Opportunity for video artists

Deadline: September 30, 2010.

Visual Overture Magazine is accepting submissions for a special section of the magazine called “Spotlight on Video Art,” to be included in the Winter 2010 issue, which will feature the work of one serious emerging videographer whose work is fine art. Materials to Submit: 2-3 videos, 500 word essay describing why your video work can be classified as fine art. Online Application: www.visualoverture.com/artists.htm

Benny Moré

Today is the birthday of Bartolomé Maximiliano Moré Gutiérrez (d. 1963 at age 43), known to Cubans as Benny Moré, and considered the best Cuban popular singer and Cuban orchestra leader of all time. Without any formal musical training, witness how he directs his huge band in the rare footage below, and then check him out in a scandalous zoot suit outfit singing number in a Cuban movie of the 1950s:

Go get some Benny CDs...

Pencil this opening for September 23

First Campello gallery exhibition in DC area in 4 years!

Next Sept 20 - Oct. 15 I will be having my first substantial exhibition in the DC area in four years. The show will be at the School of Art & Design at Montgomery College's King Street Gallery, located in the beautiful Morris & Gwendolyn Cafritz Foundation Arts Center at 930 King Street in the Montgomery College, Takoma Park/Silver Spring Campus.

There will be all new drawings in my constant exploration of using the human figure to deliver social, historical, satirical, mythological and political messages. The show also includes work by the immensely talented Johanna Mueller, who was one of my top picks from the last Artomatic and whom I predict will steal the show, as well as Leah Frankel and Leslie Shellow, both of whom are new artists to me.

The show is curated by Dr. Claudia Rousseau and is:

An exhibit of works on paper depicting mythical themes, or themes connoting transformations—mythical, magical or organic.

The exhibit will include prints, drawings and installation works employing paper with wax and other media.

The opening is Thursday, September 23, 5:00 – 7:30 pm. I expect to see all of you there to make me look good...

Small scale clay sculptor needed

Are you really good at sculpting realistic objects out of clay? Do you need some extra money? The Washington Glass School has a project that requires small clay realistic objects in the two to four inch range. This would be ongoing throughout the year. Contact washglassschool@aol.com for further info.

Lenny the Insufferable

Some good Q & A's going on in the comments section here with the usual name calling making its expected appearance.

Rita La Caimana

For your listening (and viewing pleasure) two music videos singing Rita La Caimana, one of the most famous Cuban songs of the son genre. It's about a famous woman from Bayamo, in Oriente province named Rita La Caimana (Rita The Cayman - a Cayman being a Cuban crocodile).

Apparently everyone in Bayamo knew this lady, and all her life she'd go from door to door asking for alms, and whenever she heard music playing she'd break out into a dancing fever that made her famous throughout Cuba. Check out how the two versions are so different from each other and how the singer in the first version looks like American actor Michael Clarke Duncan.

Looking for new members

The Artists’ Gallery in Frederick, Maryland is currently reviewing applicants for membership.

The Artists’ Gallery has been representing emerging and established local artists for twenty years. As a cooperative gallery, the establishment affords artists both the opportunity to show and to participate in the running of the gallery. Each month, two members are featured in solo exhibitions in separate rooms, and a changing monthly show of other members work is displayed in a third space.

Sculpture, installation, photography, ceramics, printmaking and painting are among the media represented. The gallery artists hold opening receptions on Frederick’s popular “First Saturday,” which consistently draws a strong turn-out.

Members are accepted based on a portfolio review, which may then be followed by a jurying of current work and personal interview by current members.

Information and downloadable application can be found on the website
www.the-artists-gallery.org.

To speak to a gallery representative about membership and the application process, please call Johan Lowie at 571-276-6876, or by email 5thstreetstudio@gmail.com or Linda Agar-Hendrix at 301-865-5047, email: hendrix2723@gmail.com

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.