Sunday, December 27, 2020
Hotel California at auction again!
Saturday, December 26, 2020
Mortgage and Rent Relief
In accordance with the Arts and Humanities Capital Funding Emergency Amendment Act of 2020, the Commission on the Arts and Humanities (CAH) has established the FY21 FAB: Mortgage & Rent Relief (FAB-R) grant program to assist DC-based arts and humanities organizations with rent or mortgage expenses. Funding is being offered in response to the financial impacts related to COVID-19 to help ensure arts and humanities organizations remain in place, vibrant, and viable to open when safe to do so. The complete Request for Applications (RFA) is available online.
Friday, December 25, 2020
Wednesday, December 23, 2020
The Christ, the Last Supper, and the missing afikoman
A few years ago, before governors in many states made it a Covidian crime, I was invited to a Seder meal by a friend who is also quite a well-known Philadelphia area artist and an even better known curator.
Somehow the conversation turned to Christ’s Last Supper, which of course was a Seder meal, and she observed how most paintings depicting The Christ’s last meal showed regular bread instead of the unleavened bread required by Jewish tradition to celebrate the Passover. This is very interesting to the pedantic part of me, already troubled by the fact that nearly every depiction of The Christ that was presented to me in art school depicted mostly Northern European-looking Christs, rather than the Semitic Middle East Israelite that He was.
And now I wonder, are there any contemporary depictions (or any depiction) of the last supper which depict this last Seder for Christ in a more historically correct perspective?
I am sure that there exist versions of the unknown supper created by pedantic, history-aware artists of all sorts.
Religious art has pretty much been pushed aside by the postmodernists, in what can best be described as a self-mutilation of intelligent subject matter. It would be interesting to see a new contemporary view of religious art, and allow us to discover how today’s artists would interpret our diverse religious backgrounds.
Is that a great idea for an up-and-coming curator or gallery to take on or what? But I want to see The Christ as a Semite and I want to see the middle of the matzoth on the Seder plate broken in two with the larger piece hidden, to be used later as the afikoman.
Tuesday, December 22, 2020
GASP at Artists in Middleburg
Earlier today I stopped at the Artists in Middleburg art gallery in Middleburg, Virginia (which is one of the nicest and cutest little towns less than an hour's drive from the DMV.
The Artists in Middleburg (AiM) is "a 501c3 nonprofit organization. Based out of a small art gallery in Middleburg, AiM hosts themed exhibitions each month for local artists as well as offers art classes, from Plein Air experiences to sculpting instruction."
On exhibition was GASP (GREAT ART SMALL PRICES), which features artwork under $500 and which runs through January 10, 2021. This is a terrific show, loaded with exceptional art and clearly worth the short drive to Middleburg between now and Christmas if you're looking for that most super special of gifts: original art!
The show was juried - not sure who the juror was, but as readers of my writing know by now, I love to not only tell you who the prizewinners were, but also who I'd would have given the prizes to... this is always a healthy exercise (in my opinion anyway), as it is a great example of a Campellification of that well-established art saying: "art is eyes of the beholder... in this case "it depends who the juror is."
By now I have juried hundreds of art shows at all levels of the art cabal food scale, and I am always honored to be a juror, no matter for what of for whom. I am also an opinionated juror, but that opinion always comes from a good place.
Best of Show was awarded by the juror of GASP to Greek Man, a stone, Smalti, 14k gold, and Swarovksi crystals mixed media piece (14.25 x 13 x .5 and selling for $475) by artist Charlene Sloan.First place went to Winter's Day End, a lovely oil landscape painting by Laura Hopkins.
The second place award went to Hanging on the Vine, Mixed Media (20 x 25, $500) by Maribe Chandler-Gardiner, and third place to a spectacular sunset oil painting by Sharon Clinton titled (of course) Sunset (oil, 12x19 and $375).
Congratulations to all the prizewinners - well deserved!
Now... for my personal choices.First and foremost, I really, really liked all the paintings in the show by that same Sharon Clinton, including that prizewinning Sunset, and also After the Storm, a highly demanding and superbly executed small (8x10 inches) oil - I would have chosen either of those two as Best in Show.
That's Sunset to the right - showcasing the power of color when executed by a talented painter.
The paint application shows an exuberance of that certainty in applying and mixing paint that only comes after a thousand mistakes - each one a learning episode in the glorious path to dominance over the medium.
Another prizewinner for me would have been Jill Garity - her End of Summer (Oil, 16 x 12 for $485) was exceptionally well painted and clearly she has mastered also the palette knife . Garity writes that most of her paintings are "a combination of places that are both real and imagined.They are begun with rough shapes and a pattern of light and dark and are then developed with layers of opaque paint and glazes. Underlayers peeking through providing interest and visual texture. Use of the palette knife in places also provides a randomness that provokes creativity and often takes me on a path I had not planned." Another winner would have been Contemplating Jackson Falls (Oil, 8 x 6 for $285).
Monday, December 21, 2020
Opportunity for Photographers
The Shining a Light International Photography Contest is organized by the Muhammad Ali Center.
The topic of this year's contest is “Water”.
The Muhammad Ali Center requests submitted photographs pertinent to the above described topic. Images should relate to women's work, lives, sanitation, and hygiene involving water.
Photographs from this contest will be used to produce a documentary-style exhibition of 30-45 photographs, which will be exhibited at the Muhammad Ali Center in Louisville, Kentucky beginning Saturday, March 6, 2021.
For more details, please see the section "contest theme" here.
No Entry Fee.
Details here.
Saturday, December 05, 2020
Academy graduate
As I noted earlier, when I was in the Navy I did dozens of illustrations and cartoons for many newspapers (such as The Stars & Stripes), and sketches of my shipmates and other US Navy sailors in ports in the US and European ports. Most of these drawings, cartoons, and paintings were given away to my shipmates over the years, but I also kept many of them - this one has been in storage for over 40 years and was recently found! Some of you asked for more... so here is another one!
This one is from a series of cartoons that I did for a base newspaper where the main character was a sentient money changing machine.
Friday, December 04, 2020
Opportunity for Photographers
The Shining a Light International Photography Contest is organized by the Muhammad Ali Center.
The topic of this year's contest is “Water”.
The Muhammad Ali Center requests submitted photographs pertinent to the above described topic. Images should relate to women's work, lives, sanitation, and hygiene involving water.
Photographs from this contest will be used to produce a documentary-style exhibition of 30-45 photographs, which will be exhibited at the Muhammad Ali Center in Louisville, Kentucky beginning Saturday, March 6, 2021.
For more details, please see the section "contest theme" here.
No Entry Fee.
Details here.
Tuesday, December 01, 2020
Saturday, November 28, 2020
Birth Control Glasses
One of the things that every Navy sailor or veterans knows about is the curious case of Navy-issued glasses, known to sailors as "Birth Control Glasses" or "BCG."
Somehow these nerdy glasses became hip in the 2000s, a great testimonial to the overwhelming power of Millennials and follow-on generations to enjoy what their predecessors abhorred and detested.Upon arrival to boot camp, one of the first things confiscated - if you wore glasses - were your nice, hopefully cool "civilian" glasses. They were almost overnight replaced with BCGs, which had the magical power of turning anyone, no matter how beautiful or handsome, into an immediate geek, not worth procreation.
Therefore, one of the first things that most sailors then did upon graduation from boot camp was to head to the Navy Exchange, find the eye doctor, and order some "civilian" glasses. Only those unfortunately born to be nerds, kept their BCGs, and I suspect that the BCGs and their original glasses were quite similar.
When I was stationed in San Diego in the late 1970s, our gang of squids and leather necks used to have as part of our group a Third Class Hospital Corpsman (HM3) who worked at the medical facility next to the San Diego boot camp area, which I think also served the Marine Corps boots in the Marine base on Barnett Avenue next to the Navy base then in Point Loma and now closed for many years.
This HM3 managed to have access to all the BCGs that boots would discard when they got their civilian glasses at the Point Loma base, and he'd rescue them from the garbage dumps and save them in a box.
Why would an HM3 save BCGs by the dozens each week you ask?
Each weekend, my then girlfriend Andrea, who was the only one among us losers who actually had a car, would pack her Toyota with my friends and I and drive us to the border with Mexico, where we'd head for Tijuana, or "TJ" as sailors call it, for a night of drinking and fooling around - is was essentially the only option for the under 21 crowd, as back then the only place around San Diego where a Navy sailor under 21 could get a drink was at the Enlisted Club on base (weird to think that back then a sailor could drink booze on base, but not out in town if you were under 21).
Going to the Enlisted Club deserves another story... suffice to say that usually there were usually a few hundred sailors and Marines in there and four women. If you brought a girl to the club, you better be ready to fight a few dozen drunks messing with your girl every few minutes.
So we'd go to TJ, and Andrea (who was perhaps the nicest person whom I've ever met) would drop us off at the border crossing and either agree to pick us up early the next day... or sometimes wait in the parking lot while she studied (she was in college).
When I say nice, I mean super nice!
We'd then head to the border crossing and once in Mexico hail a taxi. As most of us were usually busted a few days after payday, the "in-betweens" is where the BCGs came into play. First we'd hail a taxi and - since I spoke Spanish - I'd explain to the cab driver that we'd trade him a few pairs of prescription glasses for a ride to town.
That's some of us in the pic below...
At the bar(s) we'd bring out the box and start trading drinks for glasses... with the bar tender, with the bouncers, with the bar girls, with the customers... essentially with anyone interested... and who needed glasses.
It always worked!
The trick was to estimate (and we got good at it) how many glasses we'd need at one or two o'clock in the morning when we'd need them to get a cab back to the border crossing.
And that's how discarded BCGs bought all kinds of things in trade for a bunch of broke-ass American sailors in search of a drink!
Wednesday, November 25, 2020
Tuesday, November 24, 2020
Opportunity for Photographers
The Sony World Photography Awards are organized annually by World Photography Organization and sponsored by Sony.
The Sony World Photography Awards features four competitions:
1. Professional competition
2. Open competition
3. Youth competition
4. Student competition
No Entry Fee.
Monday, November 23, 2020
The Macha
Saturday, November 21, 2020
Feet wet
Sometimes people ask me why I'm always drawing mostly women... like the Carlos Gardel song says: "Si soy asà ¿qué voy a hacer? pa' mà la vida tiene forma de mujer..."
"Feet wet (soon to be feet dry): Cuba loses another daughter"
Charcoal and conte on paper 1990s
In a private collection in Boston
This is "Feet wet (soon to be feet dry): Cuba loses another daughter" circa late 1990s, done after President Clinton imposed the "feet dry/feet wet" policy which condemned to jail thousands of Cubans trying to escape from Castro's Workers' Paradise and who were caught "feet wet" and returned to the prison island. It is in a private collection in Boston. 18x24 inches, charcoal on paper.
Friday, November 20, 2020
Thursday, November 19, 2020
Thursday, November 12, 2020
Wednesday, November 11, 2020
Tuesday, November 10, 2020
Monday, November 09, 2020
You think that's hard?
When I was in the Navy I did dozens of illustrations for newspapers (such as The Stars & Stripes), and sketches of his shipmates and other US Navy sailors in ports in the US and European ports. Most of these drawings and paintings were given away to his shipmates, but I also kept many of them - this one has been in storage for over 40 years and was recently found!