Philadelphia show draws dozens of fine artists

Joe Barker is an acknowledged romantic, so when a young woman asked him for a watercolor of the Parc Restaurant, across 18th Street from his art booth on Rittenhouse Square, he agreed.

"She wanted to remember a romantic dinner," said Barker, of Philadelphia, as he dipped a brush into his paints and placed a stroke here and there on his canvas.

The request was made at 11:30 a.m. Saturday. At exactly 1:30 p.m., the work was finished - another original among thousands that have graced Rittenhouse Square in the 80 years since a group of art students strung clothesline between light poles and trees to let the world see their work.

The three-day Rittenhouse Square Fine Arts Show, which began Friday and ends Sunday, has come a long way since that day in June 1932 when the young members of the Art Students League took a bold step to be noticed and sell their art in the depths of the Great Depression.

Over the years, the show was opened to professional artists and to those from New Jersey and Delaware. Today, the seven-year-old September show, as well as one in June, draws artists from all over.

The 143 artists with booths at this weekend's show come from 22 states and Canada, organizers said.

One, Jenny Pope from Ithaca, N.Y., has been attending for three years.

"Because the show is limited to fine art, there is less of a distraction than ones that have a lot of pottery," she said.

Pope is a printmaker who makes "color-reduction woodcuts with an ecological twist." She depicts only endangered and invasive species.

The process she uses involves one block, a drawing, and multiple carvings and printings.

This is one of 17 shows she goes to each year.

"I also exhibit at galleries, but it doesn't bring in enough," said Pope, originally a designer who has just completed a picture book on the history of starlings. "You need the festivals."

Erin McGee Ferrell, a painter from Moorestown, said successful artists today devoted "60 percent to marketing - especially social media - and 40 percent to craft."

She's been turning her work into time-lapse videos, as well as posters and refrigerator magnets - to create art that most people can afford.

It's also theater. Last weekend, she created a stir along Route 38 in Pennsauken when she set up a large canvas and began a painting of an Elvis impersonator who every weekend shows up at Weber's Drive-In.

Another time, she said, Fox News caught up with her when she put on a ball gown and stood in the back of a pickup truck for a painting of Geno's and Pat's at Ninth Street and Passyunk Avenue. That painting drew South Philadelphia-born filmmaker Vincent Garofalo to Ferrell's booth.

Garofalo wanted Ferrell to appear in a film he's working on.

"It's a comedy," he said. "About art."

Just to be clear, Saturday on Rittenhouse Square wasn't just about art. It was also about strolling, and picnicking on blankets draped across expanses of grass.

This is the city to which Ellen Gavin of Millville, who grew up in Philadelphia, returns time and time again to capture on canvas.

"I love city scenes, I enjoy the people, and I think my art reflects my personal connections to the city," she said. "I think that kind of connection to your subject makes the difference in how your audience perceives it."

The people who buy her art are not necessarily connoisseurs, "but appreciate it on different levels," Gavin said. "It is like a restaurant. Everyone who eats there doesn't necessarily have the same experience."

Waiting for the woman who commissioned his watercolor of the Parc Restaurant to return, Barker recalled that his first work, a crayon drawing of the Last Supper, was executed at age 4.

"My grandparents kept saying to me, 'Don't become an artist, you'll never make any money,' but my grandmother kept that drawing on her fireplace for 40 years."

When he last saw it, it was covered with mold and dust. He doesn't know what happened to it.