Tentacles (A man, an axe and a doctor: A tale of pain and art)

One of the blog posts that I get the most emails about is this horror story from 2005. Here it is again:

Someone who was raised in Brooklyn shouldn’t own, and much less, try to use an axe.

What follows is a true tale of horror, of entropy and the second law of thermodynamics, of chaos and order, of the laws of the universe, of near death, of irony, of music, and ultimately of a new form of art. All of the characters are real, and if I could remember their names, I would name them.

I begin.

The back of my house has a rather wooded large area with many trees, and it also backs into an even larger wooded common area that I share with my neighbors. I am really a big fan of warm cozy fires, and during the winter I usually light one up every night.

A while back I went around and collected a lot of wood from fallen branches and also a lot of wood from a tree that had fallen months earlier. This wood had been cut, but needed splitting, so I bought an axe to split the wood myself.

How hard could this be? After all, I remember how President Reagan, while he was in office, was so fond of being filmed splitting wood in his ranch in California. If an 80-year-old President could do it, and make it look so easy, then surely a virile 40something could do it as well.

So I went to my local hardware store and bought an axe.

Act One, Scene I

It was a day much like many other balmy December days we’ve been having this winter. There was a little chill in the air, but more like a spring day than a winter day. I had gathered quite a haul of neatly cut sections of the tree trunk, each about nine to twelve inches in diameter, and I had placed them to the side of a large tree stump, which I planned to use as the base to split the firewood.

The ground was wet and the grass was moist, as it had been raining the previous few days, but although the radio had announced that there would be rain later, I thought that I would have a couple of hours to split all the wood before it began to rain.

I would be good exercise as well.

Gloves in hand, I placed the first piece of wood on the stump, took one or two slow –motion practice tries, just to get the motion and aim right, and then took my first mighty swing of the axe.

There are some instances on this planet, when the laws of gravity seem to take a couple of nanoseconds off. Like when one is walking down a path, and a rock, as if by magic, jumps from the ground and lands inside your shoe. How does that happen? Is it evidence of magic? Time travel? Even if one considers a viable explanation, the most common of which is that the other shoe kicks the rock into the partner shoe, it takes some extraordinary physics and flight acrobatics to imagine a rock being kicked by one shoe, flying sideways through the air as you walk on and sliding into the other shoe. I prefer to believe that the rocks jump straight up and floats into the shoe.

Anyway... back to my story.

The violent action of swinging the axe to split the firewood must have caused a ripple in the time space continuum, for otherwise I cannot imagine or recreate what followed next.

For one thing, I completely missed the firewood waiting to be split and barely nicked the edge of the tree stump. But this bare touching of the tree stump must have caused a tremendous vector change in the arc of the axe swing, and to add more physics to the event, the brand new axe, (with its nice slippery handle, aided by my brand new - and even more slippery - cotton gardening gloves (I should have used leather work gloves)) slipped away from me.

And aided by the wet grass under my feet, I lost my footing and slipped towards the oncoming axe. At some point, I suspect that both the axe and I were completely airborne and approaching each other in perfect flight synchronicity.

And in some incomprehensible act of flying physics, the axe went in a perfect flight pattern back towards me and between my legs.

Act One, Scene II

The axe blade missed my family jewels – barely.

I know this because I still have balls and because the tip of the blade nicked the small of my back. But I came as close to being a eunuch as anyone in the history of mankind has come; but the blade missed.

But the top of the handle didn’t miss and it crushed my balls.

Before I describe the pain, let me tell you that I've been kicked in the balls more than once. I have been an avid student and practicioner of the martial arts since I was 13 years old, and have competed in many full contact tournaments, and have been accidentally kicked in the balls many times. I have also had my share of juvenile and drunken sailor fist fights, where someone's foot or fist has delivered a painful blow to my genitals. And it does hurt intensely!

But this axe handle crushing my privates was a new dimension in pain.

And this new pain took on a new meaning as I collapsed onto the wet, muddy ground.

It was an almost exquisite pain, with shape, form, smell and incredibly enough, fireballs of vivid color dancing to music. During this time, I had a vision of how Christ and Jimmy Hoffa truly died; in fact I learned how every fucking thing in the Universe has died, and how every living entity in this Universe and the other infinite Einsteinian numbers of Universes will die. And in all cases, their death involved or will involve an axe.

Time ceased to flow, or perhaps it simply slowed down in order to make my agony more intense, which by the way, would have been impossible, as I had already maxxed out the agony scale for mankind.

And I know this is silly, but I swear that I heard the music from Guns & Roses’ Sweet Child of Mine emanating, in perfect tune to the pain, from my brutalized gonads; especially the part where the bag pipes come in.

Thus I do not know how long I agonized on the forest floor. A wet tongue belonging to Yoda, my neighbor’s dog, whimpering as he obviously felt my pain, resuscitated me.

I opened my eyes for the first time since I fell, and looked at Yoda’s handsome face. "Yoda," I whispered between clenched teeth, "kill me." He looked at me with his intelligent eyes and licked my face again. "Please bite my neck," I begged. "Kill me now!"

Yoda twisted his head in that almost human way in which dogs do, and walked away. For a minute there I thought that the stupid beast had gone to fetch a stick to play with, as he loves to fetch sticks. Had he done this, I would have kicked him in his balls. But he just vanished from my sight and then started to bark outside my neighbor’s back door.

By now the pain had diminished to a white searing pain on a planetary scale equivalent to a thermonuclear device being exploted at the core of the Earth, so the word diminished is quite bogus in this sentence. But, I sincerely wanted to find out how much damage I had done, and since by now my pants were quite soaked from the wet ground and the mud, I needed to check to see if I was bleeding.

Act One, Scene III

So I unbuttoned my pants, lowered them in agonizing ecstasy, and reached down to feel the state of my boys.

Which is precisely the moment that my neighbor, apparently being brought to the scene by Lassie-wannabe Yoda’s barking, made her appearance, as I am feeling my bruised sacs.

My neighbor is a very nice old lady who has a remarkable likeness to Grandpa Munster, and I think that she’s originally from Sweden, and she has a lovely and thick accent, and from the expression on her face, I realized that she was slightly concerned at finding a muddy man, laying on the wet ground, pants down to his ankles and fingers probing around his privates.

So I rationalized (the brain is an incredible asset) that I'd better explain, although the last fucking thing that I wanted to do at that moment was to chat with this Grandpa Munster look-a-like. But I figured that if I didn’t explain, she’d make a bat-line to her phone and report me to the vice squad.

And being the super nice lady that she is, she tried to hide her laughter, and understood, and asked me if I wanted her to call an ambulance. "Tentacles," she said (and she did say "tentacles" instead of "testicles"), "are very fragile."

"No shit Grandpa Munster," I felt like saying, but instead I moaned to her that it was OK, and that I’d drive myself down to the hospital.

It had begun to sprinkle, so she wished me luck and went back to her house.

And then it really began to rain; hard, cold rain.

And then the act of crawling back to my house became another exercise in agony, as I discovered that (a) I couldn’t walk because of the pain and (b) I couldn’t crawl on my knees, because of the pressure on my jewels.

So I sort of "rolled" towards my house, and then developed a sort of walking on all fours, legs quite widespread and putting most of the weight on my hands, as the rain fell on me.

So I finally make it to the house, thoroughly soaked and quite covered in mud. And (of course) the day before I had cleaned my house from top to bottom, and the thought of the irony of this alignment of misfortunes dawned on me as I muddied the floor of my pristine home.

I debated whether to change clothes or not, and decided that it would be impossible for me to physically remove my shoes, as my boys had by now begun to swell to an impressive size, and any pressure on them caused me to yelp like a newborn child. So I grabbed a towel from the laundry room, crawled to my van, put the towel on the seat, and climbed in to an internal symphony of new pains.

And I began the drive to the hospital emergency room.

Act Two, Scene I

Sometimes the lights on Democracy Boulevard align in timing so that one can go all the way from Seven Locks to Old Georgetown Road without hitting a single light.

Other times, a driver hits every goddamned light on the road.

Guess which of these two cycles of light synchronicity was to be my fate on that painful day?

Yep! Stop at every light, and to make matters worse, I couldn’t really "sit down" and was actually driving while holding most of my weight on one hand pushing against the car seat in order to attempt to float me above it, all the while leaning forward, sort of the way that scary old people in Florida drive.

I eventually pulled into the parking lot of the hospital, and of course there is not one single parking spot available on the ER area, so I have to park in the lot across the street, and do my crawling on all fours routine, in the rain, across the road, which as some of you may know, is quite a busy road. However, since Yoda had failed to kill me, I was somewhat hoping that I’d get run over by a car, and mercifully have it put an end to my agony.

But no one ran me over, although several cars did slow down, but I suspect it was so that they could get a look at the idiot crawling on all fours across the road, in the rain.

But in due time, I did arrive at the entrance to the ER, and at the very last minute I almost did get run over by an ambulance, bringing in someone with a medical emergency.

And so I finally enter the ER, muddy, wet, cold and still in spectacular pain.

Act Two, Scene II

I imagine that most ER personnel have seen just about everything that humankind has to offer in terms of shock, but by the alarmed expression on the male nurse at the check-in station, it was clear that he was somewhat concerned by my appearance and by my manner of movement on all fours; I also noticed that the security guard was also somewhat alarmed (and armed).

He asked me what the problem was, and as I explained what happened, both this Gaylord Focker wannabe and the guard, who had drifted within earshot, actually had the gall to burst out laughing.

And I made a silent promise to myself that in a few weeks, if I survived this ordeal, I would hunt Nurse Focker-wannabe and kick him in the nuts.

So after the whole delay of data input and insurance verification, Nurse Focker tells me to have a seat, and wait, as the doctors (plural) are all attending the patient who had just come in via the ambulance.

"What’s his problem?" I asked, not out of concern, but thinking that there are precious few emergencies in the world that could take precedence over my distress.

And Nurse Focker explains that the patient is a 96-year-old-man who’s having a heart attack.

And I’m really close to start debating that at 96, he’s had a good life, and he's probably caused his own heart attack because of Viagra, so let this geezer go and assign me a doctor, preferably well armed with a needle full of painkiller. But I hold my tongue, and wait in my own private water puddle.

Several ice ages later, Nurse Focker says that I am to be seen, and asks me if I have a preference for a doctor. In retrospect, I think that he was asking me if I wanted a male or female doctor, but by now my social graces had completely vanished, and I told him that I’d like Dr. Kavorkian. He didn’t laugh.

I am then taken to the back, and told to undress, put one of those silly robes that show your ass, and sit on the bed and wait for the doctor. Somehow I managed to undress on my own, and laid on the bed, with my legs bent and wide open, much like a woman waiting for her gynecologist.

A little while later, the curtains open and the doctor comes in: A female doctor, of course, probably picked by Nurse Focker to make my life more miserable.

And not just any female doctor, but probably the only female doctor who had also been a body extra in Baywatch. And to my utter amazement, in the middle of this intense agony, my sick male brain still finds time to align a couple of thought patterns that whisper inside my head: "WOW, she’s hot!" before resuming sending new and novel pain patterns to my groin area.

"What have we got here?" she asks using the imperial "we" that annoying doctors like to use.

"We, doc," says I, devoid of any social skills by this point, "have a serious fucking case of smashed balls, and an even more serious need for some potent pain killer." And I begin explaining what happened.

And just like Nurse Focker and the rent-a-cop a few minutes earlier, Dr. Carmen Electra, Medicine Woman bursts out laughing while she’s probing and feeling down there, hands encased in latex gloves.

Laughter induced watery-eyes and all, she then tells me that it looks like there’s no internal injuries, but that she’ll order a scan to double check, and that I need to ice down my groin area in order to reduce the swelling. "You’ll be OK in a few days."

Pheeew!

I thank her, and ask about a shot for the pain. To my astonishment she says that just a couple of Tylenols should do the trick. "Doc," I plead, "I am in really in some aggravating bad pain here."

"Don’t be such a baby," she responds, "You should try childbirth if you want to know what real pain is."

She’s lucky she’s a woman; otherwise I definitely would have kicked her in the balls.

Act Two, Scene III

A few days later, and things appear to be back to normal; I’ve been telling people that I have a back pain, and thus the strained walk.

And at some point, it dawns on me that the whole sequence of events, with the improbable occurrences, the diverse set of characters, and the Three Stoogian physicality of the act, is a new kind of art; a new kind of performance art that is, where really spectacular true events of common daily life assume astronomic personal presence and thus cross the border into a personal artistic quality, the like of which will never be repeated by any other soul on this planet.

So my performance piece is over: I call it Tentacles (not Testicles).

But is it archival?

As part of Hamiltonian Artists' Artist Speaker Series, the Smithsonian Institution's Nora Lockshin will lend her incredible expertise and present a slide talk and open discussion about methods, materials and preservation of art in any media form, from creation, through exhibition, to acquisition and conservation.

This is something that all artists should know and which is seldom discussed or taught in art schools.

On Wednesday, March 10, 2010, 7pm at Hamiltonian Gallery. Please RSVP to Gallery Director Jacqueline Ionita at 202.332.1116.

DeBerardinis returns to DC

"Coming Home: A Collection of Works by Rosetta DeBerardinis" opens at The Corner Store, 900 South Carolina Avenue, S.E. @ 9th Street near the Eastern Market.

Reception: Friday, March 19th from 6 to 8 pm.

"Coming Home: A Collection of Works by Rosetta DeBerardinis" marks the artist's return to the D.C. market upon the completion of a three-year artistic residency at School 33 Art Center in Baltimore, Maryland. The work demonstrates her expansion from color field painting to abstract expressionism to urbanscapes, monoprints, sculpture and to drawings while retaining her signature energy and strong use of color.

DeBerardinis has exhibited at commercial galleries and art venues throughout the Washington metro area, Richmond, Dallas, New York City, Houston, New Jersey, Delaware, Michigan and internationally in Croatia, Madrid, Beijing, India and France. She has shown at the Dallas Women's Museum, The Corcoran Gallery of Art, the Woman's National Democratic Club, The African-American Museum in Dallas, the City Museum of Varazdin in Croatia and the Yaroslavl Art Museum in Russia. Her work and words have been published in Washington Spaces magazine, the Virginia-Pilot Ledger Star, SoBo Voice, Radar Redux magazine and u-tube, Thinking About Art:The One Word Project, the Hill Rag, Voice of the Hill and in catalogues with comments by art aficionados like Doreen Bolger, Director of the Baltimore Museum of Art. A recent work is part of the Art on Call public art project in the Trinidad neighborhood in the District of Columbia.

During the residency, DeBardinis began to meld her ceramics with objects found on the streets of Baltimore and drove the finished sculptures back to DC for exhibition at Zenith Gallery last year. Her responses to Charm City's rawness and grit are reflected in much of her studio work. While there, she temporarily abandoned painting 9 ft. canvases to create work suitable for tiny Baltimore row houses. After downsizing in response to the architectual limits of the city, she began to exhibit surfaces as small as 2 1/2 inches, or the size of trading cards. She found compressing her energy into tiny space took practice and amazing focus and welcomed the challenge.

The former Washington, D.C. and Bethesda art tour guide, Liquitex Artist of the Month and frequent contributor to DC Art News is busy reinventing herself. An artist with academic credits and/or degrees from the following institutions: Vassar College, The University of Baltimore School of Law, Rice University, London School for Social Research and the Fashion Institute of Technology. It is appropriate that Rosetta DeBerardinis begin her artistic revival on Capitol Hill where she resided for more than a decade and maintains close ties with former neighbors and friends.

Don't miss this show!

Drawing from the model

In the otherwise empty center of the studio, Mary Anne Tom slams down the egg timer she had been trying to set to go off in two minutes. For the first thirty minutes or so of tonight's session, that is how often she is supposed to switch poses.

"I never have any luck with that thing," Tom says, slightly frustrated.

She then disrobes and takes her spot, completely naked, in front of a room scattered with friends, acquaintances and strangers. It's all in a day's work for a figure model.

Classical music plays quietly in the background as a half-dozen pairs of eyes dart between her nude form in the center of the room and the not-long-to-be-naked sheets before them.

Mike Peccini's pencil begins to move along his pad like the pen on a seismograph mid-earthquake. The rapid strokes he makes now will become the shading on his depiction of the model's body.

Tacked to one of the room's walls, two posters illustrate both the body's skeletal and muscular systems.

Drawing the human body has been a staple of artists for centuries. Instructor Oscar Fairly says that learning to draw the human form is a challenge for both novice and experienced artists.

Read the cool article by Alex Thompson in AU's American Observer by clicking here.

Wanna go to an opening in Laurel this weekend?


The 41st Annual Laurel Art Guild Open Juried Exhibition at the Montpelier Arts Center was juried by my good friend Michael Janis. The reception and his talk about the artwork is on Sunday, March 7th, from 2 - 4 pm. He will also announce the various awards then.

Michael says that "the artwork (up to two submissions from each of the 160 artists that submitted work) was in all styles and media, and there were many hard decisions on what would be selected. The resulting show is a strong survey of the area's painters, sculptors, photographers and mixed media artists. Many of the artists selected are familiar names - some are faculty at some of the area universities and colleges of art."

In da book!

I've just been notified by the editor of the new soon-to-be-published coffee table art book "100 Mid Atlantic Artists," to be published by Schiffer Books, that I have been selected to be included in the book.

When it rains it pours :-)

DCist Exposed is this weekend!


This year's opening reception for this top photography show will be bigger and better than ever, and will be held on Saturday, March 6, 2010 from 6 to 10 p.m. At the bar, mixologist Scott Palmer from Dino will have a special punch, Leopold Brothers will host a liquor tasting, Downey Selections has some wine for attendees, and Pabst Blue Ribbon will hold down the fort with plenty of beer. Nage will provide hor'dourves, while DJs v:shal kanwar and Sequoia spin tunes. Reception is $5 per guest at the door.

Long View Gallery is located at 1234 9th St. NW, just a few blocks from the Mt. Vernon/Convention Center Metro.

Amateur Stripper Contest at MOCA DC

Kitty Victorian, the "quintessence of Burlesque," will perform at the opening of the annual MOCA DC Erotic Art Show in Georgetown on March 5, 2010. Miss Kitty will emcee an amateur stripper contest and will open the show with a performance of her own featuring "extravagant costumes draped in rhinestones and feathers and wrapped in sultry boas."

The annual erotic art show at MOCA DC has become one of DC’s top crowd pleasing shows with over 300 in attendance at last year’s reception. Erotic art from artists throughout the region will be on display throughout the month.

MOCA DC’s executive director, Dave Quammen said, “All ladies from throughout the Washington, DC region are welcome to fashion their best erotic costume and come on down to shake their stuff for our crowd. By crowd response, we’ll be selecting the top three performances of the evening with three cash awards of $100 for first place, $75 for second place and $25 for third place. But regardless, win or lose, everyone will be a winner! It will be an evening with the best entertainment in town. After the amateur stripper show, the ladies are welcome to serve as human-canvases for our body painters.”

The Washington Post has called Kitty Victorian a “burlesque dancer extraordinaire bringing the saucy, seductive world of burlesque dancing to D.C., one bump and grind at a time.” Now headquartered in Chicago, Miss Kitty returns to Washington, D.C. regularly. Speaking about her upcoming performance at MOCA DC, Miss Kitty said, “Darling, I am just so excited to be coming back to Washington, D.C. and I can’t think of a place I’d rather perform than at the beginning of MOCA DC’s annual erotic art show! I’m also excited about serving as emcee for the amateur stripper contest. I might even allow myself to be body-painted after the show!”

Kitty Victorian founded Washington, DC’s Burlesque University and serves as the Headmistress teaching erotic arts to everyone. At the “university’s” website (www.burlesqueuniversity.com), Miss Kitty makes an offer most ladies can’t refuse. “What I’m saying folks is that if you want to learn the art of the tease, I’d love to teach it to you.”

On March 6, Miss Kitty will be available for a two-hour photo session with area photographers from 10 a.m. until noon. She commented, “Darling, I want to do my best for your photographers, but I really must hustle on over to my university class where I’m teaching the art of burlesque that afternoon.” Dave Quammen said, “The two-hour photo session the morning of March 6 at the MOCA DC gallery will be offered at a cost of $50 per photographer. Just contact me to sign up.”

Doors will open for the March 5 event at 6 p.m. Attendees are invited to see the special erotic art on display throughout the gallery. Then, at 7:30 p.m. when the familiar sounds of “The Stripper” begin to play, the show will open. Following the show at 8:30 p.m., the gallery will be open for body painting, art viewing, and networking with your favorite artist (or stripper). MOCA DC is located at 1054 31st St. N.W. at Canal Square in Georgetown, Washington, DC. For additional information, call (202) 342-6230 or send email inquiries to mocadc01@comcast.net.

Faculty Show at the Art League

I dropped by the Torpedo Factory last weekend to check a couple of shows going on in two of the galleries inside the building. As it happened, the Art League Gallery had an exhibition showcasing their faculty's work and I also dropped by to see it.

One of the interesting "secrets" of the DMV region is how many graduates from some of our area's best known art schools also take classes at the Art League. I once asked a couple of them as to why and the answer was simple: to learn the technical part of the craft of being an artist.

"After four years at ______________ I came away with a good BFA which will help me get into a good MFA program," related Daniel (not his real name). "But I still need to learn how to mix oil paints to make the colors that I really want; that's why I am taking painting classes here," he confessed.

Some standouts include the work of Rosemary Feit Covey, in my opinion the best printmaker in the DC region. In the below example from one of her classes, we see the etching process being delivered by Rosemary. First we see the etching "Astrocytes" and then the etching "David" and then the combined piece "David with Astrocytes."






That covers printmaking.

The Art League also boasts some really good painting instructors, and the one that I hear most students praise, and whose work I've been admiring over the years is Danni Dawson. Danni Dawson received her BA and MFA degrees from George Washington University and has been a professional artist and teacher for over 25 years. That's her gorgeous nude below.

Dupes

It is a common practice for artists to return to an image of subject over and over. People like Morandi obsessed over a specific subject and you can't go into a museum in Europe without a version of El Greco's "Christ driving the Traders from the Temple."

Two years ago I did the below drawing.

"Illegal Alien running across the border street in Brownsville, Texas, hoping that he won't be too late for his job at the Fort Brown Golf Course"
Charcoal on Paper, 1.5 inches by 1 inch.
c. 2007 by F. Lennox Campello
This tiny drawing sold in nearly record time, as a couple of hours after the posting I had an email from a collector asking to buy it, which he did.

And now I've returned to the image and the concept with two new versions of the piece, below is version two and version three:


"Illegal Alien running across the border street in Brownsville, Texas, hoping that he won't be too late for his job at the Fort Brown Golf Course (Version II)"
Charcoal on Paper, 3 inches by 1 inch, c. 2009 by F. Lennox Campello


"Illegal Alien running across the border street in Brownsville, Texas, hoping that he won't be too late for his job at the Fort Brown Golf Course (Version III)"
Charcoal on Paper, 1.5 inches by 2 inches, c. 2009 by F. Lennox Campello

Maryland Symposium

Online Registration is now open for the upcoming symposium co-sponsored by the David C. Driskell Center and the University of Maryland University College

Autobiography/Performance/Identity: A Symposium on African American and African Diasporan Women in the Visual Arts - March 5 and 6, 20010

Featuring a keynote address by Lorraine O'Grady, and a performance by my good friend and Boston-based Cuban-American artist Maria Magdalena Campos-Pons and more.

See the program online here and register for the symposium online here.

For more information contact
David C. Driskell Center
1214 Cole Student Activities Building
University of Maryland
College Park, MD 20742
TEL 301-314-2615
FAX 301-314-0679

Jeff Koons, The Curator

Over the last several months Mr. Koons, who has always been a polarizing artist, has been at work in a role he has never assumed during his three-decade career, that of curator of other people’s art. Last summer he accepted an invitation by the New Museum of Contemporary Art to organize an exhibition of works from the important collection of the Greek billionaire Dakis Joannou, a collection in which Mr. Koons’s own work plays a pivotal part. That fact — along with Mr. Joannou’s close friendship with Mr. Koons and Mr. Joannou’s role as a trustee at the New Museum, though he is not underwriting the show or providing input — has caused some people, even in the insular contemporary-art world, to worry that the arrangement is too clubby.

Read the NYT article here.

Math to the rescue

Every few years, we're wowed by news of some jaw-dropping sum paid for a previously unknown painting or drawing by a famous artist. But how can a buyer truly be sure that a piece is a legitimate creation of, say, Leonardo or Gauguin? Mathematicians at Dartmouth College, in Hanover, N.H., may have the answer. They recently presented a computer-based statistical analysis technique which they say will help art historians and conservators discover even the most skilled forgery.

Their method, called sparse coding, learns what characterizes the artist's style at a level of detail that is practically imperceptible to the eye of even the most experienced appraiser. It works by examining small patches of a picture and breaking them down to a set of essential elements.

"The aim is to establish for each artist a vocabulary of brush strokes or pencil marks that defines his or her style," says James M. Hughes, a doctoral candidate at Dartmouth who coauthored the research reported in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Read the report in IEEE Spectrum here.

Cream of the Curators' Talk

When I drove into the underground parking lot underneath American University's Katzen Arts Center last Thursday for the Curators' Talk for the WPA's much anticipated Cream exhibition and art auction, I knew that the joint was going to be packed to the gills: I was half an hour early and parking on the first level was already full.

I went up to the main floor, and immediately ran into Professor Chawky Frenn from GMU's Art School, who was taking one of his classes through the museum and to the lecture. Frenn, who is perhaps the DMV's most politically controversial painter, is also recognized by GMU as one of its best. Earlier this year he was one of the recipients of the Teaching Excellence Award at George Mason University.

Frenn is without a doubt one of the toughest political painters of his generation, and his beautiful classical paintings use the brush and style of the masters to bring forth devastating political and social commentary on paintings often too controversial (as Dartmouth found out a while back) for galleries and museums to offer in a conventional way.

The Katzen was packed to the gills. This is the 29th iteration of the WPA's annual fundraising auction. I've attended most of them since 1993 or so, and this instance was easily the most people, by far, that I've seen come to the Curators' talk.

With all due respect to the terrific curator team assembled this year by Lisa Gold, the hardworking director of the WPA, in my humble but brilliant opinion, the main reason that 67.2% of the people were there, was to see the work picked by and listen to the comments of one of the curators: ubercollector Mera Rubell. There were art dealers from as far as Philadelphia and Richmond who came to the talk and perhaps a chance to meet Rubell and slip her a business card.

The details of how Rubell became involved in the WPA auction this year and the gigantic effect that her presence has caused on the DC area art scene are somewhat chronicled here in my account of her epic "36 studios in 36 hours" marathon. They are also chronicled in her usual brooding style by Jessica Dawson for the Washington Post here.

As you constant readers know, Rubell had selected 16 artists for this exhibition, including one of my drawings. The Lenster was one of the "Sweet 16." By the way, great idea to a DC area photographer to do for DC Magazine or one of those glossies: remember the famous "Irascible 18" photograph?

Mera Rubell during her visit to my studio shows the drawing that she selected for the "Cream" exhibition (Photo by Jenny Yang)
I somewhat rushed through the exhibition, already worried that the auditorium was going to run out of seats. I noticed that a lot of unexpected but familiar DC area art scene A-listers were there, including not one but two Washington Post art critics (perhaps the first time in history that this has happened).

Can you begin to sense the impact that this woman is having upon our area's visual art scene? Look up ennui in your dictionary and feel it beginning to disintegrate.

I said hi to Mera, "how's the baby?" she asked. I told her that Little Junes is doing great. In fact, Anderson (Little Junes) has made me realize that his two sisters Vanessa and Elise were the babies from hell. The little fellow sleeps about 12 hours a night and he has been doing that most of his six months.

His older sisters are both in their twenties now and soon coming to DC to meet their little brother. They're both experienced models and thus if you know anyone who needs a model during the first week of March, let me know.


Vanessa Anne Campello de Kraus


Elise Lena Campello y Strasser
But I meander... I love that word "meander." It's the only thing that I remember from Greek architectural elements from art school and maybe the only architectural element that has an associated word meaning as well.

And so Chawky and I went into the auditorium and found a great sit in the middle, about three rows from the stage and right behind Alberto and Victoria F. Gaitan, both superbly talented DC area artists. Victoria is also one of the "Sweet 16."

The evening started with the presentation of the Alice Denney Award for Support of Contemporary Art to James F. Fitzpatrick, who is not only a wonderful asset to the DMV art scene, but also quite a funny guy. While Fitzpatrick was talking he kept accidentally fiddling with the computer keyboard on the podium, never realizing that he was giving us all a preview of the work about to be discussed, as the gigantic images rotated behind his back.

The curators (in alphabetical order) then started discussing their selected work. It started with Ken Ashton, a well-known DC area photographer and also a Museum Technician for Works on Paper at the Corcoran Gallery of Art. Predictably, Ashton selected photographers for his picks, nearly all Corcoran alumni or staff. My favorite piece amongst his picks (and the potential steal of the auction) is Marissa Long's enigmatic photograph. I want to see more works by this artist.


Marissa Long. Untitled (legs), 2006. Gelatin silver print. 8" x 10". Courtesy of the Artist. Retail Price: $300. Reserve Price: $150
I also have to admit that I was disappointed by the Matthew Girard photo that Ashton picked. I love Girard's fringe images and would have picked one of those edgy and super cool fringe people photos (Matt ferchristsakes get a website!).

My good friend Kristen Hileman, the new Curator of Contemporary Art at the Baltimore Museum of Art followed. She discussed her selection by smartly reading from her notes (and thus finishing within her allotted 10 minutes), and some cool museum wall-text jargon added a little curatorial speak to her selections, some of which "respond to idealism and order" and art that "conceal information as much as it reveals information." My favorite piece amongst her pieces, by far, was Erik Sandberg's gorgeous drawing "Consternation."

Carol K. Huh (who has a really sexy voice), the Assistant Curator of Contemporary Asian Art at the Freer Gallery of Art and Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, Smithsonian Institution and Joanna Marsh, the James Dicke Curator of Contemporary Art at the Smithsonian American Art Museum, followed.

From Huh's selections, my favorite was this interesting drawing on vellum by Jon Bobby Benjamin titled "The Burning of the Empire Absalom", which in spite of its cool title has nothing to do with Darth Vader or Star Trek.

From the very fair ("fair" as Lord Byron would have used the word) Joanna Marsh's selections, I liked Joseph Smolinski's purposefully illustrative graphite on paper titled "Stump", which according to Marsh is a "wry critique on cell phone towers."


Joseph Smolinski. Stump, 2006. Graphite on paper. 9" x 12". Courtesy of the Artist and Mixed Greens Gallery. Retail Price: $950 Reserve Price: $500

Next was Jock Reynolds, an effervescent past head of the WPA and now the Director of the Yale Art Gallery and an accomplished artist on his own right. Jock said that he had "worked with all the artists that he selected" and his selections certainly offered a "walk down memory lane" of DC's artistic foundations from the 70s and 80s. My favorite amongst his selections, however, is still quite a key figure in our area's art scene and easily one of its best-known and most creative sculptors. I'm talking about Jeff Spaulding's very sexy piece titled "Delirium."


Jeff Spaulding Delirium, 2006. Wood, polystyrene, rubber, plaster, and hydrocal. 6" x 7" x 18". Courtesy of the Artist and G Fine Art. Retail Price: $7,000. Reserve Price: $3,500.
Next was Charles Ritchie, who is an artist and the Associate Curator of Department of Modern Prints and Drawings at the National Gallery of Art. His breathtaking Astrid Bowlby selection was my favorite amongst his picks. I'm sending him mental commands for a studio visit to come visit me and see my drawings.

Mera Rubell was next.

This unassuming firecracker of a woman started by saying that she was "totally astonished at what I've found in this community."

She described her 36 hour studio-visiting adventure and observed that "the studio is the holiest of places, the inner sanctum", and admitted her challenges of selecting work by herself after 45 years of doing it as a team with her husband and then her children.

As she began to discuss her 16 selections (16 artists that is), Rubell started with m.gert barkovic (whom you may recall was one of my top picks at the last Artomatic). Her work, Rubell said, "Has the ability to capture power" and "managed to capture {Einstein's} theory."

Of Holly Bass's works, she noted that it is influenced by "the moment that she discovers her blackness [in the white neighborhood where she was raised]" and her piece "deals with change."

Judy Byron "is like a therapist; a talking healer!" She added humor by noting that Byron should "be involved in the Middle East negotiations because she can get people to kiss on the lips!"

My work then popped onto the screen behind her. A gigantic image of my Age of Obama - The Nobel Peace Prize, a million feet tall by a gazillion meters wide, was on the screen. She turned to it.

"This guy is out of control!" she exclaimed into the microphone.

She then described the events that I discussed here, noting that I was the last studio on their grueling 36 hour tour, and that I was also in the same delirious state as them, because I had also been up almost 36 hours creating artwork for them to see (because I had none to show them when I was notified of their visit - all my art was in Miami for the art fairs).


Lisa Gold and Mera Rubell with me during their visit to my studio (Photo by Jenny Yang)
"We were all so delirious that we laughed the whole time that we were there," she added.

She then described the drawing as "gorgeous" and "fantastic", recalling its association with my interest in Pictish culture and describing how the "beautiful nude figure" has the historical Obama acceptance speech tattooed onto her body echoing the ancient rites of carrying history on your body.


F. Lennox Campello. Age of Obama - The Nobel Peace Prize, 2009. Charcoal on paper. 14" x 7 ½". Courtesy of the Artist and Alida Anderson Art Projects. Retail Price: $500. Reserve Price: $250
WOW.

She ended by asking the audience: "Do you know him? - I can't go to sleep without first reading his blog."

Holy shit, Mera Rubell, one of the planet's top art collectors, reads my blog... Good God Almighty, Great Balls of Fire...

Breathe deep Campello... more Rubell's picks to come and one more curator to report on; be fair.

Next Mera talked about Rafael J. Cañizares-Yunez, who is a new DMV artist, at least new to me. She said that his work was akin to Giacometti, but "more sexual" and "amazing."

Adam de Boer is a painter, a really good one, and Mera noted that "it takes lots of courage to take on painting in this time in history."

Of the tiny Mary Early she described her works as "amazing... monumental sculptures."

When Victoria F. Gaitán's striking images filled the screen behind her, Rubell went back into story-telling mode.

"We had to go through a brawl when we visited her apartment building," she said. "And yet, she is the most tender human being you've ever met!"

"An extraordinary performance," she noted. "Very, very exciting," she continued, "haunting images... it's like: Cindy Sherman, eat your heart out!"

Carol Brown Goldberg is "compelled" and "amazing" with "magical sculptures."

Pat Goslee is described as "sensitive." She then goes on to describe Goslee's work as "beautiful and extraordinary."

Jason Horowitz's studio is "wild." The work is described as "larger than life" and "amazing." That last adjective keeps coming back to describe the work that she has selected.

At Barbara Liotta's studio Rubell recalls an "intense conversation" dealing with the sense of the District's artistic relationship to New York's presence in the art world. And Liotta's does "magical things."

Patrick McDonough was "really mesmerizing" and Brandon Morse "does amazing things."

Dan Steinhilber's work was next. Rubell described him as "amazing and totally fantastic"; his work "creates a mystery and asks questions that then surprise you."


Dan Steinhilber
Untitled, 2009. Electric floor fan, bottomless trash can and bag. 120" x 30" x 30" (kinetic work, dimensions variable). Courtesy of the Artist and G Fine Art. Retail Price: $10,000. Reserve Price: $6,000

Lisa Marie Thalhammer was the last Rubell pick discussed. "Turns out," said Rubell, "that [Thalhammer's art], painted on a building, has caused crime in that area to come down."

And she was finished.

The last curator was N. Elizabeth Schlatter, the Deputy Director and Curator of Exhibitions at the University of Richmond Museums. She went back to curatorial museum jargon a little bit, discussing "human sustenance" and "environmental sustainability" and "ornamentation versus structure." Schlatter also did a good job of searching through the WPA Artfile to "discover" some new artists.

Her best pick?

Easy... the DMV's master performance artist who also happens to be a monster of a painter: Andrew Wodzianski.


Andrew Wodzianski
House III version 2, 2009. White titanium oil on tinted canvas. 30" x 48". Courtesy of the Artist and Fraser Gallery. Retail Price: $3,000. Reserve Price: $900
And it was all over. And I mulled the fact that Mera Rubell's curatorial picks had such a distinct and unique flavor from all the other curators, that in my biased opinion they clearly reflected the huge differences between the way that a world-class collector sees artwork and the way that an academic museum curator sees artwork.

They are worlds apart; the museum curator's eye often drifts too far to the side of the mind's conceptualism, ideas and the way that ideas can be expressed in art jargon. It's not wrong or bad, just a part of the way that different people in different life-experiences or positions, see and react to art.

The collector's trained eyes (in this case with 45 years of training) are adept at picking the subtle marriage of creativity, conceptual ideas, technical skill and presentation. It is anchored on a longer lasting reality than the ethereal reality of the revolving museum door.

Both perspectives are needed to stitch together a good visual art tapestry. Both sensibilities make a terrific visual exhibition, and I will agree with the general consensus that I heard buzzed about on Thursday night, that this 29th iteration of the WPA's annual auction is by far one of the best group shows in recent years and easily the strongest WPA auction ever.

But if I was an up and coming young contemporary curator, I'd also use this exhibition to learn a little from a set of eyes with 45 years of collecting experience and see what I could "pick up from her picks."

Anyone can pick a pickle, but only an Englishman can Piccadilly.

Check out the selected artwork here and go bid for some of it.

Thank you Mera, and if you're reading this post, this is how we "misfit toys" now feel about our area's art scene because of your new presence:
.

I have a question

I'm always amazed by the size, the huge size, of thighs in the ice speed skating world. The size on Apolo Ohno and those Koreans and northern European men and women is something to behold.

It is clear to me that those monster thighs can't fit your standard "off the rack" pants when the skaters go mufti and discard those alien sex suits that they skate with.

And nu... so my question is: what do they wear when they're out and about in civilian clothes?

Stretchy stuff (like Haggars)? Big baggy pants? Jodhpurs?

Speaking of thighs... chickens have some really huge thighs too, don't they? I have always wondered about "boneless chicken thighs."

My interest is that I am curious about the process of how they get rid of the bone. Work with me here... a boneless breast is easy to visualize the process of removing the bone.

But the bone in the chicken's thigh is in the middle of the thigh (I think). So how come I can walk into my supermarket and buy plump, full, boneless chicken thighs?

Man I'd love to see the machine that does that bone-removing process...

I don't even want to think about "boneless chicken wings."

That would make my head hurt.

Art(202)TV

The DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities (DCCAH), in partnership with the DC Office of Cable Television (OCT), announces the premiere of Art (202) TV, an innovative one-hour television segment that showcases the diverse talents of the District’s art scene. Art (202) TV will be featured on TV-16 of the District’s cable system on Fridays at 9 pm and Saturdays at 11 pm.

Details here.

Hotel Art Intervention Project A few years ago I told you about my "hotel art intervention project" where, starting in the late 70's and through the early 2000's, it was my usual practice, as sort of a personal artistic jihad, to take down the framed "art" in hotel rooms, take the frame apart, and remove the usual poster or reproduction that was the art, turn it around, and draw (and once in a while actually paint) a "new" original work on the verso of the poster. It was usually a simple, figurative line drawing, more often than not done while watching TV, and often inspired by the TV show itself. Some were more elaborate than others, and every once in a while a really involved drawing would emerge. Once finished, I would re-frame the new work, and re-hang it on the wall. Sometimes I would add touches to an existing piece. I especially loved those mass produced oil paintings of beaches and huts and glorious sunsets. To the beaches I would "add" other elements, such as footprints spelling out messages, discarded syringes, a dead octopus, etc. To the glorious sunsets perhaps an UFO or the odd-looking airplane, or even Superman flying around. Between the late 1970s and up to maybe 2002-3 I did this probably around 200 times in hotel rooms in Europe, Canada, Mexico and all over the United States. A few weeks ago I visited the Left Coast and stayed in a hotel that I had previously been in many times. It has been refurbished recently and all the rooms were nice and clean. My room was decorated with some acceptable "wall decor" of flower prints (see the images below). And then, to my utter surprise I discovered a piece of artwork hanging in this room which was one of the works that I had "improved" upon a few years ago! I recognized it instantly!

Here's the "improved" print hanging on the hotel room wall today What are the chances that from all the rooms in that hotel I would end up in the one where my intervention was hanging? Or better put re-hung. Here's another shot of the piece in the corner of the room I documented most of the earlier hotel work via slides (remember slides?) - the vast majority of which were lost in the mid 90s when the storage facility where I had a lot of books, tons of art slides and other stuff was flooded. But this latter "intervention" documentation survives thanks to digital cameras, as it is one of the later ones, from around 2002. So I went back through a couple of old PCs that I need to throw away as soon as I copy everything that's in the C drive, and found some vintage digital images of the original process. This is the original flower poster, image taken in 2002 before I "improved" the wall decor What I did in this particular case, was to create a furious battle scene going on the flower itself. From a distance it looks like the flower is being invaded by bugs, but once we get close, we see a barbaric battle going on, as Cimmerians attack the flower, being defended well by armed guards. What movie was I watching at the time in that hotel room in 2002? A TV re-run of Conan The Barbarian! Here's the piece back in 2002, unframed on my hotel bed and ready to be improved Here's a close up of the "improved" flower poster Here's a close up of one of the bulbs showing the furious action going on Then, I re-discovered that in this particular instance I had done a second drawing on the back of the frame. I used the nice masonite backing to do a quick charcoal and conte drawing: two for the price of one! Here's the "extra" piece of art done on the back of the frame I never did check when I was in the room to see if that drawing is still on the back of the frame. It is probably impossible to do so anyway, as the wall decor in most hotels these days are anchored to the wall in such a way that it takes a concentrated effort to get them off the wall (as if anyone would steal it?). Here's a close up of the drawing on the back of the frame I'm not saying anything, but I feel the jihad rekindling!

  And here's the room, in case you ever happen to be out West

These days I am doing a similar, but modified project - which I will call my "art deployment" project, where I get and use frames from area thrift shops, remove the cheap reproductions (usually) that are in these frames, replace them with my own artwork -- usually art school era vintage "real" prints such as etchings, linocuts, lithos, etc. and even some original work -- and then "sneak" it back into the thrift shop for some lucky and sharp-eyed person to acquire and "boom" a Campello gets into another collection.

Tonight at the Katzen

Cream's on at the Katzen and there's a talk by the curators tonight, Thursday, February 25, 2010, 6:30-9:30pm at the Katzen Arts Center, 4400 Massachusetts Ave. NW, WDC.

Check out the selected artwork here.

Mary Early
Untitled, 2006
Wood, putty, beeswax
48" diameter x 6"
Courtesy of the Artist and Hemphill Fine Arts
Retail Price: $6,000
Reserve Price: $3,600
See ya there tonight!

How to make the luge more exciting

Nothing can help curling, but I've got this great idea for the Olympic committee to make the luge event more exciting: rebuild the courses to be wider so that all of those little cars can come down at once and thus they're really racing against each other instead of individually against the clock.

Then it would be like NASCAR on ice and the event would get huge ratings from NASCARites.

Ideas to help curling be more exciting welcomed.

Artist Interview: Frank Warren

In my opinion, Frank Warren is the best-known DC-based artist in the world. And to add evidence to that opinion, Warren's worldwide art project PostSecret is not only one of the Internet's most popular and visited websites, but also has spawned a whole series of best-selling books and launched an interesting career for Frank as a speaker on the university and museum circuit. DC Art News asked Warren a few questions:

DC: Who or what has been your biggest influence as an artist?

Artomatic was my gateway to the artistic work I do now. At my first Artomatic I was overwhelmed by the vastness of the work. Some works fired me with inspiration, others I found mediocre. But ultimately, it was the mediocre works that gave me belief that: “hey, I could do that”.

DC: What are some of the challenges or mistakes that you have experienced as an artist and what did you learn from it?

My three biggest mistakes as the founder of PostSecret

1. Not being able to delegate.
2. Not colleting email addresses from the first day of the Blog.
3. Having a bad interview with one of the producers of Oprah.
4. (Actually, not being able to delegate might be just the opposite of a mistake.)

DC: What key event, or person, if any, has attributed the most to your success or progress as an artist so far?

My literary agent, Brian DeFiore helped me create the kind of PostSecret book series I had imagined. Theo Moll, helps me set up speaking events at schools, performing arts centers, and museums. I am enjoying that part of the project -- sharing the stories and listening to secrets -- more than anything else now.

DC: What advise would you give to emerging artists?

Create art that one of your parents likes but the other hates.

DC: Who is your favorite DC area artist?

I have work hanging in my home from my favorite artists. Most of them I met through Artomatic. Mark Jenkins, John Adams, Scott Brooks and Tim Tate.

DC: Anything coming up in the near future for you?

I have been working on short PostSecret films here are two I’m proud of: click here.


Above are the hour-long lines to get into one of Warren's shows in Georgetown a few years ago. And everywhere that he takes his PostSecret show to, the lines are just as long.

Fellowships for Artists


The Hamiltonian Artists Fellowship Program is now accepting applications for their 2010-2012 Term.

Deadline: Tuesday, March 2, 2010

Hamiltonian Artists, a 501(c)3, has announced its third annual open call to new, emerging artists to apply to their two-year Fellowship Program, aimed to aid in the professional development of visual artists.

Please refer to their website for application requirements, restrictions and forms. The application process will close at 5:00 pm on on Tuesday, March 2, 2010, and any applications received after that date will not be considered.

Quote

"What was the best thing before sliced bread?"
- George Carlin

Cream at the Katzen

An opening reception for the much anticipated Cream exhibition and art auction was held on Saturday, January 30. There's a talk by the curators on Thursday, February 25, 2010, 6:30-9:30pm, both at the Katzen Arts Center, 4400 Massachusetts Ave. NW, WDC.

Check out the selected artwork here.

Mary Early
Untitled, 2006
Wood, putty, beeswax
48" diameter x 6"
Courtesy of the Artist and Hemphill Fine Arts
Retail Price: $6,000
Reserve Price: $3,600
See ya there tomorrow! Come by and say hello.

T-Shirt of the Day

A dark sense of humor for planet Earth's longest reigning dictator.

Buy it online here.

Congrats

To my good friend Alec Simpson, who has just been appointed as the new (and the first) director of the MNCPPC Main gallery and programming space at the Gateway Art Center in Brentwood, MD just outside the District line on Rhode Island Avenue.

That is one beautiful new visual arts space for the DC region.

Virginians: Get involved!

In view of the huge deficits, the state legislatures in Pennsylvania, Maryland and Virginia are devastating their funding for the arts and for education. Here's something that you can do to help in Virginia (via Virginians for the Arts):

"The greatest threat to public support for arts and cultural institutions in Virginia in the past two decades is pending before the House of Delegates and will be voted on this Thursday, February 25.

On Sunday, the House Appropriations Committee recommended elimination of the Virginia Commission for Arts and all arts grants funding as part of the House's proposed 2011-2012 budget. The full House will vote on this budget on Thursday. We believe that legislative supporters of the arts will mount an effort to delete this provision from the House budget package and thus to restore funding for the Commission and its grants to arts and cultural institutions across Virginia, large and small.

Please call your legislators immediately and ask them to take action to eliminate this provision from the House budget. And please forward this E-mail to your board members, donors, artistic staffs and all other friends of the arts and ask them to join this urgent effort. Information regarding how to determine who is your legislator and how to contact him or her is set out at the end of this E-mail.

If this devastating proposal is to be reversed, we need nothing less than an unprecedented outpouring of public outcry over this action. Only you can make that happen. Please don't assume that "somebody else" will make these calls. We need every supporter of the arts to stand up and be counted in the next two days.

What exactly are we asking for? We ask the House to delete, from the proposed House amendments to the Budget Bill (House Bill 30), the elimination of all funding for arts grants through the Virginia Commission for the Arts. The proposal to eliminate this funding is part of Item 0.9 #2h, paragraph L., reductions to Items 233 and 234. This item begins on page 7 of the House Amendments and the actual elimination of arts grants appears on page 10)."

Legislator contact info here.

What is fair use on the Internet?

Maryland Art Place will be presenting an "Internet Copyright Workshop" and it will be presented with the Maryland Lawyers for the Arts.

When: Saturday, March 6, 2-5PM

Who: Artist Stacia Yeapanis shares her experience and Attorney Cynthia Blake Sanders offers advice: "Internet Fair Use Do’s and Don’ts + Problem-Solving Work Session"

The Internet is a vast networking system for artists to deliver images of their work to the public. Internet regulations are meant to protect everyone. However, the law can be an obstacle to contemporary art production. Join us to find out why. Artists welcome to bring examples of your digital appropriations!

Free and Open to the Public - Space Limited

Registration is required and can be done by sending an email to: map.submissions@gmail.com

This week: Cream at the Katzen

The Washington Project for the Arts' (WPA) Cream exhibition is now at (through March 6, 2010) at the American University Museum at the Katzen Arts Center.

This annual exhibition features works by more than 110 local and national artists selected by an esteemed group of eight top curators including scholars, museum directors, practitioners and collectors. All works are on view until the WPA Annual Art Auction Gala, which will take place March 6, 2010, during which the exhibited works are available to the highest bidders.

An opening reception will be held on Saturday, January 30, 2010 from 6-9pm, along with a talk by the curators on Thursday, February 25, 2010, 6:30-9:30pm, both at the Katzen Arts Center, 4400 Massachusetts Ave. NW, WDC.

The 29th iteration of this exhibition highlights some of the region's most talented artists, presenting a broad range of media and styles of both new and emerging artists as well as more established career artists. As an annual WPA presentation, the auction exhibition has gained new stature and recognition, evolving from a brief 'showing' of artists' works as a preview for the WPA's auction event, to one of the most prestigious and recognizable art showcases of its kind, with a high caliber of notable curators selecting the works. Cream is a notable survey of contemporary art in the region and beyond, with selected works representing the cream of the crop and the talent of the artists included that rose above thousands of others viewed during the curatorial process.

"We are tremendously pleased with the participating curators and their art selections - the work is fresh and exciting, and there are artists with long-standing ties to WPA as well as new names that the curators are introducing to the public," said Lisa Gold, WPA's Executive Director. "It was particularly rewarding to have a window into the curatorial process this year," she added, referring to 36 Studios- Part I, a 36-hour tour with collector Mera Rubell, during which she visited with 36 artists to inform her exhibition artwork selections.

Curator View and Presentation of Alice Denney Award
Thursday, February 25, 2010, 6:30-9pm

Curator and former WPA Executive Director Jock Reynolds will present the Alice Denney Award for Support of Contemporary Art to James F. Fitzpatrick, followed by a slide show and short talk by Cream curators about their exhibition selections and a preview of the exhibition.

Admission to the exhibition and curator talk is free and open to the public. Seating for the curator talk is limited; attendees are encouraged to RSVP by February 19 to info@wpadc.org.

Cream exhibition curators and their selected artists include:

KEN ASHTON, Visual Artist and Museum Technician for Works on Paper, Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, DC

Margaret Adams, Chan Chao, Natalie W. Cheung, Billy Colbert, Frank Hallam Day, Matthew Girard, Avi Gupta, James Huckenpahler, Michael Dax Iacovone, Hatnim Lee, Marissa Long, Kate MacDonnell, Beatrice Valdes Paz, Ding Ren, E. Brady Robinson

KRISTEN HILEMAN, Curator of Contemporary Art, The Baltimore Museum of Art, Baltimore, MD

Ken Ashton, Clarke Bedford, iona brown, Renee Butler, David Carlson, Zoë Charlton, Mary Coble, Jennifer Dorsey, Susan Eder & Craig Dennis, Bernhard Hildebrandt, Ryan Hill, Brece Honeycutt, Dean Kessmann, Cara Ober, Erik Sandberg, Joe White

CAROL K. HUH, Assistant Curator of Contemporary Asian Art, Freer Gallery of Art and Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC

Jon Bobby Benjamin, Howard Carr, Neil Greentree, Max Hirshfeld, Tim Hyde, Franz Jantzen, Courtney Jordan, Martin J. Kotler, Jeffrey Smith, Stanley Staniski, Oliver Vernon

JOANNA MARSH, The James Dicke Curator of Contemporary Art, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, DC

Mark Dion, Michelle Elzay, Kota Ezawa, Devon Johnson, Mark Newport, James Prosek, Jean Shin, Joseph Smolinski, Alison Elizabeth Taylor, René Treviño

JOCK REYNOLDS, The Henry J. Heinz II Director and Visual Artist, Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven, CT

William Christenberry, Tom Green, Jacob Kainen, Betsy Packard, Lisa Scheer, Jeff Spaulding, Alan Stone, William Willis, Yuriko Yamaguchi

CHARLES RITCHIE, Visual Artist and Associate Curator of Modern Prints and Drawings, National Gallery of Art

Jay Bolotin, Astrid Bowlby, Georgia Deal, Douglas Florian, Cassandra Kabler, Mark E. Karnes, Karey Ellen Kessler, Sangram Majumdar, Rob Matthews, Beverly Ress, James Stroud, Lynn Sures, Bill Thompson, Alice Whealin, John Wilson, Janine Wong

MERA RUBELL, Co-founder, Rubell Family Collection, Miami, FL

m. gert barkovic, Holly Bass, Judy Byron, F. Lennox Campello, Rafael Cañizares-Yunez, Adam de Boer, Mary Early, Victoria F. Gaitán, Carol Brown Goldberg, Pat Goslee, Jason Horowitz, Barbara Liotta, Patrick McDonough, Brandon Morse, Dan Steinhilber, Lisa Marie Thalhammer

N. ELIZABETH SCHLATTER, Deputy Director and Curator of Exhibitions, University of Richmond Museums, Richmond, VA

Hsin-Hsi Chen, Irene Clouthier, Joelle Meredith Francht, Ron Johnson, Sue Johnson, Kirsten Kindler, Martin McFadden, Susan Noyes, Erling Sjovold, Jessica Van Brakle, Barbara Weissberger, Andrew Wodzianski, Amy Glengary Yang, Shannon Young

Additional works on view in the exhibition this year include a new series of glass sculptures created by Joe Corcoran, David D'Orio, Steve Jones, and Megan Van Wagoner, members of DC GlassWorks, a public access glass blowing and sculpture facility located in Hyattsville, MD. These pieces will be featured in the museum exhibition and on the dining tables during the auction event, also available for bid.

The Cream exhibition is open for viewing, Tuesday - Sunday, 11am - 4pm at the Katzen Arts Center, 4400 Massachusetts Ave. NW. Admission is Free. More information on the exhibition is available at www.wpadc.org. Preview the works at auction.wpadc.org.

About the Art Auction Gala
Now in its 29th year, the WPA Art Auction Gala will be held at the Katzen Arts Center on the campus of American University and is the organization's most important fund raising event. Guests include more than 400 artists, collectors, and business leaders vying to bid on the works included in the Cream exhibition, as included above. The event supports WPA mission's to promote emerging and established artists in the greater DC metropolitan region. The gala dinner is sold out but information on purchasing party tickets will be available at auction.wpadc.org.

Best deal in the auction block (in my clearly biased opinion)? This gorgeous piece.

Artist Interview: Victoria F. Gaitán


I must admit that I've only come across the really intelligent and impressive work of Victoria F. Gaitán in the last year or so, but in that short period of time I've seen this talented artist mature and quickly ascend in the DC area art scene, including being one of the "Sweet 16" artists picked by ubercollector Mera Rubell for the upcoming WPA "Cream" auction at the Katzen Museum. DC Art News asked Victoria a few questions:

DC: Who or what has been your biggest influence as an artist?

I tend to draw a lot from my own head, so I guess just trusting my own process. That said, I still swoon over 16th-18th Century painting and am an avid movie watcher and book reader. For some reason I tend to get hit with a lot of images and ideas while watching crappy TV shows late at night with the cats or while I'm in the shower.

DC: What are some of the challenges or mistakes that you have experienced as an artist and what did you learn from it?

The biggest mistake that I've made was allowing myself to be shamed and swayed into producing work that just wasn't 'me' in the interests of 'commercial viability'. Never again. From this I learned that your soul doesn't have a price, and if someone is telling you that what you make is total shit and that you and it are worthless, it may be time for you and your inner Elvis to leave the building.

My biggest challenge is the ever present old chestnut that everyone has to deal with, of not having enough money to produce the work from concept through completion (e.g. exhibition). From this I've learned that being an artist ain't for sissies.


DC: What key event, or person, if any, has attributed the most to your success or progress as an artist so far?

I'd like to thank a fucked up past and a willful neglect of reason. I had an incredibly supportive art theory lecturer (hi Jim!) at art school whose friendship and faith in me were invaluable, and for which I am eternally appreciative. My husband Alberto is my marrow, and a saint, allowing me to bring a seemingly endless stream of people along with all manner of crap and evisera into the apartment and regularly turning it into a blackened-out hell hole with hot lights. But, my biggest touchstone will always be my Father.

DC: Do you use a method for pricing your artwork?

This is something that I have a lot of trouble with. I think I've got a shaky skeleton guide; a certain pricing system for gallery work and another for commissions.

DC: Have you done any of the art fairs? If so, does your work do better at the fairs or at the gallery shows?

Nope.

DC: What advise would you give to emerging artists?

Listen to yourself first and foremost, your gut won't lie.


DC: Who is your favorite DC area artist?

Alberto, of course! I also really love the work of James Rieck, Brandon Morse, Sarah Knobel and Mary Coble.


DC: Anything coming up in the near future for you?

I have two photographs, (Hole No.1 and Hole No.2 from my Hole series) that were selected by Mera Rubell for the WPA's auction "Cream" at the American University Museum at the Katzen Arts Center that runs until March 7th.

I also have a photograph (Untitled) in the show 'Empty Time' curated by Trevor Young at the Fridge DC gallery that runs until March 3rd. As well as about 5-6 photographs (from my series Sweet Meat) in the show 'Beautiful: Virginia Women Artists and the Body' curated by Joanne Bauer at the Greater Reston Arts Center (GRACE) that opens on May 1st. Also at Jeffry Cudlin's show By Request at Flashpoint in June 2010.

There are plenty artists still to photograph, and the ceaseless boat load of filthy-dirty, grubby-grimey and oozy shoots.

Anaïs Nin

Today is the birthday of Angela Anaïs Juana Antolina Rosa Edelmira Nin y Culmell, the Cuban sex virago who is perhaps best remembered as a diarist and as a writer of erotic tales and seducer of nearly everyone who came across her incandescent life.

Other than her famous diaries, Little Birds and Delta of Venus are my favorite books of erotica.

Visiting Artist Program at the Torpedo Factory Art Center

Deadline: February 28, 2010.

The Torpedo Factory Art Center in Alexandria Virginia has opportunities for
one, two, or three-month residencies between June 1 and August 31, 201.

Visiting Artists will be provided with studio workspace, and will be able to
display and sell original work to the public.

Download the prospectus and application form from this website.

There is no application fee. The deadline for application is February 28,
2010.

Juror: Jack Rasmussen, Director and Curator of the American University
Museum at the Katzen Art Center.

Send questions to: vap@torpedofactory.org. No telephone calls please.

Little Junes has a tooth!

Anderson Lennox Franklin Lars Timothy Angus Pict Eric Florencio Brude James Tiberius Campello Anderson Cruzata Jaspersen Alonso Zaar Marrero Karling Comba Noren Dalke Hartsell y Lennox. Circa February 19, 2009. Flesh and Blood and one tiny tooth. 28.5 inches by 21.5 lbs. NFS.

American Art Collector

The Lenster has a nice mention in the March issue of American Art Collector magazine. Thank you Sheila!

Artists' Websites: Alexa Meade


Wait until you discover the really cool paintings on flesh by DC area installation artist Alexa Meade.

Alexa Meade's innovative use of paint on the three dimensional surfaces of found objects, live models, and architectural spaces has been incorporated into a series of installations that create a perceptual shift in how we experience and interpret spatial relationships.

Visit her website here.

Opportunity for Artists

Deadline: March 31, 2010.

The Greater Reston Arts Center, in collaboration with Initiative for Public Art Reston (IPAR) and the Washington Sculptors Group (WSG), is pleased to present a juried exhibition of three-dimensional sculpture, installation, video and new media from June 25 through August 14, 2010.

Juror Vesela Sretenovic, Curator for Modern and Contemporary Art at The Phillips Collection, will select indoor and outdoor works that explore the theme of "gaps" as in-between states, stops, or pauses.

Click here for a full prospectus. Deadline for entries is March 31, 2010.