Black Caucusian Bone Picking

I've got a bone to pick with the Congressional Black Caucus members' remarks after their recent trip to Cuba; but first a quote from a source within Cuba:

In primary [Cuban] education, skin colour is not mentioned," ... If we are still living in a society where white people have the power, and we don't mention colour in education, we are in practice educating [Cuban] children to be white.

Cuban history as we teach it is a disgrace, because it is predominantly white history, and explaining the role of black people and mulattoes in building this society and its culture is not given its due importance.

Esteban Morales
University of Havana
Centre for the Study of the Hemisphere and the United States

My bone has nothing to do with President Obama's recent (and curiously announced by his press secretary) monumental decision to change a major visiting policy to the unfortunate Caribbean island prison of Cuba; but first another Cuban quote:

...to carry on "hiding" the issue [of racism in Cuba] would lead black people to think that "they belong to another country, and that there are two Cuba’s as there were in the 19th century, a black Cuba and a white one."

Roberto Zurbano
Director
Casa de las Américas publishing house
Havana

What my bone deals with is the spectacular lack of historical background that the various Congressional Black Caucus (CBC) members' showed when commenting about their meeting with the Castro brothers.

Not that their highly complimentary comments about two bloody, murdering dictators would offend me. It does and it should offend anyone and everyone who loves and admires liberty. One would think that any comments about a nation with one of the world's worst human rights records, where Amnesty International has been denied access to (except to that bit of Cuba where the Guantanamo Naval Base is located); a nation where gay people were once given lobotomies to "cure" them; and where HIV+ Cubans were detained and segregated in guarded colonies away from the general public.

But what really bugs me, in my own pedantic hell, is how a bunch of historically and socially clueless African American legislators would praise the leaders and the government of one of the world's most racist dictatorships, a government which talks a talk of equality while walking a walk of institutionalized racism against its own black population.

Cuba has a long and agonizing history of racial issues, starting with its long bloody history of slavery, which didn't end on the island until 1886, and continuing through its freedom from Spain, birth of the Republic, and the triumph of the Castro Revolution in 1959. It continues to this day.

Cuba even had its own race war.

General Antonio Maceo, known as "the Bronze Titan." He was the true warrior leader of the Cuban Wars of Liberation. His father was white of French ancestry; his mother was black, of Dominican ancestry. After the first Cuban Liberation War ended in a truce with Spain, some say that Maceo was so disillusioned with the realities of life in Cuba as a black man, that he left Cuba and lived in Panama, until he was called back to lead the Cuban rebels in a new rebellion in 1895. He returned to Cuba and was killed in battle against the Spanish Army in 1896.

In 1912, black Cubans in Oriente province had enough of the new Cuban government's racist practices and the degrading treatment of Cuban black veterans, who had been the bulk of the Cuban rebels in the wars of independence against Spain. The Cuban government moved on a path of genocide and eventually the United States had to send in troops to end the war between the white Cuban government and the black rebels in Oriente.

As I recall from the CIA Factbook of 1959, on that year the island was about 70% white, about 20% black and mixed, and the rest Chinese, Jewish and other. The Cuban Diaspora which started a few months after the Castro takeover and continues to this day, with the exception of the Mariel boat lift of the 1980s, saw a mass exodus of mostly white Cubans, and as a result the island's racial balance shifted dramatically to where most people estimate that today the island is about 60% black or biracial.

But Cuba's black population has not seen a proportionate share of the power and a quick review of the governing Politburo/Parliament reveals few black faces in the crowd. In fact, "the Cuban cultural journal Temas published studies by the governmental Anthropology Centre in 2006 that showed that on average, the black population has worse housing, receives less money in remittances from abroad and has less access to jobs in emerging economic sectors like tourism, in which blacks represent barely five percent of managers and professionals, than the white population."

"I think silence is worse. The longer nothing is said, the more the racism fermenting underground is rotting the entire nation..."

Gerardo Alfonso
singer/songwriter
Havana

While the Cuban constitution of the 1940s (since then abolished by the Communist government) outlawed segregation and racism, and the current Cuban Constitution guarantees black Cubans the right to stay in any hotel and be served at any public establishment, as it has been documented by many foreign journalists, black Cubans will tell you in private that those rights exist only on paper.

The harsh Cuban reality today, they claim, is that "black Cubans won't be served" and that Cubans, regardless of race are in general barred from places frequented by tourists.

Unfortunately, these things [disparities in the treatment of blacks and whites] are very common in Cuba.

Ricardo Alarcón Quesada
President of the National Assembly of People's Power
Cuban Parliament

Do these Cuban voices from within Cuba itself sound like the subjects of a government whose murdering tyrants should be hugged and complimented by our African American legislators, in view of our nation's own racial history? Would they hug the criminal government leaders of the apartheid South Africa of the 20th century?

We have practically apartheid in this country sometimes... racism is deeply rooted in Cuba's history and will not disappear overnight."

Rogelio Polanco Fuentes
Director
Cuban Communist Party-owned Juventud Rebelde newspaper.

Shame on you CBC Chairwoman Barbara Lee (D-Ca.), shame on you Rep. Bobby Rush (D-Il.), shame on you Rep. Laura Richardson (D-Ca.), shame on you Rep. Emanuel Cleaver (D-Mo.), and whoever else of you historically ignorant bobos praised the leaders of that unfortunate prison island.

Roadin'

I've been on the road since 4AM on Tuesday morning, and driving in the rain sucks...

Fair use

Richard Prince and his dealer Larry Gagosian have responded to a copyright-infringement suit filed by French photographer Patrick Cariou, saying that Prince's use of Cariou's work falls under "fair use," the Art Newspaper reports.

At issue are 22 paintings in Prince's "Canal Zone" series, which borrow photographs from Cariou's 2000 book Yes Rasta, shot over a decade in the mountains in Jamaica, and combine them with brushwork or pornography. According to Gagosian's filing, eight were sold when they were exhibited at the gallery last November and December, at prices ranging from $1.5 million to $3 million.

Details here.

Bienal de La Habana

All of the action -- the unofficial venues, the public-art installations and sculptures -- coupled with Tania Bruguera's daring performance last week in which Cubans and some foreign visitors took to a podium, clamored for freedom, and mocked the once-sacred figure of Fidel Castro -- make this Biennial, which runs through April 30, one for the books.

''Tania's [performance] has been the most provocative gesture in all of Cuban art history,'' Cuban art critic Hector Antón Castillo says from Havana. ``Any veteran from the 1980s will tell you the same

Read Fabiola Santiago's report on the Biennial here.

Wanna go to a museum opening in DC this week?


Details
here.

Guilty plea

The director of a New York art gallery whose proprietor has been charged with stealing $88 million from investors, collectors and Bank of America Corp. has pleaded guilty to falsifying business records

Details here.

Why don't they?

Lots of arts organizations have blogs on their websites. Most aren't very good, and they're difficult to maintain well. There are many out-of-work critics. And less and less arts coverage in local press. So why not critics-in-residence?

Yeah independence. But let's suspend for a moment the idea that criticism's highest calling is simply to inform consumer choice. If instead the idea is to promote informed and interesting commentary, then who has more of an interest in this than artists and arts organizations? If readers knew that a critic was in residence rather than being paid by a local news organization, they might read the commentary differently, but so what? Would you rather read PR boilerplate that nobody believes or the observations of someone trying to engage with the art, even if they're paid to do so by the institution?

Read Douglas McLennan's excellent point here.

Craft Week DC

From April 22 - 26, 2009 it will be Craft Week DC with major events such as the James Renwick Alliance Spring Craft Weekend “Crafts Around DC: A Capital Celebration!” and the Smithsonian Women’s Committee's Smithsonian Craft Show.

Craft Week DC is organized by Washington, DC area artists, galleries, and the James Renwick Alliance (JRA) to recognize the growing community of artists in the Washington DC area working in ceramics, glass, fiber, metal, and wood.

In a postmodern world where everything is supposed to be art, we stubbornly hang on to the traditional segregation of art vs craft, but from just a quick sampling of what's going to be offered to a DC audience next week, it is certain that the line will be blurred.

There are tons of events and the whole schedule is here.

For Artists: copyright, trademark, and contract issues

Hamiltonian Artists in DC is hosting their next talk in the Artist Speaker Series Tomorrow, Tuesday, April 14, 2009, at 7:00pm at Hamiltonian Gallery.

Copyright questions? Art legal issues? John D. Mason has got your answers! Mason is an art and entertainment attorney and intellectual property attorney at The Intellectual Property Group, PLLC, and is on the Board of Directors of the Washington Area Lawyers for the Arts. He will be discussing legal matters related to art and artists, including copyright, trademark, and contract issues.

Congratulations

My good friend Professor Chawky Frenn is 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 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 classroom is a place of dialog, learning, trust, and growth. I find in teaching an experimental field to develop strategies that promote critical thinking and creative research. At the heart of my teaching performance is the enthusiasm I share about life, art, and the development of self and identity. My comments bridge the understanding of art and life, and my critiques provide intellectual and emotional insights into the purpose, meaning, and value of self-discovery and development through one’s art and work.

I am fortunate to do what I love: teaching and painting. I am also fortunate to work with amazing students with diverse disciplines, cultures, goals, and passions. Their creativity and commitment continue to inspire the best in me.

I present the award to my students, my teachers, my family, and my friends who believed in me when I could not believe in myself. As a teacher, I am a gardener who nurtures and cares for the seeds and passions in my students’ soil. I encourage and help them to develop and grow and bear their finest fruits.”

- Chawky Frenn

New York art dealer accused of being Bernard Madoff's middleman

A prominent New York financier and art collector, Ezra Merkin, has been charged with a $2.4bn fraud for collecting money from clients under false pretences and secretly handing it to the jailed fund manager Bernard Madoff.

Read the NYT story here.

2009 Guggenheim Fellowship Winners Announced

The John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation has announced the recipients of the 2009 Guggenheim Fellowships.

Ranging in age from 29 to 70, the hundred and eighty U.S. and Canadian artists, scientists, and scholars were selected from a group of almost three thousand applicants on the basis of outstanding achievement and exceptional promise for continued accomplishment.

For a complete list of this year's fellows, visit the Guggenheim Foundation Web site here.

Artists Websites: Sophie Tuttle

Sophie Tuttle is one of those hard-working artists who puts her creative energies into every facet of art: sculpture, drawing, painting, photography, illustration, etc.


You can check out her stuff online here or see it in person at the Warrenton Wine and Arts Festival in Warrenton, VA. There are going to be lots of artists selling their work and prints there (including Sophie)... in fact they're still looking for artists, so contact them if you are interested. It's allfor a good cause (benefiting St. John's School). It's going to be on April 25th and 26th and details are here.

The Gray Arm of the Law

If you take a photograph in a public place, and then publish it commercially, can the people in the photo successfully sue?

See the answer (or lack thereof) here.

Painting Bread Correctly

If you ask the guards at the NGA which painting in the collection they think is the most popular, often you will hear many of them point out Dali's The Sacrament of the Last Supper.

"People are always asking 'where is it?'"

The reason for this could be that the Last Supper, in a typical act of perhaps arrogance, for many years was hung in the NGA's coat check room, and currently is at the exit of the old wing, just before the connecting tunnel to the newer East wing.


I say arrogance because I once asked a guard (often the best sources of info in any museum) the reason for the placement. "This wing is for masters," he said, "and this Dali painting was donated to the NGA as part of the Dale Bequest in the 1960s, but with the condition that it had to be placed with the old masters."

The NGA complied, but couldn't or wouldn't cross the line and instead of hanging the Dali in one of the galleries, for years hung it in the coat room, where it attracted too many crowds and made that room a mess, and subsequently moved it to its present location, technically in the West building, but not really "in it."

A few years ago I asked the NGA for confirmation of this story, but my request was never answered.

But this post is not about Dali or the NGA, but about most "Last Supper" paintings that I recall seeing. More specifically about the bread in the paintings.

This week I was invited to a Seder meal by a friend who is also quite a well-known Philly area artist and an even better known curator. Somehow the conversation turned to Christ's Last Supper, which of course was a Seder meal and she observed how most paintings depicting The Christ's last meal showed regular bread instead of the unleavened bread required by Jewish tradition to celebrate the passover.

This is very interesting to the pedantic part of me, already troubled by the fact that nearly every depiction of The Christ that was presented to me in art school depicted mostly Northern European-looking Christs, rather than the Semitic Middle East Israelite that He was.

And now I wonder, are there any contemporary depictions (or any depiction) of the last supper which depict this last Seder for Christ in a more historically correct perspective? I want to see The Christ as a Semite and I want to see the middle of the matzot on the Seder plate broken in two with the larger piece hidden, to be used later as the afikoman.

Artists' Websites: Denee Barr

Denee Barr is a fellow art blogger and an award winning and very hard-working Maryland photographer.

Aquarium, Baltimore Inner Harbor, Maryland, by Denee Barr

In she was a 2003 Maryland State Arts Council Individual Artist Award Grant Recipient for artistic excellence in photography. In 2006 Two photographic images captured on Kent Island, Maryland's Eastern Shore inducted into the Heart of DC: John A. Wilson Building City Hall Public Permanent Art Collection (3rd floor east), Washington, DC. Also in 2006 Denee Barr received the 1st Place Award in Bethesda, Maryland at the Washington School of Photography/Washington Photography Gallery 4th National Photo Competition for images captured in New York City. In 2007 the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities purchases two photographic images captured at Adkins Arboretum for the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities Public Art Bank Collection.

Visit her here.

No hot sauce allowed

When I was in my late teens, my parents took their first ever (and only one as far as I know) vacation, and went to Mexico City for a couple of weeks. They liked it so much that they ended up staying almost a month and I joined them for a week.

Besides my well-documented discovery of Frida Kahlo during that trip, I also recall my dad's first ever exposure to Mexican food.

There are many people in this great nation who (if you live in any American state except Florida, New York and New Jersey) think that all of Latin America is like Mexico, both in culture, appearance and culinary offerings.

Of course, nothing can be farther from the truth, and (for example) Argentina is as different from Mexico as Italy is different from South Africa. In fact, most of the twenty or so nations south of the border and in the Caribbean are not only vastly different from its two giant northern neighbors, but also quite different from each other.

And their national cuisines are also quite different. Not everyone in Latin America eats tacos, and if you order a couple of tortillas in Cuba, you'll get two omelets and an odd look at your excessive dining peculiarities.

Anyway, I recall my father working his way through the menus in his discovery of Mexican food, from his first experiments with huevos rancheros, the subsequent alarm at the heat of the hot sauce, followed by a trip to the restaurant's bathroom to rinse his mouth, to his delight in discovering the less fiery carne asada and carnitas.

If you read this blog regularly, then you know what a pedantic geek I can be at Hollywood's barbarity when it comes to cultural stereotyping (this one is the worst one ever). And these days, through the wonders of FiOs and DVR digital recording, I more often than not find myself in pedantic hell.

You see, I have my DVR set to record programs keyed on a variety of keywords, one of them being Cuban cooking.

Recently, my DVR picked up a segment of Louisiana chef Emeril Lagasse's entertaining cooking show. It was focused for that day on Cuban food.

He showed his audience how to cook a fish, ropa vieja and pork chops. And the processes involved in those three dishes seemed authentic enough, until the hot sauce came out for all three recipes.

I don't watch Emeril often enough to know if this Louisiana native resident puts hot sauce on all his dishes, and if he does, then maybe it's a Louisiana thing.

Perhaps he puts hot sauce on pizza, and matzoh ball soup and haggis, etc.

But no authentic Cuban recipe calls for the fiery, Louisiana or Mexican or Texan style hot sauces that brings tears to your eyes, torments to your tongue and sends Cuban men rushing to the bathroom to rinse their tongues.

So if you ever see that show, and follow the recipes, skip the hot sauce for an authentic taste, and then add it after a few bites, if you want to Mexicanize your ropa vieja.

Wanna go to an opening at Alexandria tonight?

Reclaimed, an exhibition at Alexandria's Target Gallery focuses on everyday common objects that are reclaimed, recycled, reinterpreted and transformed into art.

From Marcel Duchamp’s “ready-mades” to Robert Rauschenberg’s “combines”, artists have been for years recycling and reclaiming everyday common objects and transforming them into something new and unique. This exhibition was open to all artists nationally and internationally to submit work that has been reclaimed and transformed into their own personal artistic statement. The jurors for this exhibition are gallery owners and collectors, a husband and wife team, my good friends Steven and Linda Krensky.

The opening reception is tonight, April 9, 6-8pm and there will be a gallery talk at 7pm.

Out of this world

On April 11:

"This event incorporates a gallery show, music, and performance as a gateway to celestial celebration."

Details here; artwork by:

Chris Bishop
Stephen Blickenstaff
Scott Brooks
Chis Chen
Jared Davis
Alan Defibaugh
Dana Ellyn
Elstabo
Greg Ferrand
Todd Gardner
Linas Garsys
Emily Greene Liddle
Peter Harper
Rob Lindsay
Marina Reiter
Bill Remington
Dave Savage
Matt Sesow
Jon Shipman
Jason Snyder
Steve Strawn
Andrew Wodzianski

Fufú: This is how you do it

That image to the right is not a banana, but a plantain (in Spanish platano).

The plantain is most commonly eaten as a side dish in many Latin American cuisines, where it is simply boiled and then served as a side dish with perhaps a little olive oil and salt to add some flavor, especially if it's a green plantain, which are rather tasteless by themselves. The ripe ones are quite tasty and sweet, and are usually served sliced and fried.

A few years ago you could only find them in Latin American bodegas, but now most major supermarkets carry them.

But let's look at the green plantain. In most Latin American restaurants where it is offered, it is offered as a boiled side dish. In Cuban restaurants (and many Miami art galleries) it is also served as tostones, which essentially involves slicing up the plantain, frying it in olive oil for a while, taking it out and crushing it, and frying it again. Add salt and you're done.

But Fufú is the real king of plantain dishes and it is rarely seen in any restaurants, even Cuban ones. I think that maybe it is because Fufú possibly developed in the eastern part of Cuba (a province once called Oriente), and it may not be as well known or served in Havana, which is the only place that most tourists visit.

With its massive forests and mountains, a large African population from Spain's terrible slavery trade, coupled with its large French immigrant population which migrated to Cuba after the Haitian independence wars, and its concentration of Galician, rather than ethnic Castillians, Catalans, or Andalucian Spaniards, Oriente evolved into a very distinct region in Cuba, quite different from Havana and the other Cuban provinces, and so did its cuisine.

Oriente is where Bacardi rum was invented, and where Hatuey beer was created, and where the mojito and Daiquiri were invented... get my drift?

And in Oriente the humble plantain is eaten as a very delicious side dish called Fufú, with the accent in the last "u" like in Hai-ku.... foo fú!

Start with a couple of green plantains. Wash then and cut out the tips of the plantains but leave the skin on.

Cut the plantains into three equal pieces per plantain and bring to a boil in water and boil for a few minutes until the green skins start to peel away.

While they are boiling, in a frying pan heat a generous dose of olive oil with a seasoning dash of salt and pepper (or Goya Sazon is you really want some exotic spices).

Add chopped fresh garlic and chopped (very small pieces) onions to the hot olive oil and fry the garlic and onions; lots and lots of garlic.

While the onions and garlic fry (don't overcook), the plantains should be ready, so pull them out, throw away the green skins and put the cleaned hot plantains on a large flat plate and mash them as you would do for mashed potatoes, but not to an extreme - they should be lumpy.

Once they are broken up some, add the frying pan mixture of oil, garlic and onions and mash it all into the plantain mixture.

Salt to taste and this culinary work of art is ready to eat!

Opportunity for Artists

Deadline: May 15, 2009 5 P.M.

Boston's Fort Point Arts Gallery is seeking proposals for 2009 group shows and performances. Proposals are open to all media and shows will be selected by guest juror, Heidi Kayser, the founding director of both the Axiom Center for New and Experimental Media and the newly formed Art Technology New England Consortium.

Submissions are due at the gallery by 5pm on May 15th.

You can email questions to: gallery@fortpointarts.org.

Robin Rose

In each major city around the world there are a limited number of artists in that city's art scene who can be best described as "firsts among equals," in the sense that their presence and influence goes beyond just being a painter or a sculptor, etc. to being a major part of that city's art tapestry.

Such an artist for the Greater Washington, DC region is Robin Rose, and although I haven't seen the show yet (but I will), I am hearing some good things as well as surprise, from his current show at The American University Museum at the Katzen Arts Center.

Titled Robin Rose: Cypher, the exhibition opens today, and there will be an artist's reception on April 23 from 6-9PM. The show will remain on view through May 17, 2009. The show at AU is concurrent with Robin Rose: Endeavor at Hemphill Fine Arts, which represents the work of Robin Rose.

The reason that his AU show is raising eyebrows from those who have seen it (someone described it to me as "out of the box!") is that what AU has on display (described as "aggressively altered found object assemblages") is so different and so very far from Rose's well-known and beautiful abstraction, that people are doing a double take.

I am also told that a lot of it is just plain funny!

I have never hidden my opinion that artists should always explore all facets and experiences and visual offerings of their artistry, rather than just deliver cookie-cutter art based on one concept.

I love seeing a single Mondrian, but lose interest when I see a dozen of them all in one room.

The way to see Robin Rose in the next few weeks is to visit his show at AU to discover this new side of this influential artist, and then drop by Hemphill Fine Arts to see what's new with his well-known encaustic on aluminum panel paintings.

Wanna go to a Bethesda opening this Friday?

Award winning artist Kristy Simmons opens her solo art show, Inklings to showcase her latest paintings exploring the intersection of the material world with virtual, or nonmaterial, reality. Thin glazes of underpainting are overlaid with thick brushstrokes, applied to both canvas as well as sheets of plexiglass on top of canvas – to give the audience the "inkling" of their combined and interdependent existence.

Orchard Gallery
7917 Norfolk Avenue
Bethesda, MD 20815

Orchard Gallery located at 7917 Norfolk Avenue. The opening reception is April 10, 6 – 8:30pm, and is part of Bethesda's monthly "Arts Walk."

Wanna go to an opening at UM tomorrow?

The University of Maryland's Stamp Gallery has an opening of the first ever solo show by Ding Ren.

Titled Here/There, the show is curated by Megan Rook-Koepsel and Jennifer Quick. Exhibition Dates: April 8 - May 6, 2009.

Opening reception: Wednesday, April 8, 6-8pm (with performance by Ding's band, Bible Kiss Bible.

You gotta listen to this

Amazing musical videoworks! Let it play at leat a minute... you'll be hooked: Click here.

NGA Partnership Encourages Children Artists

By Prelli Williams

Last March 5, it seemed that the National Gallery of Art moved to J.C. Nalle Elementary School in Southeast Washington as attendees marveled at the student Art exhibition of clay sculptures created by fifth grade students while the fourth graders recited Haiku poems as they stood beneath Drip paintings in the main corridor.

Principal Kim Burke said that a team of fifth grade teachers had submitted a proposal to the NGA, then the school was interviewed, and were finally selected out of eleven other schools that went through the process leading to a partnership between J. C. Nalle Elementary School and the National Gallery of Art.

Sara Mark Lesk, Coordinator of Art Around the Corner said that Nalle students visited the National Gallery of Art multiple times to experience works of art, develop their critical thinking skills through active looking, and explore creativity through art making. All lessons complied with the DCPS curriculum.

Student Brianna Hooks delivered the Welcome Address and the Gallery teachers presented certificates to eighty-six fourth and fifth grade participants. “This is awesome,” said Prelli Williams of Ward 7 Arts Collaborative to teachers Ms. Jones and Ms. Preston as Dr. Buaful, Ms. Staffer, Ms. Surles watched the fifth grade perform “A Day at the NGA” inspired by Art Around the Corner, and directed by Ms. Bailey.

A family activity making Clay Creatures ended with a dessert reception. The Mark and Carol Hyman Fund, The Mead Family Foundation, and the Janice H. Levin Fund made Art Around the Corner possible.

First Rocky, now...

A corner of Philadelphia's Ben Franklin Parkway lost all of its Alexander Calders this week.

For more than four years, sculptures by the inventor of the mobile adorned the grassy, tree-dotted Calder Garden bordering 22d Street - a two-acre plot once eyed for a Calder museum.

A few years ago, 11 works - 10 stationary ones called stabiles and a hybrid with a movable top - were scattered there.

As of Sunday, seven remained, including the bright-orange Jerusalem Stabile.

Yesterday morning, the last piece was carted away, and the Calder Garden was no more.

Read the Peter Mucha Inky story here.

Do this: lottoHEART

Deadline to register: April 10th, 2009

CAMP Rehoboth in Delaware is an awesome GBLT advocacy group has grown up from a grassroots effort reacting to a health epidemic to a powerhouse fighting for human equality.

For the eighth year, my good friend Sondra Arkin is the co-chair of their annual art event and they’ve made some big changes this year! And both her and I are inviting you to be part of this project.

We are asking Mid-Atlantic artists we admire to create two original, postcard-sized (5" x 7" exactly) works in any medium. All works are donations and will be sold for $100 — the catch is that your identity will not be known by the buyer until after the purchase. Also, the order in which a buyer gets to select their art is random and will be pulled off as part of a lively night of entertainment. One piece goes into the LottoHEART where the buyers select at the event (July 3rd), and the other will go into our Blind Date group (literally wrapped and random) for buyers who might not want to choose or who may not be able to come to the event.

While the exhibition is anonymous, they will heavily publicize the names of the participating artists and provide a web catalog immediately following the event. There is no theme — just stick to the size restriction. To help with this, they will provide you with two 5 x 7” hardboards free of charge if you would like. Please indicate that you would like them on your registration form or in your registration email.

You may mail or fax in the form or register at this website.

The deadline for registration is April 10th — but since the project is limited to 200 artists, I urge you to sign up today. Your work is due by June 15th.

If you have any questions, please feel free to contact Sondra at (202) 588-1764 or at heart@camprehoboth.com.

Review of my last curatorial task

"Even in the world of visual art — where originality is routinely faked or manufactured when it cannot be had by honest means — the Cuban-American artist, critic and frequent National Public Radio commentator cuts an unusually distinctive figure.

You can hear it in the streetwise mix of Latin and Brooklyn cadences with which the former Navy man — whose career included stints as both an officer and an enlisted man — sizes up and translates high-art themes in his thoughtful videos and radio narratives. You can trace it in the muscular leaps of taste and logic found in his pioneering art blog, where the one-time student of the great African-American artist Jacob Lawrence and devotee of visionary Mexican painter Frida Kahlo shows he's capable of embracing old-school aesthetic values, a populist kind of viewer's stance and the contemporary fondness for quirkiness in the very same sentence.

You can also see it in the 19th Annual Mid-Atlantic Art Exhibition at Norfolk's d'Art Center, where Campello's online prominence and long experience as a juror drew nearly 625 entries from 17 states, then distilled them into a formidable show of 61 pieces."

Art critic Mark St. John Erickson reviews Norfolk's D'Art Center's annual Mid Atlantic Competition and has some very nice things to say about both the exhibition and yours truly. Read it here.

The Declaration of Arbroath

Americans have not been the only people who have fought English armies for independence. England's own neighbor to the North, Scotland (where I lived for three years and visit often and love dearly) has fought English aggression for centuries.

Today marks the 1,690th anniversary of the Declaration of Arbroath, or the Scottish version of their Declaration of Independence, dated the 6th of April of 1320. It is addressed to the Pope:

To the most Holy Father and Lord in Christ, the Lord John, by divine providence Supreme Pontiff of the Holy Roman and Universal Church, his humble and devout sons Duncan, Earl of Fife, Thomas Randolph, Earl of Moray, Lord of Man and of Annandale, Patrick Dunbar, Earl of March, Malise, Earl of Strathearn, Malcolm, Earl of Lennox, William, Earl of Ross, Magnus, Earl of Caithness and Orkney, and William, Earl of Sutherland; Walter, Steward of Scotland, William Soules, Butler of Scotland, James, Lord of Douglas, Roger Mowbray, David, Lord of Brechin, David Graham, Ingram Umfraville, John Menteith, guardian of the earldom of Menteith, Alexander Fraser, Gilbert Hay, Constable of Scotland, Robert Keith, Marischal of Scotland, Henry St Clair, John Graham, David Lindsay, William Oliphant, Patrick Graham, John Fenton, William Abernethy, David Wemyss, William Mushet, Fergus of Ardrossan, Eustace Maxwell, William Ramsay, William Mowat, Alan Murray, Donald Campbell, John Cameron, Reginald Cheyne, Alexander Seton, Andrew Leslie, and Alexander Straiton, and the other barons and freeholders and the whole community of the realm of Scotland send all manner of filial reverence, with devout kisses of his blessed feet.

Most Holy Father and Lord, we know and from the chronicles and books of the ancients we find that among other famous nations our own, the Scots, has been graced with widespread renown. They journeyed from Greater Scythia by way of the Tyrrhenian Sea and the Pillars of Hercules, and dwelt for a long course of time in Spain among the most savage tribes, but nowhere could they be subdued by any race, however barbarous. Thence they came, twelve hundred years after the people of Israel crossed the Red Sea, to their home in the west where they still live today. The Britons they first drove out, the Picts they utterly destroyed, and, even though very often assailed by the Norwegians, the Danes and the English, they took possession of that home with many victories and untold efforts; and, as the historians of old time bear witness, they have held it free of all bondage ever since. In their kingdom there have reigned one hundred and thirteen kings of their own royal stock, the line unbroken a single foreigner.

The high qualities and deserts of these people, were they not otherwise manifest, gain glory enough from this: that the King of kings and Lord of lords, our Lord Jesus Christ, after His Passion and Resurrection, called them, even though settled in the uttermost parts of the earth, almost the first to His most holy faith. Nor would He have them confirmed in that faith by merely anyone but by the first of His Apostles -- by calling, though second or third in rank -- the most gentle Saint Andrew, the Blessed Peter's brother, and desired him to keep them under his protection as their patron forever.

The Most Holy Fathers your predecessors gave careful heed to these things and bestowed many favours and numerous privileges on this same kingdom and people, as being the special charge of the Blessed Peter's brother. Thus our nation under their protection did indeed live in freedom and peace up to the time when that mighty prince the King of the English, Edward, the father of the one who reigns today, when our kingdom had no head and our people harboured no malice or treachery and were then unused to wars or invasions, came in the guise of a friend and ally to harass them as an enemy. The deeds of cruelty, massacre, violence, pillage, arson, imprisoning prelates, burning down monasteries, robbing and killing monks and nuns, and yet other outrages without number which he committed against our people, sparing neither age nor sex, religion nor rank, no one could describe nor fully imagine unless he had seen them with his own eyes.

But from these countless evils we have been set free, by the help of Him Who though He afflicts yet heals and restores, by our most tireless Prince, King and Lord, the Lord Robert. He, that his people and his heritage might be delivered out of the hands of our enemies, met toil and fatigue, hunger and peril, like another Macabaeus or Joshua and bore them cheerfully. Him, too, divine providence, his right of succession according to or laws and customs which we shall maintain to the death, and the due consent and assent of us all have made our Prince and King. To him, as to the man by whom salvation has been wrought unto our people, we are bound both by law and by his merits that our freedom may be still maintained, and by him, come what may, we mean to stand.

Yet if he should give up what he has begun, and agree to make us or our kingdom subject to the King of England or the English, we should exert ourselves at once to drive him out as our enemy and a subverter of his own rights and ours, and make some other man who was well able to defend us our King; for, as long as but a hundred of us remain alive, never will we on any conditions be brought under English rule. It is in truth not for glory, nor riches, nor honours that we are fighting, but for freedom -- for that alone, which no honest man gives up but with life itself.

Therefore it is, Reverend Father and Lord, that we beseech your Holiness with our most earnest prayers and suppliant hearts, inasmuch as you will in your sincerity and goodness consider all this, that, since with Him Whose Vice-Regent on earth you are there is neither weighing nor distinction of Jew and Greek, Scotsman or Englishman, you will look with the eyes of a father on the troubles and privation brought by the English upon us and upon the Church of God. May it please you to admonish and exhort the King of the English, who ought to be satisfied with what belongs to him since England used once to be enough for seven kings or more, to leave us Scots in peace, who live in this poor little Scotland, beyond which there is no dwelling-place at all, and covet nothing but our own. We are sincerely willing to do anything for him, having regard to our condition, that we can, to win peace for ourselves.

This truly concerns you, Holy Father, since you see the savagery of the heathen raging against the Christians, as the sins of Christians have indeed deserved, and the frontiers of Christendom being pressed inward every day; and how much it will tarnish your Holiness's memory if (which God forbid) the Church suffers eclipse or scandal in any branch of it during your time, you must perceive. Then rouse the Christian princes who for false reasons pretend that they cannot go to help of the Holy Land because of wars they have on hand with their neighbours. The real reason that prevents them is that in making war on their smaller neighbours they find quicker profit and weaker resistance. But how cheerfully our Lord the King and we too would go there if the King of the English would leave us in peace, He from Whom nothing is hidden well knows; and we profess and declare it to you as the Vicar of Christ and to all Christendom.

But if your Holiness puts too much faith in the tales the English tell and will not give sincere belief to all this, nor refrain from favouring them to our prejudice, then the slaughter of bodies, the perdition of souls, and all the other misfortunes that will follow, inflicted by them on us and by us on them, will, we believe, be surely laid by the Most High to your charge.

To conclude, we are and shall ever be, as far as duty calls us, ready to do your will in all things, as obedient sons to you as His Vicar; and to Him as the Supreme King and Judge we commit the maintenance of our cause, csating our cares upon Him and firmly trusting that He will inspire us with courage and bring our enemies to nought.

May the Most High preserve you to his Holy Church in holiness and health and grant you length of days.

Given at the monastery of Arbroath in Scotland on the sixth day of the month of April in the year of grace thirteen hundred and twenty and the fifteenth year of the reign of our King aforesaid.

Freedom does not come easily.

For this Tuesday

There are some great works of art at some very low starting bids at the Habatat for Healing Auction to raise funds for the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society.

It all started online April 1st at 12:00 p.m. and runs through April 7th at 5:00 p.m. and you can view the artwork and bid now. Details here.

On Tuesday there is really going to be a great kick-off event. Besides Healthy Chocolate, Complementary Valet, Complementary Markers Mark Whiskey, and Wine by Delfosse Vineyard & Winery, they will have some really awesome silent auction art, other items and raffle prizes by Capital Grille, Sakura Steakhouse & Markers Mark among others, and the first 10 women through the door receive gift bags by Shea Terre Organics. Details here.

You can bid on my donation (see below) here.

Woman Jumping into the Void. Charcoal on Paper. 11x14 inches framed.
F. Lennox Campello, c. 2009.

Artists' Websites: Jenny Mullins

Jenny Mullins received her BFA in Studio Art from The University of Texas at Austin. She has studied at the Arrowmont School of Art, the cultural center for the arts at Santa Chiara, Italy, and later at the Vermont Studio Center.


She just finished her MFA in the Hoffberger School of Painting at MICA in Baltimore. Her meticulous, miniature drawings and large scale paper installations depict dense worlds of mythological beasts. The often comedic characters explore the dynamics of a dysfunctional human society. Gallerists and collectors can contact her here.

Wanna go to an opening in Baltimore tomorrow?

Loyola College in Maryland’s Julio Art Gallery will host its annual student exhibition from Monday, April 6 – Wednesday, April 22. An opening reception will be held on April 6 from 4 – 6 p.m.

We're huge fans of student art, and this exhibit, the year’s most anticipated event for students and faculty in Loyola’s fine arts department, features more than 150 photographs, paintings, collages, ceramics and other works created by undergraduate students.

The gallery is open Monday – Friday from 11 a.m.–5 p.m. and Sundays from 1–4 p.m. It is closed on all university holidays. For more information, phone Gallery Director Kay Hwang at 410-617-2799.

MICA Thesis Exhibitions

I'm a big supporter of student art and the MICA Thesis Shows are some of the best places to discover new talent.

The next set of openings take place on Friday, April 10, 2009! The reception is from 5-7 PM in the Decker Gallery at MICA. Please come and enjoy good food, good company and good art at the Decker Gallery. While there check out Jenny Mullins' work.

Caterpillar installation by Jenny Mullins
Decker and Meyerhoff Galleries will be filled with work of graduating MFA students in the Hoffberger School of Painting, Photo, New Media, Graphic Design and The Rhinehardt School of Sculpture.

In addition, there are Thesis talks on Wednesday April 15th beginning at 1:00 PM in the Decker Gallery. Details here.

5 - 7 pm, Friday, April 10, 2009!
MICA, Decker Gallery .
Show Dates: April 10, - April 21, 2009.

Congrats

To my good friend Sara Pomerance, whose film screens tomorrow at 6PM at Anthology Film Archives in NYC.

Wanna go to a whole bunch of openings in DC tonight?

In fact you can go to a whole bunch of them, as it is First Fridays and the Dupont Circle area galleries are having their openings and extended hours.

While there make sure that you check out the Caos on F Street gallery collective to see David Harp: Photography, Michael Berman: Mixed Media and Matthew Falls: Furniture.

Also "A Cast of Characters" - A survey of kiln cast and lamp worked glass as seen by the instructors and studio artists of the Washington Glass School. Reception tonight, Friday, April 3, from 6 to 8 pm at Foundry Gallery (1314 18th Street, N.W., 1st Floor, between Massachusetts and N Streets, just off Dupont Circle).

Dawson on Space Unlimited

"Space, Unlimited" shows us just how terrifying it is to be an artist right now.

In nearly all the show's pieces -- and there is one self-assured exception -- we sense a waking terror at the long shadow of art history. With so many Titians and Mondrians behind us, how to carve the road forward? Beat them or join them?

Read Jessica's review here and then go to the lecture by my good friend and co-curator Laura Roulet on Sunday, April 5 starting at 3PM at the Art Museum of the Americas, located at 201 18th Street, NW in DC.

I'm not really terrified by the way...

Spring Break in NYC

By Robin Tierney

Here’s a cure for cabin fever: a recession-priced escape to Manhattan.

Look for a discount fare on the Amtrak Acela (tip: board the no-cellphone “Quiet Car”). Rate-surf for the New Yorker Hotel, an architectural classic one block from Penn Station. It completed a massive renovation in time for the economic bust, so you can get a bargain and colossal views. Next, buy a $74 CityPass that gets you VIP admission at a bunch of iconic venues, and a $7.50 FunPass for 24 hours of unlimited subway riding on days you don’t feel like walking, although walking’s easy from this central location.

Now, some quick takes from my long weekend of art-spotting.

Big venues are scrambling more than ever to lure more visitors. The Metropolitan Museum of Art hit the bell with its new “It’s Time We Met” ad campaign built on photos submitted by museum-goers. Winners got a couple hundred bucks and an annual pass. So if you dream of having work shown at the Met, instead of slaving over a hot canvas just click some whimsical scenes with your cellphone.

So I shouldn’t have been surprised when security sentry Guy Anglade told me that visitors have asked which way to the “We Met at the Met” exhibition. Anglade shook his head: “Forget Carravaggio, where are the Flickr photos?”

"Six-year-old emulating Edward Hopper! His own choice, said his mother."
By Robin Tierney
The supersized images are plastered on billboards, buses and fencing in front of the museum. Evidently in the social media age, there’s an unquenchable thirst for acts of cuteness executed against fine art. Imagine your life’s work functioning as a background for goof-shots.

One special exhibition revisited the debate that won’t die: “is photography art?” “Walker Evans and the Picture Postcard” arrested scores of onlookers during my visit with its documents of Americana arcana culled from the photographer’s collection of 9,000 postcards. For most of the cards, the photographers remain unknown, but several of Walker’s own postcard creations are on view. Through his 1936 experiments, he taught himself to crop for maximum clarity and intensity. Walker then worked decades to free this humble genre from the pigeon-hole of nostalgia and get respect as an art form.


Walker Evans (American, 1903–1975) View of Easton, Pennsylvania (variant), 1935 Postcard format gelatin silver print 8.6 x 13.7 cm (3 3/8 x 5 3/8 in.)
Whatever you call them, their allure overpowers: viewers studied b&w and hand-colored portraits of beach towns, main streets, train depots, river ports, windswept cliffs, hometown jubilees, fan-dancers, sanitarium patients. The alchemy of documentary and lyricism includes original Coney Island amusements (“Atlantis, the Sunken City”), San Francisco’s Valencia Hotel vaulted out into the street by an earthquake, even an electric chair at Sing Sing prison.

The postcard exhibition closes May 25; check out curator Jeff Rosenheim’s terrific catalog.

Across the hall, I caught the final day of “Reality Check: Truth and Illusion in Contemporary Photography.” Interesting selections included faux-to-journalist David Levinthal’s staged battle using toy soldiers, flour and plastic bags shot using a very narrow depth of field. Mark Wyse documents a squirrel ignored in the road after falling to his death in his “Marks of Indifference” series.

Downstairs, “Pierre Bonnard: The Late Interiors” offered an opportunity to observe the graphic shorthand of dots, dashes, loops, spirals and zigzags the modernist used to record images and to compose paintings.

Make time to meander in Central Park.

Just south of the park you can overdose on eccentricities all day at MoMA (AKA the Museum of Modern Art). Sleep-deprived, I lacked the patience to mine for meaning in the temporary exhibitions that left me plagued by an earworm of “You Gotta Have a Gimmick” (from “Gypsy”). Such as Klara Liden’s projects, partly due to the medium designation of “interventions.” And a performance artist’s self-imposed year-long confinement to a cell. “Four Decades of Contemporary Art” felt like a Target commercial on drugs.

The ennui evaporated once I remembered to fetch my MoMA audio tour.

It’s worth scaling the steps for the survey spotlighting Martin Kippenberger, who has lambasted the vagaries of modern culture in nearly every medium. Consider “Psycho buildings” and the sprawling recession-ready installation presenting job interview as sporting event, complete with bleachers and cheerleaders.

MoMA admission gets you a free all-day ticket to use when you wish at P.S.1, the contemporary/indie art haven two subway stops east in Queens.


"Cheerful New York Graffiti in Building near P.S. 1"
By Robin Tierney
Speaking of gimmicks, even art-grumps might crack a smile at the swimming pool that mixes false bottom with false illusions. Darker spectacles play out on dual-sided screens showing Kenneth Anger’s surrealistic brain dumps. His lyrical 40s-style b&w “Faux D’Artifice” held me spellbound while others crowded before flickering frames of Coney Island biker escapades in “Scorpio Rising.”

Jonathan Horowitz commanded a bunch of spaces with jarring works in a range of media. Player piano playing songs from the Who’s “Tommy” paired with disturbing clips from “The Miracle Worker” and other movies. Commentary amusing and sinister about politics and celebrity, the universal appeal of violence and scandal, and imperialism as foreign policy and entertainment from the Roman Empire onward. It’s interesting. Really.

Watching Yael Bartana’s videos of vehicles eerily coming to a stop on a dark highway made me contemplate the narcotic effect of film, especially after I nodded off for an uncertain duration until a lady guard told me it was closing time.

Here comes a mini blockbuster

From the PMA:

Celebrating the extraordinary life and work of Andrew Wyeth (1917-2009), this installation consists of two paintings and seven drawings by the local artist. Among these works are a sequence of studies leading to the creation of Wyeth’s tempera painting Groundhog Day that demonstrate the transformation and distillation of observation that characterizes his finest work. Wyeth and his wife, Betsy, donated these drawings to the Museum in July 2006 during the final weeks of the retrospective exhibition Andrew Wyeth: Memory & Magic.

Born in Chadds Ford, Pa., 30 miles southwest of Philadelphia, Wyeth was educated at home and apprenticed to his celebrated father, the painter and illustrator Newell Convers (N.C.) Wyeth. He made his solo debut at the Philadelphia Art Alliance in 1936, at the age of 18, and was launched on the national scene the following year with a sold-out exhibition at the Macbeth Gallery in New York. Building on that early success, Wyeth proved to be a painter of profound imagination, skill, and staying power across seven turbulent decades. Both admired and criticized for the tenacity of his realist approach and the unabashed emotion in his paintings, he produced some of the most famous and haunting images of the 20th century.

“All I want to do is paint,” said Wyeth, “and I paint the things I know best.” The everyday “things” found in and around his homes in Pennsylvania and Maine resonated with feeling for Wyeth, offering him pathways into memory and fantasy. His paintings of “things” were rarely straightforward, realistic descriptions: usually, the subjects have been simplified in the process of study, manipulated, and layered with personal associations, metaphors, and symbols that express larger themes of loss, death, and the passage of time.

Curator: Michael Taylor, The Muriel and Philip Berman Curator of Modern Art
Location: Gallery 119, first floor

Out of Order at MAP: Drive-by review

Yesterday I got to MAP's Out of Order fundraiser auction art drop off a little earlier than last year, but by the mid afternoon there were already 270 pieces of art hung on MAP's wall.

So it seems that they're well on their way to top last year's numbers of over 600 works of art auctioned off for MAP's benefit, with 50% of the silent auction proceeds going to the artist.

When I got there and was filling out my forms, I had to do a double take on the artist who came after me. He was Michael O'Sullivan's (WaPo art critic) doppleganger, little glasses and all.

On closer examination he was a little older, but whoever this gent was, he really looks like O'Sullivan.

I stopped staring and went back to filling out my paperwork.

"Do you think this piece is too pornographic to hang in this show?" I heard the doppleganger ask the young MAP attendant. I turned and looked.

He had a painting well wrapped; he unwrapped it and showed it to the young girl. She looked a little confused and told him that it was OK. He asked if she was sure.

She then referred him to Julie Ann Cavnor (I think), the young MAP Executive Director, who was sitting behind the gallery's desk.

I couldn't resist, so as he walked to the desk, I stood up and strategically placed myself by the side of the desk, pretending I was studying the piece hung behind it, so that I could steal a look at the potentially offending work of art.

The doppleganger came to Cavnor and asked the same question. She looked at it, and over her shoulder, so did I.

I didn't see her face, but heard her telling the guy that it was OK. She did this in a very nice way.

Former Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court Potter Stewart once wrote that that "hard-core pornography" was hard to define, but that "I know it when I see it."

I think that Stewart and I, plus all the MAP personnel and I suspect every person on this planet would agree that there was no pornography in the work that the doppleganger was so anxious about.

Puzzling in fact.

The piece appeared to be an oil painting, sort of a naive style mixture of abstract and representational elements, thick paint application and sort of a New Ageish kind of look to the (ahem) finished product.

No naked bodies that I could discern with my quick stolen glance, no erect penises, no penetration of any orifices, no sucking of any kind, no genitalia that was recognizable as such.

No pornography; at least not on planet Earth.

Bypassing this distraction, I hung my work and moved on to look at the work that had preceded it.

Here's what I liked and what should be acquired during the auction:

There's an untitled lovely seascape watercolor by Patrick Klugh (#220) that will go fast. There's also a gorgeous tempting graphite work by photographer Elena Volkova (#59 and titled "Waterlines) almost next to it. This piece is a very minimalist rendition, clearly influenced by Volkova's equally minimalist photography. It is one of the best pieces in the show.

On the opposite end of the drawing spectrum, there's a very strong charcoal drawing by Matt Bergsbauer titled "Distortion #4 (it's work number 94) that reminded me a lot of Uruguayan artist Javier Gil's work. I also liked McKenzie Lefstein's woodcut titled "Trash City." That piece is number 65.

Two interesting nudes, a little too high for me to determine their media (could be drawing or digital), but with a lot of Vargas and Currin in them were next to each other (numbered 171 and 169 respectively) and seemed to come from the same artist's hand, but identified them as Brenda Brookind and David Wilson.

Number 44, "Hold Both Handles," a cool collage by M. Jordan Tierney was also quite good and should get a decent set of bids, as will Melissa Sue Mauro's appropriation of Hello Kitty in her "Distant Childhood Memories" (#72).

Candace Linthicum's pastel of a nude woman, #27 showed powerful skills with that very difficult medium, adn I also liked Diane Burnett's wire sculpture titled "The Eternal Struggle."

Right around the area where the Burnett sculpture is located, the O'Sullivan doppleganger was now engaged in conversation with a tall gent, and had his painting (wrapped again) under his arm.

"Do you think it's too pornographic?" I heard him ask the gent as I passed by.

The last piece that I will mention in this early look is David Herman's oddly titled "Untitled, Ocean." A powerful oil painting of a seascape that will get many bids, but David, is it untitled or is the title "Ocean"?

As I headed out the door, the doppleganger had returned to the receiving desk, and was once again quizzing once of the volunteers about the pornographicity of his work.

Molly, the fair attendant taking care of him, was being very nice, and I restrained my desire to jump in and ahhhh... ask him which part of "no" was fuzzy to him.

The Auction & Gala starts at 8pm, Friday, April 3, 2009. Go buy some artwork!

Things are not always as they seem

This elusive concept haunts the periphery of three distinct artists’ works, and for the month of April, Projects Gallery (which also sells my work) has three simultaneous solo shows of disparate artists who are united under the umbrella concept of Perception : Reality.

Canadian Ross Bonfanti creates his popular "concreatures" (if you've ever been to an art fair anywhere, any art fair... you've seen them) by rescuing cute, stuffed animals from thrift stores and ripping the stuffing out of ‘em.

The empty vessels are then filled with concrete. Once cured, the fur skin is peeled away, leaving a disarming "concreature" in place. Textured with the underside of the fabric, with fur embedded in the exposed seams, these sculptures retain their plush appearance and original features, including button eyes and noses.

The resulting sculpture is a constant juxtaposition between the expected and the actual.

Philadelphian Lauren Lyons is widely regarded for her photography of bands in highly stylized shoots.

She has photographed artist portraits and cheeky scenarios for illustrious clients such as Interscope Records, PETA, HBO, and Philadelphia Magazine. Celebrated for her accentuation of the artifice of her subjects, Lyons’ work exemplifies a contraction; she captures the visual evidence of the veneer.

Her carefully constructed images provide elusive glimpses at the truth, enough to ‘whet the palette’, ultimately creating a composed stylized truth.

Fellow Cuban Alex Queral’s carved phonebooks usually receive the “how’d-he-do-that?” attention wherever they are exhibited. His lushly detailed carvings are created from the soft material of phonebooks. Using classical carving techniques on an unexpected material, Queral brings forth the individual from the faceless masses. Queral crafts recognizable visages, vaguely familiar but elusively foreign, as well as evoking his own cast of characters from the bound sheets of paper.

Projects Gallery presents these three divergent artists from different regions of the continent. Each will be given their own exhibition space to focus on the individual artist, but the thematic thread connects them all. Popular in their own right, Perception : Reality invites the viewer to discover what lays beyond the first impression of these three artists’ works.

Perception : Reality will be on display April 6 - 25, 2009. There will also be an artist reception on First Friday, April 6th from 6 - 9 p.m. The reception is free and open to the public. Projects Gallery is located at 629 N. 2nd St. in Philadelphia’s Northern Liberties section.

Wanna go to an opening in Frederick, MD this weekend?

The Delaplaine Visual Arts Education Center has an openning reception, on Saturday, April 4, 2008, 3-5 pm for married artists William “Skip” Lawrence and Diane Santarella, who have simultaneous shows in April, at the Delaplaine Visual Arts Education Center Center in Frederick, Maryland.

Large canvases with rich layers of color will fill the Delaplaine’s F&M Gallery in “Homecoming”, recent paintings by William “Skip” Lawrence. "States of Mind" , by Diane Santarella, is showing in the Delaplaine’s Gardiner Gallery. Santarella’s paintings explore the graphic, visual experience of meditation, migraines, dreamscapes, and the organization of mental minutiae.

Sandberg at Conner

In Washington, DC, Conner Contemporary celebrates their first decade with concurrent solo exhibitions of new work by three gallery artists: Erik Thor Sandberg, Dean Kessmann and Isaac Maiselman.

I consider Erik Thor Sandberg to be one of the best painters that I have ever met.

His natural skills and his work ethic combine to deliver an artist who is somewhat of a throwback to the great age of painting, but also an artist whose consummate skill is also married to a very contemporary dialogue.

Conner describes Sandberg as an artist who "calls forth the regenerative powers of nature in Cyclical Nature, his third solo exhibition with the Gallery. Viewing the artist's latest series of large oil paintings on canvas elicits as much pleasure as he evidently took in painting them. Freeing figures from interior settings of his previous compositions, Sandberg opened magnificent landscape vistas as sites for the enactment of life, death and regeneration. In his inventive allegories, people and animals negotiate a tenuous balance between knowledge and irrationality. Sandberg reconciled the unsettling eventualities of his protagonists' actions by grounding them in vital elements which assert nature's boundless forces of reclamation and rebirth."

Dean Kessmann furthers his exploration of unusual ways of seeing familiar architectural spaces in Architectural Intersections, his third solo exhibition with the Gallery. In his first solo exhibition with Conner, artist Isaac Maiselman critiques political exploitation of religion in the video installation Entre el Dios, El Diablo.

The openings are on Saturday, April 4 from 6-8PM. If you are a lover of great painting, do not miss this show.

AIPAD report

One dealer, when asked what she’d sold, replied: “Off the record? Nothing. On the record? Nothing.”

Kris Wilton reports in artinfo.com.

Do this tomorrow

Tomorrow, Maryland Art Place (MAP) will be accepting artwork for their annual Out of Order silent auction.

Last year, 425 artists participated in Out of Order and several hundred guests attended, making it one of Baltimore’s most important and memorable art events! Check out my drive-by review of that exhibit here. My Best in Show pick last year was Hadieh Shafie, who won one of the major Baker awards a few days ago! Does the kid have an eye or what?

Proceeds from artwork sales will be split 50/50 between MAP and the artists and will directly support MAP’s exhibitions and programs throughout the year. For submission guidelines, please view the artist prospectus here.

I plan to donate work once again.

Out of Order
Auction & Gala: 8pm, Friday, April 3, 2009

Hanging Dates & Times: 24 non-stop hours beginning 9am, Wednesday, April 1, 2009.

Artists' Websites: Janis Goodman



Janis Goodman is not only an accomplished artist, but also one of the key figures in the Greater Washington, DC art scene. Goodman is a Professor of Fine Art at the Corcoran College of Art + Design, and one of the Arts Reviewer for the PBS/WETA, Channel 26, Around Town program. Visit her website here.

Robin Rose at Hemphill

One of Washington's most influential artists, Robin Rose, opens at Hemphill Fine Arts in DC with a show titled Endeavor. The opening reception is Saturday April 4, 2009 from 6:30 pm - 8:30 pm. The show runs through May 30, 2009.

Wanna do some body painting this Friday in DC?

Here's a party you won't want to miss! The closing of the annual 2009 Erotic Art Show at MOCA DC Gallery will begin at 6 pm on April 3 with very special contests for models and body painting enthusiasts and prizes totaling over $1,000 in value.

Models from Virginia, Maryland, Pennsylvania, West Virginia, the District of Columbia, and as far away as Delaware and New Jersey will be on hand wearing the erotic costume of their choice. A panel of judges will select the top three costumes judged on both originality and erotic flare. First, second and third place winners in the model/costume competition will each be awarded an "in-studio," two-hour portfolio-building photoshoots with one of three of the best known DC-area fashion, glamour, and fine art photographers.

Each of the winners will also be awarded a one-hour make-up session with one of three top-notch professional make-up artists! MOCA DC is fortunate to have Jerry Harke of JR Harke Photography, Inc. (Annandale, VA), Mike Cary of Mike Cary Photography (Fredericksburg, VA), and John Korb from John Korb Photography (Fairfax, VA) donate two-hour photoshoots to the winners. And, the three top notch make-up artists are donating their services to the winners.

Winners of the body painting contests will be awarded a cash prize of $50 for the best body painting artist and $50 for the best human canvas.

MOCA DC is located at 1054 31st St. NW in Canal Square in Georgetown, Washington DC, right next to a few other galleries in the Canal Square complex. For details, email Dave Quammen at mocadc01@comcast.net or call 202.342.6230.

Barbaccia and others at Delaplaine

Joseph Barbaccia's "Resonance" opens Saturday, April 4th at the Delaplaine Visual Arts Education Center's Side Gallery in Frederick, Maryland. The show goes through May 17, 2009.

Included are 12 mixed media sculptures created by Joseph Barbaccia, supported by a portrait of the artist holding one of his works by painter Margaret Dowell. Barbaccia and Dowell set an artistic mirror up to the creative personality by reflecting and revealing the artist through their own work, as well as through another artist’s eyes.

At the Center's Kline Gallery, don't miss Linda Plaisted's "The Arborist: Roots, Resilience and Rebirth" (through April 26). Plaisted "layers her original photographs of the trees of Frederick County with textures from her paintings and collected ephemera. The result is a painterly series of work that share a lucid quality illustrating the natural cycle of birth, growth, death and rebirth."

And at the Gardiner Gallery you must also see "States of Mind" by Diane Santarella (through April 26). This series of paintings explores "the graphic, visual experience of meditation, migraines, dreamscapes, and the organization of mental minutiae. Santerella works in mixed media on paper and canvas with a distinct mark that recalls Zen calligraphy and graffiti. The resulting paintings are quiet, complex and subtly challenging."

The Delaplaine Visual Arts Education Center
40 South Carroll Street
Frederick, Maryland 21701

Reclaimed at Target

Reclaimed, an exhibition at Alexandria's Target Gallery focuses on everyday common objects that are reclaimed, recycled, reinterpreted and transformed into art.

From Marcel Duchamp’s “ready-mades” to Robert Rauschenberg’s “combines”, artists have been for years recycling and reclaiming everyday common objects and transforming them into something new and unique. This exhibition was open to all artists nationally and internationally to submit work that has been reclaimed and transformed into their own personal artistic statement. The jurors for this exhibition are gallery owners and collectors, a husband and wife team, my good friends Steven and Linda Krensky.

The exhibition opens on April 1 and goes through April 26, 2009. The opening reception is April 9, 6-8pm and there will be a gallery talk at 7pm.

Another art scam artist...

Body of her email (just as received) below:

Hello.
My name is faith i saw your profile today at (afonline.artistsspace.org) and i love it also became intrested in you,i will also like to know you more,and i want you to send an email directely to my email address so i can give you my picture for you to know whom i am.Here is my email address (faithmbia53@yahoo.co.uk) i believe we can move from here.my love distance or colour does not matter but love matters alot in life.i waiting to recive your lovely reply soon, Yours Love.
Miss faith

New head of PG County Arts Council

(Via Arts & Real Estate) I had heard that my good friend Lionell Thomas had a new job as the head of the Prince George's County Arts Council, but couldn't get the DC Arts Commission (where Lionell worked for many years) to confirm it, and couldn't find anything on the web until now.

Thomas will not only bring a wealth of expertise (much needed by the way) to that Arts Council, but something that money can't buy: energy and true enthusiasm to the arts and to the new job.

2008

I just handed all my 2008 tax paperwork to my CPA and it doesn't look pretty.

Surprisingly though, sales of my own artwork reached an all time high for me. I had not realized this until this week.

In 2008 I had one solo show (of my paintings) and participated in about half a dozen art fairs and about half a dozen group shows.

I seem to do really well in art fairs, where my work has always and consistently sold well in art fairs (although 2009 started with a bummer art fair).

Bottom line: in 2008 I managed to sell nearly 80 drawings! Nearly a third of these were sold in one New York fair.

Most of these were recent drawings, but I also sold a few older pieces to a collector and even several art school works.

2009 started roughly, but I've got some more art fairs already lined up, have work hanging currently in two shows, but I still need to work on a few gallery shows.

Portraitism

With challenging economic times persisting, people are spending more time at home and are looking for affordable luxuries. Portraiture, especially portraits of children is "The New Status Symbol", according to Boston Home Magazine

Absolutearts.com report here and Boston Home Mag's portraits here.

Blue period

Representatives of the arts industries told the House Education and Labor Committee hearing Thursday that the repercussions of the recession go well beyond musicians having to put down their guitars and get "real" jobs. The nonprofit art and cultural industry alone supports 5.7 million jobs and generates $166 billion in economic activity every year, they said.

Read the AP report by Jim Abrams here.

And your art for free

Forbes estimates the personal wealth of Theodore N. Lerner at $2.5 billion, but why spend your own money on art when the taxpayers will commission it for you? The DC Government dead-panned that the baseball art belongs to DC and is only on loan to the Lerners, an assertion worthy of a Larry Neal Award for fiction. The sculpture is site-specific, so saying the art is on loan is like saying you don’t own the fillings in your teeth, you only rent them.

Read Licht on "DC Buys Bronze Bobbleheads for Billionaires" here.

Openness for everyone else but us....

A federal judge in Manhattan has spoken out about a claimant's decision to keep mum about the details of a recent restitution case involving the Museum of Modern Art and the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum.

Last month, the two museums agreed to a settlement under which they would continue to own two Picasso paintings in their collections and would pay the heirs of the works' original owner, Paul von Mendelssohn-Bartholdy, to settle the dispute.

The heirs demanded that the terms remain confidential, a decision the judge, Jed S. Rakoff, questioned when the settlement was announced, citing the museums' public roles and the gravity of the case.

Read the artinfo.com report here.

Baker Artist Award Winners

Congrats to all the Baker Award winners, which were announced yesterday evening in Baltimore.

Carl Grubbs, who is the jazz band director at St. Paul's School in Brooklandville, Hadieh Shafie, a multimedia artist who works as director of career services at the Maryland Institute College of Art, and John Ruppert, a sculptor and chairman of the department of art at the University of Maryland, College Park, were the three winners of the Mary Sawyers Baker awards. The winners were selected through a private juried process and will each receive $25,000.

Another seven artists were named winners of $1,000 "Baltimore's Choice" awards, which were selected by public online voting.

You can see all the award winners here.

When countries go bad...

Yale University has gone to court in a preemptive attempt to protect its claim to an 1888 Van Gogh painting in its collection, Business Week reports.

“The Night Café,” which entered the university collection in 1961 through a bequest from alumnus Stephen Carlton Clark, once belonged to the great Russian collector Ivan Morozov. Russia nationalized his holdings during the revolution and later sold the work.

According to Yale’s suit, Pierre Konowaloff, a Paris-based man purporting to be Morozov’s grandson, last year asserted through a lawyer that he owned the painting and sent a draft complaint of a federal suit. Konowaloff argues that the Soviet nationalization of property was illegal and that the painting is the rightful property of his great-grandfather and his estate.

Read the Artinfo.com report here.

Earlier when I discussed that fact that all the nationalized stolen Cuban artwork which has subsequently been sold by the Cuban dictatorship (mostly to French museums) would one day be subject to claims by the rightful owners, I completely forgot about Russia's earlier nationalizing theft of privately owned artwork which was then subsequently sold by the evil empire.

And in this wide open arena where governments left and right are suing institutions for the return of their national patrimonies, the writing is on the wall.

That's the way you do it...

Sotheby’s has cut CEO William F. Ruprecht’s salary for 2009 and eliminated his cash bonus for 2008 after a sharp fall in the house's profits...

Details here.

Mitch Cope's Amazing Project

Foreclosed house? No problem! Let an artist deal with it.

Read what Mitch Close is doing here.

Mellema on Imboden

Kevin Mellema reviews Connie Imboden at Heineman-Myers Contemporary. Read the review here.

International Arts Journalism Institute in the Visual Arts

From AU:

What: International Arts Journalism Institute in the Visual Arts sponsored by the National Endowment for the Arts and the U.S. State Department
When: Friday, June 12th through Friday, June 26th
Where: American University, Washington, D.C.
Deadline: April 10th, 2009

American University Museum at the Katzen Art Center is pleased to announce the first National Endowment for the Art’s International Arts Journalism Institute in the Visual Arts. This program will provide mid-career art critics and writers the opportunity to participate in a two-week intensive institute at American University in Washington, DC. The institute, which runs from Friday, June 12th through Friday, June 26th, will consist of writing workshops, lectures, and travel to major East Coast art venues.

Up to twenty-four writers will be selected, twelve from the United States and twelve from the Middle East, Northern Africa, Asia, and other countries to participate in the institute. The selection will be based on the individual’s experience in critiquing or reporting on the visual arts through a recognized media outlet. Applicants should provide a brief cover letter explaining their experience in the arts, a resume, and a published writing sample.

Participants will enjoy a two-week expense-paid trip to Washington, DC, including airfare, lodging, meals, writing workshops and regional travel to museums and galleries. Applications must be received no later than April 10th, 2009.

Please email or mail applications to Attn: Arts Journalism Institute: visualartsinstitute@american.edu

American University Museum
4400 Massachusetts Ave. NW
Washington, D.C. 20016-8031

Contact:

Jack Rasmussen, Director and Curator
American University Museum
4400 Massachusetts Ave., NW
Washington, DC 20016-8031
202-885-2489
visualartsinstitute@american.edu

Is that a great opportunity for art writers or what?