Davis Orton Gallery

Meg Birnbaum exhibits in Kobe, Japan, SoHo, and San Francisco

karendavis — Wed, 17 Feb 2010 19:54:02 +0000

Meg Birnbaum who exhibited at Davis Orton Gallery in September, 2009 is the featured photographer at Tanto Tempo Gallery and Cafe in Kobe, Japan, February 6 – March 21, 2010. She is showing work from two series: “Corn Dogs, Blue Ribbons …” and “Daylight Savings.” Meg creates her evocative black and white images using plastic toy cameras (Holgas and Dianas.) She will be giving an artist talk at the gallery on March 13.

Cow Girl by Meg Birnbaum featured at Tanto Tempo Gallery, Kobe Japan

Meg’s work has also been selected for exhibition in juried shows in SoHo and San Francisco. In SoHo, her photograph “Cheek to Cheek” will appear in Soho Photo Gallery’s 12th international Krappy Kamera competition, March 2 – April 3. In San Francisco a photograph will be featured in RayKo Photo Center’s Third Annual Juried Plastic Camera Show.

Cheek to Cheek by Meg Birnbaum in SOHo exhibit

John Chervinsky featured in “Marking Space” at Pennsylvania College of Art and Design

karendavis — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 17:50:53 +0000

John Chervinsky, who will exhibit at the Davis Orton Gallery from August 26 to September 19, 2010, is a featured artist in a three person exhibition with Laura Lentinsky and Olivia Parker, “Marking Space” at the Pennsylvania College of Art and Design from January 22 to February 26.

photograph by John Chervinsky

Robert Frank’s The Americans at the Metropolitan Museum of Art

karendavis — Sat, 03 Oct 2009 16:35:54 +0000

We go to the Met

An exhibition of the 83 photographs that comprise Robert Frank’s 1956 ground breaking photo book, “The Americans,” is on view at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City through January 3, 2010. It originated at the National Gallery of Art in Washington DC. (You’ll find good resources on both sites.)

Regardless of your familiarity with the work, this show and the accompanying catalog will add greatly to your understanding by providing a detailed examination of the book’s design roots and its organizational principles which variously link images thematically, formally, conceptually and linguistically.

The exhibition illustrates the influence of Michael Wolgensinger, a Swiss commercial photographer with whom Frank apprenticed and trained and the influence of both the photography and contemporary photo book design of among others, Bill Brandt, Walker Evans and Alexey Brodovitch. The exhibition and catalog include contact sheets which reveal the method of Frank’s shooting, and a context for his edits — from 28,000 negatives to 1000 workprints to 85 prints to the final 83.

And there is the history of the publishing of the book itself and the dense, beautiful, rambling first draft of Jack Kerouac’s introduction – [Frank] “sucked a sad poem right out of America onto film, taking rank among the tragic poets of the world.”

Other Exhibits at the Met

Also recommended: Maelstrom: Roxie Payne (roof sculpture til Nov 29) and The Lens and the Mirror, Self-Portraits through December 6, 2009 (photographs, drawings, prints, paintings, ceramics)

Also at the Met, Surface Tension (the photograph as a window, the photograph as an object.)