Opportunity for Photographers

The Washington School of Photography presents the Third Annual Mid-Atlantic Regional Photography show.

Slides are due April 8, entry is $25 for four entries. Photographers must reside in: DC, MD, PA, VA, DE, or WV. Cash prizes will be presented.

Entry forms can be found here or with SASE to:

WSP/WGP
4850 Rugby Avenue
Bethesda, MD 20814
301/654.1998

Art Job

The Washington District of Columbia Jewish Community Center is looking for a Gallery Director for the Ann Loeb Bronfman Gallery (a 600 square foot space in an urban Jewish Community Center).

The Gallery Director will curate three to four shows annually, work collaboratively with other arts professionals to bring related public programming and classes, oversee fundraising, oversee all administrative aspects of the gallery, and develop a long-term exhibition plan. Previous gallery experience required. Knowledge and understanding of Jewish traditions and history preferred. Position start date is April 15th, 2005.

This is a full-time position that includes benefits and free gym membership.

Email resume and cover letter describing experience to josh@dcjcc.org or fax 202-518-9420. No phone calls.

For more info:

DC Jewish Community Center
Joshua Ford, Washington DCJCC
1529 16th Street NW
Washington, DC 20036
f: 202.518.9420 or josh@dcjcc.org

The Thursday Reviews

The WaPo's Jessica Dawson does her 3rd Thursday mini-review thing today in the Style section.

In the WCP, Louis Jacobson's review of Joe Ovelman at Conner Contemporary brings intelligent humor to the review.

Also in the City Paper, Mark Jenkins looks at The Art of Memory/ The Memory of Art at the Goethe-Institut’s Gallery.

Secrets in the WaPo

Frank Warren, whose Post A Secret project at Art-O-Matic was a huge success, is highlighted today in the WaPo's Metro section.

Send Frank your secrets here.

Gallery Openings

Tonight is the 3rd Thursday gallery crawl around the 7th street corridor. From 6-8PM in most places. Especially interesting seems Carolina Sardi: Over/Under, curated by Rody Douzoglou at Flashpoint. Also Numark Gallery has Shimon Attie: The History of Another, which is well-worth the visit tonight.

Tomorrow, it's the turn of the Canal Square Galleries in Georgetown, as we will all have our new shows opening or extended hours and the openings will be catered by our Canal neighbor, the Sea Catch Restaurant. Elsewhere in Georgetown, Addison Ripley will have the wonderfully busy watercolors of Patricia Tobacco Forrester.

Especially interesting in the Canal Square Galleries is MOCA's Erotic Art Show, a jumble of dozens of artists exploring the moist avenues of erotica.

We will have the brilliant photographs of Lida Moser. This is probably our most important photography show of the year.

Opening tomorrow night and through April 13, 2005, our Fraser Gallery in Georgetown will be hosting the first ever Washington, DC solo exhibition of legendary American photographer Lida Moser, who now lives in retirement in nearby Rockville, Maryland.

This 85-year-old photographer is not only one of the most respected American photographers of the 20th century, but also a pioneer in the field of photojournalism. Her photography is currently in the middle of a revival and rediscovery, and has sold as high as $4,000 in recent Christie's auctions and continues to be collected by both museums and private collectors worldwide. In a career spanning nearly 60 years, Moser has produced a body of works consisting of thousands of photographs and photographic assemblages that defy categorization and genre or label assignment.

Additionally, Canadian television is currently in the process of filming a documentary about her life; the second in the last few years, and Moser’s work is now in the collection of many museums worldwide.

A well-known figure in the New York art scene of the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s,a portrait of Lida Moser by American painter Alice Neel hangs in the permanent collection of the Metropolitan Museum in New York City. Neel painted a total of four Moser portraits over her lifetime, and I believe that one of them will be included in the National Museum of Women in the Arts' "Alice Neel's Women" coming to Washington, DC this October.

Lida Moser's photographic career started as a student and studio assistant in 1947 in Berenice Abbott's studio in New York City, where she became an active member of the New York Photo League. She then worked for Vogue, Harper's Bazaar, Look and many other magazines throughout the next few decades, and traveled extensively throughout the United States, Canada and Europe.

In 1950 Vogue, and (and subsequently Look magazine) assigned Lida Moser to carry out an illustrated report on Canada, from one ocean to another. When she arrived at the Windsor station in Montreal, in June of that same year, she met by chance, Paul Gouin, then a Cultural Advisor to Duplessis government. This chance meeting led Moser to change her all-Canada assignment for one centered around Quebec.

Armed with her camera and guided by the research done by the Abbot Felix-Antoine Savard, the folklorist Luc Lacourcière and accompanied by Paul Gouin, Lida Moser then discovers and photographs a traditional Quebec, which was still little touched by modern civilization and the coming urbanization of the region. Decades later, a major exhibition of those photographs at the McCord Museum of Canadian History became the museum’s most popular exhibit ever.

She has also authored and been part of many books and publications on and about photography. She also wrote a series of "Camera View" articles on photography for The New York Times between 1974-81. Her work has been exhibited in many museums worldwide and is in the permanent collection of the National Portrait Gallery, London, the National Archives, Ottawa, the National Galleries of Scotland, National Portrait Gallery, Washington, DC, the Library of Congress, Les Archives Nationales du Quebec, Corcoran Gallery, Phillips Collection and many others. Moser was an active member of the Photo League and the New York School.

The Photo League was the seminal birth of American documentary photography. It was a group that was at times at school, an association and even a social club. Disbanded in 1951, the League promoted photojournalism with an aesthetic consciousness that reaches street photography to this day.

This will be her first solo exhibition in Washington, DC and it will run from March 18 through April 13, 2005.

An opening reception for Ms. Moser will be held tomorrow night, Friday, March 18, 2005 from 6-9PM as part of the third Friday openings in Georgetown. The reception is free and open to the public.

See ya there!

Koons Job

Courtesy of Todd Gibson's wit, this great gem of a job opportunity for artists:

Computer design
Jeff Koons LLC
(New York NY)

Computer design expert wanted to work with leading contemporary artist. Excellent color correction skills and mastery of mac based design programs including Photoshop and Illustrator required. 3-D rendering skills a plus. Please send resume with images of work to JK92106@yahoo.com with "Computer" in subject line.

Salary: Based on experience.

Style Editor Answers Questions Online

Deborah Heard, the WaPo's new Style section editor, answered questions online today.

Unfortunately I was at the Corcoran press preview today and missed the opportunity to ask Ms. Heard anything, and since I didn't know ahead of time about her online schedule, I missed the opportunity to announce it here ahead of schedule.

Someone did ask this question:

Washington, D.C.: When are gallery reviews going to start running every week again? Are you currently seeking a new freelance galleries critic?

Deborah E. Heard: Reassessing our coverage of art galleries is on my list of things to do. I've already heard from quite a few folks about this so I know it's a pressing issue for some. But give me some time; I've only been in the job for a few months.

That's the most reassuring thing that I've heard on this sore subject in a long time from the WaPo.

Read all the questions and answers here.

Biennial Part II

Last night's preview of the The 48th Corcoran Biennial, which opens to the public next Saturday at the Corcoran Gallery of Art and runs until June 27 was fun, and a veritable Who's Who in the rarified upper crust and middle layers of the Washington art scene, at least most of our scene's universe which wears ties.

Today I am heading back to cover the Biennial press preview for ArtsMedia News TV, and will interview the co-curators: Stacey Schmidt, the Corcoran's Associate Curator of Contemporary Art and Dr. Jonathan P. Binstock, the Corcoran's Curator of Contemporary Art.

More later on my impressions of the artwork chosen by Schmidt and Binstock.

DCist Arts Agenda

The DCist Tuesday Arts Agenda is here.

The Biennial is Coming

The 48th Corcoran Biennial opens next Saturday at the Corcoran Gallery of Art and runs until June 27.

I will cover the Biennial press preview on Wednesday for ArtsMedia News, and will interview the co-curators: Stacey Schmidt, the Corcoran's Associate Curator of Contemporary Art and Dr. Jonathan P. Binstock, the Corcoran's Curator of Contemporary Art.

I am really looking forward to this exhibition, as it marks a return by the Corcoran to looking in "its own backyard" for talented artists. Included in the exhibition are our own area's Colby Caldwell, James Huckenpahler, and Jeff Spaulding - and it's no coincidence that two of those three artists have been finalists in the Trawick Prize.

By the way, the deadline for the 2005 Trawick Prize is April 8, 2005.

My kudos to Schmidt and Binstock for taking the time to look close to home; more later as I see what they have chosen.

Moral Soup

Kriston over at grammar.police is stirring the moral soup pot again with a posting where he expresses uneasiness about my contributions to DCist.

Kriston feels that "you really can't don the critic's cap when you're a producer in the community." In other words, that because I am the co-owner of two galleries in the Greater Washington area, I shouldn't write art criticism (other than in my own DC Art News).

Because I have been writing about art for nearly three decades now (and specifically about the Washington, DC area since I moved here in 1993), when we opened the first Fraser Gallery in Georgetown in 1996, and because of the huge void that existed in visual arts coverage (and it's worse now), I felt that I could and should continue to write about Washington area art and artists. I thought and still think that this can be done without it being a conflict of interest with my co-ownership of the galleries.

I feel that the best thing for art galleries is more art galleries; the best thing for artists' success is more artists being successful, and in order for that to happen, there has to be writing about what our artists and our galleries are doing. And thus I continued to write in as many as 20 different magazines and newspapers, and talk on the radio, and now on TV, about our area's galleries and artists.

And everyone of those editors knows who I am and what I co-own, and no issue was ever raised before. And judging by the monumental number of emails that I get from fellow gallerists, artists and other media, no one has so far seen this as an issue before.

But it has been raised now, and I respect Kriston's opinion, which has now been echoed and endorsed in the comments to the posting by Tyler Green, who adds that "sites/publications that publish criticism/show promotion by gallerists have a serious integrity problem."

So a stone has been cast by Green, and now suddenly there is a "serious integrity problem" as an added spice in Kriston's moral soup.

When DCist and I first started discussing how we could work together to raise awareness of the visual arts scene in our area through such regular postings as the Tuesday Arts Agenda, the issue of my co-ownership of the galleries was immediately raised and discussed, and we all felt that by being completely open with a full disclosure at the masthead of any postings that included my contributions, everything would be clear and above reproach.

Apparently not, for Kriston writes "It's bitchy of me to say—and I don't know the extent to which Lenny Campello of DC Art News contributes or what Cyndi Spain has to say on the subject—but I twitch whenever I see a feature with Lenny's name attached on DCist about work on display at the gallery he operates."

I think that in editing the Tuesday Arts Agenda, the editors at DCist obviously realized that if you mention the second Friday gallery openings in Bethesda, it would be unfair to their readers to always exclude any mention at all of Fraser Gallery.

It bothers me that a question about the integrity of DCist (and by inference, every magazine, newspaper and site that has published or echoed my writing since 1996) has been raised because of me, but especially gnawing since DCist's editors were so adamant and careful to take specific steps to avoid it, and as a result of these comments I will cease to contribute directly to DCist.

DCist is a powerful and strong new voice in our area, and I sincerely believe that they are reaching the kind of public that our ignored visual arts community truly needs to reach.

Now, there's no excuse for their integrity to be questioned.

But... about "art producers as art critics," as I noted in the comments to Kriston's posting:

"And it was and is quite clear to me that what Kriston meant to say, and what Green now re-affirms, is that gallery-owners should not write criticism or about art, because any publication that would then publish that writing would have a have a serious integrity problem.

Sort of like a guy who owns a bookstore, or an editor in a publishing house, or a literary agent reviewing books.

I guess we could also extend this so that people who create art shouldn't also write art criticism? After all, they're often connected to a gallery, and it would appear a tenuous link in logic implies that the same integrity issues could be raised.

In any event, DCist is looking for new voices to help them augment the coverage of our area's visual arts. Contact Mike Grass if you are interested; I really hope some of you are motivated and start contributing to DCist and help to create an important digital footprint about our artists, our galleries and our art scene.

Prizewinners

Connie Imboden stopped by the gallery today to pick the prizewinners from the 4th Annual Bethesda International Photography Competition. Here they are:

Best in Show

Maria - Mother of a Chernobyl Liquidator
by Gabriela Bulisova


First Prize

Sex Education No. 4
by John Borstel


Second Prize

Deer Pelvic Bone No. 1
by Tim Castine


Third Prize

Untitled
by Rita Maas

Honorable Mention

Untitled
by Elena Volkov

Honorable Mention

Succulent
by Linda Lester-Slacks

Honorable Mention

Blue Wall, Taipei
by Leah Oates

Three new mags

A few days ago DC Style magazine had its launch party, and the new glossy will be available soon. I have been asked to contribute to this new magazine and will do so randomly as time allows.

Two other magazines are launching later this year: DC from the Chicago-based Modern Luxury group and Capitol File, published by NYC's Jason Binn, who is the brother to our own Jonathan Binstock, the Curator of Contemporary Art at the Corcoran.

It's Important that we all do this

I am pleased to report that the artists' bill making it possible once again for artists to receive a fair market value deduction for donated works is making its way through the legislative process. The bills have been reintroduced in both the House and the Senate and we once again need everyone's help to enlist co-sponsors for both bills.

Currently, when an artist donates a work of art, the artist can deduct the cost of the materials; however, if anyone else (but the artist) donates the work, they can deduct the actual fair market value of the work.

We need everyone to contact your Congressman and Senators.

BILL NUMBERS: HOUSE BILL H.R. 1120 "ARTISTS' CONTRIBUTION TO AMERICAN HERITAGE ACT" Introduced by Congressmen Jim Ramstad (R-MN) and Ben Cardin (D-MD).

SENATE BILL S. 372 "ARTIST-MUSEUM PARTNERSHIP ACT" Introduced by Senators Patrick Leahy (D-VT) and Robert Bennett (R-UT).

If you do not know your legislators' name go to this website and at the top of the page is a link to House and Senate.

Below is a sample letter, feel free to cut and paste and edit:

I urge you to become a cosponsor of [insert House or Senate bill number and name], which would allow artists to deduct fair-market value for self-generated works donated to a non-profit institution.

Passage of this legislation would enable museums, libraries and archives to solicit original works from artists, writers and composers who are both regional and national and help us strengthen the collections in [name your community or institution].

Currently, an artist, writer or composer can only deduct the cost of materials to create the work, which is not a large incentive to donate, particularly since the majority of artists, writers and composers in this country earn very little. Since the law allowing artists to deduct the fair-market value of self-generated works to a museum or library was repealed in 1969 there has been a dramatic decline in the number of such gifts offered to institutions.

Many national and important regional artists, writers and composers sell their original works to private collectors or abroad, which effectively keeps them from ever being seen by the American public. We are, in essence, deprived of part of our cultural and artistic heritage.

I look forward to hearing that you have become a cosponsor of this most important cultural legislation.

For Monday Night

The Americans for the Arts Emerging Leader Council is hosting an Emerging Leader Reception in order to to meet and network with other young and/or emerging professionals working for arts or other culturally minded organizations.

Monday, March 14, from 8:30 to 10:30 p.m., Biddy Mulligans Bar, Jurys Washington Hotel, 1500 New Hampshire Avenue, NW, Washington, DC 20036. Free admission. Cash bar.

In conjunction with Arts Advocacy Day, the Emerging Leader Reception will follow the 18th Annual Nancy Hanks Lecture on Arts and Public Policy, given by Ken Burns. For complimentary tickets to this lecture at The Kennedy Center, please visit this website.

Buses will be available to take attendees from The Kennedy Center to the Emerging Leader Reception. The Emerging Leader Program seeks to identify and cultivate the next generation of arts leaders in America. For more information on this program, please visit this website or contact Mia DeMezza at mdemezza@artsusa.org.

Booksigning Today

You are invited to a booksigning for Family, History, and Memory: Recording African-American Life by Deborah Willis.

Date: Saturday, March 12, 2005
Time: 3-5 pm
Location: Parish Gallery - Georgetown
Canal Square
1054 31st Street, NW
Washington, DC 20007

Collected for the first time are Deborah Willis's one-of-a kind photo quilts, her provocative and moving photo essays, and her important and revelatory critical essays about the vital contribution African American photographers made and continue to make to the advancement of photography. Willis is a winner of the MacArthur Award and a Professor of Photography and Imaging at New York University, Tisch School of the Arts.

Art Jobs

Artists Circle Fine Art (located at 11544 Spring Ridge Road, Potomac, MD 20854), a consulting firm, is looking for a part-time gallery aide to assist with art inventory, filing and organizing and special art projects. Computer literacy is required. $10-$12 per hour depending upon experience. Please send resume to Stephanie Gleichsner at stephanie@artistscircleonline.com or call 301-921-0572.

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Rockville Arts Place is hiring teachers for Summer Classes. Please e-mail Debra Moser at execdirector@rockvilleartsplace.org or call 301-869-8623 if you are interested in teaching.

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Create Arts Center, 816 Thayer Avenue, Silver Spring, MD 20910, is looking for part time teachers for school age children. Opportunities available to teach the visual arts at Create Arts Center, and to teach for Create visual arts at other schools. 301-588-2787.

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The Cultural Development Corporation (CuDC) is currently seeking a highly organized, detail-oriented Gallery Associate to coordinate the Gallery at Flashpoint. Knowledge of contemporary art, experience in a related field, and the ability to efficiently manage multiple tasks is required.

As part of CuDC's mission to engage artists and arts organizations in community development and economic revitalization, Flashpoint is dedicated to nurturing arts professionals. Hourly salary commensurate with experience. 30–40 hours/week, Tues–Sat.

Responsibilities: Coordination of exhibition selection process and liaison to curatorial advisory panel; Coordination of all gallery exhibitions, including season schedules,- exhibitor contracts, exhibit installation, special events, sales and de-installation; Management of marketing and publicity for exhibits; Reception of Flashpoint visitors and gallery patrons; Gallery upkeep and maintenance; Coordination of monthly 3rd Thursday event; and General administrative support, as needed.

Qualifications: Bachelor's degree in Art History or Arts Administration preferred; Knowledge of contemporary art and experience mounting visual art exhibits; Comfortable working in a cooperative environment that represents a broad range of artistic, cultural and social points of view; Willingness to work in every aspect of gallery management and maintenance, including receptions and evening programs; Excellent written and verbal skills, strong computer skills.

To apply, submit a resume with cover letter to: Cultural Development Corporation Gallery Associate Search, 916 G Street, NW Washington, DC 20001 or Fax 202.315.1303

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Expressive Arts Programmer.

This position, in the Recreation Division of Arlington County is responsible for the development and leadership of recreational expressive arts programs, with an emphasis on drama, movement, music. In this setting, Expressive Arts is used as a tool for community building and not clinical purposes.

The communities served are diverse in age, culture, economic status, language and ability. Duties include program planning, design, leadership & delivery; purchasing & budget oversight; coordination, oversight & training of staff, interns, volunteers; and program evaluation. Work involves high level of collaboration with other program leaders within the agency.

This position is part of a team of recreational art programmers and requires the ability to work well in both team situations and in a self-directed manner. For a more complete description, salary and application info, go to this website.

In spite of the rain

Last night's opening and the art walk was packed! We actually ran through two batches of Sangria (each is 6 gallons). This is always the key marker of attendance, at least for us.

And as previously discussed, the previous Friday's openings at the Dupont Circle galleries was also packed.

Next Friday is the Georgetown Canal Square galleries' openings; let's see how that goes.

DCist First Friday Walkthrough

By Cyndi Spain
DCist Arts Editor

DCist headed out on Friday with F. Lennox Campello of DC Art News to check out the new exhibits in the Dupont Circle area galleries. We were particularly impressed by Peter Charles' new work at Irvine Contemporary Art.

A professor at Georgetown University, Charles is from the D.C. area and received his arts training at Yale and Rhode Island School of Design. His new show includes miniature houses outfitted with their own LCD televisions.

We were surprised to find out that each screen shows live television, chosen and controlled by the owner of the artwork via remote. Like those on the larger scale, the televisions dominate the houses they inhabit and can be seen from outside the home by the all-too familiar and enticing blue glow.

The exhibit of abstractions by Andrea Way at the Marsha Mateyka Gallery was also well worth the visit. This show is Way's fourth solo exhibition at the gallery. Her meticulous work - created through an intense process of dropping colored inks into blobs of water on a level surface or by dripping colored water onto the paper - is evidence of
her patience and attention to Zen practice.

We were also pleased to see the exhibit of Molly Springfield's art at JET Artworks, located at Elizabeth Roberts' old space at 2108 R Street. Springfield, a superbly talented painter, last wowed area visual art lovers a couple of years ago with a spectacular show at the Arts Club.

Her work combines the technical wizardry of trompe l'oeil ("fool the eye") painting and drawing with intelligent compositions based on collected objects, notes, and word imagery. We really enjoyed the way the exhibit continued from one floor to the next through the text written directly onto the wall.

First Friday Walk Through

Last Friday, DCist Arts Editor Cyndi Spain and I visited a few of the Dupont Circle area galleries, which were having their usual First Friday extended hours.

We started our visits at Washington Printmakers Gallery where Rosemary Cooley's hangs until March 27, 2005. As with the vast majority of the gallery's cooperative members, Cooley is a master printmaker, with elegant dual-themed prints, usually associated in some form with fish or marine imagery.

Next we walked a few steps on Connecticut Avenue to Conner Contemporary, where Leigh Conner, as usual, greeted us with a bright smile in her even brighter gallery (Leigh paints the gallery with a fresh coat of white before every opening).

Conner is showcasing Joe Ovelman's "Snow Queen" series, which are also framed in white and brightly lit, lending them a sequential, out-of-sequence film look as the images of a drag queen's antics (Ovelman) in the snow in a New York park, develop before our eyes.

In the back room, Conner has also arranged Ovelman's earlier "17 Strangers," where the photographer has caused himself to be photographed from the back of his head view, as he gives oral pleasure to 17 strangers that he met in a park.

LC: "So Joe, we noticed that all the men that you are giving a blow job to are wearing the same coat."

JO: [Somewhat agitated, but barely whispering] "Yes?"

LC: "Is that important? I mean, what is the relationship or story behind that jacket?"

JO: [Very quietly] "It's very important."

Ovelman is a very young, very shy, and very brave photographer, with a clear vision of where he wants to take his work, and as usual Conner Contemporary proves why they're not only one of the best galleries in the area, but certainly one of the most courageous as well.

We followed the crowds that were now beginning to form and gathered at Irvine Contemporary Art where Prof. Irvine has assembled one of the first great surprises of the night: A really memorable exhibition showcasing the marriage of technology and intelligent thought to create really interesting work (by the way, check out this really good photo of the gallery by Fur Cafe).

On exhibit at Irvine Contemporary Art are the interactive sculptures of Peter Charles, who is a is Professor of Art at Georgetown University.

When I was a kid, my family was one of the first families in my neighborhood with a TV, and every night, around 8PM people from around the neighborhood, would gather in our living room to watch TV. Additionally, there were always a few neighborhood street ruffians who would watch the TV from the outside, through our windows.

Charles has constructed these clever small, house-like sculptures, and inside each one is a real mini-TV screen, actually working and with an antenna, so that the finished sculpture smartly marries the technology of the mini TVs with the creativity of the sculpture, and the interactivity of the user (each sculpture comes with a remote). It is a very good exhibition and an intelligent show. Also, Prof. Irvine told me that he intends to switch from a four week show format to a six week show format in the near future.

While at Irvine we ran into Kristen Hileman, the talented Assistant Curator for Contemporary Art at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, who introduced us to the fair Rachel Coker, who is the assistant to Hirshhorn Chief Curator Kerry Brougher, who wasn't there. It is great to see our local museum curators visiting our galleries.

Bravo Hileman and Coker!

Walked to R Street, and by now the crowds are definitely larger as we make our way into Marsha Mateyka's narrow doorway to see the new works by District powerhouse artist Andrea Way.

In her fourth solo exhibition at the Marsha Mateyka Gallery, Andrea Way returns to working on paper in the intricate detailed beautiful abstractions for which she has made herself a name as one of our area's best abstract painters.

But unlike her past work, Way is now creating, deliberate, controlled work, as opposed to the beautiful and luminous paintings that became her trademark in the 90s. In these new works, a controlled artist emerges, and the results are almost Moorish, Arabesque mosaics of colors and lines and works that easily fit into the most modern of postmodern collections as well as on the wall of the Alhambra at its height. I was totally enamored and seduced by her new works, and this show ranks as one of the best I've seen so far this year.

From the sublime to the BLOGsphere, and we ran into J.T. Kirkland and Bren; Kirkland told me not to miss Molly Springfied's debut at JET Artworks (Duh!). Props to Kirkland for visiting the shows, as he routinely does; if you're going to write about Washington art, you got to go see Washington art!

The next surprise of the night came at Alex Gallery.

On exhibition at the main gallery is a set (from a private collection) of small (around 8x10 or 11x14 inches) paintings by Jackson Pollock from 1950 and 1951. These paintings are a Pollock I never knew; an unlikely and unusual "small" Pollock, working in canvasses so small and intimate that his large signature (oddly enough signed in gaudy silver or gold pen) often takes half or a third of the bottom of the paintings, causing a bit of distractive damage to the actual paintings.

And these small Pollocks are like miniatures of the massive Pollocks that we all love or hate. But they are all painted with the paint so diluted and thin, almost like 90% turpentine and 10% paint... so "thin" in fact, that if Saint Clement ever saw them, it could have been the springboard for his famous "painting should be thin" nonsense that gave birth to the Washington Color School.

And guess what else is hidden amongst these tiny Pollocks? A drip painting that offers us a representational Pollock, using his formulaic drip paint method, to deliver a small painting of a tree.

But the surprises don't end there! Go to the back of the gallery, and we discover a Keith Haring from the period when Haring was an art school student. It is a painting of a bird, as one sees in most Florida and Annapolis galleries; and yet, there's a certain visual smell of Haring already there.

And for probably the first and only time in the Universe, Haring shares the back gallery with several small Norman Rockwell watercolors and sketches. It is yet another proof of the veracity and tenacity of Chaos theory.

And old Norman manages to deliver a few surprises of his own.

Only Nixon could go to China and only Rockwell could document in his artwork the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s, as we all discovered in the huge mega hit Rockwell retrospective that swept the nation a few years ago. But I have never seen a nude by Rockwell.

And in the Rockwell exhibit back there, we discovered a small watercolor sketch, where several women (all nude) do the Can Can a-la-Rockettes, and as the Brits say, are showing their "bits." Bawdy Old Norm!

We then headed to see Molly Springfield's long awaited debut at JET Artworks, where we met Erin (who is the "E" in "JET" - her husband and her business partner are the "J" and the "T").

And Molly Springfield did not disappoint! In fact, this is painting like no few painters can deliver or have painted before; the closest that I can up with is Richter, but there's no Richter that looks like a Springfield; she's creating new illusionism by taking trompe l'oeil to a new road.

How to explain?

Let's start by saying that a couple of years ago I reviewed Springfield when she exhibited at the Arts Club. This is a different, more profound Springfield.

Springfield new work is supposed to be all about "notes."

Words passed on paper between furtive hands in High School; perhaps a love note, or a cheat crib for Algebra. We never know, because Springfield has cleverly hitched her formidable painting skills to the latest war wagon in the painting dialogue: the marriage of abstraction with realism.

But Springfield brings this dialogue to a sensual whisper. These are hyperealistic paintings that deny us the ultimate voyeurism: to be able to read the notes. In fact, the folded papers can, at the right aspect, become muted abstractions, suddenly popping into maddening realism, but never yielding their ultimate secrets.

Much like their creator, they are delicate, waif-like works, softly speaking visual words into our senses, denying categorization, and also offering an intelligent beauty that restores that maligned adjective to its proper context when describing art. This is without a doubt one of the best painting shows of the year.

Bravo Springfield!

Warning Cyndi that we were about to enter a time warp, in the sense that once Marc Zuver got a hold of us, it may be hours before we escaped his loquacious and warm personality, we entered Fondo del Sol, but the hard-working Zuver wasn't there (he's in New York).

So we walked downstairs to the Studio Gallery, and found that the talented Michael Janis has joined that artists' cooperative and has a few pieces on display. They are very good work, already showing the imprimatura of the Washington Glass School. Janis is definitely a sculptor to keep your eyes on.

Cyndi had to leave, and as 8PM was approaching, I headed for a quick visit to Kathleen Ewing and then to Gallery 10 for a quick peek at the latest work of Mary Virginia Langston.

Overall, the crowds were quite large, and I came away quite impressed by new discoveries offered to me by two masters and two new emerging would-be masters.

The best thing for art is more art.