Oh baby baby...

As life would have it, I just so happened to give birth to little Ms. Olivia Rae Jackson Grant on Friday, October 23 at 4:15am. She came into the world as I like to say "quick like a bunny" via an amazingly fast and wonderful home birth. She weighed 6lbs 5oz at birth and is 19 1/2 inches long. She's a total doll and I couldn't have wished for a more wonderful little lady.

indigo

Two weeks ago a friend called to invite me to have my aura photographed with her at the Padlock Gallery by a visiting "galactic channel, spiritual counselor, visionary speaker, and existensial alchemist" named Ackbar.

Here is the best definition I could find regarding how the photo is produced:

"This is classified as a biofeedback apparatus. Our technologies produce an electronic interpretation of what we believe the Aura would looks like. It does not photograph the actual Aura. There's nothing that exists which can do this. The camera actually moves through two processes. It takes about eight to ten seconds to take an aura portrait. In the first two seconds the Polaroid camera snaps the portrait. In the remaining six to eight seconds, the biofeedback apparatus measures the electral potential along the meridian points of the palm of the hand, then converts that information into an electrical frequency and displays this as colors and pattern which are shown directly over the portrait to represent the Aura. The aura photos are brighter than the aura seen by psychics, because we amplify the signal. "

When Ackbar did my reading, he talked not only about the meaning of the individual colors, but also their relationship to the different chakras. In my case, he saw primarily indigo (along with blue and purple) which generally indicates a search for truth, but also psychic abilities (say wha??) which emanated from the "third eye" and crown chakras.

Since having my aura photographed, I've been doing research online regarding the strength and energy associated with color. I found a really intriguing website which clearly spells out the strengths, weakness, abilities and ailments associated with each color and chakra, and goes on to describe ways in which you can use color to improve your life. The part that I found most exciting was "color breathing."

http://threeheartscompany.com/chakra.html

If asked why I choose to paint instead of some other medium, I would probably talk about it's relationship to drawing. But, of the all the formal characteristics of paint, color is by far the most important to me. I often use flat shapes, or in some cases fields, of color to lend to my paintings a certain moodiness or psychological weight. In the past, I have just thought of it as my personal, somewhat eccentric, palette. I am pretty psyched to learn more about these ancient associations of specific colors to the body and spirit, and I can sense this becoming much more important in some upcoming paintings...

Ice House

I just read about the coolest project. Pun intended. Heh. The piece is a collaboration between New York based architect Matthew Radune and photographer Gregory Holm. They intend to transform a foreclosed home in Detroit this winter into an "ice house" by gradually spraying it with layers of water. In the spring, what is left will be salvaged or demolished and the lot will be donated to become a community garden. The intention is to draw attention to foreclosures in what was, decades ago, a thriving region. I like the project first off because it sounds like it will be visually really awesome looking, but also knowing that the lot will go from a place of icy desolation into a flourishing place of new growth seems like such a lovely use of space and symbolism. They have a swanky blog like us and also a place to donate if you like the project.

http://icehousedetroit.blogspot.com/

Ladies who sculpt...animals

Every time I get ready to start sculpting new work I take a look back at some fabulous lady animal sculptors to get inspired...here are a few that I'm thinking of at the moment...

Malia Jensen

Adelaide Paul
Nicola Hicks
Stephanie Metz

Tricia Cline

Beth Cavener Stitcher

The Legacy of Harvey Finkle

Dearl Richards
from The Jobs Project
by Harvey Finkle

Last week I went to A Tribute for Change, a fundraiser for Bread and Roses at the National Constitutional Center with a tribute to inspiring photographer Harvey Finkle.

I've had the pleasure of seeing Harvey in action on marches and organizing events, at Truth commissions, at protests ..because I was a part of them. To get an intimate glimpse at an artist, a documentary photographer, finding the little and big moments at just the right time and shooting them with his camera was a gift. I'm fascinated with what he saw during moments of sadness and frustration, of power and resilience, of unity and love, of community organizing. I especially love what he sees in the little, often mundane activities in the everyday lives and struggle of people in this country. His images are haunting. They are beautiful and they tell a story of many people, of our nation. And of the fight and heartache and power of people from all over the world.

The event was amazing. Tim Dowlin shined with his rap about Harvey. And his wife Carol, did an amazing job. She must love that man:)

please visit Harvey's website:
www.harveyfinkle.com

Here's a couple to get you started. He is a fascinating, kind man. If you ever see him clicking away, say what's up.
















xo ac

Girls with Hooves.

Last weekend I did a photo shoot with Darla and Laura on some ideas I'm playing around with just to see what develops. And of course to document Darla's fantastically beautiful belly! I love that thing! Anyway, I've posted a couple of favorites. I have to admit I think my most favorite of all are the ones where Darla was messing around with a couple of disembodied deer hooves. I can tell you right now one of these is going framed in my living room.

In other news, I got to shoot a very fancy Rebecca Minkoff event at the lovely Three Sirens Boutique for Philadelphia Style Magazine! If you haven't been there lately to see Aubrie's amazing window display I recommend going over to check it out and then trying on some of the hot little numbers they sell there.

Tumbleweeds and Crazy Animals...

It's like a ghost town in here...where the heck are you ladies? Must be super busy - ness because I know a whole lot of fancy The Other Woman ish went down this past week, involving saucy windows with partial nudity, fancy openings and photo shoots and above all else, crepes and peninas.

Anywho, with all this hub-bub, my brain is rip raring to go on this upcoming project I have to start...A crazy animals take over a house installation. I did a piece on this subject for Petit Fours, a show of miniature work by The Other Woman at Arcadia Boutique earlier this year but it ended up as more of a maquette for grander plans in my head...And when approached by the Art Alliance to create a room specific installation, I knew this would be the best fit. The space is an old mansion and the first floor is chock full o' architechtural detail, similar to what I loved about the space in the Barclay for my January show at CFEVA. Right now I'm working out how many pieces, what animals, what are they doing, where can I get furniture that will work, etc etc etc...

I feel like there's alot of opportunity to create some crazy pieces but want it to read as realistic and believable as possible...I want viewers to walk in and for their experience to be as if they just got home after a long trip and found out that all these animals had taken over their house...and these animals are all still there trashing the place and are all of a sudden staring, maybe even looking a bit hungry...oh my oh my....I'm getting all even more excited!

Here are some photos of the space (with some crazy amazing installation in it! I don't know the artist's name but its really fabulous)...any thoughts???

2 shows to go see...

I haven't been to these shows yet, so its not so much a review as it is a "go and see these shows"...TONIGHT!


Grave Concerns
Matt Pruden solo exhibition
October 8-November 6, 2009
Nexus Gallery at the Crane Building
1400 North American Street, Suite 102
Philly, PA






OPENING RECEPTION: THURSDAY OCTOBER 8, 6-9 PM

GALLERY HOURS: WED - SUN 12-6 PM

FROM THE PRESS RELEASE:

"With “Grave Concerns” Matt Pruden presents his 3rd solo exhibition at Nexus.

Stemming from research into 19th century attitudes towards the afterlife, each graphite drawing in the “Grave Concerns” series brings together a symbolic funerary ornament from Laurel Hill Cemetery in Philadelphia, and a terse bit of text from the Magic Eight-Ball. The drawings are a mash-up of high and low cultural sources: both ends of the spectrum that addresses perennial concerns about the nature of fate, supernatural force, and the survival of consciousness.

The funerary decorations observed throughout Laurel Hill derive from a long literary and art-historical lineage, a deeply symbolic language denoting such profundities as faith, grief, redemption, loss and immortality. The Magic Eight-Ball is a child’s toy invented in the 1940’s but still popular into the present. When an anxious question is posed to it and the ball is shaken, a pithy response floats out of darkness to the surface. Much as the Ouija board descended from the “talking boards” of Victorian séances into a spooky parlor game, so the Magic Eight-Ball is a laughably watered down version of divination.

Working across many media, Pruden is primarily concerned with cultural responses to the unknown, geographical imaginings, and the spectre of loss. He makes use of obscure histories as a kind of cultural subconscious, probing the ways in which they inform our contemporary world. Having previously delved into such 19th century phenomena as polar exploration, mountaineering, and Spiritualism, he now brings his focus to bear on material that is both very near at hand and forever mysterious."


About to Surface
Featuring work by Andria Bibiloni, Julie Boyer, Brooke Holloway, Jessica Jane Julius, Brenna K. Murphy, and Lareen Griffin.
September 28th through October 16th, 2009
Center for Emerging Visual Artists
1521 Locust Street
Philly, PA

3 pieces below are by Brooke Holloway, who told me she did a giant wall piece for this show...super excited to see it.




An exhibiton curated by Julien Robson, Curator of Contemporary Art at The Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Art. Select work and installations by artists participating in the 2009 Philadelphia Open Studio Tours.

Le Confessionnal

Ah, BAMcinematek. Thank you for being only a short 20 minute walk from my apartment and having the most engaging shows! Last night I saw Le Confessionnal with a brief introduction by the French Canadian director Robert Lepage. Set in Quebec City, Le Confessionnal cuts seamlessly between the present time and 1952. The plot line for the former involves Pierre Lamontagne's return home for his fathers funeral and to track down his drug-using adopted brother. Scenes from this story line interweave gracefully with the same family in 1952 and their struggle to deal with with the unexpected pregnancy of Mrs. Lamontagne's 16 year old sister, Rachel. Alfred Hitchcock's visit to town to film I Confess coincides with, and actually mirrors, Rachel's story and is filmed inside the church where Rachel worked until the revelation of her pregnancy. In Hitchcock's film a priest is accused of a crime and is unable to disclose the name of the culprit because it was revealed to him inside the confessional. In Le Confessionnal, a young priest is expelled from the church because everybody assumes he is the father of Rachel's child.

Even more interesting then the story (though the story is fantastic!) is how the film was made visually. There is an amazing overhead shot that follows Pierre through a labyrinthian bathhouse as he searches for his brother. The voyeuristic aspect of this sequence reminds me of some of Ms. Aubrie Costello's work. We are privy to the covert activities going on inside the cramped rectangular cells below. There is the beautiful metaphoric progression of Pierre painting and repainting a wall in his parents house because the outlines of the photos that used to hang there continue to permeate. The color red is a motif that returns again and again in thoughtful ways.

This was Lepage's first film. During his introduction to the movie he said most of the people involved had a theater background so there was a lot of excitement and freshness that came into the creating of the film. He also said that he was finished making films because he didn't like the process of it. He is still, however, involved in theater direction and currently has a show, Lipsynch, as part of BAM's 2009 Next Wave Festival. As a testament to Lepage's unconventional way, this performance is an 8 hour and 30 minute marathon with 4 intermissions and a 45 minute dinner break! Now that's commitment!

Through the Keyhole...

Through The Keyhole,
a window installation by Yours Truly

This week marks the unveiling of my new window installation for the competition Windows Throughout old City, an event that is part of Design Philadelphia 2009. Please stroll by (and stop in!) Three Sirens Boutique at 134 N. 3rd St to see it live!

Keep strolling around Old City to see the 50 other window displays scattered about like little secret surprises in the windows...

You can read more about Design Philadelphia @ www.designphiladelphia.org.

And pretty please with sugar on top vote for my window if you like it at www.discoveroldcity.org
or text 4040 TO 267-582-2521.

Thank you to the beautiful Laura Graham for being the watched woman in my piece....


xo ac

Beautiful Human

Last week I had the pleasure of attending a panel discussion of the Beautiful Human show at Haverford College. Our very own Laura Graham is one of the six talented artists who were invited to include their work in the lovely show, along with Donald Camp, Matthew Fisher, Rob Matthews, Joshua Mosley, and James Mundie. There were several works exhibited by each artist, which gave the feeling, as curator Shelley Spector mentioned during the discussion, of six mini- solo shows.

In looking at the show, I personally was more interested in the way each artists' work defined portraiture rather than beauty. Formally, there were a lot of common threads - working in black and white, varying-but-all-on-the-high-side degrees of representationalism, obvious attention to detail, relatively minimal/clean technical execution, etc. But, each of the artists really approached portraiture in very different ways.

To start with the lone woman represented in the show, Laura's use of masks and archetypes serve to remove the individual and transform the models into specifically articulated, albeit anonymous, characters. Matthew Fisher's soldiers are similarly reduced to any/every-man status through their uniforms and stylized faces.

At the other end of the spectrum are the small, intimate and painstaking graphite portraits by Rob Matthews. His subjects are rendered with incredible draftsmanship and disciplined, repetitive line work. The care and patience alone taken in the act of this type of drawing suggest a relationship between the artist and sitter. The further inclusion of the symbolic objects held by the people in his drawings invite the viewer to "get to know" them in a humble and personal way.

During the discussion, there was one small comment that really resonated with me. In talking about process, Laura said that none of her photographs ever turn out the way she pictured them in her head. Rob added that the ones that you know exactly how they're going to look are the ones you never bother making anyway. This is something that I've always struggled with -- I've had ideas that will stick with me for years, that I never get around to. It wasn't until I heard him say the words that I realized why, and why I shouldn't worry so much about it.

New Secret Lady Lair...

This past weekend I went on a tour of the Masonic Temple in Philadelphia. I wasn't quite sure what to expect at all...and I have to say I was quite surprised! For a top secret men's club, this place was, for lack of a better term, lady-tastic! Each room was modeled after architecture from a different place/time period and I was expecting to see super machismo and phallic references out the wazoo, but no...it was amazingly beautiful! It looks like each room was painstakingly crafted and lovingly decorated. Many of the architectural elements were plaster and faux finished to look like wood, tile, marble, etc. Amazing and beautiful...

The ceiling of this room was made of carved (or cast?) plaster tiles...incredible...

This was the Egyptian room...insane...

Egyptian room ceiling...

Egyptian room podium...(with what the tour guide mentioned were greek style sphinxes, rather than Egyptian style...curious...)

A fabulous view of the hall, which featured a cast iron staircase...

All the "wooden" ceiling beams in here were actually faux finished plaster painted with turkey feathers to make it look like wood grain!!!

AMAZING CEILINGS THROUGHOUT...!

52 foot high ceilings?!?!

...!

Caryatids...

Yet another amazing plaster ceiling...

Wtf...

What looked to be one of many amazing tile pieces...

Owl!

Bottom of the main staircase...so crazy...

Really and truly the place was amazingly beautiful and I can't believe this is where men go to have their secret meetings...surely this is a place meant for secret lady meetings, no?