Frankford Community Blog | Local News, Events, Community Resources
Joe Sherlock sent us an undated ad for the Frankford Gazette(the original). Subscribed for a buck a year, that must have been a while ago. Their printing house is shown as 4432 Frankford Ave, I wonder if it’s this building here, looks kinda small.
Thanks Joe, and anyone looking for a good read on Philly history and Northeast Philly in particular, check out his History of Philadelphia. It strikes me as a personal account but seems so universal to the Philly experience.
I grabbed a few shots of Jason Roberts work on the doors to Silk City‘s beer garden while I was visiting Carter Studios last week.
Remember, it used to look like this:
Now it looks more like this:
Fox News sent Julie Kim up to the Irish Kitchen at 1257 Pratt St to report on a shooting at 1:30 this morning.
UPDATE: The man shot in the stomach, and who later died, was identified as Dallas Iway Custalow Jr of the 1300 block of Anchor Street. On Feb. 23, Custalow’s father, also named Dallas Custalow died after a violent attack. During that incident, police allege that a neighbor on Anchor Street, Michael Bocchinfuso, 44, used a shovel and trash can to bludgeon the elder Custalow, 71.
Meet Mike and Jess Carter, founders of Carter Studios at Frankford’s own Globe Dye Works. Married almost two years they’re current residents of Port Richmond, former residents of Fishtown and 2004 graduates of Philly’s own University of the Arts. And while it’s easy to define what our Jason Roberts is up to during his stay in our part of town, it’s more of a challenge with the Carters. They work with clay, with wood, and metal. They paint. They turn factory walls into tables. In the corner sits industrial plastic dye rollers waiting to be turned into…. I don’t even know, the idea for what they’re gonna be probably doesn’t even exist yet. I asked them what their motivation in coming to Frankford was, and Mike pointed out two things, “Space and Money”. The Dye Works affords them the creative freedom to follow where their artistic visions wherever that may take them without being tied down to producing in order to afford exorbitant rent. Mike followed up with saying “for us to have this much space elsewhere, it just wouldn’t happen” and they “get to use the space for whatever they want, whatever we can do to make a living.” They envision further growth into furniture making and interior design, kinda like a “do something with space” kinda crew. Very nice. Like those rollers and old factory walls, thank God someone is using Frankford for something useful again. Below are some pics of my visit.
below: this is a before and after pic of a wall from the Seal-Tite factory up on Tacawanna.
below: these dye rollers will be??
below: only peripherally related to this story is the Carter Studios ceiling, I just love rafters
below: Crosby man!
[link] http://claywoodsteelspace.com/
John Moore is the outgoing chair for the University of Pennsylvania’s Departmenet of Fine Arts. I got a view of his art space when I took my first tour of the Dye Works with Chris Wink. And let me tell you, it’s impressive, so impressive that I was too intimidated to take any photos of it. But there is a pic of his space on the brochure for the Dye Works, it’s page 4, the top left pic. It’s an actual artist space filled with art and such too. Charlie Abdo told me he came to view his spot like 10 times at different times of the day to make sure the lighting was right.
I thought it was interesting that a UPenn fine arts master would come to Frankford, but on taking a look at his pieces, there’s definitely an industrial past kinda vibe. The blog Painting Perceptions, who has a bunch of his stuff up online, calls him “one of the leading realist painters working today.” I haven’t actually talked to this dude, but if I do, I’ll definitely throw out an update.
