September 10–17, 1998

critical mass

Still Off the Wall After All These Years

The art gallery at Dirty Frank's celebrates its twentieth anniversary.

by Jenn Carbin

		Thirst Fridays: Mary Liz meets with prospective artists every Friday at Frank's photo: Abby Bobrow

Mary Liz Connelly is sitting in a booth one late summer evening at Dirty Frank's, the renowned watering hole at 13th and Pine. The first and only director of this bar's Off The Wall Gallery, she's haloed in that muddy orange light that is uniquely Frank's, wearing one of her signature straw hats, and telling a story: Once when she was a teenager, she retreated for a while to paint in her bedroom, fully focused on a nude she was creating. Her mother let Mary Liz's friends into the house and they burst into her room, breaking her concentration. When they saw the naked female figure, they shrieked.

Mary Liz concludes her anecdote with a shrug of her shoulders and a sly smile. Even then, it seems, she had a knack for surprising her friends.

Mary Liz (as she's known professionally) has been startling people at Dirty Frank's for two decades now. The Off the Wall Gallery observes its 20th anniversary this fall with a show featuring new works by the artists who exhibited during the gallery's first five years. The show opens on Saturday, when former exhibiting artists, friends and patrons will gather to celebrate Mary Liz as "the mother of the alternative gallery system," as well as the 20th anniversary of Jay McConnell's ownership of the bar.

Long before you could sip your mochaccino with an eye on the art for sale at your favorite coffee house, there was Off The Wall.

It was McConnell who, upon purchasing the bar from owner John Segal in 1978, decided to formally arrange the far wall as a space for the friends and artists that had been showing there for years. "When I took over the bar I thought, 'There should be a gallery on this wall,' something that changed every three months or so." He called Mary Liz, an old friend of wife Mary-Rowe. "These [exhibitors] are people on their way up. Mary Liz knew a lot of them."

"I told him I'd do it, if he let me run it like a business," says Mary Liz. "That meant mailing lists, press releases, food, music…"

She had been part of the art scene in Philly for many years, as a pre-school teacher with an art-based curriculum in Germantown, and as co-owner of her own galleries in the '70s—The Building in Powelton Village and the Custom Frame Shop and Gallery, just off of South Street.

McConnell took her up on her "business" idea, and has backed her up every step of the way, paying for openings out of pocket and buttressing her with an unusual degree of understanding, based on his appreciation of both art and Frank's as a venue. He first discovered Dirty Frank's as a freshman at the Philadelphia College of Art in 1954.

		"You see something you like and you have the chance to let it grow on you," says 'accidental patron' Clark DeLeon. "She's making art patrons out of people."

Off The Wall opened in December of 1978 with a feminist show entitled Her Name is Not Anonymous Anymore, a reference to the fact that women were historically discouraged from showing work under their real names. It was to be a recurring theme for the next few years.

Three years after the opening, the gallery hosted a prison-art show, Art: Inside and Out, which featured work by inmates throughout Pennsylvania. Mary Liz fought for the female component, despite comments that "The women only do macramé.' I said, 'If we don't include work by women, we don't do the show.' We did the show."

Art: Inside and Out was very successful; there was so much work that it spilled out onto the sidewalk across the street. Along with pieces by the men, the show included macramé and a few works on paper by female inmates.

Mary Liz says there were approximately 50 pieces in the show and several sold.

She mounted a lot of theme shows those first few years: war, the environment, women's issues. One night a customer at the bar grew irate over landscape paintings depicting black male nudes. He cornered Mary Liz and was removed from the bar, but not before he broke one of her thumbs. Sometime after that she stopped hanging theme shows—figuring she'd allow the work to sneak up on people instead. But she says many shows have an underlying unity, based on things like medium, thematic thread or even diversity itself.

Over the years, works by such artists as Ellen Powell-Tiberino (one of Mary Liz's favorite painters, who became a close friend), Joe Tiberino, Jesse Vandenburgh and Robert Arufo have adorned the walls. Jim Montgomery has shown sculpture. Printmaker Sara Lee is fresh from a record-breaking Off The Wall success, having sold 28 pieces in the show before last.

That Off The Wall is a gallery in a world-class dive arguably enhances the art experience. You can sit around, hear that the artist is having a lager a few stools over, and strike up a conversation about the work without the studied hipness of a First Friday gallery opening.

Alexander Kanevsky—a 1997 Pew Fellow in painting—first showed with Off The Wall in the early '90s. On starting out at Frank's, he says, "There's a wider audience there—I miss that now… One night there was a group of black poets there, a group that I wouldn't run into usually as I don't get to poetry readings much. I probably had my most exciting critique that night."

And it is a hangout. You don't have to look, you don't have to like. As "accidental patron," Clark DeLeon says, "You see something you like and you have the chance to let it grow on you. [She's] making art patrons out of people."

DeLeon didn't buy his first piece of art at Frank's, but over the years he has purchased 25 pieces or so from Off The Wall shows, starting with the painting "Welcome Cousin" which he purchased the day it went up for $75, soon after Off The Wall was launched. A few years ago he was chatting with a friend from the bar who mentioned "Welcome Cousin" and expressed regret that he let it get away. DeLeon thought the guy was joking; when he realized he wasn't, he promptly confessed to ownership and offered to lend it to the guy.

DeLeon, who affectionately refers to Mary Liz as "a noodge," says that after all these years "I still have to put a deposit down; she still gives me a receipt… I know why—she's protecting herself, she's protecting the artist."

Mary Liz sees it as her duty to organize the artists, and says that "they need nurturing. Very few artists are organized, and a good amount of them [showing at Frank's] are having their first exhibit: they don't know what the hell they're doing."

Mary Liz meets with would-be exhibitors at Dirty Frank's on Fridays; they usually leave messages in advance but often word will get around and someone will just show up with a portfolio. Mary Liz will be there—although she leaves before the Friday night crush.

Once she accepts someone as artist for an Off The Wall show, Mary Liz presents them with showing instructions and a waiver releasing herself and the bar from responsibility for any damages. Bars, after all, are volatile places. She is quick to point out, however, that "Only two pieces that I can think of were damaged in the 20 years—and the frames were damaged, not the actual work."

The wall is looked after. She often jumps up mid-sentence to straighten a painting, or note that a track light is waning.

If a home team makes it to the championships, the work is temporarily removed and stored. Ditto for New Year's.

Togo Travalia is the man who hangs Off The Wall's shows, handles its public relations and helps remove the work before big games. It's an association that began after painter Erin Obrochta, whom Travalia was representing, passed through Off The Wall in 1993. "I was interested in the art and respected what Mary Liz was doing. She was hanging the dynamic, interesting art of some people who couldn't get into the gallery system—couched in this wonderful, eclectic environment. I'd worked with five or six other gallery directors; they often judge the artist to fit the clientele. Mary Liz is finding the very best, not based on what she's shown before. She's very true to herself."

Mary Liz has never been formally trained as an artist herself. The daughter of a Pennsylvania steelworker and a homemaker, she recalls that her grandfather had wanted to be a sculptor, and wound up carving gravestones. "It was a living."

Though Mary Liz showed a bit of talent for line drawings and caricatures, she says, "I didn't have the discipline." She says that she hasn't drawn a thing for 15 or 16 years. "I finally figured out I'm no good," she says with a wry smile.

"I remember a teacher I had when I was 5, Mrs. Snyder. She must have encouraged me; I don't remember… but she must have. I remember the smell of the tempera paint, and the way the colors would merge. I think that's why I was so obsessed with teaching my [pre-school] kids to mix."

After Mrs. Snyder, Mary Liz says, she "began taking books out of the library, reading about artists' lives. I was always fascinated by that."

Early on, she had a negative experience. "I was discouraged by a teacher we had in junior high. I was doing an abstract landscape or something and she ridiculed it. After that I wouldn't show anybody my work."

Perhaps this is why Mary Liz, who is known for her direct approach, speaks respectfully of all those who pass their work by her.

Mary Liz has never made a living from Off The Wall, although she gets the traditional one-third commission for sales. Art work is priced from around $200 to $500 these days, although at one time she showed art that was priced as high as $2,000 (which proved a little steep for the average Dirty Frank's patron).

She stopped showing photography a few years ago ("It just didn't sell").

But one or two no-sells don't mean the end for an artist. Kanevsky says, "I didn't sell anything one show and I thought, 'This is it for me,' but she invited me back."

Mary Liz is as happy about the audiences as she is about giving the exhibitors a few moments in the sun. "I'm very proud of the fact that I've started a lot of people buying art that would have never bought it."

Travalia says, "She wants to make art accessible—the price range is really accessible to anybody. And what other gallery is open 90 hours a week?"

Leah Douglas, director of exhibitions at the Philadelphia National Airport (and former gallery director at the University of the Arts), sees value in "non-gallery spaces" like the airport and Off the Wall. "People see art in the context of everyday life and it becomes moreaccessible."

As Mary Liz says, "That's where art belongs, in front of people."

What now?

McConnell, at the helm of the bar, isn't going anywhere. "Retirement to me is two words: death sentence. I have a terrific crew, a strong business. If I get another 20 years, God's good to me."

Both Mary Liz and McConnell see Off The Wall continuing well into the millennium.

As Painter Robert Arufo says, "In 20 years there's been every subject I can think of and some I wouldn't want to think of."

Here's to another 20 years.