Bruce McKaig at Gormley Gallery

Bruce McKaig: A Picture is Worth a Thousand Workers, on view October 22 through November 30.

Artist's Reception

Saturday, October 27, from 4:00 to 6:00

Gormley Gallery

Parlor Games in the Library

Saturday, November 10, from 4:00 to 6:00

Fourier Hall 103

Bruce McKaig's practice explores the power of images to reshape realities, sometimes juxtaposing antiquated techniques or objects with contemporary themes and issues. This exhibition, organized around three series -- the cowboy, the wrestler, and the dictator -- combines McKaig's own artworks with curated images and materials that explore some of the historical and current cultural and socio-economic relationships between photography and those themes.

Gormley Gallery-Notre Dame of Maryland University, 4701 N. Charles St., Fourier Hall, 2nd floor, Baltimore, MD 21210

At George Washington University: More Photographs Than Bricks

By Bruce McKaig

There is only a couple of weeks left (through April 20) to catch an exhibition in DC at GW's Luther W. Brady Art Gallery that pushes the envelope about what a photograph can be. More Photographs Than Bricks (exhibition title and part of a quote from John Szarkowski) has assembled a myriad of works that explore the medium and act of photography in surprising ways, including photographs that are not pictures and a few works that are not photographs.

The artists chosen include emerging and world famous artists: Nancy Breslin, Edward Burtynsky, Chuck Close, Kim Keever, Ana Labastida, Amy Lamb, Bruce McKaig, Megan Marrin, Abelardo Morell, Yasumasa Morimura, Martin d’Orgeval, Sean Scully, Jeffrey Smith, and JeongMee Yoon.

Jeongmee Yoon, "Emily and her pink things" (2005)
Jeongmee Yoon was born in Seoul, South Korea and moved to New York in 2004. Her work, inspired by life experiences with her own children, examines cultural codes and gender-subjective consumerism. In Emily and her Pink Things, Yoon constructs then photographs a Pepto-Bismol world cute enough to make anyone sick to his or her stomach. This work does not stop at examining the way gender is used to market products. It is thoroughly personal – Emily is Yoon’s daughter, who “loves pink, like my son [Donghu and his Blue Things] loves blue” – so it is also a confession about having acquiesced, to being engulfed in the marketing strategy.

Martin d'Orgeval (French, b. 1973) lives and works in Paris. His work is an impressive use of space, history, and imagery. Touched by Fire blends tragedy and beauty with images from the entomology and taxidermy store Deyrolle, devastated by fire in 2008. These constructed still lifes have a temporal reference, depicting the passage of time less like a voyeur and more like a detective, or even an archivist trying to put the pieces back together.

Kim Keever (American) lives and works in New York City. Keever’s “landscapes” are studio productions, still lifes in fact. Keever constructs underwater scenes then photographs them, hence the moody weight to his images. Heavy atmosphere aside, the nature of the work requires Keever to capture the scene under a sense of urgency as the materials are in fact more fleeting than stable.

Ana Labastida (Mexican) lives in San Francisco. Her installations are composed of bugs and baskets, moths in this case, made from fabric and photographs printed on glass. From a distance, the installation wants to be playful – and it is – but on closer inspection, the urban imagery on the giant insect wings becomes somewhat disturbing.

According to Lenore Miller, Gallery Director, and Olivia Kohler, Assistant Director, the exhibit started by searching for works that could be academically classified as “new history” or “new landscape” and so forth, but months of conscientious and creative detective work uncovered photographic explorations that would not conveniently fit into “categories that had served to structure art from the 16th to the 19th century.” This discovery prompted the selection process to include some non-photographic works.

The exhibition catalogue has an essay written by Virginia K laying out some of the historical context for the visual dialogue between photography and painting. Many artists and authors have commented on the interaction between photography and painting, and some have examined the resurgence of 19th century techniques in contemporary art.

David Hockney makes a comparison between photography and painting with his assertion that “photography is really good for making pictures of drawings.” (Hockney on Art, 1999). Hockney insists that the lack of “hands on” in photography explains why paintings are better at depicting reality. However, in the same book, he also says that because society is increasingly less certainty that photography is ideally suited to depict reality, photography “has been brought back into the area that painting has always dealt with.” What would Hockney have to say about this exhibition? Another prominent figure in the art world, John Szarkowski, once said, “A photograph is essentially a picture. Not everything that is sensitive to light produces a photograph. A sunburn is not a photograph.” (Looking at Photographs, 1973) Where would Mr. Szarkowski place these works? Perhaps the curator, author and historian Jean-Claude Lemagny (French, b. 1931) best describes where to place these artists by asserting that some artists are photographers, some bump up against photography.

Nineteenth century photo techniques never entirely disappeared from the art world, but the last decades have seen a significant resurgence of these dated processes used to produce contemporary works. Photography’s Antiquarian Avant-Garde (Lyle Rexer, Abrams 2002) lays out an historical timeline to situate these processes, then proposes a number of contemporary artists’ twists on how they are used today (Chuck Close - also in this exhibit, Susan Rankaitis, Jin Lee, Ilan Wolff, Mark Kessell, Bruce McKaig, to site a few). In Rexer’s words, these artists “[work] in both mystical and material ways, letting the chemistry of the emulsion register chance and time, turning Talbot's ‘pencil of nature’ into a paintbrush."

More Photographs Than Bricks is the second of three exhibitions supported by Clarice Smith with a focus on creating a dialogue by bringing the highest quality art for display in the Luther W. Brady Art Gallery. Ms. Smith is a local patron of the arts who has supported numerous large-scale projects to help bring art and people together, and personally explores the arts through her paintings.

More Photographs Than Bricks
March 24-April 30, 2010
Luther W. Brady Art Gallery
The George Washington University
Media & Public Affairs Building, 2nd Floor
805 21st Street, N.W.
Washington, D.C. 20052
Gallery Hours: Tuesday - Friday, 10 a.m. - 5 p.m.

For more information about the Exhibition and the Luther W. Brady Gallery: Click here. For more information about the author: click here.

Opportunity for Photographers

Deadline: December 17, 2010

Call for entries for the Fifth Annual Photography Exhibition at the Capitol Hill Arts Workshop. Entries must be received by December 17, 2010. The Capitol Hill Arts Workshop is seeking submissions of any and all photographic processes, black and white or color, traditional or alternative, material or digital, time-based, performance based, any work exploring the act of photography. The exhibition will open on January 8, 2011 from 5:00-7:00 p.m. and will run through February 4, 2011. Cash awards will be announced at the opening.

The juror for the exhibition is Bruce McKaig, local artist and art educator. Bruce McKaig chairs the Photography Department at CHAW and teaches at Georgetown University and the Smithsonian Associates. He has exhibited nationally and internationally for over thirty years and every once in a while reviews a DMV show in this blog. For more information about his work, please visit his website here.

HOW: Submit the following:
➢ Three to five jpegs on a CD
➢ Image inventory list specifying title, size, medium, date and price (or insurance value)
➢ Contact info including a mailing address, phone number and email
➢ An entry fee of $25.00 for up to five images, payable to CHAW

WHERE: Please hand deliver or mail these materials to:

CHAW
545 7th Street SE
Washington DC 20003

Opportunity for Photographers

Deadline: December 17, 2010

Call for entries for the Fifth Annual Photography Exhibition at the Capitol Hill Arts Workshop. Entries must be received by December 17, 2010. The Capitol Hill Arts Workshop is seeking submissions of any and all photographic processes, black and white or color, traditional or alternative, material or digital, time-based, performance based, any work exploring the act of photography. The exhibition will open on January 8, 2011 from 5:00-7:00 p.m. and will run through February 4, 2011. Cash awards will be announced at the opening.

The juror for the exhibition is Bruce McKaig, local artist and art educator. Bruce McKaig chairs the Photography Department at CHAW and teaches at Georgetown University and the Smithsonian Associates. He has exhibited nationally and internationally for over thirty years and every once in a while reviews a DMV show in this blog. For more information about his work, please visit his website here.

HOW: Submit the following:
➢ Three to five jpegs on a CD
➢ Image inventory list specifying title, size, medium, date and price (or insurance value)
➢ Contact info including a mailing address, phone number and email
➢ An entry fee of $25.00 for up to five images, payable to CHAW

WHERE: Please hand deliver or mail these materials to:

CHAW
545 7th Street SE
Washington DC 20003

Ben Ferry Opens Today

Ben Ferry opens today at Hillyer Art Space, (the show goes from June 4 – 26th). The opening reception is Friday June 4th 6-9pm. Below is a review of the show by Bruce McKaig:

Ben Ferry at Hillyer Art Space
By Bruce McKaig

What is a piece of art supposed to do? Change the fiber of existence? Look good in a living room? Bare the artist’s soul, thereby rousing ours? Provide something clever (or not) to post on Facebook? Depict, decry or distract from injustice? Give curators something to do?

Shadow Shark. Oil on canvas by Ben Ferry
Ben Ferry’s art crystallizes personal, cultural, and sociopolitical realms in a frank and self-effacing way, resulting in a well-rounded body of work that neither exploits nor avoids personal history or cultural trends. This is not a “something for everyone” approach. The layered ingredients are well proportioned, well thought-out, an executed synthesis of himself and his historical and current context, an autobiography where he stays out of the way.

When I asked Ben to talk about his work, he took us past the room stacked with watercolors and paintings, onto a front porch, gestured to the surrounding houses and said, “This is where it started. Five years ago, as I looked at the light hitting these homes, the shadow of my house on the wooden slats of the neighbor’s, a dog that hangs out with me.”

As Ben unwrapped the watercolors for this exhibition, speaking about the pieces, about his process, it became clear that his art and his life are intricately related. He is not self-absorbed so the work is about his surroundings, built from how he observes and interacts with his surroundings. In Shadow Shark, the home is his (current) neighbor’s house, the shadow is of his own home, the stenciled bust is “one of, if not my most favorite movie characters of all time, Robert Shaw playing Quinn, from the movie ‘Jaws’. I grew up around watermen and waterfowlers. A lot of my childhood memories are of characters that resembled him. Names like Leonard Broadwater, Burt Hickman, John Poke.... names you couldn't make up. They just fit the face and the place perfectly.”

Most of Ben’s watercolors and oil paintings are similar blends of past and present, of personal and cultural. In some works, the cultural is pop (block buster movies), sometimes historical (fairy tales). In other works it acquires a political stance. In Pigeons and Bombers, the strutting birds are comically and frighteningly reminiscent of German marching soldiers, body language that is also seen in Comrades, this time a rooster and a pig. Politics is always on Ben’s mind, from living in the nation’s capitol for many years, and from his childhood where he learned early on that he would have to develop a voice or go unnoticed.


Comrades. Oil on canvas by Ben Ferry.
Developing that voice through his art has involved several academic experiences. His degree from George Washington University (MFA 2001) came with classical training and craft skills. He appreciates the talent his teachers shared (Brad Stevens, “Color does not come naturally.”), but was uncomfortable being deconstructed by others. “You lose your own voice when you follow convention.” As a teacher at the Corcoran College of Art and Design, he learned a lot from his students, what they liked, what young people think a piece of art is supposed to do.

The stenciled images on the watercolors and paintings clearly reference graffiti (he is a fan of Banksy). He thinks of it as process vs. product: Spending so much time finishing the classical part of the piece, then so much time prepping the stencil, then, in a few seconds, the stenciled info is layered on and the work is done. He let several months lapse before applying the first stencil over a “finished” painting. Though he hesitated, he finally attacked with stencil because, “You can’t change the idea just because it isn’t guaranteed to work.”

He found the transition from watercolor to oil paint intimidating, fatiguing. He would show the watercolors and people would ask, “When will you do the paintings?” He searches for both a compressed sense of space and some depth of field, testing himself to see if he can learn. He does not work en plein air; he works from photographs in his studio, which has an interesting historical link. Henry Fox Talbot (British, 1800-1877), one of the pioneers of photography, was himself a painter and he invented a photo process as a means to “get” his sketches in the field and have the photographs with him in the studio to paint. Talbot described photography as “the pencil of nature.”

Amidst the personal and cultural, there is also the whimsical and humorous. Swimmers at Malcom X, Rapunzel, MacMansion, are all clearly fabricated scenes, but the juxtapositions are visibly credible. In Ben’s words, “It fits but it is also funky.” This is reminiscent of another artist, Jerry Uelsmann (photographer, American, b.1934). Uelsmann’s fabricated images, initially in the darkroom now at the computer, are fantastical scenes, not so much real or unreal as they are stubbornly plausible.


McMansion. Oil on canvas by Ben Ferry
This is Ben’s first solo exhibition. It is the result of years of work, starting with the mental willpower to accept change and start in a new direction. Because of back problems, he abandoned pursuit of professional sports and turned his attention to the world of art. His definition of success? “Always get better, play on a bigger stage.” As this exhibition goes up, he is already thinking of his next explorations: people, figures, made up environments, staged scenes, costumes. Will the new works retain the blend of personal and cultural?

Ben’s art does not definitively explain what a piece of art is supposed to do. For that matter, as an artist myself, and a Gemini as well, I don’t want an answer as much as I want the debate. Ben’s art, blending the individual with the communal, layering classic craft with abrupt juxtapositions, tacking the historical on to the contemporary, does provide one thought on the goal of art: Engage without preaching.

For information about Ben Ferry: www.benferry.com

For information about Hillyer Art Space: www.artsandartists.org/hillyer.html

For information about the author: www.brucemckaig.com

Leslie Swching at CHAW

Bruce McKaig reviews the solo exhibition by Baltimore artist Leslie Swching opening this coming Saturday at the Capitol Hill Arts Workshop. The show is July 17 through August and the Opening Reception is Saturday July 17th 5 – 7 pm.

By Bruce McKaig

A sensation, a memory, a small…a feeling on the back of your neck, something tells you that you are in touch with the long thought.

There is no clash between the urban and the rural in Schwing’s work, both serve equally as backdrops for her observations and subsequent depictions of fractal patterns. With materials as diverse as watercolor, pastel, and scratch boards, Schwing meanders a path that starts near her home in Baltimore, twists through a system of patterns molded by the materials she uses, and ends at an internal place that was calling her from the start. Starting in an alleyway or a field, she begins en plein aire, but buildings or trees become spotted with, or overtaken by, glyph-like patterns emerging over an evolution from external observation to internal contemplation. In works where the patterns have overtaken their makers, the abstracted result is an encrypted narrative, a story that does not translate as much as resonate.

Lost in the woods, you’ve been there before, everything has overgrown and become unrecognizable, but you get active, you pick up a scent, you find yourself back on the path.

In working with diverse materials, Schwing has given her visual language various accents. Her own vision persists across the materials, perhaps because she does not seem to fight with them, instead letting each one take her exploration into its own material specificity.

It doesn’t matter if you are working blindly so long as you stick with it until you are back on the path.

Schwing’s work and life have evolved to include collaborations with other artists. Her past projects include Road Kill Resurrection, which began as a date with Greg Fletcher, also a Baltimore artist and her partner for 15 years. “We realized that we could work together because the work would not be competitive.” That project lasted three years and eventually involved other participants.

For all the diversity in content – rural vs urban vs abstract – and the diversity in materials – watercolor, pastel, scratchboard – what stands out most in surveying these collected works is Schwing’s persistent visual language, built around the word harmony. The images are charged and active, but the activity is sans stress. Buildings and trees establish a space that Swching populates with fractal patterns that add a temporal dynamic, a reference to cycles and change. “I’m not trying to replicate a scene, but to catch its scent.”

If I now where I am going, I get bored.

All quotes in italics by Leslie Schwing 2010

For more information on Leslie Schwing, click here.

For more information about CHAW and opening, click here.

For more information about the author, click here.

Outwin Boochever Portrait Competition 2009

This week the National Portrait Gallery will announce the winners of the Outwin Boochever Portrait Competition 2009 at an opening reception taking place on the evening of Oct. 22. The exhibition will open to the public Friday, Oct. 23 and will remain on view through August 22, 2010.

The show has been juried from 3,300 entries, down to 49 finalists from around the country. Of those 49, seven have been selected for the short list of cash prizes. The top award will win $25,000 as well as a separate commission from the Portrait Gallery. (In May, the museum unveiled Mrs. Eunice Kennedy Shriver’s portrait by David Lenz, Lenz won first prize in 2006). The exhibition will display the works of the 49 finalists.

“The second Outwin Boochever Portrait Competition represents a significant milestone for the National Portrait Gallery,” said Martin Sullivan, director of the museum. “We opened the entries to all visual arts media and received a wonderful response.”

The competition happens only once every three years and demonstrates the new ways artists are working with the figure and creating portraits. External jurors for the competition were Wanda M. Corn, professor emerita in art history at Stanford University; Kerry James Marshall, artist; Brian O’Doherty, artist and critic; and Peter Schjeldahl, art critic for The New Yorker. Jurors from the National Portrait Gallery were Martin E. Sullivan, director; Carolyn K. Carr, deputy director and chief curator; and Brandon Brame Fortune, curator of painting and sculpture.

Portrait Competition Finalists and Shortlisted Artists (the asterisk denotes the artists on the shortlist):

Mequitta Ahuja, Houston
Jason Shaw Alexander, Los Angeles
Jen Bandini, Queens, N.Y.
Margaret Bowland, Brooklyn, N.Y.*
Benita Carr, Atlanta
Laura Chasman, Roslindale, Mass.
Mark Cummings, Newport Beach, Calif.
Yolanda del Amo, Brooklyn, N.Y.*
Armando Dominguez, Miami
Jenny Dubnau, Jackson Heights, N.Y.
Daniel Mark Duffy, Newtown, Conn.
David Eichenberg, Toledo, Ohio
Gaela Erwin, Louisville, Ky.*
Chambliss Giobbi, New York
David Gracie, Omaha, Neb.
Leor Grady, New York
Anne Harris, Riverside, Ill.
Patricia Horing, Larchmont, N.Y.
Kate Sammons, Los Angeles
Philip Schirmer, Sargentville, Maine
Justin Shaw, Lincoln, Neb.
Satomi Shirai, Astoria, N.Y.
Michael A. Smith, Ottsville, Pa.
Ben Tolman, Washington, D.C.
Jim Torok, Brooklyn, N.Y.
Anna Killian, Pensacola, Fla.
Erika Larsen, Hoboken, N.J.
David Dodge Lewis, Farmville, Va.
Lisa Lindvay, Chicago
Francesco Lombardo, Marshall, N.C.
Perin Mahler, Grand Rapids, Mich.
John Manion, Brooklyn, N.Y.
Bruce McKaig, Washington, D.C.
Pavel Melecky, Arlington, Texas
Sam Messer, Brooklyn, N.Y.
Paul Mindell, Norwalk, Conn.
Matthew Mitchell, Amherst, Mass.
Samantha Mitchell, New York
Austin Parkhill, Arvada, Colo.
Sonia Paulino, Los Angeles
Cliffton Peacock, Charleston, S.C.
Stanley Rayfield, Richmond, Va.*
Emil Robinson, Cincinnati*
Margaret Trezevant, Tampa, Fla.
Lien Truong, Eureka, Calif.
Clarissa Payne Uvegi, New York
Adam Vinson, Jenkintown, Pa.*
Dave Woody, Fort Collins, Colo.*
John Randall Younger, Charlottesville, Va.

I am familiar with the work of the two DC area artists on the list, Ben Tolman and Bruce McKaig. In fact, both of them have exhibited at the Fraser Gallery back in the days when I was a co-owner of those two galleries.

Bruce McKaig on CHAW's 4th Annual Photography Exhibition

By Bruce McKaig

Why have an exhibition of contemporary photography? Why send out a call-for-entries, review submissions, select some to hang on the walls of a gallery? Why have an opening reception, attended mostly by the participating artists and their social circles, then return most of the work to the artists a few weeks later? How did such a ritual begin and why does it persist?

Exhibitions at art galleries are a fairly modern practice. As submitted by Ethan Robey in The Utility of Art: Mechanic’s Institute Fairs in New York City 1828-1876, they are an offshoot of state or national fairs, where booths are set up and visitors can look at mechanical gadgets, scientific discoveries, jellies, pies, and well-bred livestock. By the late 19th century, some artists were hosting public receptions in their studios.

Eventually, some entrepreneurs – like Steiglitz and his Gallery 291 – decided to propose a year-round place where art and public could meet. As I looked at submissions for CHAW’s fourth annual photography exhibition, and as I gear up for my next solo exhibit at the Orlando Museum of Art, I find myself asking: Why not open year-round places for public and livestock to meet? Who doesn’t love beautiful sheep, especially a young one? Would a galerie des moutons be more preposterous than an art gallery?

Photography became public property in 1839 when Daguerre read his process out loud to the French senate. Photography was democratized in the 1880s when Thomas Edison invented 35mm film and George Eastman invented the word Kodak. In the mid-to-late 19th century, both the making and the viewing of photographs were not so much a daily bombardment as they were occasions. In most cases, if several people were to look at a photograph, they would usually be in the same room at the same time.

Clearly, that has changed.

According to The Camera and Imaging Products Association (CIPA), the number of digital cameras shipped in 2008 was 119,757,000, not including cell phones. As of October 2009, there were four billion images on Flickr. With over 300,000 images uploaded to Facebook every second, there are over 850 million images added every month. Last summer, I photographed a wedding and had to edit out numerous images that were overexposed because of how many other flashes kept firing. It seemed like most guests were also photographers.

On a recent field trip to the US Botanical Gardens, the number of people taking pictures was truly phenomenal. From cell phones to cumbersome SLRs with hefty attached flash units, people were lining up to photograph or be photographed in front of various floral arrangements amidst the holiday decor. Such colossal production rates beg the question, how much time do people spend looking at photographs? Has the priority, the principle activity, become making, not viewing?

The persistence of exhibitions and the excitement over the Internet coexist because one confronts confusion with a semblance of order; the other confronts the semblance of order with confusion. The gallery’s elitist approach strives to select and organize works in a momentary setting, as much an event or performance as a body of work, all in an effort to provide ground for discovery, debate, and direction.

The Internet’s democratic approach strives to neither select nor organize images, and the 24/7 open call-for-entries results in a bubble that can never burst because it has no dates, deadlines, or locale. The perception that the Internet is everywhere and always open implies both a trust in its availability and a lack of urgency, or even preciousness, when it comes to discovery, debate, or direction.

I suggest that people go to exhibitions because sometimes there is a precious urgency to discovery, debate, and direction.

The Fourth Annual Photography Exhibition at Capital Hill Arts Workshop is, once again, a sampling, an across-the-board look at diverse ways artists chose to approach the medium of photography, produce a piece, and connect with a viewer. By no means exhaustive, the diversity of the works conjures thoughts on defining what is an artist and what is a successful photograph. The diversity, however, does not succeed in masking the various themes that appear across the works when compared and contrasted.

Several of the images are formal studies, exploring shape and color. Red Deck, by Mark Walter Braswell, is a color image of the side of a building. Not an architectural study, with a confusing rather than informative perspective, the geometry and color are all that is left, is needed, to contemplate. Sue Weisenburger’s works are also formal studies. Foundation is more rigid, V&A in December is more organic, but both brush up against the narrative with their poetic use of geometry. In Vickie Fruehauf’s black and white scenes of water, the formal qualities have been wedded to an almost spiritual presence, in her words, “the silent observers within the natural world.” Judy Searles’ images are close-up looks at elemental materials. The materials, initially man-made, have been shaped and colored by the battering of weather and time. The temporal aspect to her work is explored in different ways by several other artists in the show.

Time as an element in photography is explored in several artists’ works, through the blurry stretching of time, or the juxtaposition of images side-by-side or sequentially in a slideshow format. Tom Pullin layers the fourth dimension of time into Fussa-Tokyo33107 thanks to a slow exposure. Similarly, Jim Blackie’s Down depicts an isolated traveler descending a quivering escalator. In the Motion Studies portfolio by Mark Issac, temporality is explored through, in Issac’s words, “the manner in which solid objects break apart and dematerialize.” Patricia Goslee and Siobhan Hanna both work with multiple images and the juxtaposition of different angles or objects has an element of time travel. In the back-and-forth observation for a viewer, the passage of time becomes a part of the experience. Leland Bryant also uses multiple images, but strings them out in a slide show. In this format, the images move by at the author’s chosen pace, not the viewers, and they run from first to last per author’s selection. Goslee, Hanna and Leland all use somewhat cumbersome titles or text that the viewer is left to appreciate or ignore.

Photo documentary works are also part of the exhibition. Gabriela Bulisova exhibits three images of anonymous Iraqi refugees. Heads cut off – by the picture frame – or eyes banded – by a wooden railing – or the human body replaced by its shadow, these images speak both of the individual and the collective. Kristoffer Tripplaar exhibits five images from Galveston Texas in the wake of a natural disaster. There are no people in Tripplaar’s images, just man-made structures with signs of nature’s rage. The absence of people succeeds in broadening the images’ story to a more universal struggle between urban humanity and nature. Another image in the show that uses absence to create atmosphere is Christopher Schwartz’s Off Duty, a shot of a deserted lifeguard station. Without people or activity, the strong colors come across bleak and doll-like. People are full-face present in Michael Stargill’s documentary sports images in a somewhat comical, somewhat iconic mixture of reportage and theater.

Photo by Jared Ragland
Several other artists in this exhibition turn directly to iconic elements and theatrical approaches. Jared Ragland’s socio-political commentary uses iconic items to construct blunt social commentaries. Ragland’s artist statement says, “While not always adhering to the traditional structure of narrative I seek nonetheless to open relationships between fragments of content and combine images to form loose associations and representations of the subconscious.” Whereas Raglan constructs his choreography with photomontage, Carolina Mayorga goes directly to theatrics in her exploration of religious ritual and rhetoric. Mayorga’s artwork addresses issues of social and political content and are produced as a mixture of drawings, sculptures, videos, or performances.

This exhibition fails to answer my questions about photography but succeeds in furthering the discovery and debate. I still don’t know how much time people spend looking at photographs. I still don’t know if a gallery of sheep would be more or less preposterous than a gallery of art.

What: CHAW”S 4th Annual Photography Exhibition
When: Jan 9th – Feb 4th 2010, opening reception Sat Jan 9th 5-7pm
Where: Capitol Hill Arts Workshop 545 7th Street SE WDC 20003
202 547 6839
www.chaw.org

Opportunity for Photographers

Deadline: December 17, 2010

Call for entries for the Fifth Annual Photography Exhibition at the Capitol Hill Arts Workshop. Entries must be received by December 17, 2010. The Capitol Hill Arts Workshop is seeking submissions of any and all photographic processes, black and white or color, traditional or alternative, material or digital, time-based, performance based, any work exploring the act of photography. The exhibition will open on January 8, 2011 from 5:00-7:00 p.m. and will run through February 4, 2011. Cash awards will be announced at the opening.

The juror for the exhibition is Bruce McKaig, local artist and art educator. Bruce McKaig chairs the Photography Department at CHAW and teaches at Georgetown University and the Smithsonian Associates. He has exhibited nationally and internationally for over thirty years and every once in a while reviews a DMV show in this blog. For more information about his work, please visit his website here.

HOW: Submit the following:
➢ Three to five jpegs on a CD
➢ Image inventory list specifying title, size, medium, date and price (or insurance value)
➢ Contact info including a mailing address, phone number and email
➢ An entry fee of $25.00 for up to five images, payable to CHAW

WHERE: Please hand deliver or mail these materials to:

CHAW
545 7th Street SE
Washington DC 20003

McKaig on Eadweard Muybridge

Helios: Eadweard Muybridge in a Time of Change
By Bruce McKaig

Seen with 21st century eyes, the images and objects in this exhibition linger in a romantic, comfortable past, but their significance and impact on photography and cinema give the show a peculiarly contemporary presence, a mute visit from the past that coyly unveils the building blocks for much of photography and cinema today.

Eadweard Muybridge, a, walking; b, ascending step; c, throwing disk; d, using shovel; e, f, using pick. Plate 521, 1887. Collotype on paper. Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, d.c., Museum Purchase, 87.7.477.
A comprehensive retrospective of Eadweard Muybridge’s explorations in locomotion and photography is now at the Corcoran Gallery of Art through July 18, 2010.

Organized by the Corcoran and curated by Philip Brookman, chief curator and head of research, Helios: Eadweard Muybridge in a Time of Change includes numerous vintage photographs, albums, stereographs, lantern slides, glass negatives and positives, patent models, Zoopraxiscope discs, proof prints, notes, books, and other ephemera. The exhibit runs chronologically from his earliest works in stereo photography (3-D glasses are provided) to his landscapes of the American west, his surveys and work from Alaska to Panama, ending with extensive samples of his animal and people motion studies.

Looking at the beautiful albumen silver prints is a treat for anyone who stares at a computer screen much of the day. The material quality of the vintage prints is nothing short of majestic, with all the serenity and fortitude the glorious west of the past is expected to have. They only become melancholic, or tragic, if a viewer compares these images to contemporary aerial photography that shows the state of the land today.

In Muybridge’s motion studies, the subject matter is usually less majestic than Yosemite or the Pacific Coast. Although the motion studies were technical extravaganzas to achieve, the subject matter is simple and straightforward, often boring and banal. Frozen in time-lapse sequences, people and animals parody gestures that will never headline at Cirque du Soleil – tossing a hat, pouring a cup of tea, walking up and then down steps (OK, there are some more gymnastic gestures). In his efforts to document the mechanics of movement, Muybridge proceeded by splintering the movement into chunky slices. They might have been made as quasi-scientific motion studies, but when viewed based on how they look not why they were made, there is an edgy pathos to these flickering slices of movement, a futility akin to the myth of Sisyphus. It’s difficult not to contemplate the images based on how they look. Despite sporadic controversies about the quality of programming and leadership, the Corcoran is a museum of art.

Whereas movement can be equated with change, involving departure and arrival, these short flipbook-like clips endlessly loop through the same futile gestures, never leaving or arriving or sustaining – just moving. In the 1920s, Frank and Lillian Gilbreth attached glowing lights to wrists, arms, and legs of workers then filmed them working in the dark. These films were tools for consulting work on movement and efficiency. (Observing that surgeons spent too much time digging for tools, they suggested that surgeons keep their eyes on the patient and ask for tools as needed, thus, “Scalpel please.”) Like Muybridge’s locomotion studies, Gilbreths’ films, when contemplated for how they look not why they were made, evoke more misery than celebration, not the stuff for a propaganda campaign promoting the work ethic.

The exhibition ends with the brilliant idea of installing a few contemporary works whose influences can be traced to Muybridge. His influences spread over painting, photography, and cinema. Included in this part of the exhibit are works by Mitchell F. Chan and Brad Hindson (Canadian team), Stacey Steeks, and DC’s own William Christenberry, to name a few. The motion picture industries, motivated by commercial interests more than scientific study, have turned Muybridge’s chunky movements into fluid blockbusters. Last summer, I participated in a video piece by then-local artist Lisa Blas (currently living in Belgium) that directly references Eadweard Muybridge. In the piece, called The Jump (in progress, not included in this exhibition), Blas, replete with skirt and heels, repeatedly walks down the sidewalk and leaps over a pile of books on the history of art.

Eadweard Muybridge, Valley of the Yosemite. From Mosquito Camp. No. 22, 1872. Albumen silver print. Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, d.c., Museum Purchase, 2007.003.
There was a great deal of mobility in Muybridge’s life, both geographically covering vast regions of the planet, and professionally interacting with numerous individuals also working on photography, motion, and cinema. Born in Great Britain, Muybridge (1830–1904) first came to the United States in 1855 and worked as a publisher’s agent and bookseller. A few years later, following a serious stagecoach accident, he returned to Great Britain and learned photography. When he returned to San Francisco in 1866, he quickly established himself as a qualified photographer, working mostly with landscapes and architecture. These images were published under the pseudonym “Helios,” which, in Greek mythology, is the name of the god of the sun.

In 1872, businessman and race horse owner Leland Stanford – former Governor of California – hired Muybridge to use photography to answer the question: In full gallop, do all four horse hooves leave the ground at the same time? Unaided human observation cannot answer the question. Muybridge spent several years perfecting techniques to produce a series of photographs that do capture a moment with all four hooves in the air. Technically, this involved developing faster shutter speeds and faster emulsions to register the fleeting activity.

In 1874, Muybridge shot and killed his wife’s lover. Though he confessed to the crime, the court acquitted him, labeling the crime a “justifiable homicide.” Stanford had paid for his defense, which included a failed attempt to plead innocent by reason of insanity, claiming that the earlier stagecoach accident had damaged his brain.

After the trail, Muybridge traveled and worked in Central America before returning to the US in 1877. Between 1883 and 1886, he worked with the University of Pennsylvania and produced over 100,000 locomotion images. In 1893, Muybridge gave a series of lectures on the Science of Animal Locomotion in the Zoopraxographical Hall at the World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago. He used his zoopraxiscope –“animal action viewer” -- to project his moving pictures, the first commercial movie theater. In 1894, he returned to England, published a couple of books, and died in 1904 at his cousin’s house where he had been living.

A catalog will accompany the exhibition, and with essays by Philip Brookman, Marta Braun, Corey Keller, Rebecca Solnit, and an introduction by Andy Grundberg.

Following its debut at the Corcoran, Helios: Eadweard Muybridge in a Time of Change will travel to Tate Britain in London from September 8 through January 16, 2011, and to the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art from February 26 through June 7, 2011.

For more information about the exhibition, visit the Corcoran's website here.

For more information about Bruce McKaig, check out www.brucemckaig.com.

McKaig on Steve Szabo at the Harmony Hall Regional Center

By Bruce McKaig

In an eloquent and poetic tour de force, these photographs from the Eastern shore and of boots stuck on barbed wire fence posts in Nebraska provide traces of human endeavor and ritual, traces in various stages of decay, on their way back to the natural elements. The abandoned state is not repellent. It is dignified. There is a Zen-like acceptance of this inevitable transformation. Szabo virtually speaks to viewers (maybe to himself) through these works, each one evenly repeating: Let it go.

This is not an exhibition of portraits, but it is an exploration of people, faceless folk who have left a mark – an object – to weather the elements, not really saying, “I was here,” so much as saying, “Now, I am somewhere else.” The works are all about the human venture to manifest in ritual and ceremony then move on, leaving a trace, an unprotected trace. There is nothing casual, disdainful or disrespectful about the abandoned trace. Tibetans traditionally perform sky burials, which involve abandoning the deceased on a platform to be devoured by vultures. No pyramid for royalty (and mass grave for the rest?), the surrender to nature is a final gesture of modesty, humility, and respect.

Instead of finality, these images explore continuity. Part detective, part archeologist, the artist Steve Szabo provides photographic traces of the traces, platinum prints that tell viewers Steve was there. In connecting viewers with these not-personally experienced signs of anonymous decisions, Szabo provides insight both into the worlds he explored and himself as an explorer.


Born in 1940, Steve Szabo was a native of Berwick, Pennsylvania and worked in the Pennsylvania steel mills. Though he attended Penn State University and the Art Center School of Design in LA, he was basically self-taught. He was employed at the Washington Post as a part time photo lab assistant in 1962, then staff photographer 1966-72.

In 1972, he took a 6-month leave of absence to get away from the hectic world of photojournalism to devote some time to photographing the landscape in Somerset County, MD. Instead of 6 months, he worked on the Eastern shore from 1971-1976 and produced the fine art platinum prints that became his first published book of photographs. In these photographs, the lingering traces of human presence and activities silently persist though the natural elements steadily attack and replace them.

Before beginning the abandoned boot series, he worked in DC, France, Scotland, Hungary, and Hawaii, producing several bodies of work and publishing additional books. In Hawaii, he photographed ruins of ancient temples, another angle on exploring the passing of time. At one point, he produced sets of multiple images, complementing the sense of place with a sense of time.

In 1990, Sazbo began photographing abandoned boots stuck on fence posts in Nebraska. The images of boots unmistakably evolved from previous series exploring traces of now-forgotten rituals (the ruins in Hawaii) and human presence succumbing to natural decay (Eastern shore images). However, the images of the abandoned boots take on a more private, personal quality. He never learned why the boots were there or if they were supposed to mean anything. He never explained why they fascinated him, maybe did not know himself. His enthusiasm and attentiveness to the isolated, weathered boots produced a body of work that, as a whole, have become traces not just of boots but of a man’s drive and curiosity to manifest and, before moving on, to leave a trace.

Stuart Diekmeyer, gallery director at Harmony Hall, worked with Szabo from 1998 until shortly before his death in 2000. In Stuart’s words:

Steve and I spent many weeks organizing and selecting images to print. Even though he could no longer manage a camera and photograph at the level he was accustomed too, I was always amazed and in awe at his uncanny ability to look deep into a photograph and make it come alive through words. He knew the story and every little detail about every photograph he had ever taken. Steve once told me, although he missed using a camera, this trip down memory lane was just as great. Whenever I returned to Steve with new prints to look at, especially images he had himself never printed, there was frequently a long period of reflection followed by a euphoric choice of words. In all matters [of] photography, Steve's passion never faltered

The exhibition was curated by Kathleen Ewing. In Kathleen’s words:

Seeing Steve Szabo's platinum photographs from his "Eastern Shore" series in 1975 was my introduction to fine art photography. I was intrigued by the combination of documentation and personal vision he conveyed in his images of the desolate rural Maryland Somerset County. From that beginning, I began to learn about the great history of photography and the masters like, P.H. Emerson, Walker Evans and so many others which had influenced Steve as he transitioned from a photojournalist at the Washington Post to a fine art photographer and teacher at the Corcoran School of Art.

The exhibition at Harmony Hall is significant on several levels. The photographs on view are from his first series as a fine art photographer, "The Eastern Shore" from 1971 to 1976 and his last series, "Icons of the Great Plains" dating from 1990 and 1991. It is fascinating to see where Steve began and where he ended his photographic career.


"International Truck, Frogeye, Maryland," from Steve Szabo's "Eastern Shore Series"
For the "Eastern Shore" series, Steve used a large format, 8x10 inch view camera to document the rural areas of Somerset County. It was a cumbersome task to carry the heavy camera and a strong tripod into the woods and fields to capture an image.

Steve's approach was to photograph the scene just as he found it; never making any changes or alterations. I'm sure he circled the abandoned International truck several times before he decided to let the window of the open car door frame the Ebenezer Baptist Church off in the distance.

Later, Steve seemed to think the image was too predictable and contrived. Personally, I felt it was a serendipitous moment and the framing of the church in the truck window greatly enhanced the image.

As well as years devoted to exploring art, Steve Szabo was also an art educator who influenced many a DC artist in his classrooms starting in 1979 (Diekmeyer was one of his students). Diagnosed with multiple sclerosis in 1992, he continued to teach until 1994 and passed away at home May 18, 2000.

This show is on through Through May 29th 2010. After the exhibition closes, the works can be seen by contacting Kathleen Ewing.

Harmony Hall Regional Center is located in Southern Prince George's County and offers classes in the visual and performing arts as well as exhibitions, concerts and performances.

For more information about the author, click here.

McKaig on Mayorga

By Bruce McKaig

Walk into the OAS General Secretariat Building on F Street NW, head down the stairs to the Terrace Level Gallery, round the corner and look down the hallway space housing this exhibit -- a space that looks somewhat like a path to a launching pad for the Starship Enterprise. The windowless, sterile architecture is flawlessly clean in proportion, line and light... and ends at a company cafeteria.

The setting could not be better for Carolina Mayorga’s site-specific installation of videos and photographs, Love Me, Quiéreme, Buy Me.

Last fall, Third Root Aesthetic, “a female owned art consulting and management business that collaborates primarily, but not exclusively, with artists, collectors and scholars of color,” approached Carolina about doing an exhibit in March 2010, National Women’s History Month. They also made a pitch to Fabian Gonclaves Borrega, Exhibit Coordinator for the Art Museum of the Americas (AMA) that includes the Terrace Level Gallery. He accepted the proposal and Carolina began conceiving and producing the works now installed at the museum.

Baby Doll 2010 by Carolina Mayorga.
Mr. Gonclaves first met Carolina in 1999 and has seen the evolution of her work over the past decade. He describes her installations ten years ago as more politically themed and geographically related to Colombia, her country of birth. At some point, he noticed her political themes had become less geographically specific. In the most recent years, he describes her shift to themes of individual identity, specifically feminism and consumerism: “Her work is often very sexually charged, and she herself wears make-up and has dyed her hair. That’s an interesting contrast to some performance artists in the 1960s, who wore little or no make-up, very drab clothing, had a cruder, rawer presence. Carolina knows who she is and, though she herself poses in her works – not a model-for-hire – the works are not really about her identity but about identity in a much more general way.”

Carolina wanted to use photographs and videos of herself to look at issues of culture and identity. “If I am wearing make-up, does that mean that I am stupid? If a woman is plain, does that mean she is intelligent?” These and other questions about stereotypes and cultural expectations are some of the thoughts Carolina explores in this installation. From front to back, the sequence of images moves from more local, DC scenarios to large mouths and more private imagery as the exhibit proceeds. Some of the still images are draped on the walls, curving in a sculptural way. “That was not the original idea,” she explains, “but as we installed, the people I was working with at the museum thought it might be a stronger presentation to leave the organic look. Sometimes, you just want to control everything, but as I thought about it, I thought they were right. It’s all about trying to discover a new way of thinking about or doing something.”

Those words about relinquishing control and thus discovering something new resemble words by the performance artist Marina Abramovic, currently exhibiting at the MOMA in NYC: “If you do things that you like, you never change, you always do the same thing again and again.”

The various video works are on two screens, one at the head of the exhibit, the other suspended along side the still images. One video shows close-ups of the artist applying lipstick, very unforgiving close-ups that visually straddle the fence between hyper realism and comic book animation. Likewise, the still images of hair or boots or mouths retain all the reality that photographs are expected to portray, but their content and garish print qualities manage to blur distinctions between hysterically horrific and comic slap-stick.

This odd blend is present in much of Carolina’s work, something like Vaudeville skits directed by Quentin Tarantino. In October 2009, she performed “The Miraculous Artist” at the Washington Project for the Arts. In that performance, she sat, robed in religious regalia, inside a confessional to give out one-on-one advice to the curious public. Her advice to me? “Since you are entering the golden years of your life, you should definitely buy several of my prayer cards.” That performance included a video playing testimonials from satisfied customers. In 2004, Carolina built a snow sculpture on a beach in Sweden that spelled out, ”by the time this sculpture melts 45,000 children will die in war.” During her Newspaper Soup performances, she gives out cooking tips about food for the destitute.


Love Me in DC, 2009 by Carolina Mayorga

How does Carolina describe the AMA installation?

"You get it out of your system kind of thing, using both photography and video, to experiment, even if people don’t see it. The feet, the sequence, the female thing, I’ve been using feet for many years, feet or shoes tell a lot about the body. I am not a photographer. I use photography to produce my installations, but I don’t want people to think of me as a photographer. Is there an international message? Its pretty open… beauty and identity are issues in many cultures… baby doll, lips, Photoshop'd to look unrealistic, using stereotypes… Language is important, not exactly in English, not exactly in Spanish, using words in the language that I think of them… why translate, if that ends up with a version that is not the way it happened? Its not just questions about gender, I also have questions about my Latina heritage. I don’t ignore it, but I try to avoid submerging into any subculture."

Love Me, Quiéreme, Buy Me by Carolina Mayorga
The Art Museum of the Americas
March 12-April 30, 2010

Terrace Level Gallery
OAS General Secretariat Building
1889 F Street, NW
Washington DC 20006
Hours: 10 – 5, Monday through Friday

For more information about Carolina Mayorga click here.

For more information about the Art Museum of the Americas, click here.

For more information about the author, click here.

Postcards from the Edge

Postcards from the Edge is easily the world's largest annual group show.

This year it is being hosted by the Robert Miller Gallery in New York, and there are around 1500 original works of art for sale to benefit Visual AIDS.

Details here. The participating artists are listed below and I've highlighted several DC area artists whose names I recognize.

The Artists

Tim Aanensen, Mary Jo Aardsma, Luciana Abait, Samira Abbassy, David Abbott, Myriam Abdelaziz, Joshua Abelow, Issa Abou Issa, Rachel B. Abrams, Daniel Abrams, Vito Acconci, Paula Acosta, Irina Adam, Derrick Adams, Raymond Adams, Brian Patrick Adams, MaryAnne Adjei, Ferid Agi, Abbey Agresta, Pierre Ahlstrom, Tatiana Akoeva, Michael Alago, Michael Alan, Lora Alaniz & Jennifer Beth Guerin, Anne Alarcon, Beatriz Albuquerque, Susan Alden, Aldwyth, Alexander 23, Ali, Meredith Allen, Blanka Amezkua, Shannon Amidon, Marie Anakee, Kristin Anderson, Chris Anderson, Stephen Andrews, Chad Andrews, Victor Angelo, Anonymous, William Anthony, Paul Antonio Szabo, Polly Apfelbaum, Sally Apfelbaum, Ida Applebroog, Robert Appleton, Tomie Arai, Carolyn Arcos, Joan Arena-Mastropaolo, Soledad Arias, Robin Arnold, Alonys Art, Nora Aslan, Dotty Attie, Ochiishi Augustmoon, Dominick Avellino, David Aviles, Joseph Ayala, Joseph Ayers, Helene Aylon, Nancy Azara, Aziz + Cucher, Adam Baer, Julie Baetzold, Ralph Baginski, Shane M. Bainbridge, Patrick Michael Baird, Paul Baker, Melanie Baker, Gikanjali Bakshi, John Baldessari, Phyllis Baldino, Julia Barber, Gerard Barbot, Perry Bard, Oliver Barnes Newton, Burt Barr, Olivia Barr, Paula Barr, Katie Barrie, Megan Barron, Rita Barros, Mark Barry, Beth Bartholomew, Barbara Bashlow Guzman, Elliot Bassman, Larissa Bates, Jackie Battenfield, Hilary Batzel, Erica Baum, Amy Bay, Kristin Beal-Degrandmont, Robert Beck, Jaq Belcher, Adam Bell, Caroline Bell, Anna Bell, Bellavia, Stuart Bender, Barton Lidice Benes, Garry Benet, Benito, Joseph Bennett, Terc Bennett, Ross Bennett Lewis, Gene Benson, Kermit Berg, Stacy Bergener, Ragna Berlin, Jason B. Bernard, Katherine Bernhardt, Amy Bernhardt, Alberte Bernier, Patrick Berran, Elizabeth Best, Stephen Beveridge, Sujata Bharani, Anna Bhushan, Susane Bifano, Peter Bill, Michael Binkley, Sherry Bittle, Darla Bjork, Christine Blackburn, George Blaha, Nancy Blair, Nayland Blake, Julie Blattberg, Ross Bleckner, Lucinda Bliss, Theresa Bloise, China Blue, Deborah Boardman, Victoria Anne Boardman, Daniel Bodner, Alana Bograd, David Bonfim, David Bonfin, Chakaia Booker, David Borawski, Frank Boros, Desiree Borrero, Todd Bosworth, Matthew Bourbon, Nina Bovasso, Astrid M. Bowlby, Melissa Bowman, George Box, Bruce Wesley Boyce, Daniel Boyer, Nicole Boyle, Bern Boyle, Gail Bracegirdle, Philip Bradley, Marcelo Brantes, Dana Brauckmann, John Breiner, Susan Breitsch, Matthew Brennan, Nancy Brett, Norbert Briar, Ben Briere, Celeste Brignac, Walter Briski Jr, Shane Britenstein, Mona Brody, Nancy Brooks Brody, Ashley Brollier, Arnold Brooks, John Brown, Stacy Brown, Brice Brown, Valerie Brown, Shash Broxson, Neil Bruce, Robert Bruce, Miriam Brumer, Loreen Bryant, Mija Bryen, Vanessa Bucci, Matthew Buckingham, Brian Buczak, Thomas Bugarin, Greg Bugel, Sarah Kate Burgess, Christopher Burke, Kenneth Burke, Marty Burns, Bob Burnside, Hannah Burr, Keil Burrman, Nancy Burson, Julie Cabell, Morgan Cahn, Robert Calame, Philip Calkins, Michael J. Cambre, Sandra Camomile, Susan Camp, Kirsten Campbell, F. Lennox Campello, Barbara Campisi, Theresa Rose Canto, Lincoln Capla, Suzanne Caporael, Karlos Carcamo, Claudette Carino, Susanna Carlisle, Joel Carlson, Curtis Carman, Victor Carnuccio, Frederic P. Carpenter, Kevin Carpio, Colleen Carradi, Mary Ellen Carroll, Lana Carter, Casey Leigh Carty, Megan Cassell, Blas Yenzzy Castro, Rick Castro, Janice Caswell, Niccolo Cataldi, James Catania, Andrea Cautmen, Andrea Cautmen, Teresa Celemin, Celso, Li-Trin Cere, Bindu Chadaga, Richard Chaloux, Mark Chamberlain, Anthony Champa, Paul Chan, Victoria Chang, Jennifer Chapek, Ben Chase, Amy Cheng, Pansum Cheng, Andrew Chesler, Julia Chiang, Mike Chiarello, Kathleen Ching, Kim Chivers - D’Amato, Kyung Cho, Wonjung Choi, Cecile Chong, Kevin Christy, Ann Chuchvara, Monica D. Church, Amanda Church, Elise P. Church, Vincent Cianni, John Cizmar, Karen Clark, Rob Clarke, Nuala Clarke, Robert Clarke-Davis, Alex Clates, Aaron Cobbett, Jon Coffett, Orly Cogan, Neal Cohen, Ben Colebrook, Ryan Coleman, Peter Colen, Susan Colgan, Cecy Colichon, Patrick Collier, Vicky Colombet, Greg Colson, Kaersten Colvin-Woodruff, Chrissy Conant, Aron Conaway, Ernest Concepcion, Elisabeth Condon, Doug Condon, Dusty Conley, Brendon Connors, Emily Conover, Juliette Conroy, CB Cooke, Jenifer Cooney, Pam Cooper, David Corbett, Christiane Corcelle-Lippeveld, Kathryn Cornelius, David Correa Muñoz, Jose Luis Cortes, David Corwin, Erin Cowgill, Doug Cox, Steve Cox, Warren Craghead III, Patrick Craig, Matthew Craig, Peter Cramer, Fred Cray, Brian Crede, Kate Crilley-Fauvell, Ada Crisclone, Elizabeth Crisman, Judith Croce, Crudo, Pedro Cruz-Castro, Janet Culbertson, James Cullinane, Alan Cumming, Daphne Cummings, Megan Cump, Colleen Cunningham, Pasquale Cuppari, Peggy Cyphers, Kathleen Dac, Melissa Dadourian, Kara Dahlberg, Pradeep Dalal, David Dalessandro, Kelly Darr, Julie Davidow, James Davis, Raoul de Jong, Jose L. De Juan, Angela De Rosette, Marc DeBauch, Blase DeCelestino, Elisa Decker, Chris Dei, Matthew Deleget, Gianna Delluomo, Christina Delsandro, Jason Deneault, Priscilla Derven, Andrew DeShong, Almut Determeyer, Aasta Deth, Geoffrey Detrani, Sarah & Pearl Detweiler, Yoko Devereaux, Linda Di Gusta, Mike Diana, Mare Dianora, Alise Ann Diavastes, James Diffin, James Diffin, Simone DiLaura, Lesley Dill, Roz Dimon, Danielle Dimston, George Dinhaupt, Aureo Diniz, Abigail Doan, Erica Dobin, Corinne Dolle, Rory Donaldson, William Donovan, William Donovan, William Donovan, Sarah Doremus, Samantha Mae Dorfman, Elissa Dorfman, Elizabeth Dougherty, Christopher Dovas, Chad Downard, Claudia Drake, Charles Drees, Melanie Ducharme, Daniel Dueck, Angela Dufresne, Linda Dugger, Jeff Dunlap, Sheila Dunn, Alexis Duque, Chad Durgan, Anne Dushanko Dober, Kimberly Dwn, Annie Dwyer Internicola, Marcel Dzama, Michael Eade, Janae Easton, Mat Eaton, Masako Ebata, Marlene Eckhardt, Allison Edge, Cynthis Edorh, Frank Egloff, Melissa Ehrenveich, Per Eidspjeld, Jason Eisner, Emily Elahi, Eva Eland, Deborah Elliott Deutschman, Scott Elms, Mia Enell, Elise Engler, Cara Enteles, Paula B. Entin, Joy Episalla, Sharon Epperson, Mark Epstein, Donelle Estey, Yvonne Estrada, Beth Evancho, Margaret Evangeline, John Evans, Patrick Evans, Dore Everett, Bruce Eves, Bruce Eyster, F. Facer, James Fackrell, Rachael Faillace, Diego Assis Fainer, Jessica Falango, Neil Farber, Emily Farranto, David Faulk, Ming Fay, Nicholas Fedak II, Tony Feher, Cui Fei, Josh Feldman, Brandon Ferebee, Rea Silvia Feriozzi, Eliza Fernbach, Brad Fesmire, Celeste Fichter, Toma Fichter, Angelo Filomeno, Janet Filomeno, Sandra Fine, Michael A. Fink, Brian Finke, Christina B. Fischer, Katie Fitzsimmons, Paul W. Flanary, Jr., Becket Flannery, Sean-Michael Fleming, Ralph Rafael Fleming, Bettina L. Fliegel, Irina Florov, Robert Flynt, Karen Foley, Roy Foo, Jean Foos, Tom Foral, Monique Ford, Juliana Forero, Jennifer Formica, Nicholas Forrest, Peter Foucault, Martine Fougeron, Nicole Fournier, Lindsey Fox, Tara Fracalossi, Anne Maria Frassila, Travis Frazelle, Christopher Frederick, Jacqueline Freedman, Jacqueline Freedman, Martin Freeman, Sabra Friedman, Matthew Fritze, Nichole Frocheur, Joanna Frueh & Jill O’Bryan, Terra Fuller, David G., Faith S. Gabel, Mark Galindez, Arturo Garcia, Corey Garcia, Roberto Garcia, Laurel Garcia Colvin, Milton Garcia Latex, Johanna Gargiulo-Sherman, Joy Garnett, Deborah Garwood, Bob Gates, Jeff Gauntt, Stan Gaz, Madeline Gekiere, Amy Geller, Mike Geno, Alexis George, Valerie George, Sarah Getto, Cris Gianakos, Byron Gibbs, Haya Gil-Lubin, David Gilbert, Shelley Gilchrist, Ardian Gill, Jean K. Gill, Eric Ginsberg, Ava Ginsberg, Luis Gispert, Sean Gittens, Judy Glantzman, Milton Glaser, Sydell Glasser, Robin Glassman, Sybil Gleaton, Daniel Glendening, Angela Glennon, A. Godard, Kate Goertzen, Monika Goete, Susan Gofstein, Justin Goh, Jo Going, Nat Goldberg, Kenneth Sean Golden, Sheila Golden, Ben & Emma Goldman, Lance Goldsmith, David Goldstein, M. Xiomara Gomez, Maria Elena Gonzalez, Kathy Goodell, Alicia Goodfarb, Abby Goodman, David Emanuel Goodman, Juliette Goodwin, Michael Goodwin, Lee Gordon, Kay Gordon, Gore.b, Michelle Gorenstein, Tal Goretsky, Jeff Gottesfeld & Mike Diana, Sarah Gottlieb, sr(s) (gr)over, Leor Grady, Deborah Grant, Robin Graubard, Deba Jean Gray, Kimberley Gray, Joanne Greenbaum, Rodney Alan Greenblat, Eric Gregg, Stan Gregory, Peter Griffin, Michela Griffo, Clare Grill, Carina Grossmann, Katrin Grotepass, Caroline Grubbs, Erin Rae Guenzler, Ivaylo Guergiev, Kathy Gulrich, Rikki Gunton, Diana Gurfel, Carlos Gutierrez-Solana, Hans Haacke, Theresa Hackett, Patricia Haemmerle, Katherine Hagan, Sara Haley, Joan Hall, Cassandra Jennings Hall, Linda Hall, Brent Hallard, Dan Halm, Cristine Halt, Katy Hamer, Anna Hammand, Harmony Hammond, Jane Hammond, John Hampshire, Linda Handler, Tan Hang Wee, Rose Hankish, Erik Hanson, Kim Hanson, John Hardy, Joann M. Harrah, Christopher Harris, Rodney Harrison, Rose Hartman, Peter Harvey, Ellen Harvey, Michael Harwood, Naj Hasani, Naj Hasani, Naj Hasani, Skowmon Hastanan, Fred Hatt, Bobbi Hau, Sarah Hauser, Tom Hawkins, Stuart Hawkins, Mary Heilmann, Mara Held, Jessica Renee Helfand, Gary Heller, Thomas Hellstrom, Brizzy Hemphill, Doug Henders, Tyrone Henderson, Geoffrey Hendricks, Bill Hendricks, John Hendriks, Carol Henry, Ed Herman, Matthias Herrmann, Alex Hetherington, Bernard Hildebrandt, Amy Hill, Claudia Hill, Juan Hinojosa, Colleen Ho, Jim Hodges, Anne Hodson, Anna Hofverberg, Laura Holeman, Frank Holliday, Joseph O. Holmes, Katie Holten, Sylvia Hommert, Meejin Hong, Stephen Honicki, Jerry Hooten, Barbara Horiuchi, Marni Horwitz, Gail Howland, Joel Hoyer, Mary Hrbacek, Gilbert Hsiao, Elizabeth Huey, Morgan Hughes, Laura Hughes, Timothy Hull, David Humphrey, John Hyde, Nash Hyon, Jessica Iapino, Shigeno Ichimura, Asia Ingalls, Matthew Ingle Gaertner, Ketta Ioannidou, Carmen Isasi, Selene Isham, Junichiro Ishida, Ellen Ito, Albert J. Winn, Alfredo Jaar, Larry JaBell, Sandra Jackman, Clarke Jackson, Jackson, Angeliki Jackson, Peter Jacobs, Brooke Jacobs, Jerry Jacobson, Jimmie James, Nicholas James, XYLOR Jane, Matthew Jankowski, Lisa Marie Jankowski, Bobbie Jansen, James Jaxxa, Jim Jeffers, Jamie Jeffers, EunKyung Jeong, Tom Jezek, Aram Jibilian, Pedro Jimenez, Laura Johansen, Erick Johnson, Liz Johnson, Holly Johnson, Nikki Johnson, Carolina Johnson, Jon Joint, Darrell Jones, Bill Jones, Benjamin Jones, Hallie Jones, Darrell Jones, Julie Jones, Michael Joo, Jose Luis Jorge, Alexander Jugasz, Miranda July, Frank Jump, Paul Justice, Ellen Kahn, Faten Kanaan, Robin Kappy, Fernanda Kaspin, Nina Katchadourian, Betsy Kaufman, Jessica M. Kaufman, John Carlos Keasler, Andromahi Kefaloo, Millan Kelley, Shawn Kelloway, Shawn Kelloway, Jamie Kelty, Kate Kernstein, Sam Kerson, Shirin Khaki, Kianne, Hee Sook Kim, Young Kim, David King, Anki King, Sarah Kipp, Susan Kirby, J.T. Kirkland, Dmitry Kiyan, Ross Klavan, Barbara Klein, Susan Klein, Thomas Klem, Elisabeth Kley, Lucretia Knapp, Karen Knesevich, Emily Knight, Frances Knight, Elizabeth Knowles, Cassie Rose Kobeski, Philip Kogan, Terence Koh, Carol Kohn, Francine Kohn, Despina Konstantinides, Thomas Koole, Katherine Koos, Fran Kornfeld, Roy Kortick, E. Jan Kounitz, Joyce Kozloff, Hope Kozluca, Aaron Krach, Helmut Krackie, Benjamin Kraus, Fawn Krieger, Debra Kruse, Liliana Krynska, Melora Kuhn, Louis Kunsch, Melissa Kuntz, Michelle Kurlan, Srinivas Kuruganti, Eri Kuwabara, Greg Kwiatek, Michael Kwiecinski, Eliot Lable, Edwin Lacend, David Lachman, Stephen Lack, Miles Ladin, Abshalom Jac Lahav, Thomas Lail, Lexi Lambros, Jeremy Landau, Marc Landes, Aaron Landow, Jesse Langille, Jessica Langston, Yuliya Lanina, Barbara Lapin, Eve Andree Laramee, Laura Lark, Laura Lark, John S. Lathram, III, Sebastien Latreille, Ayala Laufer-Cahana, Dion Laurent, Louis Laurita, Louise Lawler, J.C. Lazarus, Norene Leddy, Marjeta Lederman, Cal Lee, Tom Lee, Roz Leibowitz, Catarina Leitao, Marc Lepson, Paul Leroy Gehres, Christopher Lesnewski, Barbara E. Leven, Joe Levickas, Les Levine, Esther Levine, Steven Johnson Leyba, Danny Licul, Edward Lightner, Glenn Ligon, Clarence Lin, Mindy Lin, Ming Lin, Jennifer Lindley, Martha Link, Megan Lipke, Stephen Lipman, Marcia Lippman, Lump Lipshitz, Jackie Lipton, Tim Lonergan, Daniel Long, Jason Longchamps, Hilary Lorenz, Nelson Loskamp, Valerie Love, Mary Ann LoVerme, Gina Lovoi, Bailey Lowenthal, Rebecca Loyche, Elizabeth Kom Lozake Browning, Robert Ludwig, Vera Lutter, Janelle Lynch, Giles Lyon, Noah Lyon, Noah Lyon, Noah Lyon, Mandy Lyons, Diana Lyons, Marci MacGuffie, Ian Mack, Krista Madsen, Megan Maguire, Cecilia Mahal, Charles Werner Mahal, Jr., Jennifer Mahlman, Rebecca Major, Luis Mallo, Stephen Mallon, Marian Maloney, David Mandel, Patricia Anne Mandel, Jason Mandella, Dina Mann, Ricky Manne, Erica Mapp, Mitchell Marco, Amy Marinelli, Thom Markee, Norma Markley, China Marks, Sandy Marostica, Adria Marquez, Kathleen S. A. Marquis, Christopher Marquis, Ena Marrero, Neil Marshall, Trevor Martin, Joanna Martinez, Bob Marty, Joanna Marzullo, Christina Massey, Randy Mastin, Thomas Matsuda, Joanne Mattera, Kegera Matthews-Lawrence, Matuschka, Gina Mauro, Annie Maxwell, Jen May, Lauren Mayer, Xanda Mc Cagg, Kerry McAnulty, Polly McCaffrey, Emma McCagg, F. Mott McCampbell, Allison McCarthy, Mark D. McComb, Harold McCray, Colleen McCubbin Stephanic, Nicole McCumber, Robert McCurdy, Meredith McDonald, Tim McDonnell, Barry McGee, Dominic McGill, Brendan McGillicuddy, Conor Mcgrady, Paul McHale, Kate McInerney, John McKaig, Craig McKenzie, Anne Q. McKeown, Sarah McKiel, Mark McLoughlin, Denise McMorrow, Bruce McNally, Jamie McPartland, Beverley McQuillan, Lisanne McTernan, Amanda Means, Roberto Medina, Pam Fradina Meheran, Morgan Meheran, Linda Meisenhelder, Brad Melamed, Reyez Melendez, Kristin Ann Melin, Haley Mellin, Margery Mellman, Ann Messner, Lucia Alba Mettler, Scott S. Meyers, Maggie Michael, Vincent Michaud, Elinor Milchan, William H. (Billy) Miller, Judith S. Miller, Holly Miller, Mireille Miller, Zan Miller, Marilyn Minter, Richard Mirabile, Michael Mitchell, Kenneth Mitchell, Tadashi Mitsui, Joseph Modica, John Monaco, Christopher Mondello, Dean Monogenis, Leah Montalto, Katherine Montelaro, Ken Montgomery, Gregory Montreuil, Chris Moody, Randy Moore, Cindy Moore, Nik Moore, Kellie Moore, Paul Moran, Michael C. Morgan, Janet Morgan, Lora Morgenstern, Juri Morioka, James Morrison, Leo Morrissey, Shawn Mortensen, Keren Moscovitch, Arezoo Moseni, Carrie Moyer, Ryan Mrozowski, Roger Mudre, Jill Mueller, Jay Muhlin, Erick Assis Munari, Susan Munoz, Elizabeth Murray, Tatyana Murray, Prema Murthy, Stefanie Nagorka, Math-You Namie, James Nares, Antonella Natale, Florence Neal, Victoria Neel, David Nelson, Irene Neno Diaz, Barbara Nessim, Becky Newsom, Kathleen Ney, Annysa Ng, Christian Nguyen, Elise Nicol, Thisbe Nissin, Nick Normal, Lorie Novak, Mardi Nowak, Judith Nylen, Robert O’Donnell, Elin O’Hara Slavick, Robyn O’Neil, Leah Oates, Ashley Oates, Staci Offutt, Iviva Olenick, Nancy Olivier, Stephen Olivier II, Stephen Olivier II, Suzanne Olmsted, Dawline-Jane Oniesele, Yoko Ono, Sarah Oppenheimer, Nicki Orbach, Steven Ott, Tom Otterness, Gwen Oulman Brennan, Joe Ovelman, Jennifer Overbagh, Lindsay Packer, Jean-Paul Page, Holly Painter, Mervi Pakaste, James Paladino, Ruby Palmer, Sachin Pannuri, John Thomas Paradiso, Jung Eun Park, Brendan Parker, Mike Parker (a.k.a. Swami), Rocio Parra Parra, Stephanie Parto, Garrett Jay Paulus, Jim Pavlicovic, Leanette Peles, Carol Peligian, Leemour Pelli, Liz Penniman, Sheila Pepe, Osvaldo Perdomo, Osvaldo Perdomo, Osvaldo Perdomo, Osvaldo Perdomo, Antonia Perez, Matteo Pericoli, Bruno Perillo, Quimetta Perle, Daniel Perry, Gilda Pervin, Samantha Pesono, Carol Petino, Karsten Petrat, Daniel Petrov, Alexander Petti, Carlos Pez, George Pfau, Carol Pfeffer, Laura Sue Phillips, Tracy Phillips, Corina Pia, James Picard, Lauren Picciano, Angelia Pickett, Marta Pierazzuoli, Jack Pierce, Lee Pierce, David Pierce, Vickie Pierre, Maya Pindyck, Mary Pinto, Kim Piotrowski, Philip Pirolo, Joe Piscopia, Lucia Pizzani, Lola Planells, Dan Plansky, Anna Plesset, Betsy Podlach, Tiffany Pollack, Ben Polsky, Michael Ponce, Nuno Pontes, Bonnie Portelance, Amy Jean Porter, Josefina Posch, Maggie Prendergast, Lily Prentice, Rubin Press, Elisa Pritzker, Rick Prol, Carol Prusa, Joan Puchalski, Ernesto Pujol, Dianne Purdy, Antonio Puri, Conny Purtill, Matthew Pych, Wayne Pyle, Ileana Quintano, Fred Quintiliani, Dada Ra, Kwanghee Ra, Svetlana Raby, Luis Rabyo, Michael Rader, Dean Radinorsky, Ramirex, Paul Henry Ramirez, John Rand, Meryl Lynn Ranzer, Rappel, Jon D. Rappleye, Kaylyn Raschke, Amy Raudenbush, Moriah Ray, Evan Read, Ashley Reagan, Florita Realin, Catherine Redmond, David Reed, Catherine Renae, Richard Renaldi, Jennifer Renshaw, Carla Repice, Barbara Jo Revelle, Miguel Angel Reyes, David Reyes, Carla Reyes, Eric Rhein, Misty Rice, Jean Richard, Robert W. Richards, Benito Rios, Stefanie Roach, Daniel H. Roberts, Marie Roberts, Dale Roberts, Cynthia Roberts, Daniel H. Roberts, Andrew Robinson, Gregory Robinson, Elise Robles, Debbie Rodenhauser, Kristina Rogers, Patricia Rogers, Sunsook Roh, Tina Rojas, Tim Rollins & K.O.S., Sonia Romero, Taney Roniger, Kara Rooney, Tara Rose, Kim Rosen, Caren Rosenblatt, Theo Rosenblum, Robin Ross, Ryan Roth, Billy Rotter, Joy Faye Rowan, Carrie Rubinstein, Cornelia Ruehlicke, Scott Rummler, Thomas Rupich, Ed Ruscha, Arlene Rush, Craig Russell, Gaetano Ruvio, Carol-Anne Ryce-Paul, Carol-Anne Ryce-Paul, George S., Tara Sabharwal, Beatricia Sagar, Ken Sahr, Aiana Saigueko, Karl Saliter, Vincent Salvati, Terry Samilson, Ginny Sampson, Toni-Lee Sanastiano, John Sanchez, Joel Sanders, Joel Sanders, Reuben Sandwich, Tom Sanford, Gloria Sangoyo Ruenitz, Carmine Santaniello, Katia Santibanez, Jonathan Santlofer, Paul Santoleri, Nelson Santos, Maria & Florentine Santos, Justin Sanz, Jennifer Sarkilahti, Gordon Sasaki, Richard Sawdon Smith, Thomas Arthur Schaefer, Michael Schall, Robert Schatz, Sebastian Schaub, Sascha Schaumburg, Ann Schaumburger, Kristen Scheffold, Laura Schindelman, Joseph Schindelman, John Schluenz, Diana Schmertz, Ciarra Schmidt, Jean Schneider, Gary Schneider, Holli Schorno, Tom Schreiber, Susan Schwalb, Molly Schwartz, Sandra Scicchitani, Caroline Scott, Jeffrey Scott, Chris Scroggins, John Seal, Laura Seewoester, Analia Segal, Jackie Seles, Andreas Senser, Christina Serchia, Dixie Serrano, Mary Seveland, Joseph Sexton, Grant Shaffer, Reena Shah, Lauren Shahroody, Babe Shapiro, Laura Sharp Wilson, S. Orrin Sharpless, Donna Sharrett, Patrick Shaw, Renee Shaw, David Shebird, Frank Sheehan, Mark Sheinkman, Albert Shelton, Kate Shepherd, Etienne Latour Genore Hughes Sheppard, Christine Sheppard, Nick Shiflet, Monica Shimkus, Heesun Shin, Gabrielle Shiner-Hill, Kaori Shiota, Ellen Shire, Peter O. Shire, Kiriko Shirobayashi, Ethan Shoshan, Skip Shot, Alyson Shotz, Joyce Siegel, Nathaniel Siegel, Rebecca Siemering, Lori Sikorski, Amy Sillman, Tawnie Silva, Pet Silvia, Stephanie Simek, Jimmie Mack Simmonds, Yvette Simone, Kelley Simons, Kirsten Fae Simonsen, Sonita Singwi, Jean Sirius, Linda Sirow, Liron Sissman, Christina Sitja Rubio, Christina Sitja Rubio, Kiley Sjogren, Gwendolyn Skaggs, Jasna Skroce, Berty Skuber, Tom Slaughter, Jill Slaymaker, Susannah Slocum, Oren Slor, Aminah Slor, Adam Smith, Kiki Smith, Lory Smith, Louise Smith, Alix Smith, Jaimee E. Smith, Chris Smith, Chris Smith, Elisabeth Smolarz, Tom Snelgrove, Dorothy Snyder, Claudia Sohrens, Deanne Sokolin, Jan Lynn Sokota, Xian Soldier, Lori Solondz, Thomas R. Somerville, Thomas R. Somerville, Erika Somogyi, Fierce Sonia, Robert Soret, Mario Sostre, Ilyse Soutine, Teddy Spath Jr., Maria Spector, Sabina Speich, Tracey Sperling, Gary Speziale, Gary Speziale, Gary Speziale, David Spiher, Margot Spindelman, Matthew St Adelmann, Sherry St. Renz, Francis Stallings, Chrysanne Stathacos, Rene Stawicki, Will Steacy, Anne Stebbins, Barry Steely, Clint Steib, Sarah Steinwachs, Pat Steir, Stanley Stellar, Seyda Sterns, Steven A. Stewart, Sam Still, Michael Still, Linda Stillman, Charles Stimson, Sara Stites, Mark Stockton, David Storey, Sonya Stoweng Artis, William Streeter, Lisa Studier, Christine Stuht, Lorien Suarez, Rachel Sugar, Daniel Suits, Daniel Suits, Barbara Sullivan, Patricia Sullivan, Paul Sunday, Rachel Sussman, Futaba Suzuki, Mariko Suzuki, Jenny Swartz, Jane Swidzinski, Edward Swift, Jason Szalla, Beata Szpura, Catherine Tafur, Barbara Takenaga, Sam Tan, Tattfoo Tan, Juanita Tarnowski, William Tarnowski, Tim Tate, Yumiko Tateishi, Steed Taylor, Morgan Taylor, Holly Taylor, Lidya Tchakerian, Tom Teebe Baoe, Lynn Teichman, Mary Temple, Sam Teoste, Julie Tersigni, Gwenn Thomas, Sarah Thomas, Sharon Thomas, Megan Thomas-Melly, Mike Thompson, Ginger Thompson, Ken Thurlbeck, M.F. Tichy, Arno Tijnagel, Elizabeth Tillotson, Mary Ting, Rirkrit Tiravanija, Zdravko Toic, Mette Tommerup, Jessie Tong, Anne Marie Torrez, MIchael Tracy, Kim Tran, Jim Trask, Bill Travis, Daniel Trese, Tret, Daniel Trout, Andrey Tsers, Marina Tsesarskaya, Tomoe Tsutsumi, Tomoe Tsutsumi, Roger Tucker, Spencer Tunick, Atiim Turnbull, Calvin Twogons, Chris Twomey, Kako Ueda, Aya Uekawa, Debbie Ullman, Penelope Umbrico, Chea Ryan Urioste, Angela Valeria, Teressa Valla, Janet Van Horne, Kathryn Van Winkle, Laura Varn, Ted Vasin, MaryJo Vath, Wilmer Velez, Leo Venice, Daniel Venne, Alejandra Villasmil, Jamyson Vining, Jeroen Visscher, Don Voisine, Bruce Volpone, Anja Volz, Anna Von Gwinner, Whitney Vosburgh, Angela Rose Voulgarelis, Melanie Wadsworth, Saudia Wadud, James Arthur Wagner, Kenneth Wahl, Todd A. Wahnish, Nomi Waksberg, Robert Walden, Jen Waldhaus, Athena Waligore, Joy Walker, Meg Walker, William Boyd Walker, Kay WalkingStick, Glen Walls, Glen Walls, John Walter, Gary Walters, Elizabeth Wang, Nari Ward, Tom Warren, Marcy Wasserman, John Waters, Brian Wayne, Mary Weatherford, Patrick Webb, Tenesh Webber, Joan Weber, Jarred Weese, William Wegman, Shirley Wegner, Michael Weidrich, Mary Weiher, Louise Weinberg, Michael Weinberg, Lawrence Weiner, Dan Weiner, Ejay Weiss, Barbara Weissberger, Lindsay Welch, Carolyn Weltman, Michael Werner, Patricia Wersinger, Carol Westfall, Frederick Weston, Kurt Weston, Charmaine Wheatley, Jojo Whilden, Ken Whitbeck, Dina White, Stephen White, Lisa Wicka, Angela Wieland, Mark Wiener, Meghan Wilbar, Randal Wilcox, Wild Goddess, L.K. Wilde, Darrell Wilks, Ross G. Williams, Michelle Williams, Wendy Willis, Corey J. Willis, Maggie Willman, Fred Wilson, Millie Wilson, Letha Wilson, Martha Wilsson Edelhert, Rosalie Winard, Jean Winget-Gibson, Adela Winter, Maud Wirstrom, Gene Wisniewski, Joshua Abram Witten, James Wodarek, Connie Wolfe, Samantha Wolov, Mike Womack, Colby Wong, Ann F. Wong, Jeffrey Jay Woodbury, Cindy Workman, Helena Wright, Joanna Wright, Tory Wright, Timothy J. Wright, Jeanine Wright, Jeffrey Cyphers Wright, Rob Wright, Peter Wyman, Noel Wynn, Rob Wynne, Michael Wyshock, Cathy Wysocki, Junko Yamada, Michi Yamaguchi, Lynne Yamamoto, Carrie Yamaoka, Tim Yankosky, Max Yawney, Bo Sung Yoom, Sunhee Yoon, Laurence Young, Rorie Young Sullivan, Daisy Yuhas, Cheryl Yun, Patricia Zarate, Andrew Zarou, John Zaso, Richard D. Zauner Jr., Susan Zell, Miguel Jimenes Zenon, Carolyn Zick, Richard Zimmerman, and Alice Zinnes.

Opportunity for Photographers

The Capitol Hill Arts Workshop (CHAW) is currently seeking submissions for its seventh annual contemporary Photography Exhibition running February 2^nd through March 1, 2013 at CHAW, 545 7^th Street, SE.   CHAW is looking for any and all types of contemporary photography including traditional, alternative, black and white, color, photojournalism, fine art, time based, performance, installation…if you think it involves photography, please submit by December 14, 2012 at www.chaw.org.

The exhibition will be curated by Bruce McKaig, chair of the Photography Department at CHAW (www.brucemckaig.com).  All submitting artists will be invited to participate in a workshop on business tips for artists and receive a marketing packet with exhibition, publication, marketing and funding sources.  CHAW will present cash awards and one or more participating artists will be invited to a public art project at Canal Park in 2013.

The entry fee is $25 and artists may submit three to five works or three to five minutes of video. Please call (202) 547-6839 or visit www.chaw.org for more information and to submit work. 

Dialogues on Mexican Photography at the Mexican Cultural Institute

By Bruce McKaig

The title, Dialogues on Mexican Photography applies to both exhibitions currently at the Mexican Cultural Institute. On the ground floor, there is a sampling of earlier and recent historical works from the Museum of Modern Art in Mexico City. On the fourth floor, there is a selection of contemporary works by artists represented by the Galeria OMR also in Mexico City.

Considered independently, each show examines photographic explorations of place and identity in Mexico. When considered in tandem, they also set a stage to reexamine identity at a more ambitious level.

The ground floor galleries present an exhibition of 60 works by over thirty artists from the collection of the MOMA in Mexico City. Given the vast and deep photographic explorations in Mexico since the advent of the medium, it is no surprise that Osbaldo Sanchez, Director of the MOMA, and Inaki Herranz, co-curator of this exhibition, had access to ample works from which to chose. Nearly 60 works by five contemporary artists are displayed on the fourth floor, curated by Patricia Ortiz Monasterio, director of the prestigious Galeria OMR.

Graciela Iturbide, Mujer Angel c.1980
These hors d’oeuvre exhibitions, independently curated and structured, do not try to exhaustively cover the topics they introduce. When initially shown in Mexico City, the MOMA exhibit included some works that for various practical considerations did not travel to DC. Monasterio curated the contemporary works not from the at-large art world in Mexico but from the pool of artists that her gallery represents.

Both self-sufficient exhibits pack a substantial amount of visual and intellectual dialogue in to just a few rooms. However, an additional dialogue arises if we take a minute to compare and contrast the two exhibitions. The juxtaposition explores more than how photography or Mexico – or Mexican -- has changed over the past one hundred years. It explores how the very concept of identity has shifted from geographically based to time based, a temporal not spatial sense of self.

The wall text for the MOMA exhibit (there is little to no text in the contemporary show upstairs) enlightens the viewer to thoughts, trends, dynamics over the past century that unite or divide artists as they worked and public as they observed. The MOMA images are organized thematically rather than chronologically or geographically. The Language of Pure Forms mentions how photographers sought innovative ways to explore identity and propose, new ways to represent place. The Portrait as Symbolic Act explains that the basic function of a portrait is to introduce ourselves to the larger world. The Eternal Reinvention of the Landscape groups photographs that use the landscape to reflect the intellectual ferment of the time, the existential and political expressions of the era, to nourish codes of identity or geographic mythology. Other themes point out the use of purity versus propaganda, of the photo-story, of performance.

Carry the structure, images, and texts of the MOMA works upstairs to look at the contemporary works and a dialogue between the two exhibitions, and between the past and current centuries, begins. On one level, the contemporary works display a continued international influence, innovative ways to explore identity and purpose, to nourish codes of identity, to use psychology or performance. On a different level, the contemporary works illustrate an international presence not limited to changing content, technique or aesthetic. They also illustrate how international influence itself has become the contemporary reference material for place and identity, how international connectivity provokes more thought about time than place.


Mauricio Alejo, Pinzas, c.2005
The contemporary artists use photography, but only as one ingredient in a multipart recipe of art, technique and thought. Mauricio Alejo’s staged and ephemeral sculptures demonstrate an individualistic gesture in various quotidian spaces, but the works are apparently made to last just long enough to be photographed. These images are not of monuments that exemplify an era’s achievements or failures. They are moments when an individual manifested, as if such a moment is itself monumental, or good enough, self-sufficient. The assumption that none of those spaces persist in that state provokes thoughts on time and how things – the artist, the place, the viewer – have changed since the manifest moment’s demise. Laureana Toledo’s time-lapse videos of building facades certainly do not emphasize the significance of any individual. The pieces do not explore who people are, they explore moments people live – or, better stated, suggest that people are the moments that they live. Period. Rafael Lozano-Henner’s use of surveillance cameras and anonymous performers, while infused with humor, relegates an individual’s presence to a fleeting effort to be seen -- not heard, not counted, just seen. Briefly. “Portrait” here does not introduce oneself to the larger world, it splices oneself into it. Briefly. If one of the many dialogues in the ground floor MOMA works is over purity versus propaganda, both thoughts have slipped through the cracks by the fourth floor, melting into an amorphous foundation whose principle interest is now explored by how it moves, not what it is.

Dialogues in Mexican Photography, in juxtaposing these two exhibits, becomes a dialogue in historical identity, a dialogue more about time than a dialogue over time. Twentieth century artists in Mexico left a rich visual legacy, sometimes stereotypical, sometimes poetic, sometimes prescriptive as much as descriptive, of what made Mexican not, for instance, Bosnian. The contemporary artists’ works are more an exploration of what it is to be in the here-and-now and not, for instance, lasting.

Where: Mexican Cultural Institute 2829 16th Street, NW Washington, DC 20009

When: November 13th 2009 – January 30th 2010, M-F 10am – 6pm, Sat 10am