Friday, February 08, 2013

The Examiner on Artomatic show

Artomatic is unstoppable! It kicked of the year with a remarkable Artomatic Inauguration Ball and is not slowing down! Join 35 select artists from past Artomatic shows at juried exhibition by Lenny Campello.

The beautiful Pepco Edison Place Gallery has been transform by the variety of artistic talent on its walls, glass work, creative costumes and 3-d installations. Artist opening reception on Wednesday, February 13 from 6-8 pm is the place to be to meet your local artists and charge your (visual) senses!
 Read the article (and see many photos) by Nataliya Andreyeva here.

Bora Mici on my Artomatic show

"Critics generally hate Artomatic because they are not equipped in any intellectual way to write about a show with 1,000 artists. That would require them to visit the show six to seven times, while still getting paid for just one review, when they are used to visiting a gallery or a museum with brains tuned to evaluating a single artist or group show rather than 1,000 artists ranging from disturbingly awful to spectacularly good.

In this mini Artomatic, I have broken down the real thing for them in the hopes of restoring some intellectual honesty to their critical opinions."
Read the whole thing here.

Randall Scott is back!

New H Street Gallery!

RandallScottProjects, who used to have a gallery around the DMV a few years ago and then moved to New York, is back in the DMV with a new gallery.

Read Gail Vollrath's interview with Randal Scott here.

The inaugural opening exhibition for Scott's new spapce is Golden Cacti by Mason Saltarelli.  The opening reception is Saturday February 9 from 5pm to 8pm.

Details here

Other galleries in the same area also having openings this Saturday include CONNERSMITH on Saturday  from 6pm to 8pm and  Industry Gallery from 6pm to 9pm.

Opportunities for Artists

States of Mind

The Stamp Gallery at the University of Maryland invites visual artists and poets alike to apply for this exhibition. This is a unique show focusing on the embodiment of mental health in art.

This is not an exhibition emphasizing principles or output of therapeutic art, instead we seek artists whose work sheds light on the depth of mental health. We hope a broad representation of ideas and interpretations on this theme will be submitted for review. All mediums will be considered. Please visit our mission page for more information about the gallery.

ACCEPTING SUBMISSIONS through February 11, 2013-- CLICK HERE!


May 9 – June 22, 2013
·               A total of $1500 is available for artist honorariums
·               Artists not selected will be added to our database for future exhibition opportunities through the Stamp Gallery.
·               Artwork submitted and accepted must be available for the duration of the exhibition.
·               Artworks must be ready to install, framed and/or professionally prepared to hang.
·               If submitting a site-specific installation, artists are responsible for installation and de-installation of artwork.
·               Literary work will be uniquely displayed in the gallery in the form of projections or prints.
·               Artists are responsible for delivery and return of artwork.
·               Students are welcome to submit artwork for consideration!
·               $15 submission fee is waived for University of Maryland students


Dates and Deadlines
February 11, 2013               Submission Deadline
February 15, 2013               Artists will be selected and contacted
March 1, 2013                     Participating Artists’ materials due: Bio, high res. images, artist statement
May 3, 2013                        Artwork drop-off/ delivery deadline
May 4-8, 2013                     Installation
May 9, 2013                        Opening Reception
June 23, 2013                      Deinstallation - all artwork must be removed from gallery by end of day

Wanna go to an opening tomorrow?


           ALTERED

 Saturday evening, Feb. 9  from  5:30 to 7:30 PM. 
                            Artist's Talk:  At the reception. 

              BlackRock Center for the Arts
                    presents works by three artists: 
 
  Nancy McNamara, CassieTaggart, Joyce Zipperer
    
     ALTERED will be on display from February 6 - March 2, 2013.
                             
                             BlackRock Center for the Arts 

                               12901 Town Commons Drive
                               Germantown, Maryland 20874

                                            (301) 528-2260
                                   www.blackrockcenter.org

Thursday, February 07, 2013

When Boards of Education bite

"A proposal by the Prince George’s County Board of Education to copyright work created by staff and students for school could mean that a picture drawn by a first-grader, a lesson plan developed by a teacher or an app created by a teen would belong to the school system, not the individual."
Read all about this insane rip off idea here.

F. Lennox Campello and Artomatic Artists



Over the last couple of decades or so, I’ve curated or organized well over a couple of hundred art shows for galleries, museums, art centers, art fairs, etc. One of things that all of those events always seem to have in common is the always-surprising degree of difficulty in assembling a curated or juried group show.

This is always made difficult because (in my experience) the number of artists available to select from, and the amount of work able to be selected is always in conflict by a gargantuan exponential factor: there are always many, many more good artists than there’s space to hang a show.

And thus, one of the true constants of the curatorial task is the harsh reality of eliminating good work from an exhibition; reducing the amount of paintings, drawings, photographs, sculptures, etc. simply because of the finite amount of space to display it.

Competitions and “Call for Artists” are even worse, because artists are actively “competing” against each other for the selective nod from the juror or curator.

In selecting “F. Lennox Campello and Artomatic Artists” that degree of difficulty achieved lunar orbit almost from the very inception of the idea!

Let me tell you why: the brilliance of Artomatic (and what nearly every art critic and scribe seems to miss) is the mind-numbing diversity of what happens when 1,000 or so visually-dominant earthlings gather together to exhibit tens of thousands of work of art.

From the vast resources of the last Artomatic I could have easily organized a curated show with a strict focus on flowers, or nudes, or politics, or sex, or robots, or chickens, or music, or green art, or extra-terrestrials, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera (Note to self: do some of these shows in the future).

Instead, and drawing from my spectacularly enviable experience in assembling ass-kicking art shows, I used what I call “The Campello Group Show Success Formula.”

The formula is brilliant in its simplicity: start with a core number of well-established, well-known artists that will draw the savvy artsy crowds in; add some mid-level emerging artists hungry for the rung to the next level, and stir in some hungry, seldom seen newcomers to the art scene of the DMV. Because of the sheer size of Artomatic, the competitive factor – and thus the difficulty of the job at hand – was very high.

And so, the formula brings a tried and true approach to group show organization – these are not a selection of the “Best Artomatic Artists According to Campello”; that show would have been easy to organize. This is instead a show selected to offer you one man’s view of what Artomatic is all about, but in a manageable space guaranteed not to burn out your sensory nerves. You will see blue chip DMV artists that you and I know well, you'll see artists that I've never met, you'll see artists whom I represent or have represented, you'll see artists that will raise your eyebrow, and you'll see artists whose work you'll like, and artists whose work will leave you unimpressed.

The results in this show will surprise you, entertain you, capture your imagination and perhaps even disappoint you here and there, but overall they will give you this ardent Artomatic lover’s caressing curatorial opinions and evidence to support my theory that Artomatic is the greatest art group show on planet Earth.



Location:

Pepco Edison Place Gallery

702 8th Street, NW

Washington DC 20068


Reception Date:

Wednesday, February 13th, 6 - 8 pm


Exhibition Dates:

Friday, February 8 - Friday, February 22.


Gallery Hours:

Tuesday-Friday, Noon to 4 p.m.

Art Law Clinic

Art Law Clinic

The Maryland Volunteer Lawyers For the Arts are providing their expertise and feedback to artists in need of legal assistance.

This FREE 25-minute clinic is available to artists of all disciplines in need of advice. Saturday, February 9 at MAP Baltimore from 1-4pm. Schedule an appointment in advance at info@mdvla.org (recommended).

Wednesday, February 06, 2013

Artomatic and I

Artomatic and I are pleased to announce "F. Lennox Campello and Artomatic," a group show curated by yours truly and which will have an opening reception at the Pepco Edison Place Gallery next Wed. February 13 from 6-8 PM. Its is free and open to the public. I will give you some more thoughts on this show later, but please pencil it in.



Location:
Pepco Edison Place Gallery
702 8th Street, NW
Washington DC 20068

Reception Date:
Wednesday, February 13th, 6 - 8 pm

Exhibition Dates:
Friday, February 8 - Friday, February 22.

Gallery Hours:
Tuesday-Friday, Noon to 4 p.m.


The invited past Artomatic artists include:


Bijan Machen
Carrie Hughes
Christ Lyngas
Cory Oberndorfer
David Camero
David D'Orio
Deborah Lash
Devin Symons
Erwin Timmers
John Grunwell
Joseph Merchlinsky
Kathryn Trillas
Larry Jones
Lindsey Routt
M. Helene Baribeau
Magda Johanna Gomez
Michael Janis
Monica de Gastyne
Nancy Donnelly
Natalia
Natalie Camou
Nicolas Zimbro
Paul Farley
Philip Yabut
Rania Hassan
Ric Garcia
Roger James
Russ McIntosh
Sardar
Sasha Sinclair
Sean Hennessey
Shanthi Chandrasekar
Stephanie Booth
Tim Tate
Zofie Lang

Finally heard on Univision

A while back in November I noted that newspapers from the Dominican Republic were all abuzz about my peeps Cuban-American Senator Bob Menendez (D-NJ) allegedly short-changing some young Dominican hookers for their services while on vacation at the Dominican Republic (the DR) and how it was curiously off Univision's radars and clearly off the mainstream US press.

Prostitution is apparently legal in the DR, but short-changing a sex worker is never a smart thing to do -- not that this former sailor would know anything about that, but I've heard lots of sea stories about hookers, cheap sailors and banana knives in the PI; I'm just sayin'

Well... Univision has caught up with a vengeance and is usually 2-3 days ahead of English-language television news and at least a week ahead of the WaPo and NYT, and 24-48 hours ahead of the Miami Herald, on the reporting on Menendez's relationship with major donor Dr. Salomon Melgen. And they're deep in the weeds in the inside the DR reporting and digging a lot of evidence which is curiously being ignored (or under-reported at least) by the US mainstream press - this (of course) fuels the vast right wing conspiracy claim's that the "leftist" US mainstream press treats Democrats to a different standard than Republicans (remember Herman Cain?).

The Dominican doctor (now lives in Florida), who in 2012 poured large amounts of money into Menendez’s reelection efforts, was allegedly rewarded when Menendez then became an advocate for a very large, gargantuan Dominican Republic contract for providing X-Ray services for port security by ICSSI, one of Melgen’s companies. And Menendez also used Melgen’s private plane several times to fly to the DR and never reported it, thus breaking Senate ethics rules. Last week he cut Melgen a check for $58,500 to pay for the trips, noting (in a disturbingly bad choice of words) that he had forgotten to do so and the payment had fallen through the cracks... heh, heh...

Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/2013/02/06/3220708/watchdogs-sen-bob-menendezs-ties.html#storylink=cpy

About 2-3 weeks ago Univision reported that many other US politicians, including Bill and Hillary Clinton, had been guests, and stayed in Dr. Melgen's luxury villa in the DR.

Bill, Bill, Bill... what are we going to do about you...

Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/2013/02/06/3220708/watchdogs-sen-bob-menendezs-ties.html#storylink=cpy