Re-inventing painting

Videopainter.... videopaintism... videopaintist...



That's what I have dubbed Scott Hutchison: a videopainter.

And just when some of you and Blake thought that the ancient medium had nothing left to give, along comes Arlington-based Scott Hutchison and delivers something so "new" that I am sure that were Scott showing in NYC or LA, curators from the Corcoran or the Hirshhorn would be descending on this show like bugs on your porch light (the last time Scott showed with us, he created something of a controversy because of this).

Typical video art: Film something boring, or something artsy, or something sexy, or an old classic movie a frame-at-a-time, and then sell photographic stills from the video.

The new videopainting: Spend months and months creating a set of small paintings; superbly painted works, each and every one of them, and then marry then (through technology and video) into a singularly unique and new idea: like this one.

Click here or here if you want to see what one of the future(s) of painting looks like.

Come to the opening at our Fraser Gallery Georgetown on Friday, November 18, from 6-9PM if you want to see a gallery full of something "new."

Richard on Newman

The WaPo's former Chief Art Critic delivers a rare and welcomed thing: an unexpected review.

Paul Richard reviews William Newman at Adamson.

More please...

P.S. And the current WaPo Chief Art Critic, Blake Gopnik, last Sunday delivered a really good review of Alice Neel at the NMWA.

Openings this week

On Thursday, November 17, Susan Calloway Fine Arts has Alison Hall Cooley: Recent Works – Abstract Oil Paintings opening from 5-8PM. Cooley has exhibited in Washington, DC, Virginia, and Massachusetts. She is the winner of several awards, including the Charles C. McDougall Award for Promising New Artist. Cooley attended the Corcoran School of Art in Washington, DC, and Sarah Lawrence University.

Also on Thursday, The League of Reston Artists has the opening for their Annual Juried Theme Exhibition: "Edges". The awards reception is at Walker & Company from 6-8PM.

On Friday, being the third Friday of the month, the Georgetown Canal Square Galleries have their extended hours and openings.

We will have an amazing show by Scott Hutchison, perhaps one of our area's most innovative and talented videopainters; more on that later.

Opportunity for Artists

Deadline: December 9, 2005

Stretched Tight is an exhibition that is open to all artists in the United States and abroad working in the ancient medium that refuses to die: painting.

Artists are encouraged to submit work that challenges conventional notions. Work may represent a broad range of subjects, genres, concepts and/or processes.

Juror: My good friend Jack Rasmussen, Director and Curator of the Katzen Arts Center at American University, Washington D.C.

Jack has also served as the Executive Director of the di Rosa Preserve: Art & Nature, Napa, CA and the Maryland Art Place (MAP) in Baltimore.

Deadline December 9, 2005. Show dates February 24 - March 26, 2006. Entry fee $30.00 for three images (slide or CD). $500.00 in award money.

For a prospectus send a SASE to the:
Target Gallery
Torpedo Factory Art Center
105 North Union St
Alexandria VA 22314

Or call 703-838-4565 x 4, or E-mail: targetgallery@torpedofactory.org

This looks like fun

Deadline: November 30, 2005

The Masters Mystery Art Show 2005 is an international exhibition that will coincide with Art Basel Miami Beach 2005.

Artists are invited to donate original work in any medium in a 6 x 9 postcard format to be sold for the affordable price of $50. All artists names will be published at the time of the exhibition but the works will be displayed anonymously and the identity of the artist will only be revealed to the purchaser after the completion of the sale.

The event is organized for the sole benefit of the prestigious Master of Fine Arts in Visual Arts (MFA) program at Florida International University, Miami. In its remarkably successful 2004 inaugural edition, which took place at the Ritz Carlton South Beach, over 1000 artworks by more than 500 artists and celebrities from art related fields were featured and over $20,000 was raised for the MFA program.

It's so easy to participate! Just download the Entry Form and the Artist Info Form from this website.

Wanna go to an opening?

Salve Regina Gallery at the Catholic University of America presents: Hollow Work with an opening reception on Wednesday, November 16 2005 from 6-9PM.

Artists include: Joan Ganzevoort, Lancelot Coar, Mary Frank and Phoebe Esmon.

The Salve Regina Gallery
Catholic University of America
620 Michigan Ave NE
Washington, DC 20009
202.319.5282

South American Holiday

South American Holiday opens at the Anne C. Fisher Gallery in Georgetown this coming Friday, 18 November with an opening reception from 6-8pm.

The exhibition features South American artists Joan Belmar (Chile), Patricia Secco (Brazil), Luis Scotti (Uruguay) and Helga Thomson (Argentina).

The exhibition hangs through 13 January, 2006.

Deadline Approaching

The deadline for receiving applications for the 2006 Bethesda Fine Arts Festival is Friday, December 16, 2005.

For more information and to download an application form, visit this website.

Art Job

Bedford Gallery, City of Walnut Creek, California. Part-Time, 30 hours per week, $25.65 - $30.97 per hour plus benefits!

Coordinate and implement promotion of Bedford Gallery exhibitions; plan and present events and arts education programs. Supervise volunteers. Requires: Bachelors and/or Masters of Art or fine arts, and 2 to 3 years direct experience. City application required, apply by 11/18/05. For more information and a city application go to: www.walnut-creek.org.

Worldwide

I am somewhat amazed as to the number of visits that DC Art News gets from all over the world (from outside the DC area that is).

We're now approaching around 1,000 visitors a day, and a random check on the world map shows visits from all over the planet.

See the 100 most recent visitors here.

Power of the Web

Terry Teachout in the Wall Street Journal: "You, Too, Can Be a Critic - Regional arts journalists now have competition -- the 'artblog'"

"Few regional papers, after all, can afford to hire more than a handful of arts staffers, and even fewer editors know enough about the arts to make informed hiring decisions, much less intelligently oversee the writers they do hire."

Read it here.

Bootcamp today

I'll be at Warehouse all day co-presenting the "Success as an Artist" seminar, also known around these parts as Bootcamp for Artists.

This seminar is fully booked, but we have a wait list for the next one. Email Catriona for details.

More later...

Ursy

A while back I met a very talented lady, who has not only an important history as one of our area's top potters and ceramic wizards, but is also an amazing kayaker.

And slowly but surely she has taught herself a separate wizardry: digital manipulations of her own nascient photography.

If you want to see how an artistic vein can course through many different genres, don't miss Ursy Potter's exhibition at the Unitarian Universalist Congregation Fairfax 2709 Hunter Mill Road, Oakton, Virginia and on the phone at (703) 281-4230. The reception is Sunday, November 13 from 12:30-3PM.

Wanna go to an opening tonight?

The show is "Threesome: A Girl, a Guy, and a Gay" at Studio One Eight, a new gallery in Adams Morgan located at 2452 18th St. NW, and the opening is tonight, from 7-10pm. The show features new paintings and drawings by Dana Ellyn Kauffman, Gregory Ferrand and Scott G. Brooks.

This show brings together three figurative artists living and working in DC. Each approaches their work in a unique style from a different point of view, with equally distinct results:

- Dana Ellyn Kauffman is a full time painter, living and working in Washington, DC. and we last saw her work at Art-O-Matic... she's a narrative painter whose works usually tell a story and have powerful visual meaning, and sometimes the message may come as a shock... don’t let her pigtails fool you.

- Gregory Ferrand, a Washington, DC artist, is a graduate of Virginia Commonwealth University’s School of the Arts. After living in Buenos Aires, Argentina for two years and traveling through Latin America, he began to paint in earnest. His paintings and drawings for this show deal with emotional, physical, and societal insecurities.

- Scott G. Brooks is originally from Flint, Michigan, and graduated from the University of Michigan with a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree. He moved to the D.C. area in 1990 and currently lives and works in the U Street corridor. His work has been exhibited in New York, Los Angeles, and many venues in the D.C. area, including the recent "Jumping Through Hoops" at Gallery Neptune, the WPA/Corcoran show "Seven," "Drawing National 2" at Montgomery College, and the last three Artomatic exhibitions. Scott has also illustrated two children’s books: The Three Armadillies Tuff, and The Ring Bear. For "Threesome," Scott focused purely on the figure, creating six new paintings based on models that he has worked with recently.

While I was gone

Leave it to Blake...

Last Sunday, the WaPo's Chief Art Critic looked at the Katzen and it got a bunch of artsy folks arguing online.

Read it here.

For a different perspective, Joanna Shaw-Eagle at the Times (and who has been writing about art since Blake was in diapers), offers this view.

Tate in the Blade

The Washington Blade has a good article on Tim Tate in today's paper.

Read it here.

Tate's new solo show "Caged by History," which is already nearly a third sold prior to the actual opening (his previous two solo shows sold out) opens to the public tonight with an opening reception as part of the Bethesda Art Walk, from 6-9PM.

If you only come to see one of our shows this year, come see this one, and see what develops when the power of narrative art is brought, for the first time, to the genre once segregated to the craft side of the arts and focused only to the vessel.

Details on the Art Walk here.

DC Arts Grant Recipients

Congrats to these artists, who were recently awarded an average of $4,700 as part of individual art awards by the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities.

Trends in Contemporary Drawing

Next Thursday, November 17, from 7-9 pm, join the Arlington Arts Center for an evening of challenging definitions and preserving traditions as four leading artists and curators from the Washington, D.C. area discuss trends in contemporary drawing.

The latest AAC exhibition Drawing: Tradition & Innovation opens on November 15 and features diverse work by 21 artists from the Mid-Atlantic region. The roundtable is free of charge and open to the public.

Panelists are:

Margaret Boozer - Ms. Boozer is a contemporary sculptor whose work in clay exploits the natural occurrence of line as the material hardens. Her work is included in the collection of the Renwick Gallery of the Smithsonian American Art Museum and in many private collections. She was also an exhibiting artist in Seven. She is the director of Red Dirt Studio in Mt. Rainier, MD, and has been a visiting artist and lecturer at local and national institutions.

Richard Dana - Mr. Dana has exhibited his art extensively regionally, nationally and internationally. He has had over 16 solo exhibitions and participated in over 65 group exhibitions. Most recently, he has shown his work at the Pretoria Museum of Art in South Africa in June and at Tribes Gallery in New York in October and locally in Seven. Mr. Dana is a participating artist in Drawing: Tradition and Innovation.

Janis Goodman - Ms. Goodman is an Associate Professor at the Corcoran College of Art. She has received an NEA support grant and DC Commission on the Arts grants to individual artists. Her own work is deeply rooted in the traditions and extensions of the drawing process. For the past three years she has been a visual arts reviewer for WETA’s TV program Around Town,

Karey Kessler - A Washington, D.C. based artist, Ms. Kessler uses the tradition of mapping to underscore the organizing principles of line. Though based on the science of topography, her intimate drawings depict imagined, dream-like locales. Her work has been exhibited throughout the United States. She currently serves as Gallery Manager at the District of Columbia Arts Center (DCAC), and independently curates in the region regularly.

The evening, part of the AAC's Bridges to Contemporary Arts series, will be moderated by AAC Curator, Carol Lukitsch. For more information, contact AAC via email at info@arlingtonartscenter.org or by phone at 703.248.6800.

Montgomery County Local Cultural Policy Forum

What: "Cultural Policy at the Grassroots: The State of the Cultural Community in Montgomery County"

When: Thursday, November 17, 2005, 6:00-9:30 pm

Where: Room 204 Resource Center, Montgomery College, Takoma Park Campus, Takoma Park, MD.

The Center for Arts and Culture, a cultural policy think tank affiliated with George Mason University, the Arts and Humanities Council of Montgomery County, and Montgomery College will hold an evening forum for leaders of the cultural community, private supporters, and local government agencies.

The theme of the forum, "Cultural Policy at the Grassroots: The State of the Cultural Community in Montgomery County," will revisit the County Cultural Plan, now five years in action and focus on three primary issues: (1) individual artists and scholars, (2) partnerships, and (3) ethnic diversity.

The purpose of the forum is to discuss these issues with outside experts and move to a consensus on future action steps for the County. Local cultural leaders as well as speakers from outside of the Washington region will participate in moderated panel discussions. This event is a part of a series of cultural policy forums being held in the Washington region.

The forum is free and open to the public, however, seating is limited. For more information about this event or to RSVP, please contact Susie Leong at sleong@culturalpolicy.org.

More information about this project can be found at the Center’s website.

Need a job?

The Arlington Arts Center, a leading contemporary visual arts center located in Arlington, VA, is seeking a part time administrative coordinator. Responsibilities include maintaining database, keeping membership records, coordinating class registration, and organizing exhibition materials and artist applications. This position involves regular public interaction in person and on the phone.

An ideal candidate will be well-organized with an ability to work on different projects simultaneously. A working knowledge of all Microsoft Office Suite programs is essential (particularly Access and Excel), previous experience/internship in an arts organization desirable.

This is a 20-hour/week hourly position. Schedule is flexible, but some evenings and occasional Saturdays are required. Interested candidates should submit a cover letter and resume via fax to: 703-248-6849 or via e-mail at info@arlingtonartscenter.org. No phone calls, please.

Mid City Artists Open Studios

The next Mid City Artists Open Studios will be held this weekend (November 12 and 13). During Open Studios, many artist studios within walking distance of the Dupont/Logan Circles will be open for visitors.

I also hear that Wendy Rieger of NBC News will cover the Mid City Artists Open Studios on NEWS4 at 5pm, Friday and on Saturday morning. Watch for the newscast!

Details of the open studios here.

Airborne really early tomorrow morning and heading back home with a ton of stuff to post and discuss!

Galleries move to Saturday

The WaPo tells me that the reason for the move of the galleries column to Saturdays is that color is available on page two on Saturdays.

They also said that they "hope that one day we'll have a second galleries columnist, but that's currently on hold."

A new level

At the airport last night I pilfered a discarded Sunday WaPo and discovered that the Chief Art Critic of the WaPo now has a new category of artists: barely emerging!

As far as I can remember, artists have unfortunately been referred to as: emerging, mid-career and established. Even those terms are kind of silly, but make somewhat sense.

But in this mention of the current show at Curator's Office, Gopnik tags DC artist Kathryn Cornelius as a "barely emerging" artist.

As everyone else knows, Kathryn Cornelius has exhibited extensively in the DC area, (and most recently in NYC), was the subject of a profile in the Washington Post Express while she was sort of a leading arts activist student at Georgetown, and her work was recently acquired by the Heather and Tony Podesta collecting team at Seven.

Could we at least consider her an "emerging artist?" Methinks Kathryn passed this new "barely emerging" stage a while back.

Ahhh! the silly things we artsy folks argue about...

Tate is the word that we've heard (part II)

Last night I headed off to the Left Coast again, and I am now looking at the Pacific, but hope to be back in time for Tim Tate's opening of his third solo show with us. The opening is Friday, November 11, 2005 at Fraser Bethesda.

This show comes in the wake of two sold out earlier solo shows in 2003 in Georgetown and 2004 in Bethesda, as well as the immensely successful "Compelled by Content" show that Tate curated for us.

And in my obviously biased opinion, this promises to be the best exhibition yet by one of Washington's best-known artists and a leading and very involved member of our arts community.

Tate has absolutely been driven in creating new work for his show, probably because he's under extreme pressure as he's getting kicked out of the spaces that the Washington Glass School (of which Tate is the co-director) occupies. The School is being kicked out as part of the eminent domain scam that allows the city to kick out the people that they attracted to the neighborhood a few years ago, but that they now need to build a stadium for the Nats.

And Tate, who hates being called a "glass artist," nonetheless continues to break new ground (and a lot of glass in the process) by continuing to add and expand a new vocabulary to the glass genre: A vocabulary made of a narrative content that requires an understanding of what the artist wants to express.

In doing so, Tate has absolutely changed and refined his art and vision, a change that was first kindled by the death of his mother, which he expressed by an obsessive desire to create small, beautiful glass hearts, which have nothing to do with religion, but childhood memories of JFK imagery in his home and a receptacle for memory.

In another new series of glass slices that project from the walls, encased in steel, Tate offers us Cryptologic clues to events, influences, social and political statements, as well as the ever-present dialogue about disease and recovery.

Tate, who is HIV-positive, thus continues to incorporate his daily issue with HIV and AIDS into these works, some of which represent his own ideas of surviving the disease. In the wall glass slices, the narrative panels and the reliquaries, are hidden clues and figures that offer a constant desire for a cure that refuses to come into focus.

Don't miss this show. The opening reception is Friday, November 11 from 6-9PM at Fraser Bethesda.

Dupont Gallery Crawl

After finding a sweet Doris Day of a parking spot at 6:15PM in the usually next-to-impossible (to find a parking spot) Dupont Circle area, I visited a few galleries on Friday night.

First on the agenda was Wayne Gonzales at Conner. One can pretty much count on Leigh Conner for two things every month: to have a bright white newly painted space and to have a solid visual art show, with loads of interesting people always hanging about. And Wayne Gonzales did not dissappoint, as his exhibition showcases a few smart, sharp paintings done in the artist's trademark pointillist-like style that's a blend of Seurat, Lichtenstein and Gonzales.

Next we skipped over to Washington Printmakers, where I was not too taken by the current exhibition by Trudi Y. Ludwig. The work, while technically adequate, did not pique my interest for more than a few minutes. It's an otherwise lackluster show in a gallery known to showcase the best printmakers in our area.

Irvine Contemporary Art was the next stop, where I ran into Kristen Hileman from the Hirshhorn, and a pack of recent VCU graduates, including the fair and talented Alessandra Torres, who is currently working out of Brooklyn after her recent graduation from VCU. On exhibit were the elegant mixed media abstractions of Christine Kesler. I also had a chance to meet Irvine's new director, Heather Russell, who's already doing great things for this two-year-old gallery; congratulations to Prof. Irvine on his 2nd anniversary.

At Irvine I also ran into Kriston Capps, who pens Grammar Police, and Capps gave me a heads up on the show at JET Artworks, which he had quite liked.

I skipped a couple of galleries, as it was getting close to the last half hour or so, and headed directly to JET, where I discovered that Mr. Capps was quite on mark with his assessment of Peregrine Honig's Washington, DC debut: it ended up being the best show that I saw all night; a show titled: Albocracy.

At 29, the California-born artist already boasts an impressive resume, and in her DC debut at JET, was unfortunately (and erroneously) compared in her small WaPo review (scroll down) to the "back to basics" of Marcel Dzama, but with a "femeninist bent." I disagree completely.

In fact, Honig has little, if anything to do with the doodling Canadian artist, other than the fact that she also draws and colors her austere drawings, and that they both live in North America. This talented artist is both original and intelligent in her own work, which in this exhibition aligns with my latest interest: the marriage of art and text.

Honig creates a series of very delicate, sexy, and fragile drawings on paper, using a very sensual line, and sometimes a dab of watercolor. The power of the marriage of words to art come alive as she begings to title them, either in a delicate cursive, tiny writing style, or using an old typewriter to leave behind the nearly forgotten clumsy footprint of the typewriter key.

And she gives us titles like: "Opsomania. Obsession with sweet and delicacies" which depicts a delicate nude wearing nothing but shoes (which introduces an element of erotica into the drawing) and growing candies out of her body, where the sweets double visually as festering boils of gigantic proportions.

There's also Anthophobia (Fear of flowers), Ablutomania (Obsessive cleanliness), Tricophagus (Hair eater) and others in those unusual realms, including Albocracy, from which her exhibition derives its title.

Ms Honig writes:

"Albocracy – imbued with the hope of colorless rule. How quickly it flips, with the blink of one pink eye, to a white ruling class. Purity becomes purification. In the moment in between, there is a pale-skinned pink-eyed fragile beauty. White wig and glove, pearls and lace, a flawless virtue, until she is made to rule."

According to JET, this series of drawings "illustrates the flux of language and art, exploring unusual phobias, manias, and social structures. The drawings case rare fears and sexual obsessions in Honig’s highly stylized figurative work. Her small scale works on paper offer the intimacy of children’s book illustrations with unnerving themes and complex and tragic neuroses."

What Honig has done, and done surperbly well, is to flex intelligent artistic muscles to show us the immense power of art and words to deliver ideas and thoughts and fears and obsessions. And they are not be segregated as femeninist creations just because she's a woman, but artwork, period, because she's a talented and innovative artist, perhaps standing on the shoulders of great artists (certainly not Dzama), but adding to the contemporary dialogue in her own unique voice.

WaPo's rare Saturday treat

Update: I must have missed it last Thursday, but the WaPo announced that the "Galleries" column would be moving to Saturdays. I wonder is the column will also now review galleries and museums.

Jessica Dawson reviews a NYC and a Baltimore show in yesterday's WaPo. Read the review here.

Secret Number Two

Nothing like amazing success to make one's critics eat crow.

Who's got the second highest ranked BLOG in the entire world wide web?

None other than our own Frank Warren!

And the hardcover book by Frank Warren based on the phenomenal PostSecret project started by Frank at the last Art-O-Matic is being released November 29, 2005.

The PostSecret Book, "PostSecret: Extraordinary Confessions from Ordinary Lives," is now available from Amazon.

Pre-order the book here.

And next December 15, 2005 through January 8, 2006, the WPA\C presents Post Secrets.

Opening Reception: Thursday, December 15, 2005 from 6-10pm
Fundraiser: Wednesday, December 14 from 6-10pm for Kristin Brooks Hope Center ($10 suggested donation)
Location: Former Georgetown Staples Store, 3307 M Street, NW, Washington, DC 20007
Exhibition Hours: Wed, Thurs, Fri 6-10pm, Sat & Sun 2-10pm

Peregrine Honig

Went out gallery hopping yesterday, as it was the perfect autumn Friday for it, and the Dupont Circle galleries had their usual first Friday gallery openings going on.

The best show that I saw on the night were the terrific drawings by Peregrine Honig at JET Artworks. I will return to this young artist next week if I have time, but let me say right now that her original drawings, going for under $1000 each, are a steal for such a young artist already in the collection of the Whitney and the NMWA. The exhibition runs through Nov. 13, 2005.

Unlocked

Unlocked: Open Exhibition 2005, juried by Andrea Pollan, and presented by The Arts Council of Fairfax County through December 2, 2005 at the Verizon Gallery of the Northern Virginia Community College. The openingr reception is next Thursday November 10, 2005, 7:00 - 9:00 pm with Pollan's remarks at 7:45PM.

I juried this show a few years ago, and if you haven't been to this gallery, it is a nice space in the heart of Annandale.

Verizon Gallery
Ernst Community Cultural Center
NVCC Annandale
8333 Little River Turnpike
Annandale, VA 22203

Opening Reception:
Thursday, November 10, 2005
7:00 - 9:00 pm
juror's remarks
7:45 pm

Gallery Hours:
Monday to Friday 9am to 5pm

Artists featured: Aldo Becci, Saul Becker, Craig Cahoon, Naomi Chung, John Cleary, Sandi Croan, Heidi Fowler, Pat Goslee, Gwendolyn Graine, Josephine Haden, Linda Hesh, Blair Jackson, Ian Jehle, Karey Ellen Kessler, Susan LaMont,Amy Lin, Rita Ludden, Betty MacDonald, Tyler Mallory, LaRinda Meinburg, Michele Montalbano, Heidi Neff, Erin Root, Ben Tolman, and Elena Volkova.

O'Sullivan on Neel

Michael O'Sullivan delivers a really good review of Alice Neel's current exhibition at the NMWA.

Read it here.

One of the paintings in the exhibition is of our own Lida Moser, who posed for Neel four times (one of the portraits is at the Met in NYC), and who traded Neel paintings for slides of Neel's work so that she could send them to NYC galleries as Neel seeked a place to show her work. Apparently Neel was on welfare and traded Moser paintings for the documentation of her work.

Two of the paintings discussed by O'Sullivan are shown in the portrait of Neel by Moser displayed to the left.

Alice Neel and Lida Moser were apparently really close friends and Lida has a million stories about Alice, especially the tremendous resentment that Neel faced once she began to gather some recognition. The resentment came from the then popular male abstract painters who were in vogue, and who resented Alice's success because she was a woman and a representational painter.

Several photographic portraits of Neel by Moser are in the permanent collection of the National Portrait Gallery.

WaPo Editorial Cartoonist of the Future

The washingtonpost.com is seeking an "Editorial Cartoonist of the Future" with a digital animation competition!

The washingtonpost.com has launched a competition to find digital animators interested in exploring the world of editorial cartooning.

The Editorial Shorts Digital Animation Competition is looking for digital artists and humorists to submit short-form (3 minutes or less) animated commentary focused on current political or topical issues. Entries must be designed, edited or distributed in digital form.

Entry details may be found at www.washingtonpost.com/editorialshorts.

Hal Straus, Opinions editor for washingtonpost.com, said "The Washington Post print edition has a 125 year-old tradition of editorial cartooning that has influenced opinion and covered both the drama and comedy of news and politics. We thought it would be interesting for washingtonpost.com to see who out there is interested in picking up the mantle for the digital age."

The winner of the competition, to be announced in January 2006, will get visibility for his or her entry in a special section Opinions in the washingtonpost.com.

Deadline for entry is December 31, 2005.

Entries will be judged on humor, originality, use of the medium and topical relevance.

Judges for the competition include representatives from the editorial divisions of washingtonpost.com and The Washington Post, as well as RES Media Group, the publishers of RES digital media magazine and coordinators of the multi-city RES Digital Film Festival.

Media or competition inquiries, contact:
Eric Easter at eric.easter@wpni.com.

More money

There's more money for the arts in DC; the District government is pumping $4 million in new funding into arts programs.

Read the story here (thanks g.p.)

New art blog

t . s. m c c l e l l a n is a new (new to me that is) artist's blog out of Richmond.

Visit him often!

1st Fridays

Tonight I'll try to make it to the gallery openings and extended hours at the Dupont Circle area galleries. Good weather + good art + late meal somewhere = a great time!

See ya there!

Tapedude takes over 3M?

Mark Jenkins: CEO Material?

Read it here.

Just do it!

One of the great things about the DC area art scene, is the amazing number of spaces that exhibit artwork. Just pick-up the City Paper and see the large number of spaces listed in their visual art listings.

Artists, especially emerging artists, should take advantage of this plethora of spaces and try to get their work hung, seen, and maybe even sold.

A good case in point of someone doing this is Baltimore artist Vera Blagev.

She's not having an opening on Friday November 4th from 5:00 to 8:00 pm (exhibiting some of her recent drawings as part of the Dreamers Series) at the Wydeye Cafe located at 1704 Aliceanna Street in the Fell's Point neighborhood of Baltimore. The event is part of the Fell's Point Art Loop on the First Friday of every month when the area's galleries and alternate venues extend their working hours. The exhibit will be up for two weeks ending Friday, November 18th.

But she's also having a joint show at the Hard Bean Coffee & Booksellers in Annapolis, Maryland. The show will be up for approximately one month starting today and features original contemporary drawings by Vera and ceramic masks and sculptures by Tammy Vitali. The Hard Bean is located at 36 Market Place and is reachable by phone at 410-263-8770.

Cudlin on Wodzianski

Jeffry Cudlin reviews our Geogetown show (Andrew Wodzianski) in today's WCP.

Read the review here.

Elsewhere in the WCP, Kara McPhillips reviews Hey, is that a Boy or a Girl? at Warehouse.

Anniversary

Last month was the 9th anniversary of the opening of our Georgetown gallery (opened in 1996). Back in those days the WaPo actually wrote an article about a new gallery opening, and had two separate columns each Thursday focusing on the area galleries. The WaPo actually even published a separate article a year later on the first anniversary of the gallery's opening! Mmmm... the good ole days...

One of the two Thursday columns was the "Galleries" column, then written by Ferdinand Protzman, and the other was Arts Beat, by Eric Brace and then Michael O'Sullivan. In those years, especially after O'Sullivan took over, Arts Beat was essentially a visual arts review column augmenting "Galleries" coverage.

And so, every Thursday we'd have two separate and distinct gallery art reviews in the Style section. Today, the WaPo has reduced "Galleries" to once every two weeks, and "Arts Beat" has also been reduced to once every two weeks, and now covers all the arts, without a visual arts focus. Like they say: "If you don't get it, you don't get it."

Last month was also the second year anniversary of DC Art News. Those first few months I'd average around forty visitors a day, while we're now well over 700 visitors a day and nearly 900 page views a day, and we passed 200,000 visits quite a while back.

Craghead

True Defenders of the Craft: Drawings by Warren Craghead runs from November 4 - 26, 2005 at the Second Street Gallery, 115 Second Street SE, Charlottsville, Virginia. There will be an opening reception on Friday, November 4, 6:00-8:00 pm, with an artist talk at 6:30 pm.

Why am I posting an opening for a show in C'ville? Because Warren is a cool guy, a fellow blogger, a new Dad (and thus could surely use the money from some sales) and a damned good artist.

Charlottesvillians and others: go see this show!

Sculpture Unbound

Washington Project for the Arts\Corcoran and Washington Sculptors Group
present:

Sculpture Unbound: "An exhibition of work stretching the boundaries of the field of sculpture"
Edison Place Gallery, 701 8th Street, NW
Washington, DC 20001
January 9 - April 6, 2006

Juror: Glenn Harper, editor Sculpture magazine.

The competition will be juried from digital images and slides by Glenn Harper, editor of Sculpture.

Work to be considered: Three-dimensional freestanding sculpture, wall and ceiling hung sculpture, installations, and new media. No pedestals will be provided. Gallery has 8 feet high ceilings, loading dock with standard double door to enter the gallery, movable walls and track lighting. All work accepted and exhibited must remain on display for the full duration of the show.

Eligibility: The exhibition is open to members of Washington Project for the Arts/Corcoran and Washington Sculptors Group. Artists who are not already members may join either or both organizations. New members may request a membership form by calling and leaving a name and address or downloading it from the websites: WPA/C 202-639-1828 or www.wpaconline.org. WSG 202-686-8696 or www.washingtonsculptors.org

Existing members of either group must have paid their dues for 2006 to be eligible for this exhibition.

Digital Images: Artist must send digital images as an email entry. The artist must include an up to date resume and Image Index including name, address, phone of artist and title, dimensions, materials, date completed and insurance value for no more than 2 entries and no more than a total of 4 images. Each image should be labeled with the artist's last name, first initial and image number 1-4. (WalkerF1, WalkerF2)
1.) All images must be saved as Jpegs (.jpg)
2.) All images must be saved at 72 dpi
3.) All images must be no larger than 4x5 inches or 800k in size

Mailing address for Digital Entries:
dren@corcoran.org

For more info: WPA/C
Washington Project for the Arts\Corcoran
500 17th St., NW
Washington, DC
t: 202.639.1828 or f: 202.639.1778 or wpainfo@corcoran.org or www.wpaconline.org

Art Obituaries is an immensely interesting project designed to commemorate "art that was" by documenting accounts of an artwork's death, and thus creating a living discourse where there once was none.

Through an online process on their website, they invite artists to document the untimely or planned death of their work of art, providing a rare glimpse into an artwork's eleventh hour, exploring the nature of an artwork's life, death, and the process in-between. Artists are encouraged to investigate the concept of their artwork's obituary through a written or photo essay, text, image or whatever creative expression that pays proper tribute to their dearly departed.

Visit them here.

When Madmen Rule

Bailey on Shirin Neshat, Iran, and the execution of gay teens in Iran.

Read it here.

Calligraphart

Rose Folsom’s artwork grows out of her life-long passion for writing and of her years as a professional calligrapher. After years of study in classical western writing, Ms. Folsom began to explore writing as an expressive art: words and moving lines working together to say something new through their shape, movement and color.

Rose Folsom: Written Paintings will be on display at the first floor galleries in Strathmore Mansion on Rockville Pike opening on November 20th from 3-5PM. The show goes through Dec. 30th.

Top 100

Matt with a list of the "Power 100" in international art from the Financial Times.

Read it here.

Boy or Girl?

"Hey, is that a boy or a girl? - Artists Look at Gender" is a new exhibition opening next Friday, November 4th from 6:00pm-to 10:00pm and on view through Sunday, December 4th, 2005 at the Warehouse Gallery.

Below is "going...#1" by Allison B.Miner.

Some of the artists in the show include JS Adams, Richard Kightlinger, Dan Murray, Ruth Trevarrow, Scott G. Brooks, Ira Tattelman, Steve Sticher, Mark Osele, Dylan Scholinski, John Borstal, Alison B. Miner, Isabel Bigelow, Luis Castro, Sam Huang, Lynette Spencer, Judy Jashinsky, Matt Hollis, Jeff Morin, Abby Freeman, Sally Laux and more!

Wolov on Blake on Me on Blake...

Read it here.

News Break!

The Style section has a visual arts review on a Monday!

P.S. No, not a DC show silly, it's a Brooklyn Museum restrospective of a Canadian photographer.

Burtynsky is 6 feet 2 and, aside from a graying goatee, he doesn't look particularly artsy, nor is there anything pretentious or obscure about the way he discusses his work. He could pass for upper management at some small business where it's always casual Friday, which is actually what he was, for a while. In the mid-'80s he started a photographic printing company called Toronto Image Works, which he still owns and which now has 35 employees.

News Break II
We're philistines!

News Break III

The WaPo's former Chief Art Critic on Monica Castillo at NMWA.

The WaPo's current Chief Art Critic on Turkish Imperial silks Putting on a dazzling show at the Sackler.

Openings this Week

I'll be updating these openings later and adding some more events...

On the first Friday of the month, the Dupont Circle area art galleries have their extended hours and openings. Don't miss Christine Kesler's "New Directions," opening at Irvine Contemporary with a reception for Kesler from 6-8PM. The show runs through November 26. At Kathleen Ewing, Michael Gross opens his show "Sources," with a reception also from 6-8PM. The show runs through December 30. Over at Aaron Gallery, the fair Sabrina Cabada exhibits her latest paintings and has a reception from 6-9PM. At Conner, Wayne Gonzales has new paintings and the opening is from 6-8PM.

Over in Georgetown, the fair Anne C. Fisher exhibits Far Flung in her Canal Square gallery. The show includes a recent travel collage series by Marcie Wolf-Hubbard, photo transfers by Laura Seldman and intriguing maplike drawings by Karey Kessler. Opening reception is 6-8PM.

German abstract artist Roswitha Huber opens Saturday, Nov. 5 at Nevin Kelly Gallery with a reception from 5-8PM. The exhibition runs through the 30th. Also on Saturday, William Willis and the very talented Mary Early have an opening reception from 6:30-8:30PM at Hemphill.

On Sunday, November 6 at 2-5PM in Target Gallery in Alexandria, there's a talk with curator Ginny Friend about the current "Hardware" show at the gallery.

Yuriko Yamaguchi

One of our area's most elegant and interesting artists, Yuriko Yamaguchi returns to Numark with a show titled "Return." That exhibition opens on Friday, Nov. 14 with a reception from 6:30-8PM at Numark's beautiful award-winning space. The show runs through December 17, 2005.

Tate is the word that we've heard

A few days ago I visited Tim Tate's studio at the Washington Glass School to see what Tate has been working on for his new solo show that opens next November 11 at our Bethesda space.

And WOW! For this (his third solo show with us) Tate continues to drag glass away from the vessel (and craft) and towards the genre of the narrative and the fine arts.

Be ready to see a marriage of glass, steel and cement that will definately set a new path for this talented artist.

The show opens at Fraser Gallery Bethesda on Friday, Nov. 11 with an opening reception from 6-9PM. If you only see one of our shows this year, make this one the "it."

Artomatic 419

The city of Toledo, Ohio likes the idea of Artomatic so much that they’re considering doing an Artomatic 419.

Artomatic 419 uses their area code (419) for the northeast corner of Ohio as their unique identifier.

Artomatic has made also the great leap forward into incorporation is now officially a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization.

Arthelps 5th Annual Silent Art Auction Benefit and Reception



JAM Communications is the sponsor for this year's Arthelps 5th Annual Silent Art Auction Benefit and Reception to raise money for Food & Friends and the DC Arts Center (DCAC) – two organizations are in their own way are key components of our area's social and cultural tapestry.

Support from artists and art donors is integral in making this night a success and that is why they are asking for your help. They welcome a variety of art donations–from original and limited edition paintings and prints, to photographs, glasswork, jewelry and sculpture. I intend to donate to this auction.

In fact today, for the first time in ages, I had some time to sit down and do a drawing, and I did the below charcoal and conte drawing, which I will donate to the auction, marking the proceeds for DCAC.



For more information on how you can donate art, and for additional details on the Arthelps event, please go to www.arthelps.org – where you can download a PDF art donation form.

To arrange for a pickup of your artistic donation call: 202.986.4750 and talk to Ambre Bosko (ext 19) or Alex George (ext 13) or email: ambre@jamagency.com or alex@jamagency.com

You can also drop off or mail your donation to the JAM offices located at:

1638 R Street NW, Suite 400, Washington, DC, 20009,
between the hours of 10 am and 6 pm (Monday – Friday).

Please RSVP for the event at www.arthelps.org.

Openings

There's a ton of openings next week, but meanwhile, Carol Brown Goldberg opens tonight, at Osuna Art & Antiques in Bethesda. Opening Reception is from 6-9PM.

And this Saturday, October 29th from 6:30-8:30pm is the opening of "Me, Myself and I: Artist Self-Portraits from the Podesta Collection" at Curator's Office (that's Marina Abramovic's Lips of Thomas at Curator's Office - Image Courtesy Sean Kelly.

Power of the Web

JT has a pretty spirited discussion ongoing over at Thinking About Art about Ms. Blake's comments on my criticism of her work.

Read it here.

Conner at Artissima

Conner Contemporary Art will be participating in Artissima XII, International Fair of Contemporary art in Torino, Italy, November 11-13, 2005.

For the new entries section of the Fair, they will present new oil glaze on wood panel paintings by Erik Sandberg, digital photographs by Julee Holcombe and drawings by Avish Khebrehzadeh.

Hidden Track

Hidden Track is a new art book by Robert Klanten about to be published.

The book's pre-publishing publicity states that:

"the book illustrates how urban and street art have recently broken even further out of the subculture and are being featured more often in galleries and museums worldwide. It analyses how these public art forms are being perceived in an international art context and investigates the fundamentally different forms of presentation that this new context demands."

Artists featured include Dave Kinsey, Barry McGee and Mark Jenkins' Storker Project.

As far as I know or can remember, two of our area's art galleries (us and David Adamson) have recently featured street artists, and I included a couple of them in Seven. I am curious as to who will be the first DC area museum curator to curate, organize and/or include a street artist in a DC museum show.

But when and if they do, I bet they will go to either NYC or LA or London streets to look for the street artists; after all their streets are better than our streets.

Update: I am reminded that there was one other street artist show in the District a while back that we don't want to forget: Ron English at MOCA in Georgetown. English is in many ways a "founder of the movement" and took on Camel Ads. His work was also featured in that movie "Supersize Me."

There was also the documentary ("Popaganda: The Art of Ron English") in a small DC film festival. Showed English doing his billboard wheatpaste overs and they had interviews with Mark Clark, Slash from Guns n Roses, and Jonathan Levine.

Sheila Blake Responds

Options 2005 artist Sheila Blake responds to my criticism of her work:

Dear Lenny,

It's possible to look at two thousand, or 20 thousand paintings and still miss what looking is all about. Fortunately for me, Libby Lumpkin has that ability but I wish you'd at least concede that there are some things that you don't understand -- (I love Vermeer, but that has nothing to do with my intention; The tradition I work in has much more to do with Bonnard and Rousseau, Birchfield and Wolf Kahn).

My paintings can be looked at forever and they'll keep yielding up new things. The most superficial way of seeing them is that they're paintings of my back yard. (Although if you came out to my back yard, that's not what you'd see.) What I'm doing is constructing a reality and if you'd let yourself enter into the paintings, really walk around in them, you'd feel the air, and a specific moment in time. If you look up at the sky there'd be the surprise of that particular sky and the whole configuration of buildings and trees creates spaces that you can wander up to, through, even around and be endlessly satisfied. And there is also an ominous quality -- spring isn't the pastel spring that you think of, but some almost acidic feeling of being oversaturated with the moist air. Winter has to do with the rhythm of the bare branches and shadows and the golden light hitting the tops of the trees and sometimes a feeling of gloom. If you look at the pastels, the information is in them; they are my point of departure, but then the paintings are re-imagined to create a new reality.(That's not kudzu on the tree -- it's Virginia creeper, but what's on the real tree is English ivy. The crepe myrtle I lifted from Pinehurst N.C. along with the loblolly pine.) And then there's the light. The way I use color to create light has everything to do with the most subtle color interactions.

It's easy to dismiss as the cliché' of "light" -- but who really does this in the way I do? My color isn't representational, but creates a light and atmosphere which can be felt. I've never seen it and I'll bet you haven't either.

I'm writing this because I'm so disappointed at the superficial way you have categorized and dismissed my work. It's clear from your critique that you are either unable or unwilling to immerse yourself in a deeper way of looking.

I'm going to quote Jed Perl here: "the more an artist asks us to look at a work over a period of time, the more a work drops beneath the radar screens that criticism has set up to track the contemporary scene."

I have the highest standards for my paintings. I mean every single brush stroke. I've been a painter my whole life; I taught at Duke for years and at the Corcoran.

I know what I'm talking about. My hope is that you'll think about what I'm saying and take another look.

Sheila Blake

UVA and Cuban Art

Slowly but surely, the University of Virginia Museum of Art is acquiring an interesting collection of Cuban art.

Yesterday, an exhibition titled "Mi Cuerpo, Mi País: Cuban Art Today," curated by Andrea Douglas opened at the museum, and includes work by the leading vanguard of Cuban artists in the world.

Some of the works in this exhibition are on loan from us, or have been acquired by the Museum in the past couple of years.

Cuban artists in the exhibition that we represent include:

Aimee Garcia Marrero

Elsa Mora

Cirenaica Moreira

Marta Maria Perez Bravo

Sandra Ramos

The exhibit runs through Dec. 23rd and there's a gallery talk on November 5 at 2PM.

The Kids Aren’t All Right

Is over-education killing young artists?

Read this interesting piece by Aaron Rose here.

Gallery Talk

Andrew Wodzianski, whose current show at our Georgetown gallery is getting a lot of attention due to its marriage of technology for immediate feedback to the artwork, will be having a gallery talk this coming Saturday, October 29th at 1 PM.

The talk should be interesting, if anything because of the significant number of recorded and text comments that AW has received so far, as well as his unusual interest in Mexican wrestling.

The talk is free and open to the public. The gallery is at 1054 31st Street, NW inside the Canal Square in Georgetown. 202/298-6450.

Arts Beat

Jonathan Padget with further proof that our area's visual arts scene is one of the best around. Read it here.

Too bad the WaPo continues to ignore it. Thursdays used to be "Galleries" day in Style. In the year since they cut the "Galleries" column from weekly to twice a month, the WaPo's new Style editor (Ms. Deb Heard) has consciously decided to keep Style's coverage of art galleries down to a bare 25 or so reviews/columns a year!

There are over 1,000 visual art shows in the DC area each year in our commercial fine art galleries, non-profit visual art spaces, embassy venues, cultural institutes, etc.

It's certainly not "lack of print space," which is generally the excuse that the WaPo has given me in the past. In today's Style there are three music reviews and two theatre reviews.

All this on the day that Style is supposed to focus on "Galleries."

And an Arts Beat column telling us how good our art scene is, which now includes good apartment shows, like they have in NY and LA.

Yipee!

Might as well add those to the ever growing list of visual art shows that will be ignored by Style's ever diminishing coverage of our visual art scene.

25 yearly reviews/columns from a potential set of 1,001 exhibitions, and counting.

Moon

A couple of days ago I mentioned in my review of Options 2005 that it seems like Suzanna Fields is all over the place these days, in the sense that I keep seeing her work in exhibitions all around the region.

Another artist whose name suddenly is everywhere is the talented Jiha Moon, who's not only the most recent winner of the prestigious Trawick Prize, but who has also been exhibiting (and selling) all over and everywhere!

And Moon's works will be taken to Scope Miami by Curator's Office (who is also taking Marianela de la Hoz.

But what brought her name to my attention today is that Moon will also be part of the University of Maryland's Union Gallery exhibition titled Boundaries: Contemporary Landscape, on view November 10 through December 22, 2005.

The exhibition features four Washington, D.C. area artists - Karey Kessler, Isabel Manalo, Jiha Moon, and Christine Buckton Tillman. The opening reception will be held Thursday, November 10 from 5 to 7pm.

Silverthorne on Wodzanski

Alexandra reviews the Wodcast Revolution here.

Bailey

Bailey, Bailey, Bailey...

Never, ever, ever, ever... piss off (or give a valid reason to piss off) Bailey.

Bailey, color-named artish wannabes scribes, The Getty, art gossip (bullshit), boring museum burocrats.. yawn....

Read it here.

Options 2005

If there was ever a Washington, DC based curated art show that could used the descriptors "poisoned well" and "a no win situation," it was the current Options 2005 WPA/C show at the former Staples store on Wisconsin Avenue in Georgetown (All images courtesy Ding Ren).

And now that the show is finally up, like any big group show, it offers up a diverse array of results, and if I can reach into the trite bag of descriptors again, Ubercurator Libby Lumpkin has delivered a mixed bag of the good, the bad and the ugly.

Lumpkin has been (unfairly I think) pounded in both the mainstream press and the online art critics and observers, taking blasts from every side and quarter. And the show itself has been similarly diminished in nearly all published accounts so far.

A bit of history: since 1981 the Options show have been focused on attempting to showcase the best emerging artists in the region; that is, artists that are not represented by any commercial fine arts gallery. Many of the past artists selected for earlier Options have gone on to become well-known and some have gone on to exhibit in even more controversial and highly attacked group shows like the Whitney Biennial.

For the 2005 version, savvy DC art collector Philip Barlow was initially selected, and almost just as quickly fired by the WPA/C because of his decision to exclude from his selection process all artists who had participated in the Panda public art project. Barlow felt that artists who had made this decision had erred in their artistic path and he felt that he would use this as a culling factor in the set of emerging artists that he would start with.

Although many of us disagreed with Barlow’s perspective, we all supported his right as a curator to choose whatever means and views he chose as a way to select a show. The WPA/C didn’t and he was fired, and a firestorm of online protesting erupted, and when Dr. Lumpkin was selected to replace Barlow, we all settled down gloomily to await her show.

And thanks to the power of the web, we were able to follow Lumpkin’s progress as she visited studios and universities and homes. Seldom has a curator been under such a magnifying glass for a regional show. And seldom has an "outsider" curator delivered such a... how shall I put this? Expected show and still deliver a couple of discoveries.

In Dr. Lumpkin’s defense, let me say that it is not easy to put together a group show full of successes; in fact it is impossible. And considering the hand that she was dealt before she was even selected as the replacement curator for Barlow, she has delivered more than an interesting show, with a couple of really good finds and a handful of really surprising choices for such an elite member of the West coast art mafia.

Suzanna Fields

Stepping into the former Staples store in Georgetown, two things occurred to me: first in my head was the thought of what a great permanent space for the WPA/C this venue would be. Second was Suzanna Fields’ 3-D acrylic sculptural drips, which face towards the entrance to the gallery.

It seems to me that suddenly Fields is everywhere; if there ever was an emerging artist that has suddenly popped into the region’s visual arts cognizance, it is this talented artist.

And Options 2005 gives us a bipolar or perhaps a hybrid Fields. First we see what can best be described as colorful acrylic drips, shaped into circular shapes, with solid lines of paint stacked delicately atop each other to deliver "flowery" looking pieces that project into three dimensions. They are interesting and colorful; my problem with them is that I’ve seen dozens and dozens of this generic type of work, nearly identical in fact (except for the color of the paint used), at most outdoor art shows around the nation.

This is fragile ground: the fact that I’ve seen this kind of work (with paint used this way), over and over and over, at the Annual Boardwalk Art Show in Virginia Beach, or Arts in the Park in Richmond or wherever, doesn’t make it "bad," but it makes it sort of "common" and more "crafty" that "fine arts" in my mind, and somewhat surprising that this work was selected. Perhaps Lumpkin doesn’t venture into the plebian member of the art scene that is represented in the minds of some by an outdoor art show.

The "other" Suzanna Fields in the show is a more elegant and minimalist artist, and I particularly liked the black drawing-like pieces that show surprising texture on close examination. This is definately an artist to keep an eye on.

Lindsay Rogers

And next we come to the best work in the show: Lindsay Rogers’ amazing and vastly overpriced black pastel drawings.

I use the adjective "amazing" because, regardless of high fallutin’ art critics’ continued attempts to dismiss realism as a leading "contemporary" member of today’s dialogue of art, it keeps staying ahead of them and the rest of the words in that dialogue (witness Richter and Hirst’s recent successes).

Rogers’ work steals the show, because this being a large group show, size and subject matter, duh... matter! And Rogers’ choice of subject matter are rather common subjects (friends and fellow students I assume), elevated by her mastery of the medium, and the size of that presentation, to a sublime state. Furthermore, in using black pastel (rather than charcoal or graphite), she offers the blackest of black in her presentation, which allows the drawings to reveal a surprising range of tones, delivering the always pleasing illusion of reality on a two dimensional plane.

Anne Benolken

I first saw Anne Benolken’s mixed media boxes at Art-O-Matic a while back, but I must admit that I saw them in a new light here, and perhaps it was because I saw them more “clearly” and outside of the beautiful cacophony of art that Art-O-Matic delivers. And Benolken tore at my feelings when I read the little book that allows one to read each individual box’s title(s) all in sequence. And with titles like "Kali realizes she’ll never get her ducks in a row," one gets an insight into the frailties and insecurities and tender areas of Benolken’s life and being. By the end of my examination of her works, I wanted to give Benolken a hug.

This is highly personal work that will rarely find commercial success, unless it is preceded by curatorial exposure, as this sort of personal work always seems to find a soft spot in the eyes of museum curators. Benolken has been creating this Kali series for fifteen years, and she should find fertile ground to continue to exhibit its progress in the future in universities, museums and non profit art venues.

Jorge Benitez

My next pleasant discovery were the superbly technical drawings by Jorge Benitez, whose work I’ve never seen before. At first sight, they’re a bit of a head scratcher, as they appear to be blueprints for buildings and planes, etc. But once we read the titles, they are reconfigured in our vision in a whole new light. And now the design for a massive arch titled "Victory in Iraq Triumphal Arch" takes on a new, political meaning; and delivers to artists everywhere the immense power of a title associated with a work of art, and the resulting psychological change that it has on the viewer.

The grand master of titling artwork remains Barnett Newman, but Benitez deserves some praise for using this often unexploited part of the art process. There is a lesson in there for all artists.

Sheila Blake

A lot of fuss has been created by the inclusion of Sheila Blake’s very traditional paintings in this show. Her inclusion is by far the biggest puzzle in my mind. What was Lumpkin thinking?

I’ve never met Sheila Blake and as far as I know I’ve never seen her work before. But as a gallerist whose gallery gets approached in one way or another by nearly 2,000 artists a year, and as a curator and juror (who recently went through a few thousand slides at the WPA/C), and who juries shows by most of our area’s art leagues and groups, and as a critic who visits a lot of galleries on a continuous basis, I have seen common, unremarkable work like her's many, many times before.

And thus I return to the fact that this kind of painting has (at least in my mind) saturated my senses so much, that its inclusion surprises me as much as including paintings of ballerinas, or kittens, would have caused.

And at the risk of stepping into a minefield and even offending Ms. Blake, although these are technically adequate paintings, they are not technically brilliant paintings.

What does that mean?

It means that Ms. Blake appears to be focused on painting a subject matter to create the illusion of reality. She does an adequate job, but while Lindsay Rogers does a spectacular job of delivering technical mastery over the subject (and it is a different subject and a much easier subject to master, and inherently easier to depict by being monochromatic), Ms. Blake still shows a technical flaw here and there, especially when her work is viewed with a total focus on such a task.

Technical mastery is hard to achieve. Even Vermeer screwed up the coathanger-shaped area formed by the maid’s arm and the bowl in his painting of the Dutch maid pouring milk.

And when you see a thousand good paintings depicting light on trees and leaves, the quality factor is raised for all of the next few hundred paints that I'll see with this subject matter.

And Blake shows several technical flaws, and my Virgo personality focuses on the fact that she fails to mix the paints properly to deliver the gray in the pots in a couple of her paintings. Making gray can be a challenge to the most virtuous of painters, but here’s a hint: gray is never just black and white paint mixed together, and Blake has attempted to discover the secret of gray in her brushwork for the pots, but fails to convince, just as the geometric arrangement of her leaves on trees or the kudzu growing on the tree trunks fails to replicate the ordered randomness of Nature.

Lynne Galluzzo

Not that technical mastery alone is a recipe for success. In fact, I submit that having technical mastery over a medium has not been a "requirement" for artistic success in a very long time, with perhaps the exception of fine art glass.

And Lynne Galluzzo is definitely a technical master of colored pencils, but again my reaction to her work is colored (pun intended) by the fact that there must be a kaleidoscope virus associated with artists who work in this genre.

Why do I say this?

I’ve been visiting the Art League’s monthly group show religiously since 1993 or so, and because of the large size of the League’s membership, in that timeframe I’ve observed the work or perhaps a dozen color pencil artists. And they all seem to have an uncommon fascination with creating beautiful color pencil drawings of kaleidoscope images. And to go back to my first observation on Suzanna Fields’ drippy acrylic pieces, a visit to any major outdoor art show will offer the viewer a choice of 2-3 color pencil artists with one thing in common: kaleidoscope drawings!

My advice to Lynne: use your exceptional technical skills to explore other subjects. Color pencil art is almost a rare thing to see in the independent fine arts commercial gallery world, and perhaps that rarified artmosphere is ready for a color pencil artist working in other subjects.

The Sculptors

When I was in art school at the University of Washington, one of my art projects involved going to the various forests around Seattle, and I would glue or duck tape a mannequin to a tree. I would then spray the mannequin with adhesive and then throw dirt and tree bark on top of the mannequin. Then I would apply individual pieces of bark all over the mannequin until the entire figure was an actual part of the tree, almost a growth from it. Unfortunately, the vast majority of these (about a dozen of them) were done in the magical forest that used to be Mount St. Helen’s, and I suspect that most of them are now in art heaven.

Anyway, because of this experience, I was predisposed to immediately like the works of Marc Robarge, whose sculptures appear to have morphed out of trees, since Robarge finishes them by gluing tree bark to visceral, organic, slightly threatening forms.

They are visually attractive and interesting and are by far the best sculptures in the show, especially when compared to the rather common, cookie-cutter abstractions of George Tkabladze that appear to channel a few 20th century sculptors, although I also did like the clean, elegant and minimalist paper sculptures of Randy Toy, but didn’t get the wall noses by Tim DeVoe.

The Token Videos

What would be a contemporary group art show curated by a well-known curator without a video? Unfortunately Julian Bayo Abiodun’s and Ryan Mulligan’s token videos entries join that immense mass of "yawn" videos that populate that part of the art world controlled by museum curators.

Mulligan’s video made no impression on me, and the Post-It notes do not deserve any mention, other than an image so that readers can see what I mean.

Lumpkin has written that the Bayo Abiodun video (which shows a huffing and puffing Miami Vice-dressed man running around a building rooftop in an endless loop) has created a "finely tuned, expressive metaphor for the futility of locating one’s essential identity." I would agree, except that I would replace "identity" with "interest." Interestingly enough, I quite liked Bayo Aboidum’s painting of Lance (the running character in the video).

Painting beats video... again.

Overall, and considering the hand that Lumpkin was dealt to start with, I believe that she has put together an adequate show, whose main flaws are her inexplicable choice of some artwork that exceeds the subtle adjective of "common" and begins to creep towards "wall décor." However, because of her hard work, she has also managed to find a couple of new jewels in our emerging artists pool, and for that alone both her and the WPA/C have accomplished the mission of Options 2005.