Make or Break: Creativity as an Act of Survival
BYO Printmaking Collaborative turns 15. Happy Birthday!!!!

Asian Arts Initiative – Crescendo
Creative Entrepreneur Accelerator launches at Greater Philadelphia Cultural Alliance

Foundation for Contemporary Arts – recipients – Alex Tatarsky & Shayla-Vie Jenkins

Hedgerow Theatre – Nora, a Doll’s House

Asian American Film Festival submission is open

Née Danse/Theater – An Unfinished Herstory

New writers from Moore – Prior Reinhardt and the Effort of Existence, in ‘Such an Effort’ at the Plastic Club – Liisa Nelson’s Dreams at The Clay Studio – Shared Vision, CCH Pounder-Koné Collection is more than portraiture – –

Philadelphia named best street art in USA Today

77 Seconds at the 2025 Oscars = Emotional Intelligence?

Roberta: Hi everyone, it’s Roberta.

Ryan: And this is Ryan, and this is the midweek news

Roberta: on Artblog radio.

Okay. So how was your weekend?

Ryan: My weekend, weekend was fine. Obviously, as you saw, I did not win any Academy Awards, so I’ve asked chat GPT to write me a very angry email to send out scathing that I wasn’t even nominated. But maybe next year. I had my dress and everything up. My gown was ready to go.

My plastic surgeon was on standby just in case I needed it. You never know if things get droopy, you’re ready at the last minute. You need to call in the experts. I have funny feelings about the, those kind of award shows.

Roberta: I mean, it’s like anything you vote on, right? People vote for various reasons and.

They’ve, some of the reasons are valid and some of the reasons are not valid. And so some of it is popularity of the actor or the director. Some of it is actual quality you know, which is indefinable at. On a certain level, but very idiosyncratic to whoever’s voting. They know what quality is and so they’re voting based on individual thoughts and whatnot.

So I don’t, I’ve seen a lot of Oscar nominated movies that were not so great, and a lot of Oscar movies that have received awards that were not so great and some that have been terrific. So it’s a crapshoot, I think. And it’s all about marketing. It’s about marketing. When it boils down to it, I mean, how many eyeballs watched the Oscars?

That means something to someone who’s selling advertising or making money off of that. You know, so yeah. And the red carpet, everybody loves the red carpet, watching the people sachet down the red carpet. So that’s fun. It’s entertaining. Right. So if movies are entertainment, the Oscar awards should be entertaining, and they deliver on that, I think even though you were not nominated or on the red carpet.

Ryan: Yep. No. Next time. But there was, so I think what’s interesting about the Academy Awards was that. Anora won quite a few awards and I think what I find most interesting about that is that film cost around $6 million to make versus a Marvel billion-dollar epic. Which I think is really, which is really interesting.

Roberta: It’s good. It’s a small movie. Yes, I look forward to seeing it. I don’t know much of anything about it, but it got a lot of awards.

Ryan: It did. Well, when you watch it give me a call. because I have strong opinions about it, as you might be surprised to learn. Yes. I saw it in theater. I went with a friend of mine and, and she thought it was hilarious.

And I, well, I won’t, I don’t tell you how I feel about it. But yeah, I’ve had, I’ve had several conversations with several different people. I think most people have enjoyed it on some level, and there’s certainly portions of it that I enjoyed. But that whole plot thing. Got in the way from me. That whole story.

I didn’t understand it, and I was thinking I don’t know if we should do a segment on films that we watched. I have little side segments to our, our podcast, but I was thinking since we, you know, we, we both read and write. I was reading something about, something that popped up in my feed is an article that was written in Inc.

Magazine. It’s entitled, in 77 seconds at the 2025 Oscars. Ben Stiller taught a brilliant lesson in emotional intelligence. First of all, from a marketing standpoint, that’s excellent. SEO. Just packed. It’s good stuff. And then it was written by Bill Murphy Jr. sells himself as having 170,000 subscribers to his daily newsletter.

He’s written eBooks, including Nine Smart Habits of People with Very High Emotional Intelligence and the quote, Free Book of Neuroscience. If I could, I just want to read you what I found wild towards the end. It’s like the, one of the last paragraphs he writes, . Anyway, my favorite definition of emotional intelligence for quite a while now has been the learned ability to leverage emotions both yours and other people’s, to increase the likelihood that you’ll achieve your goals.

Roberta: Whoa, that is so manipulative. I hate it. Yes,

Ryan: I do too. And I was just thinking, isn’t that how you define like a sociopath? Yeah. How is that emotional intelligence? Maybe why the Academy’s Academy Awards are not for me. This is why I don’t read books like Nine Smart Habits of People with Very High Emotional Intelligence. Oh my goodness. Wow. I am clearly not his target audience. , because Leveraging your emotions to win. Wow. That hasn’t come up in therapy for me, but maybe I should see his therapist. Well, I,

Roberta: I would say there’s a lot of that going on in Washington DC right now. And so those people probably are all acolytes of this guy.

Ryan: That’s exactly what I was thinking too, is like maybe this is not so much a one-off so much as a syndrome to what’s going on in the white male, cis world. Like, oh, we’re, we’re so highly intelligent. Look at us go. So in Patas on the back, we’ve written a book on how intelligent we are and emotional intelligence is much the same because.

Look how successful we are. So clearly we’re emotionally intelligent. You know, Elon Musk has his child on his shoulders for a minute. Now he’s like Father of the year. Kind of the similar thing. He’s leveraging it to win. Yeah. I was thinking, wow, this is really connected. Thank you for letting me share that anecdote.

Roberta: It is pathological. Yes. And we’ll just leave it at that.

Ryan: Anyway, so that’s something I’ve been reading and something I would not recommend.

Roberta: Yeah, the, the knot being the active part of that sentence.

Well, I had an Okay weekend. I actually went to two art shows and they were both wonderful. The first is at Asian Arts Initiative, crescendo, which was curated by our own contributor, Joyce Chung. Curated by . Joyce, who is the curator at Asian Arts Initiative, first curator at that organization, they’ve done multiple guest curator curations in the past, but she’s the first onboard curator and she’s marvelous.

And the show’s documentary, and it’s about, she’s calling it a movement a Biracial movement, Asian and black artists and musicians coming together from 1981 to 1999 for activism, for their communities and for, you know, against the wars and things of that nature. There was a panel discussion that was out of this world great.

All about, there were three, three musicians, right? One African American and the other two Asian American, and. You know, to hear it from the musician’s point of view was really great going to an art exhibit. So I really thought that was a marvelous introduction to the whole concept, how interwoven the art and music was back at this time in these communities.

And it’s not all the way through the country, but I think she singled out like Detroit, Chicago, Philadelphia, and Los Angeles. And those were the cities where this was happening, both in art and music. So I would recommend going over to Asian Arts. And that show just opened and they have a bunch of there’s a wellbeing workshop and a book event and performances.

And in addition, they have sound-type music festival happening with their writers and residence program. So jam packed full of activity over at Asian Arts these days. That show Crescendo is up until June 28th, so you have some time to go see it. It’s a very, it needs time. You need to spend time with it.

It’s all documentation in glass, vitrines on the walls. And then there is the contemporary group. Fortune in Philadelphia has a little component where you can interact with, they’re collecting information about what you think and feel about X, Y, z, this racism and whatnot. And then there’s a little

Hands-on book. I don’t want to say kiosk. It’s a little movable furniture segment that has books in it on it, and you can move it around. However, it makes you comfortable to sit and interact with the books. It’s really a creative endeavor on the part of Asian Arts and Joyce to put this together, and it’s a massive amount of research that she did. So congratulations Joyce. We love your show.

The other one I went to quickly I will mention is, Make or Break Creativity as an act of survival, which is at the McGuire Art Museum on the St. Joe’s campus. I’ve mentioned this before. This is the exhibition of the Keen Collection, which is the collection of outsider artists those who have been incarcerated and made art in their incarceration, either in prison or in mental institutions, and it’s

A marvelous show. The work is wonderful. Some of it you will recognize if you have been following the outsider. Artists like Martin Ramirez is in the, in this exhibit and Alf Wolfley and then they have a little catalog, cute little catalog, very nicely designed and with a conversation that was held with some people of knowledge.

Experts in this particular area of art and the book, the catalog is 20 books. I bought it. It’s highly worth it. I’m enjoying reading the conversation and it’s got all kinds of pictures and the biographies of the artists highly recommended. And, you know, it’s the first time I set foot in . The McGuire Art Museum now is where the Barnes Foundation used to be on Latches Lane in Marion, which St. Joe’s University has now taken over. I’m not sure if they bought the building from the Barnes or if they’re leasing it and it doesn’t really matter. It’s the McGuire Art Museum, and they’ve done a good job with it. It looks really good. The shows are wonderfully hung. They have a big, the Grand Salon, which if you remember what that

Barnes Foundation Grand Salon looked like. It’s what you see when you go to the Barnes Foundation on the parkway. Now you walk in, the first room is the Grand Salon, and it doesn’t look anything like Albert Barnes’s Grand Salon with the Cezannes and Renoirs and Van Goghs and whatnot. It has contemporary art from

The St. Joe’s University art collection, including a beautiful piece by Marta Sanchez, other local luminaries, a trip to the museum. It’s free. They ask for a donation. You can put in a few bucks or not. It was just good to revisit that space, and I was delighted to see this show. This is a really good show, and it’s up until March 30th, only the month of March now.

Ryan: Okay. Yeah. I have to see that show.

Roberta: Yeah, it’s very good. You’ll enjoy it. And then downstairs, they had a hero Shey. Wood C Woodblock print show, which was interesting. Curated by students. They have an art history department, a small art department for studio artists, but a very, I think, robust art history department.

The students curated the show and got to write up the information, the wall cards for each piece. Very beautiful. So there’s lots to see at the McGuire Art Museum right now. And that was my weekend.

Ryan: Yeah. My weekend. So Rhys’ birthday ended up being like a two-parter, so we ended up doing that. After that, that evening, I went to the Half God of rainfall.

I know I had mentioned that in a previous episode. It was good. I’m, I’m looking forward to, to talking with our friend Eric Marsh about that. We, he said, talk to me after you see it. So I saw it, so now I’ll have to talk to him this week. But it was really interesting whenever I see something that’s like sport related

I’m, I’m not particularly inclined to see it, but I thought it was really well done. Everything done at the Wilma is solid and it is so professional, but I thought the, the story was really, really interesting. I, I really enjoyed how they did it and the production value was high and the performances were, I.

Excellent. I’m really curious to get his perspective on, on, he was part of the pre-show kind of giving some feedback as well, so I, I’m really curious what, what the processes was for the production, but it, I, I thought it was a successful show. I thought it was a lot of fun. It’s closed now, but I think it’s certainly sparked a lot of questions and.

Comments about Philadelphia and theater in Philadelphia and what we’re trying to accomplish. And, but it was really good. I really enjoyed it. Things at Wilma are, are pretty solid, so you see something there, you’re going to be pretty happy with what you see. And then I also was able to make the opening of Great, which is our, our old friend Julia Marsh’s.

And Nico. Yeah, it was good. It was, it was really good. I got myself, the first issue, it was. Primarily focus on UArts. They did a lot of interviews with them, a lot of conversations about the, what was happening, what was going on, and the overall impact. Well, I’m excited to see what happens more from there.

They used Da Vinci Art Alliance’s space, which also has a show that was o that was opening the next day, which also looked good. So, I mean, that’s kind of a twofer looking for something more to see. Da Vinci has a great opening happening as well.

Roberta: Great. Well, should we segue into the news?

Ryan: Yeah, that sounds great.

Roberta: First, there’s an opportunity for creative entrepreneurs, the GPCA. Greater Philadelphia Cultural Alliance is launching its second round of Creative Entrepreneur Accelerator grants. So this is a grant of $2,000 for individual entrepreneurs. They would get business consulting and $2,000, we’ll put a link in the.

Applications just opens on March 5th, so I think there’s some time to, to apply. Look at the guidelines there. I’m sure they will have Zoom or something for questions and answers. This is available through the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts. That’s something for all of our entrepreneurs out there to apply for second anniversary.

The Philadelphia BYO print celebrates 15 years. They started 15 years ago. Katie VanVliet and her colleague [Lauren Fischer], both of them graduates of Moore College of Art and Design, noted that there were very few community presses around at that time, and so they founded. BYO print. 15 years later, they’re celebrating.

So congratulations. There’s a whole lineup of activities and a party celebration party. The party, by the way, they have a physical space in Fishtown, but their party is this Friday, first Friday, March 7th at Paradigm. So their party is going to be at Paradigm Fifth Floor. So upstairs from all the galleries downstairs, and one of the, one of the events that they’re having is that Commonweal is presenting an exhibition called Printmaking Communities.

And that opens on March 6th, which is Thursday night, and that’ll be up through the month of March, the 29th of March. And so. They’re working in conjunction with Commonweal Gallery, which is very exciting. I love it when organizations collaborate on exhibits and whatnot. Third, there are two. This is another congratulations.

Two Philadelphia artists won $45,000 award from the grants to artists organization. It’s the Foundation for Contemporary Arts is the organization that announced the grants and gave the grants. So Alex Tatarsky got her grant for performance. Alex, if you may recall, did a performance at Glenford that was very highly thought of and has done a lot of performing back and forth in Philadelphia and New York, based in both cities.

And then there’s Shayla-Vie Jenkins, the dance recipient. So congratulations to both. We’ll put links into where you can read more about this in total. They gave out 1 million, $35,000 in the grants, $45,000 each. So a significant amount of money was, was spent. And that’s, that’s the end of my news.

So over to you, Ryan.

Ryan: One bit of news, just an update on something we’ve talked about before but Philly won the street art, and was voted the best city in America for street art by USA Today. So that was a public. Vote for that. And that’s the second time Philly has won that. So we talked about that a few weeks ago, comparing to Cincinnati and a few other cities that were high on that list.

And so that has now closed, so that’s exciting.

Roberta: Yeah. Congratulations. Philly Mural Arts. That would be Mural Arts.

Ryan: That’s right. I think it’s good for the city in general for those kind of nominations, but Yep. Mural arts specifically. One opportunity that I want to mention that’s also something that’s coming up is the Philadelphia, Asian American Film Festival has submissions for their early bird deadline coming up at March 31st, and we’ll have a link to where you can submit those.

My theater shout-out for the week is Hedge Row Theater Company. It’s Nora a Doll’s House. Ibsen had written a play called Doll’s House, and this is an updated version of that, so I’d be curious to see how that goes. That’s obviously a very famous play in itself, so seeing a, an updated version of that could be quite interesting, so I’m looking forward to that.

Also, coming up this weekend, Friday and Saturday is, Née Danse/Theater is performing An Unfinished Herstory in concert with the International Women’s Day, which is March 8th, they have 35 plus performers at Christchurch Neighborhood House. That is going to be a very interesting show, showcasing 35 local women performing artists.

That looks really interesting, and I just did a conversation with De Cowell, who is the founder of a Née Danse/Theater company. So you can see that interview. At the Artblog.org, as well as a lot of other really great articles that have come out in the last week. It’s been a busy, busy week of publishing for us.

Roberta: We’re mentoring students. This semester courtesy of Chenoa Baker’s Critical Writing and for design and art. The students are now, we, they got sent out. Their job was to write reviews. Chenoa was going to work with them and then pass the reviews on to me. I’m reviewing their reviews and publishing them, so another couple are just about ready to get published and they’re, they’re good reviews.

I’m happy to do this. It’s always exciting to work with young people and collaborate with them. Thank you, Chenoa for, working with us. Reaching out to us.

Ryan: Yeah, that’s really great.

Roberta: Oh, and I should also mention, we have two new writers, Joni Sullivan, who wrote about the show at blah blah gallery, A really nice, peppy, wonderful informed review, and Evan Chare who wrote about Gabardine, the David Gaines performance at the Icebox, a few a week or so ago.

Wonderful to have them and welcome them to our team of writers.

Ryan: Yes. Very exciting. Well, that’s my list lots going on. Also for, just for reference, this is first Friday this week. Keep that in mind. If that’s of interest. I know there’s quite a few openings that are happening in Old City. Lots of good stuff

Roberta: and that’s about it for me. So I guess we wrap it up.

Ryan: Sounds good. That’s it for me as well.

Roberta: Thanks for listening everybody. It’s Roberta saying bye-bye. See you next time.

Ryan: And this is Ryan, and this has been Artblog’s Midweek News. Thanks for listening everyone. We’ll see you next time. Bye-bye.