University City Arts League brings us West Philly Abstraction, presenting eight West Philadelphia artists whose works have been exhibited internationally and are part of major museum collections, and who all participate in the abstract tradition.

The opening will be held this Friday, March 9 from 6-8 p.m. at 4226 Spruce Street.

From UCAL:

Marina Borker began as a painter but moved into the realm of stained glass. Focusing on the leading of the glass, perhaps more so than the colored glass itself, Borker’s recent pieces exist in space like transparent line drawings. Borker holds an MFA from Tyler School of Art, and her work has been exhibited at Vox Populi, Nexus Foundation for Today’s Art, and Fleisher Art Memorial.

Robert Goodman‘s densely painted works pull the viewer into a swirling vortex of color and gestural energy.  Currently teaching at Moore College of Art, he holds an MFA from Tyler School of Art and was the recipient of a 2008 Pennsylvania Council on the Arts Fellowship for Painting.

Paul King takes a contemporary yet unabashedly expressionist approach to abstraction. His gestural canvases nevertheless show a firm devotion to the sensitive and disciplined painterliness of Cezanne. Paul King’s work has been shown regularly in the Philadelphia area for the past two decades and is in the permanent collection of the Woodmere Art Museum. He teaches at The University of the Arts.

Alice Oh, winner of a Pew Fellowship in the Arts, makes paintings that are built up from small color shapes and components. They evoke natural growth and progression as a metaphor for contemporary human living. Alice Oh’s works are in the collection of The Philadelphia Museum of Art and Yale University. She holds an MFA from Yale University and currently teaches at Moore College of Art.

Caroline Letham Santa traverses a territory somewhere between painting, drawing, and arguably, sculpture. Her recent works made of paper that has been found, aged, distressed, folded, and, as the artist states, “stored” and “transported” result in visual experiences that exist outside a realm of verbal definition. Caroline Letham Santa received her MFA from the University of Pennsylvania She has exhibited in curated group shows regionally and has had two solo exhibitions with the collective Tiger Strikes Asteroid.

Tremain Smith makes hybridized oil/encaustic paintings whose imagery and color hang together in building-block-like structures. She interprets the lines and planes she creates as bridges or passageways; doors, walls and floor plans to inner realities. Smith’s work is in the permanent collection of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, as well as numerous corporate and private collections.

Todd Keyser collides strategies of abstraction with the ultimate form of illusion: photography. Layering abstract painting actions upon found photographs of caves, Keyser chips away at the perennial conceptual dichotomy of seeing versus belief. Keyser holds an MFA from the Maryland Institute College of Art. Recent exhibition venues for his work include Rebekah Templeton Gallery (Philadelphia) and the Delaware Center for Contemporary Art in Wilmington.

Douglas Witmer takes an intuitive approach that combines simple geometric imagery, emphatic color, and subtle manipulation of surface physicality. It is an inquiry into the materiality of seeing, perception, feeling and memory. Douglas Witmer holds an MFA from the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. His work has been the subject of 10 solo shows nationally and curated group shows internationally, including such venues at MoMA PS1 in New York.

– Emma Eisenberg

In November 2010, over beers in Kensington’s El Bar, West Philadelphia resident Jesse Montgomery and friend Alex Shephard, two bibliophiles and voracious cultural consumers right out of Oberlin College, surveyed their options as literary career hopefuls in the uncertain world of publishing and literary criticism. Instead of accepting the dark pronouncements on how books and literary culture are dead among young people, Montgomery and Shephard set out to craft their own online community, Full Stop, that would be committed to “an earnest, expansive, and rigorous discussion of literature and literary culture.”

Montgomery and Shephard brought on as editors former Oberlin classmates Max Rivlin-Nadler, Amanda Shubert, and Eric Jett (who also designed the sleek website look), partnered with Google Ads (later replaced by Lit Breaker), and hit the ground running in January 2011. Starting out by publishing reviews and interviews and later expanding to include features and a daily blog, Full Stop “aims to focus on young writers, works in translation, and books we feel are being neglected by other outlets while engaging with the significant changes occurring in the publishing industry and the evolution of print media.”

In December 2011, in response to what the Full Stop editors characterized as “a year of global unrest,” they launched a new series called “The Situation in American Writing” inspired by a 1939 Partisan Review questionnaire that asked leading writers of that time about literature, politics, and the intersections between the two. “The Situation” spoke with prominent contemporary writers including George Saunders, Marilynn Robinson, Steve Almond, and Aimee Bender, and was picked up by such publications as The New Yorker, The Millions, The Rumpus, The LA Times, HTMLGIANT, and The Daily Beast.

When asked what was on the horizon for Full Stop, Montgomery wrote, “We just launched a new series called “Thinking the Present” that focuses on contemporary political questions and current non-fiction. Expect a series on pedagogy soon as well as more puns about birds and basketball.”

Despite the scattered locations of the other editors (New York City, Northampton, and Charleston, W.Va), Montgomery says he’d like to give Full Stop more of a local Philadelphia focus and was excited about running more content specific to Philadelphia readers.

If you’re interested in contributing to Full Stop, contact Jesse Montgomery at: jesse [at] full-stop.net

– Emma Eisenberg

Dock Street’s West Philly T-Shirt contest is still on and West Philly-based artists are encouraged to participate. You can submit your design through Saturday, March 17. The winner will be announced on March 28.

Apart from seeing your friends and neighbors wearing a tee with your work of art, you can win free beer for a week – 14 drink coupons or two beers per day!

The design can be based around the brewpub, a specific beer or Dock Street beers in general.

Here are the rules:

1. Any West Philadelphia-based artist/illustrator/designer can enter.
2. All entries must be black and white.
3. Art must be submitted electronically (.pdf, .ai, .jpg, .png, .tiff, .gif)
4. There are no entry fees.
5. Submissions will be judged on creativity, style, printability and representation of Dock Street.
6. Dock Street Staff will vote on top 3 and announce on March 20. Once they’ve selected the top 3, they’ll open the voting on their website, Facebook and Twitter and at the brewpub on March 28.
7. The winner gets their artwork printed on a run of Dock Street tees and receives 4 t-shirts for their trophy case, free beer for a week (14 drink vouchers) and a bottle of one of Dock Street’s limited release beers. And of course, bragging rights!

Also, please send the following to dockstreetinfo [at] gmail.com:

-Name
-Address
-Telephone
-Email Address
-Preferred canvas for art

We are happy to report that West Philly-based independent film project “MAYA” has reached and even slightly exceeded its funding goal on Kickstarter and will begin shooting in the first week of April. Thanks to everyone who supported it!

The film’s director, Dan Papa, is very excited that they hit the goal and says that they can’t wait to start shooting. They are still casting for the male lead role and should have a decision on that within the next couple of weeks.

A couple of crew members are still needed for this project, so anyone interested please email Dan at danieljamespapa [at] gmail.com. Here‘s the film’s Facebook page.

We are passing along information about two events happening at Dock Street Brewery.

Local artists are welcome to participate in the West Philly T-Shirt Design Contest that is currently underway at the pub. The competition is running until March 17 and the winners will be announced on March 20. Any West Philly artist, illustrator or designer can enter and there are no entry fees. The design can be based around the pub, a specific beer or Dock Street beers in general. For more information, check out this page.

The Books Through Bars fundraiser will be held at the pub on Wednesday, Feb. 22, beginning at 8:30 p.m. This fundraiser will help get dictionaries for incarcerated people. The most fundamental tool for self-education and empowerment, the dictionary is the single most requested book by prisoners across the country.

$10 donation will get you a beer, a slice of pizza and a dictionary for BTB. Live music from Sour Mash and Cask & Co is starting at 9 p.m.

Named after the New York-based avant-garde film society started in 1947 and inspired by Maya Deren’s Greenwich Village exhibition of experimental films, Cinema 16 is a new series of film experiences based at the International House that “seeks to confirm the relevance of the historic avantgarde by pairing it with contemporary sound.” For its opening night event this Friday, Feb. 17 artist and curator Molly Surno has commissioned musicians as varied as the internationally recognized pop rock band Yeah Yeah Yeah’s to the locally Brooklyn favorite krautrock group FORMA to create original music that will accompany a series of historic short, experimental films to create a mixed media performance that “remove film from the conventional big screen theater.”

This edition of Cinema 16 at IHP will explore themes of perversity, flesh, and the female form. The films are:

Asparagus
dir. Suzan Pitt, US, 1979, 16mm, 18 mins, color

Kusama’s Self Obliteration
dir. Jud Yalkut, US, 1967, 16mm, 24 mins, color

Lusting Hours (excerpt)
dir. John and Lem Amero, US, 1967, 10 mins, b/w

8:00 p.m. International House Philadelphia (3701 Chestnut Street). $9 general admission, $7 students & seniors.  For more information or if you want to buy tickets online, go here.