Her First Time

Her First Time, Charcoal on Paper. 3 inches x 2 inches. c.2008
By F. Lennox Campello

Celebrity sighting

One of the formerly best-kept dining secrets of Media, Pennsylvania is a terrific Indian restaurant called Shere-E-Punjab. My wife lived in India and is a good arbiter of Indian food, and when we first moved here, she actually wrote a note to the local paper about this modest but most excellent restaurant (the paper had done a Media restaurant issue and skipped the small Indian place).

The paper's food critic then visited Shere-E-Punjab and was so impressed that she wrote a whole article/review on them.

And then earlier this year the Philly Inky wrote a favorable review of it.

Shere-E-Punjab has really good, authentic Indian food at excellent prices.

And yesterday we had lunch there (excellent as usual) and as we were leaving, noticed that several of the key cast members of "It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia," one of my favorite TV shows, came in to have lunch. This is one of the funniest, oddest and most innovative TV shows on cable.

And no... Louie wasn't one of them.

Artists' Websites

"Virgie" by Christopher Goodwin
Former DC area artist Christopher Goodwin is also the creator of the innovative Trashball! art project.

Visit his website here.

Curatorialism

So far this year I've curated/juried a couple of shows (Color Invitations at R Street Gallery in DC and currently "Five Senses" at Target Street in Alexandria, VA).

Loads more efforts to come in 2008.

Next I'm helping to select the artists for the Johns Hopkins book and two city exhibition of the Innovators Combatting Substance Abuse Program next month in Baltimore.

In April I am curating the grand opening show for the new Mayer Fine Arts gallery in Norfolk, Virginia. Titled "Common Ocean: From Havana to Norfolk," the exhibition will showcase the work of four leading contemporary Cuban women: Sandra Ramos, Aimee Garcia Marrero, Marta Maria Perez Bravo and Cirenaica Moreira.

Also in April I am jurying Derivative Composition for VSA arts.

In June I will be curating Early Look, a student show for DC's Longview Gallery.

In September I am doing the jurying for the Maryland Federation of Artists' (MFA) annual Landscape Show in Annapolis.

In November I will be curating "Aqui Estamos" (Here We Are): Contemporary Cuban Art" for Mt. Rainier, Maryland's H&F Fine Arts, showing some very well-known as well as some new and emerging Cuban artists.

And in between all that I am fitting in six art fairs, a boatload of art panels and two solo shows (more on those later).