Weirdest Xmas Stocking Stuffer Ever!

 

My daughter on the tube

My daughter Elise belting out Xmas songs on a televised service from her church in Washington state!

Xmas cookie ops

 

A 19th venue for the Women Artists of the DMV survey!

The show that never ends!

Falls Church Arts Gallery in Falls Church, Virginia will become the 19th venue for the epic Women Artists of the DMV survey shows!

I've curated and invited about 65 new artists...

Exhibition: January 10 - February 22, 2026

Location:  Falls Church Arts Gallery, 700-B W. Broad St., Falls Church, VA

Meet the Artists Reception: 7:00 - 9:00 pm, Saturday, January 10, 2026

New Mordini

Check out this gorgeous and spectacular new public art commission  by David Mordini!

For now you can see it at Otis Street Arts Project. 

Otis Street Arts Project is an artist run space in Mount Rainier, Maryland, founded by David Mordini and Sean Hennessey. 

At the Washington Glass School: Hot Shop Superheroes

Super show at the WGS! Intensely emotional opening by a talented group of fellow vets! Visited the Strength and Fragility exhibition on December 13th as part of the WGS Winter Open Studios.

Over the past ten weeks, the Washington Glass School (WGS) in Mt. Rainier, MD has welcomed a new cohort of military veterans into the studio for the second D.C.–area session of Hot Shop Heroes—an arts-therapy initiative created by the Museum of Glass (MOG) in Tacoma, Washington. The program brings together hands-on glassmaking, personal reflection, and creative exploration, giving veterans a supportive space to build community and reconnect with their own artistic identities.

Details here: Hot Shop Heroes Spotlight: The Power of Rebuilding Through Glass | Washington Glass Studio

Heading back home

It's not Miami until you've had your guava and cheese Cuban pastelito at the airport!

Art fair people

 

Room 109 at Aqua Art Miami

 

Aqua opens today!

 

Room 109

Aqua Art Miami 2025

Arrival at Aqua Art Miami

The always exhausting job of setting up... we're in room 109!

Van headed to Miami

 We went a bit overboard and had to rent a real cargo van. 

It's heading south to the Aqua Art Miami fair in Miami Beach during Art Basel week of fairs with Erwin Timmers and Steve Wanna at the helm!

LICHTENSTEIN-ING

DWIGHTMESS is proud to announce LICHTENSTEIN-ING, an exhibition presenting a brief meditation on the appropriation of comics art by Kumasi J. Barnett, F. Lennox Campello, and JD Deardourff.

Opening Reception will take place NEXT WEEK :::: Friday, November 7th, 7-9pm :::: at Dwightmess compound :::: 805 Silver Spring Ave, Silver Spring, MD 20910. Admission is free and open to the public.

The title of the final exhibition for 2025 is derived from the name of the artist Roy Lichtenstein, one of the first artists to appropriate comics art into a white box gallery context, deliberately mutating the distributive purpose of comics and its creative intent as a popular art form. Each artist in this exhibition also achieves a similar ‘borrowing’ approach to comics art in their work.

Kumasi J. Barnett, a multimedia artist based in Baltimore, MD, uses the familiar pop iconography of comic book covers, satirizing “The American Way” by appropriating and transforming their imagery while challenging stereotypes of race and class. Beloved heroes such as Spider-Man and The Hulk are transformed into meta-cultural icons of Barnett’s own making.

Artist, Art Dealer, Art Critic and Consultant F. Lennox Campello is a multimedia artist creating drawings, video art, and paintings. Campello has conducted professional development seminars for artists, exhibited in art fairs and galleries worldwide, managed galleries and projects in the Washington, DC area, & maintained a presence as a force for good in contemporary art all while applying his drawing practice tactically to forms that suit his notions.

Employing innovative rhythms and his signature blazing palette, JD Deardourff creates bold, graphic, bittersweet compositions that draw inspiration from the vocabulary of comic books: exaggeration, energy, movement, contour line, interplay of sequential images, and artificial color.

The 19th venue! Women Artists of the DMV!

Great news! One more venue - the 19th! - for the Women Artists of the DMV survey show!

I will be selecting about 50 or so more artists and the art will be displayed at the Falls Church Arts gallery in Falls Church, VA. This is how you inquire about being potentially curated into this 19th venue:

1. Send me an email ASAP to lennycampello@hotmail.com with Women Artists of the DMV on the subject line.

2. Put your website or Instagram links in body of email and where in DMV do you live or work. That's ALL! No attachments, no images, no resumes, etc.

DO NOT send me  Facebook DM or ask details in the comments below - Just follow the two simple directions above. I'm trying real hard to keep this all in one place logistically.

Deadline  is November 10 and no entries will be accepted or reviewed after that.

Let's do this!

ARTSpiration: Next opening for Women Artists of the DMV

 

Next Opening for Women Artists of the DMV

 

Finally! A response from the National Museum of Women in the Arts

As most of you know, I've been very disappointed with the apathy with which the Women Artists of the DMV survey show - which now has over 600 artists in 18 different venues) has been received by the National Museum of Women in the Arts, which is located right here in the city of Washington, DC.

I've been emailing the National Museum of Women in the Arts with multiple offers to minivan their curators around some of the Women Artists of the DMV venues in order to expose them to a few hundred of the women artists in their own backyard.  Had been ghosted until a couple of days ago, when in response to "did you get my email?" query, I got the following: 

"I'm so pleased to let you know that NMWA's curators are, in fact, catching some of the venues of your show that are nearest to them. We are, of course, all impressed by the breadth of this project and the opportunity to see the work of so many DC artists." 

That's great, and so in return I asked them to send me the names of some of their faves so far...

Don't hold your breath.

Bootcamp for Artists!

Another opportunity (and for free!) to do my Bootcamp for Artists seminar!

Hosted by American University this time --- only 75 spots in the seminar...

Sign up here: Artist Bootcamp, with Lenny Campello Tickets, Fri, Nov 7, 2025 at 1:00 PM | Eventbrite

Congrats to the 2025 Trawick Prize Winners!

Maryland sweep!

My sincere congrats to the winners of the 2025 Trawick Prize: Bethesda Contemporary Art Awards! Out of more than 300 talented applicants, the jury chose these three as the 2025 award winners:

• Best in Show ($10,000): Danni O'Brien of Baltimore, MD
• Second Place ($2,000): Tara Youngborg of Elkridge, MD
• Third Place ($1,000): Bria Sterling-Wilson of Owings Mills, MD

The exhibition of the finalists' work will be on display at Gallery B from September 4 - 28. Gallery hours are Thursday-Saturday, 12-5pm and Sundays, 11am-4pm. The opening reception will be held next Friday, September 12 from 6 - 8pm.

Gallery B is located at 7700 Wisconsin Avenue, Suite E.

The curious case of the non responding artist

One of the lessons learned from my ongoing Women Artists of the DMV survey show - one of many, all of which I will record here eventually - is how artists procastrinate and shoot themselves in the tuchis.

Here's the scenario:

As artists get invited to be part of the show as more spaces are added and/or walls open up, some of them ignore the invite email and after a few reminders get dropped off.

It's puzzling to me that after they receive an invitation to exhibit, they do not respond, and even after a second or third reminder, there are always some who just drop off - case in point: a couple of weeks ago I invited 52 artists to exhibit at the Universities of Shady Grove (USG) in Rockville.

Because USG it is a public space, the the USG Priddy Library managers must approve each work individually and ahead of time.

A week after I sent the invitation email with detailed instructions on what to do and key dates, only 18 of 52 invited artists had responded; after a reminder, another 12 responded; after a third reminder another 10 responded as directed, and 5 asked if I could switch them to another venues (answer was no) because "Rockville is too far" — as a result I could then move 12 artists from the wait list to USG, which I did!

Based on previous scenarios similar to this one with the other venues, this week I will receive emails from about half of the non-responding artists with reasons such as "I kept forgetting to do it", or "I was sick", or a dazzling assortment of reasons.

Just venting.