Frida Kahlo Talk and Lecture

Come by tomorrow to the Smith Farm's Healing Arts Gallery, where you can not only check out "Figurative/Narrative: Memories of a Presence," featuring work by Billy Colbert, Michael Janis and Paul Andrew Wandless, but also starting at 5:30PM I will be giving a talk and presentation on Frida Kahlo, focusing on her pain and how it affected her artwork and life.

I will discuss Kahlo in terms of an artist defined and iconized by her artwork, in spite of tremendous hurdles and problems.

Free and open to the public.

See ya there!

Wanna go to a DC opening tonight?

The head out to Katzen Museum, where from 6-8PM there will be an opening at the Rotunda for the the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities FY2009 Visual Arts Applicants' Showcase.

Opening Reception: July 16, 2008, 6:30 PM
Exhibition Hours: 9:00 AM - 5:00 PM, Monday - Saturday July 17 - August 1, 2008

Katzen Arts Center
American University
4400 Massachusetts Ave., NW
Washington, DC 20016

See ya there!

My quote... mea culpa

It has been brought to my attention that a paraphrased quote that compares Tim Tate's groundbreaking advancement of fine arts glass to the groundbreaking work of Stieglitz in bringing photography to the fine arts arena, and which I have been generously attributing to a Washington and/or Washington Post art critic was actually initally coined by me several years ago for an essay on the exhibition "Compelled by Content."

After talking or emailing today to several of the folks who I thought had first coined the comparison, it's my memory who appears to be flawed and the comparison was initiated by me.

My fault and my apologies! An overzealous dealer with an overzelous mind. I enthusiastically believe that what Tim Tate is doing to glass is exactly what Stieglitz did to photography, but it is all my own biased opinion.

I will try to correct the source wherever it has appeared.

Gallery Closes: Gallerist Tells All

(Via J.T.) Chicago gallerist Lisa Boyle closes her gallery after four years and in frustration writes about the causes for her failure... here are some tidbits from her words:

Why is it so GOD DAMNED hard to sell a piece of art around here?...

...Oh now. To consider Chicago alone, it would be very easy to slide into that familiar unison of voices about how collectors here don’t collect, museums here don’t connect with the galleries and local artists, there’s not enough critical attention, Chicago can’t compete with LA and NY, etc. Actually, it come out as easily as my breath to shout out a mental “Here, here!” to accompany these tired voices of disappointment. And I could maybe also choose to take a trip down the path of righteousness and talk about people who’ve started galleries with seemingly limitless free financial support and how all the successful galleries are connected in an incestuous web of nepotism and homosexual ego stroking. After all, these are the things I gossip about in my spare time (to people who can’t get back at me, of course)....

...There is also this sea change regarding art fairs’ role in the life of a gallery. While a great load of fun for some people, they have grown over everything like a suffocating mold and swallowed up a whole heap of what an art dealer has to do on any given day. All for the honor of showing work in ramshackle booths along with a fuckthousand other artists. It’s a different job, being a gallery owner, than it was even five years ago...

Read the entire piece here.