Meco's Star Wars Galactic Funk

The shoulder is returning slowly; first day back in studio in 2014!  

Finished a piece that I had started prior to the accident and now framing it and hoping that it can head out to the Texas Contemporary Art Fair.

Listening to Meco's Star Wars Galactic Funk on the turntable...

Images of new work tomorrow...

Virginia Museum of Fine Arts Fellowship program

The Virginia Museum of Fine Arts Fellowship program is a vital source of funding for the visual arts and art history in Virginia.  VMFA is committed to supporting professional artists and art students who demonstrate exceptional creative ability in their chosen discipline and, as such has awarded more than $5 million to Virginia’s artists since the program’s creation. This year marks the 75^th anniversary of VMFA’s Fellowship Program.  A dedicated microsite and documentary to the 75-year history of the program is at http://vmfa.museum/programs/75th-anniversary/.

 

The VMFA Fellowship program was established in 1940 through a generous contribution made by the late John Lee Pratt of Fredericksburg, Virginia.  Offered through VMFA Statewide, Fellowships are still largely funded through the Pratt endowment, and supplemented by annual gifts from the Lettie Pate Whitehead Foundation and the J. Warwick McClintic, Jr. Scholarship Fund.  The Fellowship program has a long and established history of supporting Virginia’s artistic talent and has helped to further the careers and studies of many distinguished individuals, including recent recipients Morgan Herrin of Richmond, Kelly Queener of Henrico, and Will May of Charlottesville.

 

VMFA offers $8,000 awards to professional artists, $6,000 awards to graduate students, and $4,000 awards to undergraduate students.  Applicants may apply in the disciplines of Crafts, Drawing, Film/Video, Mixed Media, New/Emerging Media, Painting, Photography, Printmaking, Sculpture, and Art History (graduate students only).  All applicants must be legal residents of Virginia and student applicants must be enrolled full-time in degree-seeking programs. Applicants’ works are reviewed anonymously by distinguished jurors and awards are made based on artistic merit.  The deadline for Fellowship applications is Friday, November 6, 2015.

 

I encourage interested students and professional artists to apply. Full eligibility criteria, can be found at www.VMFA.museum/fellowships.  Visit this page during the summer of 2015 for information on how to apply for a 2016-17 VMFA Fellowship.

Eve returns

A DMV collector saw this piece at the Joan Hisaoka Healing Arts Gallery at Smith Center for Healing and the Arts in their super-popular Alchemical Vessels Exhibition and Benefit.

But someone else bought it before her turn came to pick a piece... undeterred, she found me and asked for a commission.

And thus everyone wins: She gets an original Campello, the Joan Hisaoka Arts Gallery gets another sale to raise funds for their very worthy cause, and I gain another collector.

Eve Running Away from Eden
Charcoal on Broken Clay
2015 by F. Lennox Campello

Call for Arts Educators

The Greater Reston Arts Center has an open call for an Art Educators Exhibition and the deadline is June 1 at midnight!

Chech it out here.

Hurry!

Huff Post on Campello

Still, Tacoma Little Theatre's new production of the classic Cabaret is stunning and well worth seeing. With Mauro Bozzo holding court as the Emcee and host of both the show and the Kit Kat Klub and Elise Campello brilliantly singing and acting the other key role as Sally Bowles, this production shines throughout.

Read the review of Cabaret in the Huffington Post here.

The curious case of Senator Udall, President Obama, gay marriage, Cuba and the Pope

President Obama really wants a "deal" with the Castro brothers... it is beginning to seem as "no matter what." In supporting his zeal, he often invokes the Pope's newly-flowering relationship with the brutal Castro brothers.

What it is not often discussed is that the "real" behind-the scenes force in "brokering" our President's's one-sided deal, which pretty much just benefits Cuban dictator Raul Castro, was Cardinal Pietro Parolin, the Vatican's Secretary of State and thus the number two man at the Vatican.

The same Cardinal Parolin who yesterday, in response to Ireland's historic national support for marriage equality, referred to the referendum as "a defeat for humanity."

As CHC puts it:

The Vatican welcomes and joyfully embraces brutal dictators, who have murdered, tortured and imprisoned countless innocent people -- regardless of whether they repent for their crimes.  

But peaceful, loving couples -- who have harmed no one -- are "a defeat for humanity"?

And meanwhile... what's going on in Cuba?

As we noted recently, the Havana Biennial is being marred by arrests of Cuban artists in the capital, and mass arrests of dissidents in the provinces; yesterday alone over 200 dissidents were arrested throughout the island.

And yesterday more dissidents from Cuba's Anti-Totalitarian Front were arrested as they distributed pamphlets with the images of political prisoners.  Among those arrested were Luis Dominguez, Hugo Damian Prieto, Andres Sabelino, Lazaro Mendoza and Eugenio Hernandez. 

Also arrested today was independent journalist, Yuri Valle Roca.  And political prisoner Yuset Perez Moreira, a youth activist for The Emilia Project, is on the 27th day of a hunger strike protesting his unjust imprisonment.

Meanwhile, the Congressional delegation led by U.S. Senator Tom Udall (D-NM) continued the disturbing trend -- enhanced by the Obama-Castro deal -- of ignoring Cuban democracy leaders and keeping mum on all the mass arrests - including the re-arrests of several political prisoners who had been freed as part of the original Obama-Cuba deal!

Senator Udall!!!!!!!!!!!

We, Ladies in White, believe that these relations and conversations between the Cuban and U.S. governments will not be of any benefit to the Cuban people. And even less will it empower civil society, as President Barack Obama says. If no conditions are placed on the Cuban government, it will be more of the same or worse. We don't see the U.S. government, the European Union, or Pope Francis, pronouncing themselves as regards the violations of human rights on the island, which is giving the Cuban government a green light to continue violating them. 

-- Berta Soler, leader of The Ladies in White democracy movement, during the Oslo Freedom Forum, EFE, 5/26/15