News

This just in from Madelyn Roehrig, a friend of ours in Pittsburgh. Her project Conversations with Andy is being featured Monday on NPR’s Morning Edition!  The story, part of NPR’s summer road trip series, Dead Stop,  is airing Monday, Aug 6, Andy Warhol’s birthday. As a tribute to her subject, and to the other artistic spirits buried in the Green River Cemetery on Long Island, Madelyn plans on listening from Andy’s grave with some other folks while celebrating the artist’s birthday.

Sad news: Part Time Studios becomes the latest Frankford Ave. staple of the last few years to close. Their final opening is today, from 6 to 8 PM.

Via LinkedIn Today – Charities are the latest to effectively harness the power of social media: Charity Miles is a new app that donates money for every mile a user runs, walks or bikes. We see potential for its crossover into the art world, generating income for the artisitic community. Perhaps the Cultural Fund or a new fund helping young struggling alternative spaces could develop an app that tracks distance covered on First Friday and gets people to pledge money for however many miles you cover. Developers, feel free to run with this idea.

If you’ve been wondering why cats on the Internet have thus far been spurned by the international film festival circuit, you may wonder no more. The Walker Art Center presents the first Internet Cat Video Festival on Thursday, August 30, 4-10 pm at their Open Field. Promising an eclectic selection of the best cat videos the Internet has to offer (including Henri the French cat and his ennui), the event is free and open to the public.The nominations for the festival opened on July 8, closed on July 30 and generated over 7,000 submissions to date.

The youthful artists of the Kensington Plein Air Society, led by Christopher Davison and Shanna Waddell, have banded together turning something old into something new. They’ve taken still life as their starting point if not the end point, Davison says. We can’t wait to see the show arising from this!

Good news First Friday art pilgrims–there is a new space in the 319 N. 11th St. building, bringing the total number of art venues there to six! Practice, an exhibition space located on the 2nd floor, is opening its doors on First Friday August 3 from 7-11pm, and we hear there may be another gallery coming too! Practice’s inaugural show “A Public Service Response to the Heat,” is a reaction to the intense August heat in the building — they are providing an antidote, someting to help viewers a chance to cool off, physically and mentally. Dave Kim (formerly of Fleisher Art Memorial and now of Gary Steuer’s Office of Arts, Culture and the Creative Economy), Jerry Kaba, Peter Morgan, Yvonne Lung (Clay Studio), Ryan Kelly and Annette Monnier (Black Floor and Copy Gallery) are all part Practice.

When we heard that the Barnes had commissioned a dance we didn’t get it at first, but then we remembered Le Danse, the Matisse work commissioned by Albert Barnes…and now it all makes sense! A new site-specific work is scheduled to premiere Dec. 14 at 7:30PM, created by Tori Lawrence and Co., along with Brooklyn-based music ensemble Bing & Ruth and three unnamed dancers. Let’s hope they commission some temporary site specific visual art too! It could be about card players or postmen or nudes or blanket chests or Africa–the possibilities are limitless.

As a part of Arts on South, a program to fill empty South Street retail spaces with vibrant artistic tenants, CRED Magazine is moving into a space at 325 South Street. There, they’ll be able to stage events, workshops, a gallery and a store of work they’ve featured in the magazines Issues one and two. For more information or to get involved contact Managing Editor, Heather Jones, at cred@villagearts.org. The space is open Wednesdays – Sundays, 3 pm to 8 pm.

The BlackStar Film Festival, celebrating the African Diaspora’s films and storytelling, will be held at the African American Museum, Art Sanctuary, and International House, August 2-5, 2012. BSFF’s Artistic Director is Maori Karmael Holmes, co-curator of Kinowatt: film and the power of change. Tickets are $8 general admission and $5 students/seniors,with All-Access Festival Passes (excluding parties) at $75, free panels, workshops and conversations, and registration for a Conversation with noted filmmaker Ava DuVernay, who is giving a master class at IHouse on Saturday.

Opportunities

The next deadline for Art in the Air, a digital art initiative by BreadBoard that displays artwork on the PECO building via the Crown Lights system, is August 21. Every two months, three digital artworks are selected for an Art in the Air exhibit to be displayed on the Crown Lights tower at 21st and Market. The September re-launch is a bit different, with the competition open to both national and international artists.

Visual Artist Network opportunities – The deadlines for the Artist Project at Verge Art Miami Beach 2012 have been extended, allowing more artists the chance to apply for that and for the Light Assembly video art and film event announced in conjunction with Verge Miami. The Artist Project gives accepted artists one third, one half, or one full room at Verge Miami, while the Tomorrow Stars open call invites artists to have a special exhibition of a work from their application. There’s also an opportunity to win a full spread in the new art newspaper, Art Pages. Artists can now enter on either August 15 or September 15, the late deadline.

We told you about this before, but now, it’s gotten much easier and gone online! Philadelphia’s Public Art Program invites artists to submit an application with the Public Art Artist Registry. Artists now have the option to apply or update their application online, creating a record of their work to be considered for public art opportunities.  The registry is open to all professional artists, with no residency requirements for the registry as a whole, although some opportunities are limited to artists living in the greater Philadelphia region.

Artist News

A fond farewell to Joe Girandola: he’s resigned as Director of the Low Residency MFA Program in Studio Art at the University of the Arts and is moving to Cincinnati, where he’s accepted a lead academic position at the College of Design, Architecture, Art and Planning. We will miss his energy! He’s got a sculpture made of milk crates at the Delaware Center for Contemporary Arts right now, if you want to check out his last work in the area.

Katie Murken is showing work in two national exhibitions this summer. The first, presented at the Contemporary Arts Center of Las Vegas from June 28 – August 18, is The Garden of Forking Paths, also features the work of Philadelphia artists Katie Baldwin and Nichola Kinch. And Murken’s piece Continua was selected by Juror Brooke Kamin Rapaport to be included in Color, a National Juried Exhibition at the Brooklyn Waterfront Artists Coalition.  Continua received the Curator’s Choice Award and the Best in Installation Category Award.

Rebecca Gilbert’s got two out-of-town shows in the near future. From September 24 – October 12 she’s having a solo exhibition and gallery talk for Treasure Map: Dirt and Stars (working title) at the Birke Art Gallery of Marshall University in Huntington, WV. And Printivale, a group printmaking exhibition curated by Erin Sweeney, is at the Sharon Arts Center in Peterborough, NH from September 7 to October 27

Tyler Kline was selected by Daria de Beauvais, Curator at Paris’ Palais de Tokyo, for her collection at Saatchi’s online project 100 Curators 100 Days. Congratulations Tyler!