Pae White: Lisa, Bright and Dark, is showing at the Taubman 9/4 - 11/7/2009.

I’m particularly inspired by Pae White’s work not just for the luscious visual attacks of light and space, but also for her dance between the handmade everyday and foreign fantastic.

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Works by Kathryn Pannepacker, also a mentor of mine currently showing at SMILE gallery (105 S 22nd St. Philadelphia PA). Learn the story behind these works and how they address an artist’s expectations of and in the community — and more about this show including artist Dave Foss in an article by Marie Elcin one of our upcoming guest authors this fall on her blog site Colored-Thread.blogspot.com.

I was traveling to St. Louis to see my sister, and it turned out, after four flight fiascoes, that I was only to be there for about 36 hours.  I had heard nothing of the St. Louis Art Museum, and my feelings toward the city was that it had culture, or at least good food, but not that it had anything spectacular to offer along the lines of art.  But for some reason—perhaps the gracious gods of fine art bestowed some spirit of commitment in me—I made time to visit the St. Louis Art Museum.

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” I am fascinated by the way we interact with each other and our environments.  I capture images to feed my obsession with the intricacies of human behavior and communication in the modern world. Through both still and moving images, I examine encounters, moments, and arrangements of objects that reveal patterns in our collective actions, and insight into our collective psychology. ” Kelly Shimoda

©2008 Erica Allen

“Untitled Gentleman is a series of fictional portraits created using anonymous faces from contemporary barbershop hairstyle posters combined with figures from discarded studio photographs. Through interventions in these found photographs, this work explores representations and constructions of identity in portraiture and appropriates value to images and individuals who are otherwise overlooked.

Existing between the real and artificial, these images are made effective by creating an expressive ambiguity in an unexpected context. In subverting the meaning and expectations of the traditional studio portrait, the images create an unknown narrative and visual tension that play with the viewer’s perception of the work.

The ambiguous expressions captured in these barbershop portraits inherit a vulnerable quality when placed inside the familiar frame of the studio portrait. In this new context, these once primarily functional photographs become unusually candid and passive representations of masculinity. Paired with figures from historical and contemporary found photographs, these men adopt new identities and are recognized as individuals, while remaining anonymous; identified by the hairstyle number originally found on the barbershop posters.”