Kirk Waldroff at NVCC


Saint Funiculus | 2009
left: woodcut on unryu | 3.5" x 24" | edition of three
middle: glass, oak, flourescent lighting | 9" x 30" x 6"
right: concrete, grout, gold leaf | 3.5" x 24"
Kirk Waldroff, a DC-based printmaker and sculptor who uses traditional woodcut techniques to create non-traditional prints in glass, concrete and on paper has been for quite sometime one of my favorite up-and-coming artists around here.

Why? It helps that we seem to share an interest in some of the same subject matter that interests me as his work often depicts invented saints and never-told fables.

He invents the saints in the same way that I invent medals and ribbons for non-existing conflicts and he invents new or non-existing fables while I often draw inspiration from the real ones.


Candy for Sachiko | 2009
left: woodcut print on Rives BFK | edition of one | 7" x 32"
right: glass and oak | 11" x 36" x 6.5" (closed) | 22" x 36" x 6.5" (open)
He has a show opening this coming January at Northern Virginia Community College's Waddell Gallery in Sterling, VA and the reception is Friday, January 22, 6:30pm - 8:30pm and there's also a gallery talk on Wednesday, January 20, at noon.

Saints and Fables
Prints and Print-based Sculpture
January 11 - February 12, 2010
Waddell Art Gallery
Northern Virginia Community College
1000 Harry Flood Byrd Highway
Sterling, VA 20164

Gallery Talk: Wednesday, January 20, noon
Reception: Friday, January 22, 6:30pm - 8:30pm

Tapedude Update

Mark Jenkins on Flavorpill.

Empty wine glasses

Philippa on Gopnik:

Blake Gopnik began a series in this morning's Washington Post on his experiment with "extreme connoisseurship," which entails looking at "a tiny corner of one work. If the art is really good, there will be at least a morning's worth of looking in a few square inches of it." In his first foray, he visits The Phillips Collection to look at the wine glasses on the table at the center of that collection's most famous work, "Luncheon of the Boating Party," by Pierre-Auguste Renoir. Gopnik admits that, "It isn't how most of us look at pictures. It's not even how most critics or scholars get to look at art, most of the time. But give it a chance, and it's the best kind of looking there is."

Read the whole thing here.

I'll have to re-read the Gopnik piece, which at first reading just sounded like art jargon semantic kabuki to me. But a closed mind is just as bad, so I'll give it a try again. The WaPo readers' comments (as usual) are also precious!