Later on today I'm heading down to Richmond for Arts in the Park.

More often than not, most conceptual art, and nearly all video art, has a problem with the fact that often the idea behind it all is more interesting than the real or "delivered" art.

There seems to be a new sort of conceptual "art" out there developing among the popular mass of reality in places such as Ebay.

In projects such as this one, the mass participation, and concept behind the project is as interesting as anything that one sees in a highbrow museum.

Thanks to Martin Allen for bringing it to my attention.

Washington's first Art BLOGger, Tyler Green, looks at Jim Dine at the NGA and makes a good point about the NGA being a "living-artist-adverse institution," although his logic on Dine is a bit thin, as I don't think that Dine is a "safe, serviceable artist" but in fact one of the most boring artists to have put graphite or charcoal to paper.

The Post's Paul Richard had earlier reviewed this show and had some different conclusions.

If you're going to pretend to be knowledgeable about DC art galleries and the DC art scene, then you have to get out and go to galleries - not to their websites and not to museum lectures - but to galleries and museums and lectures and artists' studios and university shows, etc.

It takes a lot of time, and a lot of gasoline, and a lot of patience. But then, and only then, can one honestly say that one can write about a city's art scene.

Tonite I went to a well-attended opening at Strand on Volta Gallery in Georgetown, where I saw an excellent and really groundbreaking show by one of our key area artists, Margaret Boozer.

Boozer is one of those area artists whose work immediately grabs you with the thought: "WOW! Just when I thought there was nothing new left in art."

More on that later, as I plan to review her show...

The opening was quite good and well-attended, with many DC area artists in attendance as well as the Post's Chief Art Critic and his lovely wife (my kudos to Blake and we hope to see him at more gallery openings and we hope that his editor (John Pancake) makes him write more about DC area art galleries and terrific DC area artists like Margaret Boozer, so that they can have a chance to go from "DC area artist" to just "American artist" at a national level. Gopnik and Pancake can do it via the Post - but they (and it) have to align to make it happen.

Also present was Dr. Jonathan Binstock, the Corcoran's Curator for Contemporary Art... it's good to see Binstock visiting local galleries and seeing what we're showing... he's a great breath of fresh-air over his predecesor. Binstock wrote his thesis on the art of DC's best-known painter, Sam Gilliam, and hopefully the Corcoran will soon announce when Gilliam's well-deserved and first-ever perspective is held there.

Just had to post this, sent to me by British artist and DCARTNEWS reader Martin Allen

Trawick Prize for Area Artists...

The Trawick Prize: Bethesda Contemporary Art Awards. Deadline for slide submission is Friday, May 21, 2004. The 2nd annual juried art competition awards $14,000 in prize monies to four selected artists. Up to fifteen artists will be invited to display their work from September 7, 2004 - October 2, 2004 in downtown Bethesda at Creative Partners Gallery. The 2004 competition will be juried by Jeffrey W. Allison, The Paul Mellon Collection Educator at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts; Peter Dubeau, Associate Dean of Continuing Studies at the Maryland Institute College of Art and Kristen Hileman, Assistant Curator at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden. The first place winner will be awarded $10,000; second place will be honored with $2,000 and third place will be awarded $1,000. A "young" artist whose birth date is after May 21, 1974 will also be awarded $1,000 (donated by Fraser Gallery). Artists must be 18 years of age or older and residents of Maryland, Virginia or Washington, D.C. Original painting, drawing, photography, sculpture, fiber art, digital, mixed media and video (VHS tapes only) are accepted. For more information, please contact Stephanie Coppula at scoppula@bethesda.org or call 301.215.6660 ext. 20. Website: www.bethesda.org.

Need to make slides from your digital files? Visit Slides.com

Cultural Development Corporation is currently accepting applications to the Flashpoint arts incubator for residency beginning between June 2004 and January 2005. First priority will be given to applications received by May 14, 2004.

FLASHPOINT RESIDENCY

Flashpoint is an arts incubator designed to assist small, emerging organizations and businesses develop the administrative infrastructure and financial capacity necessary to transition to more permanent facilities. Resident organizations housed at Flashpoint have access to state-of-the-art facilities and greater visibility in downtown. In addition, the residency program encourages professionalism among emerging artists and arts administrators. Residents grow their businesses in a collaborative office space with access to shared office equipment and administrative services.

Flashpoint’s resident organizations have access to technical assistance in key management areas such as administration, fundraising, finance, marketing, and board development. In addition, resident organizations have priority access to onsite rental venues, including a 900 square foot contemporary art gallery, a flexible 80-seat theatre lab, and a dance/rehearsal studio.

Application is available at www.flashpointdc.org.

Please submit completed applications to:
Flashpoint Residency Program
Attn: Julianne Brienza
Cultural Development Corporation
916 G Street, NW
Washington, DC 20001

For those of you who think there's nothing interesting currently being offered by Washington area galleries my only piece of advice is to get out and actually go visit some galleries.

In Canal Square, Parish Gallery has an excellent sculpture exhibition (runs until May 18) of Argentine sculptor Miguel Van Esso.

Parish next door neighbor to its left is MOCA, and Clark has mounted an interesting exhibit of early work by David Lynch, perhaps the Corcoran's most famous graduate.

Parish next door neighbor to its right is us (The Fraser Gallery) and we also have a very interesting sculpture exhibition by one of our area's most innovative young sculptors, Adam Bradley, whose work we've been showing since he was an undergraduate student at GMU (where he now teaches). Bradley works with found objects, and there's one particularly amazing piece in this show titled "Please" made completely out of discarded objects.

The life-size sculpture has open arms that beckon you for a hug. As you hug the sculpture, two levers on the back control her arms, which pull you in a tight grip and impale you on a host of knives, sharp objects and files which emerge from her stomach.

A couple of blocks up M street is Hemphill Fine Arts where George has another very interesting show: "Vote" - a show of Presidential Campaign photographs featuring work by Abbas, Bob Adelman, Eve Arnold, Cornell Capa, Raymond Depardon, Burt Glinn, Erich Hartmann, Hiroji Kubota, Constantine Manos, Wayne Miller and Alex Webb and also "The Hole Shebang" - with Eduardo Del Valle and Mirta Gomez's works on the subject of the Florida Ballots from the 2000 Presidential Election.

Kathryn Cornelius will be doing a performance piece in which she will "speak" on Postmodernity and Language.

Title: “Theory Will Eat Itself: Notes on Postmodernity from A – Z”
Date: April 29, 2004
Time: 7:30-9pm
Location: Georgetown University, Reiss 103 Lecture Hall. By the way... buy Kathryn Cornelius now.

A couple of weeks ago I went to the grand opening of Baltimore's newest art gallery, Light Street Gallery. Two area photographers, Danny Conant and Grace Taylor will have work in The Male Nude Group Show, the gallery's second show, which opens May 8, 2004 with an opening reception on May 15 from 5-10 PM.

That same night, Conner Contemporary hosts the opening reception and return to DC of acclaimed New York based media artist Leo Villareal, whose first show at Conner I reviewed and was quite impressive. Reception from 6-8 PM.

And the night before, on May 14, Marnin Art on 7th street is hosting an opening reception for Giuseppe Maraniello, who is an Italian artist who lives and works in Milan and in Europe. Reception 6 - 8:30 PM.

And G Fine Art, which is operating out of a temporary space while their new space on 14th street is finished, has a group show opening on May 7th, 2004 from 6:30-8:30pm. The show includes work by gallery artists and others. Artists in the show will be Noah Angell, Iona Rozeal Brown, Astrid Colomar, Linn Meyers, Maggie Michael, Team Response, Jose Ruiz, Luis Silva and Jeff Spaulding.

NY Times reports that Lawrence Rinder, curator of contemporary art at the Whitney Museum of American Art for four years, has resigned to become Dean of graduate studies at the California College of the Arts in San Francisco.

Rinder was just in town over the weekend.

Washington area artist Stuart Gosswein's letter to the Sunday Arts in yesterday's Washington Post discusses the important fact that the salvaged facades of the World Trade Center - which in many people's opinion, including mine, became the key symbol of the 9/11 attack - are to be "chopped up and displayed in an underground museum" rather then re-used in a final WTC monument, as it was originally envisioned.

And Stuart has thus started a campaign to reassemble the facades around the Tower footprints. For more information or to help, contact:Stuart Gosswein at (202) 783-6007, ext. 30 or email him at sgosswein@aol.com

Tomorrow I'll be at the Celtic Festival and Highland Gathering of Southern Maryland .

This is the kind of review that gets written, when elitists write the reviews.

Popularity doesn't always mean bad.

But when the critics and high art curators ignore an artist (as they have with this British self-taught ex-miner) and yet that artist nonetheless becomes famous, and rich, and then strikes huge auctions prizes at Sotheby's in the world of high art - the critics (now proven wrong by their own standards) have to spout theory and ignorance to desperately attempt to prove that they are still right.

Comparing Vettriano to Damien Hirst or Tracey Emin is perhaps the stupidest comparison that I have ever read and shows breathtaking ignorance of the power of the Saatchi PR machine to "create" those artists as opposed to a poor ex-miner from Scotland rising through the maze of modern art, while being ignored by the arts establishment, to become the best-selling artist in the world and now a secondary art market name to reckon with!

And so what if his paintintgs are overtly sexual, or overtly romantic, or overtly fill-in-the-blank.... perhaps he's been painted into a corner because there's no irony in his works, but just the honest brush of a working class, smoking, womanizer, hard drinking Scot who could give a fuck as to what an art critic thinks about his paintings.

By the way... the Vettriano painting that sold at Sotheby's for £744,800 (that's over $1.5 million) was sold by the artist in 1991 for a mere £3,000!

But don't cry for Jack, as apparently, the royalties from all the posters and postcards and other crap made from the painting earn him about half a million dollars a year!

Keep them cooking Jack!

Opportunity for artists...

The League of Reston Artists has a call for artists for its 11th Annual Juried Fine Arts Exhibition.

This exhibition will feature $1,500 in prize monies, including the $500 Jo Ann Rose Award in honor of the LRA's past president, Jo Ann Rose.

Ms. Trudi Van Dyke, the brand-new Director of the Torpedo Factory (and former director of Ellipse Arts Center, will serve as juror for this exhibition.

This call for entry is limited to a maximum of three works of art in any 2-D media from each artist. The entry fee for LRA members is $20 ($25 at the door) and $25 for non-members ($30 at the door).

All entries must be post marked by May 28, 2004. The entry form can be downloaded from the LRA's website. Send completed entry form to:

LRA
PO Box 2513
Reston, VA 20195

New Museum Show Opening...

The Art Museum of the Americas is hosting an opening reception for ABCDF: portraits of a city - (Contemporary Photography of Mexico).

The opening reception is on Thursday, April 29 at The Art Museum of the Americas (201 18th Street, N.W.). For more information, please call (202) 458-6016, or e-mail gsvitil@oas.org.

Museum hours following the opening are Tuesday-Sunday, 10 AM-5 PM.

I've written before on the subject of race and art and also on the stupifying American notion of Hispanics and/or Latinos - a totally made up "ethnicity" from a widely diverse set of nations made up of immigrants from all over the world (just like us in the USA).

And there's an art show coupled with a thesis project by George Washington University student Christina Hayes that underscores my beef with this force-fed notion of "Hispanicity."

The exhibition is called "Walking to their own beat: Afro-Cuban Musicians and the Black Identity." It consists of an exhibit by photographer Nestor Hernández dedicated to the contributions of Afro-Cuban music and its musicians, both in Cuba and in the Washington DC metropolitan area. The exhibit compliments Hayes' thesis project and should be an interesting one, as Hernandez is without a doubt one of Washington's great photographers, and who has been pursuing and discovering his 50% Cuban bloodlines with an artistic ferocity that can only kindle great results.

Nestor was part of "De Aqui y de Alla," our 2003 exhibition of Cuban artists from Cuban and the Cuban Diaspora around the world.

The exhibit has an open reception this coming Thursday, April 29th, 2004 at 6 pm. It's at the Latin American Youth Center, located at 1419 Columbia Road NW,Washington DC 20009 (202) 319-2225.

For more information, contact: Christina Hayes at (202) 448-0581 or email her at chayes@gwu.edu

Jessica Dawson reviews one of her favorite art venues in today's Post. Read it here.

Heard from Kathryn Cornelius that the Georgetown University Festival of Fine Arts got off to a good start.

I've been swamped with a house closing and now the exhausting task of moving.

Don't forget that MAP's Free-Hung Exhibition starts hanging art tomorrow.

The below info thanks to Malik Lloyd of Find Art Information Bank

Government Opportunities for Artists

For years now in the Washington DC area, and perhaps in yours as well, there has been this commercial on cable TV about free money available from the US Government. Although I never gave much credence to the ad, the man featured in the commercial has always amused me.

He dons a suit, a throwback to the Joker seen in the "Batman and Robin" TV show. He is Matthew Lesko and walks on the Washington Mall excitedly declaring that the government is giving away free money--to get a better job, to begin a new career, to get an education, to start or expand your own business, etc. Most people, like me, however, amused probably view his claims with a little suspicion. Since I like being amused, his ads usually capture my attention. The catch is to purchase his book and a person's life could change for the better.

Recently, I borrowed this book from a friend "creatively" titled "Free Money to Change Your Life." Actually, I discovered that there is information beneficial to artists. For example, it includes the amount of grants that state arts programs award annually, as well as contact information for each state art agency.

The chapter, "How Artists, Designers, and Photographers Can Get Freelance Government Contracts," list artists whom received contracts along with the amount of the contract. Nearly thirty government agencies utilize freelance artists. The Department of Labor hires outside art contractors to do editorial illustrations, book cover designs, stationery and newsletters. The U.S. Postal Service employs freelance artists to support many of their projects, including posters, brochures, and stamps. The Food and Drug Administration contracts graphic artists and designers for editorial illustrations, exhibit designs, posters and photographic projects. The U.S. Geological Survey awards about $100,000 in graphic arts contracts annually. Even the IRS gets in on the act, spending approximately $650,000 annually on contracts with various artists. Not only do we learn the types of artwork agencies use, but the book provides gives step-by-step instructions on how to obtain freelance work from the government, including contractual points of contact and application deadlines.

In addition, there is information on how to obtain contracts in video production and voiceovers as well as for freelance writers and editors.

Based on the information read, I would say that his book is an excellent start for anyone considering freelancing for the government. However, with a $60 price tag, I am pleased that I borrowed "Free Money to Change Your Life." I was informed by a friend that "Lesko is a sharp and funny guy who has made a living for at least 20 years by compiling government information buried in public documents and enthusiastically sharing it with people in a way they can really use it."

The original documents aren't secret, they're just boring. I think Lesko would be delighted if someone saved $60 on his book by borrowing it from the Government - from the local public library.

You can also order the book from Amazon.