Opportunity for Artists

The Arlington Arts Center is currently accepting submissions for their solo exhibitions 2008 occurring in the Fall and Spring 2008. The AAC has seven galleries with 525 combined running feet of wall space as well as two galleries dedicated to installation, technology or other works requiring a complete environment. The grounds surrounding the AAC can also accommodate outdoor sculpture.

Eligibility: Open to all artists in all media in the Mid Atlantic States (DE, PA, MD, DC, VA, WV)

Submission Guidelines: submit up to 20 slides or JPEGs (PC compatible, 300 dpi (or smaller) files, no larger than 4 x 6 inches), along with artist statement, resume, and description of exhibition proposal.

Deadline: All entries must be received by June 25, 2007

Entry Fee: $25 for non member, $15 for AAC members

Jurors: Selected by a panel of artists, arts professionals and collectors. Panelists for the 2008 Review are collector Philip Barlow (DC), Independent Curator Angela Jerardi (Philadelphia), Claire Huschle (AAC), Carol Lukitsch (AAC), Theresa McFadden (NVCC), and Anne Hancock (AAC Board President).

More Info: To download a prospectus and view floor plan, visit www.arlingtonartscenter.org, or send a SASE to:

Arlington Arts Center
3550 Wilson Blvd
Arlington, VA 22201

Jim Brossy debuts at Projects Gallery in Philly

This Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts M.F.A. graduate delivers highly textured, mixed media assemblage paintings using art materials, construction and found objects. Tar, latex, cement, wax, string and steel all make appearances in his paintings, in addition to the more traditional acrylic, pastel, pencil and oil. Found objects such as newspaper and old clothes augment the richness and narrative of the work.

His debut show “Unentitled” opens Friday June 1st, with a First Friday artist reception from 5 to 9 p.m. at Projects Gallery in Philly. The exhibition continues through July 29th.

Broken

Yesterday I had a crew over to trim some trees in my front yard, and I was a little concerned because the front of my house has a huge stained glass piece next to the main door. According to our neighbors and postal lady, it was custom made in 1961 by a famed Pennsylvania glass artist who used to live in the house when it was built that year.

So they parked their truck right in front of it in order to block it from any flying debris.

As I once described in Tentacles, there are some instances on this planet, when the laws of gravity seem to take a couple of nanoseconds off. Like when one is walking down a path, and a rock, as if by magic, jumps from the ground and lands inside your shoe. How does that happen? Is it evidence of magic? Time travel? Even if one considers a viable explanation, the most common of which is that the other shoe kicks the rock into the partner shoe, it takes some extraordinary physics and flight acrobatics to imagine a rock being kicked by one shoe, flying sideways through the air as you walk on and sliding into the other shoe. I prefer to believe that the rocks jump straight up and floats into the shoe.

And yesterday a large tree branch was cut, fell about twenty feet to the center of the yard, and a small piece of wood broke off as it hit the ground, and defying the laws and vectors of physics, it somehow managed to teleport itself to the other side of the parked truck, and travel about 25 feet and smash a hole in the only stained glass window in the whole damned house.

The Licht idea for art for the Nats

Recap: Last week I told you about a call for art for the new Nats stadium.

Then yesterday I told you that Michael Neibauer in The Examiner revealed that "plans to decorate the new Washington Nationals’ new stadium with crafts, sculpture and bronze figures are in limbo after the D.C. Council eliminated money in next year’s budget for a public arts project."

Now D.C. Sports and Entertainment Commission CEO Allen Lew says in this Nats' fan blog that he will go to bat for "some sort of Washington Baseball Hall of Fame in the Stadium."


But the best idea comes from Mike Licht in this comment:

When Allen Lew worked on the DC Convention Center, $4 Million was included in the basic agreement for sculpture, paintings, and other artwork to enhance the facility. On the baseball stadium project, art was an afterthought, and now the DC Commission of the Arts and Humanities has been asked to fund it, with corresponding opportunity costs for art in our residential communities.

The DC Arts Commission has tried various ways to sneak the money under the stadium budget cap (borrowing the money rather than granting it, for example), and by claiming that the custom-made, site-specific art would just be "loaned" to the stadium but still owned by the commission. That is like saying your dental work is on loan from someone else.

Public art projects like this are normally funded by the developer or tenant, and the public arts agency gives technical assistance in the art project's execution. The Commission's "exhibition game" is a "shell-game" and exhibits poor public policy, poor judgment, and questionable ethics.

It is too late to include art in the basic agreement. Here's a solution: the Lerners establish a nonprofit corporation for stadium art, throw in some bucks, get their pals to do the same, and ask the DC Arts Commission to provide technical assistance in the art project's execution.

I'll be damned if that's not a great idea that may in the end deliver both more money and better artwork to the Nats' stadium.

If done right we may end up with the best art stadium in the nation.

Let me be the first one to endorse the Licht Plan, and the second one to call for the Lerners to establish a nonprofit corporation for stadium art, for our area's deep pocketed baseball fans cum art lovers to contribute some money to it and for the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities to provide technical assistance in executing the project itself.

On the latter aspect, personally I would hope that the Commission follows the model of how the highly successful City Art Collection was curated: hire a hard-working curator with deep knowledge of the DC art scene (Sondra Arkin are you reading this?), give her a budget, maybe let her hire an assistant or two, and let them loose on the Greater DC area's artists' studios, homes and slide repositories.

That way you have a good chance of ending up with a really good art collection in the stadium, rather than "airportism."