Episode 278 – Roberta and Ryan talk about the John Jarboe show at Fabric Workshop and Museum and The Bearded Ladies Cabaret, Rebecca Rutstein’s oceanic exploration art, Brandywine Workshop, grants for artists, and new funds for arts organizations. We also talk about Marta Sanchez, Fringe Festival performances, the Arden Theater show Potus, and a Gotham FC game.
Links for the show
John Jarboe @ Fabric Workshop and Museum – Artblog article by Martina Merlo
Rebecca Rutstein @ Bridgette Mayer Gallery
Marta Sanchez @ Brandywine Workshop
Golden Sunrise Mummers #mummer curious
Jenny Holzer @ Comcast Building
Hacia La Luz, Towards The Light
Arden Theater Company. POTUS or Behind Every great dumbAss are seven women Trying to Keep him alive.
Click to expand the podcast transcript
Roberta: Hi everyone, it’s Roberta.
Ryan: And this is Ryan, and this is the Midweek News.
Roberta: On Artblog Radio. So you got really busy over the weekend?
Ryan: I did,
Roberta: Busy, Good?
Ryan: Mostly, there’s a little bit of that downtime too, of just like circling. Like you’re circling the airport waiting to land kind of feeling as well.
Roberta: I hate that.
Ryan: Last Saturday I went to the Fabric Workshop and Museum and I went to see John Jarboe’s “Rose” record release party.
Roberta: Oh good. How was it?
Ryan: It was excellent. It was a lot of fun. They had a beautiful vinyl record that, that they were releasing and it was really fun. It was a warm, welcoming time. I loved it. It turned out to be like a sing along event and my kids were super thrilled about that.
Roberta: They like to sing. Are they singers?
Ryan: Not really, that was kind of tongue-in-cheek. But I had a great time. I love going to things where they get slightly embarrassed.
Roberta: Oh my God, you’re too sardonic for me, Ryan! I totally took that literally. Haha.
Ryan: So that was a lot of fun. It was actually a pretty touching and moving experience. And if you haven’t seen the show, obviously there’s a review on Artblog about that (see links list above).
Roberta: Yes a very nice review.
Ryan: It really is a nice review and the show is worth seeing. It ends at the end of the month. If you haven’t seen it, go see it in its entirety. The exhibited show is great. It’s basically walking through a trans experience, through someone identifying through their in utero twin, Rose. So that’s really the premise of the show. And this has been a few years as a Work in Progress and you can read the review to find out more. The event was basically a musical event for the band. It was really great. I really enjoyed it.
Roberta: Was the band, the Bearded Ladies Cabaret band? Because that’s who John’s been working with. They’re really outstanding.
Ryan: She has a great voice and I really enjoyed it. Meanwhile, my kids’ soccer team went to a Gotham FC Game in Newark, New Jersey. The New York Women’s Soccer Professional Soccer Team. So we went up to Newark and saw a professional soccer game.
Roberta: Women’s soccer.
Ryan: Women’s soccer. Which was excellent.
Roberta: Very cool.
Ryan: Yeah, so we, we went up as in a couple school buses.
Roberta: Oh. Oh!
Ryan: I didn’t have to drive, but it wasn’t too bad.
Roberta: School buses, haha. Well, school buses are a thing. You can do it once, you can do it twice…
Ryan: I think because we homeschool the kids, I think it was their first time on an actual school bus. I think is what they said.
Roberta: Oh, well good for them. Everybody should experience a school bus at least once in their life.
Ryan: Then after that I went to Kitchen Garden up in Germantown and saw Emily Birdie Busch perform.
Roberta: You mean Open Kitchen Sculpture Garden? Pedro Ospina?
Ryan: No. This is a farm in Northwest Philly in the Germantown neighborhood (my neighborhood). It was folk music, if you’re into that. Very nice. It was an almost chilly evening. I wore long sleeves thinking that would be sufficient and I’m like, ‘Oh, I almost need a jacket.’ So the weather is changing. It’s nice.
Roberta: I’ve been liking it the last couple days. Go, weather!
Ryan: So that was my weekend. How was your weekend?
Roberta: Started out on Friday with a visit to Bridgette Mayer Gallery with Rebecca Rutstein, who’s the artist who’s show is up right now. And if you don’t know, Rebecca has done a lot of naval, oceanic exploration, traveling with a science crew studying/mapping the ocean floor. (She’s been the artist on scientific expeditions, working with and living with the scientists on the ship and she makes art on the ship distilling her experience of the science and the visuals.)
She said she’s been on these big ocean exploring vessels eight times, and she’s been down to the bottom of the ocean three times in a submersible. And she showed some snapshots. She said the last time they went down, they didn’t know what they were going to run into, but they ran into — I mean, not literally colliding with — but they saw what’s called a vent at the ocean floor where there are several plates coming together or separating and all this molten material that looked like a volcano coming up, up, up and dispersing into the water. What’s coming up through the vent is hot, dangerously hot, like 400 degrees. It’s from the core of the earth. It’s iron and the other metals that are coming up, and then dispersing. They go all the way to the top of the ocean and float around to the other side of the ocean and feed microbes over in Singapore or somewhere. The ship she was on was off the coast of Mexico.(Note: This is not a scientific description!)
It sounded really psychedelic actually to experience something like that firsthand. And then she was distilling it. She made 30 days worth of pictures for the 30 days she was on the boat. She only went down in this submersible once this time.
Ryan: What an amazing experience.
Roberta: Totally amazing. I think life changing, could be. She’s really very passionate about doing this. The whole art and science combination completely feeds her. And she’s made these beautiful, large and small paintings, which are on display at Bridgette Mayer Gallery, now through Oct. 19. We had a wonderful, sprawling conversation about art and science and I’ll be writing it up soon. She’s definitely a notable artist in Philadelphia. So if you don’t know about Rebecca, I would suggest you go see her show at Bridgette Mayer Gallery.
It wasn’t over the weekend, but we should tell people that we did a studio visit last Thursday with Marta Sanchez. Marta is a Chicana artist originally from San Antonio, Texas, and has been in Philly for some time. Her MFA is from Tyler. Her family, her son, her husband, is here. Marta makes amazing retablo-like art, very passionate, very political — about immigration and the border. San Antonio is pretty much almost on the border, and her mother and father migrated from Mexico, so she’s very passionate about what’s going on, and also about what’s going on in Philadelphia. It was a good visit, and Marta has a show opening Oct. 17, 2024, at the Brandywine Workshop and Museum on South Broad Street, where she’s the Public Engagement Coordinator. Her show is curated by Bill Valerio, the Director of Woodmere Art Museum. So that is worth putting on your calendar. It was very exciting to go to her studio and see how she works, hear her stories, and we’ll tell you more about that. We captured some video and audio.
Apart from that, I babysat my 16-year old grand baby. 16-month. I’m sorry, 16 months.
Ryan: A 16-year-old can handle themselves, I think.
Roberta: Well, I don’t know. That could be argued. She’s 16 months and that’s more fun. Yes. Oh my god. So much fun. She’s just at the point where you can tickle her and she laughs those great baby belly laughs. Oh my God, it’s so great. And she’s walking, so she’s toddling around. It was lots of fun. It’s a lot of up and down though.
Ryan: It’s like grandparent yoga. Think of it that way. You’re getting exercise.
Roberta: Good way to put it.
Ryan: Feeling tired at the end is appropriate. Like any good workout, you’re exhausted. You have to shower after that. Shower after babysitting. Absolutely.
Roberta: On to the News and it took us a minute to get here, Ryan. Today I’ve got, again, four things to talk about in the news. Should I rattle off what they are?
Ryan: All right, I’m ready.
Roberta: Okay. So first you may or may not remember that Artblog had some involvement with the Mummers last year. The Mummers, as in January 1st, the Mummers parade, you know, those Mummers, They are trying to recruit new members to their organization. One of them in particular is trying to recruit — the Golden Sunrise. It’s a very nice fancy brigade. (link above)
They are having a free, participatory costume building workshop on Oct. 20. I went to a costume workshop at their place last April and it’s fascinating and fun. You get to work with sequins and glitter and glue, hot glue! You know, it’s all this stuff that high art doesn’t ever truck in. But it’s art. It’s a different type of art – and it’s making costumes for them to wear on Jan. 1.
And this year’s theme for this particular brigade is Super Mario Brothers. And so now the new costume they’re adding is Princess Peach, which doesn’t mean anything to me, but hey, you Super Mario Brothers players, you’re going to know who that is and you can sign up. There’s an Eventbrite signup for the workshop. All the materials are provided. They have little snacks and beverages for you. It takes a couple hours. It’s fun. If you haven’t done anything with the mummerss and you’re Mummer curious, I would suggest this is a good way to get introduced to the Mummers
Ryan: Mummer curious. I love that. All right. I’m adding that to my list of things.
Roberta: Then I want to say two readers wrote in. First off I want to mention David Richman, who wrote commenting on a previous newsletter. I believe it was where I talked about Jenny Holzer at the Guggenheim. And he said, why did I not mention the Comcast installation that Holzer did?
And he’s right! I didn’t even know it was there. I mean, I knew, I think, when it came out during the pandemic when the building opened. This is in the second Comcast building. Philly has a wonderful Percent for Art program that’s requires art to be installed/commissioned for new or refurbished buildings, in the amount of 1% of the cost of the building. And so there is art in the second Comcast building, as there is in the first Comcast building.
I remember and have seen the art in the first Comcast building. It’s Jonathan Borofsky, I believe, sculpture — those people walking high up on planks. In the second Comcast building, there is a ceiling installation of Jenny Holzer, a scroll, a word crawl. It doesn’t change colors, I don’t think. I haven’t seen it live, just pictures. If you go to their website, you can get a glimpse of what it looks like.
Anyway, thank you David Richman for pointing that out. And he had a great comment about it. He said, ‘It’s pretty cool, if hard on your neck.’ In other words, you have to stare straight up to read it. I guess no couches provided or futons to lie down on. So thank you for that comment, David. And we’re going to run right over and take a look since we’ll be hanging out at Moore College of Art and Design (a block away) a lot coming up.
The second person that wrote in was Steven Lee Climer and he wrote about art and music because at some point we talked about art and music, and I think I mentioned Nancy Herman as an artist whose interview I’m working on right now, and she makes, she wants to make art that is music. That is her goal. Steven Lee Climer commented that he has synesthesia and he’s autistic. He sees colors and images when he makes music, and he smells certain fragrances and sees colors and abstract images. He says, ‘I paint what I see in my brain or compose electronic music based on the arrangements of colors. Visual harmony!!!!’ Steven, is the November artist in residence at Da Vinci Art Alliance and his exhibition is Synesthesia Painting and Music. And he invites you all to come by and take a look and listen and, it should be very cool.
Anyway, that’s reader commentary. Always welcome here. When Libby and I started Artblog, that was our motto, Where feedback is always welcome.
Finally, I want to say several things about money flowing into the arts and culture community. First, the Sachs Program for Arts Innovation at Penn and the Paul Robeson House and Museum have jointly issued $40,000 of grants to West Philadelphia artists. It’s the Sachs/Robeson’s inaugural grant awards. So, congratulations to all of you who received the awards, including, I want to shout out Gabrielle Patterson, who I know because Gabrielle was a student at Penn and she was a student in our Artist and Social Responsibility class at the Village of Arts and Humanities in 2015. So congratulations to all of you and shout out to Sachs and Robeson for their good work to support West Philly art and artists.
And secondly as we speak, Ryan, The Pew Center for Arts and Heritage just announced their 2024 recipients of their grants. $10 million worth of new money coming into artists and arts organizations in the city and region. The big organizatonal recipients are the Barnes, Mural Arts, PAFA. No surprises there. Opera Phila. MOAR. Also there are monies for projects affiliated with the Philly 250 celebration. Any idea what MOAR is? Museum of…
Ryan: MOAR is Museum of the American Revolution.
Roberta: Yes, that makes sense. And then the Pew Fellowships, awards that go to individual artists, are now up to $85,000 a year. Good for you, Pew! Should be up to $100,000. These twelve artists will receive those Pew fellowships:
Mikel Patrick Avery, Bettina Escauriza, Ralph Lemon, Michelle Lopez, Zac Manuel, Shavon Norris, Raúl Romero, Tyshawn Sorey, Chad E. Taylor, Stewart Thorndike, Tshay, Rebecca Wright
So congratulations everybody. I’m really happy. I know you are too, Ryan. We’re very happy to see money coming into the Philly arts community. So congrats everybody. And that’s it. That’s my list.
Ryan: Thank you for the news. For the happenings and going on, Fringe is still continuing, so I want to shout out a fringe show that I’m curious to see. Obviously Fringe and Cannonball are about a lot of performance pieces and this is a dance piece that I want to shout out. It’s “Hacia La Luz,” Towards The Light.
This is running at the Rittenhouse Film Works. Their shows are going to be September 27th, 28th and 29th. That is 219 West Rittenhouse Street, and that looks like a really interesting show worth seeing.
Philly’s Story Fest is coming up on the September 25th and 26th. This is at Bok, and it is a two day event, but it’s the same program on on two different days. Philly Story Fest is journalists and locals. It’s full of storytelling and arts and entertainment. Looks to be a lot of fun there. So take a look at that. Doors open at seven, show at eight.
Then my theater pick and I’ll keep it to three.
Arden Theater Company. POTUS or Behind Every great dumb Ass are seven women Trying to Keep him alive. That sounds like a great show. That runs through October 13th. This is a comedy show. Very much worth seeing. Take a look at that as well. Again, POTUS or behind every great dumb ass are seven women trying to keep him alive at Arden. And those are my three big picks of the week that I think are going to be a, a lot of fun and worth seeing.
And I think I mentioned I guess at the beginning, John Jarboe the Rose Garden is on through the end of the month, through the 29th. It ends September 29th. So if you want to see that, time is coming close. So make sure you see that.
Roberta: I love that — the POTUS at the Arden. And I want to say that’s sort of unusual for Philly Theater, isn’t it, to get so very, very political. I mean, it couldn’t be more topical, right?
Ryan: I think you could put that in any time, quite frankly. I mean, the history of the women behind the power or wherever behind the crown, or however you want to think of it, it long exists. We just never talk about it. So putting it on stage, I think it’s going to be comedic. It’s not even going to be serious because at some point you have to realize just how comical it is. So, you know, even in modern recent memory. Hillary Rodham Clinton wasn’t president, but she was kind of president in the nineties, because Bill seemed to be busy with the interns.
Roberta: Oh, bada boom.
Ryan: Thank you. You know, it’s true. It’s just kind of the way it was. It was unspoken and she clearly was. She wasn’t vice president, but she might as well have been president.
Roberta: Co-President.
Ryan: Yes. She was definitely directing a significant amount. So I think there’s a lot of women who have had major impact that we don’t talk about.
There was a book that I was hearing about just recently about Woodrow Wilson’s second wife and her Impact on his life, and thus the presidency and thus the country. And it’s just a name you don’t know. And or may not know. And the impact they had is substantial, I imagine.
Roberta: Well, I think she actually took over. There was some speculation or maybe it’s factual, that Wilson was not functioning and she actually took over the duties. (Yes, she did! See Wikipedia.)
Roberta: It was during the war (World War 1), so there was nothing they could do.
Ryan: Yeah. It’s really interesting. Like he went to Paris (for the Peace Talks). And was talking about the peace plan, what they wanted to do to end the war. And then he got sick and they didn’t want to admit he got sick. You know it was probably Spanish flu and he was never the same again. Wow. And yeah, I mean, it’s a huge part of that World War I story, Spanish flu. But you can connect the dots to the next war because of his sickness. It’s really interesting. It’s fascinating. Just the small little things connect to make a massive change. So, anyway, yeah, I haven’t read the book, but I was just hearing about it. I’ll have to look up the title. (See links list above)
So, no, I don’t think it’s too political. I think comedy’s a great way to address political things, conversations that are hard. The medicine’s easier to take when there’s laughter surrounding it.
Roberta: Well, I was not criticizing it. I was just saying wasn’t it unusual that there was something so overtly political,
Ryan: In the theater?
Roberta: Yeah.
Ryan: No. I think there’s been a lot of political work. It depends on your perspective. I think if we just think about American politics maybe. But there’s, there’s a lot of politics that, that I see on a regular basis that comes in.
I thinking about this year we saw, or maybe it was last year I saw The Kiss that was an amazing and political show that. Really struck and was a powerful show. Selling Kabul another one. So it depends on your politics, but there’s a lot of politics that happens in theater. I think that’s a great way to express it, and theater personalizes political ideas, too, which is good because so much of politics is just slogans and easy phrases and make America great. It’s just too simple, it’s too much of a simplification of what the embodied experience is. So I think comedy is a great way to make a point. Stick it to the man, literally in this case.
Roberta: Yeah, for sure – comedy and personalizing. The Daily Show, I know that many people — a lot of millennials, including my children — say, “I get my news from The Daily Show”, right? And the Daily Show is comedy, but it’s also news and with a point of view, and it’s a great way to get your news.
Ryan: Speaking of the news and speaking of unsung heroes and women who do amazing jobs in this country, I think about we should have like an Artblog t-shirt with the image of the current Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar.
I think that’d be great because no one would recognize her face. But she’s, I mean, if you ever see her argue or listen, I should say listen to her argue before the Supreme Court, she is powerful. So speaking of unsung women that we don’t talk about.
Roberta: All right. I am not familiar. Okay. Is she an artist?
Ryan: She’s an interesting character because I don’t know too much of her bio, but I believe she got a master’s in creative writing and then did some traveling and I guess life searching out and then went back to Harvard Law. And now a solicitor general.
Roberta: Love it. Love the backstory. She’s a creative writer! That’s great. Well, we’ll put all the information, put a link to her in the transcript. (See links list)
Ryan: Yeah. I’m sure we could find a picture of her and a flag.
Roberta: Haha, no doubt. Her official picture will have a flag in it. Of course.
Ryan: Maybe a USA pin or something.
Roberta: That’s about it for me. So I think we should sign off before we have listener fatigue here, Ryan.
Ryan: Sounds good.
Roberta: Thank you everybody. This is Roberta signing off saying see you next time. Thanks for listening,
Ryan: And this is Ryan, and this has been the Midweek News on Artblog radio. Thanks for listening.
Roberta: Bye
Ryan: Bye.
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