Midweek News, PAFA leadership change, UArts bankruptcy, Philly Comics, Partners and son, Free Library, Nancy Herman Gallery, and our Fringe and Cannonballs picks of the week

Click to expand the podcast transcript

Roberta: Hi everyone, it’s Roberta.

Ryan: And this is Ryan and this is the Midweek News

Roberta: On Artblog radio. Good morning, Ryan.

Ryan: Good morning Roberta.

Roberta: Let’s talk about the news. Alright, I have four things against. This morning, I don’t know if this is good or bad. I started out with two. We have to keep it to two, and then it crept up to three and now it’s at four.

So, oh, kill me. Is it going to go higher? I hope not. I think four is a good number, so let’s keep it to four. Anyway, this morning’s news includes in the Enquirer and Billy Penn, I believe. A notice that PAFA, Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Eric Pryor, who’s the director, is going to leave at the end of his contract, which is at the end of this year.

Now that’s big news. Reggie Brown was quoted in the Inquirer article. He’s on, he’s a vice president of the board of trustees. And we interviewed him. We have a really nice, good interview with Reggie on Artblog. He says Pryor was brought in as a change agent, ie to deal with the MFA and the BFA credentials and get that moved because they needed that done. And who’s taking over in when he leaves? At the end of the year, there will be an interim committee of three. Harry Philbrick, who used to be the museum director at PAFA and then went to Philadelphia Contemporary, which he founded, and then went to the Fabric workshop after that as interim and is now going to be interim Museum director at PA, along with two others. Lisa Biagas is the new Chief of Operations and Sonia BasSheva Mañjon is Chief Academic Officer, so a triumvirate is going to be handling the work at PAFA, which is, you know, there’s continual churn in the institutional world of art in Philadelphia.

And so it goes on. PAFA’s been churning for a couple years now. Second institutional churn I want to mention is that University of the Arts filed for bankruptcy. So Friday the 13th, they filed for bankruptcy in bankruptcy court, and they’re going to sell all their buildings. They have, I don’t know, $50 million of debt and some $90 million of buildings are going to try to sell. Not clear whether the $90 million of buildings will actually sell for $50 million to, you know, expunge the debt. So it’s very complicated. And meanwhile, they still haven’t paid the adjunct faculty members and other faculty members in the union.

Those guys are out of two months worth of pay. Now, they weren’t paid in June because you are, it’s closed June 7th I think it was. And so they haven’t been paid for June, July and now August and September. So that’s inexplicable. Why they don’t have any cash reserves whatsoever to pay those people. I find that…

Ryan: Did you see the endowment. They want to spread the endowment out to the, to other universities. So if they, what did it say? $63 million in endowments that could cover some payroll.

Roberta: Yes. But I don’t know that you can use endowment for payroll. They were, yeah, those monies come with strings attached, and it’s all about helping the students.

Who were displaced and now homeless from UArts. Yeah. So I don’t think that money is free and clear. I’m not sure they could pay salaries, but yeah, they’re going to, the bankruptcy and whatnot came as a result of UArts not being able to negotiate with Temple to take over. So Temple had made an offer to take over, but it was contingent upon Temple getting the endowment. Like all of it. And then the people who are the enders, I don’t know what you call them, the philanthropist from the Hamilton family did not want the money to go to Temple and so they said no.

And that was the end of that for Temple University, taking on all of University of the Arts. So that didn’t work out, sadly. And now they’re going to, I think the Hamilton family had half, they’re responsible for half of that endowment fund at UArts. They are happy with spreading the endowment to all the institutions that took the University of the Arts students. But it won’t go to pay salaries, I don’t think, which is pretty sad. Anyway, it continues to churn here in a not good way. I really feel for all those people who are not being paid by University of the Arts and they did all that work and they just. It’s shabby. It’s shabby treatment.

Okay, so let’s turn a little happier here now and go to comics. This is my third thing that I want to talk about. Comics in Philadelphia is such a wonderful subsection of the art sector. Many, many comics are made here by many, many artists and we love them. We just love comics so much. We’ve had comics on art blog for many, many years, so here the Art Department at the free library now has a comics collection that is two years old.

That’s awesome to have a comics collection. You can actually go into the library and get your hands on those books and read them. They also have, and they encourage people to write reviews of the comics. So we’ll put the information in the transcript on how you could email in a review. If you read a comic and you wanted to comment about about it, write a little review.

Thumbs up, thumbs down, thumbs sideways, why didn’t they do blah, blah, blah, whatever. They are encouraging people to do that. Also, they have a comics club that meets, I believe, once a month. And again, we’ll put the information about that in the transcripts so you can find out if you’re interested in joining the comics club.

So really good news on the comics front, and as an ancillary, I want to say that Partners and Son, which is a comic store in Philadelphia at South sixth Street and near Bainbridge, they just turned five this year, and it seems like only yesterday that they came into Philadelphia. So bravo to Partners and Son.

They’re celebrating their birthday all month long. So they have a series of programs. Again, we’ll put their link to their website in where you can see what the programs are this month and then next month, partners and son is tabling at art blogs art market, which is very exciting. They’ll be dropping off their materials that they’re going to have at their table. October 4th, 5pm to 7:00 PM you can come and browse and buy. Merchandise.

Ryan: Yeah, that’s great.

Roberta: Yeah, I’m very excited for that. Finally, the fourth thing I want to say is, last time I believe it was, I told you about a gallery that I hadn’t heard about that was in Jenkintown and it was turning 10 years old and bravo to them.

It was gallery 705. I want to tell you today about Nancy Herman Gallery, which is two years old this year, and this is a woman run gallery, Nancy Herman. Is an artist and gallerist and kind of polymathic artist. She makes digital arts, painted arts books. Children’s books, like a series of them.

She created her own website. We’ll put a link to it. She’s an illustrator. She, you know, has made textile pieces. She is a big music lover and classical from the classical cannon, and she has made art. Digitally that responds to the music itself. So if you think of the swells, there are elements in her art that kind of peak and valley so you can kind of see the music coming through.

Anyway, it’s a very interesting space, which I want to say she shares it with a Pilates studio. So there’s Pilates tables and equipment, the big equipment things in there, which they move out of the way for openings. But it’s a space that’s shared. When I talked with her about it, she knew about Silicon Gallery, which was in Old City, no longer sadly.

But they were a digital printing gallery and workspace. They had the printers were right out in the center of the space. It was big open space, and on the wall were the printed works that they were showing. So here’s another example of machinery and art in the same space. So she took her cue from that and she thought, I’m going to just put it together. She’s an interesting person, a woman of a certain age. She’s done a lot degree from University of Pennsylvania, has been making art forever and a day, since she was young. And I will be writing about this a little bit more. There’s a q and a I did with her, so that’ll be coming up on Artblog, but I wanted to give you a little preview of that.

So if you’re ever in Narberth, look for Nancy Herman Gallery. I think it’s the only real art gallery in Narberth. There are not a lot of real art galleries out here on the mainline. So that’s, that’s unique also.

Anyway, Ryan, that’s great. Those are my four things, so we’re ending on the upbeat. We started very heavy.

Ryan: Yeah, that’s really great. Did you see the news about the artists with the fake ads about Kamala Harris and the Eagles?

Roberta: I did. I did. Yeah, so he has been revealed to be, I can’t remember the name, but we’ll put that in the transcript. The name of the artist who did those, and someone put those in the bus shelters without his knowledge.

That’s believed. If that’s to be believed, I don’t know. Yeah. But who are we to question? I mean, I’m just throwing it out there. But it was great to do. Yeah.

Ryan: Yeah. That’s really funny. I love the, I don’t know how that, you know, how did it end up out my, my place and in the a bus stop? I have no idea.

Roberta: How do you even get a poster in those? Glass enclosed cases, what do you pry it open and then put some putty in there and close it and assume no one will notice.

Ryan: You know, I, people just go about their business, they don’t notice it’s there and it, it looked decent, it looked legit. Kind of had that, kind of had that little fo style that people, it, it didn’t seem out of the ordinary and it didn’t seem to be striking as far as image goes.

So you, you wouldn’t really think it would be. Not. Not real. A production of, yeah, not real. A production of the Eagles advertising company, so.

Roberta: Right. No, it was the same color scheme. It was. It was. It was very good. It was very professionally done.

Ryan: Unobtrusive, not obnoxious. Just kind of fit in there.

Yeah. I think it was a very sneaky, I don’t know if Kamala Harris has actually commented on it or if anyone’s brought it to her attention, but I think it was pretty funny. I love kind of the gorilla art. I wish it was a little bit more provocative. It’s fine. So, I, I don’t think it makes any bit of difference in this city.

Roberta: No. Okay. The, and the name of the artist is a street artist, Winston Sang. T-S-E-N-G confirmed in a statement that he had created the Kamala Harris Harris in an Eagles helmet poster that was seen in the SEPTA bus shelters, bus stops. But he denied knowledge of how they got there.

Ryan: That’s funny. Anyway, I find that kind of stuff hilarious. I love more that kind of random stuff. I, I love that kind of street art. That’s, that’s my kind of thing.

Roberta: No, we do have murals all over the place. That’s another conversation, Ryan, and we shouldn’t get into that yet,

Ryan: But I mean, like this one-off the one-off Art I really enjoy.

Because we do have all the murals and we’re kind of known for it, but I, but I enjoy this more temporal, like it’s just going to be here for a week at max and then it’s moving on, so,

Roberta: right. Or it gets covered up or torn down, or

Ryan: it gets covered up the or torn.

Roberta: When Space 10 26 started in 1998, they were known for wheat pasting images all over the city, and some of those would get covered up and some of those would stay up for a long, long time.

And then it got to be known that they were art and that artists were putting these, they were beautifully. Three and four colored silk screen prints that were getting wheat pasted up like real art, and people started scraping them off the surfaces and claiming them for their, for their apartments or putting, putting them up wherever they wanted them.

That’s where that was. Yes. That was a phenomenon. I have a couple. I knew some of those artists, Ben Woodward, for example, was very generous, giving away artists’ proofs of these beautiful images that he was making. He was very am animal drawn to animals and pigeons and whatnot. And he gave me some, so I have some beautiful things, but people were pulling his work off of, you know, walls here and there because they’re, they’re great.

Ryan: Yeah, I, I love that when. I think we maybe talked about this before, but when I eight years ago when I bought that that little bus, the airport. Commuter connection. Bus. Bus from like the parking garage bus. And I renovated into a camper. Our first trip we took around the west, we had different artists tag the bus, and one of one of the artists that we picked was Dr.

Chip Thomas. Who’s known as Jetsonorama. And he does wheat pasting Indian reservation. He’s an Indian reservation doctor, if you haven’t seen his stuff, I guess we should add a link to his stuff. It’s, it’s really amazing. We had him put a wheat paste on on our van.

Roberta: Cool.

Ryan: Picture. That picture would be

temporal.

Do yeah, you a picture of

Roberta: your van. You should put that in the post. I should,

Ryan: yeah. I’ll, I’ll have to find that. But yeah, I should have that. His work is really amazing. A lot of climate justice reservation justice. Kind of thing, so. Yeah. If you like wheat pacing as well. Hi. His work is, is fantastic.

And climate based environmental action. Yeah, I, I love that kind of stuff. I would hang that in my wall.

Roberta: Yeah.

Ryan: I would take that off of someone else’s building and put it in my own office. I would.

Roberta: Yeah, definitely. Definitely. No, it’s art. Yeah. Street art, yes. You can put it

Ryan: outside. Makes, it’s Philly, so if you leave it outside for five minutes, it’s someone else’s property.

It’s just kind of other rules in this city. All right. I’ll get to my things and I’m just going to pick my three, and then I’ll go from there. But this is Philly Fringe is happening. So I just wanted to pick a couple things in Cannonball. So it’s all about the performance artist, a performance art that’s happening around the city.

I do find it a little bit confusing because there’s not like a full calendar that I found that. Really like dials it in for me very clearly. But if you click on each event, you’ll see the dates that are happening. Some of the calendar events have said canceled, which are kind of unfortunate. because then it makes you think that it’s all canceled.

Some of it’s our individual shows have been canceled versus the entirety of the show. So make sure that you do double check. Entire shows have been canceled, or just the individual show. There’s been some great shows happening. One show that I want to shout out is, I hate to say Judge, a book by its cover, but this is such a great name.

Dixie Cup Seance. I love that name. So I thought, boy, this is going to be a great show. That show is running 17th to the 20th. So there are going to be a few shows once you hear this podcast available still to, to enjoy. That’s at the Ukrainian League of Philadelphia at 800 North 23rd Street, which I don’t think I’ve actually been there.

So that could be an interesting venue. Dixie Cups seance. Another one that thought looked hilarious. So one thing that I’m known for is tall socks. I, I saw this ad that said, or what this show titled Night of a Thousand Knocks, and I thought it said socks. I’m like, oh, this is for me. So night of a Thousand Knocks is Jeff and buttons.

Have a new show and it looks hilarious. The art on it is hilarious. This show is coming up Wednesday the 18th of September and Thursday the 19th, 20 North American. That’s Christchurch Neighborhood House, which is hosting quite a few different events. This looks like a great show. I thought it looked hilarious.

Oh, you’re totally up my alley.

Roberta: I have two questions, two questions before you go on.

Ryan: Yeah.

Roberta: What exactly of Dixie Cup seance caught your eye? Was it the Dixie Cup or was it the seance?

Ryan: I think it’s the word mashup of the two together. because I don’t quite, I mean, I can envision it. It’s like when you get two words in a sentence and you know them on their own, what they individually mean and represent, but you put them together, you’re like, I have no idea what we’re talking about.

Roberta: Yes.

Ryan: So that was exactly

Roberta: what I thought. What the heck?

Ryan: Yeah. Well, anyway, so that one’s described as I’ll, I’ll read you the quick title. It says, daddy Issues scams, and a piled Up Medium. Who hates Talking to the Dead? Dix Cup seance is the story of a grieving daughter and her one chance to speak with her dead father, but she only gets three questions.

What will she ask and why? And who uses Dixie cups to contact the dead? So, and at the end, those three questions, each one gets a new question mark. I thought that was hilarious. It’s great. From a grammatical, hilarious. It’s

Roberta: okay. Second question. So, lots of money. The, the night of a thousand, Knox, is it K-N-O-C-K-S

Ryan: Knox?

Yes. Like, like knock on the door, knock jokes. Yeah.

Roberta: Oh, no, not knock, knock jokes. Really.

Ryan: No. It could be you know, Shakespeare invented, did those, I guess, or borrowed that from someone else. So Really?

Roberta: I didn’t know that.

Ryan: Also roses are red, violets are blue, that sort of idea.

Roberta: Well, he was a poet.

Ryan: Speaking of Shakespeare, next Thursday in the Henrietta Project are doing Anton and Cleopatra, which is my third one. And they started on the 1st of September. So this has been an interesting spread through the Cannonball French time. They have shows. One, like once, one week, and then like one every week till the end of September.

So there’s a couple more shows coming up the 22nd and the 29th of September. That, but it’s all the

Roberta: same show. It’s all Anthony and Cleopatra.

Ryan: It’s a, it’s called Anthony and Cleopatra. A Phil John. So it’s very Philly apparently. And I’m not quite sure what that’s going to mean, but it could be really interesting.

Henrietta Project is a a, a black female led Shakespeare troupe. That’s space here in Philly. Could be very interesting. Mix it up, smash it all together, shake it around, and then pour it out on stage and see what happens. I think that’s what it’s going to be. And it could be very interesting. That’s 1608 Ridge Avenue.

That is Anthony and Cleopatra could be a lot of fun. Yeah. Those are my three big picks of the week. Sounds good for our bets. Yeah.

Roberta: I love that there’s a black female. Black female Shakespeare company in Philly. That is outstanding.

Ryan: Yeah. Be too. I want to read more about that. Be

Roberta: Yeah.

Ryan: There’s plenty of great black female theater theatrical performers in this town.

So it’s like, have a troop, we’ll do fringe, we’ll do Shakespeare, so. That’s great. Expect a different take on it. Get a different vibe of what Shakespeare was. I think you getting get a different perspective, especially when you take a lot of the men out of it. Shakespeare has a very different tone.

And, and quite honestly, I think there’s a lot there. I. To, to be explored and yeah, there’s still a lot happening until the end of the month. We’ll talk about more next week as well, since we’ll still have an additional week left in the month to talk about fringe and cannonball events that are happening.

Cool. So if you see something that you particularly liked and there’s a couple events that, that, that I’m not covering, send me a note. I got a couple notes about different things that they saw that they, people enjoyed. So Awesome. Which is why I tried to get to the pig iron show, but that didn’t happen.

Oh, great. Yeah. Thanks for sending me notes. Send keep them coming.

Roberta: Definitely. Yes. We need more email. Kidding, but Wow. Yeah. Yes, please, please let us know. Yeah. I want to say, let’s just recap what we did last weekend, shall we? Friday, Ryan and I, and Libby went out to Media, Pennsylvania. You remember Ryan’s story from media, Pennsylvania from the previous time with the loss of his wallet and the recovery of his wallet. So we all are bonding with media these days. Yeah. So one of our board members. Gabrielle Lavin has started a new coffee shop, I guess we would call it in media on Providence Road, and it’s called Yo Coffee, yo. Yes, and it’s in an old Swiss farms building, and if you knew Delco Swiss Farms, they were only in Delco.

Apparently there were a series A chain, I guess, or individually owned, I don’t know, drive through dairy stores. So you could drive in. There was big. Silo out in front to signal that you were at a farm, which you weren’t. But anyway, it gave you the ambiance of farm ness. And you would go to the window, you would order your quart of milk and your butter and your eggs and all that stuff, and then you would swing around and exit.

And so there are legacy Swiss Farms places all over Delco. That’s an exaggeration. There may be three of them. I don’t know. But anyway, Gabrielle and her husband started yo coffee in a, in an old Swiss farms. They’re repurposing it in a kind of tiki straw hat. I. Laurel wallpaper on the wall, on the inside ambiance, and it’s just great.

It is so wonderful as a reuse of an old building that who knew what was going to happen to it. And you can drive through and get your coffee and they have a full service coffee service and. Some sweets and some crazy kind of candy that they bought from a local candy maker, freeze dried m and ms, freeze dried candy, corn, you know, freeze dried everything.

Anyway, we went out, we found it, and we had coffee and talked with Gabrielle and she is. Wildly excited about what they’re doing and they’re doing community events in the neighborhood out there. The next day we were out there, Friday the next day, she was taking their little van. They have a little van that they bought to cart things around, to Rose Tree Park, I think it was, where there was a 5K and a whole bunch of vendors and they were just going to participate and have their coffee kiosk there.

That was really a nice. Field trip that we did. I’m glad we did it. It was happy. Yeah.

Ryan: Yeah. I

Roberta: thought it was a lot of fun. Yeah, it was. I had the ball avenue of the arts art walk, which was on Sunday, a very beautiful day, very hot and sunny. There were more than 30 vendors that were there, including a person from Morocco in a hijab who was doing henna. She just arrived on the scene. It was marvelous. And she said. Can I do this? I have my stuff. I can, I get a table. And of course we had set this up months before, but we found room for her. We found a table for her. We found a tent for her and she set up and she was doing a big business. People love to have their hand covered with these exquisite designs, the Hannah designs.

So that was, that was sort of the high point, high point of the, the festival for me. There were about 1500 people that showed up, which was amazing. Wow. And great. Yeah, there was a Mr. Softy truck. I was so parched by the time lunch rolled around that all I wanted was Mr. Soft. So, yeah, that happened.

But there was a, a vendor selling corn on the cob, which I thought was amazing. Out of a truck selling corn on the cob and cooked. Cooked of course. And then some African West African. Spicy food. So it was really a thing. And we’re going to do it again next year, so I’ll let you know when applications are open to, to ven at it again.

Ryan: That sounds great.

Roberta: Yeah, it was great. Anyway, we’re ramping up for the art market, everybody. We are so excited. We have the artists filled out their forms. We’re going to have. So much art, it’s going to be fabulous. And we’re hoping you show up on October 4th, Friday, October 4th, five to 7:00 PM is the opening at Moore College of Art and Design, accessible building on the parkway.

You know it, you can be there. We’d love to see you. So come on out for that. There’ll be beverages and there’ll be snacks and it’ll be really nice and art. Lots and lots of art. Affordable, so you can buy.

Ryan: Yeah. Yeah, we’re really looking forward to that. And it’s going to be happening all through October and November and into December.

Yep. So lots of time, but do come out for the opening, see if there’s available and what’s going on. And there’s a lot of programming happening that we’ll keep you up to date on as well. Yeah, so look for that opening coming up in just a few weeks. We’re excited about it.

Roberta: We are very excited. Bye. Signing off. It’s Roberta. Thank you for listening.

Ryan: And this is Ryan, and this has been the Midweek Art Blog, radio News.

Roberta: Excellent. Bye

Ryan: Bye-Bye everyone.