PAFA MFA1: WEEK 2

The second week of my Fall MFA1 sped by and I didn't see how fast it was going till it was too late. It was the first full week where I had both my drawing seminar with Michael Moore and my second Writing Seminar with Dr. Richards. I had two reading assignments due for my second writing seminar class and they were chunky to get through. The first by Thomas Crow on "Modernism and the Mass Culture" was the hardest to get through and enjoy, the second reading by Christopher Crouch, The Cultural Background to the Machine Age" was much easier to read and enjoy. And by enjoy I mean use as springboards for a papers and maybe my work. It was good to talk to some of my fellow students to see I was not the only one who chewed a bit on the readings. I have always enjoyed Dr. Richard's lectures and had him for Art History 1 and 2 as well as a class on the 19th century and got a lot out of all of the classes. There is quite a bit of reading due this week, so I will have to keep at it every day to stay caught up.

The class with Michael Moore was good, it was a show-and-tell where we brought in our work and talked about it and ourselves a bit. I brought in two life drawings and some Judge parker strips in progress to show the variety of drawing I do in a week or even daily if i have to work on the strip and school work. Mike was very kind and had some nice comments on my drawing and comics and I hunk the class also found what I do very interesting. In this class though I think we'll be doing outside drawings and bringing them into class to discuss.

As I write this post it's Friday night and I am back in my studio after doing the First Friday circuit through the Old City galleries with my buddy David Golas. As always its a lot to see and there were several openings going on and you can't see them all so I'll be visiting some other galleries in the next few weeks to catch shows by fellow students and teachers from school. It's also a mixed bag on First Fridays, some good, lots of "ehhh" and even some "what the fahhh?" I think the fact is Philly is a hard art town, or hard for painters and its also a fairly conservative town too, which has both pluses and minuses. The minuses I think are sales which are slow in this shitty economy and that makes gallery owners less willing to take chances and gamble, so I think that means more sort of 'safe art". Nice stuff, but no real pop! But I suppose as a plus it does give you an idea of what the market is here and what sells. I've been going many years now and it seems pretty much the same thing, mostly landscape, still lifes and a few figures. It seems figures are the least represented as well as portraits. Plenty of Academy Alumni's work cover the walls of most galleries in Old City as well with students hanging right along with some of their teachers which I think is great. My main goal though for the next week is to get some art going--starting tonight. Between my commercial work, the holiday, working out my schedule and my teaching starting at Uarts I haven't been able to get any painting going, but I will remedy that this weekend so by next week's post I should have some art to show.