Art scammer

Kathryn Delahunty (kattymerchandise@gmail.com) is an art scammer and he/she has been emailing DMV area artists today...

See this link.

Another dissident dies

Leading Cuban dissident Oswaldo Paya Sardinas died in a car accident in Cuba on Sunday. He is the second leading leading Cuban dissident to die in an "accident" this year.

According to a statement about the crash issued by the Cuban government late Sunday, the unidentified driver of the car lost control and struck a tree near the eastern Cuban city of Bayamo.

On Sunday, Paya's daughter, Rosa Maria Paya, told CNN that her family believed a second car had struck the vehicle her father was traveling in, forcing it off the road.

President Obama made the following statement on the subject:

 The President's thoughts and prayers are with the family and friends of Oswaldo Payá, a tireless champion for greater civic and human rights in Cuba.  Payá  gave decades of his life to the nonviolent struggle for freedom and democratic reform in Cuba as the head of the Christian Liberation Movement, the leader of the Varela Project, and through his role as a civil society activist.  He remained optimistic until the end that the country he loved would see a peaceful and democratic transition.  We continue to be inspired by Payá's vision and dedication to a better future for Cuba, and believe that his example and moral leadership will endure.  The United States will continue to support the Cuban people as they seek their fundamental human rights.

 Castro's workers' Paradise claims another courageous life in the island's struggle to free itself from the yoke of dictators.

Wanna be in the (e)merge art fair?

If you are a member of the WPA, then this is a "no-brainer" and a must do; if you're an artist and not yet a member of the WPA, then you've run out of excuses! Join the WPA now and be part of the (e)merge art fair - that alone is worth your membership fee and adds a nice bullet to your artistic CV.

This gets me to thinking about the WPA and art fairs... I do a lot of art fairs and all of them, just like (e)merge, offer special deals, prices and programs for non-profits such as the WPA is... and having the experience of many art fairs, I can tell you right now that the format and program that the WPA will be showcasing at (e)merge is going to be a winner.

This opportunity is a great idea and can grow into a whole new line of opportunities for the WPA's membership.

And not just a winner in the DMV, but this presentation and format will work in New York, Miami and perhaps even LA! So WPA... after (e)merge, why not take your membership to other art fairs around the nation? You've got a winner with this idea...

Call me.

CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS: WPA Members Work on Paper  at the (e)merge art fair

DEADLINE: Friday, August 24, 2012, 5pm
WORK DROP-OFF: September 10 - 14, 2012, 10am-6pm
WORK PICK-UP: October 15 - 19, 2012, 10am-6pm
CONTACT: Blair Murphy, Program Director, 202-234-7103 x 1 or bmurphy@wpadc.org
ONLINE REGISTRATION

VIEW CALL AT WPADC.ORG

Washington Project for the Arts is pleased to announce a call for 8" x 8" works on paper by WPA Member Artists to be on view and for sale in WPA's room at the (e)merge art fair, from October 4 - 7, 2012. All current WPA members are invited to submit one 8" x 8" work on paper. Work submitted MUST be 8" x 8" and must be delivered without a mat, mounting or a frame. If a member artist wishes to submit a work that is smaller than 8" x 8", it must be submitted mounted to an 8" x 8" sheet of paper. WORK THAT IS LARGER THAN 8" X 8" WILL NOT BE ACCEPTED.
            
Each work will be exhibited on the wall of WPA's room in a grid for at least one full day of the fair. Work will be installed on the wall using removable adhesive mounting squares. When not displayed on the wall, work will be stored in a presentation case and must fit into one of the clear display sleeves.
              
Registration, Drop-off and Pick-up
Current WPA member artists who wish to participate must register online by August 24, 2012 at 5pm by submitting their contact info, cv, work details, and one image of the work they would like to include through this online form. 
                
All work must be dropped off at the WPA office at 2023 Massachusetts Avenue between September 10 and 14, from 10am to 6pm. You will be notified via email by October 11 if your work has sold. Unsold work must be picked up at the WPA office between October 15 and 19, from 10am to 6pm.
          

If you are unable to drop your work off in person, but would still like to participate or have any other questions regarding the submissions process, please contact Blair Murphy, Program Director, at 202-234-7103 x 1 or bmurphy@wpadc.org

  

WPA Member Artists who submit must agree to the following artist agreement:
Washington Project for the Arts will take a 30% commission on Member Works on Paper that are sold. Work will be insured by WPA while it is in WPA's possession. Unsold work must be picked up at the WPA office by October 19, 2012. WPA will not be held responsible for the work after that date. I hereby release WPA, its board of directors, employees, and volunteers and agree to indemnify and hold them harmless against all claims arising out of damage to my artwork arising in connection with my participation in the WPA Member Flat File. I understand that acceptance of my work does not guarantee free admission to the fair.

Lunch at Tally Ho

Little Junes and I had lunch in Potomac's Tally Ho Restaurant today, and since they brought the little guy lots of crayons, Dad went to work on the back of the paper napkins while I waited for my yummy Congressional burger and Anderson for his hot dog.

Anderson finishing up his hot dog

Drawing done on back of my napkin - that's Little Junes atop a bull (he chose the subject)

And that's him having a drink with a pig (he selected that subject as well)

Superheroes book out

The True History of the Superheroes book is finally out from Editorial RM.

52 pages with 20 gorgeous photographs by Dulce Pinzon.

Available in both Spanish and English.

Order it here.

The Beginner's Guide to Art Investments

First and foremost, be sure that the art is something that you genuinely enjoy. The price of art is relatively unpredictable and is heavily based on developing trends; there’s no guarantee that it will have appreciated in value (or even maintained its value) over time, so you may be stuck with the piece for the long haul. Another helpful tip is to always learn the artist’s backstory, as it has a fair amount of weight in the resale value of a piece. Those with interesting stories behind their life or how they got into art tend to have higher values on their pieces; knowing the story behind a piece can be a major selling point for collectors.

Read the whole article here.

I kid thee not...

The theft of the painting was first discovered in late 2002, when the Contemporary Art Museum of Caracas was contacted by a Miami gallery owner saying that someone had offered to sell it to him. 

Experts at the museum inspected the likeness and were shocked to find that it was a fake, and not a very good one, at that. Someone had removed the original painting from its frame and put the fake in its place, leaving it to be exhibited as if it were the real thing. And no one noticed.

Read the full article here.

Was the nude too crude for beach?

Here we go again...

HAMPTON — A sand sculpture of a naked woman has some in the Hampton Beach Village Precinct calling on organizers of the popular annual competition to ask master sculptors to use more discretion next year in their artwork.

Resident Tim Jones called the sculpture "pornographic." The event organizer calls it an issue of artistic freedom.

Read the whole article here.

Anderson sez...

"I push it!"

Airborne

The kid is heading to the Left Coast for a week in San Diego... more later!

Airborne

Heading back home today from Montreal and then heading back out tomorrow morning, this time heading out to the Left Coast (San Diego)...

In Atlanta Airport's cool tunnel of colors between terminals...

Bad taste or offensive?

Ad column in Montreal

I think both...but free countries are free countries for a good set of reasons, some good and some not so easy to understand.

From American Airlines

And airlines wonder why people have low opinions of them... this recently received from American Airlines:

In order to streamline our program, we are announcing a change to AAdvantage miles earned before July 1, 1989, also called Miles With No Expiration.

Starting November 1, 2012, these miles will automatically be converted to Miles Subject to Expiration...

(e)merge announces...

News release from the (e)merge art fair:

(e)merge art fair, created to advance emerging art, returns to Washington, DC this fall. (e)merge welcomes back galleries from across the US and Europe including: BROTkunsthalle, Vienna, Austria; Amstel Gallery, Amsterdam, The Netherlands; Aureus Contemporary, Basel, Switzerland and Providence, USA; G Fine Art, Washington, DC, USA; Goya Contemporary, Baltimore, USA; and NOMAD, Brussels, Belgium. Among the galleries newly joining the fair are: Bäckerstrasse 4, Vienna, Austria; Flying Rooster Contemporary Projects, Montreal, Canada; Galería Servando, Havana, Cuba; Trailer Park Proyects, Guyanabo, Puerto Rico; Contemporary Wing, Washington, DC, Mixed Greens, New York, USA; LYNCHTHAM, New York; and Project 4 Gallery, Washington, DC, USA. A complete list of gallery and artist exhibitors will be available soon.

(e)merge is honored to have the support of the members of its inaugural Host Committee: Jane and Calvin Cafritz, Carol Feld and David Levy, Izette and Neal Folger, Janice Kim and Tony Otten, Alexia and Roderick Von Lipsey, Kim and Patrick Nettles, Rose Nosseir and Paul Carter, Frederick Ognibene, Lorie Peters, Robert Shapiro, Sid Stoltz and David Hatfield, and Daren Thomas.

“DC is one of the fastest-growing and most prosperous areas in the country, and Washington’s business, tech and collecting communities have rallied to support (e)merge and its exhibitors. With its entrepreneurial spirit and creative energy, this fair can become a model for promoting emerging art and artists everywhere."
- Robert Shapiro, Chairman of Sonecon, LLC
(e)merge is proud to partner with UBS and excited by the support of our sponsors: ESL Group, LivingSocial, HapstackDemetriou, Kaze Design, Vivid Solutions, the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities, Exhibit-E, Industry Gallery DC, and Whiteford, Taylor, & Preston; and media sponsors: The Art Dossier, The Art Newspaper, BrightestYoungThings, DC Modern Luxury, Gallerist, and the Pinkline Project.

“As our culture evolves, moment by moment, the emergence of new ideas about architecture, design and art are changing and enhancing our daily lives. Giving an experience to this evolution is what our partnership with (e)merge is all about.”
- Peter Hapstak & Olvia Demetriou, Principals, HapstakDemetriou
This year the fair looks forward to another series of educational events in October with our cultural partners – The Corcoran Gallery of Art, the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, the National Gallery of Art, the Phillips Collection, and the National Museum of Women in the Arts.

(e)merge art fair
Thursday, October 4 through Sunday, October 7, 2012
Washington, DC
www.emergeartfair.com

I used to say neigh

Stories like this one used to spin me up... now I just say: Hey! What the heck... there's plenty of room for all of us in the art world.

After Artomatic

The most common criticism levied upon Artomatic, is that because it is lacking the dictatorial. yet benevolent hand of the curator, it is a jumbled universe of so much art and so many artists, that art critics and other art world symbiots soon run out of brain storage and processing power and all they see is kitsch and trash and dreck.

For the past several years, some enterprising independent commercial art galleries from the region have staged their "after" AOM shows, where they have usually showcased the gallery owner's selection of what artists he or she were the top picks of that particular AOM. That's how PostSecret's Frank Warren and WGS' Tim Tate got their first commercial gallery shows.

Some galleries have also taken my AOM selections and organized post-AOM shows based on my picks, the most recent of which you can read here.

And I can tell you that in that post AOM tradition, next month I will be curating a post AOM exhibition at The Edison Place Art Gallery in Washington, DC.  Then the critics can take their critical pot shots at me, the vastly experienced, highly respected, immensely virile and good looking curator, rather than shoot empty, lazy negative word bullets at a show in general.

More news later as I ramp up for putting this show together in record time.

Montrealing

Bus touring around the Montreal Gay Village

Touristin' in Montreal... can you see me?

Little Junes doesn't want to miss a thing!

Montreal, Canada

We're in Montreal, Canada, where the Professor is lecturing at a conference and I'm gallery hopping in order to write some impressions of Montreal art galleries, as well as meeting and delivering a commissioned piece to a local art collector.

We're staying in the old city, which is a great venue for walking with a stroller, although Little Junes' mom just informed him that she's weaning him out of the stroller pretty soon.

This is a great walking area, packed with tourists, entertainers and lots of people walking around with official-looking badges.

But first things first, and first of all is some good Canadian suds at a local joint off Rue de la Commune accompanied by a nice salad with smoked salmon.

 Tan is compliments of all the time outdoors in the last few days checking out the hole in the roof and clearing out fallen branches from the back yard.

Of course, while waiting I did some sketches on the paper provided... in the end we ended with a set of sketches of Anderson as :

• himself wearing his favorite orange Dolphins ball cap (gift from his padrino Jorge); 
• Junes as a bird; 
• Junes as a bicycle; 
• Junes as a pepper shaker.

Sorry about all the food stains.

Heh, heh...

Airborne

Flying out tonight and heading to Montreal, Canada for a week... no more storms while I'm gone.... please!

Uninformed art critic turns into misinformed opinionist

As someone who resolutely avoids the commercial side of the art world whenever possible and prefers to focus on the artwork itself, my impression of art fairs comes largely from written accounts. Fairs in places like Basel, Switzerland, Miami Beach and New York City have been represented as typically glitzy affairs in which most of the best work sells out during exclusive previews and to which the unwashed public is invited as a kind of afterthought. The idea of bringing this kind of art culture to Buffalo initially struck me, to put it nicely, as unexciting.

But judging only by a walk-through of the fair and of Larkinville Saturday morning, this sort of elitist vibe does not surface in Echo in any way. And while a typical complaint from attendees and exhibitors at other fairs is that they do not provide an ideal place to see or understand work, I found Echo to be a pretty extraordinary one.

This sort of initial misinformation/impressions - largely driven by ignorance - astounds me... how can someone be the art critic for a major city newspaper (we're talking Buffalo here; the second largest city in New York state!) and still has not been to an art fair in 2012!

He lives in New York state! A few hours away from the second largest epicenter of art fairs on the planet!

But more importantly for his readers, how can someone be a newspaper's art critic and still "resolutely avoids the commercial side of the art world whenever possible."

Yikes! And all along here we thought that Blake Gopnik was the only art critic who did that!

And where does that "typical complaint" come from? First heard for me...

Nearly everyone there... was extremely approachable and willing to talk to visitors about their work. That's something you don't get in many galleries...

 What??? Where does this gent get those impressions from? The 1990s?

There's more intellectual disservice to this Buffalo News readers in this article by  Colin Dabkowski and zero actual art review/criticism in the column... maybe I'm missing something, but his title is "Art Critic."

Makes my head hurt... Buffalo News, please send this guy down to NYC or Miami for the next cycle of art fairs so that he can open his eyes a little wider shut.