New co-op in Arlington

Bardia is developing a new artist's co-op in Arlington, Virginia. He has his sights set on taking over the old Wilson School and is looking for several artists and teachers and studio artists to be included in his proposal.

Find more info in this post here, and if you're looking for studio space in Arlington, please reply here with a link to your information on the internet. He's searching for a number of emerging and established artists. If you have teaching experience that's a bonus!

One Day DC Art Event

On Friday January 5th, 2007 Art Outlet, Walnut Street Development, artdc.org and Arlington Independent Media (AIM) will partner together and produce a really cool art event for the Greater DC area.

They will have fire juggling, live bands, aerial dance performance, video projections and improv theatre lined up and yes, visual artists can participate as well.

Starting Jan 5th, they will have a sign-up button on their website www.artoutlet.org. For a very modest fee of $12.99, you can hang and display your art. No sales commission; no jurors.

It will be on the first come first serve basis. They will accept 100 artists. The art will be displayed salon style.

Read more here.

Job in the Arts

Browne Academy on Telegraph Road in Alexandria, Virginia is looking for a "long term" sub for their middle school art program (grades 5 - 8) beginning mid January. There are two classes each of grades 6, 7, and 8 and one of grade 5. The classes for each grade are back to back (8 am-9 am and 9am -10 am) on the same day.

Browne has a six day rotation schedule, with art classes on four of the six mornings. The days are designated on the school calendar. This is an ideal position for a working artist because it leaves most of the day for your own studio practice. If interested, please call Stephanie Kozemchak at 202.431.6447 or e-mail skozemchak@browneacademy.org or Alex Clain, head of the middle school, at AClain@browneacademy.org.

Melissa Ichiuji at Irvine

Opening January 13, 2007 is DC area artist Melissa Ichiuji's first solo at Irvine Contemporary in DC with a show titled "Nasty Nice: New Sculptures" from January 13 - February 18, 2007.

I'm a big fan of her work and thus I am really looking forward to this debut!

At the Hirshhorn

The Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden has announced its exhibitions schedule through 2009 and it includes two well-known DC area artists no longer with us: Morris Louis and Anne Truitt.

"Morris Louis Now: An American Master Revisited" will be on exhibition Sept. 20, 2007–Jan. 6, 2008, and then the first major exhibition of Truitt's work since her death in 2004, "Anne Truitt" , from Oct. 2008–Jan. 2009, is a full survey of the sculpture and two-dimensional works made during the artist's 40-year career. The exhibition is organized by assistant curator Kristen Hileman and will be accompanied by the first complete monograph on the artist.

Dorkartistry

The WaPo's Rachel Beckman Arts Beat column reports on the most recent Dorkbot DC meeting.

Beckman writes mostly about Paras Kaul, the DC area electronic artist known in the art scene as the "Brain Wave Chick."

A reader who was present at the last Dorkbot meeting tells me that the stuff that Kaul does on computers "is totally over my head, but she said her father was a hypnotist and took her into altered states then he died when she was 14 — she said 'he programmed me.'

So at the age of 14 she started studying altered states and brain waves because she desperately wanted to get back to 'these places' that her father took her. She then met the dolphin man John Lilly and did work with him (the movie Altered States is about him).

Brainchick can do remote viewing when she's in sensory depravation tanks but she claims she has only ever remotely viewed the planet Mars, and she says she knows there is life there but it is inside the planet and she has gone down into these tunnels and catacombs.

Brainwave chick also says she was taught to envision the future and most of the stuff she is working with today -- like her presentation at Dorkbot gets actualized 10 years in the future.

I was really curious when she said she 'envisions' the future -- did she mean she does remote viewing or was she just talking about the law of attraction and feeling and creating her future? She said she only does 'remote viewing in the sensory depravation tanks.'

In her presentation she said she envisions the future and she said we need to learn how to be better humans or learn how to enhance our undeveloped human qualities in three areas: non verbal communication, remote viewing, and self-healing"

The next Dorkbot DC meeting is at 7 p.m. Jan. 24 at Provisions Library, 1611 Connecticut Ave. NW. Free. or call 202-299-0460 for more info.

Practice, practice... practice

"Art is all about craftsmanship"

Federico Fellini

Artful Evening At the Warehouse

Warehouse Gallery in DC invites all of you to ring in the New Year at ArtRomp 19. Come by anytime on December 31st and or spend the evening. See the work of 35 local artists featuring painting, sculpture, video, photography, performance, and music (exhibit through Jan 27, 2008). There will be an early free picnic in the parking lot and late ArtRomp snacks.

Son of a Bush and Lobsterboy will perform later in the evening. Tickets required - see their website for info.

Art Romp: 19
Dec. 31, 2006, 7-2 am Free
Warehouse
1021-7th Street, N.W.
Washington, DC
www.warehousetheater.com
(202) 783-3933

And yet another congratulations

To DC area artist Rochleigh Z. Wholfe, who was was awarded first place in Transforming Identity, the Women's Caucus for the Arts, Annual Regional Juried Show. The show presented at the Third Floor Gallery in St. Louis, Missouri, and was juried by Evelyn Astegno from Venice, Italy.

Art Donors Balk at Tax Changes

Arts benefactors and institutions are disgruntled about a tax provision they claim will discourage donations of art, and they blame Charles E. Grassley (R-IA), outgoing chair of the Senate Finance Committee, for changing a rule that had benefited donors and museums alike...

Read the entire post from the Foundation Center here.

Congratulations

To DC area artist and writer Rosetta DeBerardinis, who has been selected as the Liquitex Artist of the Month for January 2007.

From personal experience, let me tell you that this is one of the toughest all-around painting competitions out there!

WOW!

Application process is ongoing and it offers an opportunity for painters, working primarily in acrylics, to be featured on their website. Artists' work and bio are prominently featured. Any sales are handled directly with the artist, no commissions taken. No entry fee. For details, contact:

Liquitex Artist of the Month
Liquitex Artist Materials
11 Constitution Ave.
P.O. Box 1396, Piscataway, NJ 08855-1396

Update on Eakins

CultureGrrl's blog is without a doubt one of the best national source for insider info on a lot of museum news, and she reports that:

Jeffrey Snyder, major gifts officer of the Philadelphia Museum, told CultureGrrl today that the $68-million fundraising campaign for Eakins' "The Gross Clinic" is "well over 50% there."

That still leaves a lot of cash to raise in one week. So why is Anne d'Harnoncourt, director of the museum, so "optimistic," as quoted in today's Philadelphia Inquirer? She herself has been coy in answering press questions about how much has been raised---a strange posture for someone trying to build up a sense of public urgency about the Dec. 26 deadline.

But Snyder told me her confidence is based on the museum's discussions with "a lot of our nearest and dearest" (translation: "big donors"). The campaign, he said, is in the process of "closing some gifts."

Read the entire post here.

Congratulations

To Bailey, whose photograph Theodore Roosevelt - An American Terrorist has been selected as the photo of the day by the British newspaper The Guardian.

The Picts and the Power of the Web

Some of you are aware of my deep interest in the artwork and culture of the original people of Scotland, known to history by their nickname (given to them by the Romans): The Picts.

This interest started in childhood when I used to devour sword & sorcery genre books authored by Texan pulp writer and poet Robert E. Howard.

It reached a burning interest when I lived in Scotland from 1989-1992 and discovered the real culture of the Picts.

In 1994 I created the internet's first website dedicated to Pictish culture, and three years later, as a result of that website, I was a "talking head" in a television special on the art of tattooing called "Women of the Ink" and done by TBS. I discussed, and proved on the air, the written (and apparently unknown to most scholars) third century evidence of Pictish tattooing.

Between 1993 and 2000 I visited Scotland regularly, and studied the many remaining Pictish standing stones and stone circles, and associated Pictish art, and in 1997 I created a series of drawings based on the symbols depicted on many of the stones.

Those drawings and prints from the drawings were then placed online here, and over the years I've been selling a few here and there.

In 2003 I had a solo show at Fraser Gallery titled "Pictish Nation," which married my interest in figurative drawing with Pictish symbology.

"Pictish Warrior" Charcoal on Paper by F. Lennox Campello
A few days ago, I bitched about the National Geographic's apparent lack of interest in anything Pictish, and now, suddenly I have been contacted by the National Geographic Society's television people, which is apparently filming a documentary, and wants to use some of my 1997 Pictish drawings in their documentary.

Congratulations

To Elizabeth F. Spungen, who has been announced as the new Executive Director of The Print Center in Philadelphia effective December 1, 2006.

Opportunity for Virginia artists

Deadline: February 5, 2007

By Our Heirs Forever: New Waves 2007 - On view March 29 - June 18 2007. Call to Artists "By Our Heirs Forever" is a thematic, juried exhibition of contemporary Virginia artists working in all visual arts media.

The selected works will be shown in the Contemporary Art Center of Virginia's galleries to coincide with the "Magna Carta" exhibition in spring 2007. All of the works in the exhibition will illuminate moments in history when individual rights and freedom were extended to include an ever expanding citizenry.

The exhibition will include the 1215 Lincoln Cathedral exemplar of Magna Carta, a Dunlap broadside of the Declaration of Independence, James Wilson's original draft of the U.S. Constitution, a Lincoln ­signed copy of the Emancipation Proclamation, and artifacts from the Civil Rights and Women's Suffrage movements.

Submissions will be juried by Andrea Douglas, Ph.D., Curator of Collections and Exhibitions from University of Virginia Art Museum and Jack Rasmussen, Ph.D., Director and Curator of the American University Museum at the Katzen Arts Center, Washington, D.C.

The curatorial department at the Contemporary Art Center of Virginia (CAC) encourages conceptually driven works that provoke thoughtful viewer responses to the contemporary evolution of individual rights and freedom. Applicants are invited to open new avenues for discussion about the contemporary interpretation of the "rights of man." Works will be positioned as the continuation of punctuated points in the history of this dialogue. A very wide range of perspectives presented by these documents and philosophies are acceptable. New Media, Video, and Installation submissions are welcome. Magna Carta's tenets are posted online for your review at this website.

Tate Britain Triennial Exhibition 2009 seeks curator

Below is the actual call (from the Artists Foundation list server) for curators to apply:

Who’s making a difference in contemporary British art today? Who’s influencing others? And how do you make sense of it? Taking up a prominent new, senior role within the Tate Britain team, you’ll answer these questions with authority, intellectual depth and visionary flair, and have a highly visible impact at the heart of Tate. As the Curator of the 2009 Triennial exhibition, you’ll frame the zeitgeist in a thought-provoking yet accessible way to create an agenda-setting show of national and international significance. For Tate’s diverse public audience, it will be a show to remember. Alongside the Triennial, your curatorial acumen will be crucial in shaping the way in which Tate Britain represents contemporary art as it happens.

You could currently be working anywhere in the world, but your exemplary curatorial record and experience of leading large-scale projects will speak for itself. Your fresh insight into contemporary British art will spark debate amongst artists, critics and the wider public, and match our ambitions for Tate Britain’s contemporary programme.

For an informal discussion, please contact Judith Nesbitt, Chief Curator Tate Britain on +44 (0)20 7887 8960. For a full job description and to apply, visit our website. Ref: 6122/TB.

Our jobs are like our galleries. Open to all.

The PDF file with all the details is here.

Maybe the Sopranos?

Marcel Duchamp was once asked how many people he thought really liked avant-garde art. Duchamp answered: "Oh, maybe ten in New York, and one or two in New Jersey."

Rosetta DeBerardinis on "Aging" at Pyramid Atlantic

Well-known DC area artist and writer Rosetta DeBerardinis makes her debut today and will start covering the Greater DC area art galleries and museums on a regular basis for Mid Atlantic Art News. Rosetta is not only an accomplished artist, but also a well-known presence in the DC area art scene, and a widely published writer.

Gail Rebhan’s "Aging" at Pyramid Atlantic

By Rosetta DeBerardinis

It is rare that I want to see an exhibit twice, especially one on view outside of a major museum. But, local conceptual artist Gail Rebhan’s photo exhibit “Aging” currently on view at Pyramid Atlantic is so compelling that I crawled back to Georgia Avenue yesterday to see it again. It was well worth the trip.

Timing is everything, even in death. Using both her lenses and text, Rebhan chronicles her father’s mental and physical deterioration from 1994 to 2004. One of my favorites, “Why is it so hard?” is an image of a bespectacled elderly gentleman laying flat on his bed staring towards the heavens. Dressed in khaki pants, striped shirt, and a leather belt the text on the photo reads:

“I feel lonely and isolated.
I had a bad night.
Why does it take so long to die?
Am I being punished for what I did wrong?
Why is it so hard……
Sorry for being such a burden to you."

Rebhan uses everything: his medical records, prescription labels, his words, and a few of her own. This exhibit demonstrates her talent as a conceptual artist. Here, the idea is so captivating that you cannot ignore the message.

Remember when you discovered that first gray hair? Well, this exhibit is sure to evoke dialogue about getting old and may even make you feel young.
_____________________________________
Aging by Gail Rebhan - A critical graphic portrayal of the mental and physical deterioration that often accompanies the end of life. Dec. 2, 2006 through Jan. 13, 2007 at Pyramid Atlantic, 8230 Georgia Avenue, Silver Spring, Maryland. 301-608-9101.

New Baltimore Gallery

Jordan Faye Block, who was the former director of Gallery Imperato in Baltimore has left Gallery Imperato and opened her own temporary space a couple of days ago, ago featuring a six-artist group show.

She'll continue to look for a permanent space for her new gallery, now called Jordan Faye Contemporary. The gallery's first show features works from Dawn Gavin, Lori Larusso, James Long, Kate MacKinnon, Cara Ober, and Michael Sandstrom.