Artblog Radio

Lee Tusman has curated up a storm at many places in Philadelphia (e.g., Little Berlin) and elsewhere. Now, he's got a really great-sounding one-night-only performance–Room 21–he's organized in collaboration with Ars Nova and DJ Jace Clayton and the Prometheus Chamber Orchestra. I talked with Lee about the musical performance, which will take place on Saturday, September 9 at the Barnes Foundation, and asked why it's at the Barnes and is Room 21 one of the Barnes gallery rooms. Take a listen and see! Then rush out and get tickets (here: $10/$8 for Barnes members)

Earlier this year, I was invited to curate a week of content on Curate This, the peppy new online arts publication whose mission -- like Artblog's mission -- is to tell the whole wide world that the Philadelphia art scene has great art and artists. Curate This, started by writers/artists Amanda Wagner and Julius Ferraro, is now almost one year old, and I sat down with them recently to talk about how their publication is coming along and what they're excited about. Curate This is a platform for artists and writers to speak their minds about issues involved in the arts (yes, there is some complaining).

At the Barnes Foundation, Nari Ward’s direct engagement with issues of race, culture, and class in contemporary America makes for an interesting counterpoint to the African art collected by Dr. Barnes (and by the Penn Museum) in the early 20th century. Finally, the three shows of contemporary photography, textiles, and architecture that fill the first floor of the PMA’s Perelman Building leave us with lots of questions about the “Africa” in “Creative Africa.” Just how fixed is regional or even national identity for both artists and artworks that circulate widely thanks to the global art market? What makes African art African?

2016 Pew Fellow Tiona McClodden makes documentary films and videos and sculptural environments. She's also made music videos and her work is political, exploring gender, race and under-known history. In our talk she tells me about selecting Philadelphia as a place where community she found a community of black working artists. The interview was recorded live at the Galleries at Moore's radio booth on July 7, 2016.

Roberta interviews Pap Souleye Fall about his unique body suits, stitched up while he is wearing them. Pap is also a wonderful maker of sculptural installations, and he's a dancer. Give a listen!

Jamar Nicholas wears a number of hats, as do many artists. He's a teacher -- he teaches narrative storywriting at Drexel and has taught at Moore College of Art and Design and Arcadia University; he is Fine Arts Curatorial and Administrative Assistant at Arcadia University Art Gallery, and he makes his art -- drawings of narratives that become comic books about superheroes, like the Hip Hop Cop Detective Boogaloo, which ran -- daily -- in the Philadelphia Metro in 2015.

When Daniel de Jesús performs he looks just like a painting of the Virgin Mary or a statue of a saint come to life. He wears a blue silk robe and his blue and purple eye make-up runs down his cheeks like tears. His voice resounds in unison with the cello between his knees; a drum machine may keep time or offer up haunting sounds.

Most rooms in The Colored Girls Museum are dedicated to women of color; their names are framed in the doorways. This is a museum of Herstory told through art, through shout outs to accomplished and heroic women, and through everyday stories about ordinary and extraordinary lives.

Jennifer Zarro talks with photographer Shawn Theodore, alias _xST, about his work--including why he shoots in large-format and how people react to his photos.

Although the festival was put together almost on a whim last year—Settle and her artistic director Cesar Alvarez were seeking a way to use an empty Merriam Theater for two weeks—it became an instant success.

The Institute of Contemporary Art at the University of Pennsylvania has given over its second-floor galleries to the New York art team Valerie Tevere and Angel Nevarez. One of the galleries is simply a radio on a table. It plays an original radio play the duo wrote: a science fiction story about voice recognition technology.

Harris is not afraid to investigate and offer in his collages and other artworks a new version of our national and cultural history, one which often illustrates a confounding unfairness we have all inherited.

Krimes seems to humanize art theory by putting it through a process of deep reading, personal reflection, and even letting the words suggest alternative readings. His current body of work, on view at the Leonard Pearlstein Gallery at Drexel University, is the result of this approach, his intuitive pathfinding, and chance.

Charles Frazier's Cold Mountain is a book turned into a film and now, into an opera. WHYY's Peter Crimmins has more.

Kukuli Velarde describes Corpus and also discusses her painting practice in this Artblog Radio interview conducted by Jennifer Zarro and recorded in the artist’s home and studio in Philadelphia in December, 2015.

Canadian sculpture artist Jess Perlitz recently opened "Chorus," a moving audio work comprised of recordings of incarcerated men and women throughout the U.S. She asked them, “If you could sing one song, and have that song heard, what would it be?” She layers the results into a "choir" triggered by a visitor's arrival into a cell at Eastern State Penitentiary. We interviewed Jess a couple of years ago about the emotions and processes that inform her work, and why it is that you can so often interact with her pieces.

Michelle Post’s sculptural Tronies will debut as a permanent installation at Grounds for Sculpture this fall. In our podcast the artist tells us how she received the commission and how she conceived of the 10 large portrait heads that sit on plinths like a chorus of grumpy citizen jurors waiting for something to pass judgment on. Post, a […]

Celebrating two independent gallerists On the 20th anniversaries of Gallery Joe and Pentimenti, two wonderful contemporary art venues in Philadelphia that we admire, we talk with the gallery’s owner/directors, Becky Kerlin (of Gallery Joe) and Christine Pfister (of Pentimenti). Both galleries are located in Old City, and both started in the recession of 1992/93. In […]

“It’s possible here in Philly” Lindsay Chandler and A.J. Rombach moved to Philadelphia after graduating from art school (Lindsay, from RISD, and A.J. from Boston University). They didn’t know each other before moving here but became friends through their network of artist friends. The two artists helped co-found Fjord space on Frankford Ave. last Spring, […]

[Erica Prince is a graduate of Maryland Institute College of Art. She spoke with us two years ago about originally planning to be a research-based artist, and about her love for “architectural utopias”–which makes sense given her brand-new, dollhouse-based exhibit at Vox Populi! — the Artblog editors] Erica Prince talks here of her love of […]

Matt Kalasky spoke with us Oct. 17, 2012 about his role as one of the founding editors of the new online arts journal, the The Nicola Midnight St. Claire (now temporarily called “The New, New Masses”–you can hear about that on their website). We also wanted to hear about his art, which takes the form […]

NOTE: This podcast was originally published on Artblog on September 5, 2011 Ingrid Schaffner, ICA’s Senior Curator, has been with the Institute of Contemporary Art for ten years, and in that time she’s created many great exhibitions. Schaffner has a an easy smile, a ready laugh, and an interest in the absurd, from Dali and Dada […]

Frank Bramblett grew up in a small town in rural Alabama where he played in the Alabama mud as a child. He also had an imaginary friend, Graham, who talked to him constantly. Frank’s large abstract paintings spring from his love of materials and from his need to experiment like an alchemist. You can see […]

[We’re excited to be presenting a panel on Activism, Evangelism, and Art on March 23 with Slought, Ken Lum, and Amy Sadao! Get to know Amy’s background here. — the Artblog editors] Amy Sadao, Director of the Philadelphia Institute of Contemporary Art (ICA) has won many awards for her work as a curator, organizer and leader in […]

Ken Lum moved to Philadelphia in 2012 to head up the Fine Arts Undergraduate Program at the University of Pennsylvania School of Design. Right now, you can see work by Ken at his solo exhibition, The Mini-Mall Series, at Rosenwald-Wolf Gallery. AND, coming in March, his work will be featured in the 2014 Whitney Biennial! In our podcast, Ken talks […]

Shelley Spector studied dance for many years–her mother was a dance teacher and taught dance classes out of the studio in the basement. So the idea of creating art that looks effortless–the way dancers make dancing look effortless–was built into Spector’s way of working. Spector founded the influential Spector Gallery on 6th and Bainbridge in […]

Matthew Green’s realist oil paintings depict the natural world punctuated by pieces of the built environment that intrude and insist on the human presence in the landscape. Green’s works are pristine and forlorn and raise issues of ecology and the age-old struggle of humankind to subdue the natural world. We met Green in 2003, our first […]

Libby and Roberta interviewed activist ceramic artist Roberto Lugo in 2013. The podcast is 17 minutes long and in it the artist explains his life journey from grafitti artist in Kensington to graduate of Penn State's art program. It's a great interview.

Amy Sadao, Director of the Philadelphia Institute of Contemporary Art (ICA) has won many awards for her work as a curator, organizer and leader in the arts. There are not a lot of women directors of art museums, and Sadao says that’s a problem. She herself had strong woman mentors and credits them for her success. We […]

Syd Carpenter’s ceramic sculptures are in many museum collections, including the Philadelphia Museum of Art, Pennsylvania Academy, and the Renwick in Washington, DC. Carpenter’s muscular and biomorphic forms pull together recognizable imagery–chains, fences, flowers, and a series of farms based on small family farms in the South. Considered together, her work is a loose narrative […]

Jennie Thwing‘s whimsical stop-action animations have tickled our visual funnybone for years–at the same time that they’ve made us think about issues like the environment and our culture of waste. The artist and educator (she teaches at Rowan University in New Jersey) is also a member of Nexus, one of Philly’s oldest alternative membership spaces. Thwing, […]

Libby and Roberta talk with Curator John Caperton about the complex and visually-exciting exhibit by Demetrius Oliver at the Print Center.

Ken Lum moved to Philadelphia in 2012 to head up the Fine Arts Undergraduate Program at the University of Pennsylvania School of Design. Right now, you can see work by Ken at his solo exhibition, The Mini-Mall Series, at Rosenwald-Wolf Gallery. AND, coming in March, his work will be featured in the 2014 Whitney Biennial! In our podcast, Ken talks […]

John Kelly got a scholarship to American Ballet Theater when he was 17. After dancing for a while he went to Parsons to study art. Then he hit the East Village Paradise Club and began performing, singing songs, in boy drag or other drag (e.g., dressed as Joni Mitchell), and the rest is history. Kelly, […]

Art was the family business for Renny Molenaar and Rocio Cabello, owners of IMPeRFeCT Gallery in Germantown. Renny’s family includes many musicians and visual artists, and Rocio’s family includes a graphic design firm she worked for. The two met through Renny’s gallery in the South Bronx in the 1980s, Black and White in Color. The […]

Kay Healy is known for her “stuffed” wall works, printed environments that look like scenery for a play or life-size relief sculptures. The environments are domestic, with chairs, tables, a refrigerator, a sink — printed and stuffed. The artist is from New York, and is sensitive to people’s loss of their domestic objects because of her […]

Lewis Colburn loves history and his sculptures and installations often deal with historical periods and ideas at play in those bygone eras. We would have loved to meet and talk with him in his studio in the Viking Mill building in Kensington, but that building, which houses many artists studios and small businesses, was recently closed […]

Donald Camp is a member of the Baha'i faith, and our interview with him involved talk about spirituality and seeking answers. But in addition, Don told us about magic. He is a trained magician, who learned his first tricks from his magician father.

Roberta and Libby interview artist Piper Brett in this 20-minute podcast for Artblog Radio.

Roberta and Libby interview Antonio Puri in this 21-minute podcast for Artblog Radio.

Jess Perlitz makes work that you can interact with. Sometimes there is a crank that will sound an air raid siren; sometimes there are steps to climb up to the top of a fortress lookout. Occasionally, she wears a costume and you interact with her. She sees her work as coming out of childhood play, […]

Roberta and Libby interview John Gatti in this 15-minute podcast for Artblog Radio.

Roberta and Libby interview Mary Smull in this 15-minute podcast for Artblog Radio.

Roberta and Libby interview Tim Eads in this 15-minute podcast for Artblog Radio.

—>This podcast was originally published Feb. 14, 2011, following our interview with Daniel Traub at The Print Center where he had a show of his photographs. Daniel’s film, with Glenn Holsten, The Barefoot Artist, a documentary on Daniel’s mother Lily Yeh, debuted at the Philadelphia Museum of Art last night. The auditorium was jammed, every […]

Roberta and Libby interview artist Jacob Lunderby in this 16-minute podcast for Artblog Radio.

Roberta and Libby interview Beth Heinly in this 16-minute podcast for Artblog Radio.

“It’s possible here in Philly” Lindsay Chandler and A. J. Rombach moved to Philadelphia after graduating from art school (Lindsay, from RISD, and A.J. from Boston University). They didn’t know each other before moving here but became friends through their network of artist friends. The two artists helped co-found Fjord space on Frankford Ave. last […]

We spoke with Jill and Sheldon Bonovitz in 2011. The show of their collection of outsider art, "Great and Might things: Outsider Art from the Jill and Sheldon Bonovitz Collection" opens today at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. The collection is a bequeath to the museum. In our podcast they talk about how they started collecting outsider art and why they are giving it to the museum. This podcast originally ran on May 7, 2011.

Michelle Post’s sculptural Tronies will debut as a permanent installation at Grounds for Sculpture this fall. In our podcast the artist tells us how she received the commission and how she conceived of the ten large portrait heads that sit on plinths like a chorus of grumpy citizen jurors waiting for something to pass judgment on. Post, a […]