If you look at the ground as you walk, like I do, you’ve seen them: tiles embedded into the pavement with an inset message. “Toynbee Idea in Kubrick’s 2001 Resurrect Dead on Planet Jupiter”.  Or some variation thereof.  I’d seen the tiles several times before curiosity got the best of my and I googled it.  Back then, the tiles were still one of Philly’s street art mysteries.  While the locations of the tiles were carefully catalogued, no one knew who made them or what the message meant.  I incorporated the tiles into my mental list of Philly’s many charms.  But while I was content to wonder, others – specifically Philadelphia artist and musician Justin Duerr – were endlessly fascinated and took it upon themselves to crack the code of the Toynbee tiles.

Resurrect Dead: The Mystery of the Toynbee Tiles is the documentary filmed by Jon Foy that follows the story of Duerr on the trail of the Toynbee Tiler.  Except when he Googled it back in 1994, there were no results.  Enter one of the many secondary layers of the film – an exploration of alternative communication.  Obviously, the Tiler himself (have I given away too much??) has a message very near and dear that he has been trying to publicize for decades.  But can we all agree that cutting out linoleum tiles and embedding them in pavement is not the most conventional method of communication??  Now it seems too easy to just hop on your social media site of choice and find a huge audience for whatever drivel you have to say, but it wasn’t too long ago that we had to get a little more creative.  The search for the Toynbee tiler led Duerr, Foy, and their other Toynbee-Tile-obsessed friends Colin Smith and Steve Weinik, to clues in newspapers, short wave radio conventions, and broadcast television signal interceptions, and as the Internet grew and developed as a mass communication and information dissemination tool, they were able to connect and share valuable information with other enthusiasts.

But of course the most fascinating, and in some ways the most effective, form of communication in the film is the street art itself.  There comes a moment in the natural wear and tear of pavement when the tiles break apart and float away, the words no longer legible.  In a way, the tiles that were perhaps originally meant to be seen for the message instead of the artwork become a very slow performance art piece.

If you’re worried about Resurrect Dead blowing the cover off the mystery, you should be.  It does.  Duerr,  Foy, and friends were as successful as they sought out to be.  But knowing who the Toynbee Tiler is does not take the magic away completely.  Instead, the story of the artist is as interesting as the (former) mystery of his art.  While one layer of the tiles has been cut through, there are many more that were discovered.

  Resurrect Dead is available on DVD TODAY!

OR watch it instantly!

To read more about Justin Duerr and see photos of his work, check out this article on Side Arts.

Written by Carina Giamerese: Contributing Writer, Side Arts.

Anthony C and Karen M use Krylon Indoor/Outdoor Aerosol Paint 12 Ounces-Flat Black to create what University of the Arts professor of drawing Chris Zelinsky calls “translations”.

Read more about Anthony C and Karen M on the Side Arts art blog and DoNArTNeWs Philadelphia art blog.

DoN Brewer, Contributing Writer, Side Arts

Photograph and video courtesy of Anthony C and Karen M

Anthony C and Karen M have a cool YouTube channel called anthony51112.

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How much time do you devote to social media?  Is it a daily thing?  Artist, Hayley Tomlinson replied, “This past month I‘ve been on winter break and I‘ve been doing a lot of work digitally.  I was talking to Gaby about digital work and they don’t really show that here.  But, I‘ve been doing a lot of things with outer space and geodes and crystals because that imagery interests me, so I‘m making all these crazy digital things and I’m putting them on my blog.  I‘m kind of getting some interesting feed back so I‘m trying to talk to different people online.  Like, how can I improve this?”

“I think about things I desire and things I fear like how can I be a better artist?  And how can I be a more successful well known artist which is what the photographs are about.” I noted the portraiture with ribbons and how they stand out.  “There are four ribbons First, Second, Third and Honorable Mention.  These two are Third Place and Honorable Mention, I think they’re the two photographs that have been most successful and most successfully represented my Adobe Photoshop CS5 skills.  I was thinking, I‘m in Philadelphia and what do I need to do in Philadelphia to be more well known.  And one is being featured on the art blog.  And that ended up happening.  I had an article on the art blog and they showed that photograph.  The other photograph is about the blog Tumblr which I think is very important for contemporary art, especially young people in art.  People see my work on Tumblr and really respond to it, then that will really help me get my name out.”

Prelude Gallery, curated by Gaby Heit is located at 406 S. 20th Street, Philadelphia , PA 19146
(215) 966-7228

Read more about Hayley Tomlinson on DoNArTNeWs

DoN Brewer, Contributing Writer, Side Arts

Photographs by DoN Brewer

Kodak Easyshare Z981

Calling all Fun-a-Day artists!  Want to give a little sneak peek of your project to the Side Arts community before you show it at Studio 34?  Did you have so much fun in January that your project will continue into February?  Or did you have so much fun in January that you need to take a break until next year?!

Either way, you’ve almost made it – only 9 days left of your projects – and I would love to hang out with you as you come down the homestretch with all of us cheering wildly and blowing on vuvuzelas.  We’ll chat about your inspiration, your hard work, and that one day you thought you couldn’t make a project because of w, x, y, and z… but you did it anyway!

Email me at Carina@sidearts.com and let me know what time you usually work on your project or when you’d be available to hang out in the next 9 days.  Or comment in the box below!  I can’t wait to see what all of you have created!

Kyle & Keith OBrien, New Wave Art Fine Art Products

I studied painting at Fleisher Art Memorial with some of Philadelphia’s finest art instructors – Paul DuSold, James DuPree, Frances Galante… – and all of them stand up while they paint.  Not just for teaching, they all paint standing.  Balancing their well used palettes on the arm opposite their painting hand, held so the paint is in the field of view of the painting, the artist can easily match up tones and hues from the subject matter with the paint colors.  Sounds logical but many painters sit with their palette on a table, their heads bobbing back and forth from painting to subject to palette, using their memory to find the right colors.  Standing and holding a palette loaded with paint and cups of sloppy solvents is strenuous and an exercise unto itself.  Holding a stance so the subject, canvas and paint are all within the same circle of vision for hours at a time builds strength and art cred but many artists don’t hold their palette to paint because it’s uncomfortable.

New Wave Art Fine Art Products produces a line of painter palettes that addresses artists complaints and solves many of the problems of the painters palette balancing act.  The company smartly set up a display of their products in the board room of The Philadelphia Sketch Club for the opening reception of “The Annual Domenic DiStefano Memorial 2012 Juried Works on Paper Exhibition” on January 6th.

The OBrien brothers, Kyle and Keith established the company three months ago, Kyle explains, “New Wave Art has been in the works for close to two years.  We saw an opportunity to re-invent the hand-held palette because what currently exists hasn’t changed much in centuries.  What currently exists is very uncomfortable, so, what we did was create a three point anchor system which is patent pending.  So, you have your hand cut, your arm cut and your torso cut so it evenly distributes the weight amongst three points.  They’re all made by a Mennonite wood shop in Lancaster County using hard white Maple.  We chose hard white Maple because it’s a dense wood and the grain lines are very tight so it won’t draw the paint in and distract you while painting.  All the edges are hand waxed and buffed, we have an extra coat of finish around the thumb with a forty-five degree cut in the front of the thumb and a thirty-five degree cut in the back of the thumb.  We sell the palettes finished or unfinished; the finished palette has an industrial strength finish on it that can withstand up to 33% sulfuric acid, we’ve tested hundreds of chemicals and it handles just about everything.”  Keith O’Brien adds,”Specifically it can withstand turpentine, turpinoid, solvents, anything an artist traditionally uses.”  New Wave Art sells the palettes unfinished for artists who wish to create a rich patina, they sell polymerized Tung oil, offering a more organic, eco-friendly, natural way of finishing your palette.

New Wave Art Fine Art Products

DoN Brewer, Contributing Writer, Side Arts © 2012

Photographs by DoN Brewer

Kodak Digital Cameras

Armond Scavo  Philadelphia:Through An Artist’s Eye exhibition of photographs at Philadelphia’s Cosmopolitan Club, 1616 Latimer Street (http://www.cosclub.org/ ).  On exhibition is eighteen of Armond’s favorite scenes of Philadelphia taken over a 15 year period.  Armond Scavo‘s book, Eye Volume One Rittenhouse Square. (Click on this link for a preview) is a collection of iconic images of Philadelphia’s favorite park, Rittenhouse Square.  Photographs of Philadelphia is Armond Scavo‘s new e-commerce website and blog about Philadelphia.

In this slide show Armond hangs his collection of photographs of Philadelphia in the dining room of the club on a long white wall.  Scavo came prepared with his tool kit equipped with all you need to install an art show, he whipped out the tape measure and began doing the math in his head; eye level = 63″, hanging the three largest photographs first, starting 32″ from the ends of the wall, he divides up the remaining space creating the basis for a formal arrangement across the span.  Measuring from the top of the wall to the eye level point then subtracting the difference of the wire from the top of the picture frame, Armond nailed the hook on the first try almost every time.

Philadelphia: Through an Artist's Eye at The Cosmopolitan Club

Other artists in the show at The Cosmopolitan Club include Susie Heaver‘s The Sumac Collection of jewelry and paintings by Logan Speirs.

DoN Brewer, Contributing Writer, Side Arts © 2012

One of my Christmas presents this year was a Japanese fountain pen. You can see it in the attached photo . There are two cranes on it. The word for crane in Japanese is “tsuru”-don’t ask me how I remember this. I learned the word sometime in childhood and it got stuck in the folds of my brain somewhere. I think it’s because it’s fun to say. There is also the iconic Mt. Fuji, and at the bottom of the pen, a glistening blue stream, hinting perhaps at the flow of writing that is to issue forth from the golden nib.

It is a “fine writing instrument”, a Lexus of pens so to speak. I took it out for a test drive on some really nice thick paper in one of those leather-bound notebooks and indeed it worked beautifully. Well-balanced, it is a nice size for my hand. The ink flows easily; the line is a little thicker than I would have chosen for myself but it is “juicy” and that’s fun too.

Just before the holidays I was browsing in a used bookstore and found a copy of Julia Cameron’s The Artist’s Way, which is a creativity jump-starter and aid for blocked artists.  I had skimmed it a couple of years ago and found it interesting but never felt the need to do any of the exercises.  Not that I was blocked creatively now, but just before and after Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year’s getting into the studio can get a little tricky so I figured I’d pick and choose and try some of the exercises. Since I like writing and find it also helps me clarify direction in the studio, I decided to start Cameron’s recommended  “morning pages”. Every morning you pour forth three pages about anything and everything, being as honest as possible with all your hopes, fears, plans, ideas etc.

The morning pages function as a sort of meditation or even prayer, if you will.  You are supposed to write these pages out in long hand as opposed to on the computer. My guess is it’s because it mimics that act of mark-making in painting, and therefore is probably connected to firing up the area of the brain that executes that task.

Initially, I put the “The Japanese Pen” aside as it was the kind of pen one reserves for greeting cards or lovely leather-bound notebooks and not for writing on the cheapo paper I was calligraphically regurgitating onto every morning. Moreover, the notebook I was using was one of my sons’ old school notebooks from last year that still had lots of paper in it. Cameron says to go out and treat yourself to a beautiful notebook for this purpose but I figured it was better to use what was at hand rather than procrastinate ‘til I went out to hunt for a special one.

Then I realized that not using the pen was like that tendency not to use “the good dishes”, reserving them for the company that comes every blue moon. We used our “good dishes” every day so why shouldn’t I use “the good pen”?!  So I did and am now happily “wasting ink” every morning. I notice my hand and arm aren’t getting writer’s cramp and the ideas are flowing. I may not have followed Julia’s advice to get a special notebook but at least I am using a special pen!!

Dan Haddigan explains, “Dirt is dirt is basically an on-line art magazine, eventually we want to make it into a quarterly, but for right now we have interviews with artists.  It’s kind of like blog format, we have different columns and the thing about it is it’s online submissions based.  So anybody can submit work, we’re not just Philadelphia artists, we’re all over.  Dirt is dirt is kind of hard to explain.  Me and Kevin have been friends since college and it’s kind of an inside joke like, “what it is, is what it is“, that’s kind of the way I work and Kevin does, as well.  It is what it is. ”

Kevin McWilliams says, “When we started this magazine we were just finishing up college and we realized the art world is very competitive, no holds barred tough place…so around our senior year we came up with this idea of an online magazine and gallery, not only for ourselves but for our peers.  We want to bridge the gap, that’s the biggest thing.”

“It’s actually all paint, it’s just done to look like wheat paste; it’s paint and acrylic transfer on wood.”  Dan Haddigan, Untitled Number Something, dirt is dirt at Paradigm Studio and Gallery .   “This is definitely more of a found object piece.”  Haddigan says of Untitled Little Angel, “I feel like everything I do, even my original pieces come from everything…I get most of my ideas just by looking at things and then processing them and then out-putting them in my own kind of way.  A lot of times I feel like the best things I make aren’t like created, they’re discovered.  You know?  I don’t just find things and reproduce them in the studio, it’s like an intellectual process.  I’ll pull certain things out, add things to it, try to accentuate things.”  What about the Black Jesus?  “I know it’s kind of a loaded topic but this is personal not because of the subject matter but where the objects came from, the frame I found at work, I work in an art gallery, and the little sculptural pieces are from a rest stop in South Carolina.”

Steven Alvarez, Untitled (Philadelphia) 57, photograph at Paradigm Gallery, “All the bags were found on the streets of Philadelphia. Mostly in Pennsport, right around near where I live. It makes me uncomfortable, a little bit, the idea that that’s what’s associated with my neighborhood.” The philatelic plastic bags designed for stamp collectors litter the artist’s neighborhood. “I just realized that more and more it’s something that I’ve seen in the city and I’ve tried to remove myself from it these days and not look for them as much. But, I still find myself with my head down looking at the ground.”  Steven Alvarez scans the found objects with a high resolution scanner so he can make the images as heroically scaled as he wants.  “The detail of the residue in the bag in Blueberry is amazing, it’s an interesting composition considering it’s designer drugs.” Gallery 339‘s Martin McNamara commented, “They’re very graphic, it’s an interesting idea behind them, visually they’re really striking.”

Stephanie Fuoco says, “All my pieces relate to natural organisms and work with things that are sort of living and decaying at the same time.  I make up mock-ups and let the material talk for itself.  This piece I rusted the inside of the armature, then I dipped it in plaster and then I dipped cotton in plaster and then dipped it again in a resin. Which allowed the rusting to come out more intensely.”

Paradigm Studio and Gallery , 2020 South Street, Philadelphia, Pa, 19146 is hosting dirt is dirt through 1/21/2012.

Read more about Paradigm Gallery by DoN Brewer.

DoN Brewer, Contributing Writer, Side Arts

Photographs by DoN Brewer
Kodak Digital Cameras