Wednesday, September 06, 2006

B-day

Almost forgot! Today is my birthday!

Either 30, 40 or 50... I can't seem to remember exactly.

Anyone wishing to send me original artwork as a b-day present, email me.

Wanna go to an art event tonight?

Go to The Common Share located at 2003 18th St. NW (in Adams Morgan), DC (upstairs). Featured artist is Barry Bishop and music by DJ 2-Tone Jones. 8pm - 1am and no cover charge.

D A N G L I N G

Pyramid Atlantic Art Center, in Silver Spring, MD, will be hosting D A N G L I N G (as in suspense), an exhibit by 20 artists from the Washington region "commenting on critical challenges to the global human condition including militarism, economics, environmental degradation, and personal, philosophical, and political conflicts."

The opening reception will be held on Friday, September 8th from 6:30-8:30pm and will feature remarks by participating artists as well as performance art and poetry. The exhibit is on display through September 29th.

Exhibiting artists include Anonymous, iona rozeal brown, William Christenberry, Graham Boyle and Alex Curtis of the Submissive Generation, Richard Dana, Joan Danziger, Behnam Farahpour, Susan Firestone, Dalya Luttwak, Nan Montgomery, Adrienne Mills, Brian Petro, Michael Platt, Wendy Ross, Renee Stout, R.L. Tillman, Kelly Towles, Genna Watson, Jamie Wimberly, and Jason Zimmerman.

The show is curated by Carolyn Alper and Helen Frederick, who in early April invited artists to Pyramid Atlantic to discuss ideas for an exhibition that might grow out of the DADA movement that had influenced most of them during their lives. There was agreement that although the DADA exhibition (presented this spring at the National Gallery of Art) made a huge impact on them, Dada could not be "re-created."

"I thought that artists should have the opportunity to express their dissatisfaction and disillusionment with the current state of our world. It seems that such a show would be not only interesting but essential," stated curator Carolyn Alper.

Although I am not "disillusioned with the current state in our world," I am nonetheless looking forward to seeing this exhibition.

I am especially looking forward to seeing the living paintings of Adrienne Mills, who (in addition to her work on the gallery walls) will have two "living paintings" at the reception. Spoken word artist Charisse Carney-Nunes will be covered in her words and Mills' model Jaye will be on display as well.

I am also looking forward to seeing the new work of Jamie Wimberly, who in addition to his piece for the show (titled "Art History," and which is a direct comment on contemporary art) is also contributing an essay on contemporary art.

Jamie tells me that his "intention is to start a dialogue." To that end, he has created a blog: Provocations, where "people can be as nasty or nice as they want to be."

See ya there!

Congratulations

To Richmond-based sculptor Kendall Buster, who was just announced as the winner of the 2006 Kreeger Museum Artist Award.

If you haven't heard much of the Kreeger Museum Artist Award, it is because (in my opinion), the museum has done a pretty poor job of disseminating info about it.

The Kreeger Museum "established the award, a biennial cash prize to be given to a Washington metropolitan area artist deserving of recognition and to honor its founders (Carmen and David Kreeger) generous commitment to the arts in Washington, D.C. An independent five person jury made the selection based on demonstrated consistent artistic excellence, and significant influence and contribution to the Washington arts community. The $10,000 award is being underwritten by Fleishman Hillard International Communications."

An example of Kendall Buster's work will be on view at the museum October 6 through November 25, 2006. The artist was selected by an independent five-person jury: Andy Grundberg, Milena Kalinovska, Robert Lehrman, Jim Sanborn (who was the first recipient of the award) and Sarah Tanguy.

Another superb choice for this award and congrats to Kendall and my kudos to the Kreeger for institutionalizing a great art prize for the DC area.

P.S. Capps polices the award here.

P.S. Kirkland makes a good point on what the definition of the "Washington metropolitan area" is. Read it here.

Farewell Russell

The fair Heather Russell, gallerina extraordinaire for Irvine Contemporary in DC, is returning to the NYC area after a year in the District.

As of this Thursday, she will be in NYC, as the Assistant Director of the Williamsburg-based Black and White Gallery. She will be running the new ground floor Chelsea space, and also their Williamsburg gallery

She will also have a small art advisory business, based out of her home, for works not related to the gallery, and she will be hosting events and helping clients find artworks as well.

MAAN wishes Heather all the best, hopes that she stays in touch, and we're sure that she will be a great success in NYC.

Tuesday, September 05, 2006

NYT on daily painters

And now the New York Times chimes in with yet another story on the whole genre of "daily painters" which was birthed by Richmond's Duane Keiser.

Read the story here.

And in DC area, add another artist to the daily artist genre: Pamela Viola. Visit her daily artwork often!

Monday, September 04, 2006

Street Secrets

There is a public art project going on in Philadelphia now and its focus is "confessions" and they are collecting secrets from people and then posting them.

Sound familiar?

The Philly Inky's Natalie Pompilio has an excellent story on the subject here.

She writes:

"Hundreds of collected confessions - written on anything from toilet paper to postcards, scrawled with pens or pencils or markers, crafted both from the heart and as pranks - are on display at the 3rd Street Gallery, on Second Street in Old City. These stories were gathered from 12 confession boxes across Center City."
She also reveals that:
The artists shaping the project said their aim was to have a dialogue with city dwellers - or to encourage residents to have a dialogue with each other. The writings are called "confessions" according to the definition of making oneself known or disclosing one's identity, said Michael Sebright, one of the project's leaders.

"We hoped that people in Philadelphia would find it intriguing," Sebright said, "not in the Catholic sense of confessing something wrong, but in the sense of telling a story about themselves or making themselves known to other Philadelphians."
She also quotes Frank Warren, who essentially invented the whole "secret-as-art" genre as art during the last Art-O-Matic and then made it a worldwide phenomenom through the PostSecret website and through the best-selling book PostSecret: Extraordinary Confessions from Ordinary Lives.

What the story does not say is that the organizers had invited Frank Warren's PostSecret to be a major participant in the whole Philly street secret event, but when Warren said that he "did not want to water down the content of the secrets in order to show them in public spaces," he never heard from them again - "until they they started their own secret project."

Anyway, for anyone who wants to see the real PostSecret project, the Reading Public Museum still has a large PostSecret exhibit on until October 8th.

And two more books by Warren will be coming out soon:

My Secret: A PostSecret Book , comes out next month. You can pre-order it here.

And The Secret Lives of Men and Women comes out on January of 2007 and you can pre-order it here.

DCing

Heading back to DC tomorrow.

Friday, September 01, 2006

Unpacking

Moving is such a mess, no matter how well planned! I've calculated that this is my 35th move since I turned 17 and left Brooklyn to join the US Navy a few years ago.

Anyway, the kitchen is nearly set up now.

The new house is great (built in 1961), although it needs some work here and there, like most homes do. My biggest issue is ensuring that water flows away from the house, as this is the most effective way to keep your basements dry and this is very important to me, since I do a lot of work (my studio will be ther), framing, etc.

My previous house in Potomac is still up for sale, although now that I've reduced the price by over $100,000, it's a hell of a good deal and it's getting tons of showing, as it is priced at least $175,000 less than any other house in that neighborhood.

Yesterday I drove to State Street in downtown Media, where the Franklin Mint Federal Credit Union has an amazing little bank that looks like no bank I've ever seen before, it is so nice, open and welcoming, including having a terrific little coffee shop on the entrance with free WiFi!

Media is quite a charming little town, and State Street is really attractive and I look forward to exploring it later.

Just don't ask anyone in town for directions.

Medians must rank amongst the friendliest, nicest people on this planet, and amongst the worst direction-givers that exist on this Universe and all the other infinite Universes that probably exist out there.

At the coffee shop I asked for directions from State Street to Rose Tree Park on Providence Road.

Ten minutes later I was completely confused, as the two nice attendants each gave a different set of directions, further complicated by a customer, as all three argued over the issue of whether Baltimore Pike (also called Baltimore Avenue when in crosses Media) and Route 1 were the same.

Confused I thanked them, and went inside the bank, and asked three people who were waiting around, including the kid whose job is to greet customers as they come in (yes - this bank has a door greeter). He was very nice and told me that he lived near Rose Tree Park.

And then he and the other two began arguing about how to get there.

And so, armed with around six sets of directions, I go on Baltimore Avenue and turned right, which was the wrong way.

By the way, I eventually found my way home, and discovered in the process that both streets on either side of the bank (Baltimore and State itself) run into Providence Road.

When I asked how to get there, someone should have said at the same time that they'd be pointing to State Street through the huge windows: "Follow State Street to the right and it ends on Providence Road."

Maybe that's what they were trying to communicate to me.

All six of them.

Every Curve, Every Dot

The Jerusalem Fund Gallery presents Every Curve, Every Dot, the modern Arabic calligraphy designs of Nihad Dukha from September 8 – October 27, 2006 with an opening reception and artist presentation: Friday, September 8, 6:30 – 8:30 p.m.

Space of Change

The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts has awarded the District of Columbia Arts Center (DCAC) $45,000 over two years to support new Curatorial Initiative program.

And now DCAC opens its third Curatorial Initiative Exhibition, titled "Space of Change" with an Opening Reception on Friday, September 8, 7-9pm and an artists' and curators' talk at 7:30pm.

The show, curated by Claire Huschle, Margaret Boozer and Anne Surak, will introduce the work of five artists: Amy Kaplan, Martin Brief, Justin Rabideau, and the collaborative team of Wendy Weiss and Jay Kreimer.

Thursday, August 31, 2006

Factory Work

I'm looking forward to visiting the Brandywine River Museum and seeing "Factory Work: Warhol, Wyeth and Basquiat," which opens Sept. 9, 2006.

The exhibition explores the collaboration between Warhol and the these two artists in the 70's and 80's (with Wyeth) and in the 90's with Basquiat.

WPA/C All Members Meeting

1st blog from PA...

The WPA/C is having their first All Members' meeting on September 14, 2006 at 6:30 p.m. at the Corcoran Gallery of Art in the auditorium.

Paul Greenhalgh, the new director of the Corcoran will be there to meet the WPA/C members and invites them and see the current show: "redefined: Modern and Contemporary Art form the Collection."

Details here and see ya there!

Wednesday, August 30, 2006

Packing Out

Today is moving day for me. By tonight I'll be living about two hours away most of the time, although spending a few days a week in the DC area.

Tate in Sculpture Magazine

The current issue of Sculpture Magazine (this Sept-Oct 2006 issue is unfortunaltely not online yet), now available in bookstores all across the country, has a really good review of DC sculptor Tim Tate's last show at Fraser Gallery by Sarah Tanguy, who now runs the Art in Embassies program.

Much like Ron English in the 90's, and with the exception of the Smithsonian American Art Museum, Tate's work has been generally ignored by other DC museum curators while at the same time, Tate's groundbreaking marriage of context with glass and mixed media has been acquired by several museums outside of DC and is in the process of "breaking out" from DC.

This continues to re-affirm and add evidence to the unfortunate fact that most of our local museum curators rarely look in their own city for emerging artists and instead rely on their NYC and LA counterparts before taking a chance with a local talent.

Maybe when Sculpture Magazine hits their desks they'll think about taking a cab once in a while to their own backyard instead of taking a cab only to the airport to visit other cities' emerging artists.

This is something for Viso and Greenhalgh to think about.

Update: Read the review online here and here.

Tuesday, August 29, 2006

The English on English

Brit newspaper The Guardian has an excellent article on former DC area artist Ron English (who now lives in NJ).

English was one of the finalists in the first Trawick Prize, and for years exhibited at MOCA in Georgetown, which is where I first came across his work in the mid 90's (and I reviewed him for some now defunct magazine). Like most DC area artists then and now, his work was generally ignored by DC area museums and curators.

English's career has taken off since he moved closer to NYC, and it is now represented in three continents and the subject of films and books.

Maybe now that New York and London have "discovered" his work, DC area museums and curators will pay attention to it.

Monday, August 28, 2006

Again

Another newspaper discovers that artists are selling artwork online.

Jamie Gumbrecht, writing for the Lexington Herald-Dealer, not only discusses Duane Kaiser's phenomenom, but also highlights Kentucky artist Randel Plowman's version of Kaiserdom: his own "one a day" website, A Collage a Day.

Read the article here (thanks JT).

New blog

Area artist Pamela Miller has a new blog. Visit often.

Sunday, August 27, 2006

Uncertainty at the Hirshhorn

A few days ago I received a news release announcing that this fall the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden will dedicate the entire second floor of the museum to an exploration of sculpture.

On view from Oct. 26 to Jan. 7, 2007, "The Uncertainty of Objects and Ideas: Recent Sculpture" features the works of nine "influential and emerging international sculptors."

This begs the question: can an artist be "emerging" and already be "influential"?

And where does that leave Kathryn Cornelius? After all, according to the WaPo's Chief Art critic, she's only "barely emerging."

The nine emerging sculptors are:

Andrea Cohen (born 1970, American, lives in Brooklyn)
Björn Dahelm (born 1974, German, lives in Berlin)
Isa Genzken's (born 1948, German, lives in Berlin)
Mark Handforth's (born 1966, British, lives in Miami)
Rachel Harrison (born 1966, American, lives in Brooklyn)
Evan Holloway's (born 1967, American, lives in Los Angeles)
Charles Long's (born 1958, American, lives in Los Angeles)
Mindy Shapero's (born 1974, American, lives in Los Angeles)
Franz West (born 1947, Austrian, lives in Vienna)

Each artist will be represented by several pieces, while three of the artists — Rachel Harrison, Evan Holloway and Charles Long — also have been invited to select and create installations of sculptural works from the Hirshhorn's collection in galleries adjacent to the exhibition.

"There is a pronounced psychological dimension to these works, which appear by turns lively and poetic, abundant and controlled, vulnerable and solid, chaotic and composed, ordinary and exceptional," says Associate Curator, the fair Anne Ellegood, organizer of the exhibition.

According to the news release, the exhibition "examines the ways in which the artists respond to the history of modern sculpture and their efforts to create forms inspired by challenging, often elusive concepts. The exhibition propels this exploration firmly into the 21st century with these artists' shared commitment to the study of sculpture as a medium and to creating freestanding, autonomous forms made from a variety of traditional and unexpected materials. Despite their physicality, these sculptures lie somewhere between an object and an idea—offering insight into how sculpture can challenge and expand our understanding of the world around us."

While I applaud that the museum is (finally) looking to bring to light some emerging artists, I wish that Ms. Ellegood would have also at least looked into her own local art scene to try to pick a DC area emerging artist to include in this exhibition.

Perhaps promoting Cornelius from "barely emerging" to "emerging" in the process!

Friday, August 25, 2006

Pennsylvanianing

Today I closed on a new house in PA (always an event somewhat comparable to a root canal), and on the way there I took a van-load of fragile stuff to deliver to the new house, because I don't trust the movers with it.

And in the process I managed to break the glass on the framed Gene Davis charcoal drawing, and drop the framed Vija Celmins drawing, all but destroying the frame, while hoping that the drawing survived.

And I packed the Frank Frazetta oil wrong, and put a dimple on the back of the canvas (but I know how to fix that).

Everything else made it OK, althought I still have no idea (from the last move) where my Ana Mendieta drawing is.

Is that enough name dropping? Oy vey! Still have loads of art to move.

Now I just gotta sell my Potomac house... it has been reduced by $85,000! Buy it here (Mention DC Art News and get a $10,000 discount).