This poster was provided by Gallery ML

As world’s first and only collective body art gallery, Gallery ML is one of the most refreshing, dynamic, and unique art galleries in Philadelphia. Since its opening in 2010, Gallery ML has featured body art by local, national, and international artists.  The gallery’s founders/owners/photographers, Noah Musher and Tom Lovelund, and the gallery director/resident body artist, Lawren Alice, have worked hard to prove that body art is a legitimate and respected fine art medium.  The gallery’s lively and popular First Friday events always smartly reveal the impermanence and immortality of body art.  The surprisingly fast and well executed live body art demonstrations on brave semi-nude models always creates a great juxtaposition to the gallery’s vibrant and thought provoking large photographs of body art frozen in time.  Please check out the awesome video below to get idea of what makes Gallery ML so great!

Gallery ML’s Living Breathing Canvas

In order to be a successful body artist, one has to be able to fearlessly paint a great design and concept on a living human body within a couple of hours.  Dilly-dallying, lunch and cigarette breaks, existential life crises, and paralyzing moments of self doubt are not allowed.  Body artists have to go in with a mission and own it from start to finish.  Gallery ML approaches the business of running a gallery in much the same way.  They refuse to become stagnant and are constantly changing, adapting, and finding smart ways to grow their business.

Despite Gallery ML’s success as a collective body art gallery, Noah, Tom, and Lawren felt that they still needed to take Gallery ML to the next level.  They noticed that there were too many talented, unique, and thought provoking local artists that weren’t getting the recognition or the visibility that they deserved.  Therefore, they decided to get a bigger space that would allow them to support and serve the local arts community better.  Gallery ML will be moving to a HUGE gallery on 109 Arch St. on April 6th.  Half of the gallery will be dedicated to body art and the other half will be dedicated to local artists of all mediums.

As a way to introduce the public to Gallery ML’s expansion, they debuted their first non-body art oriented exhibit this past First Friday.  Although there weren’t any semi-nude women walking around with fabulously intricate and colorful body paint designs for Gallery ML’s opening reception of “The Lunatic and the Lover,” their First Friday event did not disappoint.  The show will feature infrared black and white photography by Bill Hoo, fashion and conceptional portrait color photography by Jason Blake, and surreal socially oriented installation art by Morgan Mangiaruga until the end of January.  To learn more about each artist and their work, please click on each of the artist’s names from the previous sentence.

Noah, Tom, and Lawren will be attending a lot of exciting events this month (the Sundance Film Festival and the 2011 RAWards), so the gallery may be closed sporadically.  Please call 215-717-7774 to inquire if the studio is open or to schedule an appointment.

Written by Cassandra Hoo: Contributing Writer, SideArts 

I am very proud and thankful that the infrared black and white photography by Bill Hoo (my awesome father) was chosen to be featured at Gallery ML’s exhibit, “The Lunatic and the Lover.”  The camera lens has literally been an extension of his own two eyes for as long as I can remember.  He has captured all of our family’s vacations, hiking expeditions and nature outings, and precious moments in a unique and artistic way.  Although Bill Hoo majored in photography from the School of Museum of Fine Arts and worked as a professional photographer for a while in his youth, he has spent the majority of his career as a very successful graphic designer and creative director for major Fortune 500 companies.  It wasn’t until several years ago that he decided to say goodbye to the corporate world and pursue photography professionally again.  I think the long wait was worth it.  He’s in an artistic groove that can’t be messed with — and he has the photographs to prove it.

Bill Hoo has an acute and highly advanced understanding of light and shadow.  In art school, his nickname was the “Light Meter Man.”  He can literally tell what time of day it is without wearing a watch.  His training in traditional black and white photography and his mastery of the Zone System has fully prepared him for his latest photographic medium, digital infrared and ultraviolet photography.  The special cameras that he uses capture infrared and ultraviolet lightwaves that the human eye can’t see.  In just a couple of years, Bill Hoo has retrained his eyes and brain to see and imagine these frequencies whenever he looks through the red or blue tinted camera screen/lens.  This sixth sense gives him the innate ability to manually control the aperture and shutter speed to get the desired look that he wants for a photograph.  Therefore, every finished and printed photograph that you will see in the “The Lunatic and the Lover” exhibit was already fully realized in his brain before the image was captured.

In Bill Hoo’s Artistic Statement, he describes how he hopes his unique style and medium helps uncover the hidden beauty in nature to those that take Mother Earth for granted:

“I believe that everything is an illusion and that there is always something more interesting underneath the surface. In my photographs, I capture what the human eye cannot see by using specialty cameras that render infrared and ultra violet spectrums. By filtering out the human visible light waves, I am able to create images that bring a naked, mysterious and unsettling transparent beauty beyond what once felt familiar. I translate my vision in monochromatic (B&W) prints to purposely strip out all subjectivity to color. It is my intent to heighten the focus on the splendors of the world in the hope that people will reassess and alter their lifestyles to reconnect with nature the way that I have. I plan to bringing more people together to help build more preserves that protect wildlife and greenways.”

The photographs that were chosen for “The Lunatic and the Lover” exhibit show a wide range of Bill Hoo’s work.  There are majestic aerial shots of clouds and sky, landscapes of seemingly mystical places, and abstract close-ups of nature.  The luminous white highlights in his pictures makes the negative space in his images glow like magic, while the deep and rich dark grey and black shadows add a sense of mystery and wonder.  His ability to capture just the right amount of shadow and light, and all of the grays in between, would seriously make Edward Weston proud.  He often professes to me that he now dreams in monochrome.  I wish I could buy a one-way dream ticket to one of his beautiful photographic creations.  I don’t think that I would miss color when he makes black and white looks so fabulous.

Make sure to visit Gallery ML this month so that you can dream in monochrome too.  For more information about Gallery ML, please read my article entitled, Gallery ML’s “The Lunatic and the Lover” Exhibit. If you want to learn more about Bill Hoo’s photography, see more fantastic images, or want to hire him to brand or re-brand your business, make sure to visit his website.  He provides a wide array of marketing, advertising, graphic design, and web design services.

Written by Cassandra Hoo: Contributing Writer, SideArts 

Morgan Mangiaruga’s surreal mixed media sculpture installation at Gallery ML’s exhibit, “The Lunatic and the Lover,” immediately caught my eye when I walked into the gallery.  Granted, it was hard not to notice the two human-like sculptures with real taxidermied deer heads.  The initial shock that I felt when I first saw these interesting creatures was really entertaining.  I always like a good surprise.  Since Gallery ML has been completely dedicated to showcasing body art up until this current show, I felt that Morgan’s work served as a great introduction for the direction that Gallery ML wants to go in once it moves into a larger gallery space in April and starts curating exhibits that feature body art and local art of all mediums.

Meeting the artist behind this unique installation was equally surprising for me.  Morgan Mangiaruga is a petite young woman with a bubbly and friendly personality.  I had a hard time trying to imagine her buying cumbersome taxidermied deer heads at her town’s local farmer’s markets and spending countless hours adapting them for her installation.  This interesting dichotomy made a lot more sense once I got to know her a little bit better.  Her artwork is very socially oriented and she is very passionate about the message that she hopes to convey.

Morgan gravitates towards using animals in her work, because she feels it is representational of humanity’s primal instincts.  She also enjoys working with taxidermied animals, because she likes the challenge of bringing emotion and life to something that is so static and literally dead.  I also really respect her notion that she would rather see a taxidermied deer head in a piece of artwork than to see it be a trophy on someone’s wall.  Overall, her work is meant to remind us to not loose the purity of ourselves and conform to something that we’re not.

“A lot of my work deals with social problems or things that I see happen to my friends, family, strangers, or myself. I use animals, because of our primal instinct and our honesty with animals. With this work, it’s about the social behaviors that start to infect us.  These sculptures represent the behavioral infections that we don’t always notice is happening until it’s too late and we start to loose our own selves and the purity of ourselves.  That’s why my one sculpture is running, while the other sculpture is sitting and has accepted it.  We often allow both of these scenarios to happen without realizing it.”

Morgan’s artistic message, free spirit, and desire to be true to herself is uplifting.  She is definitely very wise for her age and I look forward to seeing the progression of her work and artistic career.

For more information about Gallery ML, please read my article entitled, Gallery ML’s “The Lunatic and the Lover” Exhibit.

Written and photographed by Cassandra Hoo: Contributing Writer, SideArts 

Jason Blake’s moody, edgy, playful, and stylized portrait color photography at Gallery ML’s “The Lunatic and the Lover ”exhibit really made my eyes happy.  My pupils danced back and forth as I looked at each photograph and tried to peel back the layers of shadows and light, muted and vibrant color combinations, and scratched, texturized, and blurred image manipulations.  The intermingling of all of these contrasting variables creates a poetic, whimsical, and mysterious backdrop to each portrait’s main focal point, the face.  In all of Jason’s photographs, the face is either dramatically in focus, blurred, in silhouette, or stylized in such a way that it stands out and gives a detailed backstory and narrative.  I felt like each photograph could be the cover of a book; I wanted to open each one up read what was inside.

When I interviewed Jason Blake after the opening reception for “The Lunatic and the Lover ” I learned that my desire to want to “read” each of his photographs wasn’t completely off base.  Jason explained to me that he reads and writes a lot of fiction and was heavily influenced by existential philosophy and Kafka’s abstract short stories while he was honing his craft at the University of the Arts.

“I was fascinated by how, within a few small paragraphs, Kafka was able to expertly craft a narrative that could fill pages of content and story in a person’s head.   For my work in general, I envision and try to capture images that contain a strong narrative that lets the viewer explore a concept in which I hint at. The viewer is free to explore the beginning, middle, and end of each characters’ history and the meaning behind their existence. Hopefully, the viewer can then relate to the subjects in a more personal way and get something out of the experience.”

“The notion of physical and spiritual transcendence is another theme that drives my work.  I like the idea that one can achieve a state of being where they can metaphysically leave their body.  In the same moment, I like to think about what happens or becomes of the body that is being left behind.   I try to capture some of these moments. In the same vein, I’m fascinated with imagery that is blurred, shows movement, or is out of focus.”

The photographs chosen for “The Lunatic and the Lover ” exhibit came from a variety of projects that Jason created over the course of the last two to three years.  The progression of his work, from oldest to newest, literally goes from dark to light (the two online photo galleries on Jason’s website are aptly titled, “Dark” and “Light”).  His older work tends to be more sinister and dramatic, while his newer work is much more vibrant and commercial (with an indie and vintage fashion photography feel).  While I’m impressed with both his “Dark” and “Light” work, I became more infatuated with his “Light” work when he explained his new artistic process to me.

“In most of my newer work I’ve started to return to shooting film.  Some I will shoot on 35mm film, sometimes push the film to achieve thicker film grain, and then rub the negatives in dust and then scan them into a computer. Sometimes I shoot on 120mm film using a plastic camera and then roll the film under a gel to get light leaks on the film.”

 The scratched and rugged texture of his newest work fondly reminds me of the Avant-Garde films that I watched in art school, which specifically tried to film the art of manipulating and deconstructing the medium of film itself.  Given that we live in a digital age, I like and respect that a young artist like Jason mixes old technology techniques with new ones.  I hope it inspires others, both young and old, to respect and learn film photography before they go and buy a digital camera.

If you haven’t already, please go and read the article I wrote on Gallery ML’s exhibition, “The Lunatic and the Lover.”  I also recommend that you read the article I wrote on Bill Hoo, the other photographer featured at the show.  He is another shining example of a photographer that integrates traditional photography with modern technology.

Written by Cassandra Hoo, Contributing Writer, SideArts

Artists: Upgrade to a premium account today to promote your artwork, access the artist opportunity listings where you can find places to show and sell your artwork, and connect with other creatives locally.

Join for as little as one month, you may cancel and renew at any time.

Congratulations! Now that you have an artist account on Side Arts, others can see the amazing arts and crafts you have created. It is time to take the next step: selling and showing your artwork and crafts in the marketplace. Upgrade your artist account on Side Arts today for just $4.99 per month to access our artist opportunities listings and have new local opportunities emailed to you daily, weekly, or monthly, promote your artwork on the site, add more images to your profile, and much more!

The more you participate on the site, the higher your ranking on Philly’s top artist leaderboard.

Here’s some other ideas to help you sell more:

• Make sure all the required fields on your profile are complete.
• Add at least three images to your profile.
• Include a link to your Side Arts profile in your email signature.
• Include a link to your Side Arts profile on your website and social network accounts.
• Post an announcement on the Side Arts blog about where you will be selling or showing next.
• Use the Side Arts blog as a forum and get feedback about your latest project.
• Upgrade to premium to start applying to local opportunities to sell and show your art, to find jobs, and more.
• Keep a list of all your customer’s names and email addresses, send them an email once a month to let them know where you are selling next (remember to give them an opt out option).

Learn more about the premium features at: http://philly.sidearts.com/subscription/. Upgrade by joining with a premium account or logging in to your pre-existing account and select the manage your membership option.

Last First Friday I pulled legwarmers on under my pants, stuffed gloves in my pockets, and donned a fuzzy hat with earflaps as I got ready to spend the night hopping from gallery to gallery.  The problem was that as soon as I stepped outside I realized I’d made a grave mistake in assuming the beginning of January meant winter weather!  Did anyone else end up with pockets crammed full of extraneous knitwear last First Friday??

I started my rounds at The Clay Studio, where Yinka Orafidiya’s “All or Nothing” exhibition was the main event.  I was in awe of her courage in transcribing her journals on the walls of the space and exploring her struggle with chronic depression through her pottery.  Orafidiya is a Leeway Foundation grantee, and she will give away the cups she made at the end of the exhibition to symbolize her healing while simultaneously spreading the message of awareness to a wider audience.  There were many other artists exhibiting recent work at The Clay Studio, though, and the two pieces I really fell in love with were these two incredibly different pitchers.  I love the modern “coloring in the lines” look of the pitcher by Brian Jones, and that little square on the lid is the perfect touch!  Adam Posnak‘s pitcher is reminiscent of the popular rooster motif for kitchen designs, but instead he’s depicted a buzzard.  That’s my kind of kitchen motif!

Brian Jones // Adam Posnak

Next, I stopped by The Knapp Gallery to see Karl Frank Slocum’s exhibition “Following the Lines.”  As the title implies, Slocum’s approach to furniture making in this exhibition relies on following the natural lines, shapes, and “imperfections” of the wood slab in both the construction and design of his pieces.  Instead of imposing his own shapes and structures on the wood, Slocum’s method allows the wood to speak for itself, and the resulting pieces are functional celebrations of the natural character of the medium.

Karl Frank Slocum

Karl Frank Slocum

Over at 309 Gallery was the near-closing of an exhibition called “The Conjurer” featuring JL Schnabel’s Bloodmilk Jewelry and Christina Brown’s photography for the line’s lookbook.  The crystals, chains, and metal claws are shown in cases alongside natural artifacts such as bones, eggshells, and wood which enhance the mystical theme of the line and give the show a bit of a Mütter Museum vibe.  Brown’s photography is the perfect complement to the jewelry, her images all at once shrouding and revealing and tricking the eye.   This show is only running through January 15th, so make sure you check it out THIS WEEKEND!

JL Schnabel's Bloodmilk Jewelry

JL Schnabel's Bloodmilk Jewelry

JL Schnabel // Christina Brown

I was perhaps most excited to check out Jay Hardman’s “Unsustainable” show at Space 1026.  I’d heard from a reliable source that his cake sculptures depicting construction sites still emitted the sweet, sweet smell of cake and frosting.  And I was not disappointed!  Space 1026 definitely smelled the best last First Friday.

Jay Hardman

Finally, I made one final stop at Vox Populi to see how much more art I could feast my eyes on before getting stuffed!  My favorite exhibition belonged to Brie Ruais, who showed a series of work called “Unfolding: Performing Sculpture”.  Demarcating the boundary of the space was a long piece of malleable clay that stretched down the wall and smeared its way across the floor.  I was pretty sure the point was to create a new performance sculpture with various imprints of the people who tread upon it, but I admit to stepping over it like almost everyone else – just in case.  There were a few faint footprints across the piece, but mostly I thought it looked pretty good the way it was originally!

Brie Ruais

Written and photographed by Carina Giamerese: Contributing Writer, Side Arts.

Wanted: Serious Artists Who Want to Make Money

You are serious about your art. Are you ready to get serious about your art business?

 Register Now

Dear Artist,

Painter Eric Armusik, The Main Line Art Center and Artist Career Training have a common goal – to add more value to your life as a working artist. We hope to meet you  at one or more of these scheduled events, to help you make a better living making art:

Eleven Tips for Success as a Professional Fine Artist:

You may be a hobbyist who wants to make art a second career. Perhaps you are already a part-time or full-time emerging artist. Maybe you are in mid-career and want to refresh your business. Success is possible for you. And you can do it at your own pace. These eleven tips have been used and proven to work by an international online artist community of artists.

Friday, March 2^nd, 2012 from 12:00 – 1:00 p.m.
Main Line Art Center • 746 Panmure Road • Haverford, PA

Members* $15.00

Guests $25.00

Make Art & Make Money: Creative Art Marketing for Fine Artists

Saturday, March 3^rd & Sunday, March 4^th, 2012 10:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m
Main Line Art Center • 746 Panmure Road • Haverford, PA

Members* $325.

Guests $395.

* Member Rate for artists registered in an A.C.T. 12 month program, or members of The Main Line Art Center.

Avoiding the business side of art is like driving down unknown country roads in the dark without headlights: you don’t know what your destination looks like. You might end up down the wrong road, or worse yet, run out of gas. If you want to attract more collectors, gallery dealers and museum curators, you must know how to market your art. It doesn’t have to be hard, boring or expensive. You just need a system and you have to use it consistently.

Imagine having a reliable vehicle for marketing your art, with high beams to focus on the best way to save you time, money and energy. Learn to navigate the seven stages in the journey. You will leave this class with a marketing map that will help you drive your business so that you have a better year than ever. Then all you have to do is steer. BTW, Bring your favorite art materials – art making is part of the weekend.

You’re a productive artist. You’ve worked hard to create a body of signature work and you have the time, money and energy to market it. You will benefit whether you are a part-time or full time artist who is emerging, mid-career, or established, and you want to make money from your art.

Join Aletta de Wal, Artist Advisor & Art Marketing Strategist for Artist Career Training and Artist-Entrepreneur Eric Armusik for a creative, hands-on workshop to help you have more fun and make more money from your art.

______________________________________________________________________________

Aletta de Wal, Artist Advisor & Art Marketing Strategist
Author of the forthcoming book “My Real Job is Being an Artist: What YouShould Know Before You Quit Your Day Job (or Get One)”Aletta de Wal inspires fine artists to make a better living making art in any economy. Aletta makes art marketing easier and the business of art simpler to help working artists increase their income and create more time to make art and still have a life.

Bottom-line: No drivel here ~ just friendly, focused information to let you get back to making art.

Eric Armusik, Romantic Painter / Artist EmpowermentEric Armusik is part Romantic painter and innovative marketer.  His maverick approach to promotion and sales only pales to his technical ability as an artist.  His success internationally has been solely through his own efforts and he empowers artists to do the same.

Bottom-line: Claim your greatness. There is never a reason for someone  to limit or define your success.

Arts service providers, non-profits, and retailers: Post your announcements on Side Arts to reach over 650 local artists, 100 local arts organizations and retailers, and more than 2,000 unique monthly website visitors. Side Arts has the largest listing of artist opportunities in the Philadelphia region.

Businesses and organizations use Side Arts to post announcements such as:

• artist opportunities
• calls for artists
• vendor requests
• jobs and commissions
• requests for proposals
• gallery openings
• classes and workshops
• advertisements and more

Businesses with premium accounts can post announcements for $9.99 per month.  You can upgrade from free to premium for as little as one month, and may cancel and renew at any time.

The more you participate on the site, the higher your ranking on Philly’s top arts service provider and retailer leaderboard.

Learn more at: http://philly.sidearts.com/subscription/businesses/. You may upgrade by joining as a premium member or logging into your pre-existing account and selecting the manage your membership option.

Business Testimonial:
“In order to officially announce Storably’s launch, we decided to have a pop-up gallery in our office space. What a great idea, right? There was just one problem: we didn’t have a single connection in the Philadelphia art scene. We tried Twitter, Craigslist, and other outlets, but we weren’t getting enough responses, and the responses we did get were low-quality. Finally, someone recommended us to Side Arts. It was super easy to post a request for artists, and even though it was last minute, we received a large number of responses. Even better, the responses were from high quality artists. Overall, our experience with Side Arts was excellent. We look forward to using them for all of our events.” – Brendan Lowry, Community Manager, Storably, a Philadelphia tech start-up.

Come Closer, photograph, Jeff Stroud, Photographic Society of Philadelphia

The Photographic Society of Philadelphia, the third oldest photography society in the world, offers many benefits to its members like educational lectures, field trips and socials.  But, PSoP also has had an ongoing series of photography exhibits for and by its members, their current home is Cafe Twelve, 212 South 12th Street, offering long walls, good light and comfortable accommodations. Cafe Twelve is so big that the society hosts a bi-monthly group show and a solo show.  Jeff Stroud is currently the featured photographer, at the well attended opening reception on January 3, 2012, he spoke about his work.

Pod Lights, photograph, Jeff Stroud, Photographic Society of Philadelphia

“Basically, I’m around Nature all the time, I usually photograph Nature.  So, that’s where I started, with Nature.  That’s what a lot of these pieces are, except for the blueberries, they were sitting on the kitchen counter and sunlight was streaming in the house.  These are old Christmas ornaments, that I thought they were like fifty years old, I’m not sure they’re that old, I just liked them because of the sparkle and the shine of the glass.  The one on the end with the piece of wood has a little vine that sticks out and makes sort of a circle, the strange little vine spirals, look how it wound itself into a circle.  These are old pods, thistle pods I believe, that are catching the light, hanging upside down and this is also some kind of little vine that grows and catches the other trees, it could be grapevine.  The light was just perfect for that little piece of grass growing there.”

Jeff Stroud, Photographic Society of Philadelphia at Cafe Twelve

“I shoot with a Nikon D60 10.2MP Digital SLR Camera with 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6G AF-S DX VR Nikkor Zoom Lens.  The prints were made at PhotoLounge (the PSoP sponsor offers society member discounts), it was my first experience there, it was good, they took care of me at the last minute.  I’ve been a photographer for eight years, I started in Easton, NY, 60 miles north of Albany.  I started with an old high end Kodak.com camera.  Originally I got the message that Nature had to be recognized and the best way for me to do that was to take its picture.”

Do you use Photoshop? “I try to use it as little as possible and capture the image in the camera.”  Do you use a macro lens?  “No, I just get really close with a 55mm lens, manual not automatic.  I got a new lens for Christmas, 55 – 200mm.”  From Santa?  Are you showing anywhere else now?  “I have a collection of eleven photos at Galleria Deptford in NJ, that collection is there until the first of February.  I’m working on a collection to be shown in a gallery this Summer.”  Are you shooting against a black background?  “No, this is all outside.  The light was shining in just the right spot.  For instance, this one with the grass was shot at high speed which gave it that shining light, it’s actually outside.”

Learn more about Jeff Stroud at his blog and buy his products at RedBubble.  Learn more about the Photographic Society of Philadelphia:
www.phillyphotosociety.com

http://forum.phillyphotosociety.com/

http://www.flickr.com/groups/phillyphotosociety/

http://www.youtube.com/user/phillyphotosociety

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Photographic-Society-of-Philadelphia

Read DoN‘s reviews of Jeff Stroud‘s photographic exhibition at Galleria Deptford, PSoP photographer Bob Brunin and Karen Schlechter on DoNArTNeWs

Read more about the Photographic Society of Philadelphia on Side Arts and DoNArTNeWs.

Members of the Photographic Society of Philadelphia are welcome to join the Side Arts community of artists with free or premium web pages and access to the Side Arts blog.

DoN Brewer, Contributing Writer, Side Arts

Photographs except where noted by DoN Brewer

[Affiliate Marketing Disclosure]