This coming Sunday is the Bethesda Artist Market and I will be there along with 30-35 area artists selling artwork. Goes from 10-5:30 PM at Bethesda Plaza.

More info here.

Not often that a new masterpiece is "discovered."

A small but anatomically correct wood carving statute of Christ on the cross is set to "cause a stir in the art world this weekend as it appears in Florence for the first time, billed as a hitherto unknown masterpiece by the city's most famous artist, Michelangelo Buonarroti."

Regular DCARTNEWS reader Darin Boville makes a good point about my posting below and that we shouldn't snicker at Shreveport's awful sculptures when we have atrocious sculptures like the unfortunate Korean War Memorial - a magnificent design by the way - but awfully executed by sculptor Frank Gaylord.

Some of the figures are way out of any human proportion that I know of... also some of the hardware is as if the sculptor had taked toy guns and made molds from them....

In fact, the more I think about it, the more I convince myself that our Korean War sculptures are worse than the MLK memorial statutes in Shreveport!

This is so funny! DCARTNEWS reader and area artist James W. Bailey sent me this great link announcing that the city of Shreveport had won "bad art poll" and not only that, but it also received over 40% of the vote!

It seems appropriate that Picasso, perhaps the world's greatest artist ever, is the first one to smash the $100 million dollar auction price. Read the Sotheby's story here.

Norman Rockwell's Four Freedoms: Paintings That Inspired a Nation opens on May 15 and runs to my birthday on September 6th! at the Corcoran Gallery of Art.

Co-organized by the Corcoran Gallery of Art and the Norman Rockwell Museum and presented in conjunction with the dedication of the new National World War II Memorial, Norman Rockwell's Four Freedoms: Paintings That Inspired a Nation celebrates four of the artist's most well-known paintings.

Rockwell created Freedom of Speech, Freedom from Want, Freedom of Worship and Freedom from Fear after President Franklin D. Roosevelt's speech addressing these four fundamental freedoms of all Americans in 1943 (except of course, for Americans of Japanese ancestry).

Rockwell's unexpected rise to the upper crust of the fine arts world, after being maligned for so many decades, and in spite of the dislike of his work by many elistist curators, has been a pleasant surprise of the modern art scene.

Only Nixon could go to China and only Rockwell could paint stuff like this back in the 60s.

The District of Columbia Arts Center is one of the great cultural jewels in our city, and next Friday they will be celebrating their 15th anniversary with a gala at historic Halcyon House in Georgetown.

Since its inception in 1989, DCAC has presented more than 100 visual art exhibitions and well over 500 performance events. Poets, painters, actors, storytellers, sculptors, and performance artists have been drawn to DCAC, which features an 800-square-foot gallery and a 50-seat black-box theater. This interdisciplinary arts space is a vital cultural asset in our area. Last year alone, the DCAC gallery's programming included 11 visual art exhibitions featuring six D.C. artists, as well as artists from Cuba, Miami, Philadelphia, Croatia and Taiwan.

The gala will feature food, open bar, 10 piece band, outdoor performance, and the huge studio of artist John Dreyfuss - the largest artist studio in DC and possibly one of the largest in the world. I've been to Halcyon many times, and just a visit to this gorgeous house is worth the admission price. For more details, contact DCAC at 202.462.7833.

Next Friday, on May 14, from 6-9 PM we're hosting an opening reception for the second solo show by Tim Tate.

Tim Tate, the 2003 Washington DC Artist of the Year, is an openly gay artist who has been HIV-positive for over 20 years and who now finds himself as one of the hottest and rapidly rising artists in our region.

Tate has had an extraordinary couple of years, with some spectacular accomplishments. Amongst these, in addition to being selected as the "Washington DC Emerging Artist of the Year" at the last Annual Mayor's Arts Awards, Tate also recently won the international design competition for the International AIDS Monument to be built in New Orleans, he also founded the Washington Glass School - already a prime arts force in our community. He is also the Founder of the Gay and Lesbian Artist Group in Washington, DC.

His work has recently been acquired for the permanent collection of the Smithsonian's American Art Museum's Renwick Gallery and last week, together with Whitney Museum Curator Lawrence Rinder, he was a key panelist in the Hirshhorn Museum's panel on Arts and Healing.

Tate works in glass, and nearly all of his imagery deals with HIV and healing. He is considered by many to be the finest contemporary glass artist in the region, and is a brilliant creative talent who has gone beyond mastery of the technical skills of the art of fine art glass and is now pushing the genre into new areas where content is the prime force behind the work. Tate marries his artwork with intelligent ideas and conceptual dialogues that bring forth reactions, opinions and set forward a whole new conversation and path for the genre of fine art glass.

Using events and details from his personal life as well as public issues, Tate incorporates this as a rich set of conceptual ideas so that his work is no longer about the technical frontier of the art glass genre, or the use of colors and forms – it is all that and more.

How? Tate breaks new ground by adding a new vocabulary to the genre: A vocabulary made of content that requires and understanding of what the artist wants to express. In doing so, Tate has absolutely changed and refined his art and vision, a change that was first kindled by the death of his mother, which he expressed by an obsessive desire to create small, beautiful glass hearts, which have nothing to do with religion, but childhood memories of JFK imagery in his home. In another series of works, dealing with HIV, undefined forms within tall cylindrical towers of nebulous glass come into focus as the towers are spun – defining symbols and crosses that represent cures for diseases, both physical and cultural.

Tate studied at Dale Chihuly’s Pilchuck Glass School in Washington State, Corning Glass in New York and Penland School of Crafts in North Carolina.

His first solo exhibition at Fraser Gallery Georgetown in 2003 sold out, and we currently have him scheduled to open this new show at Fraser Gallery Bethesda on May 14 through June 8, 2004. Titled "I Never Claimed to Have a Map to Get to The Heart Of This Or Any Other Matter...." at this exhibit Tate will open a new series of works in glass addressing his obsession with HIV and healing.

Ken Trapp, former Curator in Charge of the Smithsonian's American Art Museum's Renwick Gallery has written the following about Tate's new work that we will be exhibiting this next month:

"HEART-SHAPES WITH FLAMES ATOP AND WORDS ACROSS THEIR FRONT, SLICES OF GLASS LAID ONE ATOP THE OTHER TO CREATE A SOLID VESSEL IMPRISONING A FIGURE, AND STILLED BODIES EMBEDDED IN A GLASSY TOMB, ARE SOME OF THE SUBJECTS IN TIM TATE'S MOST RECENT EXHIBITION "I Never Claimed to Have a Map to Get to The Heart Of This Or Any Other Matter...."

AND YET THESE OBJECTS ARE NOT MORBID OR REPULSIVE. BY TAKING ON THE CLICHES OF OUR CULTURE TATE LAYS DOWN A CHALLENGE FOR HIMSELF, A CHALLENGE HE IS UP TO. IT IS EASY TO MISREAD HIS IMAGES: HE MUST BE A DEVOTED CATHOLIC, FOR INSTANCE.

FOR TATE, THE OBVIOUS IS NEVER SO CLEAR. HE SUBVERTS THE SACRED BY TREATING ICONS AS SECULAR IMAGES---A HEART IS NOT NECESSARILY A HEART, BUT AN IMAGE FILLED WITH CONTENT. HIS USE OF TEXT IS NEVER TRITE OR PANDORING, BUT RATHER TAKES US ON HIS PERSONAL ODISSEY OF HEALING.

IN OTHER PIECES, HIS FIGURES ARE VEILED AND COVERED, ONE WITH THEIR MATERIAL OF IMPRISONMENT, REMINDING US OF TATE'S FEELINGS OF INVISIBILITY IN SOCIETY. IT IS IMPOSSIBLE TO SEE SUCH FIGURES AND NOT BE REMINDED OF HOW MUCH THE DISCOVERY OF SELF IS A DAILY EXERCISE OF UNCOVERING LAYERS WE HAVE ASSUMED OR IMPOSED ON OURSELVES. THIS SHOW REPRESENTS A JOURNEY WORTH EMBARKING ON......

Sandra Ramos, one of the leading Cuban artists in the world, and whose American debut takes place at Fraser Gallery Georgetown this coming May 21, made the national news recently when she had her visiting visa denied to attend her solo show opening reception.

And now Ramos has enlisted a powerful friend in her effort to get a chance to attend her American gallery debut: Senator Paul Sarbanes from Maryland.

In a letter to the gallery, Senator Sarbanes directed the gallery to request that Ramos apply again for a visitor's visa and Sarbanes wrote: "If Ms. Ramos is willing to reapply, I will be pleased to provide a letter in support of her application by email to the Consulate on her behalf."

The US Department of State has been denying visiting visas to Cuban artists since the beginning of the year. Ramos is considered by many to be the leading Cuban artist of her generation and has previously visited the US many times. Her work, which deals with many taboo issues of Cuban society and government, is in the collection of several American museums, including MOMA in New York and MFA in Boston.

For figurative artists...

2nd Annual Figurative Art Online Competition from www.Atelier-rc.com. The First Prize winner will be the featured artist for the Summer 2004 Edition to be launched on 28 June 2004, the 427th anniversary of the birth of Peter Paul Rubens. For details visit:this web site.

After a long anticipated wait, one of our area's best printed resources, the 2004/2005 Artist Directory will be delivered to WPA\C on Friday, May 7, 2004.

Distribution of pre-paid directories begins at their Artist Directory Launch Party from 4-8 PM at the Gallery at Flashpoint, 916 G Street, NW, Washington, DC, 20001. Please bring family and friends and stop by the launch party to pick up or purchase the new 2004/2005 Artist Directory as well as check out the WPA\C sponsored show, Anonymous.

Many DC area art galleries, including us will also be selling the directory. Any artists wishing to be included in next year's directory, should contact the WPA/C.

Just back from two days at Arts in the Park in Richmond, still going strong after 34 years. A bit rainy and windy, but still managed to sell a few pieces of artwork.

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.