Here is January’s leaderboard of top artists and businesses in Philly!

The top Philly artists for January:

1) Suzanne Comer
2) Susan Moloney
3) Anthony C and Karen M
4) Lilliana S. Didovic
5) Lauren Rinaldi
6) Pia De Girolamo
7) Daniel Chow
8 ) Jon Bandish
9) Bill Hoo
10) Elaina Posey
11) You?! Maybe next time. Promote your work at Side Arts today!

The top Philly arts service providers and retailers for January:

1) Paradigm Gallery + Studio
2) Bluestone Fine Art Gallery
3) Prelude Gallery
4) Cleanwash Letterpress
5) GEDO

Top artists and service providers are determined by a mix of user data including number of profile unique visits, number of blog posts, log in frequency, number of applications to opportunities and RSVPs, and other factors.

Want to level-up to a top artist or service provider in Philly? We won’t give away the mix, but ranking is based on a top-secret algorithm of site feature usage. The more you promote your arts and crafts through Side Arts, the higher the ranking. Try different combinations of site features daily.

Lilliana S. Didovic, a Side Arts member artist, is the subject of a new book, Her Philadelphia Tales, The Art of Lilliana S. Didovic (Volume 1) by Side Arts Contributing Writer and member artist DoN Brewer.  Based on DoN‘s blog posts on Side Arts Philadelphia art blog, accompanied by Lilliana‘s exuberantly bold and colorful paintings with a fascinating biography of the artist, it is more than an art book.  A quote from Her Philadelphia Tales, The Art of Lilliana S. Didovic (Volume 1):

“Vlado had Joseph drive a military police car across the border and we were hidden in the back.  With tears in my eyes I left Sarajevo, the town I once loved.  We said goodbye to the people we shared blankets with in the basement of our neighbor’s house and the last crumbs of bread.  We left behind our apartments, our people, our belongings and the remains of our once beautiful Olympic City.  The Military Police car easily passed through all of the barricades.”

DoN designed Her Philadelphia Tales, The Art of Lilliana S. Didovic (Volume 1) in Apple iWork ’09 [OLD VERSION] Pages, Adobe Photoshop CS5 and Microsoft Word 2010, the publisher is Amazon’s CreateSpace featuring beautiful images of Lilliana S. Didovic‘s painting in lovely full color.  Read the Side Arts blog post that prompted writing the book.

Her Philadelphia Tales, The Art of Lilliana S. Didovic (Volume 1) by DoN Brewer is available on Amazon.com.  Thank you to Side Arts for making this opportunity possible.  Learn more about the book at DoNArTNeWs.

DoN Brewer, Contributing Writer, Side Arts Philadelphia art blog

Join 3rd Street Gallery for First Fridayfrom 5-9 for their 2nd Annual Community Exhibit. 98 Philadelphia Area Artists will display over 200 works of art.

Second Sunday Artists Reception on February 12th from 1 – 3pm. (Snow Date is Sunday Feb. 26)
The show closes on Sunday February 26.
Regular gallery hours are Wednesday – Sunday from 12 – 5pm.

The following artists will be featured at the gallery throughout the month of February:

Susan Abrasiabian
Charles Adams
Carol Albrecht
Chuck Angeline
Lori F. Banks
Jeffrey Belpanno
Sarah R. Bloom
Madelyn Bradley
Jeanne Bustard
Rocky Canonica
Patty Castner
Melvin A. Chappell
Brian P. Clarke
Constance Cone
Chris Cox
Adam Crawford
William Cromar
A.M. Crum
Diane DeAngelis
Robin Debreceni
Susan DiPronio
Megan Driscoll
Marlene B. Dubin
Mo Ganey
Rhonda Garland
B. Gesshel
Maureen Glassman
Barbara Glickman
Sheila Grabarsky
Catherine Gringos
Ignacio Guajardo-Unanue
Stephen Haigh
Linda Lou Horn
Gralin Hughes Jr.
Hilary Hutchison
Ryan Jackson
Gary Forrest Johnson Jr.
Aaron Kalinay
Naomi Knecht
Brittany J. Koch
Renee Kumar
Pelagia Kyriazi
Maryann Laverty
Lisa Lawinski
Deborah Leavy
Yeoun Lee
Adam Levine
Nancy Lloyd
Jennifer Long
Donna D. Lovely
Dennis P. Macedo
Carissa Marinelli
Helen Lee Meyers
Arlene Gale Milgram
Rodney Miller
Debrorah Mix
Susan Moloney
Lee Muslin
Rochelle Myers
Bill Myers
Nancy Neill
Benjamin Nelson
Scott Nichols
Alfred Ortega
Arthur B. Ostroff
Martha Parrish Bush
Donna Payton
Virginia Powell
Linda Ramsey
Roy Reinard
Heather C. Riccardi
Lauren Rinaldi
Lucy Roehm
Dorothy Roschen
Ellen Sall
Lois Schlachter
John Schmiechen
Aaron Schnittman
Josh C. Sears
David Segals
Joshua Sessoms
Rex Sexton
Keith Shively
Craig Shofed
Simone Spicer
Harry Stainrook
Donald Stevenson
Rose Marie Strippoli
Kim Tieger
Judy Tobie
Anthony Tsirantonakis
John Turner
Erin Vaganos
Carol Vandewall-Baca
Rik Viola
Susan Wallack
Jon Weary
Jullian Weizenfeld
Patricia Wilson-Schmid
Ewa Zeller

3rd Street Gallery is a-not-for profit cooperative of professional artists, established in 1972. The membership of men and women work together as a network of support and encouragement to help foster individual artistic achievement and growth.

For more information about the gallery visit http://3rdstreetgallery.com/ or visit them on Facebook

Join Center City Restoration in the premier First Friday opening of their new studio space at 142 N. 2nd St. They are excited to present the works of local artists, Vasil Anastasav and Lauren Rinaldi. Their doors will be open to the public for the first time on Friday, February 3rd from 6-9pm.

Committed to preserving the historical beauty of Downtown Philadelphia, Center City Restoration specializes in Historic property restoration and remodeling in the Center City district of Philadelphia. Their strengths lie in project management, meeting a deadline and a seamless project that highlights your homes existing properties. Center City Restoration’s top priority is customer satisfaction and their business plan relies on satisfied customer referrals.

For more information visit their website:
http://www.centercityrestoration.com/ | Facebook | Twitter

A little background on the artists:

Vasil Anastasav was born in Europe in family of artists. Graduated from the College of Fine Arts, Sofia, Bulgaria with a Bachelor of Art and Majored in Mural Painting at the Academy of Fine Arts, Sofia, Bulgaria. He has 25 years of experience in fresco and seco mural painting, mosaic, stained glass, icons, logos, architectural restoration, decorative painting, trompe l’oeil, interior finishes and Fine Art. He currently lives and works in Philadelphia.

For more information visit his website:
http://www.vaart.xbuild.com/#

Lauren Rinaldi is a Brooklyn born artist who has lived in Lancaster County, PA, has a BFA in painting from Tyler School of Art, and also studied at Temple University, Rome. The works on display, once described as seductively repugnant, tell intricate and personal stories exploring the meanings of encountering the unexpected through her engaging and vibrant paintings. She uses her own body and experiences to talk about issues of identity, self-exploration, gender, and very literally, the form and function of the human body. A Philadelphia resident, she lives in the Fishtown section of the city with her husband and son.

For more information visit her website:
http://laurenrinaldi.tumblr.com/paintings | Facebook | Twitter

If you would like to schedule a time to see the show please call Center City Restoration at 215.313.9301 or send an email to info@centercityrestoration.com

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 on Amazon!

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.

Have an exciting news story or upcoming event? Need press coverage and promotion?

We’re always on the lookout for the hottest local art events.

Contact one of our contributing writers today!

DoN Brewer: doN@sidearts.com
Carina Giamerese: carina@sidearts.com
Cassandra Hoo: cassandra@sidearts.com

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!