I recently went on a trip to Philadephlia for a wedding, the trip started at the 100 year old Latham Hotel. The trip was great, the architecture in Philadelphia was awesome I had a blast taking pictures the whole weekend.

Something I have always been interested in taking pictures  of  has been alleys, true city alleys. I just love the feel of them nice and gritty full of graffitti just like in the  movies.

Another look at the hotel we stayed in the look is just oldschool I really like it.

To my surprise just down the street there was an art show in the park at Rittenhouse Square. All fine art and it was going on the whole weekend. I was lucky while my girlfriend had bridesmaid duties I had a chance to walk around and look at some great art work.

I also had some time to talk to some of the artists, most of which made all their money from these type of shows I  had no idea that artists could make a living this way!

Here is one of the artists that makes a living from these shows Ken Orton you can check out his portfolio here. I had the pleasure of talking with Ken for a while and in addition to these awesome glass bottle paintings which look so realistic he has done a lot of paintings of classic cars. He had one of these cars on display but the rest were bottles, these bottles were great I was really fooled into thinking they were real photographs.

In the middle of the park is where the student exhibitors were and so I got a chance to talk with them too. Thomas Panico was one of them his main focus is in illustration he attends the University of the Arts in Philadelphia. He works in mixed media, using watercolor, pen & ink, pencil, photography, and digital media, amongst others. You can take a look at his portfolio here.

Here is an up close look at some of his work, nice and bloody.

Here are Kieth Grace and his wife at Kieth’s booth where he displayed these cool paintings done with pieces of newspaper mixed in. The end effect has killer I really enjoyed this booth I just really liked the colors and the overall look and feel. He also had some skateboards with his unique style of painting all over them, which really caught my eye being that I used to skateboard and have never really stopped loving the sport or the culture.

You can check out his portfolio here.

Some of the artists felt the urge to do what they do best and paint while everyone walked past and looked at their work. Jim Lynn felt so inclined here and what gets me is that he is painting something that is obviosly not there, he is painting from his imagination!

You can check out some of his trippy paintings here.

Another artist that struck my interest was Jeffrey Cannon the colors he used in his paintings were amazing. Some of these places were scenes which he had seen and been to, but I believe he said most of these paintings were created from his mind.

You can check out these original pastel paintings here.

The fact that he like a lot of the other artists makes all of his money from these shows, has got me thinking about if there are shows like this for graphic design. I think that will be the next thing I research, I am really interested in finding out about that.

A look from across the  street, the whole park looked like this a huge square in the middle of fancy hotels and grand condos.

Now this artist had work different from all the other artists I saw, he had some really cool scenes along with some cool paintings of Jerry Garcia and President Obama.

This artist Michael Pomerantz had some really awesome stuff and you can check out  his work  here.