Art Enables

Art Enables is a not-for-profit arts studio for persons with developmental and/or mental disabilities. They work with artists from throughout the region - DC, MD, and VA.

On July 22nd, they are hosting their first-ever regional art event, a one day juried exhibition of outsider/folk/visionary artwork produced in 14 programs located in DC, Baltimore, and the region.

The exhibition features the work of over 60 artists, most of whom have not been exhibited before.

Although Art Enables is the host for the exibition, the show includes work created by outsider artists through a diverse group os organizations, such as Miriam’s Kitchen, Prisons Foundation, Smith Farm for the Healing Arts, Create! For Seniors, Anchor Mental Health, Art for the People, Studio Downstairs, Mitch Snyder Arts and Education Center, Life Skills, Arc of Baltimore, St. Luke’s House, ARTiculate of WVSA arts connection, and Arts for the Aging.

The juried show, on July 22, 2006, is at MOCA DC in the heart of Georgetown. It is a one-day event, 11 am to 8 pm (reception from 6 pm to 8 pm). The exhibit and gala are free and open to the public.

Phantom Floor

Phantom Floor is a new exhibition opening this coming Thursday, July 20, 2006 from 6-9pm (show runs through August 11, 2006) at Salve Regina Gallery, Catholic University, 620 Michigan Ave. NE, Dept. of Art, Salve Regina Hall. Red Line Metro, Brookland/CUA stop.

The exhibition is curated by Lea-Ann Bigelow, and according to the news release, the exhibition explores the following:

"In the shifting territory between the real and the (imag)ined, the material and the ephemeral, the defined and the unbounded, the self and the other – there dwells the phantom.

For their existence, phantoms draw deeply on individuals’ desire to conjure, project and believe-in alternate and ofttimes contested truths based on their singular, personal experiences.

With Phantom Floor, guest curator Lea-Ann Bigelow brings together the bold new work of three young Washington-area artists – Phoebe Esmon, Tomás Rivas and Karen Joan Topping – in a collective engagement with the liminal and powerfully evocative notion of the phantom.

Through site-specific installations, sculpture and mixed media compositions, the artists excavate, (re)interpret and unleash a host of histories and memories - of places, of people, of things – in a strategic haunting of the gallery, and in so doing remind us of the willful defiance of established truths that fuels artistic creation itself."

New art gallery

I'm hearing of a new art gallery which will open later this year in DC. The new owner/director already has an ambitious and strong focus to become one of the top notch spaces immediately.

More later...