Wednesday, December 12, 2007

Miami Art Fire

Among the hundreds of paintings destroyed in a post Art Basel fire at the Harold Golen Gallery in Miami are apparently works by former DC area hanger about Ron English.

More Art for your Buck

See this and then join something!

Tuesday, December 11, 2007

Open Studios

Join the Washington Glass School's open house and annual Washington Glass School Holiday Party and Glass Sale. Lots of fine arts glass, class specials, artwork from a dozen prominent and emerging artists, music, food! This yearly event is always their biggest bash of the season and I am told that this is the largest sale that they have ever had! The perfect way to pick up original holiday gifts!

What: The Washington Glass School's Annual Holiday Sale and Party

Where: The Washington Glass School (3700 Otis St. Mt. Rainier, MD 20712; just across the DC city line; tel: 202-744-8222)

WashGlass.com for more info on the school.

Plenty of free parking and just 4 miles up Rhode Island Ave from Logan Circle.

When : Saturday, Dec 15th from 2 to 6pm

Monday, December 10, 2007

Wanna go to an opening in DC on Thursday?

You are all invited to the opening reception of Elements at Prada Gallery next Thursday, December 13, 2007. This exhibition features the work of Mark Cameron Boyd, Craig Cahoon, Willem de Looper, Pamela Frederick, Flora Kanter, Pepa Leon, Gene Markowski and Alex Mayer.

Prada Gallery is new to me and it is located at 1030 Wisconsin Avenue, NW, in Georgetown between M and K Streets, next to the Embassy of Thailand.

The reception is from 6:30 to 8:30 pm - please RSVP to (202) 342-0067.

Saturday, December 08, 2007

Matt Nagle on Campello

Another Campello gets reviewed... this time my daughter Elise gets reviewed by Matt Nagle of the Tacoma Weekly.

Read the review here. That's her to the left.


Meet me in St. Louis, Elise Campello to the left - photo by Kat Dollarhyde

Friday, December 07, 2007

Hands

artPark has some really nice things to say about one of my drawings that they purchased for their collection.

Read it here.

Market Five Gallery in trouble

For over 30 years Market 5 Gallery has operated in the north hall of Washington, DC's historic Eastern Market as an alternative art space.

Despite the fact that the space has no indoor plumbing or climate control, this non profit arts organization has thrived and launched many DC area artists. A few years ago, Market 5 went to court to fight what the gallery terms "an illegal eviction" by the city.

The case was then settled out of court but according to sources, the rent was raised almost 10 fold with the promise of indoor plumbing, heat, an upgraded electrical system and other improvements to bring the entire market up to code.

Now that improvements are underway on the south hall of the market, the city apparently trying to evict Market 5 Gallery again.

Please help the gallery by signing a petition to stop this eviction. Go to market5gallery.org for information about the gallery and then go to this website sign the petition.

Wanna go to an Arlington, VA opening tonite?

At the Arlington Art Center: Hope and Fear, Curated by Carol Lukitsch and part of the Winter solos 2007, and in the Jenkins Community Gallery: Art Enables: Outsider Art Inside the Beltway.

Show Dates: December 4 – January 19

Reception: Tonite! December 7, 6 – 9 pm

Location: Arlington Arts Center, 3550 Wilson Blvd, Arlington VA.

You’ll see works in their main floor galleries by Michael Platt, Sandra Parra, Janis Goodman, M.V. Langston, Rachel Waldron, Steven Williams, Laurel Hausler, and Shahla Arbabi -- all selected by former AAC Curator, Carol Lukitsch, in her show exploring both beauty and unnerving tension in contemporary art: "Hope and Fear."

In their Chairman’s Gallery on that same floor, and in their Truland experimental galleries downstairs, you’ll also find three disparate WINTER SOLOS shows that highlight both established and emerging contemporary artists from around the Mid-Atlantic region: Jennifer Levonian, Young Kim, and Joe Mannino.

Downstairs, a selection of works from ART ENABLES — a D.C. arts organization working with adults who have developmental and/or mental disabilities -- will be on view in the Jenkins Gallery. And upstairs, you’ll find the colorful representational paintings and prints of resident studio artist Edith Heins in her show, Up Close and Personal.

The reception will include the premiere of a new dance choreographed by Lucy Bowen McCauley, with performances at both 6:30 and 7:30 in the Meyer Gallery by Bowen McCauley Dance.

Hope and Fear curator Carol Lukitsch will give her remarks in the Tiffany Gallery at 7:00.

Read the WaPo review here.

Thursday, December 06, 2007

Wanna go to a DC opening tomorrow?

Tomorrow, December 7 is not only the anniversary of the day when, according to John Belushi in Animal House, the Germans bombed Pearl Harbor, but also it is the last in the inaugural round of 9x10 exhibitions featuring the work of WPA member artists!

In tribute to the late William Warren Parker’s support for emerging DC artists, his family has generously donated space at the William W. Parker (WWP) Gallery – housed in Mickelson’s Fine Art Framing at 629 New York Ave NW - to the WPA for a new “nine-by-ten” exhibition series: 9 shows of 10 member artists each.

These shows provided a new outlet for WPA member artists, and each exhibition presented a diverse cross-section of the WPA membership to the public, showcasing works in all media.

Show #9: December 7, 2007 – January 4, 2008, featuring works by Michele Banks, Michael Kent, Preeti Gujral Kochar, Pepa Leon, Laurie Messite, Mary D. Ott, Bailey Rosen, Andrei Trach, Jennifer Trice and Irene Zweig.

OPENING RECEPTION: FRIDAY, DECEMBER 7, 6:30 – 8 pm
WWP Gallery (Mickelson’s Fine Art Framing)
629 New York Ave NW, 3rd Floor
Washington, DC 20001
Info: 202.639.1828 or here.

In addition, Michele Banks has a solo show of her abstract watercolors running at Gallery Frame Avenue in Bethesda through December 31.

McQuaid on Campello

The Boston Globe's Cate McQuaid reviews "Ozspirations" at The New England School of Art and Design Gallery at Suffolk University in Boston and has something nice to say about my drawings, although she pretty much dismisses the rest of the exhibition.

Read her review here.

New Acquisitions

A sculpture by Sol LeWitt and an oil painting by William D. Washington, a 19th century Washington, DC raised artist famed throughout the South for his "Burial of Latane" Civil War painting, have been acquired by the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts.

VMFA is a state museum with private endowments for art purchase. I think that this is perhaps the ideal public/private partnership, because art is purchased with private funds and then becomes the responsibly of the state for its ongoing care.

Throughout their history, they have benefited from many generous donors, including Mr. and Mrs. Paul Mellon, Rita Gans, Lillian Thomas Pratt, and Sydney and Frances Lewis, among many others.

Sol LewittThe LeWitt was a partial gift of the Sol LeWitt estate and Pace Wildenstein in honor of Frances Lewis and in memory of Sydney Lewis, in addition to some funds from the Sydney and Frances Lewis endowment.

VMFA's new Sol LeWitt sculpture is titled "Splotch #22" and was created in acrylic on fiberglass this year. It stands just more than 12 feet tall.

"Much of today's art practice would be unthinkable without LeWitt's pioneering work in Conceptual Art in the 1960s and 1970s," says John Ravenal, VMFA's Sydney and Frances Lewis Family Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art.

"Our new sculpture is the largest and most complex of LeWitt's series of non-geometric sculptures. It is also LeWitt's last work."

Ravenal says that the artist made two drawings for "Splotch #22" on which he indicated colors and height. A fabricator then translated the drawings into 3-D using a computer. The result is a sculpture made of layers of industrial-grade foam that were laminated, carved and sanded before being coated with epoxy resin, fiberglass, and multiple layers of paint and varnish.

I am curious as to the technical aspect of this... once the "fabricator" has created a 3-D digital file, is it then fed to a machine which then "builds" the sculpture, or creates a mold for it? And who carves and sands the industrial-grade foam? Who coats it with resin and fiberglass and then applies the paint and varnish?

Possibly not LeWitt, and that's OK...

But is this the same general idea as a watercolorist creating a watercolor and then handing it over to a lab which then scans it into a hi resolution image and prints it into a canvas, and then another machine replicates the artist's original brush strokes in a finishing clear medium and recreates another work which is not the original piece.

We call those reproductions.

But then say that the artist's watercolor is scanned into a 3-D translation and made into a sculpture?

Makes my head hurt.

Wednesday, December 05, 2007

Miami Day One

As the entire human art universe is now focused on Miami, I thought that it might be fun and interesting to have an artist's viewpoint reporting from Miami.

Each day I will publish the District's uberartist Tim Tate's experiences from Miami. Here's the first installment:

A day by day impression of ArtBasel from the perspective of an artist showing there for the first time. Call it my mini blog for just these few days. One artist's journey through the most complex art maze on Earth.

The weather here is spectacular... about 75 degrees yesterday and cool and breezy. I cabbed in from the airport to my hotel (which is a totally adorable guesthouse in South Beach) then went to see my gallery space at the Flow Art Fair.

FLOW is one of the spin off shows from ArtBasel Miami Beach and is right next to Bridge and Aqua (two other art fair spin offs). And all are right next to "the" ArtBasel MB.

I arrived in late afternoon.... this is just set-up day. Wednesday is press preview at noon and the actual opening is Thursday night.

FLOW is being held at the Dorset Hotel. When I arrived it was a little underwhelming. It seems that each gallery that is participating in FLOW gets a hotel room.

FLOW is considered one of the best off shoot fairs as it's an invitation only show, which means that a gallery has to be invited to show there - in other words, a gallery can't apply to the show, it has to be invited.

I am showing here with a gallery with an incredible reputation, and they are totally featuring me. I can't quite believe it.

And a hotel room is what you get... a small hotel room.... about 15 x 20 feet.

It's all so odd. They have covered the toilet with fabric and it is its now a pedestal for a sculpture. They have covered the sink with a black disc and it is now another pedestal. Thank God that they also covered the flocked brocade wall paper that dominated the room!

It totally reminds me of just starting out in my art career when we would take over a friend's apartment for a home show.

So finally I am being represented at the largest art show in the world, and it feels just like I'm starting all over again. Just like Annie Adjchavanich's $100 art sales used to be in the District years ago!

But maybe that's the point: I am starting over. Just on an international level.

I am told that this is the way its done and so I am hopping on board for this ride. For better or worse, I will report it all to you.

Last night they threw a welcoming party for us on the roof of the Dorset Hotel. Tons of liquor and sushi; it was very nice. George Hemphill of DC's Hemphill Fine Arts, came over to me and said hi and welcomed me to FLOW (he is showing here too).

At the same time, right across the street was a huge VIP opening for the super-swells... klieglights... limos... furs... very fancy (I think Lenny was there).

And as I stood on this roof deck... klieg lights dancing across the buildings, George Hemphill saying hi... everyone coming up to me telling me how blown away they are by my video pieces... I thought: "maybe I have arrived."

But as my life has taught me... my hubris in these situations is always quickly corrected by the Universe... we will see as the days unfold down here.

More tomorrow...

Tim

New Hands

The District's Aaron Gallery has been around for a long time. Recently the director and owner passed away, and now the gallery is in the hands of the talented Sabrina Cabada and she's slowly but surely re-inventing the gallery, one step at a time.

And something new already!

They're having an art exhibition by gallery artists - as opposed to the same work hanging all the time as they used to be.

Join the gallery and artists on Friday, December 7th for an opening reception at 1717 Connecticut Avenue, NW, Washington DC at 6:30 to 8:30 pm. Contact info@aarongallerydc.com for further details.

Work by Chico Hardraker, Chris Milk Hulburt, Francine Shore, J. Aaron Alderman, John Blee, Mary Jennings, Matt Sesow, Rebecca D’Angelo and Sabrina Cabada.

New Director at the Phillips

Dorothy Kosinski
Dorothy Kosinski, Senior Curator of Painting and Sculpture at the Dallas Museum of Art, has been selected as The Phillips Collection's new director.

"I am thrilled to have been selected as the next director of The Phillips Collection," says Dr. Kosinski. "I have long admired Duncan Phillips’s extraordinary record as a collector of modern art and his deep commitment to contemporary artists."

Dr. Kosinski will assume her post next Spring and succeeds Jay Gates, who announced his retirement in June 2007. Read the WaPo's Jackie Trescott's article on the subject here.

Welcome to the DC area!

Tuesday, December 04, 2007

Washington Color School


Monday, December 03, 2007

Wanna go to a DC opening this Wednesday?

Leslie M. Nolan opens at DC's Gallery A (2106 R Street, NW, Washington, DC 202-667-2599) with an opening reception on December 7 from 6 - 8:30PM. The exhibition goes through January 3, 2008.

Callboxes

The Washington DC Southwest Neighborhood Assembly History Task Force Call Box Committee, in collaboration with Cultural Tourism DC, seeks artists to participate in Art on Call.

This public arts project is a city-wide effort led by Cultural Tourism DC in partnership with the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities and the District Department of Transportation to restore Washington, DC's historic abandoned police and fire Call Boxes as neighborhood artistic icons.

Art on Call challenges artists to use existing police or fire Call Boxes as frames for the artist's unique and creative image or design that can be permanently installed within the call box.

For more information regarding this opportunity and for a copy of the prospectus please email swcallboxproject@gmail.com.

Sunday, December 02, 2007

ABMB

Art Basel Miami Beach takes place December 6 - 9, 2007, although ABMB itself has become such a magnet for art symbiots of all kinds that the event now encompasses more than the 200 leading art galleries from North America, Latin America, Europe, Asia and Africa which will exhibit artworks by over 2,000 artists at the "real" ABMB.

There are now well over a dozen satellite art fairs all revolving around ABMB, and quite a few DC area art galleries and private dealers will be represented in several of these fairs.

It's a long way since the now-closed Fusebox Gallery became the first DC area art gallery to venture to the Miami area in 2003; as I recall to show Fusebox artists at The Art Positions section -- those air-conditioned shipping containers right on the beach.

The more I talk art fairs to gallerists and art dealers the more that it makes sense why a good gallery should do at least 3-4 art fairs a year. Some Philadelphia gallerists that I have spoken to have been "saved" from closing down in stingy Philadelphia because of art fairs.

"About 75% of my yearly sales now come from the three art fairs that I do each year," related to me an Old City gallerist. "Next year I am going to apply to double that number."

I hear a similar story from DC area gallerists, some of which are now even exploring art fairs in Europe and Latin America, as the sales continue to climb more and more at the fairs, and the appetite for the European Euro is discovered.

Moral of the story: If you are a gallerist, you owe it to your gallery and to your artists to start applying to the high quality art fairs such as Scope, Bridge, Aqua, Flow, Art Miami, Pulse, the Armory Show, LA Art Fair, Art(212), Affordable Art Fair, Red Dot, Pinta (for Latin American art), SOFA, NADA, Frieze, ARCO, Art Santa Fe... the list goes on an on - just click here to see how many different art fairs there will be next weekend in Miami.

This doesn't mean that the "new" art model is just art fairs; far from it. There are such models, and several private art dealers do great in getting into art fairs and selling loads of work.

But they do not contribute to their city's cultural life. And that's OK... a city's cultural tapestry has many members and parts, including private art dealers.

However, an art gallery, a good art gallery anyway, is not just an art store, but an integral and key part of the cultural tapestry of a city. As my good friend John Pancake once told me, "a heroic venture."

And so the true and valid model for a good and reputable art gallery seems to be a mixture of a brick and mortar establishment, a substantial and organized and updated web and digital presence, and a healthy assortment of art fairs.

Gallerists: Start applying now for 2009 - most 2008 deadlines have already passed! Or stop complaining about being unable to sell artwork in your local market.

Congrats!

Multiple congrats to former DC area artist (now living somewhere in Atlanta) Jiha Moon, whose work was recently acquired by the The Mint Museum of Art in Charlotte, North Carolina, which also (a while back) acquired a work by DC artist Tim Tate.

Second congrats because Moon is also having her European debut at the Miki Wick Kim Gallery in Zurich, Switzerland.

Third congrats because there's a review of her recent show at Curator's Office is in the December issue of ArtForum; read it below (click on it to get a larger image):

Jiha Moon Review

Jiha Moon has also been in my "Buy Now" list for quite a while...

Update: The Mint Museum has advised me that Jiha Moon will have her first solo museum exhibition at the museum February 2 through July 6, 2008!

Friday, November 30, 2007

The WaPo on Amy Lin

Amy Lin's current commercial gallery solo debut (at Heineman Myers Contemporary Art) is not only selling well, but also receiving the critical attention that it deserves.

The Washington Post has the very rare double mention today. Read the first review here and then a second article here.

Amy Lin has been on my "Buy Now List" for a long time now. Don't wait much longer. The show goes through December 23, 2007.