In the art world, New York's where it's at, right? The market's there, the galleries and the dealers. The collectors are there, or come there to see what's hot and what's not. The big-foot critics are there. It's the media capital of the world. If you're going to make it in the art world, that's where you've got to be, right?
Well, not exactly. If many artists believe the pavements are greener in New York, others on the whole would rather be in Philadelphia.
Take Diane Burko, the landscape painter whose massive two-canvas diptych graces the rotunda of the Marriott Hotel near the Convention Center. Burko was born and brought up in Brooklyn. Studied art at Skidmore College in Saratoga Springs. Then went to the Graduate School of Fine Arts at the University of Pennsylvania, started teaching part time at Community College of Philadelphia, and has been here ever since (with time out for residencies in France and Italy).
Why did she stay?
``It's a very comfortable, human-scale city,'' she said a few days ago, taking time out from an interview by local filmmaker Carol Rosenbaum, who is making a documentary on Burko and the Marriott project. ``I love the architecture. I think there's an energy here. It's less distracting, it really is less distracting.''
And a lot cheaper to live in than New York, she added.
Burko was one of a dozen artists interviewed in an informal survey of why they chose to live here, or there. Mostly, they tended to agree on two things: One is that, yes, New York is the major marketplace and major media center. The other, though, is that you don't have to live there to make it there or anywhere else.
Stephen Talasnik chooses to live there, although he has strong emotional ties to Philadelphia, where he was born, in 1954, attended Central High, got an MFA from Temple University's Tyler School of Art, and was director of the Fleischer Art Memorial while teaching part time at Tyler. He lives there, he says, because New York continually recharges his batteries, not because it validates his art.
