YOU COULDN'T MAKE UP THE TIBERINO FAMILY. Oh, sure, you could try. But in the end you'd probably sound like an old Cheech and Chong promo from the 70's which declared them to be, "The world's only Mexican Chinese American comedy team in the world, man." If you tried to describe the Tiberino family merely as the sum of its parts, you'd be able to say, in fairness, that they are "The world's only devout Catholic Muslim biracial narcoleptic artist colony in West Philadelphia with nice knockers in the world, man."
That's not fair. Pater familias Joe Tiberino is not narcoleptic. But he does seem to fall asleep suddenly and with regularlity in both public and private places where wine is served. Joe Tiberino, who is not in the photo above -- and not because he was napping! -- is the artistic Vito Corleone of this genetic "thing of theirs," this need to make art. This need to paint and draw and sculpt and bake art so much that their home in West Philadelphia looks like something that Hansel and Gretel stumbled upon in the forest, a gingerbread house built entirely of human figures from floor to rooftop. And that's just the outside.
OK, if you were going to make up names for the artist sons of an artist father named Tiberino, you might go with names as classically American as, say, Joe. You might. Joe and his artist wife , the late Ellen Powell Tiberino, did not. He was white. She was black. But both were intensely Catholic. She, in fact, converted to Catholicism at the age of 13 after a Baptist childhood. Which may or may not have had anything to do the names given to the three Tiberino boys: Leonardo, Raphael, and Gabriel.
The youngest, Gabe (right) just turned 23, which means he probably played with Donatello, Michaelangelo and the other Mutant Ninja Turtle action figures as a kid and never gave the names a second thought. The middle son, Leonardo (left), reacted to his Renaissance Florentine namesake, who painted both the Sistine Chapel and the Mona Lisa, by becoming a Muslim. Note Leo's inscrutible smile.
Raphael Tiberino, the eldest, reacted by growing larger than his brothers and developing a fondness for hoisting sometimes willing human beings of all sizes into the air, and sometimes over his head. Women seem to react to this better than men. I've got the pictures to prove it. (And, yes. Aaron, I'm talking about you. You wuss.)
Which brings us to Ellen. (Knock, knock. Who's there? No one, I just didn't know how to bring up the knockers.) After naming sons Raphael and Leonardo, more pretentious artist parents might have named their first born daughter after a famous American female artist, a Philadelphian perhaps, say, Mary Cassat Tiberino. In the end, perhaps, family pride will prove Ellen Tiberino's name to be the most famous. Her late mother's work hangs in the Philadelphia Museum of Art where Ellen Powell Tiberino is considered one of the best 20th Century American black female artists. In fact, the Ellen Powell Tiberino Museum of American Art at the aforementioned gingerbread art house on Hamilton Street in Powellton Village, is known simply as "the Ellen."
Which has nothing to do with the photograph above taken during the opening of The Family Tiberino: A Legacy in Art running through the end of August at the Sande Webster Gallery at 2006 Walnut Street in Center City, and which features pieces by all of the aforementioned Tiberino family artists. Joe Tiberino is not entirely absent from the photo. His images of black heroesfill the canvas on the wall behind his children. In fact, Joe is the mustacioed white guy with the old fashioned movie camera standing to the right of Spike Lee just above Gabe's head.
My original title for this picture was "Gotcha!" because it is the only time I have seen all the Tiberino children laughing at the same time. Not to name names (Ellen), some non-Rennaissance-named Tiberinos smile more than others. But then the more I looked at the photo of these Philadelphia artists, the more another title struck me as being more appropriate:
"Ain't no stopping us now."
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