The CIA, Jackson Pollock and the abstract boys...

Oh boy...

For decades in art circles it was either a rumour or a joke, but now it is confirmed as a fact. The Central Intelligence Agency used American modern art - including the works of such artists as Jackson Pollock, Robert Motherwell, Willem de Kooning and Mark Rothko - as a weapon in the Cold War. In the manner of a Renaissance prince - except that it acted secretly - the CIA fostered and promoted American Abstract Expressionist painting around the world for more than 20 years.

Details here...

Read this!

I started out as a young Turk completely rebellious against skill.  I was conceptual!  I knew what was important!  And it wasn’t some type of mindless devotion to creating perfect solder seams.  I was so bad, and this is true; that on at least one occasion, my work fell apart at the opening.

Read some really good writing by Judith Schaechter at Late Breaking Noose here.

Looking for studio space?

Available July 1, 2013.

Approx. 326 sf for 353.17 per month plus utilities. This store front studio is located in the heart of the Gateway Arts District. One block from The Gateway Arts Center and 1/4 mile form the DC line on Rhode Island Ave. Most mediums allowed.

1 year lease minimum.

For more information, to get an application, or to see the space email John Paradiso at john@gateway-cdc.org

Gallery B call to artists!

  

The Bethesda Arts & Entertainment District and Bethesda Urban Partnership are accepting applications for Gallery B in downtown Bethesda!

This gallery, located at 7700 Wisconsin Avenue, Suite E in downtown Bethesda, is available to interested artists and arts organizations for one-month rentals. All media including, but not limited to, painting, photography and sculpture is eligible to use the space. Gallery B does not take a commission on any artwork sold during the exhibition.  

They are seeking applications from local artists and arts organizations for month-long exhibitions in 2014.  There is approximately 1,500 sq. feet of available exhibition space.  The deadline for submission is July 19, 2013.

To be considered for a solo or group exhibition, and to review the gallery requirements, please complete this application.

Questions?  Please send them an email to artist@bethesda.org.

  

 www.bethesda.org

Eve Sees Her Face for the First Time

"Eve Sees Her Face for the First Time"
Charcoal, conte and Embedded Video
2013. Framed to 40x30 inches

The return of the censored artsy underwear

The more things change...

David Woodward, a Queen's University fine arts student, planned to display 10 pairs of underwear at a university donor appreciation event. But when he arrived, the Toronto Star reports school officials quickly told him to get rid of them before the event at the Kingston, Ontario, school began.

This is so old news in some many ways... sometime in the mid 1990s there was a Washington DC area artist, I can't recall her name, whose work consisted of exactly the same thematic idea, but in this case her own underwear (sexy, feminine things...) and of course it was censored. I recall this because I wrote a long article for the historic KOAN Magazine about it.

More than a decade later... the more they stay the same.

New record for rugs... cough, cough

 New record!

"A Persian carpet decorated with swirling vines and vibrant flowers that was stored for decades by the Corcoran Gallery of Art sold Wednesday for more than $30 million. That sum, fetched at a Sotheby’s sale, shattered the previous record for rugs sold at auction. But it won’t help the struggling Washington gallery overcome its financial woes because the money must be used for future acquisitions, not to help the bottom line."

Read the article in the WaPo here. If the Corc needs some ideas as to how to spen the $30M... they know my number...

Opening at the Katzen June 15...

The American University Museum at the Katzen Arts Center spotlights the art of its hometown with five of its six new summer exhibitions featuring works by Washington, D.C. artists. Exhibitions open Saturday, June 15, with a reception from 6 to 9 p.m. and close Sunday, August 11.

The museum has a reputation for showing Washington art, something director and curator Jack Rasmussen initiated when the museum opened in 2005.

“Museums were not showing Washington art except on very rare occasions,” Rasmussen said in a recent interview with American magazine. “It’s important to have local artists on your side. They support you, they talk to their friends, the friends come, and all this makes it possible to have a scene in which people want to participate.”

Washington Art Matters: 1940s–1980s tells the story of art made here during five crucial decades. As such, this is the first major effort by a museum to present a comprehensive history, representing those times with works by some 80 artists. The exhibition is based on Washington Art Matters: Art Life in the Capital 1940-1990, a book published by the Washington Artists Museum and co-authored by Jean Lawlor Cohen, Benjamin Forgey, Sidney Lawrence and Elizabeth Tebow.

Tim Tate: Sleep Walker features video installations by Tim Tate, Washington’s best known contemporary glass artist, as well as collaborations with Pete Duvall and Richard Schellengberg. Videos are probably the closest medium we have to experiencing the inexplicable quality of the dream in our waking lives. Rich in symbol, metaphor, movement and mystery, videos—like dreams—enable us to participate in another reality, and, through that participation, to be transformed. Hidden within is the latent content which will give the viewer an understanding of what is happening in the mind of a dreamer.

Raya Bodnarchuk: Form spotlights sculptures by Raya Bodnarchuk, a major artist and influential mentor in Washington for 40 years. Her sculpted animals and people are beautifully and carefully observed, the mature work of a master of many different media. Bodnarchuk trained at the Rhode Island School of Art and Design and the Rinehart School of Sculpture, Maryland Institute College of Art.

Nan Montgomery: Opposite and Alternate consists of recent oil paintings by Washington, D.C., artist Nan Montgomery. Throughout her career, Montgomery’s basic signature has been the use of color as communication, the interest in the painted surface and a minimalist aesthetic.  Large fields of color are painted with many color overlays using a small brush.

Kitty Klaidman: Beneath the Surface highlights recent mixed media paintings by Washington, D.C., artist Kitty Klaidman. In these paintings, richly colored acrylic pigment is applied on wood panels covered with molding paste than has been incised with organic patterns. They are then highly glazed. The over-all effect is to make explicit the subtle rhythms and tensions in seemingly static natural settings.

Chester Arnold: Accumulations and Dispersals showcases large-scale, ecologically relevant oil paintings by San Francisco Bay area figurative artist, Chester Arnold. It is the great pageant of life on earth, as seen and remembered by an individual, mixed with dreaming narrative and fictional riff that speaks of the accumulated travails of an individual and an era. The voice and vision, although sparked with critical observation, is orchestrated with an overwhelming love of visual experience. As evidence of an artistic ambition and moral commitment to the human experiment, these paintings celebrate living and art-making and accumulating in a most visible and accessible way.

And the winner is...

If you read this, then you know that I am a little shocked but not surprised that the boss of one of the jurors won the Bethesda Painting Award.

I know that the subordinate recused herself when discussing her boss, but you know how it looks no matter what... I'm actually beginning to think that it wasn't her fault that her boss applied to the prize while she was the juror, nor that two other co-workers also made it to the finals.

Bethesda Painting Awards Winners

Best in Show ($10,000): Barry Nemett - Stevenson, MD
Second Place ($2,000): Christine Gray - Alexandria, VA
Third Place ($1,000): Hedieh Ilchi - Rockville, MD
 
Congratulations to all the 2013 Finalists!

Joan Belmar – Takoma Park, MD Dennis Farber – Lutherville, MD Christine Gray – Alexandria, VA Hedieh Ilchi – Rockville, MD Barry Nemett - Stevenson, MD Cara Ober - Baltimore, MD Erin Raedeke - Gaithersburg, MD Bill Schmidt - Baltimore, MD

Grammar Police on the prowl

No, not Kriston "Il Capo" Capps (who's instead Hirshhorning), but the other grammar police... see what I mean hear here... cough, cough.

The Batman in The Batcave... brooding over Robin

Newest piece... heading to Glenn Aber Contemporary Art in NY for the Hamptons art fairs... the work has a 6.5 minute loop of appropriated vintage Batman TV show video focusing on The Batman's relationship with The Boy Wonder.





The Batman in The Batcave (Brooding Over Robin)
Charcoal, conte and Embedded Appropriated Video. Circa 2013
Framed to 30x40 inches.

Update: Thanks to FedEex, this piece arrived to the gallery with a large footprint on the box (packed by FedEx) and busted glass and frame, so it couldn't be exhibited at the fair by my NY dealer... luckily, when I got it back from him, all that it needed was reframing... so it is safe.

New doors for the Library of Congress

In case you haven't noticed, all new doors on the east side of the Library of Congress Adams Building have been installed, with the new west side doors going in sometime in the next month. 

This is the culmination of a project that began 9 years ago where the Washington Glass School was tasked with replacing the doors in this most iconic of DC buildings. 

The project has been ignored by the DC area media (what else is new?) but the doors were fortunate enough to receive a fantastic 4-page spread in American Craft Magazine, discussing a one-in-a-lifetime project that represents not only some of the best of what the DMV art scene has to offer, but also the perfect balance of craft and architecture.

Read the article here.

Pheo Para Alliance Fundraiser at the Katzen

The Pheo Para Alliance and
The Katzen Arts Center at The American University
cordially invite you to
THE HEALING ARTS
An Evening of Art, Discussion, Good Food, and
Live and Silent Auctions
Saturday, June 22 at 5:30pm
The American University Museum

Sponsorship Levels:
The Andy Warhol Table For 10: $10,000
The Georgia O’Keefe Table For 8: $6,000
The Larry Rivers Table For 6: $4,500
The Sam Gilliam Table For 4: $3,000

$350/person
$175/person for patients and artists

FUNDS RAISED WILL GO TO RESEARCH FOR FINDING A CURE FOR PHEO PARA.

SCHEDULE OF EVENTS:
5:30-6:30 - Cocktails and Art Exhibit of Prominent Washington Artists (and also by yours truly, easily the prominest of all prominent DC area artists... cough, cough... I will be donating this work) . Silent Auction Opens.
 
6:45-7:15 - Panel Discussion “The Healing Arts”
Dr. Frederick Ognibene, Deputy Director Of Clinical Research Training, National Institutes of Health, Moderator
 
PANELISTS:
Susan B. Magee – Author, INTO THE LIGHT The Healing Art of Kalmon Aron
Shanti Norris – Executive Director of Smith Center for Healing And The Arts
Jerzy Sapieyevski – Award Winning Composer, Pianist, and Educator
Tim Tate – Mixed Media Sculptor, Co-Founder of  The Washington Glass School

Humanitarian Award Presentation to Dr. Antonio Tito Fojo (a fellow Cuban-American by the way).
 
7:30-9:30 – Dinner, Entertainment, Live Auction
 
9:30 – Grand Finale

PLEASE RSVP BY FRIDAY, JUNE 14
Checks payable to
Pheo Para Alliance can be sent to:
6111 Western Avenue, NW
Washington, DC 20015
To register online, please visit
www.pheo-para-alliance.org

Red Handed at MFA

RED HANDED

A gallery installation experience by ROSEMARY FEIT COVEY 

June 21st, 2013 - June 5th, 2013

EXHIBITION LOCATION

Morton Fine Art (MFA)

1781 Florida Ave NW (at 18th & U Sts)

Washington, DC 20009

HOURS

Tuesday - Saturday 11am - 6pm

Sunday 12pm-5pm  

OPENING RECEPTION

Friday, June 21st from 6pm-8pm

The artist will be in attendance. 

About Red Handed:  

Rosemary Feit Covey's Red Handed is a complete gallery installation project which combines drawings printed on both hand and commercial printers.  The prints are then made into paintings, or left rough on cheap paper.  Covey's exploration in media and method has evolved and is comprised of wall-wrapped images and an all-encompassing floor piece - the major part of the installation - which forces the viewer to walk on the art.  The image is meant to have no beginning and no end.

Red Handed began as a set of drawings and printed columns during Covey's 2012 residency at Spiro Arts in Utah. The initial drawing appeared as a steam of conscience image. It was at first unclear why red hands kept appearing on her running figures, Covey feels it is connected to guilt.

Inspiration for Red Handed:

Referencing Dore, Modigliani and Picasso's Guernica - Red Handed raises issue of collective versus personal guilt.

"Where all are guilty, no one is; confessions of collective guilt are the best possible safeguard against the discovery of the culprit, and the very magnitude of the crime the best excuse for doing nothing."
 -Hannah Arendt

"For all survivors of suicide the question of guilt opens a maw that fills and envelopes adding to the pain, shock and sorrow. A murder has been committed where the murderer can not be blamed. The past becomes the framework for constant reexamination.  I had to ask myself - why did this image spring whole from my imagination?  I had to wait and allow my thoughts to unearth the past.  Guilt is the most personal of emotions and universal only when we take it on ourselves before we look at the rest." -Rosemary Feit Covey

About ROSEMARY FEIT COVEY:

Rosemary Feit Covey was born in Johannesburg, South Africa. In a career spanning three decades she has exhibited internationally and received countless awards. Covey's work is in numerous national and international museum and library collections.
Select collections include the Corcoran Gallery of Art; the New York Public Library Collection of Prints and Drawings; the Papyrus Institute, Cairo, Egypt; the National Library of Australia, Canberra; The National Museum of American History; Georgetown University Library Print Collection; Harvard University Library; and Princeton University Library.
Georgetown University Library currently houses 512 of her wood engravings in their permanent collection. She has an upcoming solo exhibition at the Evergreen Museum at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore in 2014.

Red Handed marks Covey's third annual exhibition at Morton Fine Art.

Jackie and Marilyn find a home together

Both these pieces are now in the collection of a well-known DMV collector. In my opinion this couple has the largest (I'm talking in the thousand plus) collection of DMV area artists.

Ave Jacquelinas ER
Charcoal and Conte with Embedded electronics
20x16 inches, circa 2012

Ave Marylinas
Charcoal and Conte with Embedded Electronics
20x16 inches, circa 2012

Jenkins on Alchemical Vessels

Read the WaPo's Mark Jenkins review of this terrific fundraising exhibition.

Next Saturday at Blackrock

Anne Marchand, Mike Schaffer, Mark Sharp

acrylics, wood sculpture, mixed media

  

Exhibit: June 5-28, 2013

Location: Main Gallery

  

Reception: Saturday, June 8 5:30-7:30

Free!

  

AND

Robert O'Brien

oil paintings

Exhibit: June 5-July 26, 2013
 

Location: Terrace Gallery

BlackRock Center for the Arts

12901 Town Commons Drive

Germantown, Maryland 20874

301-528-2260  www.blackrockcenter.org

Arts Council of Fairfax County announces the 2013 Strauss Artist Awards

The Arts Council awarded $5,000 each to these Fairfax County based artists:

Diane Coburn Bruning
Susan Eder and Craig Dennis
Rebecca Kamen

All Strauss artist awardees can be seen at http://artsfairfax.org/strauss-artist-awards/recipients. 

Congrats!

The Batman in the Batcave

Newest piece that marries technology with contemporary drawing... heading to Glenn Aber Contemporary Art in NY for the Hamptons art fairs...





The Batman in The Batcave (Brooding Over Robin)
Charcoal, conte and Embedded Appropriated Video. Circa 2013
Framed to 30x40 inches.

Call to Artists: Art Bank 2013

Call to Artists: Art Bank 2013 

The D.C. Commission on the Arts and Humanities is seeking to purchase two and three-dimensional works of art including prints, drawings, mixed media compositions, paintings, photographs, ceramics, and moveable sculptures. To expand the District's collection further into new media forms of contemporary art, we strongly encourage video artists and other technological innovators to submit as well. Submission of works in series is strongly encouraged. Representational, conceptual, and abstract works will be equally considered.

Each artist is allowed to submit up to 10 images for consideration and all artwork submitted must be available for purchase and review upon submission (see calendar for dates). Artwork must be created with archival materials and be no larger in size than 96" in any direction. In addition to images of prospective artwork, a completed application must include:

• An Artist Statement
• A current CV or Resume
• An Image List, declaring the retail price of each piece of artwork listed

To Apply:

To submit prospective work for review during the Art Bank 2013 acquisition cycle, please visit  http://dcarts.slideroom.com and open an account. Your account will be assigned a login password, to enable you to access Art Bank 2013 and any other open opportunities in Public Art.

Artist Eligibility:

This call is open to all artists who reside or maintain studio space in the Washington Metropolitan Area. However, preference will be given to District of Columbia residents.

For more information, contact Zoma Wallace, Art Bank Coordinator at zoma.wallace@dc.gov or (202) 724-5613.