Philly Art Fair

Next weekend around 50 art dealers and galleries will be taking part in the 16th Annual American Fine Art Show at the 33rd Street Armory in Philadelphia.

I'll be away at another fair and unfortunately will not be able to visit this one, partially because I just found out yesterday that it was taking place next weekend.

Of interest, most of the participating galleries are either local Philadelphia dealers or New York galleries; no Left coast galleries or DC area galleries...

Magical Realism

There's a really interesting exhibition titled "Magical Realism" at the Abington Art Center in Jenkintown, PA.

The show, which goes through November 8, 2007 includes work by Aaron Delamatre, Marilyn Holsing, Susana Jacobson, Steven Kenny, Deirdre Murphy and Walter Benjamin Smith II.

Check out some of the artwork here.

Reading levels

Three years ago I ran some art bloggers and art critics' writing to an evaluation tool that deciphered to what reader level they were writing to.

Just for fun, today I ran some art critics, bloggers and writers through it and they're listed below in order of easier readability (from requiring less education to read to requiring more education according to the Fog Index). For some odd reason, it resisted reading the Washington City Paper's online pages, so I couldn't do a score on Jeffry Cudlin or Jessica Gould, so instead I used Cudlin's blog.

My blog received a Fog Index of 13.8. That means that you'd need almost a college sophomore education to read and understand my obtuse writing - that's up from a 12 in 2004).

The Fog index has been developed by Robert Gunning and its numeric value is a school grade. The author claims that a lower Fog index is actually a better score, as then it is easier for readers to comprehend the writing. For example, the average New York Times article is written to a reading level of 8.9 years or just about High School freshman level.

The scores, from best to worst, according to Gunning:

Tyler Green - 9.9

B'more Art - 10.0

Rex Weil - 10.1

Thinking About Art - 10.5

Regina Hackett - 10.5

Edward Winkleman - 11.0

Grammar Police - 11.1

Dangerous Chunky - 11.6

Richard Lacayo - 12.3

Walter Robinson - 12.4

Blake Gopnik - 12.8

Charlie Finch - 13.1

Jessica Dawson - 13.3

Peter Dobrin - 13.3

CultureGrrl - 13.6

Michael O'Sullivan - 14.1

Black Cat Bone - 14.3

Robin Rice - 14.6

Fallon and Rosof - 14.7

Glenn McNatt - 14.9

Edward J. Sozanski - 15.7

Jerry Saltz - 16.6

Donald Kuspit 17.6

Flip Video

I've been hearing amazing things about the new Flip Video gizmo that is:

- Simple to use, pocket-sized camcorder with one-touch recording and digital zoom

- Holds 60 minutes of TV-quality video on 1GB of built-in memory; no tapes or additional memory cards required

- Convenient USB arm plugs directly into your computer for easy sharing and archiving

- Built-in software lets you easily e-mail videos, share them on YouTube and Grouper, edit footage, and capture still photos from video

- Watch videos instantly on TV with included cable

So I just ordered this one from Amazon.com (cheaper than from the manaufacturer itself); expect video to make presence here soon.

Artdc one day show

Artdc.org, a Washington, D.C., artists’s forum, will present “Art in Transition Continued” on Saturday, October 13, 2007, in the future Greater Goods building, 1626 U Street, NW, Washington, D.C. 20009. Doors open at noon; an art party is 6 p.m. to midnight.

The participating artists are: Steve Mead, Antoinette Wysocki, Jodi A. Patterson, John N. Grunwell, Dan Rosenstein, Alexandra Zealand, Alexandra Silverthorne, Kim Reyes, Emily Berl, Christie Ortiz, Rhett Rebold, Raju Singh, Steve Loya, Stephen T. Hanks, Matthew Best, Graham Meyer and Adam Eig.

Details here.

Artists' Talks in Philly

Tomorrow, October 12, 2007 from 12:00 ­- 1:45 pm at the Philadelphia Marriott Downtown (1201 Market Street, Philadelphia, PA 19107), in room 403 there's an artists's talk with Zoe Strauss and Julia Bryan-Wilson

Titled "Contemporary Public Art in Philadelphia: An Artist's Talk with Zoe Strauss and Julia Bryan-Wilson," this conversation reflects the program committee's special interest in the arts and activism and is presented as part of the Annual American Studies Conference. Free and open to the public and no tickets are required.

Art Vandals

The Vandals were a Germanic tribe which (towards the end of the Roman Empire) swept down from Germany and left a path of destruction in their wake (thus the word "vandalism") as they marched through Europe in search of food and warm lands. Eventually, together with another German bunch of hungry barbarians known as the Visigoths, they settled in Spain by the millions and became a significant chunk of the modern Spaniard and French DNA. The Vandals settled mostly in the South, and gave their name to the region today called Andalusia in Spain (from "Vandalus").

Recently, in Lund, a small university town in southern Sweden art vandals attacked "The History of Sex," an exhibition of photographs by the New York artist Andres Serrano. Read Carol Vogel's report here and Bailey's unique take here.

For the last several years, the Swedish artist Felix Gmelin has been interested in artworks that have literally been destroyed in museums, galleries, or other public spaces. In the art project Art Vandals, Felix Gmelin reinterprets twelve works that have been subjected to vandalism. Check it out here.

At the Warehouse in DC

The Last Next is an exhibition of paintings and drawings by Washington-based artist Kristin Holder at DC's Warehouse Gallery. Works from 2002 until the present will be included in the exhibition, including a site-specific wall drawing. In recent years Holder has been the recipient of the Second Place Award at the Trawick Prize, a Pollock-Krasner Foundation grant, and a one-year fellowship from the British Academy in Rome. Her work is included in several public and private collections.

The exhibition will be on view at Warehouse (­third floor) from October 11 through October 28, 2007. The opening reception will take place on October 13 from 7:00-10:00 p.m. Additionally Holder created a wall piece on the original 100 year old wall on the 3rd floor of the space.

The second show at Warehouse, opening on the same night is "RISD DC/Baltimore Biennial 2007," an exhibition of art and design work featuring local alumni from The Rhode Island School of Design. The show features recent work by RISD alumni who graduated between 1950-2006, and who now live and work in the Washington Metropolitan area.

Joy to the World

These days, when Three Dog Night's Joy to the World is played by some hotel band it is usually preceded by the drummer announcing: "and now something for the former hippies in the crowd..."

Wrong!

Below is Chuck Negron and Three Dog Night, a group that dominated the charts and the radio waves for a while and sold 50 million records by 1975 and 90 million records sold to date...

Click and listen.

Reading levels

Who is offering art writing to an intelligent reading level?

Three years ago I ran some art bloggers and art critics' writing to an evaluation tool that deciphered to what reader level they were writing to (was that sentence-ending "to" a dangling preposition?).

Read that three-year-old report here... tomorrow I will re-run it with the same authors and some new ones.

Wanna open a rent free gallery in Mass?

I couldn't resist this news release:

John Olson, a business owner in downtown Lynn, has a space available on the first floor of his building in Central Square Lynn that he is offering to artists who may want to run a temporary co-op in the space.

The space is currently unfinished; unpainted sheetrock walls and cement floor, but has large windows on the street level, high ceilings (21 ft.) and a large amount of interior wall and floor space (2100 sq. ft.), and could support a substantial amount of work.

He is looking for a group, who, in exchange for the free use of the space, would be willing to man the space and keep it open at least four weekdays, one weekend day, and one or two evenings. He is offering the space in exchange for a 25% commission to cover his utility costs, but is willing to negotiate.

John's ultimate goal is to rent this space, so there is no set time frame on this offer.

For more information, contact John Olson directly at jolson@columbiainsuranceagency.net.

Hirshhorn Looking for new boss

Email from the Hirshhonistas:

I am pleased to announce the formation of an eight-member committee to assist in the search for a new director of the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden. The search is being conducted by the Office of the Under Secretary for Art.

The members of the search committee, in alphabetical order, are:

• Neal Benezra — director of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art since 2002. He previously served as deputy director and curator of modern and contemporary art at the Art Institute of Chicago. Previously, he spent eight years at HMSG, where he was assistant director for art and public programs and chief curator.

• Constance Caplan — art collector and trustee of HMSG. She also serves on the board of the John Hopkins University College of Medicine and has served as the chair of the board of trustees of the Baltimore Museum of Art.

• Ann Hamilton — the first artist to serve as a trustee of HMSG. She is an award-winning visual artist who specializes in installation work and has participated in more than 60 solo and group exhibitions. She is a professor of art at Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio.

• J. Tomilson Hill — collector of modern and contemporary art and chairman of the board of trustees of HMSG. He is vice chairman of The Blackstone Group in New York.

• Susan Lake — collections manager and chief conservator at HMSG, where she has worked for more than 25 years.

• Mitchell P. Rales — collector and vice chair of the board of trustees of HMSG. He is the founder and director of The Glenstone Foundation. He also is founder, director and chairman of the executive committee of Danaher Corporation, headquartered in Washington, D.C.

• Ned Rifkin — Under Secretary for Art at the Smithsonian since 2002.

• John W. Smith — director of the Archives of American Art since 2006. He was formerly assistant director for collections, exhibitions and research at The Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh from 2000 to 2006.

The new director will succeed Olga Viso, who is scheduled to leave at the end of the year to become director of the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis.

Sincerely,

Cristián Samper
Acting Secretary

I have some thoughts on who should be hired to run the Hirshhorn... more on that later.

Anderson on Roth

John James Anderson has a really insightful interview with the Corcoran's Paul Roth (the Corcoran's Curator of Photography and Media Arts).

Read it here.

Rand on Timmers

I've been meaning to link to this really interesting interview by DCist Kelly Rand with DC sculptor Erwin Timmers, who is slowly but surely becoming the DC area's leader of the "green art" movement.

Read the interview here.

Opportunity for Artists

Deadline: March 1, 2008

The Innovators Combating Substance Abuse Program has issued a Call to Artists whose original art will be selected to appear in a forthcoming book on art and addiction to be published by the Johns Hopkins University Press. The Innovators Program, supported by The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, is a national program based in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in Baltimore.

The purpose of the proposed book is to provide a stimulus to change the way America views addiction by using the visual arts to put a human face on addiction and recovery. Creativity and artistic expression play a significant role both in recovery and in raising awareness of the personal toll caused by substance abuse and addiction. The proposed book on addiction art is intended to complement and serve as the companion volume to the editors’ book on addiction science, Addiction Treatment: Science and Policy for the Twenty-First Century (JE Henningfield, PB Santora, WK Bickel (eds), Johns Hopkins Press, October 2007).

They invite all artists to submit original artwork on the theme of drug addiction and recovery (drugs include alcohol, tobacco, illegal, or prescription drugs). A distinguished panel of jurors, composed of prominent members from both the art and addiction science communities, will select the art for the book. Finalists will receive an honorarium of $200, with the top five finalists receiving an additional honorarium of $500; a copy of the book, and will be included in exhibitions in Maryland (May 2008) and at the annual meeting of the College on Problems of Drug Dependence in Puerto Rico (June 14-19, 2008). Other exhibition possibilities are pending at this time.

Works submitted may be in any media, including video. Works included in the book will not be limited to size, but extreme size may limit works for inclusion in the exhibitions.

For additional information and entry forms, please contact the Innovators Program at (443) 287-3915 or visit their website at www.innovatorsawards.org.

Eligibility:
- Works in all media including video will be accepted.
- Works may be any size.
- Works may have been completed in any year.

Entry:
- Artists may submit up to 3 artworks in slide or digital format.

For Slides: Label each slide with your name and title of work on the front of the slide. Please indicate the top of the slide. Place slides in an “8 ½ x 11” clear vinyl slide sheet holder. Write your name on the holder.

For CDs: Label each file with your name and title of work. Write your name on the CD holder. Submit images in .jpeg format, resolution 72dpi; file size should not exceed 1mb.

For Digital Images Submitted by E-Mail: Label each image with your name and title of work. Submit images in .jpeg format, resolution 72dpi; file size should not exceed 1mb. Email digital submissions to: innovatorsawards@jhmi.edu.

Artists must submit a 100-200 word Artist Statement which addresses the relationship between the artist / the work and the “Drug Addiction and Recovery” theme. Artists must also complete and submit the Submission Form.

Send submissions to:

Innovators Combating Substance Abuse Program
The Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine
600 N. Wolfe Street
Meyer Building 3-142
Baltimore, MD 21287

Job in the Arts

The Nevin Kelly Gallery, a fine art gallery located in Washington, DC's U Street Corridor, is searching for a new part-time gallery assistant.

Experience Required: BA in arts-related field and one year relevant work experience preferred. The candidate MUST have excellent writing and computer skills and the ability to work independently and self-motivate. A desire and ability to take initiative in developing projects is also a plus.

How to Apply: Please submit cover letter, resume and three references to info@nevinkellygallery.com or fax to 202-232-3465. No phone calls please.

Tate on VoA

DC uberartist Tim Tate was in the Voice of America airwaves today. Transcript here.

Photo Reference at Photo West Gallery in Philly

Photo Reference, with works by DC area's own Denee Barr, Matteo Colaizzo, Jeff Dentz, Emily Erb, Luis el Estudiante, Brendan Gavin, Bill Kelly, Eva Preston, Sheila Ruen, and Harry Sefarbi opens with an opening reception on the 12th of October from 5-10pm at Photo West Gallery. The exhibition goes through Oct. 22, 2007.

WaPo Chief Art Critic Online

The Washington Post's chief art critic, Blake Gopnik, will be online today at 2PM to answer questions.

Details here.

New gallery in Philadelphia

"Rebekah Templeton Contemporary Art is the newest face in the thriving Philadelphia art scene. Scheduled to open November 11, 2007, Rebekah Templeton will be exhibiting cutting edge contemporary art in all media.

Rebekah Templeton Contemporary Art is the brainchild of independent curators and artists Sarah Eberle and Ben Will. Eberle and Will have worked together on a number of underground curatorial projects. Sarah Eberle has an extensive background in visual art. After graduating from University of California at Berkeley, she worked for Worth Ryder Gallery and Kala Art Institute in Berkeley, CA. Upon arriving in Philadelphia in 2002, she worked as the Gallery Store Manager for The Print Center and played a major role in the founding of Falling Cow Gallery as the inaugural Director. Ben Will has worked as an independent curator in London and Philadelphia, as well as working for a variety of arts organizations including Artistsspace in New York City.

The two met while co-curating an exhibition, “Squat,” displayed at Tower Investments in Northern Liberties, now known as Tower Gallery. Discovering a mutual love for contemporary art, they decided to open a gallery together. They bought a run down Row Home on the corner of Girard Ave. and Second St. in South Kensington, the heart of Philadelphia’s newest art neighborhood. After almost two years of renovations and a grant from the American Street Financial Services Center, Rebekah Templeton Contemporary Art is ready to open.

The inaugural exhibition will feature work from New York City artist Sara Gates and will include video and wall paper in addition to paintings and prints. The opening reception will be held on November 8, 2007 from 6-9 pm in conjunction with the neighborhood’s newly thriving Second Thursdays, modeled after Old City’s First Fridays."

Manon Cleary at DCAC

Were I ever to rank the District of Columbia's top ten artists of all time, Manon Cleary would easily make the list and challenge for the top three spots.



And although she has been in very frail health for many years now, Cleary continues to paint and draw and re-invent herself over and over, as all great artists do. Whether her subject matter focus is penises, rats, men in bags, flowers, or her own rape.

And next Friday, Cleary debuts yet another focus for her work with a series of new sky paintings at the District of Columbia Arts Center. From the news release:

Manon Catherine Cleary – by any earthly measure – is a luminary among Washington DC artists. Globally exhibited and collected, Cleary has enjoyed a forty-year career as an artist and teacher, and is principally acclaimed for her virtuosic and conceptually provocative enlistment of oil paint and graphite to photo-realist ends. It is with great honor, then, that DC Arts Center will showcase the artist’s very newest “skyscapes” in its Gallery during the month of October – works rendered and mounted in remembrance of Cleary’s dear friend and DCAC founder and patron Herb White, in whose company she spent countless contented hours “chasing clouds.”

The show runs from Friday, October 12th – Sunday, November 4th and the opening reception is this Friday, October 12th, from 7 – 9 pm.

Art Happening in DC this Friday


Date: Saturday, October 13
Time: 7 p.m. to 12 a.m.
Location: Lee Jensen Brake Service
1333 14th Street, NW
(between N Street and Rhode Island Ave.)
Washington, DC

Music by eightyeight

Featured Artists: Steven M. Cummings, Daniel Davidson, Drew Ernst, Kate Hardy, Ju$t Another Rich Kid, Geoffrey Mann, Gregory McLellan, Ted Noten, Cory Oberndorfer, Painted Lady Performance Project, Chris Tousimis, René Treviño, and Trevor Young.

Philly critic's Arts blog

Philadelphia Inquirer classical music and art critic Peter Dobrin has an excellent art blog (new to me) here.

He has this interesting quote from the Inquirer's art critic Ed Sozanski: "Museums are the place of last resort for art."

Visit Dobrin often.

WaPo Muscle

The Washington Post had an amazing museum section yesterday.

So far I think that my favorite piece was Paul Richard's 1967, the Year the Pieces Began to Come Together, which reminisces about the DC art world of 1967. Richard is the retired WaPo chief art critic.

His successor, Blake Gopnik, will be online on Tuesday, October 9 at 2PM to answer questions. Details here.

The blogger show

John Morris from Digging Pitt Gallery in Pittsburgh, PA has been working on a groundbreaking joint effort with Agni Gallery (New York, NY) and Panza Gallery (Millvale, PA) to present The Blogger Show. The exhibits showcase the work of over thirty artists (including yours truly) whose common interest is in clarifying artistic discourse through their blogs. All of the exhibits will take place between November 10, 2007 and January 12, 2008.

All of the exhibits will take place between November 3, 2007 and January 12, 2008.

Per Bill Gusky, "arts bloggers are using this technology to redefine the role of arts in American culture. The interactive aspect of blogging has encouraged the growth of artistic discourse in unexpected ways, with a shift in who and how art is discussed. One of the most significant contributions of artist bloggers to this dialog is an honest appraisal of process and theory. Using the platform of the internet to express these thoughts has included a multitude of elements. Many artists load images onto their blogs. Another aspect of the online community that has yet to make its impact felt is in the arena of regional arts that makes an exhibit in Detroit as accessible as one in New York.

The artists in the exhibits at Agni, Digging Pitt and Panza Galleries represent a range of visual disciplines and aesthetics. The one commonality is active blogging. Some use blogging as a platform for discussing issues facing visual artists while others treat the blog as a public journal. Whatever approach or combination of approaches, all have brought a level of clarity to artistic discourse. These exhibits are a reflection, in physical space, of the ephemeral blogosphere. And by its very nature, an extension of the guiding philosophy behind Digging Pitt's flat file archive.

This exhibition focuses on the work of artists who are active art blog writers. The work you see here emerged in the studio in near-simultaneity with the artist's written expressions. These twin efforts -- art making and blog writing -- sometimes appear to flow together and intertwine beautifully, and at other times almost seem to be in diametric opposition.

The relationship between written word and the created artwork suggests the erratic flow of a culture in which propaganda freely mingles with news journalism and science is polluted with articles of faith. It seems at times that the only appropriate response to the apparent untrustworthiness of all our societal and cultural expressions is a schizophrenic call-and-response in which everyone probes for even the merest scintilla of truth using tools of decidedly mixed sincerity.

The questions that emerge and the answers that may or may not accompany them will hopefully provide valuable insights into ongoing cultural developments that are incredibly difficult to discern amid the maelstrom of media that beset us all, but that must ultimately be discerned if we are to gain an understanding of where we're headed as a culture."

Here's the breakdown of venues, artists and dates:

Digging Pitt Gallery
4417 Butler Street
Pittsburgh PA 15201
November 10, 2007 - January 12, 2008
Public Reception: December 8, 6-9PM

• Martin Bromirski (Richmond VA) - Anaba
• Sharon Butler (Mystic, CT) - Two Coats of Paint
• Lisa Call (Parker, CO) - New Work and Inspiration
• F. Lennox Campello (Washington, DC and Media, PA) - Mid Atlantic Art News
• Rose Clancy (Pittsburgh, PA) - paperWorks
• Kevin Clancy (Boston MA and Pittsburgh PA) - soft soft pink pulls through the ivory void
• Warren Craghead (Charlottesville, VA) - drawer
• Roberta Fallon (Philadelphia PA) - Fallon and Rosof's Artblog
• Ann Gordon (Detroit MI) - Detroitarts
• Cable Griffith (Seattle WA) - Cable Griffith
• Tracy Helgeson - Works by Tracy Helgeson
• Stephanie Lee Jackson (Brooklyn NY) - Pretty Lady
• JT Kirkland (Washington, D.C.) - Thinking About Art
• Mary Klein (Minneapolis, MN) - stillifes
• Eva Lake (Portland, OR) - Eva Lake
• Steven LaRose (Ashland OR) - Steven LaRose
• Michael Lease (Richmond VA) - Annabelle's Aspirin
• John Morris (Pittsburgh, PA) - Digging Pittsburgh Arts
• Elizabeth Perry (Pittsburgh, PA) - Woolgathering
• Libby Rosof (Philadelphia PA) Fallon and Rosof's Artblog
• Marc Snyder (Pittsburgh, PA) - Fiji Island Mermaid Press

Digging Pitt Too
45th & Plummer Streets
Pittsburgh PA 15201
November 10, 2007 - January 12, 2008
Public Reception: December 8, 6-9PM

• Susan Constanse (Pittsburgh, PA) - - Oranje
• Bill Gusky (Canton, CT) Artblog Comments

Panza Gallery
115 Sedgwick Street
Millvale PA 15209
November 10, 2007 - January 12, 2008
Public Reception: December 15, 6-9PM

• Kevin Clancy (Boston MA and Pittsburgh PA) - soft soft pink pulls through the ivory void
• Christiane D (Pittsburgh PA) - Christiane D
• David Grim (Pittsburgh, PA) - Serendipity
• John Morris (Pittsburgh, PA) - Digging Pittsburgh Arts
• David Pohl (Pittsburgh, PA) - find the time to rhyme

Agni Gallery
170 East 2nd Street, Storefront #3
New York NY 10009
November 3 - 30, 2007
Public Reception: November 3, 6-9PM

• Nancy Baker (Raleigh, NC) - Tire Shop
• Martin Bromirski (Richmond VA) Anaba
• Sharon Butler (Mystic, CT) Two Coats of Paint
• Lisa Call (Parker, CO) - New Work and Inspiration
• F. Lennox Campello (Media, PA and Washington, DC) Mid Atlantic Art News
• Rose Clancy (Pittsburgh, PA) paperWorks
• Kevin Clancy (Boston MA and Pittsburgh PA) - soft soft pink pulls through the ivory void
• Susan Constanse (Pittsburgh, PA) - Oranje
• Warren Craghead ( Charlottesville, VA)drawer
• Mark Creegan (Jacksonville Florida) - JaxCal.org
• Christiane D (Pittsburgh PA) - Christiane D
• Roberta Fallon (Philadelphia PA) Fallon and Rosof's Artblog
• Ann Gordon (Detroit MI) - Detroitarts
• Cable Griffith (Seattle WA) - Cable Griffith
• David Grim (Pittsburgh, PA) - Serendipity
• Bill Gusky (Canton, CT) - Artblog Comments
• Tracy Helgeson - Works by Tracy Helgeson
• Stephanie Lee Jackson (Brooklyn NY) - Pretty Lady
• JT Kirkland (Washington, D.C.) - Thinking About Art
• Mary Klein (Minneapolis, MN) - stillifes
• Eva Lake (Portland, OR) -Eva Lake
• Steven LaRose - (Ashland OR) Steven LaRose
• Michael Lease (Richmond VA) - Annabelle's Aspirin
• Joanne Mattera (New York NY) Joanne Mattera Art Blog
• Rob Matthews (Philadelphia PA) - Matthews The Younger
• John Morris (Pittsburgh, PA) - Digging Pittsburgh Arts
• Loren Munk (Brooklyn NY) - James Kalm
• Elizabeth Perry (Pittsburgh, PA) - Woolgathering
• David Pohl (Pittsburgh, PA) - find the time to rhyme
• Libby Rosof (Philadelphia PA) Fallon and Rosof's Artblog
• Chris Rywalt - (Wood Ridge NJ) NYC Art
• Marc Snyder (Pittsburgh, PA) - Fiji Island Mermaid Press

New PostSecret book coming

I just got through the new PostSecret book, which is titled A Lifetime of Secrets. And just like its predecessors, Frank Warren continues to tap into the inexhaustible well of worldwide secrets to deliver an exceptionally interesting book again - both as a read and as an art book. The new book goes on sale next week and it is already ranked at #105 on Amazon (as a pre-order). You can pre-order it here. Frank's book tour starts next week and he will be on the Today Show talking about PostSecret on October 11th.

There is also a new PostSecret video on YouTube (it is ranked 47th most viewed for the day and climbing).

Lastly, over 300 spiritually related postcards are on exhibit in the latest show at the American Visionary Art Museum in Baltimore.

Moon & Hopper

Cudlin has a really excellent review of The National Gallery’s current exhibition on Edward Hopper.

And in this review is where we see where a trained painter can sometimes deliver an insight into a painter's work than an ordinary critic sometimes can't; Cudlin notices that:

There are many subjects that didn’t suit Hopper’s approach to color and form. He was hopeless, for example, with seascapes. His 1922 etching The Cat Boat and a later oil painting, Ground Swell (1939), are half-baked attempts to represent water. In the former, a few thin lines like cramped cursive—little cartoon peaks, really—lamely indicate waves. In the latter, the sea appears to be made of some viscous blue-green substance; the stuff lies in thick furrows, holding both a buoy and a sailboat completely immobile. Only the boat in each picture seems like a decent compilation of specific shapes. Hopper clearly liked that boat but didn’t have many ideas about where to put it...

... His figures, too, were often vague and half-invented. The female nude in Morning in a City (1944) gazes out at a sharply rendered city. But she herself looks like a lumpy troll, as if she wandered out of a painting by modern primitive Henri Rousseau. Hopper typically made studies for his figures but often relied on memory while painting, and proportions could get lost in the shuffle. This woman’s nakedness lacks eroticism, and as a result seems alien, disturbing—as nondescript as Hopper’s trees and waves.

Lumpy troll... that's hilarious!

Elsewhere in the CP, Capps reviews Jiha Moon at Curator's Office. Moon is on my "Buy Now" List.

Wanna go to a C'ville opening tonight?

Charlottesville's Migration: A Gallery has Edwin White's metal sculpture and mobiles opening tonight in a show titled “Line to Volume.”

The exhibition goes through November 2, 2007 and the opening is from 5:30 – 8pm as part of C'ville's own First Friday openings.

New WPA website

The new WPA website is now online and their new online artfile, which will be ready for prime time on October 29, 2007 rocks!

New editor at WaPo

Tracy Grant is the new editor for the Washington Post's Weekend section.

Our congratulations to Grant on the new job!

The WaPo's Weekend section has its own separate presence from the rest of the paper, and as far as the visual arts, in my opinion Michael O'Sullivan has the best presence, connectivity and corporate knowledge on the Greater DC area's region visual art scene in the entire newspaper. By far...

O'Sullivan does a great job for the readers of the Post, who are usually proportionally shortchanged in the visual arts (and have been for years, but accelerated by the disastrous Style editorship of Eugene Robinson and perpetuated by the current editor) by the paper's newish Arts section.

But I hope that Tracy Grant has an open mind, because the Weekend section can use a lot of refurbishing and modernizing and parts of it need to realize that it's 2007 and not 1977.

I am not an objective critic, not by far, but here are some suggestions for Tracy Grant, and I sincerely hope that Grant will take them as constructive suggestions rather than burying her head in the sand like her predecessor.

1. The Listings: No section of Weekend is a bigger waste of newsprint than the 80% static listings - especially the museum listings. But, let us assume that some people still refer solely to a printed paper, rather than the Internet, to find out what's showing where. The way that listings are managed, the way that they must be submitted, and the way that they are updated is a joke in 2007. Example: while I understand that in 1977 a reader may want a constant reference of what's on exhibit at the Navy Museum - a static permanent installation museum - why is that listing (and dozens like it) there Friday after Friday for years and years? The listings need to be more dynamic, like the Washington City Paper's listings are, where galleries and museums, etc. can email their listings in (or mail it or fax them). Suggestion one: Provide an online entry point where galleries and museums can electronically submit listings. And for the readers' sake, reduce the space allotted to static listings that never change and use the newsprint space to list more gallery listings, which do change on a monthly basis!

2. The Mini Reviews: The Weekend section used to employ an small army of freelance writers and critics to provide mini reviews of movies, theatre, performance, etc. These voices augmented their regular writers and critics and really made the Weekend section a must read for anyone interested in the arts. They never did that for the visual arts. Why did Weekend do this for all genres of the arts except the visual arts? Suggestion two: Budget for 2-3 freelance writers to submit a few mini DC area gallery reviews each Friday - just like you once did for the other art genres.

3. The Big Review: More please; O'Sullivan does a great job, but the hungry visual art masses want more! Here's an idea (unless it is an union thing that forbids this from happening): The WaPo owns a couple of other printed newspapers out there... such as the Gazette. Why not augment O'Sullivan once in a while with one of the art critics who already writes for one of those newspapers, already is on the WaPo's payroll database, and easy to tap into, to supplement and augment O'Sullivan's voice (or replace him when he's away on vacation or recuperating from a medical issue as he is now) when he's gone. Suggestion Three: Augment Michael O'Sullivan's visual art criticism with Dr. Claudia Rousseau's art criticism - she's the art critic for the Gazette newspapers - owned by the Post.

Wanna go for a pretty drive?

If you are a fan of children's illustrations and a really beautiful countryside setting, then this weekend you should take a drive to the Brandywine River Museum in beautiful Chadds Ford, PA and check our their current "Flights into Fantasy: The Kendra and Allan Daniel Collection of Children's Illustration" on display through November 18, 2007.

On exhibit you'll discover fantasy in children's illustrations by some of the most famous illustrators of the 19th and 20th centuries such as Arthur Rackham, Edmund Dulac, Kay Neilsen, Jessie Willcox Smith, W.W. Denslow, Ernest Shepard, Ludwig Bemelmans, Dorothy Lathrop and E. Boyd Smith. Nearly 100 superb works selected from the remarkable collection of Kendra and Allan Daniel.

Tapedude in the CP

The DC area's Mark Jenkins is probably one of the region's most visible invisible artists, both around here and abroad.

And the current issue of the WCP has an excellent profile on Jenkins by the CP's Jessica Gould. Read it here.

Secret Apartment

"The leader of an artists' cooperative has been sentenced to probation for setting up a secret apartment inside a shopping mall's parking garage as part of a project on mall life."

Details here.

First Fridays

If you wanna do openings and gallery crawls, first Fridays is your key day.

There are a lot of gallery openings tonight in Philadelphia, a city known for "legendary stinginess toward the arts" according to the Daily News' Tom DiNardo.

Details on the gallery openings "here.

In DC, Heather Goss details some key openings around the nation's capital, and I will say it again, DC can also be accused of wanting to save a dinar here and there at the expense of the arts. Check out DCist here.

Fidel Castro as an Orthodox Jew

In Cuba, you can get in a lot of trouble if you depict "El Lider Maximo" in any sort of unfavorable light, or showing any kind of weakness. Big trouble... like jail time sort of trouble.

Castro manipulation of organized religion has been masterful, and the way that he has handled the Catholic Church in Cuba, as well as the decimated Cuban Jewry, should be a lesson to all despots and tyrants. Because Castro is essentially an atheist and deeply against organized religion, which he uses as just another tool of his regime, depicting him in any sort of religious or believer status would be cause for artistic concern in Cuba.

But this is America.

And although the old tyrant has never been very proud of his Celtic roots, his parents ancestral home in Galicia has actually offered him an exile home in the rugged mountains of Iberia's Celtic regions, in the event that Castro ever decided to leave Cuba, which I seriously doubt that he ever will.

But in Cuba there has always been an urban legend that Castro's mother, Lina Ruz, also described as a Galician, was actually Jewish, perhaps because her last name was said to be similar to a well-known hidden Sephardic Jewish family in Spain.

Also, because Castro was born out of wedlock to Lina (who was the 14 year-old daughter of a maid in his father's household); and because Castro was the third out-of-wedlock child of Lina; and because this affair was the cause of his father's divorce from María Luisa Argota (his Galician wife); and because Castro was not baptized until age 8, the children in the Jesuit school that he started attending at age 6 labeled him a "Judio" as a derogatory term in the racist Cuban society of the 1930s.

"Fidel Castro as an Orthodox Jew"
Charcoal on Paper, circa 2007 by F. Lennox Campello
And thus, and begging forgiveness from all Jews around the world, my drawing of an elderly Fidel Castro Ruz, who like many senior citizens, has suddenly discovered religion, begged and prayed for forgiveness for all his horrible sins and abuses of the Cuban people, and using his power forced his way and become an Orthodox Jew in Havana's historical synagogue.

Next (and definately more appropriate): Castro as Ayatollah Fidel...

Bethesda gallery renamed

Today I received a press release announcing "Waverly Street Gallery formerly Creative Partners Gallery's" Holiday Show (a multi media show featuring the work of Gallery Artists) from December 4, 2007 through January 5, 2008, with an opening reception on Friday December 7, 6-9 pm.

What took me a little bit by surprise was the fact that Creative Partners had renamed itself. Their new website (which as of this AM does not work for some reason is www.waverlystreetgallery.org).

Since I am in a "do as I say, not as I do," mood - and actually thinking about re-naming Mid Atlantic Art News to something more generic in case I spread my wings to New Mexico in the future - this question will sound a little hypocritical.

Why do galleries with a long established presence rename themselves?

Creative Partners is one of the Greater DC area's top cooperative galleries, which means that it is an artist-run, artist-owned gallery, where all members share all of the gallery's expense, and like many of the co-ops around the DC area, and other metropolitan areas, they have been around for a ton of years.

So they have name recognition, which in the gallery world is a good thing.

And thus the question: why change the name?

Creative Partners is the second area gallery to do this recently. Factory Photoworks renamed itself Multiple Exposures Gallery a couple of years ago. Like Creative Partners, Multiple Exposures, nee Factory Photoworks, has been around for decades, and showcases some of the best photography in the region at very affordable prices.

I could call Creative Partners and ask them the question. But it is more interesting to elaborate and guess on a generic reason why an established gallery would change their name.

In the case of a cooperative, I think that the reason may be simply to begin the process to re-invent itself; to attempt to establish a new presence, by disassociating somewhat with the past.

I don't think that changing names is necessary for this; in fact, I think it may hurt the cause (if that's the cause). It is spectacularly hard to do a global change for any and all presences where the "old name" exists: directories, press lists, websites, online resumes, roledexes, etc. Unless you are careful and do it right, you can wipe out an entire digital footprint with a name (and website) change.

I am a big fan and supporter of cooperative galleries. Together with independently owned commercial fine arts galleries, non-profit galleries, university galleries, museum galleries, and alternative art spaces, they make up the visual arts tapestry of a city or region.

All galleries everywhere, including fabled places like New York and LA, struggle to survive and sell work in order to pay the artists, pay rent, pay for publicity, pay for openings, pay for electricity, pay for the plumber the 2-3 times a year that somebody flushes a sanitary napkin (or one of those indestructible hand towels) down the toilet at an opening and clogs the pipes, pay for websites, etc.

Selling art is not an easy task for the most adept of galleries and gallerists. The tales of sold out shows and shows that sell out before the openings are sometimes true, but also sometimes exaggerated as a publicity stunt. I know for a fact of a former DC area gallery (no longer around) that used that storytelling line to create this "sold out" aura around the gallery that was fabricated most of the times.

Selling art in the Greater DC region is a especially difficult task, and a hard one to understand. Selling art in the Philadelphia area appears to be just as difficult, if not more, than the DC region. Both areas have more than their share of very, very wealthy people.

A lots of upper income bracket people as well. The estimated median household income for Bethesda, Maryland (where Creative Partners is located) was around $114,000 two years ago, and the median house or condo in Bethesda is around $850,000. By the way, it's $150K and $950K in nearby Potomac.

And you can research your head off and find out that generally speaking, the Greater DC area is making more money than most of the rest of the country.

But cracking the code and getting people to actually buy a piece of original artwork is a very difficult process, and unfortunately for the galleries and for artists, they only control a small part of it.

The most difficult part is getting people to actually know that there are galleries, and openings, etc. Getting the potential buyer to the gallery, or aware of the gallery or artist, is the key, and of course the most difficult part.

And because most galleries can't afford the rents right on the main commercial streets (say M Street in Georgetown, or Bethesda Avenue in Bethesda), they're usually found in clusters just off the main drags (like Canal Square in Georgetown, R Street in Dupont Circle, or to the side of East-West Highway in Bethesda, like Creative Partners - on Waverly Street I assume). And galleries, hungry for low rents and bigger spaces, are usually the first ones that begin to revitalize a sketchy neighborhood, such as the former Fusebox Gallery did for 14th Street (for galleries anyway) and Conner Contemporary is doing for the entire business community in their new location. And let's not forget that a few decades ago, a handful of artists took an abandoned building in boarded-up Old Town Alexandria, removed forty truckloads of garbage from the building, refurbished it and created the Torpedo Factory and kindled the birth of a new tony neighborhood and destination.

That means that you usually do not have the luxury of "walk-in" traffic of people walking around the nice shops, boutiques, restaurants that line up high end commercial streets like Bethesda Avenue or M Street, etc.

And the stores that sell pretty wall decor pieces on those high rent streets do gang buster business. In them you find every variation of the "painter of light" theme, or the art of rock stars (dead or alive), or TV celebrities artwork, or perhaps Russian kids who paint like Picasso (and have since grown up).

And they sell all of the above for serious money.

The kind of money that could buy serious art, not wall decor.

And the buyers think that they are buying serious artwork.

And then they drop another grand for a rococo frame to go with the wall decor.

And from my own personal experience, every once in a while, a handful of times in a gallery's lifetime, one of those buyers "discovers" a real gallery and then a collector is born, if the gallery is good enough to educate and open the person's eyes.

Why are these would-be collectors so hard to bring in from the dark side? A while back I submitted this thesis:

Because they were not exposed to art in their upbringing. Not because their parents were bad, uncultured people, but because their parents were hard-working stiffs who worried about the rent, the electric bill, the food bill and paying for junior's college so that junior could get a Computer Science degree and go on and invent AOL.

And in college, junior probably was not exposed to art other than the two or three peripheral courses that he needed to get his electives; certainly not to buying art, or even aware that art was for sale.

And then junior works hard and becomes a millionaire, and now has disposable income out the yingyang, and looks around for expensive toys, because as George Carlin is fond of saying, we all love to collect "stuff."

And he sees ads for expensive cars, expensive furniture, expensive cigars, and he reads tons of reviews for the latest trendy restaurants, etc. But he's never really made aware that there's also art out there, for our local media has a spectacular sense of apathy towards the visual arts in our area. The Washington Post is the only major American newspaper that has a freelancer deliver around 25 reviews a year to cover an entire year of DC area gallery shows, and they allow their chief art critic to review only museum shows. Very little attention is placed upon our art galleries by the newspapers, certainly not commensurate with the amount of print space that they give theatre, music, dance, fashion, etc.

So junior doesn't know that the DC area has a really good and creative visual arts scene.

Thus when junior takes a stroll through the city's main shopping streets, he doesn't know about the side streets where the galleries are, but sees the stores passing for art galleries that sell the pretty, expensive "pictures," and then junior assumes that this "stuff" is art.

And he drops a ton of money for a pretty "picture." It happens all the time, otherwise these stores would go out of business.

But instead it is the art galleries that go out of business: Veerhoff (after 125 years), Numark, eklektikos, Fusebox.

Every once in a while, junior - usually by accident - discovers a reputable art gallery, and sometimes a real collector is then born. It has happened to me, as a dealer, many, many times. But for every one of those, thousands of others remain on the dark side, or worse still, think that they have to go to New York to find contemporary art.

The apathy shown by the media towards art galleries and visual artists is multiplied by a thousand if you happen to be a cooperative gallery.

Art critics, writers who write about art, art bloggers, and other assorted scribes in the art scene tend to ignore cooperative galleries and their artist members. It is immensely unfair and short-sighted, and reflects an interesting sort of neo-connish tendency in an otherwise very liberal crowd. Like the same group's general dislike and distrust of any artist who is liked by the public in general; or public art that the public likes. It's an interesting paradox that has always intrigued me.

I've never been a member of a coop gallery, but have juried shows for coop galleries many, many times, and intimately know artists who have and are members of cooperatives. And thus I have some insight into the inner workings of galleries such as Creative Partners is.

Like I said, running an art gallery is not an easy task - as Washington Post Arts editor John Pancake once told me, it is a "heroic act."

Running a gallery by committee, as coops by default are run (and non-profits are supposed to be run), must be the task from art hell. And like any committee running anything, 10% of the people usually end up doing 90% of the work.

It's a paradox of its own. The same strength (equitable distribution of expenses among artist members) that makes a coop nearly invincible to the economic forces that makes opening an art gallery the second riskiest business proposition in the nation (restaurants are first), is its most visible weakness (direction by committee).

Trying to convince 20 or 30 voting members to agree on what colors to paint the gallery walls must rank up there with trying to get any Presidential candidate to answer a "yes or no" question with a "yes" or "no."

Getting the talented bunch over at Creative Partners to change names to Waverly Street Gallery, or the amazing photographers at Multiple Exposures, nee Factory Photoworks, must have been a herculean task.

And if the name change main reason is to set a new presence and a new footprint and a new direction for the gallery, and hopefully generate more noise (reviews in newspapers, blogs, etc.) and more sales, then there's a whole complex set of other issues that would need to be addressed. Issues too long and exhausting to list here, but important for a gallery re-inventing itself. Issues such as preserving online presence, learning how to improve art sales, visualizing and implementing a "new" physical presence, distributing the workload with specific goals, website presence and organization, selling avenues to explore, aggressive press presence, display, etc.

Otherwise, it would be the same as when Esso renamed itself Exxon: new name but same old gas.

Trescott on WPA

The WaPo's Jacqueline Trescott with an excellent article on the WPA's separation from the Corcoran first reported here.

You can also read the official news release here.

WaPo Blog Directory

The Washington Post has started a new blog directory with some very cool capabilities. If you are a blogger, you can register your blog here.

The 0 Project

The gent in that cherry picker installing the massive work of art by Rosemary Feit Covey around the Arlington Arts Center is my good friend Jeffry Cudlin, the Center's curator and the City Paper's chief art critic.

As I've stated before, Rosemary Feit Covey is one of those wizard artists that when you see their work, you are left speechless by both the imagery and also by the technical skill. She is by far, my favorite printmaker in the DC region.

"The 0 Project"

Cudlin is installing part of Rosemary's "0 Project [Zero Project]"

The 0 Project is an installation involving worldwide participation. The centerpiece of the project is 0 ("Zero"), a 300-foot long, 15-foot high banner printed on DuPont™ Tyvek®, which will wrap the old building of the historic Maury School. It will be installed through February 2008.

The image on the Tyvek is based on a drawing created by Rosemary Feit Covey, and "shows a vast crowd of shouting faces looking out at an unseen event. The image, representing silent screams of the masses, serves to encourage viewers to speak out about societal concerns and contemporary events, thereby giving voices to the voiceless. Significantly, the image does not have a political bias and invites participation regardless of the cause."

Check it out here. Scheduled national and international partners for this project are located in Los Angeles; Mumbai, India; Buenos Aires, Argentina; and Toronto, Canada.

Selected from among hundreds of applicants in the mid-Atlantic region, the 0 project will also premier as a printed piece wrapping the Arlington Arts Center this week. Printed on Tyvek on an HP 500 printer, upon installation it will be fifteen feet high, wrapping 300 feet around the outside of the art center... and that's what Cudlin is installing.

The evening reception is this Friday, October 5, 2007 from 6-9 PM and will include a performance piece in which the public is invited to participate

WPA\C Announces Separation from The Corcoran

The Washington Project for the Arts is leaving the Corcoran and returning to its independent roots.

The separation will be formal on December 31, 2007 and the WPA will relocate to new offices in the Dupont Circle area.

More later.

When the dog bites

My wife is a retired-from-competition former uberathlete. She was once ranked fifth in the world in the duathlon, was twice the Maryland triathlon champion, swam for Colgate, blah, blah, blah.

And although she no longer competes, she still runs a gazillion miles a week, swims endless laps and road-bikes all over the place.

Recently, on a Sunday where there was an awesome flea market in downtown Media, PA (hundreds and hundreds of sellers), we made plans to meet in Media. She would bike from the University where she teaches and I would, ahem, drive to Media.

Around noon or so I get a phone call from her telling me that she's leaving the school and heading to Media - that's about four or five miles. Her cell phone reception in this area, by the way Sprint, sucks.

A little while longer I begin to get worried. And then I get a broken-up, unintelligible call from her, but I can tell that something's wrong, really wrong.

Two or three broken up phone calls, all with the same sense of urgency, and then a few more, now with male voices trying to say something, really panics me, so I run to my van and race down the street where I knew she'd be biking.

I come across an ambulance, I stop and here's what happened:

She was biking down the street, not the sidewalk, but the street, and doing 25-28 MPH, which unless you're a really good road biker, is like the speed of light to chicken bikers like me.

On a lawn ahead of her, she spots a dog. A really big fucking, scary looking dog. She's a savvy road biker, with thousands of miles under her butt, and thus she mentally checks out that there's a big dog, but also that the dog's owner is holding the dog with a leash, but she keeps an eye on the situation.

As she zooms by, the dog pulls away from its owner, pulling her onto her stomach and escaping from her leash-hold, and makes an intersecting bee-line for the bike approaching down the middle of the street. And the dog lunges and bites her on her lower calf, a few inches above her knee.

This dog weighs 138 pounds (my wife weighs 115), and it's a half (what else?) Rottweiler and half Husky.

At this point, I think that 99% of the bikers on the planet would have been knocked off their bikes, with a huge dog clamped onto your leg. In fact I would have fallen off my bike had the dog just barked.

But she stays on and keeps pedaling. Can you imagine the strength and balance needed to do that?

And I suspect that one of the wheels, or perhaps the pedal, hits the dog and the beast lets go and returns to its screaming owner, probably licking its bloody chops.

By the time I got there, the ambulance was already there, and the cops had sized up the situation, and I send the ambulance away to emergency to deal with the number two pencil-sized holes that the canine monster had left on her thigh.

The very agitated dog owner: "I am so sorry, he's such a gentle dog, he's never bitten anyone before... he just reacts like that when joggers or bikers come across his territory..."

Wanna go to a DC opening this Wednesday?

The Catholic University of America’s Columbus School of Law, together with the CUA Department of Art and Campus Ministry has sponsored the juried art exhibition entitled, Images of Justice, which explores the theme of social justice through the vision of local artists in a broad spectrum of two- and three-dimensional media.

On display will be works by Mark Behme, Linda Hesh, Emily Greene Liddle, Dr. Robert E. O’Brien, Fernando C. Sandoval, and Henrik Sundqvist.

Opening Reception, 4-6 p.m. – Wednesday, October 3, 2007.

Opportunity for artists in LA

Deadline: November 30, 2007

LA's Korean Cultural Center is seeking submissions from US artists for exhibition. Open to all media. Awards of up to $2,900. No entry fee. Send SASE to:

Korean Cultural Center
15th Annual
5505 Wilshire Blvd
Los Angeles CA 90036

Or call 323-936-7141 or fax to 323-936-5712(FAX) or email exhibition@kccla.org

Opportunity for Artists in Virginia

Deadline: October 29, 2007

Charlottesville's Second Street Gallery, established in 1973, seeks entries for its 2008-2009 exhibition season. Submit 10 slides or Mac CD PowerPoint presentation (not PowerPoint show), slide list, resume, statement, SASE, and $15 fee.

Second Street Gallery
115 Second St SE,
Charlottesville, VA 22902

Arlington Openings this Friday

Friday, October 5, 2007, from 6:00 to 9:00 p.m. at the Arlington Arts Center is the opening for the seven new solos that start their fall season.

This collection of seven solo exhibitions — each distinct, and occupying its own gallery at the AAC — "encompasses everything from traditional representational painting, to wall mounted sculptural installation, to hybridized projects using video in combination with other media."

And in the case of Chawky Frenn, I predict harsh political and social commentary art, painted with an exceptionally talented hand with little irony.

From the news release:

- Gillian Brown projects video onto translucent objects, breaking evocative images apart and refracting or reflecting them onto various surfaces.

- Heidi Fowler paints images of everyday industrial objects on unconventional substrates — her recent work features networks of phone or power lines painted across collaged beds of junk mail envelopes.

- Chawky Frenn’s representational paintings are dense with art-historical allusions and violence in equal measure. His work has been formed by his experiences growing up in Lebanon, witnessing the atrocities of war firsthand.

- Laurel Lukaszewski is a sculptor who explores pattern, rhythm, and line using black stoneware and porcelain. The abstract tangles projecting off of the walls in her installation at AAC, Kaminari, playfully represent brush strokes in three-dimensional form.

- Timothy Michael Martin is an abstract painter who, in his reductive paintings, combines diagrams and schematics with oblique pulp sci-fi references. His work comments on the visual codes of modernism and on utopian and dystopian visions of the future.

- Claire Sherwood creates mixed media installations with lace, concrete, wax and coal. These materials are combined to form objects that are paradoxically both decorative and crudely industrial--or both stereotypically masculine and feminine.

- Alessandra Torres is a performance and installation artist. Her AAC project, Figure Study, draws elements from Zen painting and dance; in it, Torres presents flat, jointed, reductively rendered figures mounted on magnets that the viewer is invited to manipulate and reposition at will.

Prediction: Look for Torres, who now lives in NYC, to steal this show. All shows through November 17th, 2007.

Bow Down to Washington

One of the things that people who don't like college cheerleaders in skimpy outfits like about the University of Washington cheerleaders, is that usually when they play at home they are covered in plastic raincoats (over their skimpy outfits).

For decades the Washington Huskies have been a perennial Top 20 team, several times national champions, and generally one of the top two or three universities who send the most players to the professional ranks.

But the Huskies have fallen on rebuilding times over the last few seasons.

And the rebuilding is beginning to show and although I generally do not talk about football in this blog, I wanted to be the first writer on the planet to predict that 19-year-old Washington red shirt quarterback Jake Locker (is that a great quarterback name or what?) will win the Heisman Trophy on his junior or senior year.

What an amazing future Jake Locker has...

Tonight the dogs from Seattle fought the USC Trojans, the best team in the country (and the best for years now), and were a 21 point underdog.

And on a day of upsets, where half of the Top 10 teams lost, where number seven Texas was shoved around and brutalized by Kansas State, number three Oklahoma was upset by Colorado, South Florida (???) embarrassed number five West Virginia, the Testudos of Maryland stunned number ten Rutgers, number 13 Clemson was spanked by Georgia Tech, number 21 Penn State lost to Illinois, number 22 Alabama lost to a once fading Florida State... the Huskies almost pulled out a 21-point underdog win over USC... and the dogs were one fumble away, plus a reversed interception in the end zone that turned into the Trojan winning field goal... from a stunning victory.

Go Huskies and Bow Down to Washington.

Congrats!

To Cara Ober and the gang at Bmore Arts, which has been named "Best Use of Bandwith" in this year's Baltimore City Paper's "Best Of Baltimore."

Well deserved!

Beyond the Margins

Hillyer Art Space at 9 Hillyer Court, NW, in DC will have Beyond the Margins: Selections from Soweto, South Africa opening next week, October 5, 2007, with a reception from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m. and runs through December 14, 2007.

Developed and curated by Martin Britz, President and Founder of the South African Fine Arts Congress, Beyond the Margins represents a body of work from both established and emerging black, South African artists working in the Soweto region outside the city of Johannesburg from 1970 to the present.

Represented in Beyond the Margins are Peter Sibeko, Muzi Donga and Winston Saoli, three of the most eminent painters of the Soweto school. Additional artists featured in the exhibition include: Ben Macala, Eli Kobeli, Speelman Mahlangu, Hargreaves Ntukwana, Godfrey Ndaba, David Mbele, Martin Tose, Leonard Matotso, Sipho Msimango, Solomon Sekhaelelo, Mvemve Jiyane, and Grand Maghandlela.

Giants

A couple of new tiny drawings of two art giants. Each charcoal is about one and a half square inches.

"Man Ray"
Charcoal on Paper. 1.5 by 1.5 inches. 2007
By F. Lennox Campello
In a private collection in Richmond, VA


"Marcel Duchamp"
Charcoal on Paper. 1.5 by 1.5 inches. 2007
By F. Lennox Campello
In a private collection in Richmond, VA

Makes sense

Mike Licht solves the Jacob Lawrence issue. He writes: "You (and Regina Hackett) can assume your readers are familiar with Jacob Lawrence. Jacqueline Trescott can't."

Great point and case closed.

At the Corcoran

This month, the Corcoran opens the photography exhibition Annie Leibovitz: A Photographer’s Life, 1990–2005, as well as Wild Choir: Cinematic Portraits by Jeremy Blake, which features three digital media projects by the late artist.

More interesting to me is their "2007 Alumni Juried Exhibition, Recent Graduates: 2002–2006." That exhibit goes through September 30, 2007, so hurry and go see it. It was juried by Molly Donovan, curator of modern and contemporary art at the National Gallery of Art and it's at the Corcoran's "new" Gallery 31.

Gallery 31 is the Corcoran’s newly dedicated exhibition space for the Corcoran College of Art + Design. The space will host exhibitions by the Corcoran’s faculty, students, alumni, visiting artists, and annual senior thesis exhibitions. Located at the New York Avenue entrance of the Corcoran, Gallery 31 will be open during Gallery hours and will be free to the public.

Come again?

Recently, a respected art collector in Portland, Ore., walked into a local gallery. The owners greeted her warmly, and ushered her to the back room to show off their latest acquisitions. After politely declining several works, the collector chose a $5,500 porcelain sculpture shaped like a basket and covered in tiny, platinum elephants. "She has such a great eye for art," gushed the gallery's co-owner, MaryAnn Deffenbaugh.

The collector, Dakota King, is 9. In a collision of the art boom, the wealth boom and the Baby Einstein approach to parenting, galleries and auction houses around the country report that children who aren't old enough to drive are building collections that include works by Jasper Johns, Andy Warhol, Camille Pissarro and Rembrandt. At Sotheby's in New York, an 11-year-old boy with blond ringlets waved a paddle last fall and successfully bid $352,000 for a Jeff Koons sculpture of a silver gnome. Some teenagers are flipping art for quick profits. A few grade-schoolers are even loaning works to major museums, including Houston's Museum of Fine Arts, a coup for a collector of any age.

[stunned silence follows]...

Read the article by Kelly Crow in the Wall Street Journal here. It is a really, really a well-researched and interesting read by the way.

Day of the Dead

Pencil this date in and come party Day of the Dead style, with art, workshops, altars, music, spoken word, dancing, marigolds and the souls of the departed when Arlington's Art Outlet presents “Ofrenda: Art for the Dead” from 3 p.m. to midnight on Saturday, October 13.

Twenty artists will show their personal altars and offerings, or ofrendas. Workshops will teach kids and adults about the Dia de los Muertos tradition. Details here.

- Day of the Dead Workshop: Sugar Skulls 3 – 5 p.m.
- Mariachi Band 5 – 6 p.m.
- Film Screening by Zulma Aguiar 6:15 - 6:30 p.m.
- Mud Pie 6:30 – 7:30 p.m.
- Flo Anito 8 – 9 p.m.
- Special Guest Appearance by Sarah Lovering 10:30 pm
- Aphrodizia featuring Yoko K. 10 p.m. – Midnight

Artists in the show are: Zulma Aguiar, Michael Auger, Jennifer Beinhacker, Alison Christ, Andrea Collins, Rosemary Feit Covey, Roni Freeman, Jenny Freestone, Vickie Fruehauf, Susan Gardiner, Angela Kleis, Emily Liddle, Rob Lindsay, Bono Mitchell, Thomas Paradis, Marina Reiter, Marina Starkova, Henrik Sundqvist, and Jack Whitsitt.