Thinking About Art has a few good reviews from J.T.'s gallery walk-through last Saturday.

Tomorrow and Friday I will be hopping around the 7th Street corridor and the Canal Square galleries and will discuss some of those shows.

Mark Jenkins' virtual tape men invade the Mall. Read it here.

Guest Editorial: Does the absence of an arts movement mean art is not... moving?

Guest Editorial by Malik M. Lloyd

"The art of any society emerges from the beliefs, attitudes, organization and structure as well as the inherent creativity and energy of that society. The truths and standards generally accepted are also those which underlie all artistic expression.

We are at the dawn of a new millennium. The 21st century has come bringing with it the new age of technology, terrorism and war. Modern technology has transformed the way we communicate, conduct business and for some us, it has changed the way we do art. Terrorism and war have forced us to take a closer look at not only other cultures and religions, but to examine those things in our own religion and culture that shape us and make us what we are today.

If it is true that art is reflective of the beliefs, attitudes and structure of society, when the history books are written about the current era what will they say about the art of the new millennium?

Popular music, unlike the visual arts, has a distinctive array of current trends and movements with the sounds of hip-hop, rap, gangster rap and neo-soul. Like most arts movements of the past, these musical forms were met with hostility and apprehension. History has taught us that revolutionary change often comes with a high price tag.

In art, there are numerous examples of arts movements that were not accepted by the masses when the work was first exhibited. In his work titled, Modern Art, Trevor Copplestone points to this same lack of acceptance regarding Impressionism, Futurism and Surrealism in the 20th century.

When the Impressionist first exhibited in a group show in 1874 their work was ridiculed, compared to the scribbles of a child, called wretched and insulting.

Copplestone writes this about Futurism: 'In 1909, the Futurism manifesto was published, extolling the beauty of speed, the virility of the new machine-based society and the possibilities inherent in the nascent scientific age of a new dynamic humanism. On the whole the movement was met with ridicule that its activities deliberately invited.'

In 1924, the first surrealist manifesto was issued. Surrealism appeared in many different artistic forms, including poetry, fiction, music and films. Surrealism is often thought of as an attitude to life and society as opposed to a style in art. During the 1930s, surrealist work was put on display in most countries. Without fail, these exhibitions were met with incomprehension. Moreover, the mainstream press vilified surrealism. Copplestone notes when the 1936 International Surrealists Exhibition opened in London that the Daily Express wrote that it was 'unfit' for the public, which was probably due to the overt sexuality used extensively in the early surrealist works.

Many art historians have argued that pop art was one of the most accepted by the public from its very onset, which was due to it being the first art form in which the lifestyle of the popular culture dictated the art. In the late 1950s in London and New York, pop art took as its subject matter from the common imagery of American culture as defined by the advertising industry. Pop art addressed trendy fashionable images. The qualities desirable for pop art was popular, low-brow, mass-produced, young, witty, sexy, gimmicky, glamorous and big business. Pop was anti-art, or at least, anti-high art.

Currently, in the visual arts, diversity seems to be the operative word. Depending on the which gallery one steps into, regardless of the city, state, country, you can readily view abstract art, impressionistic, cubism as well as a variety of other styles and mediums. No particular style, method or medium has dominated the art scene in the first few years of the new millennium nor has any group of artists developed manifestos declaring new artistic intent or motive.

Via chose or as a result of an absence of a current artistic style, fashion or 'movement' visual artists appear to be more focused on things that interest them on a more personal or individual level. They appear to be working more within themselves and producing work that is connected to their own personal experiences, interest, influences, heritage or history. A kind of 'individualism' appears to be the constant theme within the art of the new millennium.

Regardless of which direction that we decide to travel, history books will be written. It is up to you to create the text."

Malik M. Lloyd
FIND ART Information Bank

2004 Bloggies

Hey! I've been asked to be a voting panelist for the 2004 Bloggies! Too late to try to bribe me... I've already voted.

Opportunity for Artists

Washington, DC personal trainer Colin Shah will be opening his own gym soon in the Foundry Building in Georgetown. He would love to display work by local artists on a monthly (possibly longer) basis in his reception area/lounge.

Any artists who are interested in exhibiting their work should send a CD or printed images of their work (no slides please!) along with a SASE to:

Colin Shah
1900 35th Street, NW
Washington, DC 20007

Legal Issues for Arts Professionals

Date: Tuesday, February 8, 2005 (snow date Tuesday, February 15, 2005)
Time: 1-4pm. Location: Morgan Lewis Washington, DC
1111 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW
Washington, DC 20004

Presenters: Elena M. Paul, Esq., Executive Director, Volunteer Lawyers for the Arts, and Alexei Auld, Director of Legal Services.

Description: As creators of intellectual property, arts professionals should be aware of issues affecting their work. This workshop provides an overview of legal issues in the arts and the three areas of the law that affect all arts professionals: copyright, contracts, and entity formation. An additional threshold issue faced by arts professionals is choosing the right legal entity for their business, including answering the basic question of whether the right structure is a for-profit or not-for-profit model. Registration required. Email staff@cultural-alliance.org with name, address, phone, email address. Free for Cultural Alliance Individual and Affiliate Members. $25 for Non-members; the fee can be applied to membership.

Send me your words

In the past I've asked readers to email me your reviews of visual art shows that you'd like to see published here. The best thing for art is more art, and in 2005 I want to expand DC Art News to include more reviews from diverse voices.

So let me encourage you again to email me your reviews.

A couple of reminders

Today is the DC Warming panel at DCAC. It starts at 6:30PM.

The Synergy Art Project will have a meeting for interested artists at Karma Restaurant on January 24, at 6PM. Karma is at 19th and I, NW.

Next Thursday is the 3rd Thursday of January, and thus the 3rd Thursday extended hours for the 7th Street corridor galleries. From 6-8 PM.

The following day on the 21st, is the opening night for the Canal Square Galleries in Georgetown. From 6-9PM.

Tentacles (A man, an axe and a doctor: A tale of pain and art)

Someone who was raised in Brooklyn shouldn’t own, and much less, try to use an axe.

What follows is a true tale of horror, of entropy and the second law of thermodynamics, of chaos and order, of the laws of the universe, of near death, of irony, of music, and ultimately of a new form of art. All of the characters are real, and if I could remember their names, I would name them.

I begin.

The back of my house has a rather wooded large area with many trees, and it also backs into an even larger wooded common area that I share with my neighbors. I am really a big fan of warm cozy fires, and during the winter I usually light one up every night.

A while back I went around and collected a lot of wood from fallen branches and also a lot of wood from a tree that had fallen months earlier. This wood had been cut, but needed splitting, so I bought an axe to split the wood myself.

How hard could this be? After all, I remember how President Reagan, while he was in office, was so fond of being filmed splitting wood in his ranch in California. If an 80-year-old President could do it, and make it look so easy, then surely a virile 40something could do it as well.

So I went to my local hardware store and bought an axe.

Act One, Scene I

It was a day much like many other balmy December days we’ve been having this winter. There was a little chill in the air, but more like a spring day than a winter day. I had gathered quite a haul of neatly cut sections of the tree trunk, each about nine to twelve inches in diameter, and had placed them to the side a large tree stump, which I planned to use as the base to split the firewood.

The ground was wet and the grass was moist, as it had been raining the previous few days, but although the radio had announced that there would be rain later, I thought I would have a couple of hours to split all the wood before it began to rain.

I would be good exercise as well.

Gloves in hand, I placed the first piece of wood on the stump, took one or two slow –motion practice tries, just to get the motion and aim right, and then took my first mighty swing of the axe.

There are some instances on this planet, when the laws of gravity seem to take a couple of nanoseconds off. Like when one is walking down a path, and a rock, as if by magic, jumps from the ground and lands inside your shoe. How does that happen? Is it evidence of magic? Time travel? Even if one considers a viable explanation, the most common of which is that the other shoe kicks the rock into the partner shoe, it takes some extraordinary physics and flight acrobatics to imagine a rock being kicked by one shoe, flying sideways through the air as you walk on and sliding into the other shoe. I prefer to believe that the rocks jump straight up and floats into the shoe.

Anyway... back to my story.

The violent action of swinging the axe to split the firewood must have caused a ripple in the time space continuum, for otherwise I cannot imagine or recreate what followed next.

For one thing, I completely missed the firewood waiting to be split and barely nicked the edge of the tree stump. But this bare touching of the tree stump must have caused a tremendous vector change in the arc of the axe swing, and to add more physics to the event, the brand new axe, (with its nice slippery handle, aided by my brand new - and even more slippery - cotton gardening gloves (I should have used leather work gloves)) slipped away from me.

And aided by the wet grass under my feet, I lost my footing and slipped towards the oncoming axe. At some point, I suspect that both the axe and I were completely airborne and approaching each other in perfect flight synchronicity.

And in some incomprehensible act of flying physics, the axe went in a perfect flight pattern back towards me and between my legs.

Act One, Scene II

The axe blade missed my family jewels – barely.

I know this because I still have balls and because the tip of the blade nicked the small of my back. But I came as close to being a eunuch as anyone in the history of mankind has come; but the blade missed.

But the top of the handle didn’t miss and it crushed my balls.

Before I describe the pain, let me tell you that I've been kicked in the balls more than once. I have been an avid student and practicioner of the martial arts since I was 13 years old, and have competed in many full contact tournaments, and have been accidentally kicked in the balls many times. I have also had my share of juvenile and drunken sailor fist fights, where someone's foot or fist has delivered a painful blow to my genitals. And it does hurt intensely!

But this axe handle crushing my privates was a new dimension in pain.

And this new pain took on a new meaning as I collapsed onto the wet, muddy ground.

It was an almost exquisite pain, with shape, form, smell and incredibly enough, fireballs of vivid color dancing to music. During this time, I had a vision of how Christ and Jimmy Hoffa truly died; in fact I learned how every fucking thing in the Universe has died, and how every living entity in this Universe and the other infinite Einsteinian numbers of Universes will die. And in all cases, their death involved or will involve an axe.

Time ceased to flow, or perhaps it simply slowed down in order to make my agony more intense, which by the way, would have been impossible, as I had already maxxed out the agony scale for mankind.

And I know this is silly, but I swear that I heard the music from Guns & Roses’ Sweet Child of Mine emanating, in perfect tune to the pain, from my brutalized gonads; especially the part where the bag pipes come in.

Thus I do not know how long I agonized on the forest floor. A wet tongue belonging to Yoda, my neighbor’s dog, whimpering as he obviously felt my pain, resuscitated me.

I opened my eyes for the first time since I fell, and looked at Yoda’s handsome face. "Yoda," I whispered between clenched teeth, "kill me." He looked at me with his intelligent eyes and licked my face again. "Please bite my neck," I begged. "Kill me now!"

Yoda twisted his head in that almost human way in which dogs do, and walked away. For a minute there I thought that the stupid beast had gone to fetch a stick to play with, as he loves to fetch sticks. Had he done this, I would have kicked him in his balls. But he just vanished from my sight and then started to bark outside my neighbor’s back door.

By now the pain had diminished to a white searing pain on a planetary scale equivalent to a thermonuclear device being exploted at the core of the Earth, so the word diminished is quite bogus in this sentence. But, I sincerely wanted to find out how much damage I had done, and since by now my pants were quite soaked from the wet ground and the mud, I needed to check to see if I was bleeding.

Act One, Scene III

So I unbuttoned my pants, lowered them in agonizing ecstasy, and reached down to feel the state of my boys.

Which is precisely the moment that my neighbor, apparently being brought to the scene by Lassie-wannabe Yoda’s barking, made her appearance, as I am feeling my bruised sacs.

My neighbor is a very nice old lady who has a remarkable likeness to Grandpa Munster, and I think that she’s originally from Sweden, and she has a lovely and thick accent, and from the expression on her face, I realized that she was slightly concerned at finding a muddy man, laying on the wet ground, pants down to his ankles and fingers probing around his privates.

So I rationalized (the brain is an incredible asset) that I'd better explain, although the last fucking thing that I wanted to do at that moment was to chat with this Grandpa Munster look-a-like. But I figured that if I didn’t explain, she’d make a bat-line to her phone and report me to the vice squad.

And being the super nice lady that she is, she tried to hide her laughter, and understood, and asked me if I wanted her to call an ambulance. "Tentacles," she said (and she did say "tentacles" instead of "testicles"), "are very fragile."

"No shit Grandpa Munster," I felt like saying, but instead I moaned to her that it was OK, and that I’d drive myself down to the hospital.

It had begun to sprinkle, so she wished me luck and went back to her house.

And then it really began to rain; hard, cold rain.

And then the act of crawling back to my house became another exercise in agony, as I discovered that (a) I couldn’t walk because of the pain and (b) I couldn’t crawl on my knees, because of the pressure on my jewels.

So I sort of "rolled" towards my house, and then developed a sort of walking on all fours, legs quite widespread and putting most of the weight on my hands, as the rain fell on me.

So I finally make it to the house, thoroughly soaked and quite covered in mud. And (of course) the day before I had cleaned my house from top to bottom, and the thought of the irony of this alignment of misfortunes dawned on me as I muddied the floor of my pristine home.

I debated whether to change clothes or not, and decided that it would be impossible for me to physically remove my shoes, as my boys had by now begun to swell to an impressive size, and any pressure on them caused me to yelp like a newborn child. So I grabbed a towel from the laundry room, crawled to my van, put the towel on the seat, and climbed in to an internal symphony of new pains.

And I began the drive to the hospital emergency room.

Act Two, Scene I

Sometimes the lights on Democracy Boulevard align in timing so that one can go all the way from Seven Locks to Old Georgetown Road without hitting a single light.

Other times, a driver hits every goddamned light on the road.

Guess which of these two cycles of light synchronicity was to be my fate on that painful day?

Yep! Stop at every light, and to make matters worse, I couldn’t really "sit down" and was actually driving while holding most of my weight on one hand pushing against the car seat in order to attempt to float me above it, all the while leaning forward, sort of the way that scary old people in Florida drive.

I eventually pulled into the parking lot of the hospital, and of course there is not one single parking spot available on the ER area, so I have to park in the lot across the street, and do my crawling on all fours routine, in the rain, across the road, which as some of you may know, is quite a busy road. However, since Yoda had failed to kill me, I was somewhat hoping that I’d get run over by a car, and mercifully have it put an end to my agony.

But no one ran me over, although several cars did slow down, but I suspect it was so that they could get a look at the idiot crawling on all fours across the road, in the rain.

But in due time, I did arrive at the entrance to the ER, and at the very last minute I almost did get run over by an ambulance, bringing in someone with a medical emergency.

And so I finally enter the ER, muddy, wet, cold and still in spectacular pain.

Act Two, Scene II

I imagine that most ER personnel have seen just about everything that humankind has to offer in terms of shock, but by the alarmed expression on the male nurse at the check-in station, it was clear that he was somewhat concerned by my appearance and by my manner of movement on all fours; I also noticed that the security guard was also somewhat alarmed (and armed).

He asked me what the problem was, and as I explained what happened, both this Gaylord Focker wannabe and the guard, who had drifted within earshot, actually had the gall to burst out laughing.

And I made a silent promise to myself that in a few weeks, if I survived this ordeal, I would hunt Nurse Focker-wannabe and kick him in the nuts.

So after the whole delay of data input and insurance verification, Nurse Focker tells me to have a seat, and wait, as the doctors (plural) are all attending the patient who had just come in via the ambulance.

"What’s his problem?" I asked, not out of concern, but thinking that there are precious few emergencies in the world that could take precedence over my distress.

And Nurse Focker explains that the patient is a 96-year-old-man who’s having a heart attack.

And I’m really close to start debating that at 96, he’s had a good life, and he's probably caused his own heart attack because of Viagra, so let this geezer go and assign me a doctor, preferably well armed with a needle full of painkiller. But I hold my tongue, and wait in my own private water puddle.

Several ice ages later, Nurse Focker says that I am to be seen, and asks me if I have a preference for a doctor. In retrospect, I think that he was asking me if I wanted a male or female doctor, but by now my social graces had completely vanished, and I told him that I’d like Dr. Kavorkian. He didn’t laugh.

I am then taken to the back, and told to undress, put one of those silly robes that show your ass, and sit on the bed and wait for the doctor. Somehow I managed to undress on my own, and laid on the bed, with my legs bent and wide open, much like a woman waiting for her gynecologist.

A little while later, the curtains open and the doctor comes in: A female doctor, of course, probably picked by Nurse Focker to make my life more miserable.

And not just any female doctor, but probably the only female doctor who had also been a body extra in Baywatch. And to my utter amazement, in the middle of this intense agony, my sick male brain still finds time to align a couple of thought patterns that whisper inside my head: "WOW, she’s hot!" before resuming sending new and novel pain patterns to my groin area.

"What have we got here?" she asks using the imperial "we" that annoying doctors like to use.

"We, doc," says I, devoid of any social skills by this point, "have a serious fucking case of smashed balls, and an even more serious need for some potent pain killer." And I begin explaining what happened.

And just like Nurse Focker and the rent-a-cop a few minutes earlier, Dr. Carmen Electra, Medicine Woman bursts out laughing while she’s probing and feeling down there, hands encased in latex gloves.

Laughter induced watery-eyes and all, she then tells me that it looks like there’s no internal injuries, but that she’ll order a scan to double check, and that I need to ice down my groin area in order to reduce the swelling. "You’ll be OK in a few days."

Pheeew!

I thank her, and ask about a shot for the pain. To my astonishment she says that just a couple of Tylenols should do the trick. "Doc," I plead, "I am in really in some aggravating bad pain here."

"Don’t be such a baby," she responds, "You should try childbirth if you want to know what real pain is."

She’s lucky she’s a woman; otherwise I definitely would have kicked her in the balls.

Act Two, Scene III

A few days later, and things appear to be back to normal; I’ve been telling people that I have a back pain, and thus the strained walk.

And at some point, it dawns on me that the whole sequence of events, with the improbable occurrences, the diverse set of characters, and the Three Stoogian physicality of the act, is a new kind of art; a new kind of performance art that is, where really spectacular true events of common daily life assume astronomic personal presence and thus cross the border into a personal artistic quality, the like of which will never be repeated by any other soul on this planet.

So my performance piece is over: I call it Tentacles (not Testicles).

J.T. has a good report on the Caio Fonseca talk that occurred last Thursday at the Corcoran. Read it here.

And over at Angstbabe, Tracy has had it with the GW MFA program and is switching to GMU's. Read her reasons here.

DC Warming

DC Warming is a panel focusing on "Movers & Shakers" and the new energy in the DC contemporary art scene. It will be held this coming Tuesday, 18 January 2005 at 6:30 p.m. at the District of Columbia Arts Center.

Cost for this event: Members $15, Guests $20. This program is limited to 50 people. Please RSVP to Mary Beth at dc@ArtTable.org or telephone 202.332.0099.

Panelists include:
Andrea Pollan, Director, Curator's Office (Moderator), Jayme McLellan and Victoria Reis, Co-directors, Transformer Gallery, Maggie Michael, artist, Allison Cohen, art consultant (Sightline) and IP lawyer (solo practice), Tyler Green, art critic for Bloomberg News and blogwriter, Modern Art Notes, Philip Barlow, art collector and DCAC Board Member, and Henry Estada, independent curator.

AOM Top Artists Opening

Yesterday the WaPo gave the three-gallery Top 10 AOM Artists exhibitions their Hot Pick of the Week and last night we had part two of the three-opening night sequence.

I've discussed this before, but there's an interesting phenomenom that I've noticed vis-a-vis press coverage of gallery shows: It is clear to me that we seem to get a lot more people show up to the gallery based on a small Hot Pick mention than a full review.

And last night was huge!

We actually ran out of Sangria within the first hour (ten gallons of the stuff was consumed in an hour!) and had to make an emergency liquor store run, which in the Soviet Socialist Republic of Montgomery County, is not a trivial thing to find at 7PM on a Friday night. Anyway, we ended up running through 20 gallons of the stuff by the time we ended the opening night festivities.

Our Bethesda show featured some of the work previously exhibited by the invited artists, as well as new work such as a couple of terrific new plastic men sculptures by Mark Jenkins (as well as four new pubic hair tapestries), several new sculptures by Alison Sigethy, new glass sculptures by Michael Janis and Tim Tate, and a new installation by Ira Tattelman.

And next Friday, from 6-9 PM, is the third set of openings, when our Georgetown gallery will showcase photographs by Matt Dunn and Denise Wolff and paintings by Margaret McDowell, and our Canal Square upstairs neighbor, the Anne C. Fisher Gallery hosts Anne's list of her Top 10 AOM Artists.

Later today is the opening of J.W. Bailey's Stealing Dead Souls from 5:00 - 7:00 pm at the Black Rock Center for the Arts in Germantown, Maryland.

And then later tonight is the opening of Scott Treleaven at Conner Contemporary from 6-8 PM.

Go see art.
P.S. Opening night photos courtesy of Guy Mondo.

Congratulations are on order!

The Franz and Virginia Bader Fund of Washington, DC, has awarded artists Charles Ritchie, Yuriko Yamaguchi (represented by Numark Gallery) and Steven Kenny (winner of our 2001 Georgetown Fine Arts Competition) individual grants of $15,000, $20,000, and $15,000, respectively.

The grants, first started in 2002, are earmarked for living artists over the age of 40 who work within 150 miles of DC.

A Sacrifice for Art

Tonight we have the opening for the AOM artists in our list.

The show looks great, and I must admit that with the right lights and a white cube environment, the whole aspect of artwork changes. I will post some photos later. This somewhat bothers me.

Anyway... now I've listened to Edwards' talking fish a few hundred times and they're still really funny!

But let me tell you something: Tonight our opening is from 6-9 PM, and that means that I'll be getting home around 11 PM.

And tonight the SciFi Channel has the series premiere of the new sexy Battlestar Galactica series, and as an acknowledged, testified, bonafied Science Fiction geek (NOT Sci Fi), it hurts me deeply to miss this premiere and to have to look for the VCR's guide (I hope I can find it) to figure out how to tape the damned show so that I can watch it later.

I did watch the two-part pilot movie, and it was great! Sexy characters, and some news-making heresy in the changes from the original TV series.

But... what happened to all the Black people?

It reminds me of the Richard Pryor joke about Logan's Run. In the original Galactica, both Col. Tigh and Boomer were Black; in the new Galactica one is White and the other is Asian.

In fact the only main character who (I think) may be Black is Petty Officer Dualla.

PS - And although the Virgo in me is crying out for it, I won't even begin to obsess on how they mix Naval ranks with regular ranks (some people in the ship are Petty Officers and Commanders, while others are Colonels).

The Thursday Art Reviews

Jeffry Cudlin at the City Paper reviews Martin Kotler and John Dryfuss at Hemphill Fine Arts. He nails the analogy between Dreyfuss' sculptures and Atlas Shrugged; it hadn't occurred to me, but its a perfect analysis of the works! In fact, mentally I've already placed them not only in the book, bit also in the great B&W movie with Gary Cooper (or was that The Fountainhead?)

Also in the WCP, Louis Jacobson reviews "The Tao of Physics" at the National Academy of Sciences.

At the WaPo, Jonathan Padget reviews Morten Nilsson at Ingrid Hansen Gallery.

Critical Alignment (Part III)

Last Sunday I commented on the fact that all of a sudden (and again) critical voices are aligning to proclaim the fact that painting (which a few cycles ago they were all saying was dead), is not only alive and kicking, but hot!

This repeating and never-ending cycle of "discussion" amongst critics is really a waste of words, and soon an U-turn will happen and a few years later, a new reversal, etc.

But it does reveal more evidence of critical alignment, as another critic suddenly reveals that "painting has never been out of the picture. Rather, it has often been work on canvas that proved the most provocative."

There's a lot of bull and incomprehensible art jargon in this article, but read it anyway... the article is here.

And now I wonder when we'll see some words on newsprint from our local painting-hating critics as they align with this new groupthink.

German Garbage Collectors Punished with Modern Art Lessons

(Thanks AJ) What is it with janitors, garbage collectors and cleaners in general with their desire to destroy modern "art"?

Some zealous German street cleaners in Frankfurt cleared and incinerated what they thought were abandoned building materials. It was in fact an art installation done as part of a city-wide exhibition of modern sculptures by artist Michael Beutler.

Thirty of the city's garbage collectors are now being sent to modern art classes to try to ensure that the same mistake never happens again.

I kid you not! Read the story here.

Yesterday I discussed the very generous grants of the Anonymous was a Woman program and wondered how two non-New York artists had sneaked through the New York only filter.

And this morning I got an aswer in the email! One of the two non-NY artists was J. Morgan Puett.

A friend writes:

J. Morgan Puett used to have an incredible arty line of natural fiber, un-ironed clothes, baggy dresses with a baroque southern hipster flair, vaguely Amish looking too

J. Morgan Puett used to have a place in 1992 called Skep at 527 Broome St in NY. In 1992 she was 35--so she is 47 or 48 now. She was born in Hahira, GA. Suzanne Vega, the folk singer, did her opening benefit show at Skep. Syd Straw, the famous singer, used to model for her sales brochures. Michelle Shocked was also a shareholder in Skep, and Jane Pratt, the editor of Sassy magazine, was involved. I think Natalie Merchant used to wear her clothes too.

Skep is an old woven beehive and Puett comes from four generations of beekeepers. Her brother Garnett Puett is an artist who works with bees.

I went there in 1992 -- the building was an old screw factory (if she owned it and then sold it, she probably made a fortune and moved to the country in Pennsylvania).

She would recycle the coffee grounds from the coffee shop and use them upstairs to dye the clothes. Extremely cool clothes -- but EXPENSIVE!! Pirjoj used to sell them in her Georgetown store-- $800 one-of-a kind looking pants dye-stained with tea, coffee grounds or grass and beet juice with all sorts of cool buttons and flaps.

J. Morgan Puett is VERY connected

And thus a New York connection for this gifted artist, and the New York only filter worked!

The change of leadership at the Greater Reston Arts Center that I reported about on Monday makes the news locally.

Anonymous Was A Woman $25,000 Grants

Ten female artists have received $25,000 grants from the Anonymous Was A Woman foundation in its ninth annual round of awards.

This year's recipients are Janet Biggs (video installation, NYC), Moyra Davey (visual artist/photographer, NYC), Liz Deschenes (visual artist/photographer, Brooklyn), Jessica Diamond (visual artist, Bronx), Joy Garnett (painter and media artist, NYC), Elizabeth Lyons (sculptor, Rochester, N.Y.), Sarah McEneaney (visual artist/painter, Philadelphia), J. Morgan Puett (transdisciplinary artist, Beach Lake, Pa.), Alison Saar (visual artist/sculptor, NYC), Carmelita Tropicana (performance artist, NYC).

I wonder how the two Pennsylvania artists sneaked through the New York-only filter? I suggest that this generous foundation change its name to Anonymous Was A New York Woman or spread its generosity outside the Empire State.

Anonymous Was a Woman awards "no strings" grants to women, age 35 and over, at a critical juncture in their lives or careers, to enable them to continue pursuing their work. Anonymous Was a Woman awards operate like the MacArthur Foundation "genius awards" in that artists do not apply for them but rather are nominated, usually without their knowledge.

I don't know who this year's nominators were, but I am pretty sure where they all live.

Lauren Katzowitz Shenfield is executive director of Philanthropy Advisors in New York. And according to this article, "she advises the donor behind the New York-based Anonymous Was a Woman Foundation, which makes unattributed annual $25,000 grants to women artists whose work has been underappreciated by the market. The benefactor, says Katzowitz Shenfield, is an artist herself, and she was concerned about what the gifts might do to her relationship with other artists if they knew she was behind the grants. 'She also finds it enormously thrilling to do this kind of philanthropy,' Katzowitz Shenfield adds."

Bravo Anonymous Donor! Ms. Katzowitz Shenfield: Advise her about the other 48 states and our District.