Nicola Vruwink‘s The Best That You Can Do, 2009-10, is currently on view as part of Palm Springs Art Museum‘s permanent collection. The artist crocheted cassette tape to create the sculpture.
The phrase “the best that you can do is fall in love” is a lyric from the 1981 song Arthur’s Theme (Best That You Can Do) by Christopher Cross for the soundtrack to the 1981 film Arthur.
Currently on view at Philadelphia International Airport, It’s A Wrap 2, brightens a section of the airport with art work and installations by several local artists.
Included in this post are works by Nicole Nicolich (pictured above), Tim Eads of Tuft the World, Olivia Chiaravalli, and on the ceiling tiles- work by Miriam Singer and Eurhi Jones.
From the airport about the exhibition–
This exhibition features work by Philadelphia area artists who were invited to create unique architectural interventions within the Airport terminal. Using yarn, fabric, felt, found objects, tape, paint, wheat paste, and wood, the artists applied their work to the ceiling tiles, columns, rockers, walls, walkway, and windows. They have visually transformed this location into an immersive and experiential art-filled passageway.
The artists responded to the existing architectural elements to create an unexpected visual experience and an engaging space for people to pass through. It is a form of urban interventionism where art activates the built environment with the intention to see a public space in a new and creative way.
Work by Tim Eads of Tuft the World
Olivia Chiaravalli, “Brick by Brick”
Miriam Singer, “Dreamliner”
Eurhi Jones, “Tinicum”
Anuj Chandra Shrestha, “Sumud”
If you have a layover or arrive early to Philadelphia International Airport, make sure to take some time to check out some of the art on display. Works like the murals in this post, are part of the airport’s Exhibitions Program.
About Art at PHL:
The Airport’s Exhibitions Program is a nationally-recognized, award-winning visual arts initiative.
In 1998, Philadelphia International Airport established an Exhibitions Program – a visual arts initiative to humanize the Airport environment, provide visibility for Philadelphia’s unique cultural life, and to enrich the experience of the traveling public.
The Exhibitions Program is responsible for organizing and presenting rotating exhibitions that are located throughout the Airport. The exhibits change throughout the year to provide a variety of educational and cultural programs. This forum for presenting visual arts attests to the Airport’s commitment to supporting arts and culture.
The Exhibitions Program provides millions of visitors from around the world access to a wide variety of art forms by artists and arts institutions from the Philadelphia area.
The artists in this post- Anuj Chandra Shrestha, Lale Westvind, Steve Teare, Olivia Fredricks, and Amze Emmons are all part of the exhibition, Jawn 8. Jawn, a slang term local to Philadelphia, is defined as- “a placeholder word that may refer to a thing, place, person, or event, substituting for a specific word/name”. For even more on the word jawn, check out this article on Atlas Obscura.
Lale Westvind, “They Grew The Garden”
Steve Teare, “The Art Museum Games”
Olivia Fredricks, “The City is Our Playground”
Amze Emmons, “Philly Birdsong Onomatopoeia”
Giorgio de Chirico, “Portrait of Guillaume Apollinaire”,1914, Oil and charcoal on canvas
René Magritte, “The Secret Double”, 1927, Oil on Canvas
Dreamworld: Surrealism at 100 at the Philadelphia Museum of Art presents a large collection of works, in a variety of mediums, from the artistic movement. The show takes you through Surrealism’s history and is filled with many inventive and imaginative pieces- including several from lesser-known artists.
From the museum about the exhibition-
Surrealism burst onto the scene in Paris in 1924. French writer André Breton announced the aims of this revolutionary literary and artistic movement in his Manifesto of Surrealism. It started with a question: How, ideally, should we live? Breton observed that, at about twenty years of age, we make the error of trading our childlike imaginations for adult good sense and logic. Yet it’s the imagination that allows access to the innate state of freedom that we all possess. And maintaining freedom, Breton proposed, should always be the highest human aspiration.
Surrealism’s ambitions were broad and bold: its adherents wanted nothing less than a revolution in consciousness. To that end, they explored a method of experimental poetry called automatic writing, comparable to spoken free association, done spontaneously and, as far as possible, without conscious intent. Sigmund Freud’s theories about the role of the unconscious and the interpretation of dreams were an important inspiration. The Surrealists looked to access the unconscious mind to break free from the constraining rationality of the modern world.
Visual artists were part of the Surrealist movement from the start. They took up surprising and often challenging subject matter, imagery, and techniques across many mediums: painting, sculpture, drawing, printmaking, photography, book illustration and design, and film. In Dreamworld: Surrealism at 100, we explore how, from the movement’s 1920s beginnings through the 1950s, these trailblazing artists made good on Surrealism’s revolution in consciousness.
The exhibition is split into six categories- Waking Dream which features Surrealism’s beginnings in the 1920s, Natural History, focused on the influence of nature, Desire, Premonition of War, Exiles, and Magic Art, which focuses on the new type of esotericism that emerged within Surrealism in the aftermath of World War II.
Lee Miller’s photographs of natural rock formations
Salvador Dalí, “Aphrodisiac Telephone” 1938, Plastic, metal
From the museum about Aphrodisiac Telephone, one of the artworks in the Desire section–
Salvador Dalí likened the Surrealist object, which uses found items, as a symbolic creation with improbable juxtapositions, comparable to poetry and sexual perversion. He applied this idea in Aphrodisiac Telephone. Its basis is the substitution of a lobster— a real lobster in the sculpture’s first iteration for display in 1938, a factitious lobster in white plastic for the editioned version —for a similarly shaped telephone handset. The title alludes to the lobster’s reputation as an aphrodisiac when eaten.
Max Ernst, “The Fireside Angel (The Triumph of Surrealism)”, 1937, Oil on canvas
From the museum about the Max Ernst painting above, from the Premonition of War section-
Ernst painted The Fireside Angel (The Triumph of Surrealism) to protest the atrocities of the Spanish Civil War as well as the defeat of the Republican side. But this depiction of a rampaging bird-headed beast also served as an allegorical reflection on the nature of evil. Ernst exhibited this painting as The Triumph of Surrealism — a despairingly ironic title given the situation in Europe — at the 1938 International Surrealist Exhibition in Paris.
During World War II many European artists escaped to New York City and Mexico. The Exiles section features works by these artists, as well as Mexican (like Roberto Montenegro pictured below) and American artists whose work could also be seen as part of the Surrealist movement.
Roberto Montenegro, “The Double”, 1938, Oil on panel
The last section of the exhibition Magic Art, focuses on the increase in post-war interest in supernatural themes. There was also a room devoted to the work of artist friends Leonora Carrington and Remedios Varo, who had moved to Mexico during the war.
Leonora Carrington, “And Then We Saw the Daughter of the Minotaur”, 1953, Oil on canvas
Remedios Varo, “Creation of the Birds”, 1957, Oil on Masonite
This exhibition is on view until 2/16/25.
Symbiosis (2011) by artist Roxy Paine has been on display in Iroquois Park on the Benjamin Franklin Parkway in Philadelphia since June 2014.
About this work from the Association for Public Art (aPA), which organized the installation and acquisition-
Hand-fabricated from thousands of pieces of stainless steel pipe, plate, and rods, Symbiosis suggests both ecological and anatomical branching systems.
Rising 34 feet high, the more than 3.5 ton sculpture was created from standard industrial piping that was welded, formed, and polished in the artist’s studio to create two shimmering, interrelated organic forms that both buttress and weigh on one another, referencing the darker aspects of nature and the fierceness of its laws. Symbiosis represents the collision of two dendroids that result in stasis, a questionable relationship that teeters between support and detriment.
Roxy Paine’s work consistently blurs the lines between the natural and artificial. He is known for work that explores the collision of industry and nature, and his series of stainless steel “Dendroid” sculptures are exemplary manifestations of this practice. The “Dendroids,” a term combining “dendron” (Greek for “tree”) and -oid (a suffix meaning “form”), are monumental structures that convey a fusion of industrial and organic forms. They evoke arboreal structures, vascular systems, synaptic networks, and industrial pipelines, interpreting the natural world through a man-made lens. The structures represent search, growth, and the branching of systems that suggest dormant energy and potential, a theme Paine has explored in his work for the last 15 years.
Nearby you can also find Mark di Suvero‘s painted steel sculpture Iroquois (seen in the second image posted).
Sean Solomon- Shooting Star
Every month I listen to the majority of bands and musicians who are playing in Los Angeles and select some for a monthly playlist. It includes a variety of genres and usually newer work by the artist.
This month includes new music from Cate Le Bon, Lindsey Troy of Deap Vally, and Together Pangea; a Duran Duran cover by Storefront Church; and a little more electronic music than usual- including a new song by hyperpop artist Glaive.
LA-based musician and animator Sean Solomon released Shooting Star this past October, and also created the video.
Below are January’s selections-
Secret Mall Apartment Trailer
The story in the 2024 documentary Secret Mall Apartment, feels relatively straightforward at first. In 2003, a group of eight artists built an apartment in a small, unused space in the Providence Place shopping mall in Providence, Rhode Island. They continued to use it until they were discovered a few years later. But the film takes you on a journey beyond the creation of the apartment. It’s also about gentrification, urban development, and artist housing; mall culture and consumerism; the artists’ work outside the apartment; and, by the end, even the question of what makes something art.
Artist Michael Townsend was no stranger to art installations. He had previously created one inside a drainage tunnel, allowing only a select few with keys to see it. When local artist venue and living space Fort Thunder was torn down, the idea of living in the nearby new mall began. He remembered noticing an odd extra space while the mall was still being constructed. After searching and finding it with his then-wife Adriana Valdez Young, friends and fellow artists Colin Bliss, Andrew Oesch, Greta Scheing, James Mercer, Emily Ustach, and Jay Zehngebot joined them to build the apartment. Luckily for viewers, the process was also documented with a Pentax Optio (even if the footage is low-res). Furniture was added, along with a video game system, and eventually a wall.
While their new home provided a break from the outside world, it also became a place for the artists to plan their tape-art installations. These included a five-year portrait series in NYC for 9/11; a mural on the site of the Oklahoma City bombing; and creating work with kids on the walls of Hasbro Children’s Hospital in Rhode Island. Townsend continues to make tape-art projects today.
The documentary is fun to watch and at times, even inspirational. It’s currently available to watch on Netflix and other online platforms.
Going all the way back to 2015 today for this mural by El MAC, Augustine Kofie, and Joseph ‘Nuke’ Montalvo. La Abuelita/Má’sání, a portrait of Diné (Navajo) weaver Martha Gorman Schultz, is located on the outside of The American Hotel in Los Angeles.
From El MAC (Miles MacGregor)’s website about the mural-
“The portrait is painted entirely with aerosol and fatcaps, and is based on photos I shot a few years ago of an artist named Martha Gorman Schultz. She is a Navajo blanket weaver from northern Arizona, and part of a respected family of weavers including her granddaughter, Melissa Cody.
I felt this painting of Martha could be an empowering representation of beauty not often depicted in public art or media. Beauty that is feminine, elderly, indigenous, loving and powerful.
The building this mural was painted on was constructed in 1901, and you can imagine how much Los Angeles history it’s seen over the last hundred years or so.
This was an especially collaborative effort- Along with the work of Kofie and Nuke surrounding the figure, SKILL UTI painted the wall to the left, integrating an already existing piece by DASH 2000(Rest In Peace). SWAN provided ground support, along with CHEE, AISE, BLK, OFIER, SELEK, CALVYRUS and some other younger members of UTI crew, which has been painting these walls for the last few decades.”
Sadly, Martha Gorman Schultz passed away in February of last year at the age of 93. For more information on her life and work, check out Hyperallergic’s tribute.
“Boys Planting”, 2021, Oil on canvas
“The Last Night”, 2020, Oil and acrylic on canvas
“Quiero Amor”, 2019, Oil on canvas
“Nous Visited The Seine, But Did Not Swim”, 2022, Oil on canvas
“The Senses”, 2021, Oil and oil stick on canvas
The paintings in Jerrell Gibbs‘s solo exhibition at Brandywine Museum of Art, No Solace in the Shade, are alive with colors and movement, capturing moments in time both real and imagined.
From the museum about the show-
Chopping Ice from the Water Trough, 1935, an oil painting by artist Dale Nichols, is part of Brandywine Museum of Art‘s permanent collection.
From the museum about the work-
Rising to popularity during the Great Depression, a style known as American Regionalism brought modern stylization to images of rural life. In his landscape painting Chopping Ice from the Water Trough, Dale Nichols engages Regionalism by bringing a clean, minimal approach to his representation of daily farm chores by highlighting the smooth contours of the snowy slopes and the sharp-edged geometry of the barn. Nichols, a native of Nebraska, trained and taught for many years at the Art Institute of Chicago but returned throughout his career to the farm subjects most familiar to him from his childhood. His work was so attuned to farm life that International Harvester Company commissioned him to depict a series of works marking the development and use of the famous McCormick Reaper in agriculture.