Ober, Bailey, McNatt, Gopnik, and now Capps

Kriston Capps from the WCP confirms that there appears to be a dealer angle on the whole "Bailey as Ober" exhibition controversy in Baltimore and even makes a good case for the potential "adjustment" of the context and focus and word-spin of this show after the fact; here's the original news release on the show - there's nothing on Ober.

Read Capps here.

Here's an idea: how about some institution in DC or Baltimore sponsor a panel where Bailey, Block, Gopnik, McNatt, and Ober all sit down and chew this out and respond to the good questions raised by the visual arts blogsphere and take questions from the audience?

Maybe the BMA, or MICA, or School 33, or MAP, can step up and offer the place to host the discussion?

I'll moderate it for free.

Numbers

Between January 2007 and December 2007, this blog received 715,265 visits/page views, an all time new record for DC Art News, Mid Atlantic Art News, Daily Campello Art News.

Evidence of the huge thirst that exists for information and writing about the visual arts.

"If you don't get it, you don't get it"
- Washington Post ad slogan

Thank you!

This Saturday

On February 2, O'Neill Studios will be hosting a Party, Art Show and Silent Auction to benefit Autism Speaks. Their past events have attracted hundreds of people and raised thousands of dollars for important charities, all while showcasing the best of the DC art community. Around nine artists will be painting live as attendees party around them. All guests are invited to eat, drink, dance, buy artwork, and bid on some cool items. Special performance at 9 p.m. featuring the legendary DC band, the LivelyStones.

WHO: Art lovers, partygoers, charitable contributors, DC metro community

WHAT: Post-Holiday Party, Art Show and Silent Auction to raise money for Autism Speaks

WHEN: Saturday, February 2, 2008 6 p.m.- midnight

WHERE: LeftBank, 2424 18th St, NW, Washington, DC 20009

CONTACT: Christine Hamershock, christine@oneillstudios.com, tel: 301.530.9030

On Museums

Opinions are like assholes; everyone has one.

And depending on everyone's points of view and depth of knowledge, and agendas, and interests, when you're wrong, you're wrong, but also, when you're right, you're right, and this one is right on (thanks Rosetta!)

Luna & Summerford

Carlos Luna: El Gran Mambo opens today at DC's beautiful American University's Katzen Arts Center and runs through Monday, March 17, 2008.

Luna is a Cuban-American artist who is "a storyteller and social chronicler, merging themes of fables and mysticism, eroticism and prejudice, and religiosity and anthropology, all of which are organized, disbanded, interwoven, and reorganized in the iconographic discourse he creates. "

Also beginning today is work by Ben L. Summerford a Professor Emeritus from AU. "Ben Summerford has been a major influence on Washington art for over 50 years as an artist, teacher, and cofounder of the Jefferson Place Gallery."

There's several other shows opening early next month, including work by William Christenberry (his Klan Room Tableau makes their first appearance in DC), Roger Brown, Elena Sisto, and others.

An opening reception for all of the above shows will take place on Saturday, Feb. 16, from 6 to 9 p.m. All shows will be open for viewing. In addition to the artist’s reception, a Gallery Talk on Roger Brown with Curator Sidney Lawrence will take place on Saturday, Feb. 16, at 4 p.m. and then a second Gallery Talk with Carlos Luna will take place the same day at 5 p.m. as American University Museum's Director Jack Rasmussen leads a conversation with artist Carlos Luna about his work.

Afghanistan Has World's Oldest Oil Paintings

Buddhist images on the walls of central Afghanistan's Bamiyan caves are the world's first oil paintings, Japanese researcher Yoko Taniguchi says. Taniguchi, an expert at Japan's National Research Institute for Cultural Properties, and a group of Japanese, European, and American scientists are collaborating to restore the damaged murals, the Daily Star reports. The Los Angeles-based Getty Conservation Institute analyzed 53 samples from the murals that date back to about 650 A.D., concluding that they had oil in the paint. "My European colleagues were shocked because they always believed oil paintings were invented in Europe," Taniguchi said. "They couldn't believe such techniques could exist in some Buddhist cave deep in the countryside." The Bamiyan Valley is known for two huge 1,500-year-old statues of the Buddha that were destroyed by the Taliban in 2001.

Read the whole story here.

Southerning

I'm down South for a few days... more later.

But meanwhile, if you are a DC area sculptor looking for a great bunch of creative folks to hang around with, the Washington Sculptors Group is having a Sculptors Happy Hour, tomorrow, Tuesday, January 29, 7:00 pm at Busboys and Poets in DC.

Gopnik, Ober and Bailey

The WaPo's Chief Art Critic has an interesting angle on the debate caused by a Baltimore exhibition by an artist copying the distinctive style of Baltimore artist Cara Ober (Disclaimer: I have never met Cara Ober, nor do I own any of her works, but I have been to Baltimore).

This is one of Gopnik's most successful articles to date, at least judging by the intense debate that it caused at dinner with my in-laws; the sparks were flying as people took sides. He writes:

Baltimore artist Christine Bailey tests an almost equally strange notion. What if one artist were to suddenly start working in the very different style of a local colleague -- not simply copying specific works, but fully inhabiting that colleague's trademark way of painting? "Christine Bailey: New Work," on show in a corporate lobby in Baltimore, is the experiment. Its results can be seen in the tempest that it caused on the Baltimore art scene.

The artist being copied is Cara Ober.

Bailey's paintings capture all of Ober's telltale tricks and tics. Nostalgic imagery is pulled from older sources. Bird books, old encyclopedias, decorative wallpapers? Check. Tender, pastel colors -- soft washes of pale yellows, blues and pinks -- with brooding splashes of black on top? Check. Scraps of dictionary definitions, presented in old-timey fonts? Check. An overriding sense of capital-P Poetry, without ever making clear quite what that poetry's about? Check.

Gopnik, of course, takes the predictable side; he writes: " it's hard to imagine that a cerebral artist such as Bailey would like Ober's work enough to want to truly claim it as her own."

That's a zinger against Ober, earned (I think) because in Gopnik's own words, she is a "rather successful female painter."

That description could be compliment, I think, maybe... Why the maybe? because in the obsessive, theory-driven art brains of talented writers, but one-sided and one focus critics like Gopnik, I think that often ideas are much more important to them that the art itself. Success with commodifiable art is not necessarily a good thing to the theory mafia (la Cosa Teorista).

And thus, often it's a negative thing to be successful in that weird one-sided art upper world. And if an artist is successful, then that's often seen by these single vision soldiers as a negative.

I think that the right mix is probably a mix of creative ideas together with some degree of artistic success; not all artists have to be just Van Goghesque victims, or Pointdexters, or commercial geniuses (although the latter really helps... money is not everything in the world, but it's damned well ahead of whatever is in second place).

Notice how Gopnik tears at Ober's success: he insinuates that her artistic output is common and it is so "especially when it's one that's been out there for a decade or two already, and is shared by painters working all around the globe."

OK Blake, can you name three of those artists? Any country will do. I'm not saying that you're wrong, but as someone well-travelled, who has lived in three continents, and goes to a gazillion openings and art fairs, I'm wrecking my brains trying to think or remember a single artist in the last decade or two years whose work is similar or reminds me of Ober's? I just need an example to back up such a hugely broad commonizing statement.

Words count.

But we'll give Gopnik an A+ in making a clear case that Bailey is not really trying to just "copy" Ober's work as a forger or an imitator would. It's a good point and certainly does make up for an interesting and provocative idea for an exhibition.

But then again, in the theory-only OCD brains, the need to diminish the "other side" emerges no matter how well the case has been made for the theory side. He stabs Ober's work in the heart by writing that "in this case it's hard to imagine that a cerebral artist such as Bailey would like Ober's work enough to want to truly claim it as her own."

Not needed - Blake already made a solid case as to why Bailey is doing this; this is just an attempt to diminish Ober's work. It's not malice, but just an example of being unable to co-exist with the "other side." Gopnik can't help himself - he must elevate the idea above the work, and then attempt to bury the work.

But then, this erudite Anglophile steps over the edge with his exuberance over what Bailey has clearly accomplished with her idea. He joyously writes that

Most artists make an object and barely feel a ripple when they go public with it. It can seem a useless act, or at least an impotent one. So, Bailey says, she asked herself a question: "Can I make a picture -- a benign object -- and really make it function socially?" Judging from the heated responses to her project, the answer's clearly yes. It's made "Christine Bailey: New Work" one of the most stimulating local shows I've seen in ages.... Four of the lobby pictures are on their way to being sold, but it's hard to know if they're being bought for their tasteful, Oberesque good looks or their hard-hitting Baileyan brains

If it is the latter, then I think that those words begin the commodification of the idea into a commercially successful object; this is slippery ground for the theory only mafia. A "made" soldier like Gopnik should know better.

Congrats to Gopnik for delivering one of the most stimulating local reviews that I've read in ages; congrats to Bailey for not only delivering an interesting show and idea, but also an apparent commercially successful one; and congrats to Ober for simply being a damned good painter and good enough to be the target of this project.

Ahh... one last thing, and someone correct me if I am wrong, but I seem to recall that Jordan Faye Block, Bailey's current dealer and the dealer who set up this exhibit, used to be -- used to be -- Ober's dealer as well; but I am working from memory here and it is Sunday.

I am curious if there is a dealer part in the Ober selection process? I wonder if this issue had anything to do with Bailey's choice, and this is my open question to her, which I wish I could ask her directly rather than asking here.

If her dealer suggested Ober, then the dealer deserves a "well done" as well - after all, if we're gonna pick on an artist's style, we might as well pick on one whose work has a good sales track record, uh?

This is all good for art.

OK... one more last thing: Gopnik describes Baltimore's scene as "conservative." This adjective seems to be applied to every city's art scene on the planet, and it may be the right adjective, but then again, can someone send me an example of where a critic or writer has ever described any city's art scene on this planet as "progressive" or "liberal"? I'm sure some are, but I just want to be educated as to where, and with facts to back up such a sweeping statement.

Read Gopnik's article here and read Cara Ober's blog here - it has a lot more info on this interesting issue, including a statement by Bailey. And for a different take, read the Baltimore Sun's art critic's take on the issue here and artPark's here, and Mango & Ginger here and Bethesda Art Blog here.

Update: Kriston Capps from the WCP confirms my memory that there was a dealer angle to this story.

Gallery Anniversaries

Longview Gallery near the Convention Center in DC, and Project 4, also in DC, are celebrating second year anniversaries. Sometimes it is clear to me about how little people who are not gallerists understand about what a business-heroic task it is to run a gallery successfully. Congratulations to Drew Porterfield and Anne Surak.

Longview Gallery's next show is work by West Virginia painter Mary Chiarmonte and Jessie Mann (daughter of photographer Sally Mann). The Opening Reception is Friday, February 8, 5-8pm and the show goes through March 15.

Project 4 celebrates its two-year anniversary with an exhibition of new works by a selection of their artists as well as a preview of artists being introduced this year. The Opening Reception is Saturday, February 2, 2008 - 6:00pm - 8:30pm. The exhibition goes through March 1, 2008 and features work by one of my favorite DC area artists: Margaret Boozer, as well as work by Beau Chamberlain, Christine Gray, Amy Kaplan, Ani Kasten, Tricia Keightley, Lisa Lindgren, J.J. McCracken, Rich MacDonald, Amy Ross, Rene Trevino Paul Villinski and Laurel Lukaszewski.

You may recall that Laurel Lukaszewski was my prediction during the last Artomatic to emerge as that massive show's art star, and Lukaszewski has done spectacularly well both locally and in various galleries in other cities as well.

By the way, Anne Surak will be co-curating New Waves for the Contemporary Art Center of Virginia (CAC). New Waves 2008 is open to Virginia artists and will be on view April 11-June 15, 2008 in Virginia Beach. The exhibition will be seen during CAC's huge Boardwalk Art Show & Festival, which draws 350,000 visitors annually. The deadline for New Waves 2008 is February 1, 2008. Details here.

And another by the way, I will be also curating an exhibition titled "Early Look" for Longview Gallery later this summer. The exhibition will feature art by undergraduate art students from the Mid Atlantic who are enrolled in an accredited undergraduate art course. More on that later, but I plan to do a lot of art school visiting over the next few months. That exhibition will be from June 6 through July 5, 2008.

Glass3

I gave you an early heads up last year... for the whole background read this.

And now the official news release:

The Georgetown Business Improvement District (Georgetown BID), in partnership with Artomatic, Inc., the Office of the Secretary for the District of Columbia, and Sunderland City Council, is proud to present an international fine arts glass exhibit, entitled Glass3, hosted by The Shops at Georgetown Park (3222 M Street, NW).

Glass3, which opens to the public on Thursday, February 21, debuts as the first Artomatic international collaboration. Located on the lower level of the mall, the three-story space contributed by The Shops at Georgetown Park will soon present vibrant glass work, glass blown sculptures, as well as narrative glass work through etching, writing, and video projection.

Glass3 is the first international glass exhibit for Artomatic. The exhibition will feature international glass artists represented by Cohesion Artists from Sunderland, England, national artists organized by the Arts Commission of Greater Toledo from Toledo, Ohio, and Washington, D.C.-based artists represented by the Washington Glass School. Through invitation only, each arts organization selects the artists presented in the three-week long exhibit.

The show will be open through Sunday, March 9, and is free and open to the public. Gallery hours are Monday through Saturday, 12 p.m. to 8 p.m., and Sunday, 12 p.m. to 6 p.m.

This international show again underscores something that has been brewing and growing under the noses of DMV area museum curators and that has ironically been recognized first nationally and now internationally: the Greater DC area has become a hot spot (pun intended) for contemporary fine arts glass and is clearly leading the way in delivering a new conceptual, narrative and even technological boost to fine art glass.

You all know that I am not objective about this issue, but I wouldn't be surprised to see this seminal work with glass as the kernel for creativity become the basis for the most significant new art movement in the DC region since the halcyon days of the Washington Color School. I don't know who will be in this show from the UK and from Ohio, but I suspect that we may see a lot of really terrific vessels from those artists and perhaps then DC area eyes will see how different the work of our locals is when compared as to what the rest of the world is doing.



Call for Redemption, c. 2007 Tim Tate
Blown glass, cast glass, video projection, speakers and motion sensors

Wanna tour the DC City Hall Art Collection?

At 12 p.m. on Thursday, January 30, the public is invited to the Wilson Building for a guided tour through the City Hall public collection of art on permanent display on floors 1-5 of the Wilson building. The tour will be lead by the talented Ellyn Weiss, whose work is included in the collection.

This is a unique chance to meet with local artists featured in the collection and have a discussion on being an artist in the Nation's capital and to see a rich cross section of local artists (both established and emerging). This will be a bi-monthly occurrence. This is the richest and largest permanent exhibition of the work of local DC area artists in the city, featuring a broad range of work, from internationally known artists such as Jacob Kainen, Sam Gilliam, Tim Tate and William Christenberry, to work by most of the artists of significance working in the capital region area now.

The tour is free; however space is limited. Please RSVP to beth.baldwin@dc.gov with the number in your party. Meet at the Pennsylvania Avenue entrance — the building is located at 1350 Pennsylvania Ave NW. ID is required to enter the building.

Opportunity for Artists

Deadline: March 1, 2008

The Innovators Combatting Substance Abuse Program has a call out for artists for original art to appear in a forthcoming book on art and addiction to be published by Johns Hopkins University Press.

Open to all artists and all media, including video on the subject of drug addiction, including alcohol, and recovery. A panel of jurors (I'm one of them) will select finalists, and each finalist will receive a $200 honorarium, with the top five receiving an additional $500, copy of the book, and inclusion in exhibitions in Maryland and Puerto Rico.

No entry fees!

Download entry form here.

Philadelphia Biennaleing

"The Philadelphia Museum of Art is pleased to announce the selection of Bruce Nauman (b. 1941) as the artist to represent the United States at the 2009 Venice Biennale. The State Department’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs selected Nauman following the unanimous recommendation of the Federal Advisory Committee on International Exhibitions (FACIE) that reviewed proposals received through an open competition. Carlos Basualdo, Curator of Contemporary Art, and Michael Taylor, the Muriel and Philip Berman Curator of Modern Art, will serve as the U.S. Commissioners and will organize the exhibition from the Philadelphia Museum of Art."

London Blues

In this cruise that I just came back from, we all had a lot of fun in one of the bars singing drunken karaoke songs (I know... I know...) and it reminded me of something from my past.

Sometime around 1988 or so, I lived in England for a few months, and back then a lot of the English pubs were really into karaoke. And even though I am not a Texan, one of my past roomates is from Texas and he used to play "London Blues" all the time and I used to really love to sing it in English pubs.

Scary uh? A guy from Brooklyn singing a Texas song...

Unfortunately the cruise ship didn't have it in its inventory, but upon getting back I got myself a couple of Jerry Jeff Walker CDs and it brought back memories of the song that I think may be the greatest Texas song of all time --- and yes, I know that I've just made a zillion Texans disagree with me... or maybe not.

Listen to Barry P. Nunn sing it here the way that it's supposed to come out... lyrics below.

Well, when you're down on your luck,
And you ain't got a buck,
In London you're a goner.
Even London Bridge has fallen down,
And moved to Arizona,
Now I know why.
And I'll substantiate the rumor that the English sense of humor
Is drier than than the Texas sand.
You can put up your dukes, and you can bet your boots
That I'm leavin' just as fast as I can.

I wanna go home with the armadillo
Good country music from Amarillo and Abilene
The friendliest people and the prettiest women you've ever
Seen.

Well, it's cold over here, and I swear
I wish they'd turn the heat on.
And where in the world is that English girl
I promised I would meet on the third floor.
And of the whole damn lot, the only friend I've got
Is a smoke and a cheap guitar.
My mind keeps roamin', my heart keeps longin'
To be home in a Texas bar.

I wanna go home with the armadillo
Good country music from Amarillo and Abilene
The friendliest people and the prettiest women you've ever
Seen

Well, I decided that I'd get my cowboy hat
And go down to Marble Art Station.
'Cause when a Texan fancies, he'll take his chances.
Chances will be taken, that's for sure.
And them Limey eyes, they were eyein' the prize
That some people call manly footwear.
And they said you're from down South,
And when you open your mouth,
You always seem to put your foot there.

Repeat chorus 'til the cows come home.

And thank God they also didn't have Up Against the Wall, Redneck Mothers.

Openings in C'ville

Charlottesville, Virginia holds a dear place in my arts heart - back in the mid 90s when we were hunting for a place to open a gallery, I focused a lot of attention on Charlottesville before the space in Georgetown fell in our lap. I also seem to have a lot of collectors of my own work in that area for some odd reason.

Anyway... two interesting exhibitions taking place there.

At the Second Street Gallery, Rob Tarbell's appropriated stuffed animals that he usually finds at Goodwill assume new forms as their stuffing is replaced with porcelain slip and then fired in a kiln.

There will be an opening reception for Tarbell (who teaches at Virginia Commonwealth University and Piedmont Virginia Community College) on First Fridays, February 1, 6:00 - 8:00 pm, with an artist talk at 6:30PM for Rob Tarbell: The Struggles Play Nice.

Migration: A Gallery, Laura & Rob Jones (who own one of my drawings) continue to offer the C'ville area a kick-ass exhibition program.

Currently they have the acrylic paintings of University of Mary Washington art professor Stephen L. Griffin in a show titled "Strata."

That show goes through Feb. 15, 2008.

Then check out the cool schedule of exhibitions coming down the road, including a Washington Glass School show.

White House Redux

You can just click onto this website or read on from the news release that I received:

I'm excited to announce that I'm on the jury for a new design competition,called White House Redux, the purpose of which is to design a new home for the U.S. Presidency.

It's a speculative project, to be sure - but a fun one, and I can't wait to see what comes up.

Here's the brief: What if the White House, the ultimate architectural symbol of political power, were to be designed today?

On occasion of the election of the 44th President of the United States of America, Storefront for Art and Architecture, in association with Control Group, challenge you to design a new residence for the world's most powerful individual.

The best ideas, designs, descriptions, images, and videos will be selected by some of the world's most distinguished designers and critics and featured in a month-long exhibition at Storefront for Art and Architecture in July 2008 and published in Surface magazine.

All three winners will be flown to New York to collect their prizes at the opening party. Register now and send us your ideas for the Presidential Palace of the future!

Continuing: Few people realize the extent of the White House, since much of it is below ground or otherwise concealed by landscaping. The White House includes: Six stories and 55,000 square feet of floor space, 132 rooms and 35 bathrooms, 412 doors, 147 windows, twenty-eight fireplaces, eight staircases, three elevators, five full-time chefs, a tennis court, a bowling alley, a movie theater, a jogging track, a swimming pool, and a putting green.

It receives about 5,000 visitors a day. The original White House design, by James Hoban, was the result of a competition held in 1792. Over the centuries, presidents have added rooms, facilities and even entire new wings, turning the White House into the labyrinthine complex it is today.

What if, instead of in 1792, that competition were to be held today? What would a White House designed in 2008, year of election of the 44th President of the United States, look like?

That's the question, then: If you were to design a residential office complex for the U.S. President, what would it look like? Perhaps London's GLA? Or the CCTV Building? Or Selfridge's, Birmingham? Or the Kunsthaus Graz? Would it be stylistically European - or Latin American, or African, or Asian? Prefab? Rammed earth? Perhaps an updated Nakagin Capsule Tower? Or would it be a Walking City? Maybe a helicopter archipelago? Maybe algae-powered, or billboard-bound, or an inhabited dam? Would it be ironic, self-deprecating, imperial, solar-powered, walled off behind anti-missile batteries, or anachronistically neoclassical and made of limestone? All of the above?

Here are the specs. The jury consists of Beatriz Colomina, Stefano Boeri, Liz Diller, John Maeda, myself, Mark Wigley, and Laetitia Wolff. So step up and submit.

I'm genuinely excited about this. Show us your best! Think big, think small, think detailed. Think abstract. Change history.

Details here.

One closes and one opens in Baltimore

Touchet Gallery in Baltimore will close.

DB5K is a new space across the street from where Touchet was.

Touchstone

If you want to see 60 DC area artists all in one space (while you wait for the next Artomatic), then check out Touchstone Gallery's current show Double Vision, which is on now through Feb. 3, 2008.

Work by Mary Ott, Paul So, Cynthia Young, Alice Whealan, Jeanne Garant, Christine Cardellino, Janet Wheeler, Helen Corning, Marcia Coppel, Miriam Keeler, Mari DeMaris, Marie Straw, Melissa Widerkehr, Charles St. Charles, Walter Smalling, T. R. Logan, Kyoko Cox, Steve Alderton, Brian Martucci, Michael Lang, Emery Lewis, Chris Hutchinson, Marshe Hutchinson, Janathal Shaw, Malia Salam-Steeple, Antonia Macedo, Peter Karp, Dina Volkova, Helena Chenomazova, Maya Mackrandilal, Bill Bennett, Harriet Rosenbaum, Dina Rotklein, Harvey J. Kupferberg, Ulrich Stein, Rima Schulkind, Alice Bindeman, Aina Nergaard-Nammack, Lee Wayne Mills, Rosemary A. Luckett, Brigitte Pierrette Davis, Tory Cowles, and Kathy Beynette.

Sonya A. Lawyer at GRACE

About three years ago I came across the work of DC area photographer Sonya A. Lawyer and included her in a massive exhibition titled “Seven” that I curated for the Washington Project for the Arts/Corcoran. Then I lost contact with Lawyer's artwork.

And then last week I was invited to speak on contemporary art at the Greater Reston Arts Center in Reston, Virginia and came across the new work by Lawyer, which was on exhibition in GRACE’s beautiful new gallery spaces.

To say that I was simply impressed with the new directions in her work would be the first great understatement of 2008.

I was taken, absorbed, seduced, educated, revitalized and convinced that this talented photographer had accomplished a very intelligent marriage of her photographic skills, her gender and her culture, all succinctly wrapped up and presented for comment and absorption in this exhibition.

On view was a 21st century marriage of Mondrian design, African-American history, vintage photography, online appropriation, race relations, enviable presentation and well-honed artistic skills, and also a lesson on power and vision.

Oh yeah... and also an imaginative American photographer perhaps liberating the work of those earlier photographers on whose shoulders she stands, and also the subjects of their work.

Joanne Bauer, GRACE’s hard working curator told me that Lawyer had began collecting vintage photo albums of imagery of people of color from a variety of sources such as online auctions and antique stores.

Later Lawyer told me that after a couple of months of watching the online auctions, she realized that some participants would buy an album and then split apart the images in the album and re-sell them individually to make a larger profit.

She also told me that “the women, men, and children are for the most part nameless and only now known by their auction ID number and their seller’s quirky sign-on. The thought of families torn apart, albeit figuratively, and then sold to the highest bidder is very disturbing and repeats a very troubling part of history. Although I recognize my own complicity by participating in the auctions of my ‘ancestors,’ I do feel that I am rescuing the albums (people) I can, from further disturbance.”

Enter the power of art, as a healing process perhaps, for the artist and even for the nameless faces in Lawyer’s growing collection.

But this is not an easy step to take. She then struggled and says that as she looked over the albums for the past couple of years, she was never quite sure how to, and if she should, incorporate them into her own artistic practice.

At the GRACE show we now know that she did. And she succeeds triumphantly, and a key to the success is her presentation.

Lawyer has incorporated the vintage images into a very modern, Mondrianesque quilt-like presentation on fabric that manages to bridge modern ideas with the historical perspective of the Gee’s Bend quilters to deliver something new and refreshing and geometrical in contemporary photography.

She says that “In a quest to work with new materials, and because I never felt as I if was finding the right colors in fabric stores, I began hand-dying cotton fabric. The texture and the process finally felt right.”

The individuals chosen by Lawyer say something about her and about her focus. There are no victims in these images of a people who perhaps were being victimized by history when these photos were being taken almost a century ago. Instead, in the works on display are beautiful, empowered, and proud people, and one hard-looking individual that has known little fear of others in his hard life.

MR 096 (Cerulean Blue) from "Finding Authenticity (does anyone remember?)"
24" x 18", 2007, photo transfer on fabric by Sonya A. Lawyer

And curiously, as Lawyer says, except for the tell-tale signs of clothing and hairstyle, some of the photographs may have been taken “eight days ago instead of 80 years ago.”

Beautiful, empowered, and proud... not the kind of images that Hollywood and popular culture generally uses as historical references for people of color from decades in the past; not caricatures and stereotypes, but human and authentic. Lawyer notes that “their eyes twinkle with insight and intelligence as they gaze at the camera, dressed in their best, with hair perfectly coiffed.”

When one looks at old portrait photographs discarded to the bins of antique shops or the digital world of online auctions, we all seem to come up with the same questions about these long-forgotten and abandoned people. And Lawyer asks “What were their names? How long did they live? Where did they work? Were they religious? Who were their friends and lovers? And who were their enemies? Who disappointed them and discarded them like trash? And who did they truly trust and believe in?”

Unfortunately, we will never know the answers to those and many similar questions. But I submit that in rescuing them from the bins of discarded history, and incorporating them into the substrate of a new art process, and consciously marrying them into a historical presentation brought forth into a contemporary dialogue, Lawyer has not only rescued, but also liberated these images and given them the potentially infinite lifespan that great artwork delivers.

The exhibition at GRACE goes through February 16, 2008 and it is the kind of exhibition with the impact deserving of a trip to Reston, by both the public and Washington Post, Washington Times and Washington City Paper critics alike.

GRACE, under the leadership of John Alciati and Joanne Bauer has made a noticeable turn-around in the last couple of years after a handful of years of being slightly out of focus and even in confusion, and kudos to the current board, curator and President/CEO is well deserved.

Go to Reston and see this show.

Charles Albert Huckins' Favorite Artwork

This submission of a favorite artwork comes from Charles Albert Huckins, an active photographer in the Washington, D.C. metropolitan area who has maintained the Stonelight Images web site for the continuous exhibition of his photography since 1999. He writes:

Although I, along with your other readers, have many favorite works of art, time and circumstances require me to narrow my submission down to two anonymous works few people have ever seen before.

Masquerade - © 2005 Charles Albert Huckins


Three Graces - ©2003 Charles Albert Huckins
Though virtually unknown, both of these works are priceless, in my opinion.

“Masquerade” is a painting on cinder block, replete with symbolism and, for me, is as enigmatic as the Mona Lisa. “Three Graces” is an ink drawing on enameled steel plate and has a dignity and simplicity of line that make it spell-binding. Although both are figurative works, they have all the energy and spontaneity of the abstract Gee’s Bend quilts, now so rightfully esteemed as icons of American folk art.

Both works were created by unknown former inmates of the Youth Correctional Facility of the District of Columbia Department of Corrections site in Lorton, Virginia. The entire prison facility was decommissioned in 2000 and has been owned and converted to other uses by Fairfax County since August, 2002.

What makes these remarkable works of art so unique at this time is the possibility of their being unavailable for future generations to appreciate firsthand.

In the process of transition from a prison complex to a multifaceted community resource, a number of intriguing artifacts within the prison’s walls have necessarily been destroyed. However, these two works of art, and several others scattered around the prison site, are still intact and salvageable.

Fairfax County is currently seeking input regarding the artistic value of these and other works before a final decision is made about whether or not to save them. Perhaps some of your credentialed readers might care to weigh in on the artistic merits of these works?

If any of your readers would like to express their opinions about the art-worthiness of these works in writing, I, as a volunteer assisting Fairfax County in the documentation of prison resources, will be happy to forward all such comments to the appropriate County authorities. I may be reached at cah@stone-light.com.

I will publicly testify that in my opinion these works not only merit being salvaged, but in doing so represent a triumph of art over adversity, in a sense.

Perhaps the Youth Correctional Facility of the District of Columbia Department of Corrections can simply isolate and protect these works, but leave them exactly where they are, maybe adding some wall text next to them so that future generations can be inspired and learn from the artwork of those who created it in far from enjoyable circumstances.