Douglas Witmer
Tuesday, December 18, 2007
new green line art projects
Here are two new exhibitions up at my cafes:Green Line | Powelton
Zarouhie Abdalian
Who you callin' gutter punk : recent engravings
Through January 2008
Green Line | Powelton, 3649 Lancaster Avenue
Zarouhie Abdalian's series of intimately scaled, exquisitely rendered engravings portray homeless youths. As engravings, hand-carved into copper, these portraits record acts of painstaking physical and mental exertion, determination, and care. The portraits describe individuals who are often indiscriminately and blindly labeled as "gutter punks" solely because of their status as homeless youth.
Zarouhie Abdalian grew up in New Orleans, Louisiana and graduated from Tulane University. She has exhibited in New Orleans, Philadelphia, France, Spain, Bosnia-Herzegovina, and South Africa. In 2007, her illustrations were published The Color Inside, a children's book by Folwell Dunbar. Abdalian's work is held in many private collections and is in the permanent collections of the Ogden Museum of Southern Art in New Orleans and the Montgomery (Alabama) Museum of Fine Arts.
Abdalian currently lives and works in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania where she is the Artist-in-Residence at the Philadelphia Cathedral.
For more information, visit www.zarouhie.com.
The Green Line Cafe
John Overmyer
Commentary 1995-2007
Through January 2008
Green Line Cafe, 4239 Baltimore Ave
Nationally recognized West Philly-based artist and illustrator John Overmyer shows hundreds of drawings completed over the past twelve years. Overmyer recently created the album art for Songs on the Green Line, released by the Cafe. Overmyer made many of the drawings in this show while having coffee at the Cafe. The work is installed on the Cafe's walls in a similar fashion to his studio...in an offhand collage fashion with tape showing.
One wall features preparatory drawings for "Songs on the Green Line." The other focuses on editorial illustrations, including work done on assignment for many widely known publications.
Labels: Green Line Art Projects, Green Line Cafe
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Saturday, December 08, 2007
songs on the green line
Here's news about a project (two projects, really) that I've been working hard on. The fifth anniversary of my cafe is coming up in January. Over the years we've had a lot of incredible musicians play at the cafe, and I thought it would be great to celebrate the anniversary with a compilation album. I collaborated with Rich Wexler from Sherman Arts, who books our shows. In the end we were able to get a terrific group of nationally-recognized artists and local up-and-comers to lend their songs to the CD. We named it, simply, Songs on the Green Line.
While we were at it, we thought it only fitting to make the CD a fundraiser, so 100% of the profits from the sale of Songs on the Green Line will benefit Cooperativa San Fernando, a worker-owned coffee cooperative located high in the Andes Mountains of Peru, where the Green Line's house coffee is grown.
The 13-song folk-rock compilation features songs by local and nationally known independent musicians: The Innocence Mission, Denison Witmer, Birdie Busch, Soltero, Red Heart the Ticker, Jack Ohly, The Corndawg, The Weeds, Fan of Friends, Devin Greenwood, Circles, Bird and the Buffalo, and Little Ocean. Cover art by West Philly's own John Overmyer. I'm biased, of course, but I think it's a terrific listen.
The album is due December 13.
Preview and pre-order the album HERE.
Then there's the other project. (I won't toot my horn too loudly on this one...but it was a big project and it is finally finished! ) If you want some terrific coffee, or an interesting T-shirt, or need a new insulated travel mug, you might like clicking HERE.
If you're in Philadelphia, come to one of the CD release shows this week at the cafe:
Thursday December 13
Soltero
The Corndawg
special guest Amy Pickard
Friday December 14
Birdie Busch
Jack Ohly
Circles
Saturday December 15
Fan of Friends
The Weeds
Little Ocean
www.greenlinecafe.com
Labels: Green Line Cafe, miscellany, music
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Friday, November 16, 2007
new show : green line art projects
I've decided to begin posting here about the exhibitions I do at my cafes. With three locations, it's quite a big job. At two of the locations I focus on local artists. And at the third this past year I've begun to bring in work from connections I have around the country. I'm ambivalent about cafes trying to be galleries. But more recently, with the large audience of hundreds of customers a day, I've realized I have an opportunity to give artists a broad kind of exposure they wouldn't get in a traditional gallery. Green Line Art Projects is still a grass-roots, informal, mostly non-commercial affair at this point. I pretty much show what I think will work in a given space. As a "program" it is way less focused aesthetically than an actual gallery would be. But in the past year it feels like this aspect of the cafe has really grown and strengthened. The shows are getting noticed and reviewed. It has taken a lot of time and energy away from my personal studio work the last months, but it feels like good work to be doing. We have two new shows coming up. Here's info about the first of the two:
Brae Howard
China Portraits
Thru December 2007
The Other Green Line, 4305 Locust Street
In 2005, Philadelphia-based photographer Brae Howard lived in China for 10 months, teaching English, while documenting the people and absorbing their rich culture. She quickly felt at home in their culture and deeply admired their ways of thinking, their whimsical combinations of colors and patterns, their natural sense of community, and their easy humility. Most of the photographs are of strangers on the streets and some are of her students. The photographs are characterized by the warmth and natural fondness felt towards her subjects.
Labels: Green Line Art Projects, Green Line Cafe
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Sunday, September 23, 2007
the last day of summer
Some of you know that my job is being the co-owner of The Green Line Cafe, located a few doors down the street from where I live. In late August, I found myself with a small open period of time between exhibits I had scheduled for the cafe. So I decided to fill it by hanging a few of my pieces there. It was the first time I displayed my own work at the cafe. It wasn't really a show. Just a place for a few of my paintings to be for a time. Work like mine is often displayed in fairly pristine environs. So it was good to see these paintings existing in a heavily trafficked public space, in the mix of a lot of other visual information, music, conversation, activity. To me they felt "domesticated"...what I wish for them...to be in relationship to places where people (not viewers) live.
One of the things I was particularly interested in seeing was the paintings with the stained glass windows in the space. When we renovated the cafe space just over five years ago, we restored the uppper set of windows, adding color. I chose and arranged the colors. You might say these windows have become another one of my favorite things. The ideas of transparency and clarity have been prominent in my color and they probably come in part from looking at the light coming through these windows.
Something about taking this work down on Friday afternoon, in the golden light of late September, I felt the summer end for me.
Labels: Green Line Cafe, miscellany, my favorite things, my work, paintings
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