philadelphia sketch papers.com
click HERE for www.philadelphiasketchpapers.com
philadelphia sketch papers: “the context of my process”
a website, podcast, etc that is about my process of knowing other artists i love and admire, what happens to them and to us and to me because of that association and, incidentally, a member’s personal view of a club’s history, by random installment.
the longest continuing, entirely artist-run organization in america or, for that matter, the world, is the one i belong to in philadelphia.
it was founded in 1860 and by tradition, charter and sheer ornery-ness has been owned and operated entirely by working artists now for 150 years.
short of the nation itself no other freely volunteered organization of its kind or most any other can claim that longevity.
what does this mean?
to me, it means that, contrary to the characterization most admit, working artists, as a group, or at least this group, in this organization, share long, abiding, life-long professional issues like no other. they are, in fact, demonstrably resolute, especially in the integrity of that 150-year-old autonomy, as artist-run.
through the long- and the short-, the fat- and the lean-, as well as the dreaded up- and the more-frequent, tho no less merry, down-times...there were always, always times for the artists to support each others’ lives and, more importantly, each others’ work.
this website, then, i wish to dedicate to that history, those histories, of artists who have left their inexorably strong mark on their times at that Club, in their work. these are my friends, living and dead, and i visit them every day.
they were, as i am as part of this group of artists, “the context of the process”.
this is my personal process as a born, bred, home-fed philadelphia artist.
this is, part and totality, all about the when and how, and hopefully the why, of who i am, and why my work is such and so.
which, withall, is really, to those who truly ‘know’, very philadelphian. -dm
