We have an amazing lineup scheduled for next Wednesday, including internationally known muralist (ex-graffiti artist ESPO) Steve Powers! Steve got 2 nice shout-outs in the New York Times and Wall Street Journal last week.
Featured Artists:
Steve Powers is an artist from Philadelphia who has shown his work a the Institute of Contemporary Art, Philadelphia, Deitch Projects, New York, the 2001 Venice Biennale, Alleged Annex, Los Angeles, the 2002 Liverpool Biennial, and The City Arts Centre in Dublin. His body of work reflects a fascination with graffiti, sign painting, urban marketing and con games of all shapes and sizes. In 2004, Powers and Creative Time organized The Dreamland Artist Club, a project that revitalized a New York landmark by painting signs and rides in Coney Island. In 2007, he was awarded the Fulbright grant, which he used to create murals in Dublin and Belfast with the assistance of local teenagers. Powers, who is currently partnering with the City of Philadelphia’s Mural Arts Program on “Love Letter“, 50 rooftop and street-level murals along the elevated train route in West Philadelphia, will be discussing his experience painting murals in Coney Island and in Dublin, Ireland.
Powers will discuss “Love Letter” on September 23rd at the Slought Foundation.
RSVP required. Buy advance tickets HERE
Naomi Brownstein is a writer and First Person Arts StorySlam winner. She has presented her work at Liberty Scribblers slams, and at the Erotic Literary Salon. The First Person Salon will be her first curated presentation. She’ll be reading her short story I Remember Crystal Place. Naomi is a member of the First Person Arts Golden Ticket Society, an avid dancer (ballroom, hustle, and salsa), and a big fan of Philadelphia theater. She is currently seeking publication for her book, A Poor Person’s Guide to Entertainment and Culture in the Big City.
Sissy Carpey is a memoir writer whose stories have appeared in The Philadelphia Inquirer, The Washington Post, Inside Magazine, and the Jewish Exponent, among others. Her story “Escaping the Invisible Years”, about the triumphs and difficulties of growing up with a brother suffering from mental retardation, was published in Inquirer Today magazine, and won many national awards. She has written a book called A Piece of her Heart, a memoir about growing up in an immigrant Jewish family, and what it was like to be an American child during the Depression and World War II. For the Salon, Carpey will be telling her family’s story: what it was like to be separated forever by the Russian Revolution, both in the Soviet Union and in America, and the reunion that followed.
Architects Daryn Edwards and Brian Phillips will showcase the upcoming Welcome House project, which will be featured in the First Person Festival of Memoir and Documentary Art this Fall. Welcome House will be an urban structure that artists of all kinds will live in for short periods of time and will have the ability to document their experience. It will be a welcoming environment for both artists and the communities. The Welcome House is expected be up and running in October. Edwards and Phillips are Principal architects at Interface Studio Architects. Phillips, a founding principal at the firm, is a Lecturer at PennDesign where he teaches graduate level design studios and has taught undergraduate studios at the Temple University School of Architecture. His work with ISA has recently appeared in DWELL, Metropolis, I.D. Magazine, The Philadelphia Inquirer, GreenSource and on NPR Radio. In 2008, the office was the recipient of the Philadelphia Emerging Architecture Prize and three AIA design awards. Edwards has taught at Philadelphia University and is active in local chapters of the Community Design Collaborative, the American Institute of Architects and is the immediate Past-President of the Board of Directors for Habitat for Humanity Philadelphia. He is a licensed architect, LEED accredited professional and was awarded the Young Architect Award in 2008 from AIA Philadelphia.
Music and Motion Dance is Citypaper’s Arts Pick for this week!
Check them out at our Salon this Wednesday:
Where: Laurie Beechman Cabaret at the University of the Arts, 601 S. Broad St.
When: Wednesday, August 12th 7:30-9:30
Why: Art is good for you…
Cost: $8 – Buy tickets now to guarantee a seat!
We have our upcoming Salon lineup set: Buy tickets in advance HERE.
Featured artists:
Jennifer Baker
Jennifer is a painter who has been documenting over 20 years of her life in Northern Liberties. She will talk about the life, death and rebirth of a city neighborhood as she experienced it during 2 decades as an artist living and working there. These are images from about 1990 to the present: her personal impression of the area’s evolution from a small manufacturing center with breweries, tanneries, and meat packing plants, to a lost and partially abandoned neighborhood friendly to arsonists, short dumpers, and artists looking for cheap space. She is now examining Northern Liberties’ newest incarnation as a neighborhood of hip young people moving into old working class houses and the numerous new developments (many of which are now in bankruptcy). Her paintings and monoprints present her personal experience of this process.
Jennifer is currently in a show called “Summer in the City” at Projects Gallery in Northern Liberties. She was a recipient of a PA Council on the Arts Visual Arts Fellowship, and a finalist for a Pew Fellowship for the Arts.
Check out her work at a Brooklyn Gallery HERE, and locally at the Projects Gallery HERE
Shareef Hadid Jenkins
Shareef is an actor and playwright from Philadelphia who will be excerpting his recent work from the Philly Fringe, “Getting Your Life”. The play is adapted from journals he kept while living with a transsexual Crystal-meth dealer. “Getting Your Life” deals with drug abuse and the desire to stop using, while being powerless to addiction. Shareef’s most recent play, “The Three Mothers of Zachary”, was featured in Festivus, Philadelphia’s first LGBT Artist Festival. He will be showing “Getting Your Life” at the Philly Fringe Festival this September.
Music and Motion Dance
Music and Motion Dance, voted 2008 My Fox Philly Best for Dance, will be presenting 2 excerpts from their work “The 9 Muses”. Drawing from their own muses, each company member created new choreography, both individually and as part of a group, seeking to answer the question – What inspires you? Music and Motion Dance Troupe has participated in Live Arts and Philly Fringe for the past 5 years. “The 9 Muses” will be performed in its entirety on September 5th for the Philly Fringe.
Damon Reaves
Damon Reaves, a Philadelphia native, is a performance and conceptual artist exploring issues of identity. He completed his MFA at the University of Pennsylvania in 2008 and has also studied at The School of Visual Arts in New York and The Frank Mohr Institute in Groningen, The Netherlands. In 2008 Reaves was awarded The Locks Foundation Post-Graduate Fellowship. He recently joined Nexus Foundation for Today’s Art and currently serves as a Mural Corps Instructor for The Philadelphia Mural Arts Program.
Damon will be presenting the audio from a work-in-progress premiering as part of the Shelter exhibition at the Painted Bride this November. Combined with physical action, the piece explores the way individuals balance self-identity with cultural/social identity and questions what it means to be sheltered in both.
Date: August 12
Time: 7:30-9:30pm
Location: Laurie Beechman Cabaret, 601 S. Broad St.
Cost: $8
All Ages!
Photo: Phil Jackson
Join First Person Arts at our Salon tomorrow night: skateboarding subculture, reflections on a 29 year marriage, a 7 day conceptual relationship, and gringos in Mexico! How can you resist?
Date: July 8th
Time: 7:30-9:30pm (doors at 7:00pm)
Location: Laurie Beechman Cabaret, 601 S. Broad St.
Cost: $8 All ages! Buy your tickets online now to guarantee a seat.
Phil Jackson will present a selection of photographs from of his life-long documentary of the people surrounding him in the subculture of skateboarding. As a child he was drawn to skating by its lack of rules and authority figures. This attraction, combined with the fact that skateboarding is outlawed in almost every major city, has led to a scene made up of freethinking and often delinquent youth who have all learned to run from cops at an early age. Skateboarding served as a raw, bloody escape from the trite banality of a suburban upbringing. Having spent over half his life as a skateboarder, he has earned the respect of his peers and acquired the skills to chronicle the lifestyle that comes along with it. His work illuminates an alternative way of life to that of mainstream America. You can see more of his work here and hear from the man himself at the July 8th Salon! (Buy tickets here, the fees are on us, so it’s just 8 bucks.)
He’ll be joined by these three artists, presenting unique projects of memoir and documentary art:
Poet Lynn Levin who will present a reading entitled For Better or For Verse, a series of reflections on 29 years of marriage. (More about Lynn Levin)
Writer Jeff Bender will read from his newest memoir writing, La Reforma. (Jeffbender.net)
Writer and Photographer Ellie Brown will share her collaborative work on a short-duration conceptual relationship. (sevendayrelationship.blogspot.com)
The Salon takes place at the Laurie Beechman Cabaret (601 S. Broad St. in the Philadelphia Arts Bank) on July 8th and runs from 7:30pm to 9:30pm.
Admission is $8, seating is limited, and we typically sell out.
Please buy your tickets in advance!
At the July 8th Salon, Poet, writer, and translator, Lynn Levin will give a spoken-word performance entitled For Better or for Verse: Poems, Comic, Romantic, Dramatic about her 29 year marriage. Though not self-evidently love poems, they cover a spectrum of emotional tones – tart, comic, passionate, affectionate, anxious.
Levin is the author of three collections of poems, Fair Creatures of an Hour (2009), Imaginarium (2005), and A Few Questions about Paradise (2000), all published by Loonfeather Press. Imaginarium was a finalist for ForeWord Magazine’s Book of the Year Award. Lynn Levin’s poems have appeared in Ploughshares, Washington Square Review, 5 AM, and Boulevard. She teaches at the University of Pennsylvania and at Drexel University, where she also produces the award-winning TV show, The Drexel InterViewTM.
You can see Levin read on July 8th along with three other incredible memoir and documentary artists:
Photographer Phil Jackson will show work documenting his lifelong love of skateboarding and his engagement with its robust and creative subculture. (PhilJacksonPhoto.com)
Writer Jeff Bender will read from his newest memoir writing, La Reforma. (Jeffbender.net)
Writer and Photographer Ellie Brown will share her collaborative work on a short-duration conceptual relationship. (sevendayrelationship.blogspot.com)
The Salon takes place at the Laurie Beechman Cabaret (601 S. Broad St. in the Philadelphia Arts Bank) on July 8th and runs from 7:30pm to 9:30pm.
Admission is $8, seating is limited, and we typically sell out.
Please buy your tickets in advance!
“Ten Days in the Capsule”
It all started, as some of the best stories do, with a Craigslist advertisement. Zach Webber and Ellie Brown embarked on what they called a capsule relationship: meeting, courting, marrying, having a child and divorcing in the space of less than two weeks. Though fictional at its core, the performance blends into real life–kind of a reverse-method-acting or method living?–resulting in real emotional attachments:
Ellie Brown will share photos and writings about her conceptual relationship at the Salon on July 8th. You can read about her experiences and the project more broadly here.
Brown will be joined by these three incredible memoir and documentary artists for one night only!
Photographer Phil Jackson will show work documenting his lifelong love of skateboarding and his engagement with its robust and creative subculture. (PhilJacksonPhoto.com)
Writer Jeff Bender will read from his newest memoir writing, La Reforma. (Jeffbender.net)
Poet Lynn Levin will present a reading entitled For Better or For Verse, a series of reflections on 29 years of marriage. (More about Lynn Levin)
The Salon takes place at the Laurie Beechman Cabaret (601 S. Broad St. in the Philadelphia Arts Bank) on July 8th and runs from 7:3opm to 9:30pm.
Admission is $8, seating is limited, and we typically sell out.
Please buy your tickets in advance!
There is, of course, a story behind Nathan Manske’s founding of Imfromdriftwood.com, a collection of “true stories by gay people from all over”:
The morning after I watched the Gus Van Sant-directed, Sean Penn-starring, Dustin Lance Black-written Milk, would you believe I was inspired? But funny enough, what inspired me was Milk more so than Milk. An image I recalled wasn’t even in the film. It was a photo of Supervisor Harvey Milk, one of the first openly gay elected officials in the U.S., riding on the hood of a car in a San Francisco Gay Pride march, holding a sign that reads, “I’m From Woodmere, N.Y.” The sign was intended to show how far people came to attend the San Francisco rally, but it meant something more to me. It meant that there are gay people in every small town and every big city across America and the world. I was thinking about that photo in between assaults on the snooze button and I responded to Harvey’s sign. I’m from Driftwood.
An accomplished copy-writer for some of the biggest companies in the world, Manske is indeed from Driftwood, Texas, but has lived in Brooklyn, New York since 2003. Imfromdriftwood.com recently attracted it 100th submission! Add your own story to the site and then join us on June 10th for a reading by Manske and friends of some of the most compelling work.
Manske will be joined by these three incredible memoir and documentary artists for one night only!
Sarah McEneaney shares a series of thoughtfully rendered personal narrative paintings covering the flux of human experience ranging from the mundane to the acutely traumatic. (Salon Preview)
Stephanie Yuhas reads from “American Goulash,” a collection of stories about growing up a first-born American daughter to an all-Transylvanian family. (Salon Preview) American Goulash website.
Michael M. Koehler shares PARADE, a photo essay exploring his relationship to Philadelphia, mediated through images of this city’s iconic Mummers. (Salon Preview) Michaelmkoehler.com
The Salon takes place at the Laurie Beechman Cabaret (601 S. Broad St.) and runs from 7:3opm to 9:30pm
Admission is $8, seating is limited, and we typically sell out! Please buy your tickets in advance.
At the June 10th Salon, Stephanie Yuhas will share “American Goulash”, a series of humorous stories about her childhood as a first-born American to a Translyvanian family. “American Goulash” is a written self-exploration that preserves old stories, tales, and idiosyncrasies from her own past. Her work is, more broadly, an encouragement to all people to speak to their elders and learn from and share their family histories. You can read some of the stories at the American Goulash website.
Stephanie Yuhas is an award-winning writer, producer, and artist whose films have been featured on the front page of sites like YouTube, MySpace, CollegeHumor, and in dozens of international film festivals. She works with several productions companies around the Greater Philadelphia area to produce and market film and animation, including Shinygrape Studios, Cinevore Studios, and Crystalline Studios. Her last project she worked on was a musical that involved a girl rolling around in raw meat, and in addition to her current project, “American Goulash”, she is developing a feature film involving robotic uteruses. Needless to say, she leads an “interesting” life. You can see some of her work by visiting Shinygrape.com.
Yuhas is also the Executive Producer of Project Twenty1, an organization dedicated to networking, inspiring, promoting and exhibiting artists from all disciples through film and animation. To find out more about Project Twenty1, visit NotJustAFilmFestival.com.
Join us on Wednesday, June 10th for Yuhas’ Salon presentation along with three other artists exploring facets of memoir and documentary art:
Sarah McEneaney shares a series of thoughtfully rendered personal narrative paintings covering the flux of human experience ranging from the mundane to the acutely traumatic.
Michael M. Koehler shares PARADE, a photo essay exploring his relationship to Philadelphia, mediated through images of this city’s iconic Mummers. Michaelmkoehler.com
Nathan Manske will present selections of “true stories by gay people from all over” collected on his website Imfromdriftwood.com
The Salon takes place at the Laurie Beechman Cabaret (601 S. Broad St.) and runs from 7:3opm to 9:30pm
Admission is $8, seating is limited, and we typically sell out! Please buy your tickets in advance.
