Penn’s Institute of Contemporary Art is hosting its annual ICA After Dark celebration on April 14 as part of its Student Week initiative. 

The student-takeover event, presented by the ICA Student Board, begins at 6 p.m. and ends at 9 p.m. The celebration revolves around the theme “Glow Up” and will feature tote bag screen printing, glow in the dark face paint, and student DJs. 

Founded in 1963, the ICA is part of Penn’s campus on 36th and Sansom streets and is governed under the Office of the Provost. ICA was founded to promote under-recognized artists in art and culture. 

The ICA Student Boardworks with the museum staff to connect Penn and the wider Philadelphia community to contemporary art. Board members also promote the ICA’s exhibitions, engage with artists and curators, and plan public events such as After Dark. 

“Having Penn students know that they have a place here in the ICA and have a voice, where they can talk to a curator if they’re interested in that field — it’s a resource we can all use,” College first year and Marketing Committee Chair Ivanna Dudych said. 

The After Dark event will be free to all Penn students and other Philadelphia undergraduates with a student ID.

“After Dark is a great way to get students involved in the current exhibitions and to feel a sense of autonomy in the galleries where they can just be themselves in a free space, listening to music and connecting with other people in the Philly area,” College junior and Professional Development Chair Emma Poveda said. “We’d really like to see connections fostered between Penn, PAFA [Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts], Drexel, Temple, and other institutions in the area.” 

Students at the event will also have after hours access to the current exhibitions Terence Nance: Swarm and Carolyn Lazard: Long Take. 

“The exhibitions on view right now are of great social relevance and also explore themes of fluidity in the surrounding environment,” Poveda said. “For students to be able to enact that process within themselves in the gallery is truly special.” 

After Dark completes the events of Student Week, which is the ICA’s joint programming with student organizations on campus, including the Orgullo Latino Fashion Association Fashion Show on April 7 and Paint Night with Monolith Arts Collective on April 13. The ICA Student Board members volunteer during all these events. 

“Student Week is about bringing together students across fields of contemporary art. After Dark wraps up that conversation,” Public Engagement Project Manager and Administrative Coordinator Brittany Clottey said. 

The ICA Student Board has been planning After Dark since the start of the semester. Board members are split into three different committees: programs and outreach, marketing & communications, and professional development. Students work together to plan both external and internal events, engage with the Penn community through creative content, and converse with professionals in the field through opportunities such as the “Ask an Arts Professional” series.

“It’s been really cool to see different creatives involved that are students taking initiative, from designing the flyers to students wanting to host a printmaking workshop,” Clottey said.

The ICA Student Board hopes that Student Week will strengthen the relationship between the Penn community and ICA. 

“I live right across the street from the ICA, and I didn’t know about it until I joined [Student Board],” Dudych said. “We hope this event keeps the ICA on people’s radar.”

Assorted ramblings from the world of entertainment:

• The Butler Institute of American Art will unveil its Vincent & Phyllis Bacon Grand Gallery this weekend, and the man who designed those walls also will have art hanging on them.

Coinciding with the unveiling is a watercolor exhibition by C. Robert Buchanan, who is the architect responsible for many of the expansion projects at the Youngstown museum, including the Bacon Grand Gallery.

According to Buchanan, “I paint for the pleasure of it. I like to pick a subject or object and develop a design with color and composition. There’s no scholarly approach to it, just plain enjoyment.”

Louis A. Zona, executive director of the Butler, called Buchanan, “One of the most talented individuals to hold a paint brush or handle a T-square.”

Buchanan’s watercolors will be on display in Butler North through July 2.

• Metallica certainly isn’t my favorite band, but it may have supplanted KISS and the Grateful Dead as the smartest one.

While the latter two bands have radically different sounds, both were / are masters of marketing their brand. Metallica made a couple announcements recently that show James Hetfield, Lars Ulrich, Kirk Hammett and Robert Trujillo also are forward thinkers when it comes to controlling and expanding their market.

Last month, Metallica announced it was buying Furnace Record Pressing, a record plant in Alexandia, Va. Vinyl is the one area where physical media sales are improving, and demand outpaces current production capacity.

Many acts, from local bands to national artists, have had to delay the vinyl release of their music because of the backlog at pressing plants. Metallica, already one of the top-selling acts on vinyl, now has the ability to get its releases out whenever it wants, which is a nice luxury to have.

For example, last year Wilco decided to delay the project it was working on and release “Cruel County” before its Solid Sound Music Festival instead. While the music was on streaming services in May, the vinyl didn’t arrive until this January. I don’t know how well the physical release sold, but I bet it would have sold more copies when the band was getting the national press that coincided with the digital release.

Owning a pressing plant seems to be a good investment, at least in the short term.

This week’s Metallica announcement was a real surprise.

To coincide with the release of its 12th album “72 Seasons” this week, the band created the Metallica Marching Band Competition.

Who knew the “metal” in the band’s name was brass?

Marching band charts have been created for “Enter Sandman,” “Master of Puppets,” “One” and 10 other Metallica favorites provided by Hal Leonard via sheetmusicdirect.com.

Marching band directors are invited to create programs built around Metallia’s music and submit video of the performance. Professional judges will pick five finalists in each category, and Metallica will pick the winners and also allow fans to pick their favorites.

In the collegiate category, the top Division I school will win $75,000 in prizes and the top Division II school will receive prizes valued at $40,000. The top high school gets $15,000, and the two fan favorites (one college, one high school) each get $10,000 prize packages.

Think of how many people see the halftime show of The Ohio State University Marching Band each week during the football season, either in person, on television or online. Other collegiate bands have huge followings, and thousands turn out locally and around the country to watch their high school teams play and their bands perform at halftime and for band nights.

The deadline for bands to submit their performances is Nov. 16, and complete details are available at www.metallicamarchingband.com.

Andy Gray is the entertainment editor of Ticket. Write to him at agray@tribtoday.com

As artist Bayne Peterson sketches the voluptuous and sinuous shapes of what will become his vibrant wooden sculptures, he takes cues from organic movement. “I’m thinking less, ‘what does nature look like?’ and more, in a general sense, ‘what would nature do?’” he says. His geometric works echo both generative and reductive biological processes, bulging and surging in asymmetric forms that accentuate the relationship between negative and positive space.

Evoking growth, replication, and deterioration, Peterson references geometric principles when structuring his works. He begins with an initial drawing, cuts dyed and raw wood, and then splices the segments into checked patterns, stripes, and radial motifs. Each work undergoes a hefty round of sculpting with rough hand tools like rasps and files before the soft, supple curves emerge. “My process (of) shaping and sanding feels very much like erosion, and I also think of my sculptures in relation to geology, with the layers of dyed wood being like layers of sediment,” he shares, likening the lines to topographic maps.

The resulting sculptures contrast the vivid patterns with the natural grain of the raw material, and many are comprised of two larger forms stacked or slotted together. Because Peterson prefers irregular motifs and undulating forms, the works shift in perspective depending on the position of the viewer. “One of the most fun parts of making sculptures for me is the challenge of making a static object seem animated,” he says, elaborating:

Sometimes I want it to feel like the viewer’s entire field of vision, and not just the object, is in motion, like looking at an underwater object from above the rippling surface…My ultimate goal is to push all these factors to a level at which the object begins visually to swim and in which the overload of information within the work is difficult to process all at once, like the experience of watching a flickering campfire or looking at a glitching pixelated digital screen. 

For more from Peterson, who is based in Rhode Island, head to Instagram, where he shares a trove of sculptures and glimpses into his process.

“Untitled” (2018), dyed plywood and natural wood, 15 x 9 x 5 inches. Photo by Jeffrey Sturges

“Untitled” (2021), dyed plywood, 19 x 10 x 8.5 inches. Photo by Lance Brewer

“Untitled” (2022), dyed plywood, 15.5 x 12 x 6.5 inches. Photo by Lance Brewer

“Untitled” (2020), dyed plywood, 11 x 15.5 x 5.5 inches. Photo by Jeffrey Sturges

“Untitled” (2020), dyed plywood, 14 x 13.75 x 7.5 inches. Photo by Jeffrey Sturges

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