Opportunity for artists

Montgomery College Drawing National II

Deadline: January 20, 2005 (snail mail entries)
January 21, 2005 (email entries)

Exhibition dates February 21 - March 11 at Montgomery College in Rockville, MD. Open to artists living in the United States. All drawing media. One to three entries. No entry fee, no commission, return shipping paid for mail-delivered work. No size restrictions. Work must be ready to hang, presented in a professional manner. Insurance.

Approximately 35-40 works will be exhibited. Looking for straight, creative, and unusual approaches to drawing.

Juror: Sarah Stecher, Associate Professor of Art, Montgomery College. 301-251-7649, Email her here.

View and download prospectus here.

Some DC area art jobs

Deadline: January 17, 2005
Job: Assistant Director of the Art Gallery at the University of Maryland.

The Assistant Director works closely with the Director in the overall management and administration of the Gallery's exhibition program, permanent collection, education program, and fundraising.

The successful candidate will fulfill the following requirements: Possess a bachelor's degree. Must have 2-3 years experience in a museum of gallery setting involving exhibitions, handling art objects, and grant writing. Excellent organizational, time management, and oral and written communication skills. Ability to prioritize and manage multiple tasks and deadlines. Strong interpersonal skills and an ability to interact with a diverse public. Additionally, the preferred candidate will: Possess a bachelor degree in art, art history, or related fields. Possess a graduate degree. Demonstrate academic training in art history and/or art and understanding of current museum standards.

Salary: Low to mid 30's

For best consideration send a letter of application, resume or curriculum vitae and three names of references by January 17, 2005 to:

Dorit Yaron
Deputy Director
David C. Driskell Center
2108 Tawes Fine Arts Building
University of Maryland
College Park, MD 20742

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Job: Assistant Professor in Graphic Design: American University

Deadline: Until filled

Assistant Professor rank. Tenture Track. Beginning Fall 2005. Qualifications: MFA or equivalent terminal degree in the discipline. Teaching and professional experience preferred. The applicant should be knowledgeable of current issues in design, the demands of the professional field and the tools, technologies and resources inherent to the discipline. Expected familiarity with theoretical issues of graphic design as well as its historical background. Ability to contribute to the teaching of interactive and experience design courses a plus.

Responsibilities: Teach courses in graphic design at the undergraduate level, basic through advanced levels; stduent advising, including mentoring women and minority students. Scholarship/Creative work: active professional in the field. University service: serving on Department, College and University Committees. Salary is competitive and dependent on qualifications and experience. Applications will be reviewed beginning January 15, 2005 and continue until the position is filled.

Selected candidate will begin appointment working at facilities located in a brand-new building. Visit www.design.american.edu and www.american.edu for further information on the University and design program. Include letter of application stating teaching philosophy, curriculum vitae, a minimum of 20 slides or disk media with samples of own work and (if available) examples of students' work, and printed writing samples if any.

Salary: Competitive and dependent on qualifications and experience.

Send materials along with a self-addressed, stamped envelope for their return, and three letters of recommendation to:

Graphic Design Search Committee
Department of Art
American University
4400 Massachusetts Avenue NW
Washington DC 20016-8004

Top 10 DCist Posts of 2004

DCist was one of the best things that happened to our area's cyberspace information grid (how's that for a new acronym? the CIG!). Anyway, they have their Top 10 DCist Posts of 2004 and were kind enough to have a few nice words about DC Art News.

Read their list here.

(Thanks AJ!) A tried and true formula for achieving and becoming temporarily notarious includes a healthy dose of anti-government political art. If the idiots in government (in this case the Swiss) bite and do any sort of censoring, the artist is guaranteed overnight exposure!

"No one paid much heed last year when the Swiss artist Thomas Hirschhorn stopped showing his work in Switzerland to protest a right-wing populist's entry into the government. Now, in a new exhibition in Paris, a biting critique of Swiss democracy, Mr. Hirschhorn has provoked stormy scenes in the Swiss Parliament that have turned him into his country's most talked about artist overnight."

Read the latest case in the NYT here. If you don't have a NYT password, get one: it's free! (or useAJ's).

Even the Swiss! Geez!

Faith Flanagan's Top Ten DC area exhibitions of 2004

Faith Flanagan is a local art fan, collector in the rough, and sometime guerilla curator. Here's her top DC area shows of the year:

Calder/Miro, The Phillips Collection
Douglas Gordon (with emphasis on 24 hour Psycho), Hirshhorn
Jason Gubbiotti and Ian Whitmore, Fusebox
Jenny Holzer, Xenon for DC, Curator's Office
Avish Khebrehzadeh, Conner Contemporary Art
Sally Mann, Last Measure, Hemphill Fine Arts
Ana Mendieta, Hirshhorn
Maggie Michael, Run, G Fine Art
Brandon Morse, These Things Happen, Strand on Volta
Esther Hidalgo - Lara Oliveira - Katherine Radke - Christopher Saah - Dylan
Scholinski, THE EXERCISES--E1: Contemplating Process, Transformer Gallery

Addendums -- (aka TG Awards):
Best After-Party: WPA/C Auction 2004, Black Cat
Best (sort of borrowed) Fundraising Idea: Anonymous One, Flashpoint
Best Non-exhibition art event: Opening of 1515 14th Street, NW
Best Place to look, as an emerging collector, for a great emerging artist (without really trying): Academy, Conner Contemporary Art, August

Liz Smith, gossip columnist for the New York Post writes about Chirstmas, PC and Blake Gopnik.

Post to hire another "Galleries" art critic

I have been informed that the Washington Post has decided to hire a second freelance writer to augment Jessica Dawson's "Galleries" reviews.

Since the Arts Editor (John Pancake) is still out of the country on a teaching sabbatical, and will not return until mid January (and maybe because the Post has received some many complaints from all of us), the newspaper is curently looking to hire a freelance art critic to replace Dixon and augment Dawson at "Galleries."

The Washington Post has assigned the task of finding a replacement to its Chief Art Critic, Blake Gopnik.

I'm glad that they're looking to hire a second voice and I am holding my fingers crossed that it will be someone who actually knows something about DC area artists and galleries and who can name more than five galleries and more than half a dozen artists.

In fact, free to Mr. Gopnik and the Post, I have devised a clever test in order for Gopnik and/or the Post staff to test a prospective applicant's knowledge of the DC art scene, since (as we all know), Mr. Gopnik has so far succesfully avoided writing about our artists and galleries.

Here's the test:

1. Signal 66 is/was a:
(a) TV show
(b) Gridlocked highway
(c) DC art gallery
(d) All of the above

2. What DC artist was included in a recent Whitney Biennial?
(a) Sam Gilliam
(b) Lou Stovall
(c) Chan Chao
(d) Maggie Michael

3. Which of these is not a real DC area art venue?
(a) Fusebox
(b) Flashpoint
(c) Transformer
(d) Multicoupler

4. Which of these DC area gallery owners are artists as well?
(a) Norm Parish
(b) Alla Rogers
(c) Elyse Harrison
(d) All of the above

5. What DC area artist was included in a recent Venice Biennale?
(a) Sam Gilliam
(b) Muriel Hasbun
(c) Kelly Towles
(d) Jason Gubbiotti

6. What DC area artist has been featured in the Hirshhorn recently?
(a) Chan Chao
(b) Muriel Hasbun
(c) Dan Steinhilber
(d) Sam Gilliam

7. What happens on the first Friday of each month?
(a) WaPo employees get paid
(b) Dupont Circle art galleries have their extended hours
(c) Corcoran has free pizza for all of its unpaid docents
(d) None of the above

8. What is Art-O-Matic?
(a) A computer virus that erases all the images in your hard drive
(b) A new British painting robot
(c) A huge, open art show roughly held every couple of years.
(d) An Irish racing horse

9. Which of these embassies also have associated art galleries?
(a) Mexico
(b) Italy
(c) Ukraine
(d) All of the above

10. What was the last piece of art that you purchased?
(a) A painting
(b) A print
(c) A photograph
(d) I have not purchased any real art recently, only a video

11. Which of these DC area art venues is a museum?
(a) Museum of Contemporary Art
(b) Museum of Modern ARF
(c) Artists' Museum
(d) None of the above

12. Name one DC area artist who's ever had a retrospective exhibition at the Hirshhorn.
(a) Ana Mendieta
(b) Carlos Alfonzo
(c) Fernando Botero
(d) Please...

13. Name a reason why Sam Gilliam has never had a major DC area museum retrospective.
(a) He refuses them
(b) Who is Sam Gilliam?
(c) He has had many
(d) He lives in Washington, DC

14. John Currin is to Big Tits as Gene Davis is to __________?
(a) Angela Davis
(b) Spanish Tapas
(c) Stripes
(d) Menudo

15. Which of these former DC area artists became really well-known soon after they moved away from DC?
(a) Joyce Tenneson
(b) Tara Donovan
(c) Martin Puryear
(d) All of the above

16. Name the single and only black artist who's ever had a retrospective at the National Gallery of Art.
(a) Jacob Lawrence
(b) Wilfredo Lam
(c) Romare Bearden
(d) Sam Gilliam

17. What is the Torpedo Factory?
(a) A sandwich shop in Adams Morgan
(b) A building full of artists and galleries in Old Town Alexandria
(c) A super secret building in the Navy Yard
(d) A chic clothing shop in Georgetown

18. Roy Lichtenstein is to comic books as Clark is to ___________?
(a) Construction
(b) Candy bars
(c) Strip joints
(d) George Washington

Hey! That was kind of fun! If any of you have any more questions that we can add to our questionnaire, please email them to me.

Holiday Teaser

I'll have a really interesting bit of information to post tomorrow; make sure you check in!

At the risk of having the ACLU sue me: Feliz Navidad!

O'Sullivan on Towles

Michael O'Sullivan reviews Kelly Towles' current exhibition at David Adamson and declares being a fan of Towles' work.

This is one of the reasons that I like O'Sullivan's writing. When was it the last time that you read a WaPo art critic declaring that they were a "fan" of anybody's work?

Other than O'Sullivan (this and in other past reviews), never. It is as if declaring that one actually likes the work being reviewed, with just a little bit of passion or enjoyment, is verbotten in the how-to handbook of modern art criticism.

Bravo O'Sullivan.

Top 10 Shows of 2004

With the large number of commercial fine art galleries, embassy galleries, non-profit galleries, artists cooperative galleries, alternative art venues and museums that we have in our Greater Washington, DC area, the task of selecting a list of top anything is not a trivial task.

To make matters worse, everytime that I've done this in the past, and after I see someone else's list, I always go "crap! I forgot about that show!"

Nonetheless, here's my top ten visual arts show of the year for our region, sans our shows of course. I was tempted, as 2004 allowed us to bring to the DC region some brilliant work by world-class Cuban artists like Sandra Ramos, Cirenaica Moreira, Marta Maria Perez Bravo and Aimee Garcia Marrero (all of whom were in Art Basel Miami Beach) as well as a spectacular second sold out show by Tim Tate, who enjoyed what can best be described as a record-setting 2004.

My Top 10 (in no particular order)

Ana Mendieta at the Hirshhorn

Sally Mann at the Corcoran

Chan Chao at Numark Gallery.

Bruno Perillo at Irvine Contemporary Art

Ian Whitmore at Fusebox

The Quilts of Gee's Bend at the Corcoran

Margaret Boozer at Strand on Volta

"In 2Words: Numbers" at Target Gallery.

Courtly Art of the Ancient Maya at the National Gallery.

Dan Flavin at the National Gallery of Art.

Washingtonian takes a swing at Glenn Dixon and Blake Gopnik

Washingtonian magazine's national editor, Harry Jaffe, has an article in the current issue titled "Three Best Post Columnists — and Two Worsts."

He writes:

Worst Review: Glenn Dixon on the Calder Miró show

Reading Post art reviews, one sometimes imagines the critics walking into exhibitions with their noses so high in the air they can’t see the walls. The height of naive nastiness came from Glenn Dixon in his October 10 review of the Calder Miró show at the Phillips Collection. Dixon, a freelance writer, tried to be more dismissive than the Post’s main critic, Blake Gopnik.

He succeeded in that but failed to describe the exhibition. He doesn’t like Miró. He denigrates Duncan Phillips, the museum’s founder. Every line reeks of animus. Viewers have flocked to the Phillips to see the wondrous and playful collection. Ignore Dixon; see the show, which closes January 23.

Regardless of how one feels about Dixon's animus, my question to Mr. Jaffe and to Washingtonian: How can you publish a magazine about Washington, DC and not have a regular column each month that reviews a gallery or museum show?

Like (cough, cough) the elegant and eloquent reviews of restaurants that the magazine publishes in issue after issue?

We need more critical visual art voices in this town to write about our artists, our galleries and our museums. And glossy magazines like Washingtonian need to step up to the plate and add to our city's cultural scene with more than just restaurant reviews and more than just listings of museum shows and the rare page about an artist or a show here and there.

One half page review a month is not much to ask, is it?

How about we kick start another letter writing or email-sending campaign? Let's all write to Mr. Jaffe and ask him to add a regular monthly art review column to the magazine (and not just museum reviews for chrissakes!). Make sure that you also copy the magazine's editor John Limpert and the arts editor, Susan Davidson.

Jeffry Cudlin Goes Yard

That's new baseball talk (new to me) for hitting a home run. The current issue of the Washington City Paper has Cudlin's review of the area's visual arts year gone by.

And I'll be damned if Cudlin doesn't just hit a very readable homer, but also throws a couple of tight fastballs (awright, awright... enough with the baseball talk).

On Blake Gopnik:

"Ostensibly, Blake Gopnik is the Washington Post’s art critic of note. But his coverage of the art scene this year has seemed less concerned with Washington than with a certain city to the north: He wrote a travelogue on the galleries of Chelsea, and he recently began conducting studio visits with artists living and working in Brooklyn. Still, certain D.C. events were on Gopnik’s mind, if not on his itinerary. We could count on him to draw attention to anything confirming his worst suspicions about his occasional hometown — say, those PandaMania bears, or, yes, the redundant controversy of Artomatic (in which I participated)."

That was very good, and it takes cojones to say it; and there's more. Cudlin praises Dixon, references a well-known BLOG and slams Jessica:

"Meanwhile, thoughtful freelance critic Glenn Dixon — the only area reviewer to write on a 19.3 grade level, according to one local art blog — bailed on the Washington City Paper and made an auspicious debut in the Post’s Galleries column. Then he promptly thought better of it and bailed once more —which leaves column readers again with Jessica Dawson and only the blandest publicizing imaginable. But now only twice a month."

Ouch! I do disagree with Cudlin's broad characterization of cooperative galleries when he writes that "Numark [Gallery] stands out in a ’hood that’s home to craftsy emporiums such as Zenith Gallery and — even more dubious — pay-to-show member galleries such as Touchstone."

I disagree 1000% with his characterization of artist-run cooperative galleries.

Cooperative galleries such as Touchstone are not "dubious" and in fact cooperative galleries in this town are some of the oldest galleries in our area, surviving the demise of many private galleris, and have been a breeding ground for many, many artists, who now show in other galleries - including now showing in most of the independent, private commercial fine art galleries mentioned in Cudlin's article.

In fact, I am told that at least one of those "other" galleries mentioned elsewhere in Cudlin's article is one that unfortunately has charged artists to exhibit. This is called a "vanity gallery" and it is much different than a cooperative of artists all sharing the costs of running a gallery space. Being a true "vanity gallery" is unethical especially when the gallery pretends to be a "regular" gallery and in private charges artists a fee to exhibit in their spaces. Very unethical.

Otherwise a superb round-up! Read Cudlin's entire article here.

Bravo Cudlin!

WCP's Top 10 Photography Shows of the Year

Louis Jacobson delivers his take on the photography year for 2004 in our area with a very good piece in the current Washington City Paper.

Lou's Top 10:

1. "Lost Images: Berlin Mitte" at Addison/Ripley Fine Art.

2. "Winogrand 1964" at the S. Dillon Ripley Center International Gallery.

3. "Maxwell MacKenzie: Markings" at Addison/Ripley Fine Art.

4. "Jacques Henri Lartigue: Vintage Photographs, 1905–1932" at Sandra Berler Gallery.

5. "Martin Kollar: Slovakia 001" and "Darrow Montgomery: Postcards From Home" at the Kathleen Ewing Gallery.

6. "ABCDF: Portraits of a City" at the Art Museum of the Americas.

7. "Room Service" at Panhwa Art Studio.

8. "Aaron Siskind: New Relationships in Photography" at the Phillips Collection.

9. "Christopher Burkett: Resplendent Light" at the Kathleen Ewing Gallery.

10. "Viggo Mortensen: Miyelo" at Addison/Ripley Fine Art.

Anne Truitt

One of the Washington area's best-known and most respected artists, Anne Truitt, born in Baltimore in 1921 and a resident of the Greater Washington, DC area for many years, has died at age 83.

Her work was and is represented locally by the Ramon Osuna Gallery in Bethesda.

Our best wishes to the Truitt family.

My current exhibition of nude drawings at Fraser Gallery Georgetown is online here.

Comments, criticisms and purchases welcomed.

The Lebanese newspaper Daily Star has an article discussing the work of GMU Professor Chawky Frenn, who is of Lebanese ancestry.

The article discusses the Dartmouth exhibition where Frenn outshocked Damien Hirst.

Read the Daily Star story here.

The Art League

The Art League is our area's largest artists' organization, with over 1,200 members. The Art League also operates a school with over 2500 students per term and a supply store for the purchase of art supplies by students and members.

When I first re-arrived to the Washington area in 1993, the first thing that I did was to join The Art League, and was a member for several years.

Each month The Art League has a juried competition, where members can bring two original works of art to be juried by a guest juror. Selected works are then hung at The Art League's large gallery on the ground floor of the Torpedo Factory.

The current show was selected by Maurine Littleton, the owner and director of the terrific gallery by the same name in Georgetown that is perhaps the finest glass gallery in the world.

I have been asked to be the juror for the January competition and will be doing so during the first week of January.

To get more details on becoming a member of the Art League, call them at 703/683-1780 or view their application form here.

A couple of days ago I was filmed by a TV crew who is doing a 13 part TV series called "Art Adventures." It is focused on collecting art, mostly for beginning collectors.

They also focused on the work of Tim Tate, as the series also identifies new emerging artists.

It was supposed to be a five minute screen time, which in TV-land always means a couple of hours of shooting.

Dr. Claudia Rousseau, the over-qualified art critic for the Washington Post-owned Gazette newspapers writes a singularly eloquent and intelligent review about our Winter Group Show in our Bethesda outpost.

Cough, cough...

At the risk of sounding nepotic (and definitely waaaaaaaaay past objective!), I think she really drilled into what some of the artists that she writes about are trying to deliver. It's hard to write eloquently about a group show (always some good.. always something forgettable).

Before moving to our area, Rousseau was one of Latin America's most influential art critics. It is no surprise that she gets Cuban artist Sandra Ramos right off the bat and writes:

"Cuban artist Sandra Ramos' approach to figuration uses a surrealist vocabulary to convey politically charged content. "In my paper prison" is part of "Isla prisión," a strongly emotive series about Cuba as a prison in both political and artistic senses. Here, the artist's body, wearing the uniform of Castro's "Communist Youth," lies in the shape of the island behind prison bars formed by pencils. Ten unmounted paper sheets in plastic sleeves comprise "The Inability to Trap Images." Each shows a silk-screened hand with a small image printed above it.

Taken together, Ramos' work can be interpreted as a reference to the failure of artistic censorship, or simply to the travails of the artist to capture reality. Either way, the images make an indelible impression because they clearly have profound meaning for the artist, and hopefully, for the viewer."

And she gets our own area's Tim Tate; she writes about him:

Glass artist Tim Tate's new works, "A Slice of Heaven/A Slice of Hell," the first an icy blue, the second red, hang side by side in long, narrow cast bronze frames. An examination of their imagery presents the same provocative vocabulary that has made Tate so successful in recent years. Much of it appears universal, even Dantesque, but is instead very private and autobiographical in nature. For example, what may recall a Catholic votive for many viewers -- a red glass flame topping a blown glass heart bearing a cross, in turn containing yet another red flame -- is titled with a distinctly non-religious ring: "Hunka' Hunka' Burnin' Love." Yet for the artist, the eternal flame on top, inspired by John F. Kennedy's tomb site, is a healing image, intended to convey ideas of love and spirit outliving death and pain.

Tate uses private images of healing all through his works. In "Nine Paths to Heaven or Hell," a circular piece made of nine glass voussoirs (wedge-shaped pieces that form an arch), the topmost element contains a hand surrounded by rays holding a beaded ball (a nucleus perhaps?), also conceived as a healing image.

Tate's technique is impeccable. Yet his allusive and mystifying content is a far cry from the craft approach often associated with glass art.

Read the whole review here.