Visual Arts

The Pennsylvania Ballet's season-closing program, at the Merriam Theater through Sunday, is a triumph of marketing. Two dances new to the repertory, both taking off from French visual art, are a very traditional premiere by Kirk Peterson called Dancing With Monet and the company premiere of Margo Sappington's 1974 Rodin, Mis en Vie, which could be translated as "Rodin Brought to Life. " Thirteen of Rodin's works, all but three of which reside in Philadelphia, are re-created in this modern work.

After the divorce was final this spring, Ylanah Sloane turned her bedroom at 13th and Spruce into a studio. She sold the mattress, slept on the floor, and gave her butcher-block table a second chance as an easel. Every morning she set out her palette and brushes and paper on the flat surface that stood about four feet high, took a deep breath, then tried to paint flowers that she could barely see. Roses were first. "I've always loved roses," she said. She had to hold the vase close, to see through pinholes in the cataracts that have covered her eyes since birth.

With funding for art exhibitions becoming harder to find, the Pew Charitable Trusts is throwing a lifeline to museums, galleries and other visual-arts organizations in the Philadelphia region. The Trusts announced Thursday the creation of a grant program to help such organizations develop stronger and more innovative exhibitions and related publications. The Philadelphia Exhibitions Initiative, initially funded at $3.2 million for three years, will be administered by the University of the Arts, in much the same way that UA administers Pew's fellowship program for artists.

Video art in various forms has been around for more than 30 years. During that time it has become increasingly complex technically and more sophisticated in terms of aesthetic goals. Yet the term "video art" remains amorphous, because the medium can be manipulated in so many ways. Video art began by mimicking film and commercial television. Artists made "videos" that viewers watched passively, in linear time - beginning, middle, end. This was the obvious path into video art, but for viewers it isn't always the most satisfying because they must surrender themselves to the format.

On the last day of the Avenue of the Arts Festival, a member of the University of the Arts School of Dance performs on one of the several stages. The weekend event, which ended yesterday, gave Broad Street's arts and cultural organizations and culinary institutions a chance to celebrate. Food, performances and visual arts were among the main attractions.

People hustling through 30th Street Station Thursday morning should be greeted by something completely unexpected - a 16-foot-high fiberglass and metal sculpture of a cartoony seated figure with its hands over its face. There will be something vaguely familiar about the figure. Could it be the three-fingered hands? The white gloves? The knobby earlike fringe around the head? The bare pate? All of the above speak to the world of cartoons in general and Disney characters in particular.

A dedication ceremony was held yesterday for the Brandywine Workshop's Firehouse Arts Center at Broad and Fitzwater streets. The occasion marked the kickoff of a two-phase capital campaign to raise $6.5 million to develop the city's first mixed-use, multi-cultural visual arts complex. The core of the proposed 42,000-square-foot facility is a historic firehouse built in 1861. Funding will come from a combination of grants, contributions and conventional financing.

Mimi Quinn of East Oak Lane gazes at the Avenue of the Arts sand sculpture at an open house at PNC Bank, Broad and Chestnut streets, last night. At the open house Mayor Rendell and PNC Bank President and CEO Richard L. Smoot unveiled the model, which depicts visual arts, performing and community-based organizations on Broad Street. The evening also included some entertainment as the Pennsylvania Ballet and the Wilma Theater performed. Also showcased were winning proposals of the avenue of the Arts public art competition.

The Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, the oldest art institution in the country, has been awarded a $600,000 challenge grant from the National Endowment for the Arts. The academy, founded in 1805, is one of 68 cultural institutions to which a total of $19.16 million has been awarded, according to the endowment's chairman, Frank Hodsoll. The grant will be used to complete the second phase of the academy's three- phase expansion plan. The phase includes expanding endowment, now $7 million; expanding space for staff and storage; enhancing public spaces, and establishing a laboratory to conserve works on paper, said Harold A. Sorgenti, chairman of the board of trustees.

The second annual Artosphere, Arkansas' six-week arts and nature festival, will have a distinct Philadelphia-area flavor. Andrea Packard, director of the List Gallery at Swarthmore College, will present her artwork during the opening ceremony on Green Day, April 22. She also will discuss a visual arts exhibition, Garden as Muse. Corrado Rovaris, music director of the Opera Company of Philadelphia, and David Hayes, music director of the Philadelphia Singers, will lead the Artosphere Festival Orchestra.