The new Touchstone Gallery to re-open

Grand Opening: Friday, September 10, 6 - 8:30 pm

Touchstone Gallery, which is owned and operated by an association of Washington DC area artists since 1976, is re-opening in a new space on New York Avenue September 10, with a "champagne celebration." Touchstone, which has been without a home since leaving its former Penn Quarter location nearly a year ago, begins its latest incarnation with fifty members in a custom-designed, ground-floor site at 901 New York Avenue, next to Acadiana restaurant and a block from the Convention Center.

New Gallery

Art Reactor, a new artist-run gallery/workshop/studio space at 5614 Baltimore Avenue, Hyattsville, Maryland, 20781, is currently hosting its first curated exhibit. The show, entitled The Whole Plate Project, is an exhibit of photographs made in the whole plate format, using a variety of historic and contemporary materials. Whole plate as a size is defined as 6.5 by 8.5 inches - it is the original format as used by Louis Daguerre for his polished silver plates in the first photographs of 1839.

Whole plate as a format has had a long and varied history, coming in and out of fashion with each major wave of photographic innovation. The work in this show relates historic process and practice to modern issues, anxieties and imagery. Work featured includes wet-plate collodion, hand-crafted silver gelatin prints, platinum/palladium, cyanotype and silver-gelatin prints on contemporary commercial papers.

The exhibit features work by eight artists from across the US, Canada, and Germany - Scott Davis, Quinn Jacobson, Diane Maher, Chris Rini, Denise Ross, Barry Schmetter, Heather Wetzel and David William White. including two artists from the Washington DC metro area, Scott Davis and Barry Schmetter.

The exhibit runs from August 9 to September 10. Art Reactor will be open August 27th from 7-9 PM for a reception with light refreshments. Regular open hours will be held Saturday the 28th from 10am to 4pm and September 4 and 5 from 10-4. The space will also be open by appointment weekdays after 7pm or any other unscheduled time on weekends.

Martell on Gossage

Nevin Martell has a terrific piece in the WCP about DC area super photographer John Gossage.

He wasn’t yet 18 when he had his first show in New York. Since then, he’s exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, D.C.’s Corcoran Gallery of Art, and Hannover, Germany’s Sprengel Museum, and shared wall space with Jasper Johns and others. In September, his well-known series The Pond, which documents an unidentified, Walden-esque body of water somewhere near Baltimore, will be displayed in its entirety for the first time at the Smithsonian American Art Museum. It was published as a book in 1985.

“John Gossage is the most talented and most significant photographer of his generation—a generation rich in excellence,” says Lewis Baltz, a celebrated photographer himself. “Alongside Ed Ruscha and Richard Prince, Gossage’s achievements in the book format have been an invaluable contribution to the field and an inspiration to the rest of us.”

Read Martell's really excellent article here.

Battle of Covadonga

Today (we think) marks the 1288th anniversary of the Battle of Covadonga, the historic event that stopped the tide of the Islamic invasion of Spain and turned back the Arabic armies in what became the Reconquista of Spain.

It is said by Arab historians that with Pelayo (Pelagius, 681-737) as their leader, the combined Gothic, Celtic and Asturian Christian armies under Pelayo, a son of Favila, who had been a noble at the court of the Visigoth King Egica, (687-700), and had established his headquarters at Cangas de Onís, in Asturias, united the various northern peoples of Iberia (the Celts in Galicia and Asturias and the former ruler Visigoths) and began an uprising against the advancing Umayyad Muslims, who had defeated and killed Rodrigo (Roderick) the last Gothic King of Spain.

On this day, in either 722 or 721, the ten-year-old Islamic invasion of western Europe was turned around as Pelayo defeated the Islamic armies and the battle assured the independence of the most ancient Kingdom of Asturias, and it is that kingdom's survival which eventually became the kernel of new thrust that reconquered the westernmost European peninsula and became the modern nation of Spain.

Freedom does not come easy.

Kuitca coming to the Hirshhorn

"Guillermo Kuitca: Everything, Paintings and Works on Paper, 1980-2008," on view Oct. 21-Jan. 16, 2011, at the Hirshhorn will present over 45 canvases and 25 works on paper, spanning the Argentinean artist's career.

"Part of the Hirshhorn's commitment to international contemporary art has always been a focus on the artists of Latin America," said Kerry Brougher, the museum's deputy director and chief curator. "The Hirshhorn acquired its first work by Kuitca back in 1995, when he was still an emerging figure, and we have watched his reputation continue to grow ever since. We are pleased to have co-organized this retrospective and to be able to present the full spectrum of this insightful artist's work in Washington, and we look forward to the upcoming year featuring exhibitions with some of the most influential Latin American artists of our time."

The exhibition is the first comprehensive survey of the artist's work in the United States in more than 10 years and is co-organized by the Hirshhorn, Albright-Knox Art Gallery in Buffalo, N.Y., and Miami Art Museum in Miami, Fla.

Here's the odd thing to me. For at least five or six years I've had not one, but two art collectors who are retiring and in the process of donating most of their collection. I've tried every angle that I know to donate some of their Latin American artists, specifically Sandra Ramos, to the Hirshhorn. They continue to decline to accept the gift, and that is their right, but what puzzles me is that other museums (MoMA, Dallas, MFA Boston, Miami) have all recognized the inherent value of accepting a Ramos donation now -- before the Castro brothers finally died and Cuba returns to the list of free nations -- rather than later.

And now Kerry Brougher highlights a "focus on the artists of Latin America" (news to me), which makes their declining of a gift by one of Latin America's most celebrated Cuban artists a puzzle. Especially when other museums all over the US are jumping on the offers.

I realize that I am far from objective on this issue, but it is still a puzzle to me. By the way, the last Sandra Ramos work that I offered the Hirshhorn as a gift has now been gifted to the permanent collection of the Miami Art Museum.

If you feel like fish

It has nothing to do with art, but I've been meaning to mention this for a while. I love fresh fish and the key fish place around here is Atlantic Supermarket (7901 New Hampshire Avenue, Hyattsville, MD 20783-4609, (301) 439-7005). Loads of fresh fish in their fish department, including many species not generally available in your regular supermarket. Today I bought Mahi Mahi for $2.99 a pound and it's not frozen, but on ice and the guy cleans it right in front of you.

I also bought a fish that I'd never heard of called Basa. I got it just to try it (and because it was very cheap).

Having just come back from Miami, I was hoping to find Mamey ice cream, which (in my opinion) is the best tropical fruit ice cream on the planet. They didn't have it (in fact they don't have much ice creams).

I'll keep looking for Mamey (called Zapote in the Oriente province of Cuba) ice cream. They even sell it at Safeway in Miami, so maybe my local Safeway can order it for me.

Jessica Picks Steven Silberg as the 7th one

Jessica Dawson's Real D.C. series may completely (OK, OK, partially restore) my faith in the WaPo and the local area's visual art scene. Her 7th pick is Steven Silberg and so far she's seven for seven with me in her picks.

Whodda thunk it?

Check out all seven picks so far here. All picks will be invited by me for the next volume of 100 More Washington Artists.

This is funny

Erik Wemple, the editor of TBD.com has some really funny editorial comments for a variety of DC area publications. He also raises a really good question: Why does Washington Hispanic, a Spanish language newspaper, have an English title? This is not only a good question, but also a funny one!

By the way Erik, Fuego means "fire" and Frio means "cold" - it sorta works with what you're doing with the publications, but a better set of words would have been Caliente which means "hot" instead of Fuego. But I am very pedantic about that, and I do like the shortness of the Fuego word and how it aligns with the "F" in Frio. Super funny anyway.

Why does Washington Hispanic have an English name anyway? It doesn't even translate well. The translation would have been (in proper Spanish) El Hispano de Washington. That almost sounds like a person instead of a newspaper.

Come to think of it, in Miami, the New Herald has a Spanish language version. It is called El Nuevo Herald. That even weirder to me. The right name would have been El Nuevo Pregonero.

At the end of the day

Just when you thought the Campello-Capps feud was over and it was safe to go back to the pages of this blog and the City Paper's...

Awright... I'm being melodramatic; the battle of words between Capps and I is almost over, but not before you read this in the WCP. You see, the City Paper has done something unprecedented: they have allowed me to re-write Capps' story so that it is a bit more fair without eliminating Capps' fears about anonymous contributors to the book and other neurotic issues.

So go on and read the piece and if you want to leave a comment there, then try your best to keep them civil and constructive. I know that both Kriston and I do not bruise easily and we can both take constructive criticism and disagreement and hopefully we will all come out of this having learned something positive.

Putting together this first volume was an immense amount of work, and yet I am looking forward to the next couple of volumes and will apply the “lessons learned” from this first volume to all the others.

Shame on Springfield, MA

Art censorship covers all sides of the social spectrum in this great nation. Throw in a nude (or in this case, not even a nude) in most public settings around the US and something is bound to go wrong. Even in the Soviet Socialist State of Massachusetts. From the Legal Satyricon:

Censorship — its not just for rednecks

I often rant about the censorship minded former confederacy — but I must admit that my home state of Massachusetts has its share of censorship monkeys. The censorship monkey of the day — the city of Springfield, MA and Gina E. Beavers, director of the Springfield Arts Initiative for the Springfield Business Improvement District (SBID).

Read the entire post with all the details here.

Congrats!

To Renee Stout, the 2010 winner of the High Museum of Art's David C. Driskell Prize, which recognizes Stout's original and important contribution to African-American art.

Stout's show Renee Stout: The House of Chance and Mischief opens Saturday, September 11, 2010 with a public reception from 6:30 - 8:30PM at Hemphill.

Welcome!

To Dafna Steinberg, who is the new Gallery Director at the Ann Loeb Bronfman Gallery at the Washington DC Jewish Community Center. Their next show is an exhibition of works on paper by artist Miriam Mörsel Nathan. The exhibition, curated by Steven Cushner, will be on display from September 15 through December 17, 2010, with an Opening Reception from 6:00 to 8:00 pm on September 14.

Working from pre-World War II photographs, Mörsel Nathan searches for details of family members, most of whom she has known only through photographs and stories. In working with these images, she creates hauntingly beautiful and provocative works. By piecing together fragments of information collected from family documents, notes on photographs and oral histories, Mörsel Nathan’s work reveals an elusive story of personal history and ascribed memory, acknowledging what she does not know about the people in these images.

Mörsel Nathan explains, “Only after completing these pieces was it clear to me that my way of working–making it difficult to see the images–was very much a part of the story. That’s how it is with memory, even an inherited one. It can be hard to retrieve. It is often non-linear. It can be vague or unclear or incomplete or hidden.”

The exhibition includes a series of multi-colored monotypes and screen prints based on a photograph of her aunt Greta; a wedding series of her Uncle Josef’s wedding, complemented by a video chronicling the original images from the wedding; and her version of a pre-war “family album.”

Curator Cushner says, “Miriam Mörsel Nathan has been able to take her particular experience and transform it into a language that speaks to all of us. This is the magic of all good art–to create a bridge that can connect the personal and private, with the universal and communal.”

The three-month exhibition will be accompanied by myriad of special programming, including panel discussions, film screenings, literary, musical and theatrical events. Miriam Mörsel Nathan’s work for the exhibition Memory of a time I did not know… is supported in part by funding from the Montgomery County government and the Arts and Humanities Council of Montgomery County.

Airborne

Heading back home today early in the morning... too early.

Studio Space Available

Pyramid Atlantic is currently offering a private studio space for an artist (or artists) to share. The 10 X 12 studio space has large windows, natural lighting and free WiFi access. Rent is $300 per month. Monthly rental fee includes 24 hour studio access, parking and utilities.

Artists working in the mediums of paper-making, printmaking, book making and digital media are encouraged to apply. Unlimited use of printmaking facilities and equipment is available with studio rental for an additional $100 a month.

Artist interested in applying for the private space should submit:

* A resume of artistic experience,
* A typed one-page Artist Statement,
* Up to 10 images saved in jpeg format,
* A sheet identifying the name of each image, medium, dimension and date created

All materials may be emailed to jdominguez@pyramid-atlantic.org or mailed to:

Jose Dominguez
Executive Director
8230 Georgia Avenue
Silver Spring MD 20910.

All applications must be received by Sept 12, 2010

Read and weep some more

He's Britain's most talked-about young artist. His paintings fetch hefty sums and there's a long waiting list for his eagerly anticipated new works.

It has all happened so quickly — he's still getting used to the spotlight — and Kieron Williamson fidgets a little when he's asked to share his thoughts on art.

"Cows are the easiest thing to paint," said Kieron, who has just turned 8. "You don't have to worry about doing so much detail."

Read it here.

Jessica's Finalist No. 6: Chloe Watson

Great choice! Check it out here.

VARA in action

The news release from artist David Ascalon reads:

"When artist David Ascalon's towering Holocaust memorial, just blocks from the Pennsylvania state capitol, was dedicated in 1994, he could not have imagined that a dozen years later, his name would be stripped away from the sculpture's base. Nor could Ascalon have envisioned that his most cherished creation - one which he designed to honor the millions who perished at the hands of the Nazis - would have been mutilated through drastic modification at the whim of a bunch of Harrisburg bureaucrats. But that is precisely what happened.

Ascalon, however, was unwilling to permit this violation of his moral rights to go unchecked. Through his attorney, Jason B. Schaeffer of Cherry Hill, New Jersey, he has filed suit under Congress' Visual Artists' Rights Act of 1990 (VARA) - a law enacted to protect against such destruction - in Federal District Court for the Middle District of Pennsylvania. Through this action, Ascalon seeks to compel restoration of this important public artwork to its original design."

Here are some before and after pictures, including ones that show the artist's signature completely ground away. A copy of the complaint is here.

I don't know who the artist was, or even the name of the piece was, but does anyone remember that huge piece of shiny, fluttery, metal public art that used to be above the Bethesda Metro stop for years? The thing was massive; then, all of a sudden it was gone!

I wonder if that artist, whoever she or he may be, even knows that his work is no longer there.

The perils of public art... I guess.

Opportunity for Artists

Deadline: September 6, 2010

CoolClimate Art Contest. The purpose of the contest is to engage the creative community on behalf of producing an iconic image that addresses the impact of climate change and spurs participation in the climate change debate. The contest is being judged by notable art experts and celebrities such as Philippe Cousteau, Van Jones, Jackson Browne, Chevy Chase, Agnes Gund, David Ross, and Carrie Mae Weems. Winners will be voted on by the public on Huffington Post. Submissions are due September 6 and can be posted online here.

Hot Foot

I rarely hang my own work in my house, but I have a recent version of Superman Flying Naked temporarily hanging in my house while the art piece that goes there is on loan for an exhibition. The other day I noted that the way the sun was striking the glass made it look as if the Man of Steel had incandescent feet.

Tax Free Bennies

In addition to her $877,000 compensation package, Ellen V. Futter, president of the American Museum of Natural History, lives rent free in a $5 million East Side apartment that the museum bought when she came aboard.

The Metropolitan Museum of Art houses its director, Thomas P. Campbell, in a $4 million co-op that it owns across Fifth Avenue from the museum.

The director of the Museum of Modern Art, Glenn D. Lowry, may have the best deal of all. In addition to the $2 million in salary and benefits he earned last year, he lives in a $6 million condo in the tower atop the museum.

Read the NYT story here.