July 2013

Night Market

Art of Food — Produced by Monica Rogozinski

The Food Trust brings healthy and fresh food to neighborhoods in Philadelphia that otherwise have no access to it. The Food Trust works in schools, grocery and corner stores, farmer’s markets, community centers and the popular Night Market. Through these programs the Food Trust is revitalizing Philadelphia’s communities and improving Philadelphians’ diets. In this segment of Art of Food, we learn what is going on at the Food Trust and specifically, get an inside look at the famous Night Markets.

In 2010, the very first Night Market premiered in East Passyunk. Since then, the Food Trust has hosted many Night Markets in nieghborhoods throughout Philadelphia, including University City, Washington Avenue and Chinatown. At the most recent Night Market on Fairmount Avenue, over 25,000 people attended. The event is a full-on traveling food festival: a varied array of over 45 delicious Philadelphia food trucks gather to serve unique dishes while lively musicians and performers entertain. The Night Market presents a new concept of gathering that is centered on serving a diverse line-up of quality food and simultaneously bringing people into new neighborhoods that they may never have otherwise discovered.

Witness: The Art of Jerry Pinkney

Art of Life — Produced by Karen Smyles

From June 28th thru September 22nd The Philadelphia Museum of Art will present an exhibition of drawings and watercolors by Jerry Pinkney highlighting the artist’s long and varied career as a designer and illustrator. Touching upon personal and cultural themes such as the African American experience, the wonders of classic literature, and the wisdom of well-loved folk tales, the works in this exhibition celebrate both small yet extraordinary moments as well as significant historical events, reflecting the transformative power of visual storytelling in our lives. Pinkney’s luminous illustrations include work from such classic picture books as The Patchwork Quilt (1985); John Henry (1994); Minty, A Story of Young Harriet Tubman (1996); Black Cowboy, Wild Horses: A True Story (1998); The Old African (2005); and Sweethearts of Rhythm (2009).

Winner of the 2010 Caldecott Medal for his acclaimed children’s picture book The Lion and the Mouse (2009), Pinkney grew up in the Germantown section of Philadelphia and studied at the Philadelphia College of Art (now the University of the Arts). He’s been the recipient of five Caldecott Honor Medals, five Coretta Scott King Book Awards, four Coretta Scott King Honor Awards, and a lifetime achievement award from the Society of Illustrators in New York.

A few weeks before the exhibition opened, Friday Arts had the opportunity to sit down with the artist during his visit to the museum to put the final touches on the exhibit. In July’s Art of Life segment you’ll get to see and hear how his Philadelphia roots influenced his art and why he still gets such joy from his work.

Listen below: ART Producer Michael O’Reilly crafted this radio preview using the interviews that ART OF LIFE Producer Karen Smyles had captured for her video segment. Additional interviews and ambient sounds captured by producer Elisabeth Perez-Luna were woven into a narrative that describes Mr. Pinkney’s humble and fractured beginnings growing up in a too-small house in Philadelphia while laboring (and succeeding) under the burden of dyslexia.

Art Outside In

Art — Produced by Michael O’Reilly

The Philadelphia Museum of Art is undergoing an ambitious and far-ranging multi-phase renovation, part of which is being overseen by the architect, Frank Gehry. There are those who have commented that “Philadelphia gets a “Gehry” and it is completely underground”. What this sentiment doesn’t realize, and what our segment hopes to rectify, is that design can be hidden behind an already-established facade, but still be brilliant. The ART segment takes you below, behind and through the little-seen spaces at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, and ultimately ends at the current exhibition, “Great and Mighty Things”. This outsider art from the Jill and Sheldon Bonovitz collection was donated to the museum precisely at a time when the PMA was best-equipped in decades to deal with the original and unruly forms of this “homegrown” art form.