February 12-18, 2004

art

Candygram

Interior motives: Sculptor, Valentine's Day fan and now magazine editor Candy Depew (shown in the apartment she created for Temple Gallery) believes "making things gives you power. A lot of the things I make are gifts of love."

Artist Candy Depew's online magazine is also a valentine -- to the decorative arts, interior design and the city itself.

by Robin Rice

Candy Depew calls herself a sculptor. When you win prestigious awards like a Pew and Leeway’s Edna Andrade Emerging Artist grant, sculptor might be an acceptable pigeonhole.

Nevertheless, to call Depew a sculptor is something like calling Donald Trump a realtor: true but laughably inadequate. Though it’s absurd to juxtapose Depew, whose chosen mission is to share beauty through "the dissemination, promotion and study of decorative art and culture," with a self-aggrandizing toad like The Donald, the two do have a couple of features in common. Both are known by their first names -- and now Depew is giving hers to a magazine, CandyCoated, which will be inaugurated on the Web this Valentine’s Day (www.candycoated.org).

And both Depew and Trump enjoy sharing their taste in interior design with the public. While Trump’s quarters (seen recently on The Apprentice) are memorable for his expenditures on gilded Empire and Regency furnishings, Depew personally fabricates much of what you see in her spaces. I tend to think of her as an installation artist who orchestrates ceramics, fabrics, furniture, paper and wall painting throughout an environment. Commissioned to decorate a Temple Gallery apartment for visiting artists, she spent the entire sum on materials, reserving no profit for herself "because it was nice to do a gorgeous work."

The apartment is serene and surprising. Pinks and greens flow through the healing, creative environment. Mirrors, which Depew often uses, offer visitors ever-changing perspectives on themselves and the context. "I like to hide words," Depew says. Here she places the phrase "I see beauty within and around" in reverse-mirrored Mylar lettering where it reflects legibly. Photographs of this mirrored apartment with a yoga practitioner and a dancer posing in mirroring positions will be among the many images on the CandyCoated website.

Depew recently completed a five-year residency at The Clay Studio. She is also a master printer who worked more or less concurrently at the Fabric Workshop, where she still prints the fabrics she uses in her installations. To these skills and a spectrum of graphic and mechanical abilities, she brings broad-based research into the decorative arts, anthropology, color, psychology and related fields. Japanese design is an obvious influence, but if you look closely you will find links to every manifestation of the decorative arts. She’s closely studied many important collections, including those at the Victoria and Albert Museum, and in local libraries ("Philadelphia is the place to be for decorative arts and printmaking"). It’s a kaleidoscope of sources but, Depew says, "I find similarities in the differences. I believe in humanity as a network. That’s why I’m doing a computer magazine before printing: to build the network."

She began the magazine project as part of her work toward a Ph.D. in decorative arts at the London Consortium, which is connected to the Tate Modern and other British arts institutions. When her mentor, Paul Hirst, passed away unexpectedly, her work at the Consortium foundered temporarily, but she is moving ahead with CandyCoated, which was always conceived as the companion to a traditional written dissertation.

The second -- paper -- issue of the seasonal magazine will benefit from a couple of important residencies augmenting Depew’s tools for printing. At the Kohler Arts Center in Sheboygan, Wis., in September, she’ll design fonts for the magazine. Alphabets of extruded cake-decorating script with which she frequently decorates her ceramic work will be photographed and digitized. She’ll also design the official masthead for CandyCoated. A subsequent residency at the European Ceramic Work Centre in The Netherlands will produce "a symbolic language," a series of dingbats based on forms she frequently uses: heart, leaf, fire, flower.

But meanwhile, there’s the first online issue of CandyCoated to be completed, and it is ambitious. "Each issue will be focused on color," Depew says. "Valentine’s is my favorite holiday in the whole world." The Valentine’s site will offer visitors white, black and red sections. Within each color are several themes, all consistent with the valentine motif but not necessarily specific to it. White will include photographs of cool white marble statues of human figures and the erotic blown-glass sculpture of Che Rhodes.

The black section includes images of a sculpture by Leroy Johnson, well-known for his ceramic vignettes of Philadelphia neighborhoods. Johnson’s rowhouses are often falling down, at the very least, dilapidated and in need of love, but they enshrine delightful details of beauty and redemption: tiny gold crosses, fragments of exposed wallpaper or views of the night sky. CandyCoated visitors will be able to print out a Johnson sculpture and mount it as a tabletop folding screen. A second theme in this section is Japanese black and gold lacquerware: glossy, sleek and sumptuous.

Of course, red is it for valentines. Two collections of historic valentines will be displayed. Depew’s been collecting old valentines since childhood and has many charming and extravagant examples, some dating back to Victorian times. She acquired a collection of valentines from around 1909-10, which belonged to a George Lorentz. All are addressed to him in childish handwriting. Depew points out that Lorentz apparently tore off the heads of a number of female figures in the valentines.

Depew is a redhead and an Aquarius. These two attributes get their own section, with pictures and brief descriptions of 40 redheads and 40 Aquarians. There will also be a "recipe to attract love," contributed by a "well-known local chef" working under a pseudonym. At this point, Depew does not know exactly what the dish will be, but it will be simple and probably contain tomatoes (members of the nightshade family once known as "love apples").

"A seasonal decorative stress-reliever" will be part of every issue. A future one will show people how to design and silk-screen a T-shirt. Depew believes that "making things gives you power. A lot of the things I make are gifts of love." Throughout the site will be many photographs of Depew’s work, including the apartment at Temple. CandyCoated is a Valentine’s gift to everyone. "I just want to honor luscious images that will convey what I have seen and inspire people to change their lives."

Visit www.candycoated.org starting Sat., Feb. 14.

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