William Demaria, Erin Owen & Oliver Stern at Washington Printmakers

 William Demaria, Erin Owen & Oliver Stern

AFTER THOUGHT

– emotional landscapes –

January 18 – February 25, 2024

Reception: Saturday, Jan. 20, 2-4:00 pm

After Thought explores overlooked aspects of the landscape with personal significance for each of the three artists, recording emotional experiences as opposed to simple observation.

Demaria attempts to capture the emotions he experiences within the natural landscape using a visual language inspired by Rorschach tests. He is focused on the emotional connection between humanity and the landscape, seeking to preserve his experiences with the hope it will inspire others to value the natural landscape more. 

Owen’s artwork, Dreams of Glacier National Park, is a sculpture based on the framework of the children’s game Kerplunk. Rather than marbles, the sculpture contains etched fragile glass balls filled with crude oil, barely held in place, echoing our endangered glaciers and illustrating the dire position of our ecosystem, a consequence of our dependence on crude oil and other fossil fuels.

Stern, native to Pennsylvania, grew up surrounded by the postindustrial landscape of the anthracite coal industry. In this work, Stern records emotions and memories found on a walk along the Schuylkill River to its watershed, exploring places where human infrastructure and the environment overlap and shape one another, challenging and complicating the separation between humans and nature.

Demaria and Stern look to the past to understand the present, Owen looks to the present to understand the future. While all three of these artists have different perspectives on the landscape, they share a focus on the overlooked / afterthoughts of the landscape, which tell the most about humanity and the real state of our world. 

VISIT THE SHOW

Local artist opens new gallery in Georgetown

 From the Georgetown Dish:

Washington DC based artist Robin Sutliff has opened her own gallery in Canal Square at 1054 31st St NW, #006.

She has been producing art for a majority of her life. Using acrylic and resin on multiple mediums that include metal, canvas, glass and paper, she favors rich colors, abstract minimalism, compositions that evoke the essence of nature and creations that evoke a unique spirit and response from each individual.

GREAT NEWS for the DMV art scene! As many of you may recall, Canal Square at one point three decades ago was the epicenter of the Georgetown art scene as it was the home of seven art galleries!

TWILIGHT by Robin Sutliff

DC ART NEWS wishes the best success for the new space - hopefully it will re-magnetize the Square and bring more galleries there! 

Read the full article here.

About Robin Sutliff:

Washington DC based artist Robin Sutliff has been producing art for a majority of her life. Using a mixed medium platform she used acrylic and resin, inks and powdered pigments to create extraordinarily textured pieces, Robin puts forth her emotional perspective as it manifests at the time of creation and the outcome has been a series of moving and visually compelling works of art. 

As an artist, she favors rich colors, abstract minimalism, compositions that evoke the essence of nature and that triggers a response from viewers. 

Visit her website here. 

2023 Baker Artist Awards winners to be highlighted

2023 Baker Artist Awards winners to be highlighted
during January 19 MPT Artworks special

Six Maryland artists earn prestigious award as part of annual program

Maryland Public Television (MPT) will profile the six winners of the 2023 Baker Artist Awards competition during a special Artworks episode airing on Friday, January 19 at 7:30 p.m. on MPT-HD and online at mpt.org/livestream. The program will also be available to watch on the free PBS App and MPT’s online video player.

 

A preview of Artwork’s 2023 Baker Artist Awards special and individual artist profiles can be found at mpt.org/programs/baker-artist-awards.

 

Now in its 15^th year, the Baker Artist Awards celebrates the Baltimore region’s creative vitality and recognizes individuals with outstanding talent. Artists who create an online Baker Artist Portfolio and reside in Anne Arundel County, Baltimore City, Baltimore County, Carroll County, Harford County, or Howard County are eligible for awards. The 2023 winners were announced by the Greater Baltimore Cultural Alliance and the William G. Baker Jr. Memorial Fund in June, 2023.

 

Prizes are awarded to artists who exemplify a mastery of craft, commitment to excellence, and a unique and compelling vision across six creative disciplines: visual arts, inter- and multi-disciplinary work, music, performance, film/video, and literary arts.

 

The Baker Artist Awards has distributed $1.3 million in annual prize money since its launch in 2009. In 2023, one artist from each of the six artistic disciplines received a $10,000 Mary Sawyers Baker Prize. One of the six selected artists was also honored with the additional $30,000 Mary Sawyers Imboden Prize, taking home a total of $40,000.

2023 Baker Artist Award winners:

Elizabeth Evitts Dickinson (literary arts; Baltimore City – Mary Sawyers Imboden Prize winner) – Dickinson’s writings span multiple genres, including narrative nonfiction, journalism, short fiction, and memoir. Her work has been featured in The New Yorker, The New York Times, Harper’s, The Washington Post Magazine, and The Southern Review, among other publications. Dickinson has earned numerous awards and accolades for her work, and was named a 2018 National Endowment for the Arts Creative Writing Fellow.

Jordan Tierney (visual arts; Baltimore City) – Tierney’s experiential found-objects art is made mostly from trash collected from Maryland’s natural spaces. Her work has been featured in exhibitions at the Smithsonian Institution, Baltimore Museum of Art, and American Visionary Art Museum.

Abdu Ali (music; Baltimore City) – Ali is a musician, producer, poet, and multidisciplinary artist who works in sound, video, and live performance. Ali has performed at MoMa Ps1, The Andy Warhol Museum, The Carnegie Museum of Art, and The Kennedy Center, and has had work featured in The New York Times, The Fader, and Elephant Magazine.

Oletha DeVane (inter- and multi-disciplinary work; Howard County) – DeVane’s multi-disciplinary work includes sculpture, mixed-media visual art, and video installations. Her work is on display in permanent collections of the Corcoran Gallery of Art, Baltimore Museum of Art, Museum of the Bible, and Museum of the Americas, and has been featured in publications including B’more Art Magazine, The Baltimore Sun, and The Washington Post.

Colette Krogol (performing arts; Baltimore City) – Krogol is a choreographer, director, performer, and filmmaker. She is co-artistic director and co-founder of Orange Grove Dance, whose dance and film works have been produced and presented by The Finlandia Foundation, The Jerusalem Academy of Music and Dance, Lönnström Taidemuseo, Museum of Zhang Zhidong, Raumars AIR, Officina Creativa, CerCCa, and Klaustrid at Skriduklaustir.

Margaret Rorison (film/video; Baltimore City) – Rorison’s work has shown at festivals including The Ann Arbor Film Festival, Edinburgh International Film Festival, Images Festival, SF CROSSROADS, Open City Documentary Film Festival, and Mono No Aware Cinema Arts Festival. Her experimental short films have earned her the ORWO Award for Best Cinematography at the Ann Arbor Film Festival and a special jury prize at the New Orleans Film Festival.

Registration is NOW OPEN for the 37th Annual Northern National Art Competition

The 37th annual Northern National Art Competition will be held at the Nicolet College Art Gallery nestled among the trees in Rhinelander, WI.

More than $8500 will be awarded in prizes including three, $1000 awards of excellence. Open to US artists 18 years of age and up. $35 entry fee entitles the artists to submit one or two pieces for consideration. There is no theme and artwork must be 2D and hang-able.

Began in 1987, this show is a cooperative venture between Nicolet College Arts & Enrichment and the Northern Arts Council (NAC). The Northern National Art Competition strives to showcase a cross section of contemporary art in a variety of two-dimensional mediums. Each year, hundreds of artists nationwide submit work to be considered for inclusion by a judge, and the art is always both visually exciting and intellectually stimulating.

WPA: Open Call for Artwork: Collectors' Night 2024

Open Call for Artwork: Collectors' Night 2024

Deadline: Monday, January 29, 2024

Submission Portal Here

Collectors’ Night raises money for WPA’s artist-organized exhibitions, programs, and projects. Taking place each spring, this annual benefit sale includes more than one hundred artworks by artists living throughout the United States. Proceeds from the sale are split between the artists and WPA.

The auction will take place during the last week of April into the first week of May. We plan to hold the auction online on Artsy, and install all the artworks onsite in Washington, DC, for the closing gala event, Collectors' Night, on Saturday, May 4 (SVTD! subject to change).

There is no submission fee.

On the anniversary of a hero's death

 Nine years ago my father died on this day... here's my eulogy from that date:

"Hoy se ha caido otro roble en la selva del amargo exilio" is how I always thought that my father's eulogy would begin once he died.

"Today another oak falls in the jungle of bitter exile," began the eulogy for the man whose bloodlines my children and I carry on.

Florencio Campello Alonso died today at age 90 in Miami, the heart of the bitter Cuban Diaspora. Like many Cubans of his generation, he was the son of European immigrants to Cuba. His Galician parents left the scraggy mountains of northern Spain's ancient Celtic kingdom and in the first decade of the 1900s migrated to the new nation of Cuba upon its liberation from Spain.

Galicians have always been uneasy subjects of the Spanish crown, stubbornly hanging on to their ancient Celtic traditions, to their own language and to their bagpipes, so it is no historical surprise that they left their mountain homelands en-masse and headed to the new tropical paradise of Cuba, free from the heavy hand of the Spanish monarchy.

And thus it was never a surprise to me that my father was both a fighter against heavy-handed rulers, a lover of freedom, and one who was never afraid to re-start a life for the better, even if it involved discarding the old. 

My father could have been one of the privileged few who currently rule  atop the food chain of Cuba's Workers' Paradise. But instead of accepting the benefits of oppression, this most valiant of men chose the harsh path of right over wrong.

And he paid for it dearly (he spent years in Concentration Camps), but when he died, his soul was clean.

In his youth, my dad worked the brutal hours of the son of an immigrant who was slowly building a small financial empire in eastern Cuba. My father was pulled from school as soon as he learned to read and write, and like his two other brothers and eight sisters, he was expected to work and contribute to building a familial empire.

And he did, as my mother relates the stories of my father's childhood in the fields of eastern Cuba, a blond creole in a land of jingoist natives... he trying to out-Cuban the "real Cubans"... how he organized a labor union of the exploited Haitians who worked almost as slaves at the Los Canos Sugar Mill, how he joined a group of bearded rebels in the mountains of the Sierra Maestra in the fight against a tyrant, how he ran for the leadership of the Sugar Workers' Union and beat the Communists to the post, and how he spent years in a Castro Concentration Camp, jailed for the crime of refusing to join the Party, because he believed in Democracy and not Communism. 

And because of that stubbornness, in the 1960s he was offered the bitter pill of exile, and this brave man decided to choose family... and left his birth place, and thus became another immigrant within two familial generations and brought his wife and child to another new land.

And it is to him that I owe the greatest gift that a father can give a son: the opportunity to grow in freedom in the greatest nation in the history of this planet.

It is because of my father's courage that I was raised in this country and not in a land bloodied by brutality and oppression.

It is because of my father's teachings that I was raised with the conviction that freedom is not free and never to be taken for granted; after all, he fought for freedom and then Castro, the man who inspired  the fight, ended up being a worse dictator, eventually destroying all notions of freedom for all of his people.

It is because of my father that I was taught that every citizen owes his  nation some form of service, and that's the main reason that I signed (at age 17) to serve in the US Navy.

It is because of my father that I despise anyone who hides behind the mask of victimism to excuse failures and shortcomings.

When our family arrived in New York in the 1960s, my father began to work in a factory three days after he landed at the airport; my mother (who came from a privileged Cuban family and had never worked a day in her life) found a job as a seamstress five days later. That pattern was repeated for decades as they worked their way in a new nation.

"We thought we'd be back within a few years," was the answer given to me when I once asked the question about leaving their birthplace. When that didn't materialize, they became fierce Americans in the "United States of Americans" sense... these were the "America None Better!" set of immigrants, and in my Dad's case, you better be ready to fight if you dissed the USA.

"Americans"!

Always a fighter he was... and always for the right reasons.

Cubans are archaic immigrants... we love this great nation because we  recognize its singular and unique greatness; perhaps it is because our forebears had the same chance at greatness and blew it.

And my Dad loved this nation even more than he once loved Cuba... perhaps it is the genetic disposition of the serial immigrant. After all, his father had left his own ancient Celtic lands and kin for a new land... which he learned to love dearly.

My father always wanted to make sure that I knew that I was an "Americano" and not another forced-on label.

"Labels," he'd say, "are just a way to separate people."

By labels he meant "Hispanic" or "Latino" or anything with a "-" between two ethnic words.

I also remember as a kid in New York, when he bought a huge Hi-Fi record player-color-TV console... that thing was huge. He bought it "lay-away" and he'd pay $10 a week to the store and him and I would walk all the way from our house on Sackman Street to the store on Pitkin Avenue to make the payments every Saturday - he never missed a single payment, and that taught me a lesson.

It was soon playing my Dad's favorite music, which oddly enough was Mexican music (Cuban music was a close second)... and he knew all the words to every charro song.

Guadalajara en un llano, Mejico en una laguna... 

Guadalajara en un llano, Mejico en una laguna...Me he de comer esa tuna 

Me he de comer esa tuna.... aunque me espine la mano.

That Jorge Negrete song... being shouted often on weekends at the top of his lungs from our apartment in a mostly Italian neighborhood in East New York in Brooklyn must have raised some eyebrows.

My dad and I watched Neil Armstrong land on the moon on that TV set... we also watched loads of Mets games... and in 1969 and 1972 went to Shea Stadium to see the Mets win in '69 and lose in '72. He really loved baseball and he really loved those Mets!

When I joined the Navy at age 17, my first duty station was USS SARATOGA, which at the time was stationed in Mayport in Florida, so my Dad decided to migrate south to Florida and moved to Miami... just to be close to me.

He and my mother spent the next 40 years in the same apartment while I was stationed all over the world.

When I visited him today in Miami, he looked good and freshly shaven... this is a good thing, as my father was a freak about hygiene... and that's a common "creole" trait.

The Hospice nurse almost teared up when I told her that my parents have been married for 60 years.

I looked at this old "gallego"... his skin as white as paper, his eyes as blue as the sky, and his head (once full of blond hair) as bald and shiny as the old Cuban sing song ("Mira la Luna, mira al Sol... mira la calva de ese.....") and I saw the generations of Neanderthals, Denisovans and Gallego Homo Sapiens that led to my bloodlines... the generations of fighters, of strugglers, and of tough guys who didn't take no for an answer and who made a better place for others. 

And I felt at peace and grateful.

And as my father died tonight, after an extubation,  all that I can think  to say to him is "Thank you for your courage... from me, and from my children... and soon from their children. You opened a whole new world for them."

I love you Dad... Un Abrazo Fuerte! Thank you for your gifts to me and my children and it is no coincidence that you died on El Dia de Los Reyes.

Artist Talk this coming Saturday

The very super talented Steve Wanna will be giving an artist talk this Saturday, January 6, at 11AM in conjunction with an outdoor group show at the Kreeger Museum in Washington DC. 

Ferns, scrawned black
(Installation view at the Kreeger Museum. Image by Anne Kim Photography).

He will be discussing his sound installation Ferns, scrawned black. The event is free to attend but registration is required. Hot drinks will be served. Dress warmly!

Multiple Exposures Gallery Presents WINTER

Multiple Exposures Gallery (MEG) has announced WINTER, a new fine art photography exhibition juried by Tim Anderson, publisher and editor of acclaimed photography magazine, Shadow & Light. 

On display at MEG through January 28, 2024, the exhibition features 24 images that reflect the beauty and complexities of winter. "Upon first viewing, I almost felt an icy shudder course through my body," juror Tim Anderson says. 

"The challenge was not to select those that would be in the gallery show, it was which ones to not include. All are worthy." 

Exhibition Artists: Soomin Ham, Eric Johnson, Clara Young Kim, Irina Lawton, Sandy LeBrun-Evans, Matt Leedham, Francine B. Livaditis, Maureen Minehan, Van Pulley, Sarah Hood Salomon, Alan Sislen, Tom Sliter and Fred Zafran

Exhibition hours: 11am-5pm daily

Location: Multiple Exposures Gallery | Torpedo Factory Art Center | #312

A Drawing Like No Other: Marilyn Brought Back to Life in 9,000,000 Marks

Opens February 7 at the American University Museum:

A Drawing Like No Other: Marilyn Brought Back to Life in 9,000,000 Marks

With a depth of resolution created by nine million graphite marks, A Drawing Like No Other is Billy Pappas’s pencil drawing of mid-20th century screen icon Marilyn Monroe. Pappas, a Baltimore native, spent nearly nine years working seven days a week, 16 hours a day, to create this single drawing of Monroe, based on a Richard Avedon photo from 1957. Curated by Gary Vikan. Gallery Talk: 2 to 3 p.m., Feb. 17.

This exhibition is devoted to a drawing – its artist and his creative process – with a depth of resolution that guest curator Gary Vikan declares has “likely never before been achieved in the history of art.”

Its creator, Billy Pappas, a Baltimore native and graduate of the Maryland Institute College of Art, set out in 1994 to create the “apotheosis of naturalistic portraiture” and establish a new standard for drawing. Billy’s point of departure was a reproduction of Richard Avedon’s famous soft-focus portrait of Marilyn Monroe from 1957.

More than eight years and nearly nine million marks later, Billy completed this extraordinary work, using nothing more elaborate than standard drawing pencils and two sets of magnifiers. The drawing’s precision and detail are so profound, its visual data so rich and deep, that it required the narrow band multi-spectral imaging techniques developed by Bill Christens-Barry for imaging of the Dead Sea Scrolls. As Charles Falco of the College of Optical Sciences at the University of Arizona remarked: “By incorporating 3-dimensional information from live models, Billy has arrived at his own solution to the fundamental limitation of the photograph.”

Learn about Billy Pappas’ creative process and the critical reception of this work, including his related encounter with David Hockney which became the subject of an award-winning documentary by Julie Checkoway, Waiting for Hockney. In his review of the film following its premiere at the 2009 Tribeca Film Festival, Ben Davis of Artnet wrote: “Pappas has clearly done something, maybe even something great – you leave the film wanting to see the work in real life.”

4400 Massachusetts Avenue, NW

Washington, DC 20016

(202) 885-1000

 

Upcoming fairs in 2024

Next March I'll be at the Affordable Art Fair in Chelsea, New York City - we'll be featuring the works of Cory Oberndorfer, Christina Helowicz, Suzanne Yurdin, Dora Patin... and yours truly!

And after that we'll be at the Affordable Art Fair Austin in Texas! First one ever there!, with works by Jon Linton, Seth Fairweather, Kathleen Hope, Jodi Walsh and me!

A tromp l'oeil memento mori - "The Other Side" 5x7" by Dora Patin

Drop me a note if you'd like some complimentary tickets to either of those art fairs.

Is there an art fair coming to Washington, DC

Not yet... but the DC Commission on the Arts & Humanities is thinking about one -- I've volunteered to assist them...

As you may know, we've been hosting a series of community stakeholder meetings discussing the potential of bringing an international art fair/festival to Washington DC in 2025. We want to meet with individual artists from the community to discuss this opportunity and how it might impact their livelihood and their art.

Our next Art Week 2025 Community Stakeholder Meeting will be held at the Thurgood Marshall Center (1816 12th St NW) on February 1st from 6 to 8 pm.

There is very limited space for this meeting. Please RSVP to secure a spot. There will be a few spots left for walk-ups but we cannot exceed our event capacity. If you have attended a stakeholder meeting in the past please let someone else get a chance to RSVP.

Join us from 6 to 8 pm on Tuesday, February 1 at the Thurgood Marshall Center.

I first proposed a slightly different version of the following art fair model to all the organizations mentioned in this article about a decade ago, when there was (even then) a sense of art fatigue brewing in the art world. Result: zip, nada, nothing! No one even answered my letters (remember letters?).

In a post Covidian world, I suspect that a lot of people will still be a little leery of large group gatherings, and art fairs based on pre-Covidian standards may be a bit antiquated in the Brave Chickenized New World.

Herewith a revised Campello Art Fair Model.

The important thing to remember, as I mull, chew, and refine a "new" art post-Covidian fair model to replace the existing pre-Covidian art fair model, which in its American incarnations seemed to work well only in Miami and New York, but not so well in the West coast (and as we DMV-based folks have seen with (e)merge and artDC, not at all in the capital region), is the marriage of a legitimate art entity (a museum) with an art-for-sale process as a means to raise funds.

The seeds for this model already exist in the DC region with the Smithsonian Craft Show, now in its third decade.

Considered by many to be the finest craft fair in the world -- and from the many artists that I have spoken to over the years -- one of the best places to sell fine crafts as well, this prestigious and highly competitive juried exhibition and sale of contemporary American craft usually takes place each April for four days. It takes place at the National Building Museum in Washington, DC and it includes one-of-a-kind and limited-edition craft objects in 12 different media: basketry, ceramics, decorative fiber, furniture, glass, jewelry, leather, metal, mixed media, paper, wearable art and wood.

There were 120 exhibitors in their last show, including emerging artists and master craftsmen, over 30 of whom were first-time participants. Twelve of those selected were also first-time applicants to the show. All were chosen by a panel of expert jurors from a highly competitive field of close to 1,400 applicants.

So, we have a model for crafts in DC which has been working for over 30 years.

See where I'm going?

Can we envision the Smithsonian American Art Fair?

Or... The Smithsonian American International Art Fair?

The SAIAF would dramatically expand the business model of the Smithsonian Craft Fair to a National Mall-wide - outdoors - or even a citywide art fair anchored and guided by the Smithsonian Institution, and possibly either:

(a) spread throughout the various accommodating outdoor spaces at the various SI locales around the National Mall or even…

(b) in temporary art spaces, booth, or containers on the open spaces of the National Mall itself!

The latter is not as big of a deal as it sounds.

The National Mall already hosts a spectacular variety of outdoor events on the Mall spaces where complex display spaces are temporarily built, secured and just as quickly dismantled, grass re-seeded, and by Monday the Mall is back to normal.

Boom!

For art, all we need is protection from the weather and security. Perhaps even a combination of "free" (to the public) set of exhibitors (maybe out on the Mall) coupled with a paid admission set of exhibitors inside SI spaces -- or just make them all free to the public?

Details... details...

This new fair model would be open to both commercial art galleries and art dealers, as well as to art schools, and (and here's the key "and") to individual artists and cooperative artist-owned galleries.

Size matters… just ask Salvador Dali, who once said: “If you can’t paint well, then paint big!”

Would 1200 galleries, dealers, schools and artists in a mega, new-model art fair raise some interests from art collectors to come to DC for a long weekend in May?

It would if it attracted 100,000 visitors to the fair instead of 10,000 (like the looooong gone art fair artDC once attracted).

Are you aware that in May the Bethesda Fine Arts Festival in nearby Bethesda attracts 30-40,000 people to the streets of Bethesda for this artist-only street fine arts fair? or that also in May the Northern Virginia Fine Arts Festival attracts the same number of people to the streets of the Reston Town Center to buy art from individual artists?

Both Bethesda and Reston have two of the highest median household incomes in the US. And I am told that the Greater Washington, DC region has the second highest concentration of multi-millionaires in the world.

The money is here - the key is to get the disposable income crowd in touch with the art.

Both Bethesda and Reston manage to accomplish this one weekend each year. Do not, under any circumstances assume that these are "street fairs" where teddy bears, country crafts, and dried flowers are sold. These are both highly competitive fine arts outdoor fairs where artists from all over the nation come to and compete for spots because artwork sells well.

I have seen $80,000 worth of sculptures sell to one collector in Bethesda and a painter with a price point of $17,000 sell out in Reston.

Do not let the snobby attitude of the high art world affect your preconception of what these two street art fairs are like; go visit one this coming (and hopefully post Covidian) and open your eyes. In 2021 the fairs slipped from May to later months… but I am sure that they’ll be back to May in 2022.

And because of them, and because of the success of Art Basel Miami Beach, we know that given a certain critical mass, people will come out to an art fair. The primary key for art dealers to have interest in an art fair is sales (and also exposure to new collectors, museum curators, etc.), but mainly sales.

If you are a British gallery, by the time you get yourself and your artwork to Miami Beach, you're in the hole a whole bunch of Euros and British pounds; if you don't sell anything (like it happened to a British gallery in artDC and an Israeli gallery at another fair), chances are that you won't return to that fair.

But increase the public attendance numbers exponentially, and Economics 101 tells you that sales will also increase exponentially. And unlike the hotel-deprived artDC location at the Convention Center, I am told by DC's tourist gurus that the National Mall is already a magnet location where visitors, regardless of where they are staying around the Greater DC region, flock to during their visits to the capital.

Since two major Greater DC area street art fairs already exist in May in the Greater DC area, we can even consider aligning the weekends so that both Reston, Bethesda, and the Smithsonian American International Art Fair all take place on the same weekend!

Offer free bus service between Reston and Bethesda and the National Mall for collectors to hop around during the fair weekend, and a public buzz alignment will begin to happen. The Smithsonian American International Art Fair starts on a Thursday through Sunday and both Reston and Bethesda continue to run on Saturday and Sunday. And the Smithsonian American International Art Fair is focused as a major fundraiser for the cash-hungry SI.

A formula of booth prices + perhaps a 5% commission on all sales (both tax deductible for American galleries) would take care of temporary Mall booth construction, re-seeding of grass, and booth construction inside SI venues and still yield a nice chunk of cash for the SI.

If there's commercial success and high public attendance, soon we'd see some satellite hotel fairs popping up all over DC and its easy-to-get-to suburbs; the Phillips will jump on the bandwagon right away.

ABMB had 26 fairs all over Greater Miami last December. Another DC-unique element to the above model, and an important element that only a Washington art fair weekend can add: include the Embassies!

In addition to all the above events taking place, the fair could also align with shows at 15-20 embassy galleries around DC. The embassies would showcase one (or a group) of their national artists, and then the fair would really have an international flavor, and the beginning seeds of an American Venice in the DMV.

DC is a small city; it's fairly easy to set up transportation between the embassies and the Mall. In fact, some embassies could probably set that up themselves.

I think that this "new" super model could (and eventually when someone delivers and implements it -- it will) challenge Miami Beach -- and yes, I am aware that DC in May is not Miami in December -- but I also think that the District's own museums and public attractions trump Miami's anytime, so the DMV has something different to offer the potential collector who may be considering attending a new art fair in a city (like DC) that also offers him/her some other cultural and visual attractions besides good weather, and nice beaches… and Calle Ocho.

DC art commissioners... Smithsonianos... DC city fathers and mothers.... call me!

"Confluences: Intersectional Visions of Italy"

The Georgetown University Art Galleries and the Italian Cultural Institute of Washington are thrilled to present "Confluences: Intersectional Visions of Italy." The exhibition presents for the first time in the United States a group of artists addressing social justice issues connected to notions of Italy—which is far more complex than the single cultural, political, or social space it is commonly thought to be. 

Artists: Dafne Boggeri, Valeria Cherchi, Giulia Crispiani, Maria Adele Del Vecchio, Binta Diaw, Alessandra Ferrini, Muna Mussie 

These contemporary artists counter such familiar fictions through projects that consider nuances of individual and collective experience across a variety of topics, such as colonialism, societal amnesia, gender-based biases, and civic activism. 

This exhibition will be on view in the de la Cruz and Spagnuolo Art Galleries from January 26th, 2024 - April 7th, 2024. The project is curated by Ilaria Conti and organized by the Italian Cultural Institute of Washington in collaboration with Georgetown University Art Galleries. You are invited to a private curator-led tour of the exhibition on Friday, January 26th at 5 pm. An Opening Reception from 6-8 pm that is free and open to the public will follow. Visitors should RSVP for the Reception here. 

Bethesda Painting Awards

The Bethesda Arts & Entertainment District invites local artists to submit work to the 20^th annual Bethesda Painting Awards. This juried art competition awards $14,000 in prizes to four selected winners. The deadline for submissions is Tuesday, February 27, 2024. Up to eight finalists will be chosen to display their work at Bethesda’s Gallery B in June 2024.

 

A panel of esteemed jurors, including Virginia Anderson, Department Head of American Painting & Sculpture and Decorative Arts at the Baltimore Museum of Art; Scott Hutchison, Associate Professor of Practice in painting and drawing at Georgetown University; and Nicole Santiago, Professor of Art at the College of William and Mary and the 2023 Bethesda Painting Awards Best in Show Winner, will curate the competition.

 

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 28, 1994 may also be awarded $1,000.

 

Artists can apply online or download an application online. For information on the Bethesda Painting Awards, visit www.bethesda.org or call 301-215-6660.

 

Participation is open to artists aged 18 and above, residing in Maryland, Virginia, or Washington, D.C. The competition welcomes original 2-D paintings, spanning various mediums such as oil, acrylic, watercolor, gouache, encaustic, and mixed media. The maximum dimension should not exceed 60 inches in width or 84 inches in height. No reproductions. Artwork must have been completed within the last two years and must be available for the duration of the exhibition. Selected artists must deliver their artwork to the exhibit site in Bethesda, MD. Each artist must submit five images, an application and a non-refundable entry fee of $25.

The Bethesda Painting Awards was established by local business owner Carol Trawick in 2005. Ms. Trawick has served as a community activist for more than 25 years in downtown Bethesda and established The Jim and Carol Trawick Foundation in 2007. She is the former Chair of the Bethesda Arts & Entertainment District, past Chair of the Bethesda Urban Partnership, Inc. and founder of The Trawick Prize: Bethesda Contemporary Art Awards.

 

 

Best in Show winners include:

2023  Nicole Santiago, Williamsburg, VA

2022  Andrew Hladky, Kensington, MD

2021  Megan Lewis, Baltimore, MD

2020  Lawrence Cromwell, Baltimore, MD

2019  Mary Anne Arntzen, Baltimore, MD

2018 Carolyn Case, Cockeysville, MD

2017 Katherine Tzu-Lan Mann, Washington, D.C.

2016 Tanja Softic, Richmond, VA

2015 Bill Schmidt, Baltimore, MD

2014 Kyle Hackett, Baltimore, MD

2013 Barry Nemett, Stevenson, MD

2012 Ali Miller, Baltimore, MD

2011 Alison Hall, Roanoke, VA

2010 Nora Sturges, Baltimore, MD

2009 Camilo Sanin, Jessup, MD

2008 B.G. Muhn, North Potomac, MD

2007 Matthew Klos, Baltimore, MD

2006 Tony Shore, Baltimore, MD

2005 Joe Kabriel, Annapolis, MD

 

From award-winning theatre to independent films, downtown Bethesda’s Arts & Entertainment District is filled with inspiring artists and art venues. The Bethesda Arts & Entertainment District is managed by the Bethesda Urban Partnership, Inc., and is the producer of The Trawick Prize: Bethesda Contemporary Art Awards, Bethesda Painting Awards, Bethesda Fine Arts Festival, Bethesda Film Fest and Play In A Day.

 

Established by Montgomery County in 1994, Bethesda Urban Partnership, Inc. (BUP) is a downtown management organization that markets and maintains downtown Bethesda. The BUP team works in marketing, maintenance, transportation and administration to produce cultural events and community festivals and attend to landscaping and maintenance needs. BUP also manages Bethesda Transportation Solutions (BTS), the Bethesda Arts & Entertainment District, and the Bethesda Circulator as well as the non-profit art spaces, Gallery B, Studio B and Triangle Art Studios. For a closer look, please visit www.bethesda.org.