Gopnik on Buster

Blake Gopnik checks in with one of his once a year area gallery reviews and has a rare review of Kendall Buster at Fusebox. It's a good review of a superb show.

Fusebox, easily one of the best galleries in our area, sort of gets "screwed" by the WaPo on a general basis, as the regular "Galleries" column has never covered them, as Jessica Dawson has recused herself from covering Fusebox shows due to private reasons.

The only one time that "Galleries" covered Fusebox was when Glenn Dixon shared the column with Jessica for a little while, before he had a dispute with the WaPo and quit.

This could easily be solved if the WaPo just honored their earlier promises to hire another freelancer and return "Galleries" to a weekly column on Thursdays.

Meanwhile Fusebox gets screwed because they're never covered in "Galleries," and Blake gets screwed because he's forced to make up for that by actually having to write about a "local artist" (his words), and the rest of the galleries get screwed because the Chief Art Critic of the world's second most influential newspaper rarely writes about them/us.

This could all easily be solved by having the WaPo simply hire another independent freelancer to cover the two weeks of the month currently without gallery reviews.

He's back

Glad to see that Jeffry Cudlin is back at the City Paper.

Cudlin reviews "Kahn & Selesnick: The Apollo Prophecies" at Irvine and also Symbioland at Curator's Office.

We were beginning to get worried that the CP was Washingtonpostdownsizing* their visual arts coverage.

More please...

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*At the present rate, by the time 2005 ends, there will have been about four times more European/NYC fashion show reviews in the WaPo than gallery reviews. If you don't get it, you don't get it.

Holly Foss at Foundry

Our Georgetown gallerina, Holly Foss, is having an exhibition at Foundry Gallery, and the opening reception is tonight as part of the First Fridays Dupont Circle gallery crawl.

Using a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts and one from the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities, Holly has been documenting her Georgetown neighborhood through photography.

A few years ago Holly was driving through Georgetown, was involved in a serious car accident, and woke up many months later, following an extended coma, in Georgetown University Hospital. She writes:

All I know is I was lucky to be alive and for the first time took notice of so much I had missed before. In leaving the hospital and driving through Georgetown’s residential neighborhoods, I suddenly became aware of the neighborhood’s stylish detail and historic fabric – the facades, turrets, towers, portals, lintels, sills, fences, fire plaques – now became fascinating in their unusual way. And the easy transfer of lines from one building to the next worked in a way that only enhanced the dignity of these grand imposing structures. Having lived in both Boston and New York City provided an historical perspective enabling me to appreciate what make Georgetown so unique.

Holly Foss earned her BA at Wellesley College, where she also took classes in Photography at MIT. Her work has won many awards and been featured on television on WETA and Fox Sunday Morning news and has appeared in many of our local newspapers.

Tonight's reception at Foundry is from 6-8PM and Holly's show hangs through October 30th.

Options 2005 (first report)

It's just a little bit past midnight, and yet the emails are already pouring in about what a great opening Options 2005 hosted and as to the significant number of works that sold at the opening (around $15,000), which is always (as an art dealer's perspective) a good sign for a show designed to showcase new, emerging talent!

I am sorry that I missed the opening, but I am home and sore from some new cool hamstring-stretching routines that we learned tonite (we have a new Sensei, and she's really good!) Photos and more details later (of Options 2005 that is).

And let me be the first to send a virtual congrats to the WPA/C.

Transformer Auction

Transformer's 2nd Annual Silent Auction Benefit and Reception is coming on Saturday, October 29, 2005 from 7 to 10pm.

Hosted by Fusebox, the auction will feature over 40 original artworks and limited edition prints by some of our area's emerging and best known artists.

Details here.

Artists in the curated auction are:

Gabriel Abrantes
Ken Ashton
Lisa Bertnick
Kheshan Blunt
Chan Chao
William Christenberry
Mary Coble
Billy Colbert
Cynthia Connolly
Frank Day
Djakarta
Jason Falchook
Suzanna Fields
Sabrina Gschwandtner
Jason Gubbiotti
Linda Hesh
Lucy Hogg
James Huckenpahler
Jeff Huntington
Erick Jackson
Susan Jamison
Judy Jashinsky
Nicholas Kahn & Richard Selesnick
Dean Kessmann
Avish Khebrehzadeh
Jae Ko
Bridget Lambert
Pepa Leon
Mike Lowry
Kevin MacDonald
Maki Maruyama
Mimi Masse
Maggie Michael
Jiha Moon
William A. Newman
Piero Passacantando
Beatrice Valdes Paz
Lucian Perkins
WC Richardson
Luis Silva
Jeff Spaulding
Dan Steinhilber
Zach Storm
Trish Tillman
Kelly Towles
Jason Zimmerman
Ian Whitmore

Tickets can be bought online here and then click on the tab for "auction."