Thursday, September 21, 2006

Ideas

Just finished reading Kirkland's latest reviews of the shows at G Fine Art in Washington, DC, and my jaw dropped when I saw the paintings by Prof. Louis Cameron, an artist whose work I don't know and as far as I know, I've never met.

My jaw dropped because the paintings on exhibitions at the gallery are exactly the same subject and general size as paintings that I did in 1999-2000 from a series that I called "Digitalia" and which essentially were large paintings of my military ribbons earned while I was in the Navy.


photo by JT Kirkland

My military ribbon paintings have an interesting story, first revealed here last year. I have also pasted it below.

It shows how two minds, apparently working apart, can come up with exact the same concept and idea. I still have perhaps 20 or so of these works, both paintings and drawings, that I did after the story below took place.

A Story That Must Be Told (Originally published Feb. 9, 2005)

As mentioned here, the McLean Center for the Arts sponsors a very good painting competition every couple of years called "Strictly Painting." It is now in its fifth iteration.

A few years ago, around 1999 or 2000, the juror for that year's version of "Strictly Painting" was Terrie Sultan, who back then was the Curator for Contemporary Art at the Corcoran. I thought that this choice was a little odd, as Ms. Sultan, in my opinion, was not "painting-friendly." In fact, with all due respect, I blame her for diminishing the Corcoran Biennials, which used to be known as the Corcoran Biennial of Painting.

As such, they were essentially the only well-known Biennial left in the nation that was strictly designed to get a look at the state of contemporary painting, which was somehow surviving its so called "death."

It was Ms. Sultan who decided to "expand" the Biennial and make it just like all other Biennials: Jack of all trades (genres) Biennials. In the process, depending on what side of this argument you're on, she (a) did a great service to the Corcoran by moving it into the center of the "genre of the moment" scene - like all other Biennials, or (b) gave away the uniqueness of the nation's top painting Biennial title.

I'm aligned with the minority who supports camp (b) but understand those who defend her decision to become just another player in camp (a). Most people think that her decision and drive were the right thing to do in order to bring the Corcoran to a world stage, and perhaps it was.

But I digress.

When she was announced as the juror, I decided to see if I could predict her painting selectivity, sensitivity, process and agenda. It was my thesis that I could predict what Ms. Sultan would pick.

So I made a bet, and decided to enter the exhibition with work created specifically to fit what I deduced would be agreeable to Ms. Sultan's tastes. I felt that I could guarantee that I would get into the show because of the transparency of the juror's personal artistic agenda. It is her right to have one; I have them, in fact, we all have them.

I was trained as a painter at the University of Washington School of Art, but around 1992 or so, I stopped painting and decided to devote myself strictly to my love for drawing. So I had not picked up a brush in several years when I decided to enter this competition, designed to survey the state of painting in our region.

It was my theory that Ms. Sultan would not be in the representational side of painting. It was also clear that she (like many curators) was seduced by technology in the form of videos, digital stuff and such trendy things.

And so I decided to see if I could marry digital stuff with painting.

And what I did was the following:

I took some of my old Navy ribbons, and scanned them in to get a digital file. I then blew them up so that the final image was quite pixilated. I then printed about five of them and took slides of the printed sheets of paper.

I then submitted these slides to the competition, but identified them as oil on canvas paintings. My plan was that if accepted, how hard could it be to whip up a couple of paintings after the fact? I titled them with such titles as Digitalism: National Defense and Digitalism: Expeditionary Medal and so on.

From what I was later told, several hundred painters submitted work. And Ms. Sultan selected about only about seven or eight painters in total. And not only was I one of them, but she picked two of my entries.

I was elated! I had hit the nail right on the head! I felt so superior in having such an insight into this intelligent woman's intellect that I (a painter no more) could create competition-specific work to get accepted into this highly regarded show.

And then I began the task of creating the two paintings, using the pixilated images as the guide.

And it turned out to be a lot harder than I thought.

For one thing, I had submitted the "paintings" in quite a large size; each painting was supposed to be six feet long.

And it didn't take me long to discover that there are a lot of color nuances and hues in an average pixilated image.

And I went through dozens and dozens of rolls of tape as I pulled off the old Washington Color School trick of taping stripes (in my case small one inch square boxes of individual colors - hundreds upon hundreds of them) in a precise sequence to prevent smudging and color peeling, etc.

I painted for at least six hours every day, switching off between paintings to allow the previous day's work to dry off enough to allow a new layer of tape to be applied. I did all the varnishing outside, which usually attracted all the small neighborhood ruffians.

It was incredibly hard work, and I was ever so sorry that I had even gotten this crazy idea. All my nights were consumed.

Expeditionary Medal, oil on canvasBut eventually they were finished and delivered to MPA and Ms. Sultan even wrote some very nice things about them in the exhibition's catalog.

Me? I was in a mix of both vindication and guilt; exhausted but fired up with the often wrong sense of righteousness of the self-righteous.

After the show, I had no idea what to do with them, and they didn't fit my "body of works," but I ended up selling both of them through Sotheby's.

And today, some art collector in South Carolina and another one in Canada, each have one very large, exhausting and handsome oil painting of pixilated naval ribbons hanging in their home, in happy ignorance of the interesting story behind them.

I mentioned the adjective handsome in describing them, because a few years ago I was telling this story to Prof. John Winslow, who asked to see the images of the real paintings. When I showed him, he said that they were actually "quite handsome paintings."

I had never had my work described as "handsome" (although the Washington Post once described it as "irritating"), so it stuck in my head.

So there you have it: The story of a former painter with a point to prove about a local curator, the subsequent hard-labor punishment of the process, and a hidden story behind two handsome paintings.

Postcards from the Edge

Deadline is postmark Friday, November 10, 2006 (NO late entries)

Postcards from the Edge is an annual Visual AIDS benefit and this, its 9th year, it is being hosted and held at Sikkema, Jenkins & Co in New York City.

Postcards From the Edge is a show and sale of original, postcard-sized artworks on paper by established and emerging artists. All artworks are $75 and sold on a first-come, first-served basis. The works are signed on the back and exhibited so that the artists' signatures cannot be seen. While buyers have a list of all participating artists, they don't know who created which piece until it is purchased and the signature is revealed. A collector might end up with a work by a famous artist or one they don't yet know. Either way, they walk away with a great piece of art while supporting Visual AIDS's important work. Last year Ida Applebroog acquired my art donation.

I have participated for several years and encourage all artists to join us and participate.

Hosted by Sikkema, Jenkins & Co.
530 West 22nd Street, NYC

Preview Party on World AIDS Day Friday, December 1, 2006
Benefit Sale December 2 –3, 2006.

For more information contact Visual AIDS at (212) 627-9855 or email them at info@visualaids.org.

See ya there!

Oh, Snap

Oh, Snap is a new (formerly Tubulosity) DC-based art blog by Greg Wasserstrom. Visit him often!

Opportunity for Artists

Deadline: October 25, 2006

Coker College's Cecelia Coker Bell Gallery is reviewing entries (all media) for solo shows in the 2007-2008 exhibition season. Send ten 35mm slides or jpeg files (they prefer 1024 x 768 pixels) on CD/DVD, list for images, statement, resume, and SASE to:

Larry Merriman
Coker College Art Dept
300 East College Av
Hartsville SC 29550.

Full prospectus here

Kirkland does DC

JT over at Thinking About Art has been hitting the key shows around the District and has several interesting reviews:

Five Shows at the Katzen.

Trawick Prize.

David FeBland at Fraser Gallery.

Robin Rose at Hemphill.

William Wegman at Adamson.

Robert Creamer at Heineman-Myers.

Nicholas and Sheila Pye at Curator's Office.

Wednesday, September 20, 2006

Conservative Berkeley and Rocky

Chris Gilbert, the former curator of art at the Baltimore Museum of Art (and a past Trawick Prize juror I believe), a while back resigned his position as a curator at the Berkeley Museum of Art & Pacific Film Archive and has now quit the "system."
Chris Gilbert (Wendy Edelstein photo)
Gilbert resigned over disagreements caused by the exhibition "Now-Time Venezuela: Media Along the Path of the Bolivarian Process".

In his statement Gilbert states:

"...they have said they wanted "neutrality" and "balance" whereas I have always said that instead my approach is about commitment, support, and alignment -- in brief, taking sides with and promoting revolution."
Gilbert then discusses
"...the fact that the museum, the bourgeois values it promotes via the institution of contemporary art (contemporary art of the past 30 years is really in most respects simply the cultural arm of upper-class power) are not really those of any class but its own. Importantly the museum and the bourgeoisie will always deny the role of class interests in this: they will always maintain that the kinds of cultural production they promote are more difficult, smarter, more sophisticated -- hence the lack of response to most contemporary art is, according to them, about differences in education and sophistication rather than class interest. That this kind of claim is obscurantist and absurd is something the present exhibitions make very clear: the work of Catia TVe, which is created by people in the popular (working-class) neighborhoods of Caracas, is far more sophisticated than what comes out of the contemporary art of the Global North."
So what this once "insider" offers to us is the opinion (backed by his experiences) that popular artwork is inherently better than most museum-level contemporary artwork, and that the reason that contemporary museum shows are not generally accepted by the public is then rationalized by the museums and art elitists as a result of the public not being educated and sophisticated enough to understand what the artwork is all about.

But this elitist operating mode of thinking will always be denied.

Interesting; Gilbert continues:
"...it is too weak to say that museums, like universities, are deeply corrupt. They are. (And in my view the key points to discuss regarding this corruption are (1) the museum's claim to represent the public's interests when in fact serving upper-class interests and parading a carefully constructed surrogate image of the public; (2) the presence of intra-institutional press and marketing departments that really operate to hold a political line through various control techniques, only one of which is censorship; finally (3) the presence of development departments that, in mostly hidden ways, favor and flatter rich funders, giving the lie to even the sham notion of public responsibility that the museum parades)."
Now take Rocky.

In the Greater Philadelphia area, and elsewhere through newscoverage and blogs, a lot of discussions and opinions have been aired about the public return of the Rocky Balboa statue to a new spot at the foot of Eakins Oval next to the Philadelphia Museum of Art.

The statue, which re-creates one of the most famous scenes from the original Rocky movie (and was introduced in Rocky III), was installed initially many years ago at the top of the museum steps, but was removed just a few months later when "museum officials and art aficionados argued that it was merely a movie prop and that its 'exaggerated proportions and caricature' would sully the internationally renowned museum's image."

And now the Philadelphia Arts Commission recently voted 6-2 to move the 2,000-pound, 8 foot, six inches bronze out of storage and install it permanently at the foot of Eakins Oval.

This decision has divided public opinion faster than Mrs. Clinton.

On one side of the public opinion, there's... ah... the public, which seems to me to like having its Rocky statue back as sort of a visual and touristy symbol of this blue collar, working class city.

"We're thrilled," said city Commerce Director Stephanie Naidoff. "What more wonderful a symbol of hard work and dedication is there than Rocky?"

On the other side are art academics and elitists and some art bloggers.

The two "no" votes from the Arts Commission came from Prof. Moe Brooker, an abstract painter from the Moore College of Art and Design and from Miguel Angel Corzo, the President of the University of the Arts.

"It's not a work of art and ... it doesn't belong there," said Brooker.

Corzo has suggested that he might resign from the commission over the vote, saying that "placing the pugilist near the museum goes against the commission's desire to 'raise the standards of the city.'"

I wonder what side Chris Gilbert would take: the side shuddering at the thought of the Italian Stallion sullying the image of the museum, or the masses, rushing up the 72 steps to the museum only to find that the statue is not there and then having to ask where the Eakins Oval is.

By the way, according to Google, the words "Conservative Berkeley" have been used together only just over 100 times in the billions and billions of pages that make up the web.

Yo Adrian!

New writer at the CP

From Erik Wemple (WCP editor):

Dear Colleagues:

Allow me to announce that Washington City Paper has hired a columnist for our S&T column. Her name is Jessica Gould, and she comes to us from the Northwest/Dupont/Georgetown Current.

She has a wonderful and direct writing style and her passion is arts reporting
[underlines are mine], which she's eager to do in a column format for Washington City Paper. She's used to writing up to five stories a week, so she can crank news copy like no one's biz.

She starts on Oct. 12.
We all welcome Jessica!

Tuesday, September 19, 2006

Looking Through a Lens

"The eruption in the media and on photo blogs last week over an image taken on 9/11 by the German photographer Thomas Hoepker--and the glib interpretation put upon it by Frank Rich in the New York Times--has proved once again that we don't need Photoshop to doctor the meaning of an image."
Thomas HoepkerArt critic Richard Woodward discusses in the WSJ the war of words triggered in the blogsphere by this photograph depicting five young Brooklynites on the Brooklyn waterfront seemingly engaged in a fun and relaxed conversation while the WTC burns in the background.

As reported by David Friend in his book "Watching the World Change: The Stories Behind the Images of 9/11," Herr Hoepker, who never spoke to his subjects, saw the New Yorkers in the photograph as "totally relaxed like any normal afternoon. They were just chatting away. It's possible they lost people and cared, but they were not stirred by it. . . .I can only speculate [but they] didn't seem to care."

Read here what happened next.

In Latin America

Just finished doing a massive piece for a chain of Latin American newspapers covering the fine arts scene in the Greater Washington, DC region. I'm now hoping to sell them on doing the same thing for some of the other major art scenes in the Mid Atlantic.

More later...

Philly Art Falls Guide

...the town that birthed Thomas Eakins is pushing paint again this fall.
Roberta Fallon, writing in the Philadelphia Weekly, gives us a preview to the visual arts highlights coming this fall. Read it here.

In her superb co-blog, Roberta also visits the newest gallery in Philly.

Cerulean Arts is owned by Michael Kowbuz and Tina Rocha, and located at 1355 Ridge Avenue. Their grand opening show includes work by Astrid Bowlby, Pat Boyer, Eric Brown, John Bybee, Alexander Cheves, Michael Kowbuz, Nancy Lewis, Yuri Makoveychuk, Meg McDevitt, Hiro Sakaguchi, Mark Shetabi and Kevin Strickland.

According to Fallon, the gallery's "exhibition program is not locked down yet but the pair said they'd have six-week shows, not month-long. Artists who will be featured in upcoming solo or group shows are Sara Roche, Alexander Cheves, Jeffrey Tritt, Binod Shrestha, Hiro Sakaguchi and Yuri Makoveychuk."

Wyeths

Went to the Brandywine Museum to see Factory Work: Warhol, Wyeth and Basquiat and will be writing a review for a couple of newspapers and also a review here. Stay tuned.

While there I was lucky enough to run into the fair Victoria Wyeth, grandaughter of Andrew and niece of Jamie, who gave us all a terrific tour of the museum with a lot of great personal insights into the Wyeth family.

Black Artists of DC

Black Artists of DC (BADC) is a community of artists formed in 1999 whose purpose is to "promote, develop and validate the cultural and artistic expressions of artists of African ancestry in the Washington, DC metropolitan area."

The exhibit "Convergence of Vision: The Power of Art," showing at the Prince George's Community College's (PGCC) Marlborough Gallery from September 18th through October 12th will be the group's first showing at a public venue and will feature the work of 34 of the group's artists.

"As a group, BADC seeks to engage and educate our community in the history and value of Black art," says Claudia Gibson-Hunter, BADC facilitator. "There is such a wealth of artistic talent in the Washington metropolitan area, and we want to expose our community to the hidden treasures they have right in their own backyards."

Details here.

Monday, September 18, 2006

Bummer

No Artomatic this year. The NOMA building that they were negotiating for has not come through, despite their best efforts. The AOM crew is working hard to make AOM happen in 2007.

Detail here.

Trashball

Chris Goodwin has started a blog called Trashball! that documents some of the stuff that he finds (much of it in his PT job driving a dump truck). Much of the trash that he finds will end up in one of his two Trashball! machines: One is currently at Warehouse on 7th Street and the other at Busboys and Poets on 14th street in DC.

Visit Trashball! often!

Survey

The Indianapolis Museum of Art announced today that it is planning the first full-scale survey of the critically acclaimed Afro-Cuban artist María Magdalena Campos-Pons.

New Baltimore Studios

A dozen artists or so have been renovating around 24,000 feet of the former Lombard Office Furniture spaces located at 122 West North Avenue (at Howard Street) just across the Howard Street bridge from MICA in Baltimore.

They're having their first event on Saturday, January 28th from noon to 4:00pm. RSVP to Daniel Stuelpnagel at danstuelpnagel@yahoo.com or call him at 415/203-7739.

Sunday, September 17, 2006

Gordiany's Grille

A couple of nights ago I went out to a Widener University function, and afterwards we drove around looking for a place to eat.

We drove down Baltimore Pike, and eventually ended up in a little restaurant in Clifton Heights, PA called Gordiany's Grille.

Let me summarize this find in one word: WOW!

We expected to find a small, local place, with maybe some decent food. Located at 252 West Baltimore Avenue in Clifton Heights, PA, the place looks nice from the outside, but unassuming and like a regular neighborhood joint.

It is all that, but the food was amazing!

The chef is a beefy guy nicknamed "Zus" - "It's from Hay-Sus," explained Kelly the waitress. "It's Spanish for Jesus."

And the food was divine! And so affordable!

Imagine a place where you can can a huge plate of clams in a wine and onion and Italian sausage concoction for under nine bucks (and I mean huge). It's called "Drunken Clams" and it was great.

The table next to me ordered a steak, and Jesus came out with a slab of meat on a board to discuss how she wanted it cut with the lady who ordered it. They settled on a "butterfly" cut.

When the pasta dish that we ordered came to us, it brough "ooohs" and "aaahs" from the locals at the place, as it was a sight to see, as the crab legs had been arranged is such a fashion that the huge plate looked like a work of edible art.

Unlike the ritzy places that give you three strands of pasta, this dish was also massive, and I ended up taking half of it home.

This was a truly memorable discovery, everything on the meny is under $20, and I look forward to visiting this little jewel many times. They are located at 252 West Baltimore Avenue in Clifton Heights, PA, and their phone is 610/259-4060.

Saturday, September 16, 2006

Stephen Wiltshire

I was first exposed to the amazing skills of Stephen Wiltshire when I was living in the United Kingdom in the late 80's.

His first words were "pencil" and "paper," first spoken when he was five. He is called "the living camera."

But this video is amazing.

Friday, September 15, 2006

Tonite: Sandberg at Conner

This week is shaping out to be an extraordinary week to see the best that contemporary painting has to offer to the DC region.

In addition to Robin Rose at Hemphill, and Manon Cleary at Edison Place Gallery, and the New Leipzig Painters at the Katzen Arts Center, and New York's David FeBland at Fraser Gallery (which is selling out as usual), tonight Conner Contemporary Art hosts the opening for Erik Sandberg's newest solo, titled Contrary.

Just like Cleary and Rose are easily some of the best DC area painters of their generation, Sandberg - in my opinion - is amongst the best Washington area painters of his generation. Buy Erik Sandberg now.

The opening night reception is tonight, Friday, September 15th from 6-8pm.

Saturday: 14th Street Galleries

The Galleries of the 14th Street Arts Corridor in Washington, DC launch the Fall Art Season with joint receptions on Saturday, September 16.

Who: Adamson Gallery, Curator’s Office, G Fine Art, Hemphill, Irvine Contemporary, Gallery plan b, Transformer, and Street Scenes: Art Not Ads (a Welmoed Laanstra public art project).

What: Joint Receptions to launch the fall season

When: Saturday, September 16, 6-9 PM