Summer is officially underway...and so is SUMMER SOLSTICE, the show, which opened last Thursday evening to acclaim, enthusiastic crowds and continuing sales! Please visit in person and also look for us to feature works from the show in our posts over the next seven weeks. We'll start at the top, as critiqued by OUR JURY. The five members of our panel — IRVING XCHEL CHAN GOMEZ, JON LAIDACKER, NATALIE HOPE MCDONALD, KAREN RODEWALD and JODY SWEITZER — elevated eight of our artists with their JURY CITATIONS. In this lofty company, HOLLY WYNN took BEST OF SHOW for her captivating take on iconic imagery, speaking both to climate change and to the artist in every season. “Living in a place with four seasons does affect my creative process,” says Holly, “particularly in the winter, when bouts of seasonal depression make it hard to put my energy and care into my art. This piece captures the isolation and loneliness that come in and leave me feeling uninspired and unsure what to do.” Please lift your glasses to Holly and her heralded colleagues:
BEST OF SHOW: Holly Wynn’s “My Own Little Iceberg” (PICTURED HERE)
SOLSTICE AWARD (from Druid Society of Dirty Frank’s): Joseph Eggleston’s “Samsara”
ULTIMATE JERSEY VIBE: Asya Livshits’ “Ocean City”
MOST SUBMERSIVE: Maryanne Buschini’s “Floating”
MOST NOSTALGIC: David Helwer’s “Gathering Eggs”
MOST SUSTAINABLE: Jennifer Barrile’s “Salem Harbor”
BIGGEST REALITY CHECK: Robin Brownfield’s “Say Goodbye”
MOST PROMISING DEBUT: Som-Mai Nguyen’s “Flood 2”
Today in Every Way
TODAY IN EVERY WAY: We haven’t even wrapped the kickoff to our summer juried show, but we will swivel the spotlight this afternoon so it shines on FRANK SHERLOCK, our resident bard of DIRTY FRANK’S and past Poet Laureate of Philadelphia, who is releasing his new poetry chapbook, TOMORROW SOMEHOW, today (6/25) with a 5-7 PM RELEASE PARTY. So please join us for your favorite drinks, poured by the incomparable HEATHER RAQUEL PHILLIPS...a nice spread of food, courtesy of JEANNE PHILLIPS...the opportunity to PURCHASE Frank's new collection, which is all too happy to sign and inscribe...a FREE BROADSIDE for the first 25 buyers...and, to top it all, an OUTDOOR READING at 6:00. If you’re in town or on your way back, we can think of no better way to cap a lovely weekend. See you soon!
Solstice Now...and Tomorrow
Summer solstice just officially happened — at 10:57 AM EDT, to be exact — so HAPPY SOLSTICE! (And, yes, the days get shorter from here.) But we have a way you can extend this nature-embracing celebration right through tomorrow night. Why not join us for the OPENING RECEPTION for SUMMER SOLSTICE, THE SHOW? Our 7-10 PM reception will mark Off the Wall’s 17th Annual Summer Juried Show as we welcome 38 amazing artists, eight of them new to our space. Their art does more than lift up a single day or season. Many of the 70 works on display signal a dire warning that if we do not quickly make inroads on climate change, we will lose the privilege of enjoying four distinct seasons. But it’s not all ominous tidings. Tomorrow evening (and every day through August 18) you can experience inspiring artwork that will feed your soul and spur you to action, while also enjoying your favorite drinks, energizing conservation and the delectable light hors d’oeuvres that are the order of the day. Plus, we will announce the jury’s eight award winners. We look forward to seeing you soon!
End of Our Show
We have not shined a bright enough or wide enough spotlight on the artists of MARY LIZ MEMORIAL MASTERS EXHIBITION 18 (MLMME18). Nevertheless, we bid a fond farewell to these immense talents, fully confident that we will see and show their art again soon. In some cases, very soon; Karen Stabenow, in fact, will be back with several pieces in our SUMMER SOLSTICE juried show, which goes up Saturday and opens next Thursday. But what better way to start saying goodbye than with a coda painting of sorts from Serge Krupnov, who made a tour de force debut in our space with 15 sales. Serge is a master of evoking a sense of time and place in his canvases, which resonated deeply with our audiences. In this case, he chooses the end of summer — even, ironically, as we officially greet that season with the theme and timing of our next outing.
SERGE KRUPNOV
“End of Summer”
oil on panel
500.
Welcome to the Longest Day
We certainly honor D-Day, 79 years on, and those who gave so much for freedom. But in this case, we’re talking about the longest day of the year — and proudly introducing the 38 artists of SUMMER SOLSTICE. While our 17th annual summer juried show deals with creating art in all four seasons, the existential crisis that is climate change clearly rose to the top as the urgent theme of many of the 70 works chosen. We cordially invite you to meet our artists, including a talented octet making their Off the Wall debuts, and see what they have to say at our OPENING RECEPTION: 7-10 PM on THURSDAY, JUNE 22 (incidentally the day after the actual Solstice). In the meantime, enjoy the extra sun and, above all, CONGRATS to those listed above!
Come Celebrate!
Today in particular and all month long, we will shine a spotlight on PRIDE at DIRTY FRANK’S and OFF THE WALL — not to mention, up and down 13TH STREET, the Main Street of our Gayborhood. If you are dropping by after the parade and amid the many festivities, please make the NE Corner of 13th and Pine a destination. The amazing HEATHER RAQUEL PHILLIPS is behind the bar...proceeds of Strawberry Blonde by Evil Genius will benefit The Trevor Project...and Off the Wall artist M.K. KOMINS is set up just outside doing caricatures en plein air. We look forward to lifting our glasses with you this afternoon and throughout June. CHEERS!
Last Call for Your Art
Today represents your final chance to enter this summer's OFF THE WALL juried show...and to share with our jury how your art celebrates summer itself — and speaks to making art in all the seasons. Since enjoying four distinctive seasons may quickly become a thing of the past, many entrants are also choosing to speak to climate change, which makes perfect sense. Your point of view matters. So if you have not entered and want to, please look at your body of work to find the connection you want to make. You can submit up to five works that meet our size requirements (48” or less in combined dimensions: height + width) to offthewallgallery@gmail.com by 11:59 PM TONIGHT (Thursday, May 25). You should also send questions our way, including requests for a brief extension, which we may be able to accommodate. SUMMER SOLSTICE runs from June 18 to August 18, and accepted, ready-to-hang work must be dropped off on Saturday, June 17. We look forward to considering your outstanding art!
30 Hours from Now
Our MARY LIZ MEMORIAL MASTERS EXHIBITION (MLMME18) always marks a high tide in the annual calendar of OFF THE WALL shows. This year is no exception, as we raise the curtain on this year’s renewal with an OPENING RECEPTION on THURSDAY, APRIL 27, 7-10 PM. CHARLES EMLEN returns from an electrifying debut in our space in PROCESSES INTERSECTING SPACES, with eight major sculptures that deftly marry the conceptual with the traditional. SERGE KRUPNOV shows a range of theme and a depth of talent with 23 paintings, ranging from riveting portraiture to lucid moments of transcendent, sometimes fleeting beauty. And with 16 works, KAREN STABENOW puts the emphasis on “fleeting” with Arctic paintings that signal our planet in crisis, paired with Philly-centric bridgescapes. We cordially invite you to join us tomorrow to celebrate a phenomenal show and to meet the artists. Other luminaries on hand will include curator JODY SWEITZER and bartender ROSE COSSABONE, pouring your favorite drinks. But the true stars, as always, are on the Wall and in our 3D case. We look forward to seeing you soon!
30 Days to Enter
Between now and May 25, our summer juried show, aptly entitled SUMMER SOLSTICE, seeks outstanding art in all media that celebrates the opportunity to create in a climate that experiences all four seasons. And acknowledging that our climate is changing — along with every other one on earth — we also invite artists to speak to this change and to advocate for ways to slow climate change. As always, the summer version of OFF THE WALL’s popular juried shows has no entry fee and no hanging fee. The only stipulations are SIZE — 2D work must be less than 48" in combined dimensions (height+width) — and, in the jury’s eyes, PRICE. We connect artwork accepted into our shows with many buyers, but we have the greatest success when your work is competitively priced. Email images to offthewallgallery@gmail.com, along with all required information. Details are above and, for an easier-to-read version, at offthewallgallery.org/call-for-entries. We look forward to considering your art!
Stardust
Two extraordinary artists made overdue OFF THE WALL debuts in PROCESSES INTERSECTING SPACES. While CHARLES EMLEN isn’t going anywhere — his sculptures are in our next show — we must bid farewell to PAULA GILLEN and her SUPERPOWER WOMEN IN SPACE. Some protagonists in her digital photomontages are larger than life; others are seemingly mired in workaday life…only it’s in outer space! The work fits perfectly with Paula’s penchant for biting social commentary and her prevailing sense of humor. “Influenced by Surrealism, Feminism and The Pictures Generation, my work strives to be satirical, irreverent and playful,” the artist tells us. In the world she has created for this captivating series, “forward-thinking women are in charge — and there’s a trap door to Earth if you get out of line.” After Friday, alas, we have to pop that trap door and simply wait until Paula returns to our Wall.
PAULA GILLEN
“Domestic Space”
18 x 16
aluminum print of
digital photomontage
300.
Pure Craft
With PROCESSES INTERSECTING SPACES well into its final week, it’s the last chance for fans of our five amazing artists to fall in love — and welcome great art into their homes. The latest such acquisition, soon bound for the West Coast, is this marvelous canvas from JOSEPH EGGLESTON. Part of a newer series inspired by his favorite horror flicks, this painting offers an imagined scene from 1996’s “The Craft.” Says the artist of the larger works in the set, “All of these paintings are created from using multiple image stills [from the film] to make something old anew, like rearranging puzzle pieces. In fact, some sections are completely made up but still capture a feeling of nostalgia and a fondness of where it was derived. I opt for the long landscape-style canvas to recreate the feeling of a ‘widescreen’ video format and place figures in different positions to suggest movement. My desire is to try and make it feel like we are peeking in on a moment in time that has been captured with some wild paint strokes.” But while every cult classic deserves re-viewing, the streaming platform that is our Wall is taking down these titles after this Friday. So come in and log on while you can!
JOSEPH EGGLESTON
“Who’s Connie Francis? Honey, Listen and Learn”
18 x 36
oil and acrylic on canvas
1100.
New Math
As our boffo OPENING RECEPTION draws to a close — though we intend to keep the party going until the end of the night! — we need to bring into the fold of today’s posts one more artist. We first called out CHARLES EMLEN’s phenomenal installation in our 3D space last Saturday with a video post, but it's worth spotlighting again...plus the artist points out the calculus of his two-screen multimedia work, which suggests that PROCESSES INTERSECTING SPACES is by far our most prolific show in terms of numbers of pieces included at once. “In this installation, there are two monitors. One displays a 10-minute looping composite video. The second shows a random slideshow with roughly 110 unique images,” explains Charlie. “Assuming the video changes every 5 seconds, that alone provides approximately 120 individual scenes. Combining those scenes with the slideshow images yields well over 10,000 unique scene/image pairings! A veritable cornucopia of iterative design.” Simply WOW.
CHARLES EMLEN
“Contemplo Armamento”
composite video animation
video screens and hard drive
3000.
...Something Blue!
Looking for any color in the palette? Or for that matter, any tube on the paint rack at Dick Blick? Look no farther than the work of JOSEPH EGGLESTON. A self-confessed painter of “messy portraits,” the artist is also on a new run with his subject matter, which would fit just as neatly in the last BORROWED category. Since the pandemic, he has found himself watching and rewatching his favorite horror films, predominantly cult classics or classics-in-the-making. From there, it gets fun, as Joseph describes. “I strive to create a likeness but shy away from exact replication; it isn’t important to me if the viewer knows the source material (although it is fun when people have that AHA! moment). This idea of valuing likeness over replication made me wonder: what would happen if I manipulated the stills in order to manufacture a ‘scene’ that feels like it is from a film but doesn’t actually exist?” Many of his larger canvases in PROCESSES INTERSECTING SPACES — OPENING RECEPTION tonight (3/9), 7-10 PM —do exactly this. The smaller work, like this homage to the ouevre of Jordan Peele, focuses on pure portraiture. All of them immediately transport us. So figure out how you will get out of the house to see us and this great art...and don’t say nope!
JOSEPH EGGLESTON
“Young Red”
acrylic and charcoal pencil on wood
125.
...Something Borrowed...
Next is a truly illuminating artist making her debut in our space — but one we’ve admired from afar for quite some time. PAULA GILLEN uses her photomontages to create amalgamations of found and “vintage images, pop art and fashion, along with my own original photographs.” In doing so, she delves into “themes of psychology, social commentary and humorous disruptions of original and found imagery.” For her SUPERPOWER WOMEN IN SPACE series, the artist has created a single-gender society, where women are in charge not only of their domain but of the whole damn universe. It’s playful, thoroughly engaging and really needs to be experienced in person. What better occasion than the OPENING RECEPTION tonight (3/9), 7-10 PM, of PROCESSES INTERSECTING SPACES? Power up your rocket ship and be there!
PAULA GILLEN
“Bravely Shouting into Space”
20 x 16
aluminum print
300.
...Something New...
It’s been over a decade since the art of JON LAIDACKER has graced our Wall. Always comfortable in any creative setting, from traditional painting to mural arts, this artist is a trailblazer of a young medium: digital painting. “While it has managed to be acknowledged,” Jon observes, “digital painting has a way to go in gaining genuine appreciation among fine artists.” Although the subject matter here, as stated in the title, spans generations, his body of work in PROCESSES INTERSECTING SPACES — OPENING RECEPTION tonight (3/9), 7-10 PM — showcases fresh dimensions. The artist is undertaking more complex setups that we have seen before and showing his work both at larger scales (this piece) and in smaller, innovative packaging. Jon’s four small paintings on the post are also available in one signed, limited edition 4-pack that fits in your pocket. Pretty cool. Very new!
JON LAIDACKER
“Generations: 70 Years on a Shelf”
digital painting in Procreate
limited edition of 25
25.5 x 25.5 framed / 350.
22 x 22 unframed / 250.
Something Old...
No, no one’s getting married tonight. But we definitely have an engagement! So in inviting you to tonight's 7-10 PM OPENING RECEPTION for PROCESSES INTERSECTING SPACES, we happily invoke the age-old adage as we walk you through a few highlights from the show. Let’s start with a “painting” — in fact, a digitally manipulated photograph — that is part of MICHAEL JICHA’s PROJECT 1910 and was previously seen and sold at the 2019 edition of UNDER $100. The difference now is that we have never seen this work in the proper dimensions. Only at this size can we more fully understand the artist’s practice, which “interprets the Post-Impressionist to Surrealist movements.” Find out more in person and on offthewallgallery.org. See you tonight!
MICHAEL JICHA
detail from “Reine d’Or”
35 x 25 framed
digitally manipulated photograph
500.
Never Too Late
Life journeys can go in unexpected directions. Perhaps this holds even truer for those who are artists at heart. For GRETCHEN RAICHLE, creativity was one of her earliest callings. “As a younger person, I immersed myself in drawing and attempted paintings and pastels,” she recalls. “Illustration, like images in childhood books, and later discovering Pyle, N.C. Wyeth, and Sargent were huge attractions, and that of the ‘Red Rose Girls’ fascinated me to no end.” These memories were tucked away. Some acquired the sheen of nostalgic luster. Others seemingly vanished into the folds of time. Gretchen, who had pursued other passions in life including being a professional chef, was determined to excavate what once moved her most deeply. “Some 45 years later, when I dug out all the books, magazines and materials I had collected, I discovered I was drawn to watercolor.” But making art is not riding a bicycle. “I was paralyzed looking at a white sheet of paper until I found ALICE MEYER-WALLACE at Community Arts Center, Wallingford,” the artist continues, referencing an esteemed member of the OFF THE WALL community and a past Mary Liz Fellow. “Alice has been my mentor, teacher and friend over the last five years,” adds Gretchen, “and her free-spirited enthusiasm and encouragement have made all the difference.” These are the stories we love to hear. We are honored to have Gretchen as part of NEW FACES OF ‘23, where she represents her medium in all its subtleties and sublimeness. Perhaps watercolor is just as much a hero of this story as are Gretchen and Alice. “Watercolor is a truly magical medium. It is luminous and always full of surprises if you just let it in.”
GRETCHEN RAICHLE
“Red Cup”
23 x 19.5
watercolor on 140 lb. cold press Arches paper
250.
A Voice for the Many
We are proud to say our NEW FACES OF ‘23 artists have found not only new fans but collectors, too—with 16 sales and counting. GLORIA KLAIMAN can lay claim to four of the red dots (but the assemblage shown here is still available!). She has perhaps connected so readily with our audiences because her art aims to convey a complex world view. “In my mixed-media art, I always strive to explore the beauty of the natural world,” says Gloria, “as well as the songs, dreams, ideas, fears and aspirations of the people around us. In the current political climate, this also entails a conscious effort to counter the initiatives that promote hateful separations between the self and the other; the self and nature; and the self and the spiritual, idiosyncratic and different in the world.”
GLORIA KLAIMAN
“The cages are broken and all the children dance”
20 x 16 x 1.5
mixed-media assemblage
275.
Final Week
Our first show off the year has flown right by! NEW FACES OF ’23 feels fresh and continues to find fans, but the march of time means this coming Friday, March 3 is the final full day of this eye-opening exhibition. Among our 10 artists—all members of our sister organization, THE PLASTIC CLUB, and all making their respective Off the Wall debuts (hence our title)—ROBIN BROWNFIELD stands apart in her medium: mosaic tiles. Her story is equally unique. “I used to be a sociology professor. After becoming disabled, I turned to mosaic art,” she tells us. Robin’s work has received widespread exposure, including shows in New York, Las Vegas and San Francisco; locally, media attention has sometimes shone a special spotlight. “Following a FOX-29 story about my award-winning series of Black Lives Matter portraits,” continues the artist, “Tamika Palmer commissioned me to do a portrait of her daughter, Breonna Taylor, whose death, in part, launched a rebirth of the BLM movement. This portrait can be seen in the documentary ‘Bree Way: Promise Witness Remembrance.’” It’s a fitting reminder that Black History Month is also drawing to a close.
ROBIN BROWNFIELD
“Blowing Bubbles”
mosaic art
750.
Finding Answers, Together
How do you put a price on your art? This fundamental, surprisingly complex question has baffled just about every artist. As a gallery that strives to make art accessible to almost all buyers—and to connect our artists to collectors and bottom-line success—we want to demystify the process and help you find the best way to value your own work. So do our friends at our sister organization, THE PLASTIC CLUB. Hence the collaborative Plastic/Wall workshop this Sunday, February 26, at the Club (247 South Camac Street) from 2:00 to 3:30. Off the Wall curator JODY SWEITZER will lead a panel of experts, themselves working artists: JAMES OLIVER, James Oliver Gallery; CAROL TAYLOR-KEARNEY, Powell Lane Arts; and RACHEL ZIMMERMAN, Inliquid.org. The workshop is FREE and OPEN TO THE PUBLIC. So please join us this weekend as we find answers...together!