Also this issue:

Learning to Fly
Shelley Spector chats about her life, her art and her upcoming show.
-Robin Rice

Boxed In
In a story of a con man turned boxer, Darin Strauss loses sight of the core of truth.
-Justin Bauer

Blind Date
Two artists are grouped together for an exhibit at Seraphin Gallery.
-Robin Rice

East Meets Midwest
Wisconsin artist T.L. Solien is featured in two gallery shows this month.
-Susan Hagen

Poe's Own Twilight Zone
-Toby Zinman

June 6-12, 2002

first friday focus

Brian David Dennis, <i>(sunday’s)

Bridgehead</i>, 9 feet by 9 feet by 14 feet, balsa

wood, cardboard, string.

Brian David Dennis, (sunday’s) Bridgehead, 9 feet by 9 feet by 14 feet, balsa wood, cardboard, string.

The Galleries at Moore | Temple Gallery | Ashley Gallery

by Lori Hill

The Galleries at Moore

Dutch artist Mark Manders has spent years considering himself as a building, a piece of architecture of his own creation in which he can "store" thoughts, visions, words and images. He manifests these abstractions in concrete objects such as tea bags, stacks of drawings, shoes and iron beds. Now, Moore College of Art + Design is allowing Manders' drawings and sketches for his "building" to have the spotlight as such a meaningful part of the artist's sculptural process. In "Fragments from Self-portrait as a building," his first solo museum exhibition in the U.S. (he'll be included in a MoMA show this fall), Manders lets us in on the complex and literal concepts that fuel the construction of his personal architecture. Concurrently, L.U.R.E. (Lighting for Urban Rooftop Environments), which made its public debut in March, is staging a stable installation at Goldie Paley Gallery, organized and curated by Nadia Hironaka and Aaron Igler. They and others will present a rotating series of sound, light and video works at the gallery to whet local appetites for L.U.R.E.'s next "outdoor multimedia event."

Mark Manders, through July 26; L.U.R.E., through June 28 (summer hours, Mon.-Fri., 10 a.m.-5 p.m.), 20th Street and Ben Franklin Parkway, 215-568-4515.

Temple Gallery

For a week or so, Temple Gallery's lobby and exhibition space has been vacant -- but that's the process of making a clean slate for its one-night-only "Show Up and Show Show." The idea: An artist shows up with one of his or her own works (of any reasonable size or medium) and gets to show it that night, right then and there, along with like-minded folks. Participants check in, have a label prepared for them and, with the help of gallery staff, install their own work with the tools and equipment provided. Artists can come at any time and leave at any time, taking their works with them when they go. Only time will tell what the gallery will look like by the middle of the show. For now, bare walls and empty pedestals await the impromptu exhibition.

Fri., June 7, 5-11 p.m., 45 N. Second St., 215-782-2776.

Ashley Gallery

A relatively new gallery in Northern Liberties, Ashley Gallery is owned by Diane Ashley, a Baltimore transplant who decided to open her space in an area of Philadelphia with lots of artists but not a lot of spaces to show. The walls of her second-floor gallery, above a frame shop, feature a rotating cast of local and national artists such as C.M. Dupré, Bill Miller and John David. The newest work will be Brian David Dennis' (sunday's) Bridgehead, a room-size model construction that Dennis himself decided to treat as a sculptural piece on its own. Dennis says that he set a "rule" for himself that the next thing he created "must be from balsa wood." His material of choice for the model? Wooden coffee stirrers. The long arcing plane is made almost entirely of the stirrers, which are bolstered up by slightly --and only slightly --stronger sticks of wood. Dennis will also show collages of the coffee stirrers, among other materials, mounted on the vinyl pads used to ease the rolling of office-chair wheels.

Reception Fri., June 7, 5-9 p.m.; through June 30, 718 N. Third St., second floor, 215-627-4467.

And Then There’s …

Besides Ashley Gallery, a few other galleries have opened in the last month or so. There's another in Northern Liberties, at 314 Brown St.: ADM Group Inc., which may sound like a brokerage firm but is actually an interior- and furniture-design company that also shows work by local artists (Full disclosure: This month's show features past and present City Paper photographers Dominic Episcopo and Trevor Dixon). Also seek out Grass, at 401 S. 16th St., and, at 260 S. 11th St., the LaSalle Gallery (owned by longtime local artist Tony LaSalle, who is currently showing his own bright flowery paintings in the window). ... Extended through June 15 is "Clearance," an exhibit of Blazo Kovacevic's work at Gallery Siano (309 Arch St., 215-629-2940). ... Puerto Rican printmaker Orlando Salago shows his woodcuts at Taller Puertorriqueño. (Through July 12, 2721 N. Fifth St., 215-426-3311).