would not mend, but they would embroider or embellish, or whatever you wanted to add to it. Yeah, I talked to this one person who, and I probably have their card somewhere off to put them in the notes, but they had a straight stitch machine that they got from India. They just found this person on Facebook, and they’re like, sent them a bunch of money, and in return, they got this old straight stitch machine that has a rotary mechanism so they can control the direction of the foot. Wow. It was really interesting. So they showed us a little demo. This was really cool. So you can do a lot of embroidery, right with that straight stitch machine. Did

Roberta
you take pictures? Yeah, oh, put, put a picture or two up with the transcript up, so you can see this sounds really, really great. And is there a weaver’s guild, or some sort of organization that that is the umbrella over this

Ryan
event. This event is Weaver’s house at the Bach. So they have a studio space, they have a shop and and they do demos, and they do classes. So if you’re interested in those types of things. Oh, I could put some notes in there too. Yeah, definitely put a link to them. But this isn’t counting as my three, because I talked about them last week. So anybody keeping notes, this is not one of my three. That was last week’s three. This is a holdover, a carryover. You’re so bad, I’m trying to keep it to three. Oh, man, but, yeah, it was a great show. That was Saturday. It’s an annual show, so see that again. But Weaver’s way, Weaver’s house is, is a regular place at Bach. So yeah, it was all crafting in all quilts my weekend, apparently,

Roberta
awesome. Well, fiber arts are very, very beautiful. But there’s also something humanly comforting about, you know, the tactility of fabric. It’s just you want to touch it, you want to hold it, you want it wrapped around you. You know, there’s a lot that goes with fibers to make it a human magnet. Everybody wants fiber this and fiber that. It’s just. Beautiful stuff, scarves and mittens and hats and blankets, blankies for the babies on

Ryan
those snuggly blankets where it’s like you you’re wearing, it’s like a poncho you’re wearing. It has the arm holes like my kids have those, really,

Roberta
I bet they do. That sounds divine. How was your weekend? What did what were you up to? Not a lot check your calendar. Yes, I’m checking my calendar right now. Well, we had our wonderful trip up to Arcadia on Friday, Ryan, you and I, and we should probably talk about that a little bit today, although it’s going to be forthcoming on our blog at a certain point. We saw Scott Kip installation perpetual memory. I believe it’s called, I can’t remember in my non perpetual memory, but it’s a wonderful, wonderful walk through interactive installation. And they’ve, I mean, the big news is that it was supposed to close on the 15th, and they’ve now extended it through the 22nd by appointment only. So we’ll put in who you get in touch with to make an appointment to go see it. But you should go see it. This is if you missed Scott kips piece at marginal utility in 2014 that was 10 years ago. There won’t be another one for another 10 years, if indeed there is another one. So this is a once in a lifetime thing. If you haven’t seen it before, I would say, and it was marvelous. And we’ll tell you more about Scott Kip. We’re going to talk to him. We talked to the curator, Richard tortilla and Matt Brower, I believe is his name, the current gallery director at Arcadia. Very good conversation. We’ll have that up, we hope, as a podcast with pictures, lots of pictures. That was big Friday. That was a really good thing to do, and we did it on Friday. Beautiful day also. And then my the rest of my weekend was really anticlimactic. So I I had a zoom with my sister, which I do every Saturday. Wonderful thing to do started during the pandemic, and we’re still doing it every Saturday, so I love it. And I babysat for Eliza, my 18 month old grandbaby. So that was pretty much it for my weekend. And then looking forward to this week, of course, so many things going on. You know, weekends are important. I used to work straight through the weekends for art blog. I would work seven days a week, you know, not eight hours a day, certainly by any means, not even six hours a day by any means. But I cannot sustain that pace anymore, and I’ve decided I am allowed a weekend, and so I carry the guilt with me of not doing the work right. That doesn’t go away, but I don’t do the work. And then Monday comes and it’s like this cloud of, oh, I didn’t do that, and now I have to do this. That’s just me. Folks don’t get this way. I don’t recommend it, but everybody needs a weekend. It’s really important to pause, and I want to say I feel for people that have a crazy schedule that doesn’t allow them a two day consecutive day break in the middle of whatever their work week is. It just it’s not good for the human body or mind. Last

Ryan
Sunday, I got an email from you, from work related stuff, so I’m not sure you’ve entirely given that one up yet.

Roberta
No, that’s true. I don’t do as I say. Don’t do as I do, for sure. I try to not work on the weekends. Let’s put it that way. Okay, so let’s go on and upwards. With the news, I have a couple things. One, is a serious thing, a refer to a piece that’s coming out in this week’s New Yorker, because we are artists, and we support artists and the arts,

The New Yorker found out about us a long time ago and put us on their mailing list to get updates on what is coming out that has a particular art interest that they think our readers would like. So this one is Calvin Tompkins, who is their go to writer, interviewer. Has done marvelous, marvelous interviews with all manner of artists. Contemporary Artists wrote a book that I thoroughly enjoyed about Marcel Duchamp. Highly recommend that book he interviewed Rashi Johnson, and it’s a lot about the exploration of masculine vulnerability. Johnson has a show coming up at the Guggenheim, solo show taking over the Guggenheim. It’s a mid-career retrospective So, and he’s apparently one of the few black male artists who deals with vulnerability, masculine vulnerability. So this should be good to you know, read about and then go see the show at the Guggenheim. Whenever that opens, we’ll put the link to the New Yorker. Article in the transcript. So you’ll have it. He’s a very good interviewer. You know, he sort of sets the bar very high in my mind, for how to conduct an interview and then write about it, a written article that includes the material from the many interviews. I mean, it’s more than one sit down. It’s goes on for weeks. I think there’s that.

Then to turn to something very much lighter, there’s le Patan libre. It’s the Philadelphia debut. It’s called Murmuration, and it’s a renowned Canadian ice skating company called Le Patan Libre is coming to Philly, and they’re debuting a performance, a contemporary dance on ice performance. So I thought that was just the wildest thing I’d ever heard. It’s going to be at the Penn ice rink, which is on the Penn campus. Well, the outskirts of the Penn campus. Does the pen campus end? Actually, it does. It doesn’t. It just sort of goes everywhere. Anyway, 3131 Walnut Street. If you’ve been on Walnut Street, you’ve passed it going to West Philadelphia, they need you to register. The event is Friday. This the 13th at 7:30pm Saturday, the 14th at 7:30pm and then if you can’t make that, they’re doing a free community engagement event. It’s free skating for you and them. Thursday night, December 12, seven to 8:30pm, different location, independence. Blue Cross River rink. So in South Philly anyway, Isn’t that wild and ice, ice dancing dancers, actually, I think that sounds like something that, if it stays cold enough to keep the ice melted or not melted, but frozen properly, so they don’t trip and fall all over themselves, that that would be marvelous to do and to skate with them at the Community Engagement event. Sounds awesome. That would be an experience. It would be.

Finally, I want to shout out to Tom Judd, a Philadelphia artist, very well known, very well respected. He’s been podcasting. I did not know this for three years actually, with radio. Kismet doing interviews with artists, and he now has had an amicable separation from Kismet and is on his own with his podcast called Being an Artist with Tom Judd, and it’s available free on Libson, which I want to say. Shout out to Libsyn. That was our first podcast host. Way, way, way back in 2010 when we started, they were great, and his latest podcast is with Stuart Netsky. So Stuart is a very well respected senior artist who’s shown at the ICA and elsewhere, and is very quotable. And one of the quotes they had in the PR says, this is a quote from Stuart Netsky. I appreciate the Rococo for its extravagance and theatricality as it appeals to my love of kitsch. And ain’t that true? The Rococo is really kitsch. So all right, that would be a good one to listen to. That’s it for me. Those are my three sort of tidbits that I thought were very juicy, crunchy and wanted to share with you. So Ryan over to you.

Ryan
I have a couple that are not art related, but kind of newsworthy for the city. On December 15, coming up is open streets for West walnut so between on Walnut Street, between 15th and, I think, to 19th, is going to be closed, and it will be open to people from 11 to five, which they do this once a year in that section of town. And there’s a couple of their spots they use, but this is going to be that section, so it’ll be a lot of shopping. Written house will be open in bus links, Sunday, December 15. It was just great time to be out there, car free. It’s just stress free. As long as there’s not too much traffic around Rittenhouse. People can get irritated, I imagine from there, but lot of diverted traffic. So if you’re going in that area, heads up, if you’re but

Roberta
they should stay away from that area. All the cars, all you car drivers, right, stay away from Rittenhouse on open streets December 15, yeah, because

Ryan
it’s going to be a minute. Something else that popped up on my radar was Forbes does this list for a few years. It’s 30, under 30. Philadelphia artist who also shares time with New York New Jersey is Kalisha wood, and someone who I’ve been trying to get an interview with for a little while. So she was named on that list. So congratulations to her on on that she’s done some fabulous work. If you’ve ever seen her work, it’s it’s pretty amazing. I think last time I reached out to her, she was in Europe, or at the time, or whatever. So getting around, getting the workout.

Roberta
Can I ask a question? Yeah. So. Forbes is known for lists, right? They have the list of the richest men in the world, people in the world, I shouldn’t say men. Sorry about that, richest people in the world. And we all know who number one is, and we’re not going to speak his name. So the 30, under 30, what are their qualifications for these people, it doesn’t have to do with wealth, does it?

Ryan
No, they’re described as trailblazers, or people who are doing something new or exciting. People to watch is kind of like a watch list. I think they have a long list of people that they think are worth watching. These are just 30, under 30, and then they have a couple, yeah, they have a couple other lists. Like, they have a 20 Industry List with 600 people that they’re put on there. So they, they like lists. They they understand that that moves the internet. Dial this one specifically for her work. I think her work is interesting. It’s compelling. But what is it? Exactly? Textiles.

Roberta
Cool. Well, congratulations to Kalisha, that’s cool.

Ryan
So let’s get into my my three. So we’ll get my specific three for the week coming up is the second Thursday. So all the art studios, galleries and event spaces in that area, in over there in that that section of town, un American, and around there will be open and available, and popping with their openings and albums and seeds of culture, gallery will have an opening on December 12, from six to 9pm that’s imprints of time and place. It’s going to be combination of ceramics and photographs. So second there’s, I think be a lot of things over in that area as well. Crane, arch will be open, common will be open. A lot of those places will be open. Ray will be open. So if there’s things that you’d like to see, it’s good time to get over there. Put this one on your list as well to take a look at. This is an opening show, an opening event, reception for a show that’s going to be running through the end of January. We’re getting into Nutcracker season even more heavily. So this is one that I’m going to this week of two. Oh my so this is the first one I’m going to, which is going to be the one man Nutcracker by Chris Davis. So hopefully this one is comical and light and fun and friendly, because I don’t know how many serious ones I could do in the season. I think the answer is two. Anyway, this is going to be at the Lewis Glover theater at the Drake, and that show is running through December, starting on the 10th of December, and running through the 29th that’s the one man Nutcracker, by Chris Davis. And then lastly, I wanted to shout out the circus school in in Philadelphia. It’s just down the street from my house. Actually, it’s a circadian circus campus. They have a circus holiday show for families. That is going to be December 14. They’re gonna have two shows, I believe, but I think the evening show is the adult one, and the matinee afternoon show is the family focus show. So the family focus show is 3pm and then the adult show is at 8pm that is at the circus school.

Roberta
That’s a great list. Can I bump in here a couple things. I’m sorry, people, these just were on my radar, and I would like to share them. Anne Mini, our 90 year old emerging artist, shall we say, who has a gallery in Philadelphia, which is common wheel gallery. Anne is not an emerging artist. Anne is a fully formed, wonderful. You know, force of nature, artist. And that opening is on Thursday the 12th, at 5pm and that is up near crane arts, the Commonweal move to masher Street. I believe it is, I hope, to get to that. And tonight, December 10, which, of course, you won’t hear this, but I do want to mention it. Marta Sanchez, a good friend, a friend of our blog, a really dear, wonderful, generous, big hearted artist. She’s leaving Philadelphia. She is moving with her family elsewhere, to the southwest. I believe she’s from San Antonio originally, but I do believe that they are moving imminently. She is packing up her studio, and she’s having an a studio sale. We’ll put in, I think it’s by appointment. There’s a particular day, but we’ll put in Marta’s contact information. Get in touch with Marta if you want to go see her studio, which is quite amazing in its own right, and support Marta as she exits Philadelphia tonight, she is speaking with Bill Valerio at the Brandywine workshop and archives, where she has a show hanging currently, and it’s a wonderful show, marvelous show, and I want to hear. Them in conversation tonight, so I’ll be there that’s at six o’clock at Brandywine tonight. There’s my two that I snuck in. Sorry about that.

Ryan
No worries. Yeah, those are important.

Roberta
Our art market is over. Let’s just have a pause, a moment of silence for the art market here. That’s enough, and it was a wonderful market, wonderful exhibit. Thank you to all the artists who participated, to all of the customers, art collectors, who came and bought art and the and thank you to the vendors, partners and son and Ulysses, who very generously, gave us merchandise that they put on display and sold some of we’re very proud of what we did. We had never had quite this kind of exhibit before in our history, so it was a big push for us, and we’re very proud of it. And now we’re tidying up, and we’re going to get in touch with everybody. So if you bought something at the art market, look for an email from Artblog telling you about how to come and get your piece of art now that the show is over,

Ryan
And also to Moore college and all of those people who were so amazing, so supportive, so helpful, carried all so much of this show for us. They were just wonderful, absolutely.

Roberta
Let’s shout out some names. There’s Gabrielle Lavin, who’s the gallery exhibition director, and this wouldn’t have happened without you, Gabrielle. Thank you so much. Diana Emmons, the gallery coordinator, who was instrumental in helping us set up the programs that came along with this and helped us with all kinds of installation details, and then the installation crew, led by Katie Dillon Lowe, you guys are amazing. You all, and Suzanne in the shop. Thank you so much. It did take a team of many, many people to put this together and pull it off. So we’re very thankful thank you for mentioning all that, Ryan.

Ryan
Yes, they did a great job. We’re so appreciative,

Roberta
totally. That’s about it for me. Thank you everybody for listening, and we’ll see you next time. This is Roberta saying bye bye,

Ryan
And this is Ryan, and this has been Artblogs Midweek News. Thanks for listening, everyone. We’ll see you next time bye, bye.