Just do it!

One of the great things about the DC area art scene, is the amazing number of spaces that exhibit artwork. Just pick-up the City Paper and see the large number of spaces listed in their visual art listings.

Artists, especially emerging artists, should take advantage of this plethora of spaces and try to get their work hung, seen, and maybe even sold.

A good case in point of someone doing this is Baltimore artist Vera Blagev.

She's not having an opening on Friday November 4th from 5:00 to 8:00 pm (exhibiting some of her recent drawings as part of the Dreamers Series) at the Wydeye Cafe located at 1704 Aliceanna Street in the Fell's Point neighborhood of Baltimore. The event is part of the Fell's Point Art Loop on the First Friday of every month when the area's galleries and alternate venues extend their working hours. The exhibit will be up for two weeks ending Friday, November 18th.

But she's also having a joint show at the Hard Bean Coffee & Booksellers in Annapolis, Maryland. The show will be up for approximately one month starting today and features original contemporary drawings by Vera and ceramic masks and sculptures by Tammy Vitali. The Hard Bean is located at 36 Market Place and is reachable by phone at 410-263-8770.

Cudlin on Wodzianski

Jeffry Cudlin reviews our Geogetown show (Andrew Wodzianski) in today's WCP.

Read the review here.

Elsewhere in the WCP, Kara McPhillips reviews Hey, is that a Boy or a Girl? at Warehouse.

Anniversary

Last month was the 9th anniversary of the opening of our Georgetown gallery (opened in 1996). Back in those days the WaPo actually wrote an article about a new gallery opening, and had two separate columns each Thursday focusing on the area galleries. The WaPo actually even published a separate article a year later on the first anniversary of the gallery's opening! Mmmm... the good ole days...

One of the two Thursday columns was the "Galleries" column, then written by Ferdinand Protzman, and the other was Arts Beat, by Eric Brace and then Michael O'Sullivan. In those years, especially after O'Sullivan took over, Arts Beat was essentially a visual arts review column augmenting "Galleries" coverage.

And so, every Thursday we'd have two separate and distinct gallery art reviews in the Style section. Today, the WaPo has reduced "Galleries" to once every two weeks, and "Arts Beat" has also been reduced to once every two weeks, and now covers all the arts, without a visual arts focus. Like they say: "If you don't get it, you don't get it."

Last month was also the second year anniversary of DC Art News. Those first few months I'd average around forty visitors a day, while we're now well over 700 visitors a day and nearly 900 page views a day, and we passed 200,000 visits quite a while back.

Craghead

True Defenders of the Craft: Drawings by Warren Craghead runs from November 4 - 26, 2005 at the Second Street Gallery, 115 Second Street SE, Charlottsville, Virginia. There will be an opening reception on Friday, November 4, 6:00-8:00 pm, with an artist talk at 6:30 pm.

Why am I posting an opening for a show in C'ville? Because Warren is a cool guy, a fellow blogger, a new Dad (and thus could surely use the money from some sales) and a damned good artist.

Charlottesvillians and others: go see this show!