El Rey

Con dinero y sin dinero.
Yo hago siempre lo que quiero.
Y mi palabra es la ley.
No tengo trono ni reina.
Ni nadie que me comprenda.
Pero sigo siendo el rey.

Hoyt's Mid Atlantic

Once again it was my honor and pleasure and hard work to jury my fellow artists; this time for the 2012 Hoyt Institute of Fine Arts Mid Atlantic Art Competition in Pennsylvania.

And like I've noted before, even though I’ve juried, organized, curated or otherwise passed judgment on my fellow artists around 300 times in the last few decades, the process of jurying an art show never ceases to amaze me by both how individually difficult each one is and how inspiring each one becomes.

As a juror, and when done properly, the task of selecting artwork is immensely hard; made harder by the fact that a juror must also reject artwork and artists. More often than not, some rejected artwork floats back and forth between acceptance and rejection – there are variables that dictate how many pieces are included and how the downsizing of a show (it is almost always downsizing) tugs at the visual arts heart.

The Hoyt Mid Atlantic jurying process was an especially difficult show to put together. Why? Because there were so many powerful entries competing for limited wall space and because the vast majority of submissions reflected an amazing variety of genres, media, approaches, ideas and processes.

There was mastery in painting; plenty of that and from plenty of diverse approaches! Bruce Erickson subtle and intelligent approach to composition, light and homage to the classics is vastly different from James O’Malley’s brutally hyper-realistic take on our surrounds. 

They are both the result of artists flexing very powerful technical skills married to even stronger artistic visions.

Carol Wallace’s breathtaking watercolor takes a mundane subject (Pears) and elevates it to a sublime position as only a refreshing and difficult watercolor can do. 

And Ohad Cadji’s lusty photograph is a triumph of the human body’s never-ending ability to engage and warm our mind and body.

For those of you invited to exhibit, I send a well done! It was a tough competition and you should feel pleased and honored. For those artists whose work was rejected, as an artist myself, I your juror shares that experience with you and I know that it is never easy to accept. However, I also pass that as a juror and artist, it is clear to me that one juror’s vision and approach is just that: one juror! Keep on creating!

I have been honored to put my name to this show, and I thank all of you for it.

Go to this tomorrow...

Pencil this in and if you want to know the history, oddity and meaning of the terms "Hispanic" and "Latino", then come to the lecture as well...

Fall for the Arts at AU

On September 15, 2012, the curious and creative will be conducting an orchestra, making a collage with a living artist as a Muse, learning iconic jazz dance moves, and creating music out of thin air.

Fall for the Arts, a unique celebration of the Arts at AU, will feature an afternoon of dynamic classes and hands-on workshops capped off with an elegant reception and live auction of works by prominent artists. The afternoon classes span a wide-range of activities including creating sound effects, acting Shakespeare, Hindustani tabla drumming, and stage combat, to name just a few. Proceeds from the event will benefit the Arts at AU.
 

There is also a very cool art auction with some excellent artworks up for auction at some very good starting prices, including an amazing Manon Cleary graphite drawing at a starting price of just $2K. Check out the artwork up for auction here or plaease browse below or use the links below to review available works—and see Artist Bios (PDF):

Lisa Montag Brotman Manon Cleary Joan Danziger Willem de Looper Alan Feltus Robert Gates (two artworks) Sam Gilliam Carol Goldberg

Tom Green Micheline Klagsbrun Edith Kuhnle Lou Stovall Robin Rose Ben L. Summerford Sharon Wolpoff

Come celebrate the Arts at American University. The event is open to the public. Admission is $50 for the entire event.

Register Now for 2012

Worshiping at the Altar of Modern Art

Herewith the latest work in my marriage of drawing/painting with embedded electronic components. In this piece, titled Nude Artist Worshiping at the Altar of Modern Art, the embedded electronic screen plays a Powerpoint show of what most lay people think of when the term "modern art" is employed in a conversation.

This is a charcoal and watercolors piece, which now begins to see me add a little color to my drawings. It is done on 12x16 inches, 300 weight acid free, pH-balanced Rising paper.

See if you can figure out which artists are being homaged in the following screenshots of the work:

And below a couple of shots depicting me in the creation of the "Jackson Pollock" piece to the left of the work...

Courage Unmasked Tomorrow!

VIP Gala on Wednesday, September 12, 2012, 6:30 pm to 9:30 pm
The Katzen Arts Center at American University
4400 Massachusetts Avenue, NW, Washington, DC 20016

Tickets required

Lest We Forget

"Studio View, 9/11"
Oil on Canvas c. 9/11/2001 by David FeBland

WPA Artists' Directory

CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS

EARLY BIRD DEADLINE: September 14, 2012, 5:00pm
FINAL DEADLINE: October 12, 2012, 5:00pm

Register for the 2013 - 2014 Artist Directory

Published bi-annually, this four-color, 8½ x 5½ inch directory is the definitive listing of established and emerging contemporary artists throughout the Washington region. It is widely used by galleries, curators, art consultants, and art patrons. Copies are distributed to selected art critics and other members of the press, and to museums both within and outside of the region. The 2013 - 2014 Artist Directory will be published in the spring of 2013, and will be available for sale on the WPA website and at select area retail locations at the price of $9.95.

Each participating artist will be featured on a full page (8½ x ½ inches). The page will include the artist's name, a color digital image of their work, their studio address and phone number, email address, web address, categories to describe their work and studio practice, and their gallery affiliation.

All current WPA members are eligible for publication in the Artist Directory. There is an additional participation fee that includes a copy of the Artist Directory. Participants who submit before September 14, 2012 can pay a discounted early registration fee of $65. After September 14, the registration fee increases to $75. The final registration deadline is October 12, 2012. No submissions will be accepted after this date. 

Registration for the 2013 - 2014 Artist Directory will be handled exclusively through WPA's website.

Each participating artist can upload one image to be featured on their page. Images must be submitted as .eps or .tif files in CMYK format. They must be 300dpi and as close as possible to, but no smaller than 6 inches on the longest side. If you have any questions regarding the 2013 - 2014 Artist Directory or any issues with registration, please contact Christopher Cunetto, Membership Manager, at ccunetto@wpadc.org or 202-234-7103 x 2.

Washington Society of Landscape Painters

While temperatures hit the 100-degree mark this summer, Washington, DC, area painters were donning hats and sunscreen and grabbing their outdoor easels in a quest to create paintings for their 100th birthday party celebration.

One of the oldest plein air painting groups in the USA, the Washington Society of Landscape Painters started out as an all male clubcalled "the Ramblers." Limited to 40 active members, it now includes both male and female artists who pursue their profession locally, nationally, and internationally.

Visitors will see both large and small oil, watercolor, pastel, and acrylic landscapes displayed by member artists at the McGuire Woods gallery at the Lorton Workhouse, at 9601 Ox Road in Occoquan, VA.  For more information: (www.workhousearts.org/visual-arts).

The public is invited to a free reception on Saturday, September 29, from 5-7 pm.  Come early (10-noon) to watch WSLP artists painting nearby in the historic town of Occoquan. The show runs from Friday, September 28 through Sunday, October 21, 2012.

Gallery hours are Wednesday through Saturday 11 am-7 pm, and Sunday from 12-5 pm.  For more information, send email to barbaranuss@wslp.org.

Courage Unmasked This Wednesday

On September 12th the second Courage Unmasked auction will take place at American University's Katzen Arts Center. For that event, together with several other artists from around the nation, I was invited to create a mask for the fundraising auction, and for quite a while I have been refining a three dimensional version of my embedded video drawings to make them jump into the fourth dimension with a mask.

In essence, more than 50 artists from all over the country created fine art by transforming radiation masks formally worn by HNC patients to position and immobilize their heads during treatment. These unique masterpieces will be auctioned at the Gala on the 12th. Money from mask sales and admissions will fund 9114 HNC, dedicated to helping those in financial need during and after treatment.

 911 4 HNC means “Help for Head and Neck Cancer.” This is a unique fund dedicated to granting financial aid directly to patients who have or had head and neck cancer (HNC). Unlike many other foundations, theirs does not give dollars to research.They support only individuals and their families in the locations where money is raised.

Improving the quality of life for those with head and neck cancer is the foremost goal of this endeavor. The 9114HNC fund receives money from the auction of fine art sculpture by artists who transform radiation masks worn by head and neck cancer patients. The money raised goes directly to individual patients who are struggling to make ends meet, whether it’s for taxi fare to the hospital or groceries.

Date: September 12, 2012at AU's gorgeous Katzen Art Museum.

Start Time: 6:30 pm
End Time: 9:30 pm
Buy your tickets here.

Below is my piece that you will see at the Katzen. This is titled "Eyes of  Frida Kahlo" and consists of an assembly of two small LCD screens embedded within the mask and each playing two separate Powerpoint presentations; each has 68 embedded images of Kahlo's self portraits.

The focus of the piece is to envision triumph over pain, as the brave people who have to undergo radiation therapy for head and neck cancer (HNC) have to do.

Eyes of Frida Kahlo (front view)

Eyes of Frida Kahlo, left view

Eyes of Frida Kahlo, right view

Eyes of Frida Kahlo, seen in a dim light

Eyes of Frida Kahlo, seen in the dark

Opening This Friday

Pencil this in and if you want to know the history, oddity and meaning of the terms "Hispanic" and "Latino", then come to the lecture as well...

Congrats!

The Trawick Prize: Bethesda Contemporary Art Awards is a visual art prize produced by the Bethesda Arts & Entertainment District through the amazing generosity of Mrs. Carol Trawick. The prize honors artists from Maryland, Washington, D.C. and Virginia. 

 

A couple of nights ago, the annual juried competition awarded $14,000 in prize monies to selected artists and features the work of the finalists in a group exhibition.

Winners 

Best in Show, $10,000 - Lillian Bayley Hoover, Baltimore, MD
2nd Place, $2,000 - David D'Orio, Mt. Rainier, MD
3rd Place, $1,000 - Dean Kessmann, Washington, D.C.
Young Artist Award, $1,000 - Hannah Walsh, Richmond, VA 

 

Can I pick them or what? I think this is now 4 out of the last five years that I've predicted the top prizewinner! That's Carol Trawick in the photo with the 2012 Best in Show winner Lillian Bayley Hoover and Catherine Leggett.

Congrats to all the prizewinners!
   

The 2012 exhibition will run through September 29 at Gallery B, located at 7700 Wisconsin Ave., Suite E, Bethesda, MD 20814.

Chicomms Censor Shanghai

This is what happens when old Communists are still in charge:

Censorship of political content has long been a feature of the Chinese art world under Communist Party rule, but gallery owners and artists at SH Contemporary were told on Thursday that city officials were being extra careful ahead of a once-a-decade leadership transition set to take place in Beijing next month.
“It’s especially sensitive this year because the 18th Party Congress will start soon,” said a fair organizer after trying to convince another booth to remove a painting that censors didn’t like because it appeared to include images of Mao Zedong.

The last-minute removal of art works, some of which had passed initial vetting for the fair, underscores the party’s reach and the pressures building in the political system ahead of the secretive conclave that will anoint new leaders.

Pictures of Mao? Oh No! God forbid that an artist actually show the image of one of history's greatest mass murderers... Read the whole article here.

A week from now...

Pencil this in and if you want to know the history, oddity and meaning of the terms "Hispanic" and "Latino", then come to the lecture as well...

DC to host photography fair

My good friend Kathleen Ewing, whose iconic photography gallery has been the standard bearer for fine art photography in the DMV (and the nation in general) for decades, is launching a satellite photography fair to coincide with Connersmith's (e)merge art fair.

This is good for the DMV art scene... the more art fairs the better... and if (e)merge can continue to spawn satellites, that is a sign of success... now all that we need to do is to have the region with one of the world's highest concentration of wealth (I'd guess 25% of the 1% lives around here) start buying some original art to hang on their walls instead of framed [fill in the hoity toity college of your choice] posters or vintage movie French or Italian movie posters of old Cary Grant movies.

The fair will feature more than fifteen established fine art photography galleries from across the United States, with representative samples from their gallery inventories. An extraordinary range of photographic images—from 19th-Century Images to cutting-edge contemporary visions—will be on display and available for purchase.

LOCATION
2801 Sixteenth Street, NW (former residence of the Ambassador of Spain) Columbia Heights neighborhood, accessible by Metro and major bus routes

 

HOURS
Friday, October 5: Opening Night Preview (by invitation only)
Saturday, October 6: Noon to 7pm
Sunday, October 7: 11am to 5pm

A Saturday morning panel discussion, "On Collecting Photography" will be held from 11am to 12 noon. All weekend events are FREE and open to the public.

Seen on Univision

A few minutes ago I was dumbfounded when, while viewing an interview on Univision's national news show with a nice lady from the Puente Movement, in the background I noticed a large framed photo of Ernesto Guevara de la Serna Lynch, the man known to most of the world as Che and to most Cubans as El Chacal de La Cabaña.

The Puente Movement:  "Puente Arizona is part of the global movement for migrant justice and human rights. As a grassroots community-based group Puente promotes justice, non-violence, interdependence and human dignity. Puente Arizona works to empower the community and build bridges by working collaboratively with various organizations and individuals."

So I decided to write this organization with such good goals, a note about the psychopath who adorns their walls: 

As an artist and writer I've spent years researching and creating work, both written (I've written an online bio of Che as a young man) and visual arts about this complex man. I have read all his diaries and writings and speeches and interviews, and from his own words comes out a RACIST psychopathic personality which I've discovered that most people are not aware of.

Don't listen to me if you are the types of people who are easily seduced by dogma and what Hollywood and ignorant Latin American and European icon-makers have made of the myth of Che. I ask that you listen to Che from his own diaries and memories - if after reading what Che has written, said or done, you still believe that any decent human being who is struggling for the rights of others should have a poster of Che as a positive image, then you are way beyond logic - Read on:

On Mexicans: "Mexicans are a band of illiterate Indians."

On Blacks: "The black is indolent and a dreamer; spending his meager wage on frivolity or drink; the European has a tradition of work and saving, which has pursued him as far as this corner of America and drives him to advance himself, even independently of his own individual aspirations."

On Black Cubans: "We're going to do for blacks exactly what blacks did for the revolution. By which I mean: nothing."

On Homosexuals: Che played a principal role in setting up Cuba's first labor camp in the Guanahacabibes region in western Cuba in 1960-1961, to confine people who had committed no crime punishable by law, revolutionary or otherwise. This "crimes" involved homosexuality, drinking, vagrancy, disrespect for authorities, laziness and playing loud music. Che defended that initiative in his own words: “We only send to Guanahacabibes those doubtful cases where we are not sure people should go to jail… people who have committed crimes against revolutionary morals, to a lesser or greater degree.... It is hard labor, not brute labor, rather the working conditions there are hard.” Che's homophobia is expressed in the poster placed at the entrance to the forced labor camp, where homosexuals were confined, which read:  “The work will make you men”', replica of the slogan “The work will make you free” used in the Nazi concentration camps. It was intended to correct the homosexual behavior applying rigorous punishments with the intention of modifying this social deviation, which does not constitute a crime punishable by law.

On the thousands of executions that took place in 1959: In an appearance on Channel 6 of Cuban TV in February 1959, Che declared that "at La Cabaña all executions are carried out under my express orders.” He adds: “It is necessary to work at night, the man offers less resistance at night than during the day. In the nocturnal calm the moral resistance is weakened. Do the interrogations at night. It is not necessary to make many inquiries to shoot somebody. What one need to know is if it is necessary to shoot him. Nothing more. You should always give the accused the possibility to do his discharge before executing him. And this means, understand me well, that the accused should always be executed, without mattering which has been his discharge. Make no mistake about this. Our mission doesn’t consist in giving procedural guarantees to anyone, but to make the revolution, and we must begin by the same procedural guarantees.”

On the right of workers to strike: In a TV speech June 26, 1961, when he was Minister of Industries Che said: “The Cuban workers have to start being used to live in a collectivism regimen and by no means can they go on strike.”

I support what you are trying to accomplish - but I am sickened to see that you do it under the image of a murdering psychopath - I blame it on ignorance on your part, and hope that you can do your own research and then put that image of Che where it belongs, the garbage bin.

Un abrazo,

Lenny Campello

 Five gets you ten that they ignore this email and go on trying to do good things under the banner of a murdering racist whose image has been redone by 60 years of lies. I hope that I am wrong.

Debbie and Antonio

Congresswoman Wasserman Schultz: "What are you here for?"

Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa: "I'm getting fitted for a hearing aid"

September 6

Today is my birthday, and as a proud former Naval officer, I am pleased by some key naval historical references to this day in history.

- In 1492, Christopher Columbus sailed from La Gomera in the Canary Islands (where my maternal grandmother came from), his final port of call in the Old World before crossing the Atlantic for the first time and reaching the New World... of course, now we know that the Vikings and Basque fishermen had made the crossing hundreds of times prior to his voyage, but his is the one that counted!

- In 1522, La Victoria, the only surviving ship of Fernando Magellan's courageous expedition, returns to the sherry-growing town of San Lúcar de Barrameda in Andalucia, Spain, thus becoming the first seagoing vessel to circumnavigate the world.

- In 1620, the Pilgrims sail from Plymouth, England, on the Mayflower to settle in Massachusetts.

Potomackers: Wanna go to an opening tomorrow?

Seen on Univision...

I was commenting to a friend that it is clear to the most casual observer that Spanish language TV stations, and more specifically (here in the US) Univision, have a very clear and machista attitude on how they cast and present their weather forecasters (most of which are young women), such as Univision's muy bonita Jackie Guerrido, as this image search of Univision's famous weather lady yields.

Then out of the blue I received a mass email which was titled "Why God Sends Rain to Latin America and not to the Middle East‏" - The email consists of a collage of images of female weather presenters from various TV stations across Latin America and closes with three images of weather newscasters in Middle Eastern countries.

I'll let you be the judge, but this re-affirms what I have been droning about for quite a while here, and that is how I've noticed how Spanish language media in the US (and I guess Latin America) gets away with stuff like this obvious objectification of female news staff that would get your local TV station picketed left and right.

And, ahem... the mass email ends with "Any Questions?"