The traveling exhibition featuring contemporary botanical artworks depicting plants discovered and introduced by two generations of the Bartram family is opening today at Bartram’s Garden (54th St & Lindbergh Blvd). The exhibit coincides with Bartram’s Spring Plant Sale (members-only preview of the plant sale is also today) and many of the plants depicted in the artists’ works will be available for purchase during the sale, which will run throughout the weekend.

The exhibition will be installed in the gallery of the restored Barn, built in 1775 by John Bartram, and the oldest barn in Philadelphia. It will be on display through May 24, then will travel to further venues throughout the southeastern US. For more information, go here.

Bartram’s Spring Plant Sale will be open for general public this Saturday and Sunday (May 4 & 5), 10 a.m. – 4 p.m. The plant sale is an annual fundraiser for the garden. For more information on what plants are available for sale this weekend, check out this page.

Philly-focused weekly online mag Flying Kite’s “On the Ground” initiative establishes temporary media hubs in vacant or under-utilized storefront and seeks to help transform the selected neighborhood through news coverage, events and social media for 90 days. Their current neighborhood camp is in the People’s Emergency Center building at 4017 Lancaster Ave, and as part of the “On the Ground” initiative, Flying Kite is presenting an inaugural art exhibition, Transformation 19104. It includes some of West Philadelphia’s most important artists working across multiple mediums. The show opens this Friday, June 8 in conjunction with Second Friday on Lancaster Ave. The reception and exhibition will take place from 6-9 p.m.

“From fiber and textiles to found sculptures, the Transformation of the space will showcase the neighbors who have been working and creating community and new art movements in their homes and studios,” says curator Bonnie MacAllister, who also curated “Women of Lancaster Ave.” at 4017 Lancaster in the fall as part of the corridor-wide LOOK! exhibition. From Flying Kite: “Ellen Tiberino and Wendy Graves-Papadopoulos, two exhibitors in Women of Lancaster Ave., return for Transformation. Tiberino’s brother Gabe, part of the celebrated local family of Tiberino artists, is also part of the lineup. In addition, Jeff Dentz of Traction Company, the collaborative workspace and art center at 41st and Haverford, will exhibit.”All art in the show was created by artists who live or hold a studio in the 19104 zip code and all works are said to “represent transformation in their own way.”

Here are the artists’ bios (from Flying Kite):

Ndokaa Bundu
This native of 19149 was raised Lutheran, attended public schools and a private liberal arts college. He studied in Avignon (spring 1978), taught science in Gbarma, Liberia (1980-1981) and lived in the 11215 with a friend’s sister, winter & fall, 1983 before moving to 19104 in 1983, working in 19140 since 2001. Now an anarcho-marxist, Bundu is married with three cats, two Honda civics and one 3-speed bicycle.

Alexa de los Reyes
Alexa de los Reyes has studied color theory, portraiture, abstract and representational painting at Massachusetts College of Art, the Liga de Arte in San Juan, Puerto Rico, and the School of Visual Arts. She has painted portraits and interior murals on commission for clients in Boston, New York, Washington, D.C., and San Juan. After graduating from Harvard with a degree in History & Literature, Alexa worked as a writer and editor for several years in different mediums, contexts, and countries. She began painting seriously while living in South America in the late 1990s and has since made the passion into a discipline. Alexa currently resides in West Philadelphia with her husband and two young boys.

Catherine Gontarek
Gontarek’s mixed media paintings on board evoke a sense of impermanence through images that depict objects and places that seem to float in and out of hand painted patterns. Working on smaller panels that are then mounted together to form a larger whole, seems to add to the ephemeral feel of her paintings. In one piece an image of an empty chair is coupled with a casual rendering of her son. Gontarek’s work leads one to assume that the artist looks to her immediate surroundings for inspiration, resulting in paintings that seem to somehow blend intimacy with design. Catherine Gontarek lives in West Philadelphia with her family.

Wendy Graves-Papadopoulos
Graves-Papadopoulos has lived in West Powelton for 15 years. She volunteered at the University Arts League for 5 years. She is the co-founder of the Satellite cafe at 50th & Baltimore. Her current work involves hand-dyed natural fabrics which are assembled into blankets. She believes that there is something inherently valuable in art that you can use, i.e. ornamental utilitarianism. She also works in ceramics and silversmithing.

Et Green
Green is a graphic designer and illustrator from Philadelphia.

Bonnie MacAllister
MacAllister (WCA member) is a multimedia performance artist who works in oil, watercolor, film, theatre, and mixed media. She has recently shown her visual artwork at the Delaware Art Museum, Galeria 6 (Mexico), the Center for Green Urbanism (DC), University of Pennsylvania, Montclair State University (NJ), and Florissant Valley Art Gallery in St. Louis, MO. She studied under Jacques Derrida, Helene Cixous, and Agnes Varda. She is a Fulbright-Hays recipient to Ethiopia and a Pushcart Prize nominee. She has lived in Sanders Park since 2004.

Jeff Dentz
Dentz graduated from the College of General Studies at University of Pennsylvania and received a Certificate in Printmaking from the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts. He currently teaches at Fleisher Art Memorial and exhibits his work locally. His work is part of the Print and Picture Collection at the Free Library of Philadelphia and the Printmaking Department Archives Collection at PaFA.

Maggie Machledt
Though born and raised in Indianapolis, Maggie has called West Philadelphia her home for nearly 4 years. Maggie is a papercutting artist who has expanded her craft to include creating botanically-shaped jewelry from flat bike tubes. She earned her Masters in Art Therapy from Drexel in 2011, and currently works with adults coping with chronic mental illnesses in North Philadelphia.

Sofya Mirvis
Unexpected interactions of material and image is the consistent motive behind my creative process. I am interested in all that lies beneath the surface of a landscape, person, or object, representing what can be felt but seldom seen or touched.Michael Persico
Persico is a professional photographer living and working in Philadelphia. He specializes in clean, thoughtful imagery that evokes feeling for, and from, his subjects. When not behind the lens, he’s happy spending time maintaining his ’66 Honda Motorcycle or making a break to beach for a few good waves on his classic longboard. When pressed to name his artistic inspirations, he cryptically says, “I am inspired by photographers of the past, and motivated by photographers of the present.” Michael has shot for New York Magazine, Anthem magazine, Plan B Magazine, Ace Fu Records, Anti Records, Philly Style and the Philadelphia Weekly.

Sara Suleman
Suleman was born in Karachi, Pakistan.  She works in various media ranging from photography to installation. Her works are tied to observations from daily life which are then abstracted and re-imagined. She has shown her work in exhibitions including Gender Games, International House Philadelphia 2012, Erasing Borders, Queens Museum of Art, and Aicon Gallery, New York, 2011, PECO Art in the Air program 2011, Newark Open Doors project 2011, and in various Film Festivals, such as the Los Angeles Asian Pacific Film Festival, San Fancisco Women’s International Film Festival, and Philadelphia Asian American Film Festival. She is an active member of Women’s Caucus for the Art, Philadelphia Chapter and received a grant from PIFVA, Philadelphia Independent Film and Video Association in 2012.

Ellen Tiberino
Tiberino can claim a connection to the Lancaster corridor since birth. She is the daughter of distinguished artists Ellen Powell Tiberino and Joe Tiberino. She studied visual arts at Fleisher Art Memorial and Moore College as a child and during high school at Creative and Performing arts she studied the performing arts of drama dance and singing. Over the past five years, as well as teaching she directed her main energies to sculptural relief glass work (mural and easel size). She worked at times with artists Joseph Brenman and Gail Gruniger Scuderi on different mosaic mural projects and the community peace pole project (a joint project between the Ellen Powell Tiberino Memorial Museum and the West Park Cultural and Opportunity Center where students clay masks were affixed to a pole in mosaic.) Ellen curates shows at The Ellen Powell Tiberino Memorial, named for her mother and where she has executed two major murals “And Still I Rise” (2007) and “Tomorrows a New Day” (2008). She is currently working on several small mosaic pieces for upcoming shows.

Gabe Tiberino
Born and raised in Philadelphia, Tiberino is a mural artist who was truly born into art. Encouraged by his family as a child he was exposed to a variety of art forms. Tiberino graduated from the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts in 2005. Throughout his schooling, he assisted many of Philadelphia’s mural artist. He has assisted over twenty murals and has been the lead in several of his own. His paintings have been in numerous one man and group shows throughout the region. Tiberino gives us visual images, in acrylic and oil paint journalizing street experiences, thoughts, emotions and projected dreams. His work retains the freshness of direct observation. Reflecting his interest in rendering art in a more public way, all his paintings are concerned with people, locals and dealing with art as part of the real world. Clarity is his virtue.

– Emma Eisenberg

Happiness. That’s a hard thing to think about. I think there is some moment in time when childhood simplicity slips away and the American “happy chase” takes over. And it is a race unto the death.

Americans are obsessed with happiness. Parents claim that all they want is for their children to be happy. Adolescents pine away for the guy or the girl or thing or the status that will make them happy. College students turn to their shrinks for answers, asking, “Why can’t I just be happy?” But how often do we take the chance to stop, look inside ourselves, and truly ask, am I happy? How often do we ask not what people are doing with their lives, but how they feel doing it? What is happiness and what really makes us happy? How do we control our happiness? And how does society shape the way we envision happiness? These are the questions The Happy Show, a current exhibit at the Institute of Contemporary Art (36th & Sansom), asks its visitors.

Walking through The Happy Show is like walking through the inside of a brain, designer Stefan Sagmeister’s brain. Small tidbits of handwritten commentary and parenthetical thought bubbles are sketched across the physical space of the exhibit, annotating the walls, stairs, railings, elevators, and corners. Next to the stairs leading up to the main space of the exhibit was a note in typed print requesting, “Please do not climb or sit on the stairs.” Below the classic instruction, written in messy handwriting between parenthesis was, “you may Look DuMB.” And the exhibit attempts to capture this sense of personality and subjectivity with which each individual mind approaches the world, formulating constant mental commentary while navigating through life.

A flier in the lobby of the ICA informed me that Happy Show was on the second floor of the institute. As I climbed the steps I realize that there were words painted across the indent of the steps. When I reached the top and looked down I could make out the complete affirmation across the steps, “PEOPLE TO CHANGE.” The exhibit subtly revealed its goal; it set out to change the way viewers think about happiness. Sketched along the railing was a message recording that the ancient Indian language Sanskrit contains sixteen words happiness while German includes none. Sagmeister asks, “Does this mean that Indians are happier? Or do they just know how to talk about it properly?” These two antithetical nuanced language differences embody divergent approaches to the inadequacy of language. Sanskrit grasps at an almost endless list of words, each failing to fully express happiness precisely, while German simply doesn’t try. Sagmeister enters the same quagmire, but he arms himself with tools beyond language. He admits, “I am usually rather bored with definitions,” but happiness is the “one thing we all want but never seem to be able to get for very long.” So he tries to pinpoint it through an interactive exhibit that works on all of the senses.

The exhibit manages to interweave a sense of familiarity with clinical psychoanalysis. The first quote leading up the stairs to the exhibit informs, “Research psychologist Jonathan Haidt describes the mind as a small rider, the conscious, sitting on a giant elephant, the unconscious. The rider thinks he is in charge and can the elephant where to go, but the elephant has his own ideas.” And the exhibit is a mental ride. I felt my own mind riding along Sagmeister’s as I made my way through the designs. Before entering the exhibit I was asked to draw my own symbol of happiness on an index card with a sharpie. The collective explanations of happiness offered by the visitors are recorded online. I drew two hands intertwined within a heart. Others drew pictures of a homemade bacon and eggs breakfast, a piece of cake with the inscription, “cake makes me happy, for four minutes,” and a graph with a life represented by a wavy line between the axis happy and sad, among others. Before entering the main section, I faced a large picture frame. Written beneath it was, “Smile.” I put my face through the frame and as I smiled widely words began to rise and light up from the floor in front of me until shining from the ground was the message, “Step Up To It.” It urged me to own my own happiness, to actively smile, to be happy.

The next design was a series of video screens. The first displayed an old woman’s naked and wrinkled body sitting cross-legged. Different shots of the woman displayed her body in different positions with words painted in black across her skin. The message spelled out “It’s pretty much,” across the top, “impossible” across her breasts, “to please” along her long legs, and “everybody” across her arms and chest. The next video screen recorded Sagmeister’s transformation of New York City. He went around to different familiar spots and changed them, if only slightly. In the window of a coffee shop he painted “used,” in a supermarket he wrote, “time,” with tuna cans, he wrote “taking” across the side of cop car. Then he wrote “IT” in honey across his chest and lied down in the summer street until bees covered his skin. Three of his friends swam across the Hudson river, spelling out “for” across their backs. These different alterations eventually wrote, “Over time I get used to everything and start taking it for granted,” all across New York City. Sagmeister’s designs challenge the status quo within society. He explains that he once saw a beautiful eighty-year old woman dressed in black on the subway. He felt the urge to tell her how beautiful she was, but he chickened out and she left the train at her stop. Suddenly he found himself racing off the train after her. “You are fantastic,” he told her.  When she smiled, he promised himself that he would continue doing this in daily life, sharing his thoughts with those around him and creating simple connections with others. A small change he made to overcome his social anxiety was asking a woman holding a coffee cup where she bought her coffee rather than continuing aimlessly in search of a coffee shop. Why isn’t that normal?

The next screen displayed the message, “Having guts always works out for me.” “Having” was spelled out in white cloth in a forest through the trees, “guts” was written in furniture in a band’s garage practice space, “always” was written in a marker across white tulips that slowly wilted as the movie continued, “works out” was shaped by leaves piled up on an outdoor basketball court that blew away with a gust of wind, “for” was written in little cut up pieces of hotdog meat, and finally the camera moved through a party of dancing and chatting people before finding “me” spelled out in a tower of playing cards, lost and neglected in the corner of the room. Sagmeister understands social anxiety. He expresses it and articulates it on screen, slowly impressing his message in his viewer’s mind’s eye. As I watched the screen the background music played a soft melody. The lyrics of the song were “this empty space deep down inside makes me feel like I’ve been eaten alive.”

At the center of the exhibit is a platform with a bicycle on it. I climbed onto the bike and began to pedal. Before my eyes words slowly lit up, spelling out, “Actually doing the things I set out to do increases my satisfaction.” I had to pedal hard and diligently for the entire message to appear. I couldn’t give up. Then finally in bright read lights the final message appeared, demanding, “Seek discomfort.” A final message of the exhibit was, “Now is better.” This caption was spelled out in cups of overflowing coffee, eggs cracking and splattering, and milk sputtering from small containers. You can miss your chance in life.

Before entering the exhibit I came face to face with a disclaimer. “This exhibition will not make you happier. It will not take away your anxieties. If you regularly weep into your pillow at night, visiting the ICA won’t keep you from doing so. These pieces will not stop you from having dreadful thoughts during your morning shower.” No, the exhibit won’t solve your problems. But it just might give you a new perspective on your own emotions, it might break you free from your own mind for a few minutes, and it might help you realize that the world is not under your control but what you do and how you think can be changed at every moment. Find out for yourself.

– Erica Kimmel

The Happy Show. Through August 12, 2012. Institute of Contemporary Art, 118 S. 36th Street. Hours: Wednesday, 11am – 8pm, Thursday and Friday, 11am – 6pm, Saturday and Sunday, 11am – 5pm, Monday and Tuesday, closed.
 

West Philly puppeteer Beth Nixon and her Ramshackle Enterprises have been creating puppets, organizing puppet and clown shows and participating in parades and pageants in the city for more than a decade. Don’t miss her Retrospectacular show opening tomorrow (Thu, April 5) from 6-9 p.m. at the AIR Gallery at 4007 Chestnut Street.

At the show you can read and fondle relics from Beth’s first Philly performance at the 2000 post RNC Puppet Uprising to this winter’s collaboration with Sarah Lowry in the creation of “Below and Beyond.” Puppets, masks, suitcase theaters, illustrations and cardboard constructions will be on display and almost everything will be for sale! Also enjoy snacks, door prizes, and favorite songs from puppet shows of old performed by Beth and Morgan FP Andrews (beginning at 7:30 p.m.).

If you can’t make it to the opening, you can stop by at the closing event on April 26 (6-9 p.m.). Free flying grandparent puppets will go to the first 15 guests who come to each event.

Gallery hours include the first three Fridays in April from 4-7 p.m. or by appointment (215-779-8553).

 
University City Arts League brings us West Philly Abstraction, presenting eight West Philadelphia artists whose works have been exhibited internationally and are part of major museum collections, and who all participate in the abstract tradition.

The opening will be held this Friday, March 9 from 6-8 p.m. at 4226 Spruce Street.

From UCAL:

Marina Borker began as a painter but moved into the realm of stained glass. Focusing on the leading of the glass, perhaps more so than the colored glass itself, Borker’s recent pieces exist in space like transparent line drawings. Borker holds an MFA from Tyler School of Art, and her work has been exhibited at Vox Populi, Nexus Foundation for Today’s Art, and Fleisher Art Memorial.

Robert Goodman‘s densely painted works pull the viewer into a swirling vortex of color and gestural energy.  Currently teaching at Moore College of Art, he holds an MFA from Tyler School of Art and was the recipient of a 2008 Pennsylvania Council on the Arts Fellowship for Painting.

Paul King takes a contemporary yet unabashedly expressionist approach to abstraction. His gestural canvases nevertheless show a firm devotion to the sensitive and disciplined painterliness of Cezanne. Paul King’s work has been shown regularly in the Philadelphia area for the past two decades and is in the permanent collection of the Woodmere Art Museum. He teaches at The University of the Arts.

Alice Oh, winner of a Pew Fellowship in the Arts, makes paintings that are built up from small color shapes and components. They evoke natural growth and progression as a metaphor for contemporary human living. Alice Oh’s works are in the collection of The Philadelphia Museum of Art and Yale University. She holds an MFA from Yale University and currently teaches at Moore College of Art.

Caroline Letham Santa traverses a territory somewhere between painting, drawing, and arguably, sculpture. Her recent works made of paper that has been found, aged, distressed, folded, and, as the artist states, “stored” and “transported” result in visual experiences that exist outside a realm of verbal definition. Caroline Letham Santa received her MFA from the University of Pennsylvania She has exhibited in curated group shows regionally and has had two solo exhibitions with the collective Tiger Strikes Asteroid.

Tremain Smith makes hybridized oil/encaustic paintings whose imagery and color hang together in building-block-like structures. She interprets the lines and planes she creates as bridges or passageways; doors, walls and floor plans to inner realities. Smith’s work is in the permanent collection of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, as well as numerous corporate and private collections.

Todd Keyser collides strategies of abstraction with the ultimate form of illusion: photography. Layering abstract painting actions upon found photographs of caves, Keyser chips away at the perennial conceptual dichotomy of seeing versus belief. Keyser holds an MFA from the Maryland Institute College of Art. Recent exhibition venues for his work include Rebekah Templeton Gallery (Philadelphia) and the Delaware Center for Contemporary Art in Wilmington.

Douglas Witmer takes an intuitive approach that combines simple geometric imagery, emphatic color, and subtle manipulation of surface physicality. It is an inquiry into the materiality of seeing, perception, feeling and memory. Douglas Witmer holds an MFA from the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. His work has been the subject of 10 solo shows nationally and curated group shows internationally, including such venues at MoMA PS1 in New York.

– Emma Eisenberg

Don’t miss this pretty amazing exhibit at Green Line Cafe on Locust (4426 Locust Street). The cafe has launched the Screens ‘N’ Spokes art show that benefits multiple sclerosis research and the cycling team that promotes the cause.

The exhibition features a very cool selection of screen prints by a variety of North American artists who created their work especially for this cause. The prints can also be viewed and purchased on Etsy. All of the proceeds from the sales will go to the National MS Society.

Here is some more information on the Screens ‘N’ Spokes project and the people behind it.