Artistic Work Force

...there are two million trained, entrepreneurial working artists across the country who are assets to their communities. Representing 1.4 percent of the U.S. labor force, artists constitute a sizeable class of workers -- only slightly smaller than the total number of active-duty and reserve personnel in the U.S. military (2.2 million).

More info here.

Connie Imboden at DCCA

The Delaware Center for the Contemporary Arts current exhibition Reflections, is an exhibition of black-and-white and color photography by Baltimore's own Connie Imboden.

For twenty-five years, Imboden has been photographing nudes, in the process creating some of the most unique interpretations of this traditional subject in the history of contemporary art. The exhibition runs through April 12, 2009.

Tape as Art

He created a makeshift apartment in the parking garage of the Providence Place mall, where he and fellow artists lived off-and-on for more than three years until the stunt was squelched by security guards. He has designed art projects using everything from chain-link fence to snow.

Now he's trying to take his primary artistic love – tape – to the masses.

Townsend, 38, has for 15 years used colorful painter's tape to construct murals and spice up drab walls with quirky images including giant teddy bears and aliens. Now he is working on a book that he hopes will document the history of tape art and encourage schools to incorporate the off-beat medium into their curricula.

Read the AP story about Rhode Island artist Michael Townsend here.

My own favorite tape artist is DC's own Mark Jenkins.

New Art Fair Model?

A group of 20 Old Master paintings dealers are joining forces with Christie’s and Sotheby’s to launch London’s inaugural Master Paintings Week with a series of gallery openings from 4-10 July.

The week coincides with the auctions of Old Master Paintings and Master Drawings, and will provide an alternative to art and antique fairs.

Is this a new model? I guess, but we pretty much proposed the same thing last year. Read the article in the Art Newspaper here.