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.
Melissa Maddonni Haims has yarn bombed her husband's head, and once, a municipal employee's bicycle as part of April Fools' joke concocted by Mayor Michael Nutter.
Melissa Maddonni Haims has yarn-bombed her husband’s head. She’s yarn-bombed a child’s cast, the lauded Uffizi Gallery in Italy, and the historic Mount Pleasant mansion in Philadelphia. She even yarn-bombed a municipal employee’s bicycle as part of April Fools’ joke concocted by Mayor Michael Nutter.
Not all local officials have been thrilled with her grandmotherly graffiti, though. Once, while retouching one of her yarn-bombed works that was wrapped around a lamppost in LOVE Park, the police approached her. She was on an eight-foot ladder at the time, which she hastily leapt off of and threw in the back of her car. She then made a getaway.
“I took off,” she said. “The whole time I kept going, ‘I have a kid. I have a mortgage. I have a kid. I have a mortgage. I can’t go to jail.’”
Haims, 42, is showcasing 10 years’ worth of such yarns in the exhibit “in retrospect,” which features photographs of her most beloved yarn-bombings, a live yarn-bombing performance and, believe it or not, a number of works that are not yarn-bombing-related whatsoever.
In fact, those are among the most poignant pieces in the exhibit.
“They Are Dying All Around Me” is a quilt Haims made entirely of her grandparents-in-law’s address books. They had survived the Holocaust and then fled to America, where a friend told them, “everyone has telephones and will want to give you their phone number,” says Haims. It was true, apparently, because Haims' grandparents-in-law amassed 10 address books throughout their lives, which she stitched together, creating intimate and incredibly sobering art.
The title of the work, which is embroidered into the quilt, is based on a conversation between Haims and her husband’s grandfather before he died, one that will be familiar to anyone who has loved an elderly person.
“I asked him about his neighbors,” says Haims. “And he said, ‘They’re dying all around me.’”
The theme of loss haunts Haims’ retrospective. She created a soft sculpture in honor of her deceased mother, titled “Heaven,” which looks like knitted icicles dripping from the ceiling. It is at once imposing and comforting (just like all good mothers). “Offering,” meanwhile, is another soft sculpture that Haims constructed while grieving for her best friend who died in a car accident.
Through June 22, reception Fri., June 6, 5 p.m., 230 Vine St., 215-925-9914, paintedbride.org.
Last week, international artists Keir Johnston and Ernel Martinez staged a procession through North Philadelphia. But there were no coffins or crosses or monks.
Instead, Johnston and Martinez carted two reconstructed bulletproof glass booths (the kind seen in corner stores throughout the city), down sidewalks and around abandoned lots. Passersby watched the strange affair, occasionally walking up to and touching the comical, eerie booths.
The booths eventually made their way to the Asian Arts Initiative, where they are now part of the exhibit “Corner Store (Take-Out Stories),” which looks at the corner store as a meeting ground for city residents of all stripes. The show includes live performances, multimedia portraits, photographs, installation and video.
Nancy Chen, public programs manager at the Asian Arts Initiative, describes the corner store as a “microcosm of cultural exchange, a kind of accidental culture exchange.” She says the artists are hoping to determine “if there’s a way, through their work, to push the cultural exchange even further.”
Through Aug. 22, opening Fri., June 6, 6 p.m., 1219 Vine St., 215-557-0455, asianartsinitiative.org.
Local artist Andrea Gaydos Landau's hand-cut drawings and collages are inspired by the concept of the double negative, with the empty space snaking through her geometric shapes often as appealing as the shapes themselves.
“Landau looks to the natural world for inspiration and strategies to build her work,” a press release from the gallery reads. “She questions ordering and impermanence, which in turn, examine the kinship between both presence and absence. Landau represents these ideas in an intuitive manner, filtered by geometry, the history of the decorative arts, and the natural sciences.”
Through June 29, opening Fri., June 6, 6 p.m., 319A N. 11th St., 2nd floor, 484-469-0319, tigerstrikesasteroid.com.
