A phone call with Mark Mothersbaugh in which I sound like a total geek

. . .Is now available on the one culture podcast.

IF YOU DON'T MAKE IT TO COPY ON FIRST FRIDAY YOU MIGHT AS WELL DIE.

Related:

Tiki Culture

The Dead Horse Inn by Duke Riley

Ben Peterson

FOOD

Copy Gallery

IF YOU HAVEN"T SEEN THIS YET SEND YOUR PHOTO TO ARTBLOG NOW!

Tell Mayor Nutter that the arts in Philly need funding!


Austin Lee and Mayor Nutter. See this as a video animation.


Artist Anthony Campuzano at Fleisher/Ollman Gallery, in front of work in his one-man show in January


Jodi Rice
Adam Wallacavage's house
photo by-Adam Wallacavage


hi. my name is tim bowman. i'm an artist in philadelphia and i
remember mayor nutter's campaign promise to create an office of arts
and culture. i'd really like him to make it happen.


Sign me up! says artblog correspondent and Copy Gallery co-founder Annette Monnier

Join the Kiss for Mayor Nutter campaign! Send in your 281(h) x 375(w) jpeg photo of yourself to libbyandroberta@gmail.com and help us demonstrate how many people care about the mayor's campaign promise to create an Office of Arts and Culture.

Email this project info around to every Philadelphia artist and art lover you know. Let's show Mayor Nutter the face of Philadelphia's amazing arts community. No broken promises, Mayor Nutter, please!!

STUPID HISTORY (LESSON)

Candida Pagan's "No-Confidence Party" was at Pifas but it closed last week.

It's still hard for me to think about the year 2000 as being a long time ago. I met someone yesterday who was born in that year.

I was twenty and it was the first time I ever registered to vote. I registered to vote because of Ralph Nader, I wanted to vote for him. I totally thought voting for Al Gore or George W. Bush would be voting for the lesser of two evils. While I don't still feel as strongly that way, I'm still proud of the fact that I voted for Nader that year. I wouldn't have voted for Gore the way I felt about him then. I wouldn't have even registered.



9/11 happened in 2001, after all that recount bullshit. Does anyone else feel like this happened yesterday?

Electoral College. I remember thinking this thing was a bad idea in Fifth Grade Social Studies.

The 2005 Atlantic hurricane season.

Kerry vs. Bush. Bush wins.

Now. This is the most optimistic I've been about a presidential election since 2000.

Still underlying this optimism is this:



Sorry, the only clip I could find is actually a campaign commercial for this guy, but I also found this awesome video of Dennis Kucinich:



So, when I went to The Philadelphia Institute for Advanced Study the de facto headquarters of Candida Pagan's brainchild political party, the No-Confidence Party, it took me back to 2000.

The basic party platform is this; write in an actual vote of no confidence (to congress?), informing them that you have no confidence in the american voting system. I assume this is sort of like the British version of a motion of no confidence, "a censure motion, a no-confidence motion, or simply a confidence motion, [. . . ] a parliamentary motion traditionally put before a parliament by the opposition in the hope of defeating or embarrassing a government."

In short, this "artwork (?)" made me think about how much my personal notion of The United States has changed over the past eight years and it made me dizzy.

Just to make this clear; though I enjoyed Ms. Pagan's project this blogger in no way condones voting any way but Democrat in the up-coming election.


Also at Pifas was this itty-bitty gallery by Sophia Wang.

Robin Hooding gifs for you

Ryan McCartney paints a mean picture.

The Street Button show at Fleisher/Ollman is over in six days come tomorrow. I just wanted to mention that I really love these paintings by Ryan McCartney. I know, they look a little dinky and pathetic but they are truly awesome. . . haven't seen them mentioned in any other press on the exhibition, so I thought I give Ryan a bit of a shout out. These paintings made my night a couple of weeks back. (They are about the size of a square microwave.):

Charles Hobbs, Trapped in Orbit: Out of Body, Out of Mind

Large-scale painted trees adorn the gallery walls of Out of Body, Out of Mind

The Esther M. Klein Art Gallery, January 11-March 1, 2008.

Wow! Mr. Hobb's exhibition at Esther M. Klein makes the journey out to West Philadelphia worth it, I've never seen the lobby of the Science Center so holistically transformed. . . It actually made me feel a little giddy, like I was twelve, so forgive me if I gush. It's always hard for me to be articulate when all I felt at an exhibition was pure unpretentious pleasure.


Mr. Hobb's motorized sculptures occupy the Science Center's lobby-turned forest.


A transparent "record" (seen below) cycles this projection between "day" and "night"



There is also a theremin (not pictured), made by Mr. Hobbes himself . I am told he can play actual music on it, like the theme to The Legend of Zelda, or Somewhere over the Rainbow.

This is not a video of Charles, but it gives you some idea of how cool this is: