Delaware artist Rolando Corpus‘s oil paintings were on view at The Grand Opera House in Wilmington for last month’s Art Loop. Several Wilmington locations were featured in the paintings including the Van Buren Street Bridge, Delaware Art Museum, and the fountain in Brandywine Park.
Larissa Ranbom‘s small works, on view at The Delaware Contemporary for We Can Use The Rain, encourage a closer look. The embroidered paintings are also a reminder to take time to look more closely at the natural world around us.
From the museum:
We Can Use The Rain is an exploration of growth through the year, from the redbuds in early spring through the vibrance of summer to the geometry of autumn milkweed pods and cacti grown indoors in the winter. It’s not only carefully tended garden flowers that are sustained by rain, but also the honeysuckle and dogwood that otherwise thrive with little attention. While they may not be mobile, they still change rapidly, taking the spotlight for a while and then fading to be supplanted by the next to bloom.
The flora (and fungus) on display were found in and around Wilmington – whether in a meticulously curated botanical garden or greenhouse, greeting passersby from a front yard, in an out of the way spot in a park, or growing enthusiastically in a neglected patch by the highway. The viewer is encouraged to consider how what grows around us reflects the communities we cultivate. Stitch by stitch, these works closely examine plant life, remembering that no matter where we are, we can all use the rain.
This exhibition is on view until 10/31/26.
These murals were created in 2020 on the Union Transfer building in Philadelphia by NYC artists John “Crash” Matos, Chris “Daze” Ellis and Lady Pink and Philly-based artists and muralists Adam Crawford and Andréa Grasso.
More details on the project can be found on the Mural Arts website.
Keith Garcia, “Stand Strong” 2026, Acrylic on canvas
MaxxMoses, “Heads on Fire”, 2008
Harrison Doyle, “The Medium is the Message”, 2026
“Hands Up”, 2014, by Leon Rainbow, who also curated the exhibition
Currently at Delaware Art Museum, Walls of Resistance: Art as Activism celebrates the work of more than seventeen artists whose work incorporates aspects of graffiti.
From the museum:
Walls of Resistance: Art as Activism explores graffiti as more than a visual language. Graffiti is a way of claiming space, celebrating identity, and giving form to unheard voices. The exhibition brings together artists with a range of experiences and styles, and it considers how creativity can respond to the world around us. Graffiti can incorporate political statements, personal stories, and cultural pride, or can simply be the act of leaving a mark. Walls of Resistance invites each artist to interpret the theme of graffiti culture in their own way. We invite viewers to consider these varied types of expression and how each can encourage curiosity and inspiration.
The exhibition will be on view until 10/25/26.
This Saturday (10/17) the museum is hosting the 4th Annual Hip Hop Cultural Summit: Art as Activism, presented in partnership with AllHipHop and Guerrilla Republik in conjunction with Stop the Violence Coalition, Inc.
From the museum about the event:
This free, all-ages event brings together artists, Hip Hop legends, performers, and community leaders to celebrate Hip Hop’s five elements and explore its deep connections to creative expression, activism, and social change.
This year we’re highlighting Hip Hop as both a cultural force and a tool for activism. DelArt welcomes Hip Hop legend, Rock and Roll Hall of Famer, and Public Enemy co-founder Chuck D, along with Darryl “Cornbread” McCray, the Philadelphia native widely recognized as a pioneer of modern graffiti. Experience dance performances, live DJ sets, an MC Battle, panel discussions, book signings, vendors, community conversations, and more throughout the Museum.
The Recap is back and discussing art shows from the past, Rocky, The Odyssey, poetry, and how art can help us feel seen and also inspire us to persevere through our challenges.
Check it out here!
Matt Kresling, “The Devil’s Bathtub”, 2026
Egevaerk, “Waiting for the Storm”, and “Weather Change” 2026, both taken on the High Coast in Sweden
Matt Kresling, “Glacial Till Revealed by the Erosion of the Drumlin at Chimney Bluffs, Near Lake Ontario”, 2026
At the Edge, on view at John William Gallery in Wilmington as part of a collaboration between the Wendell Castle Workshop, HB381 Gallery, and the Wilmington Film Festival, includes photographs by filmmaker Matt Kresling and the Danish artists and furniture designers Mette Bentzen and Lasse Kristensen, also known as Egevaerk. The artists photographed natural formations found in both Scandinavia and the Great Lakes region near the workshop for inspiration and with Kresling created the documentary Path about their work and the residency. The works created at the Wendell Castle Workshop were on view at HB381 in NYC over the summer.
Tonight, 10/7/26, is the opening reception for the exhibition, with a screening of Path at 6pm. The exhibition will be on view until 10/11/26.
More from the gallery and Project Director Kathrine Page:
…The residency became a critical exploration of the deep geographical and cultural connection between the two continents. Working along the shores of Lake Ontario, the artists searched for stones that embodies qualities central to their practice: a reverence for nature in transformation, an awareness of water’s ancient and shaping force, and an appreciation for the mystery and paradox inherent in the sea. They ultimately selected rocks whose fluid contours revealed the incremental effects of tides and whose visible strata suggested the slow thaw of a disintegrating glacier. Inspired by these specimens, they created two large-scale, stack-laminated, hand-carved sculptural furniture works, measuring four and five feet in height.
This exhibition of photographs documenting the residency draws on a visual language shaped by an aesthetic connection to glacial formations and landscapes of confluence and exchange. It explores emotional intersections and celebrates the threshold where atmosphere and materiality meet. The photographs reflect shared characteristics of the landscapes of Denmark and the Great Lakes region, while highlighting the creativity that emerges from this geographical kinship.
At the Edge also celebrates the role of intuition as a catalyst for artistic discovery and breakthrough. At its heart, the exhibition offers a meditation on the collaborative residency that brought together furniture designers and filmmakers in an exploration of landscape, material. memory, and place.
Accompanying the exhibition at the Wilmington Film Festival is the documentary film, Path, by Matt Kresling in partnership with Nordic filmmakers in Denmark. Path documents the design team Egevaerk’s journey from Denmark to their five-week residency of artistic discovery in Rochester, NY where they designed, built, and crafted sculptures in the workshop of the late legendary artist Wendell Castle. Far from the Danish traditions and expectations that had shaped their craft to this point, they set out to find their own path. This is a film about craftsmanship and the courage to break with the familiar forces of nature- far greater than us all.
Happy news for cat lovers and fans of the original Welcome to Fishtown mural (pictured below), the artists Evan Lovett of Visual Urban Renewal & Transformation (VURT) and Kristin Scholz, (SEA OF DOOM) have created two new cat murals outside of Barcade‘s Fishtown location in Philadelphia. The original mural, which also appeared in the television series Dispatches from Elsewhere, was replaced by an apartment building in 2023.
On the other side of a wooden fence you’ll find the second mural, a cat night scene with more of an emphasis on Scholz’s artistic style.
Mural by Kristin Scholz, image via her website Sea of Doom
The original “Welcome to Fishtown Mural” by Evan Lovett and Jimmy Glossback, image courtesy of Streets Dept
Lovett is currently raising funds to recreate Prince of Front Street, another of his animal murals in Fishtown that has been obstructed by a building. That work, created with Jimmy Glossblack, who also worked on the first mural, features a large pigeon. More information here.
Looking up at the sky from outside Villa Albertine, the French Institute for Culture and Education’s headquarters in NYC, is this lovely statue of Le Petit Prince, a character from the book of the same name by Antoine de Saint Exupéry. Created by French sculptor Jean-Marc de Pas, it was installed in 2023 for the 80th anniversary of the book which was published in 1943.
In Le Petit Prince, or The Little Prince, a young prince from a very small planet lands on Earth and recounts his adventures to an aircraft pilot who is stranded in the Sahara desert after a crash. Through the prince’s stories Exupéry explores themes of love, loneliness, loss, and human nature.
The Misfits (1961) – UK Trailer
With ghosts from the past lingering, the characters in director John Huston‘s 1961 film The Misfits are trying to survive in a world they’ve lost connection to. In a role written for her by her husband, playwright Arthur Miller, Marilyn Monroe stars as Roslyn, a recently divorced woman in Reno who attracts the attention of three troubled men who think she might be their salvation, despite the her having has issues of her own. Clark Gable plays a womanizing older cowboy, Eli Wallach is a former WWII pilot and mechanic, and Montgomery Clift arrives later as a charismatic rodeo performer who is down on his luck. The group eventually decides to head off into the Nevada desert to capture a group of wild horses in the film’s most dramatic scene. Shot in black and white, it’s visually stunning, and all of the actors, including Thelma Ritter as Roslyn’s landlord and friend, put in exceptional performances.
Watching The Misfits, it’s hard not to also be reminded of the actors’ lives outside of the film, and what was to come. While writing her character, Miller used aspects of Monroe’s past and personality. This mixture of fact and fiction feels present in her performance and was complicated by her health struggles, substance abuse, and the continuing problems in her marriage to Miller. They divorced soon after, and within a year and a half, Monroe died, at 36, from a drug overdose. Clark Gable, who has some physically demanding scenes in the film, had a heart attack two days after the film was completed and died ten days after that. He was 59 years old. Montgomery Clift’s self-destructive behavior and substance abuse issues led to his death in 1966, at the age of 45.
Several photographers from Magnum photo agency were hired to shoot the making of the film. It’s an incredible list of famous photographers that includes Henri Cartier-Bresson, Inge Morath, Eve Arnold, Bruce Davidson, Cornell Capa, Ernst Haas, and Erich Hartmann. In Magnum’s On Set series, Inge Morath and Arthur Miller discuss working on set, and in another Eve Arnold‘s work is highlighted. Arthur Miller would later go on to marry Morath in 1962.
US actress Marilyn Monroe on the Nevada desert going over her lines for a difficult scene she is about to play with Clarke Gable in the film “The Misfits” by John Huston. Nevada. USA. 1960. © Eve Arnold | Magnum Photos
Inge Morath | Set of “The Misfits”. Clark Gable and Marilyn Monroe. Reno, Nevada. USA. 1960. © Inge Morath | Magnum Photos
Mark Rothko “Untitled (Yellow on Orange) no. 579”, 1957, Oil on canvas
Mark Rothko was born today, September 25th, in 1903. One of several Rothko paintings using shades of orange and yellow, Untitled (Yellow on Orange) no. 579, was on view at the Palm Springs Art Museum in 2019 as part of the group exhibition, Shaping Vision: Impressionism to Abstract Expressionism.
From the Palm Springs Art Museum about the work:
Although Rothko is closely associated with Abstract Expressionism, his methods and intentions contrast strikingly with others in the group including Willem de Kooning and Jackson Pollock. Instead of the highly gestural styles of these artists, Rothko typically applied his colors in thin, glowing clouds of paint that eliminate all traces of the brush. In “Untitled (Yellow and Orange) no. 579”, a misty rectangle of yellow floats on a background of saturated reddish-orange. With minimal means, Rothko suggests a vast space that absorbs the viewer in its calm and sensuous hues. Highly literate and articulate, Rothko wrote that he sought in painting a contemplative experience that elevates awareness out of commonplace experience onto a more transcendental plane.
If the painting above makes you think of a bright, sunny day, you are not alone. Finnish designer and creative director Joonas Virtanen recently created a fun app that matches the current weather in your city (or many other ones) with a Rothko painting.