Sweatheart on Trading Spaces This Weekend!!!!!

As this e-mail from Thom explains:

hello dudes, me & rose have broken into reality television. please watch rose hide bananas in the carpenters tool belt & check out my new haircut. you'll probably learn a ton.

best, thom

SATURDAY 10pm on TLC
(reairs sunday at 1pm)

Trading Spaces
Philadelphia: Dickinson Street
TV-G

Ryan is a writer for the weekly City Paper, and Aryon does operations at the art collective 1026. They'll be swapping with Rose and Thom who are in the art-dance band Sweat-heart. These South Philly hipsters swap their pads and decorate each other's digs.

Ben Peterson Reports on Poland

Ben talks to a friend at the "Psychedelic Club", part of a project being undertaken at the residency program at the Center for Contemporary Art in Warsaw.

Ben Peterson is an artist currently residing in Philadelphia, artblog talked to him in detail back in May regarding his all-round awesomeness and detail-oriented mega-realistic yet fantastical landscapes/architectures. Once I overheard a friend who isn't all that into art in general compliment one of Ben's pieces by saying "If I was high I could look at that all day". . . so drug-induced stupor or no Ben's the kind of artist who generously serves up a cornucopia of mysterious detail to the viewer.

Mr. Peterson recently had the opportunity to visit Poland for an artist residency, so I thought I'd talk to him about the nature of artist residencies and Polish art. I found a wealth of information that I'm only just beginning to process and thought I'd let everyone in on my new knowledge adventure:

Residency in a Castle

Annette: What was the residency called?

Ben: I don't know if it had a name. The center is called Ujazdowski Castle.

A: It was in a castle?

B: Castle is a loose term. I think it's more like an old hunting lodge you might visit for the weekend. . . it was pretty much rarely used from the way I understand it and then it was just bombed to shit during World War II.

A: So it was an old-stone building?

B: No. Don't think romantic, think governmental building. Think civic building and think plaster. It's really not what you'd expect from a castle, it has some towers but they are only towers in the since that there are four of them on each edge. No moat or princesses.

A: You're kind of ruining this for me.

B: I know. It was used as a hospital during WW I, then leveled during WW II and during the 1970s there was a cultural revival that went on in Poland and it was rebuilt. I don't know know what it was used for at first but I believe during the 1980's it became what is now The Center for Contemporary Art and I think not long after the artist residency program was established.

When the phone rings say yes

A: So how did you happen to end up at this non-castle?

B: The artists are nominated by a couple of different groups in America. . . I only know some of them because I guess it's a blind nomination. I know one of them is The Headlands Center for the Arts. . .

A: And that's another residency program?

B: Yes. That's the one I did in California. So basically a bunch of people are nominated and then they just decide form those nominations who they are interested in having come out.

A: So you don't apply for this? You just basically get a phone call one day like "Hey! You wanna go to Poland?"

B: Yep.


This is the Polish flag.

The day I arrived the director went on vacation.

A: So what exactly do you do in a Polish artist residency?

B: The day I landed the residency director was going on vacation.

A: What?

B: Yeah. So I think partly to give me a real, interesting experience of Poland and partly so I wouldn't be wondering around Warsaw without any help, she took me to this small sculpture center in the middle of nowhere. I stayed there for a week and that was really surreal.

A: Surreal how?

B: It was a left-over communist-party sculpture center where older artists would go to work on gigantic marble and granite sculptures.

A: Like sculptures of workers with big muscles?

B: Not so much. They definitely had a socialist-realist bent but it was more like heavy 1920's, 1930's Modernism. Think vaguely futurist, but the center has fallen into misuse so the only people who go there are. . . I don't know how to describe them. . . I guess you could say they are just holding on to an older period in Poland's art history. There are some people working on contemporary stuff there, but it's mostly a refuge for the old-guard.

Of roommates and monster-drawings that lock you in

A: So you were the only person in the residency?

B: At first. There wasn't a clear-cut program so I just kind of wondered around looking at stuff for a week. Eventually the rest of the people in the residency showed up and I went back to Warsaw, but there was really no schedule. I ended up doing what I do here (wake up, get coffee, work on art) except for the fact that my roommate was involved in this project that entailed reenacting the 60s, which kind-of didn't really happen in Poland, as far as what we think of as 60s culture. I usually coin his project "the hippie project".

A: So did you accomplish what you wanted to at the residency? Before you left you were talking of this plan to create what sounded like a monster of a drawing. . . and I know your work takes time to make.

B: Yeah. The drawing was a good and a bad idea. In the end I didn't complete it there because it was such a massive undertaking. It would have been impossible for me to finish it and still experience the residency. If I had wanted to finish that piece I should have stayed at home, locked in my studio.

A: So your process is completely autonomous from your environment? Poland didn't influence what you were doing in any way?

B: The drawing took many elements from the environment but I would have had to explain them to you for you to see them. I never make work where I immediately try to relate to an environment, it's just too heavy-handed. I would never try to depict another culture that I'm completely unfamiliar with as if I am really capable of understanding it.


"The Hippie Project"

Tell me again what you told me when you were drunk

A: You mentioned something at the bar the other night about trying on firemen's outfits and dancing in fields. . . what was that all about?

B: The one thing that I participated in for "the hippie project" was going to these art festivals that were held in smaller towns. I don't have anyway to really say that these festivals are a very European thing because this was the first time I ever visited Europe, but I believe they are. I think it's new for Poland, though, because many of the towns seemed to be a little freaked out.

One we went to took the form of a tour. Our first stop was an ice-cream parlor where all the ice-cream was hand-made and came straight from the cow to you. The next stop we went to was to the local post-man's house and he showed us his stamp collection, which was massive and amazing. Then we went to an excessively old theater that probably once lead life as a church, where three musicians played us what I would loosely term "psychedelic rock." We went on to visit the firemen and they told us about their jobs and let us try on their outfits. The tour ended at the house of a woman who worked for a very important contemporary art organization in Poland and she showed us her extensive collection.

Ask not what you can do for Poland but what Poland can do for you

A: What did Poland get out of the residency?

B: That's a good question and it seemed like that was the one on the average polish person's mind and the answer is I don't know. The whole idea of offering something tangible seems off to me. I don't think you can start out by thinking you can give something to anywhere that it needs.

A: It seems like you got something out of it.

B: There is the possibility that other people did too. I certainly brought my experiences and opinions to any discussion I was apart of. I hope I didn't leave a bad taste for Americans. I don't think I did.

During our talk Ben mentioned many Polish artists and resources, here are some links to just a few:

Piktogram. A quarterly, bilingual, international art magazine based in Warsaw, Poland.

Oskar Hansen. A very influential Polish architect, artist, and teacher. One of his most important ideas was that of Open Form. Here we can see some of his work at The Hoover Dam

Andre Cadere, left behind an oeuvre consisting of about 180 Barres de Bois of different lengths.

Krzystof Wodicko, "by appropriating public buildings and monuments as backdrops for projections, Wodiczko focuses attention on ways in which architecture and monuments reflect collective memory and history". . .

Miroslaw Balka. "Balka explores how subjective traumas are translated into collective histories and vice versa.". . .

Center for Contemporary Art in Warsaw

This was originally posted on artblog

Come see me be a DJ on Thursday

That's right! BUCKETS OF BABES=GOOD MUSIC at the Khyber on Thursday 11/29. Poster designed by Emily Glaubinger.

Two Articles Off-Site

High Art, Cheap Beer and Regionalism

Annette Monnier, one-fifth director of Copy Gallery and one-sixth founder of the now defunct Black Floor Gallery, will be writing on artblog from time to time, by way of introduction her first post is on the relationship between place, art, and cheap beer.

Pabst Blue Ribbon (PBR)



Before I moved to Philadelphia I thought of PBR as the beer in the David Lynch movie, Blue Velvet, it was somewhat unusual and hard to find and even a little bit avant garde. "The Hard to find" part of that idea was quickly displaced upon arrival in Philly. One of the first places I was taken to was Bob and Barbara's, which of course is a veritable gallery of old PBR ads, and I was introduced to the city wide special; three dollars gets you a shot of jim bean with a PBR to wash it down, though some people might say it's a PBR with a shot of jim bean to wash it down. I drank a lot of those and it did nothing to discourage my view of PBR as the beer of the underground. We served it proudly at all of our Black Floor Openings. Read more on artblog

"I thought this was a gallery. I don't get it."

Were the words Alex DaCorte teacher uttered when he brought him over to the living room of 1409 Ellsworth Street, the place where he had decided to host his senior thesis exhibition. The "living room" in question was Padlock Gallery, a thriving arts space that has been opening it's doors to both the insiders and outsiders of Philadelphia's art scene since February of 2004. Read more on digphilly

Vote for Nick-Chatfield-Taylor's Matt and Kim Video!

This video:



Directed by awesome video-maker and pal Nicholas Chatfield-Taylor for the very awesome Matt and Kim could win "best indie music video 2007" on MTV! But! Only if you get your figures clicking here! Do something good!

P.S. Blog friends! It is a very confusing site and the little black square next to the video's name is where you click to vote. Took me twenty minutes to figure it out. No joke!

People taking pictures of the Liberty Bell of Pensylvania

I went to see the Liberty Bell for the first time last Friday. It is perhaps the most famous mistake I can think of:

Philadelphia Punches Omniana Creator in the Nose

Or, What good is a blog with no pictures?

Violence in Fantasy:

First I'll explain Omniana, which is a fantasy/role-playing sort of game created by Aaron Delamatre, an artist and friend form Cincinnati, Ohio. It's a card game in which you pick a card that tells you what sort of monster you are and then when it's your turn you can "attack" someone else's monster in what-ever land they are in. Monster descriptions are like this:

Thin Rats: They are a pack of three brothers who have been weirdly mutated into paper thin rats with edges as sharp as steel blades. "Flee to safety, my papery brothers, for we are like paper and can do as the paper does."

If you pick to combat some kind of giant with your paper rat in a room with 25 teleportation holes you have to argue why your rat would beat the giant.

I, with my parents (who came to visit Philly for the first time ever) and Gerik Forston, went out to Abington Art Center to play a couple of rounds of this the other night. To get there we rented a hybrid from Philly Car Share and it took me a while to figure it out because instead of starting it with a key you start it with a start button. Weird but cool.

I had a really good time playing Omniana, if you can get a hold of the game (I think there are only one hundred copies in the world) and can find a group of people who are willing to rap like geeks then I suggest it.

Violence in Reality:

Dear Philadelphia,

You are getting scary, so calm down. My friend Beth was recently attacked with a knife in her own house, Vox Populi and my own Copy were recently burglarized--and the other night when I was walking down Frankfort from Johnny and Brenda's to the Fishtown Tavern, on my friend Sue Spaid's (currently working on developing programs for Abington Art Center) advice that we try a new place, the group of us (Aaron Delamatre, Gerik Forston, Sue and myself) were assaulted by a group of rowdy teens (perhaps five of them?).

They, the kids (and for all of you who care, these were white kids), were just generally throwing insults and we (Okay. Mostly I.) were throwing them back when one of them up and decided to punch Aaron in the nose and run. At first I thought the kid had just barely tapped him and then I saw blood.

So get this Philly: I love you but you can't treat my out-of-town friends this way. If you don't want people to enrich your life with art and culture just say so and don't send a pack of kids after us. What is it with all your pent-up rage lately?

I hope you can get over it, I hope that new dude from D.C. steps up,

-Annette Monnier

The Residency at PIFAS to cat-people in four points

K-Fai's installation at PIFAS

This post could get complicated so I'm going to try and make it as simple as possible:

1. The Philadelphia Institute for Advanced Study (PIFAS), basically a warehouse full of artist studios on 2nd and Cecil B. What sets it apart from most such warehouses is it's concentration on sciences, languages, clubs, and other kinds of think tanks--it even hosts a residency.

2. The Residency is called The Eric James Johnson Memorial Fellowship and it (quoted from the website) "provides a living space, a studio, a bicycle, and a computer for one month to qualifying artists with projects they wish to complete in the city of Philadelphia. The program is completely free and comprises no stipend; however, fellowship recipients are automatically considered for the Benjamin D. Letzler Genius Grant, awarded to scientists and individuals deemed to have made an indelible contribution to the discipline of public education." A conversation with Residency Coordinator Ramsey Arnaoot lead to the discovery that the Benjamin D. Letzler Genius Grant is really $36 and the bike provided is a folder but that is not the point.



Past Eric James Johnson Memorial Fellowship recipients Ursula Böckler and Georg Graw created a Drive-In and screened films of their own making.

C. The point is that this residency has been bringing some far out people into Philadelphia, people as far out as England or Germany and they have been using their month in Philly to create some interesting projects (not only art but music, writing, or whatever.) It is a great program aimed at demystifying residencies and helping free-thinkers get the time to think.

4. Recently I attended a video viewing and installation exhibition by resident K-Fai Steele who draws cat-people.


Othello, cat-people style.

I must admit that I didn't really get the cat-people adaptation of Othello that was on view, I thought perhaps it was supposed to be some absurdist play on the shakesperean tragedy but couldn't really make anything out of it. The installation of life-sized paper mache cat people was more compelling, but I admit, just as mysterious. It all seemed kind of whacky and I almost dismissed the whole thing but something made me visit K-Fai's blog and ask her a few questions. It turns out the cat-people are all actually self portraits and that I actually feel a comraderie with a lot of her drawings:

"The first questions that people generally ask are "why cats?" and "why self-portraits?"  When I was a kid, I drew myself and my family members as people with cat heads.  I'm not sure where I got this idea from, I would love to say it was divine inspiration, but it must have originated directly from me imitating Gary Larson or Richard Scarry.  I realize now that drawing myself as a Cat-Person allowed me to draw without the shame and luggage that traditional figure drawing demands.  Also, cat faces translate to the human face better than, say, dogs or alligators, and cats were the only pets that my parents allowed for us to have--"have", meaning we fed them and they roamed around our barn pissing all over my parents' carefully collected antiques."



A detail from a drawing called "In Every Cry of Every Man, In Every Infant's Cry of Fear, In Every Voice, In Every Ban, the Mind-Forge'd Manacles I Hear". See more pics by visiting K-Fai's blog.

ZOE STRAUSS STARTS A TRUST FUND FOR YOUNG FILMMAKERS

Zoe Strauss is starting up a trust fund for young filmmakers by selling limited edition prints on her website.

The film that started it all is the Zoe Strauss documentary If You Break the Skin You Must Come in ( website here) which must be excellent because when I went to go see it the other night this many people were there:




. . .and it was all sold out so me and the Fabric Horse blogger, Mary, who also showed up, went to go see The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford instead, and all I have to say about that is this.

Review of two recent art publications (or thankless jobs)

As a person who has made "catalogs" for each of her last three solo shows, and has more then a hand-full of each of them (except for the latest which I gave away for free) left, I have a soft-spot for anyone who can get a collection of zeroxed writings together. Everyone will take your publication if it is free but hardly anyone will read it. If it costs money, someone may pick it up and browse through it, and maybe even like it, but no one will buy it.

Still, though, the creator of zines (even if they call their zine a mag--as is the case with Megawords) is a hero in my book:



The catalog of Anthony Campuzano's recent show at Fleisher/Ollman Gallery, either called Love Everyone (the words which grace the cover-image based on this woodcut by Ben Franklin) or titled like the show as Note on Door.

Authors: Anthony Campunzano, William Pym, and Pablo Colapinto with help from (most likely without permission) reprinted texts from the likes of Vladmir Nabokov to the BBC's Compliance Manual.

Immediately I like that this catalog is standard zine sized, a folded in half sheet of regular copy paper, and most of the text appears to be properly zeroxed, though one wonders if some of the common "mistakes" of zine creators; too much black, off-center copying and etc. were aesthetic decisions or actually accidents.

The text itself proves to both disambigufy (I think I just made that word up) Mr. Campuzano's somewhat ambiguous show while creating a gestalt of mystery all of it's own. The best original essay award goes to Pablo who blew my mind by straight up comparing Anthony's paintings to Shrodinger's cat theory. I enjoyed the longer essay by William Pym, the director of Fleisher/Ollman, which gave further insight into the work of Campuzano but I can't help feeling that Mr. Pym and I have some deep philosophical disagreements.

The rest of the copied text, including that of Mr. Campuzano, weaves a highly intriguing cloud of ideas and dots could be connected in infinite directions. No doubt that each piece of text was included because it struck some personal chord with the editor. All in all very awesome, please make one for every show.




Megawords Magazine

Published by Dan Murphy and Anthony Smyrski.

This edition of Megawords actually contains more words then pictures, which is different. The content is all interviews and though no information is given to this effect I have concluded that the interviews are with all of the people who have helped the Magazine through all its various incarnations. I really liked this issue because I am a sucker for interviews. The only problem I have with interviews is getting interested in the words of people I have never heard of before, but I was very interested in the words of William Pym and former Independant publisher Sam (Matt) Schwartz because I always see them around.

It was great to read these two speak because I've had nothing but the most awkward conversations ever with them in person. I do wish William Pym would leave myspace alone--it's not hurting anyone, and I was overjoyed to hear Mr. Schwartz articulate something about journalism that I've been thinking for awhile:

"Journalism that people get paid to do--nowadays, so far as I can tell--is about access and betrayal. You try to get access to people, institutions and situations that the public is interested in, that either have some celebrity value, or some intrigue value. You get really close to your subject, and you sell them out."

I don't know what to say after that except; THE END.

A SQUID EATING DOUGH IN A POLYETHYLENE BAG or AIDS Wolf at Copy

AIDs Wolf rolled up to Copy with Old Time Relijun (who I enjoyed but I LOVED AIDs Wolf)--also playing were Philly natives Drums Like Machine Guns and Satanized--a couple of Sundays ago when it was still October and I was worried about global warming. Dave Dunn and I carried all their stuff inside:



And, besides the fact that neither of the bands really helped carry their stuff in, the show was amazing. Seripop posters were hung all over Copy's store and I thought twice about buying one but I think I'll quote Chloe Lum, Seripop poster maker (with Yannick), and screecher for AIDs Wolf when she said "I'm too cheap to even buy my own art". . . but then she went on to buy three Steve Keene's ($5), which aren't too expensive for anyone's blood.















As with most art collectives slash music makers AIDs Wolf is kind of hard to understand. I mean you see them, you like them, you get their vibe, but when you try to put all the pieces of the puzzle together you find you really don't know that much. Like, you really don't even know their real names, even on their Wiki Page they go by code: Hiroshima Thunder, Him, the Maji, Special Deluxe, and Barbarian Destroyer.

So I put a couple of questions to Chloe on her Facebook account:

Annette: How are AIDs Wolf and Seripop related?

Chloe: AIDS Wolf and Seripop are related in the fact that Yannick and I do both and that we do 99% of the AIDs Wolf graphics.

We started seripop because we both played in (unsuccessful) bands and wanted to promote em. by the time AIDs Wolf rolled around , Seripop was getting some respect and notoriety here and there so people perked up their ears a bit to the unknown noise rock band from Montreal; Most of those people ended up hating us.

A: Just for kicks what are your musical and artistic influences?


C: AIDs Wolf influences:

Chrome , Captain Beefheart (!!!!) , Discharge , Throbbing Gristle , Us Maple , Royal Trux , Arab on Radar , Voivod , Emerson Lake and Palmer , Jean Louis Costes, This Heat , Sun City Girls , Caetano Veloso, Sightings.

Seripop influences:

Saul Steinberg , Art Chantry , Eduardo Munoz Bachs , Simon Bosse , Basil Wolverton , Wiktor Gorka , Dan Decarlo , Mark Beyer , Jean Dubuffet , Henriette Valium, Vittorio Fiorucci

And now everyone understands everything!

SUNDAY DECEMBER 2ND EQUALS OFFICIAL LAUNCH

YO! I AM NOT READY FOR VISITORS YET! JUST GOT OUT OF THE GODDAMN SHOWER!

So Philebrity blew the whistle on my new blog before I was ready to tell anyone about it. The official launch date will be the date of my gallery talk at Vox Populi: SUNDAY, DECEMBER 2ND AT 3 PM. There will be foodstuffs and etc. per usual.

I am 27. I make art.

For all of those who haven't followed me from blog to blog a little art introduction; I just had a little art show at Padlock Gallery in Philadelphia. It was called "27" in honor of the fact that I turned 27 the day before the show. Lately I have been drawing large groups of people composed of people I know and people I find on the internet or in glossy mags, these drawings don't photograph well for me. I also produce "floral arrangements", copy essays, and draw (mostly flowers) on sheets. This show was accompanied by a little zine called "Ordinary People Can Typically Gain Power by Acting Collectively."

I dedicate my most recent work to Edward Gorey, Philip K. Dick, and Susan Sontag, but a big inspiration for my recent thought processes has been the books Bluebeard by Kurt Vonnegut and The Lives of the Artists by Giorgio Vasari.

Basically my thesis is art takes time and you judge an artist on a life's work, this is a problem if you want to live and eat on a daily basis so you have to find a way to do that:



You'll have to excuse my love of pictures with lots of flash--this is what you'd see when you walked into the gallery, a mirror's eye-view of "Portal of History" which is a beaded curtain made out of tapes of my recorded voice reading The Lives of the Artists.



Outside of the mirror, you cannot read Giorgio Vasari.



A detail.



The right side of the gallery.



"Decorative Element", a drawing on a sheet.



"Flower Arrangement 12"



"Yellow Sign Menu"



Detail.



"Spiderman" I was planning on naming this piece Black Flag but Jasper Johns might already have one like it, plus I already reference Raymond Pettibone--I'm punk rock at heart but this piece is about claiming responsibility for the place you live in and the mess you have allowed that place to make. Think of the ending scene in the first Spiderman movie.

Now some bad flicks of my drawings:



"Dial 481" everyone's favorite, it refers to a mood you can dial in Philp K. Dick's Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?. The mood is about coming out of despair and seeing endless possibilities for the future.



Detail.



"Really Full Subway Car" This flick is so terrible you can't see anything, basically many people are in the subway car, which floats in a sea of thoughts.



Detail. There was also one other drawing that I didn't even attempt to photograph.

Special thanks to Fabric Horse for writing my show up!

That's me, now let's talk about the rest of the world.

REPOST OF MY LAST ART IN THE AGE POST

The following post has been taken off the Art in the Age site, it is the last post I made as blogger for Art in the Age, so the final paragraph is a little obsolete:



GYRO TAKES OVER ART IN THE AGE THOUGH IT ALWAYS HAD IT

Yesterday morning we read something Philebrity linked to in New York Magazine about Gawker and became caught up with the idea of transparency, which for a business means not keeping any secrets from the people reading or buying you. It is in the interest of transparency that I regret to inform you of some new developments for Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction:

Yesterday afternoon Tim Gough and Nick Paparone the inventors of the idea of Art in the Age, and the people in charge of the look of the line, basically its art directors, were taken off the project by their financial backers; Gyro Worldwide. Reasons for their removal were not any wrong-doing on the part of Nick and Tim, rather Gyro considered the amount of money they asked for in their contract to be beyond what it could spend on the line. As we all can believe it sometimes takes years to turn a profit on any business venture and Steve Grasse, owner of Gyro, reported that "It took seven years to turn a profit on Sailor Jerry"--Gyro's other clothing company.



Concerns abound about the integrity of the clothing line and whether it will live up to the high standards set by Tim Gough and Nick Paparone, as to that, only time can tell.

I personally regret what has happened with Art in the Age, Nick and Tim are good friends and I wish them every possible success and happiness--and I know, talented as they are, they'll have no problems moving on. However, I am going to stay on as Art in the Age's media component. Dave Dunn and I will continue making video interviews and I will continue to cover the arts from Philadelphia and vicinity using this site. I also cannot help but hope, that even under different hands Art in the Age will continue to produce high-quality artist made multiples.

Please make use of the comment section to give voice to your opinions on this matter. I am especially interested in what people have to say about my own choice of staying with Art in the Age and what they think will happen with the company in the future.

As always thanks for reading!

-Annette Monnier



This whole situation was the balls and no one ended up looking good, here are some of the comments people made. (There were some really nasty ones towards the end but I couldn't "publish" them because I had already quit.) I have removed all the names of the commentors, not for anyone's protection but mostly because I don't know all of their real names and feel like a jerk writing LordVoldemort7:

Well, it sort of seems unfair that the inventors and the dreamers got the shaft. It's the old business model of chewing up the creative side and then, having dined, moving on. As for you, don't let anyone else tell you what to do. See what happens and then make a decision--your decision. Gotta love you for feeling loyalty to your friends and feeling some squeamishness, here.

"Don't Give Up" possibly the best t-shirt ever, and appropriate for all situations.

I agree with L---- that the creative capital (Nick, Tim) has been steamrolled and that it's not the first time and won't be the last time that "stuff happens" and the artists take the hit. The economy sucks right now and Gyro made a business decision. It hurts but they're bottom line is important to them. I'm sad about this and I am sad for Nick and Tim. I do think talent will out and Nick and Tim will rise up with another venture. Annette, you are great as the voice of Art in the Age and it would be sad to lose you as well. It's got to be very hard for you.

The line will NOT be the same. The dream is dead. Time to move on to the next thing.

I'll miss shopping here.

Seems like the biggest thing she forgot to mention is that from what I know, not only are Tim and Nick the creative backbone of the company, they also concepted the entire project, building it from scratch; too bad that aspect of ownership doesn't seems to be as important to the blogger as the financial ownership.

What is gyro? It is a meat wrap sandwich, right? I don't eat meat. I eat falafal, why doesn't falafal take over art in the age?

Didn't the same thing happen to John Kricfalusi with Ren and Stimpy?

This is what happens when you put yourself and your talents at the mercy of faceless monetary interests at the core, that was the whole point of DIY, everything, collectives, etc. Out generation of thinkers put into the modern condition of the wealthless with a wealth of ideas being bought and gaining very little in the end has to find ways to push this like a self sufficient vehicle so as not to hit potholes and have boundaries. . . hard to say with bills to pay, I know, I know. I just hope this has positive results, in sparkling something new and beyond. PUSH IT.

It's sad that we reach a point in our lives where we'd rather stick around after our friends get trampled by greedy businessmen than show some compassion and integrity for an obviously foul situation. Between Urban Outfitter's and Gyro, Philadelphia has become a breeding ground for unethical behavior. I think I'm going to vomit.

WTF

BOOOOOOOOO

New blog, no money.

This is tough.

I started this blog because my other on-line journal, "Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction" lost all meaning due to dark times of failure and corporate betrayal.

Blogspot is not as pretty as Art in the Age, and although it is nice that Blogspot is free it also does not pay me anything. This blog has no budget, come here a lot and maybe I can change that, even buy a new location and pay some brilliant web genius to design a page worthier of your aesthetic sensibilities. But, comrades! if you can't judge a book by it's cover, I think it follows that you can't judge a blog by where it's hosted.

You may have noticed that this blog is once again titled after an art essay, this time "One Culture and the New Sensibility" by Susan Sontag. The whole essay is pseudo-reasonably summed up by this quote:

"From the vantage point of this new sensibility, the beauty of a machine or of the solution to a mathematical problem, of a painting by Jasper Johns, of a film by Jean-Luc Godard, and of the personalities and music of the Beatles is equally accessible. "



So what you're reading here is a blog that is not a snob in any of the traditional ways. This web-log may review some Alex Katz on the same day that it asks you to appreciate horribly-taken photographs of cheeseburgers (this blog loves nothing so much as a digital camera with a flash), it asks you to do this because it believes that's the way people are beginning to see things anyways. We are becoming one big schizophrenic culture-monster, and rather then belittle this way of seeing the world, this blog wants to find out if we can use it to actually understand the world (and each other) a little better. Also, I don't really want this to be a one-woman show, if you like me please help me out.

Also this blog is mostly about art and culture in Philadelphia, that's where I live, that's what I love, and that's what I want to bring into the discussion with the rest of the world but I care about shit that happens all over the global town.