Wednesday, July 13, 2016

Inside Out ready to come to Upper Darby

William Trost Richards' "Newport Coast" is one of 10 replicas from the Philadelphia Museum of Art on display during the Inside Out exhibition in Upper Darby starting next month.
The Philadelphia Museum of Art has announced what pieces of art will be displayed throughout Upper Darby as part of its outdoor art gallery exhibit program called Inside Out.

Replicas of ten pieces from the museum’s collection will be on display from August to November in areas including the 69th Street shopping corridor to the communities of Drexel Hill and Westbrook Park.

These are the pieces and locations selected for the latest cycle of Inside Out:
69th Street Transportation Center- “Estate” (Robert Raushcenberg); Beverly Hills Middle School- “The Disks of Newtown” (Frantizek Kupka); Dermond Circle, “The Bucintoro at the Molo on Ascension Day” (Canaletto);

Garrettford Elementary School- “Dog Barking at the Moon” (Joan Miro); IHOP on 69th St.- “Two Dragons” (Kano Hogai);

Upper Darby Free Library Municipal Branch- “The Libraries are Appreciated” (Jacob Lawrence); Upper Darby High School- “Krishna and Radha” (Unknown); Upper Darby School District Administration Building- “Newport Coast” (William Trost Richards);

Upper Darby Township Municipal Building- “Grand Canyon of the Colorado River” (Thomas Moran); and Westbrook Park Elementary School- “Noah’s Ark” (Edward Hicks).

Installation of the art is slated for Aug. 9.

A strong focus on education was the driving point of bringing Inside Out to Upper Darby, with officials from the Upper Darby School District and the township worked in tandem with the art museum on the plans.

“Both the township and the school district have a deep appreciation for the arts and wanted to use this partnership opportunity with the art museum to generate conversation in the community about different works of art,” said Upper Darby  School District spokesperson Dana Spino.

Upper Darby follows up to neighboring Lansdowne’s turn at the exhibit that wrapped up this month. Media and Wayne participated in the program during the initial launch in the Philadelphia area last year.

Monday, July 11, 2016

Drexel Hill Basketball Court Focus of New Book

From a serial killer in Philadelphia to the shit of Vietnam, Tom Faustman’s first two books in his self-
published Misadventures of Dylan series were on the darker side.

With the recent release of the third book in the series, and the first chronologically, “Dylan’s Chase” moves to a more nostalgic place of time: the basketball court of Drexel Hill Elementary School.

What Faustman deemed a “hotbed” of activity in the 1960’s at Shadeland Avenue and State Road when he was growing up, it encouraged him to write a story about the budding competitive nature of basketball and the stories of the people who played there.

“It was a really magical time in my life and the lives playing at this basketball court and the friendships that developed out of it,” Faustman said, who currently resides in Connecticut. “It was such a fun period of our lives and I wanted to tell the story of the fun part of it, but young men are more sensitive to the difficult lives of the people around them. It’s kind of the real world.”