New Drawings

Here are some of the new works that I'm be taking to the Miami International Art Fair (MIA), which opens Thursday night at the Miami Beach Convention Center.

Supergirl Flying Naked. Charcoal on Paper. 4.75 x 40 inches.

The Lilith, Running Away from Eden. Charcoal on paper. 39 x 10 inches.

Eve, Running Away from Eden. 22 x 18 inches. Charcoal on Paper.

Eve, Agonizing Over The Sin. Charcoal on Paper. 13 x 49 inches.

Adam's First Night Outside of Eden (Adam Alone While The Great Owl Watches).
8.5 x 22 inches. Charcoal on Paper.

Airborne

Heading down to Miami Beach to participate in the second annual Miami International Art Fair at the MB Convention Center and also to hang around with my parents. If you want to score some free passes to the fair, send me an email and I will email them to you.

Linn Meyers drawing at the Katzen

Linn Meyers: A Very Particular Moment "responds to the architecture of the museum by covering the walls with hand-drawn, repetitive, geometric lines—creating a hypnotic, meditative space. Meyers will spend two weeks in the museum creating her largest temporary drawing to-date on a 23 ft x 32 ft. wall in the museum’s third floor gallery."

The American University Museum at the Katzen Arts Center is open from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. Tuesday through Sunday. Admission is free. For more information, call 202-885-1300 or look on the Web here.

MIA

Later this week I'll be heading down to Miami Beach to participate in the second annual Miami International Art Fair at the MB Convention Center and also to hang around with my parents. If you want to score some free passes to the fair, send me an email and I will email them to you.

If I have time, later I will post some of the new 2011 drawings that I've created for this fair.

Draw from the model

I'm always being asked by artists where they can go and draw from the live model. There are many places in the DMV where one can just show up, or sign up and draw from the live model.

One cool place is the Del Ray Artisans Gallery. These sessions operate on a drop-in basis so there is no need to register in advance. Bring your supplies and join them at the gallery to draw or paint their live models. They don't supply easels - only plenty of chairs - but you are welcome to bring your own if you want to use one. All skill levels are welcome.

Gesture Sessions (two hours)

Come to the gesture sessions to loosen up and participate in a fun, fast-paced drawing experience. These two-hour sessions are composed primarily of series of dynamic 1-5 minute poses. One or two favorite poses may be revisited for 10-15 minutes at the end of each session.

Short Pose Sessions (two or three hours)

Short pose sessions are made up entirely of poses lasting 5-15 minutes. These sessions are a wonderful way to get in lots of drawing practice with a wide variety of poses.

Short/Long Pose Sessions (three hours)

The three-hour short/long pose sessions start with some short 1-5 minute warm-up poses and progressively move into longer poses lasting 10-45 minutes. These sessions provide a great opportunity to hone your drawing and observation skills.

Long Pose Sessions (two or three hours)

For people wanting to spend an extended amount of time on a pose, go to their long pose sessions. These sessions will be composed of two long poses with perhaps a few warm-ups at the start. Please no acrylics or oils; pastels, watercolor and ink are welcome.

The fee for each three-hour session is $8 for DRA members and $10 for non-members. Two-hour sessions are $6 for members and $8 for non-members. Please check the Del Ray Artisans calendar www.thedelrayartisans.org for upcoming dates and times. If you have any questions, please contact Katherine Rand at 703.836.1468 or DRA.LifeDrawing@gmail.com.

Rousseau on Michael Enn Sirvet

Claudia Rousseau on Michael Enn Sirvet at Reyes + Davis Gallery

The solo exhibit of Michael Enn Sirvet’s sculpture at Reyes + Davis Gallery (923 F St NW) has been extended to January 15, 2011. Thus, those who haven’t seen it still have a week to see this extraordinary work.

Sirvet’s trajectory over the past few years has been exactly that: extraordinary. I first saw and reviewed his work at the Glenview Mansion in Rockville in June 2004, impressed by his combination of organic shapes, exquisite craft and mathematical brilliance. Since then, the core of his practice remains the same, but the challenges he sets himself, and the risks he’s willing to take to achieve them, have grown and changed. This is perhaps the best thing we can say about an artist—that he/she is working in a trajectory, new things building on what came before, new creativity coming out of a thorough investigation of each new idea, and going forward with that.

Sirvet is a structural engineer by training and employment for a decade before he decided to go full time as an artist in 2008. It is evident to even the casual observer that this background both informs and strengthens his art work. Nothing is haphazard. Everything is carefully planned, organized and impeccably created.

Yet, there’s a wild side to this artist, one that relates to the woods and the backcountry. And that’s here too. Leaf forms made of aluminum, which also look like frozen fire. Hanging pieces that recall beehives in the perfection of their structure, but are also industrial in their materials. Wood, aluminum, brass, bent to remake the hidden perfection of nature evident in works whose aesthetic is thoroughly grounded in it.

Art image of the day again (after tonight's shocker)...


And perhaps the biggest playoff upset in football history?

The Power of the Web

Remember when I complained here that I couldn't find Naranja Agria anywhere in the DMV?

Well, today when I got home I received the pleasant surprise of having a gallon of the stuff delivered to my front door from CubanFoodMarket.com and a gift from one of you who has been thanked separately.

Do I have the nicest friends on the planet or what?

I see more yummy recipes coming in the future.

In Unison: 20 Washington, DC Artists

Next week the Kreeger Museum will open In Unison: 20 Washington, DC Artists, an exhibition derived from a monoprint project initiated by DC artist Sam Gilliam.

Gilliam "invited 19 established and respected painters, sculptors, printmakers, digital media and installation artists working in different styles, to join him in creating several print portfolios. Each made a set of five monoprints, one of which was chosen for the show by Sam Gilliam, Judy A. Greenberg, Director of The Kreeger Museum, Marsha Mateyka of the Marsha Mateyka Gallery and Claudia Rousseau, art critic and art historian."

As stated by Rousseau, “Creating a group portfolio and exhibiting together express the ideas of unity and identity that are underlying motives of the project, and which are vital to sustaining a thriving artistic community.”

The exhibition will be on view at The Kreeger Museum from January 15 – February 26, 2011. The invited artists are:

▪ bk.iamART.Adams
▪ Akili Ron Anderson
▪ Sondra N. Arkin
▪ Paula Crawford
▪ Sheila Crider
▪ Edgar Endress
▪ Helen Frederick
▪ Claudia Aziza Gibson-Hunter
▪ Sam Gilliam
▪ Susan Goldman
▪ Tom Green
▪ Martha Jackson-Jarvis
▪ Walter Kravitz
▪ Gina Marie Lewis
▪ EJ Montgomery
▪ Michael Platt
▪ Carol A. Beane
▪ Al Smith
▪ Renée Stout
▪ Joyce Wellman
▪ Yuriko Yamaguchi

Millennium Arts Salon is the exclusive sponsor of this major exhibition at the Kreeger. Several well-known names in the list, plus quite a few that are new to me; I'm really looking forward to seeing this exhibition.

Wanna go to a DC opening tomorrow?

"Celebrate Gay Marriage" is the January show at the Foundry Gallery (located at 1314 18th St, NW) and it opens tomorrow.

The show includes juried works selected on their ability to visually represent the theme of gay marriage. Show runs Jan 5 through Jan 30. Hours: M-F, 1 to 7pm; Sat & Sun, 12 to 6pm. Opening reception Fri. Jan 7, 6 to 8pm.

Professor/Dr. Jonathan Katz, co-curator of now notorious National Portrait Gallery's "Hide/Seek" exhibition, will deliver a lecture on Sat. Jan 15 at 4:00 pm. Questions, please call 202-463-0203.

Blake Gopnik Replacement Application

(Via WCP)

Congrats!

To all the FY11 grant recipients from the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities.

The grantees in the Artists Fellowship Program are:

Adam Davies
Alexandra Silverthorne
Alexis E. Gillespie
Anna U. Edholm Davis
Asmara Beraki
Avish Khebrehzadeh
Barbara Josephs Liotta
Brandon W. Bloch
Colin Winterbottom
Cory Oberndorfer
Eleanor Walton
Erik Sandberg
Gediyon Kifle
Janis Goodman
John James Anderson
Joshua Cogan
Judy A. Southerland
Kenneth George
Khanh H. Le
Marta Perez Garcia
Mary J. Early
Mia Feuer
Michael Dax Iacovone
Michelle Herman
Molly Springfield
Rik Freeman
Ruth Stenstrom
Scott G. Brooks
Tim Tate
Virginia N. Durrin

There are some new names (new to me anyway) on the list, but I'm happy to see that 10 of the 30 "must-live-in-DC" grantees are in my 100 Artists of Washington, DC book. That's a pretty good batting score. There are also several names on this list which will be invited for volume two.

You can pre-order the book on Amazon here.

Art image of the day (after yesterday's shocker)...



Makes me wonder: is there another professional (or any other athletic team for that matter) that actually has a "real" piece of art as a logo, such as the Seattle Seahawks have in the above Pacific Northwest art piece?

The Reconquista ends

Today is the 519th anniversary of the surrender of King Boabdil (real name Abu 'abd-Allah Muhammad XII), who surrendered the last Moorish Kingdom in Europe, Granada, to the Spanish forces of Isabel The First, The Warrior Queen of Castile and León, and Ferdinand The Fifth, King of Aragon.

The Moors forever left behind them the beautiful fortress of La Alhambra (where the story of Rapunzel allegedly took place) and the legend of the "last sigh of the Moor."

Legend has it that as the Moorish royal party left the city and headed towards exile, they reached a point which overlooked the city of Granada, and Muhammad XII, in looking at the city and the green valley around it, burst into tears. When his mother saw this, she said to him: "Thou dost weep like a woman for what thou could not defend as a man."

The conquest of Granada ended the 700 year Reconquista of the Iberian peninsula, eventually created the Kingdom of Spain, and most importantly, according to Cuban culinary legend, it also accounted for the creation of the Cuban dish known as Moros y Cristianos ("Moors and Christians") or white rice and black beans, which was created years later in homage to this final victory.

MIA

The Miami International Art Fair is next on my radar as I will be flying down there in a few days to help Mayer Fine Art with the fair work and to hawk some of my own artwork. My Philly dealer, the hardworking Projects Gallery will also be there, as they were there last year for MIA's inaugural year and did gangbusters.

No DMV art dealers are exhibiting in this fair, which is very heavy on Florida and Latin American galleries. From what I see here, several galleries from Art Basel, Scope, Art Miami stayed behind and are exhibiting at MIA.

They figured out that this "new" fair did really well on its debut year and are hoping 2011 will even be better. More later....

Happy MMXI!

Happy 2011 to all of you... and don't think that I've forgotten to gloat over the Washington Huskies super upset over Nebraska in the Holiday Bowl.

Expect to see the Huskies QB Jake Locker, who ended his college career with this upset that puts the Washington Huskies on the road back to respectability, to go early in the next NFL draft.

Next for me? The Miami International Art Fair at the Miami Beach Convention Center January 13-17. Send me an email if you'd like some free tickets.

Nope

No, I don't know how that 2008 post got in here earlier... but happy New Year's from the Poconos!

Congrats!



To my next door neighbor George Borden, whose gorgeous "Flying the Potomac" photograph, was chosen as one of the 10 Most Memorable Images of 2010 by the CP.

Here's the CP's Top 10 DMV photography shows and the whole Arts Review issue here.

Book Cover: Who are they?


The book cover for the 100 Artists of Washington, DC book was chosen and designed by the publisher. As I noted three months ago:

The publisher declined my suggestion of one art image on the cover and instead is opting for a collage of thumbnails of artists' portraits of their choosing.

I had suggested to them that one strong art image on the cover would be best. They opted for the thumbnail collage because that has been the standard for other art books in this "100" series.

I suspect that they chose the cover thumbnails based on what their graphic design department feels are the "best portraits" from a portrait viewpoint. I had zero input into the chosen images, other than the initial version of the cover had two thumbnails that I suggested they switch (which they did). The artists on the final cover are (in no particular order):

Amy Lin, David D'Orio, Malik Lloyd, Kathryn Cornelius, Michael B. Platt, Craig Kraft, Marie Ringwald, Judy Byron, Byron Peck, Joseph Barbaccia, Victoria F. Gaitán, Lisa Brotman, Maggie Michael, Pat Goslee, Scott G. Brooks, Erik Sandberg, Melissa Ichiuji and Rik Freeman.

Seventh Annual Bethesda Painting Awards

Deadline: Friday, February 25, 2011

The Bethesda Arts & Entertainment District is currently accepting applications for the seventh annual Bethesda Painting Awards, a juried competition honoring four selected painters with $14,000 in prize monies. Deadline for submission is February 25, 2011. Up to nine finalists will be invited to display their work at a Bethesda gallery.

The competition will be juried this year by Philip Geiger, an art instructor at the University of Virginia; Evelyn Hankins, associate curator at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington, D.C. and Jinchul Kim, a painting professor at Salisbury University.

The first place winner will be awarded $10,000; second place will be honored with $2,000 and third place will be awarded $1,000. A “young” artist whose birth date is after February 25, 1981 may also be awarded $1,000.

Artists must be 18 years of age or older and residents of Maryland, Virginia or Washington, D.C. All original 2-D painting including oil, acrylic, watercolor, gouache, encaustic and mixed media will be accepted. No reproductions.

Each artist must submit five digital files or slides, application and a non-refundable entry fee of $25.

Applications are available online at www.bethesda.org.

The Bethesda Painting Awards were established by my good friend and Bethesda philanthropist, art collector and community activist Carol Trawick in 2005.