Mark Jenkins on Anastasia Travieso-Diaz

Mark Jenkins reviews several local shows over at DisCerning Eye - I especially liked the words about Anastasia Travieso-Diaz:

BUILT UP AND THEN PARTLY EXCAVATED, Anastasia Travieso-Diaz’s paintings are literally constructions. So it’s fitting that the local artist’s abstract canvases often suggest grand buildings or naturally occurring structures such as caverns and grottoes. The engrossing pictures in her Studio Russo show, “Disintegration Regeneration,” were made intuitively, and not named initially. But they came to bear such suitably evocative titles as “The Architecture of Collapse” and “Unraveling the Structure.”

Read the review here.

"Immigrant Artists" declined by Montgomery College

Bummer to report that Montgomery College's selection panel has declined my proposal for a show focusing on immigrant artists.

Dear Lenny,

I am writing with the results from our recent call for proposals for the King Street Gallery at Montgomery College. I am sorry, but we did not select your proposal. Yours was among many worthy proposals for very few exhibition slots, and the choices were difficult. Thank you for your proposal and thank you as well for your patience as we have completed this review. We very much appreciate your efforts in making your proposal and we hope that you will consider applying for future opportunities here at MC.

Sincerely,

Kevin Bowman

Professor

Visual and Performing Arts Department

Takoma Park/Silver Spring Campus

930 King Street

Silver Spring, MD 20910

Will begin to look for new venues...

Backrooms

Earlier today, Anderson, together with his friend Aarad, and I sat through Backrooms, which is described as "2026 American science fiction psychological horror film directed and co-scored by Kane Parsons and written by Will Soodik."

There was a lot of heavy-handed influence from the Blair Witch Project in the film, which is immensely challenging to understand and make sense of, and has a somewhat silly (yep - that's the correct adjective) turn towards the end.

About the most memorable part of the film is the presence of a young actress named Lukita Maxwell, who in the very short period of time that she's actually on screen makes her presence really felt by the audience... I predict a lot of great things for this lady.