What to do this First Friday
Please note: This article is published as an archive copy from Philadelphia City Paper. My City Paper is not affiliated with Philadelphia City Paper. Philadelphia City Paper was an alternative weekly newspaper in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The last edition was published on October 8, 2015.
At his exhibit in Austin, McNamee-Tweed hung the watercolor pieces alongside an elaborate recreation of an actual bookstore. He says the installation included "all the bookstore clichés that I could manifest"
OUT OF THE WOODS: Students at the Center for Art in Wood get crafty during this year’s Windgate ITE International Residency at the Center. Work from that program will be on display Friday through Oct. 25.
Amber Johnston
Amber Johnston
Mere weeks before his exhibit “Pop-Up Bookstore” opened in Austin, Texas, Kevin McNamee-Tweed says, “I didn’t know what I was doing.”
To stir up an idea, McNamee-Tweed headed to his safe place: a book-store. He had always dreamt of becoming a writer and had once worked at a bookstore in San Francisco. Recently, he almost opened a bookstore with his best friend from Brooklyn.
Surrounded by novels, poetry collections and magazines, McNamee-Tweed started making watercolor and gouache paintings of imagined book covers, complete with made-up titles, authors, illustrations, featured reviews and a healthy dose of silliness. Washington Square Squared is the title of one. Another: So You Grew Up in White Suburban America But You Love Bob Marley and Other Cultures. Then there are the fake reviews: “This novel suffocated me,” says the Omnipolitan Times of the book Omaha. “Didn’t read it,” says Sturgil Commontree, author of Smoke Like Wool Curls Up in the Worst Way.
“I just started making these things and didn’t think about it,” says McNamee-Tweed. “When I had about 30 of them, I figured I could probably turn this into a full concept.”
At his exhibit in Austin, McNamee-Tweed hung the watercolor pieces alongside an elaborate recreation of an actual bookstore. He says the installation included “all the bookstore clichés that I could manifest”: hanging plants, dusty fans, coffee tables, fake art and even a bulletin board filled with “people posting insane things.”
But in Philadelphia, McNamee-Tweed is paring down the show. Instead of hitting viewers over the head with bookstore ephemera, he wants the installation to “hint at bookstore.” The focus will be squarely on his dozens of watercolors of books (as well as some newspapers and posters), which will be organized on the wall according to genre and the author’s last name. There will probably also be a fake clerk and a few plants.
The exhibit calls to mind all of the country’s bookstores that have folded in recent years, but not in an overly depressing way.
“I do want to kind of memorialize books,” says McNamee-Tweed, “and hold up my love for them as objects and as things that contain stories.”
Through Sat., Aug. 2, reception Fri., Aug. 1, 6 p.m., 2430 Coral St., littleberlin.org.
Albert LeCoff, co-founder of the Center for Art in Wood, tells his international fellows not to worry about producing picture-perfect woodwork by the end of their two-month stay.
“There’s usually the pressure of performance,” he says. “I always say, ‘If you come up with a good pile of shavings, I’ll be happy.’”
His advice captures the happy, innovative attitude of the Windgate ITE International Residency, now in its 19th year. Despite his recommendation, the artists always end up creating wood pieces very much worthy of display. In fact, a past fellow literally used wood shavings in a piece to depict the fur of a ram.
This year’s “allTURNatives: Form + Spirit 2014” exhibit features work by Eric Adjetey Anang, Miriam Carpenter, Jordan Gehman, Reed Hansuld, Maggie Jackson, Amber Johnston and Yuri Kobayashi, who hail from everywhere from Pennsylvania to Canada to Ghana.
Through Oct. 25, reception Fri., Aug. 1, 5:30 p.m., 141 N. Third St. 215-923-8000, centerforartinwood.org.
Stop by Tiger Strikes Asteroid to see geometric mastermind Gary Petersen’s colorful, massive, site-specific painting. Along with the titular 14- by 19-foot piece, his exhibit “zip line tow rope” also features a few works on paper.
“I am interested in geometric abstraction that reflects our vulnerability and uncertainty in the world,” Petersen says in his artist’s statement. “I’ve always been interested in the line, how it contains, defines and suggests. Color is very important in my work. It allows the somewhat familiar forms to become personal and subtly eccentric.”
Through Aug. 31, reception Fri., Aug. 1, 6 p.m., 319A N. 11th St., 484-469-0319, tigerstrikesasteroid.com.
