Also this issue:

The Right Hand Giveth...
Richard Price talks about his new novel, Samaritan, and the selfish side of altruism.
-Interview by Frank Halperin

Fly South for Winterthur
A Delaware estate presents a unique display of Mexican art.
-Robin Rice

Domestic Bliss
-Susan Hagen

Nikki Giovanni
-Elisa Ludwig

A Plantsman in Asia: 1979-1999
-Lori Hill

Seussical: The Musical
-Jesse Delaney

Artsbeat
-Debra Auspitz

January 9-15, 2003

artpicks

Flipping the Bird

It's an East Coast/West Coast rivalry of a different kind at Vox Populi this month. "Flipping the Bird" brings together artists who flout the conventions of the relationship between subject and materials -- in a coastal divide. Justyna Badach says she and co-curator Laura Heyman noticed that these artists were all working with this "duality of aesthetic and how it's reinterpreted depending on where you live." The E.C. team members (Reed Anderson, Katrin Asbury, Chris Giglio, Gabrielle Kanter and Michael Laforte) take everyday objects and dress them up in sophisticated materials, using high-tech methods. Giglio, for example, makes "photograms" by placing film on a television monitor, and turning the set on and off for trippy lighting effects in the developing process. The W.C. team (Samantha Fields, Chris Johanson, Robert Martin, Shaun Odell and Philip Ross) reduces sophisticated ideas to their most rudimentary elements using childlike techniques like painting by numbers and bright colors. Fields airbrushes clonelike bunnies, while Ross has learned to grow fungus in unnatural ways, creating what Badach calls "mutant mushrooms." The gallery compares these artists to "inspired stoners in a middle-school shop class," and it's safe to say they're on to something: Didn't those kids always make the coolest stuff anyway?

"Flipping the Bird," opening reception, Fri., Jan. 10, 6-9 p.m.; gallery talk, Fri., Jan. 10, 6 p.m.; exhibition runs through Jan. 31, Vox Populi, 1315 Cherry St., fourth floor, 215-568-5513.

—Lori Hill