If you like the idea of the huge warehouse located at 3848 Lancaster Ave turning into a multi-use neighborhood event space for flea markets, food vendors, craft fairs, musical showcases, farmers markets, town fairs, expos, extravaganzas, contests, championships, food events, community events, karate demos, etc., you can show your support at tonight’s party at the space. The party called Lanxgiving will include performances by four bands – Pattern is Movement, Pile, Hound, and Amanda X. And hot food from Poi Dog and Ranch Road Tacos will be served with free cold drinks.

Entrance is from the rear of the building on Warren St. The event begins at 7 p.m. and here‘s its Facebook page.

Art part of “American Queen” series (Photo courtesy of Davis)

“Too many Basquiats. Not enough new artists.”

Black acrylic etches the lines of the first five words atop three stacked yellow crowns that run down the canvas’s vertical. The letters of the last two words—arguably the most prolific—are bold white on top a banner of black at the end, serving as the eyes of a symbolic queen. The background is a sea of baby blue with random strokes of white, red, navy and yellow.

In a way, Tiffany Davis’s anchor of her “American Queen” series—and the series itself, which includes “Never Condense Art,” a spin on Andy Warhol’s infamous soup cans—is both reverence and dismissal. For her series, the 29-year-old West Philadelphia artist (who goes by American Queen TJD (Facebook page)) takes elements from her favorite artists—like Jackson Pollack’s splashes or Jean-Michael Basquiat’s crown—and treats them as foundations for a larger purpose. Davis then washes the distinct trademarks away with her own deeply felt abstract expressionism—each canvas a kaleidoscope of color and words that call to a greater mission.

“Anybody can reproduce anything that Basquiat did, but why would you want to do it?,” Davis said, talking from her hotel room on Sunday as she waited for the Eagles game to begin. “I can probably make a name for myself [if I called] myself the female Basquiat, but why should I have to do that?”

Davis, who works during the day as a program director at Drexel University, hung up the hats of her successful fine art-cum-clothing line Cocky Persona last year in order to concentrate on the canvas-based visual work. It’s art that projects a message, with all canvas infected with the moments taking place in her life or in the world at large. (Her next string of pieces will reflect her recent trial — losing her rented South Philly home this past weekend to a fire. The day of our conversation, she was in the process of moving back to her childhood home at 56^th and Larchwood.) You can read it in the words that brand each canvas, like “Waste no time. Live,” “Breathe. Passion proves itself,” “Love you first,” or “Worth, state of mind”—positive reinforcements from the gut.  Continue Reading

Due to routine maintenance work, Trolley Routes 11, 13, 34 and 36 will be diverted to 40th and Market Streets, starting at 5:00 a.m. Sunday, Nov. 24 through 5:00 a.m. Monday, Nov. 25, according to an advisory released by SEPTA. Route 10 Trolleys will be diverted to 40th and Filbert Streets.

During this time, passengers can transfer at 40th Street to the Market-Frankford Line for travel to and from Center City. For more information, visit: http://www.septa.org/.

On Spring Garden Street between 35th and 36th, 12 garden beds line the perimeter of the Dornsife Center for Neighborhood Partnerships. Heads of cabbage still sway above the planks of wood, but the growing season is over. Soon the last few crops will be harvested, leaving the garden empty until next Spring.

But if a few Drexel University students have their way, the community will pick up the reigns and keep the garden alive for years.

For the most part, the garden was maintained through the growing season by the Drexel Urban Growers (DUG), a small group of students committed to urban farming and sustainability. The group began by building an urban apiary (beehive) on the campus garden at 33rd and Race, but they have since moved their work off the campus and into Mantua.

The Triskeles Foundation had already designated funding to build a garden at the Dornsife Center, but DUG simultaneously expressed interest and ended up helping with the construction and taking over as the garden’s caretaker. The only requirement by Triskeles was that half of all produce be donated to the community.

Christian Brown, president of DUG, noted that the group ended up donating more like 95 percent. “The community loved the produce. They’d often be lined up right when we started harvesting at 11 a.m.,” Brown said. “There was always more demand than supply.” Continue Reading

Project MEOW trappers like to make certain that their feral cats are well cared for during their spay or neuter surgery. Here’s Merlot, a newcomer to an established colony, being held in a warmed towel while he recovers from anesthesia. While PAWS is often used for local feral cat spay and neuters, The Spayed Club in Sharon Hill will hold feral cats overnight, which helps trappers make certain their cats are mostly recovered before being returned to them.

If you have too many unowned cats on your block, why not consider getting in touch with some of your neighbors and getting involved? Project MEOW can show you how to trap, may be able to provide transportation and recovery, and has traps to loan with a small deposit. It takes a team, and a lot of like-minded neighbors to solve a problem, but if many people volunteer to trap on their own blocks, very soon you will begin to see a lot less stray cats and kittens wandering around.

Project MEOW volunteers have reduced the numbers of kittens born every year on their own streets, often working alone or with one other neighbor. Want to stop the tide of spring kittens? Contact info@projectmeow.org to see how starting now can make a huge difference during the 2014 “kitten season.”

(Project MEOW’s Tracylea Byford contributed to this post. Photo credit: Dr. Sarah Alexander of The Spayed Club in Sharon Hill)

The Woodlands.

An expansive swathe of history, The Woodlands is a majestic estate that is as overawing as it is rousing.

Once home to famous Philadelphia lawyer Andrew Hamilton, The Woodlands on 40^th Street and Woodland Avenue has transformed over the centuries from a 250-acre tract to a 53-acre manor featuring neoclassical architecture and lush greenery. And now the famous grounds, which made the National Historic Landmark District registry in 2006, is the inspiration of Elizabeth Gilbert’s new novel, The Signature of All Things (Viking), released last month.

Set in Philadelphia, The Signature of All Things is a tale of botanical history set over 120 years (from 1760 to 1880), with the main character family, the Whittakers, living at White Acre—the fictional manifestation of The Woodlands. According to her blog post on The Woodlands’ website, Gilbert—the novelist behind the wildly successful memoir-cum-movie Eat, Pray, Love—was inspired by the grandeur of The Woodlands, with particular focus on the carriage house and basement, which became a private botanical study and bedroom of the head housekeeper, respectively, in Gilbert’s first novel in 13 years. “So much of The Woodlands ended up in my novel—providing me with marvelous details which, I believe, help the book spring to life,” she writes.

“The Woodlands has now become so intrinsically entwined in my mind with White Acre that I can scarcely tell the two apart. I’ve been so grateful, as well, to the welcome that the curators of this great American treasure have given me — to the grounds, to the rooms, to the history,” she continues. “My hope is that my imagined story will draw very real readers to this very real place, so that The Woodlands will continue to get the appreciation it so richly deserves!”

Originally purchased by Andrew Hamilton in 1735, The Woodlands didn’t become the grand parkland it now is until 1786—20 years after Andrew’s grandson William inherited the grounds. That year, he built The Woodlands mansion with matching carriage house and stable, and “reshaped [it] to reflect contemporary English picturesque landscape and horticultural ideals.” Nestled on the Schuylkill River’s west bank, The Woodlands now features an elaborate Victorian rural cemetery, created in 1840, that is the resting place of over 30,000 people.

The Woodlands is open to the public from dawn to dusk. Pick up Gilbert’s novel, The Signature of All Things, in bookstores or online.

–Annamarya Scaccia