My recent post on the Philadelphia First Friday gallery walk reminded me that there was another recent art event in Philadelphia that I had meant to write about. The Rittenhouse Square Fine Art Show, which started life 75 years ago as the “Rittenhouse Square Clothesline Show”, is the oldest organized outdoor art show in the U.S. It has traditionally been held the first week in June, but two years ago, they added a Fall edition.
In this juried, art-only (no crafts) show, there is almost always something of interest in addition to the beautiful urban park setting for the show.
This time around, one of the artists I noticed was Faye F. Vander Veer, a painter from Virginia who seems to have some connection with Philadelphia, even if it is simply participation in this show.
Her paintings are straightforward, painterly observations of city scenes in Virginia, Philadelphia and Europe, as well as landscapes of rural Virginia and occasionally farther afield in Maine and elsewhere.
Her European section showcases work inspired by her travels to Rome, Venice, Paris and the South of France.
Her still life section contains nicely immediate small scale still lifes, and the figure section features informal observations of people in social situations, galleries and cafes. I particularly like the cafe and nightlife themes there and in the European section.
It’s worth noting that though the images above the gallery sections are not linked (only the text), once you get into the thumbnails for an individual section, the paradigm is reversed and the image is linked, not the text. When viewing the larger images, there is a convenient previous and next navigation, but it’s easy to miss the fact that clicking on the image at that point is a link to a larger version.
