Ernesto "Che" Guevara de la Serna Lynch
Janis, Marquart and Baker at the MPA
The three artists included in this exhibition, curated by Nancy Sausser and which just closed last Saturday at the McLean Center for the Arts in McLean, Virginia, Michael Janis, Allegra Marquart and Tom Baker, are all, according to the curator, storytellers. She is not only right, but I would add that they are superb storytellers who employ the visual arts in their own distinct ways to narrate their stories.
Both Janis and Marquart are commonly associated with the revolutionary artists of the Washington Glass School. It is people like them, along with artists like Tim Tate and Erwin Timmers, who have been redefining the way that we think, interpret and discuss glass in the modern dialogue of contemporary art.
For the revolutionary minds of the 20th and now 21st century, glass in the context of the postmodern art world has nearly always been defined as craft, rather than art. This absurd designation, in my opinion, has been levied upon this entire substrate because of the spectacular success of a couple of "crafty" glass artists such as the gigantic figure of Dale Chihuly.
A few years ago a former Hirshhorn Museum curator told me that the "Hirshhorn does not collect glass." Replace the word glass with any other art medium and you see how nearsighted that statement was.
And the "craft" brand has also stuck because the successful names of the craft world drifted apart over the years, and also over the years built a formidable collectors' base developed at fairs such as the Smithsonian, SOFA, etc. These fairs generally predated the now common "high art" art fairs such as Art Basel Miami Beach, Pulse, Scope, Red Dot, etc.
The "craft" world was doing hugely successful art fairs many years before it became more common for the "high art" world (and yes, I know that Art Basel in Basel itself has also been going on for decades).
And thus, for years glass artists and other "crafty" artists were happy with their vessels and bowls and organic marine forms that commanded good prices from a very specific (and limited) set of collectors.
And then a few years ago, centered around the Greater Washington, DC region, a new glass movement began to emerge. This group of artists saw glass as just another substrate to create artwork, all kinds of artwork, not just bowls and vessels and pretty organic forms.
They used those materials to develop narrative stories, as Janis and Marquart do in this show. And they married glass to technology, as Tim Tate does with his self contained video installations. And they had glass emerge as a powerful new form of "green art," as Erwin Timmers does with his recycled materials glass sculptures.
In this MPA exhibition, Janis shows us what he contributes to that incendiary new group of narrative galss artists, if we can even call them just "glass artists" any longer. In this show he exhibits seven pieces from his Tarot Card series. These wall hung glass panels, elegantly bordered in metal, each depict a card from the ancient fortune telling card system. Using the traditional process of sgrafitto, Janis essentially draws on glass with glass dust and then fuses it all to deliver what can best be described as a glass drawing. They are simply rendered in a minimalist style on sheets of translucent glass that forges a brilliant aura of ethereal context to his subjects.
Marquart is an enviable technician and astute artist who searches the world of fairy tales to discover and present in a new visual way a subject matter that often resides in our childhood memories. In this show she exhibited both kiln formed glass and relief printmaking to deliver the tales. It was a superb partnership of genres. These are sculptural stories.
Tom Baker had eleven intimate and exquisite silkscreen relief prints which unfortunately were a little overpowered by the larger works of Marquart and Janis, and yet, probably because of their intimate size, still managed to attract those of us who like to get nose-close to a work of art to explore it deeply and precisely. His dizzying visual dialogue includes pyramids, electric mixers, ballistic missiles, etc. all waiting for close inspection and interrogation to deliver the narration component of this artists works.
And the same narrative thread that joins all three artists' works into a cohesive exhibition, is the glue that joins the viewer to the conversation in the viewing of the show.
Here's a quick, minute-long video walk through the exhibition.
Civilian: Be there tonight!
Join Civilian Art Projects as they debut their new digs and the first exhibitions in their new space in the Warehouse Arts Complex at 1019 7th Street NW (at NY Avenue). Civilian is one of the District's hardest working galleries and we all wish them the best in their new spaces, which I can't wait to see.
And for the debut show Jayme will have Terri Weifenbach's "Woods" (with an essay by Gareth Branwyn) and new sculptures by artist, super chef and musician Carole Wagner Greenwood in a show titled "A Little Give and Take."
Nov. 13 - Dec 19, 2009
Opening Reception: Friday, Nov. 13, 7-9pm.
Mellema on local art shows
Kevin Mellema reviews several DC area shows and as usual hits the nail on the head on all of them and agrees with me on the key Novie Trump piece.
Nice as that series is, it's Trump's "Out of the Fire" piece that packs the hardest punch. Here we find 11 white bird wings singed by fire. Like several other pieces here, it deals with personal hardships, survival and the ability to fly onwards in the aftermath. It's a notion that all of us have to deal with in some capacity throughout our lives.Read Mellema here.
Black & WTF
Trust me, you're going to be glad that I pointed you to this very weird photography website.
Goodbye Geocities
Just received notice that a while back Yahoo had decided to stop hosting the free Geocities webpages.
Back in the early days of the Internets, Geocities was the starting point for many websites, including mine, which I built there sometime in the very early 1990s. It was through Geocities that I taught myself HTML and it was through Geocities that I made my very first Internet art sale sometime in 1993 or 1994.
And when we first opened the original Fraser Gallery in Georgetown in 1996, it was Geocities that hosted the gallery website for a couple of years until the real name domain was available sometime in the 1998 and we snatched it up.
There were millions of websites and pages on Geocities, and now, just like that they are all gone, including (I suspect) loads of art websites (like my original one) and perhaps loads of business online histories, such as those early years of the gallery.
When Yahoo acquired Geocities a few years ago, the last thing that I thought was that they'd be shutting the servers down and immediately destroying some of the web's very first websites. This is a shame, considering how relatively inexpensive servers have become and what a moneymaker powerhouse Yahoo continues to be.
Goodbye Geocities...
Reaching Out with Tim B. Wride
A couple of interesting Weekend Seminars at the Corcoran Gallery, Washington, DC:
Artist Seminar
Introduction to Critical Looking: A Seminar for Thinking Photographers
Friday, November 13, from 7:00 –9:30 pm
After all the practical workshops, after all the tech consultations, after all the seminars, after all the portfolio reviews ….now what?Cost: $95 (Students: $47)
How does all of the information apply to YOUR process and YOUR work? How do the trends and climate of the art world affect you and your work? Do you know how to look at photographs — including your own — and CRITICALLY ascertain the direction and relevance of them? What is the difference between the work you want to do and the work you SHOULD do? How do you know which way to turn in order to grow as an artist?
Curator/writer/educator Tim B. Wride will guide you toward a fuller understanding of the art climate in which you are working and the social, economic, and creative pressures that are affecting your photography. Through a dynamic program of lectures, Q&A’s, and group interaction, we will explore the state of the market, the directions of creative interplay, and, most important, the necessity of critically and intensely LOOKING at the work you see as well as the work you make. For too many artists this is the most overlooked aspect of their tools and talents; for all artists, however, CRITICAL LOOKING is the most basic skill that must be developed in order to challenge and advance their artmaking ability.
Do you know how to look at photographs—including your own—and CRITICALLY ascertain the direction and relevance of them? What is the difference between the work you want to do and the work you SHOULD do? How do you know which way to turn in order to grow as an artist? CRITICAL LOOKING is the key to expanding your awareness and applying a conscious understanding of your artistic process.Cost: $375
Tim B. Wride guides you through a dynamic series of historical perspectives, contemporary observations, interactive exercises, group critiques, and one-on-one portfolio reviews with the goal of awakening a fuller understanding of YOUR unique creative process and the directions that may be open to you with this new understanding. Open up your creativity and apply it to the way in which you approach images and imagemaking. Make the move to growth through self-awareness.
Tim B. Wride is a voracious consumer of photographic images. He likes nothing better than to look at photographs and talk to photographers about their work.
As Curator of the Department of Photographs at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) for 14 years, Tim curated over 50 exhibitions, authored and contributed to a dozen books, and has lectured, participated in panels, juried exhibitions, and provided portfolio reviews internationally. In 2004, Tim became the founding Executive Director of the No Strings Foundation, a Los Angeles-based non-profit that provides individual artist grants to U.S. photographers.
Tim is currently developing and offering seminars, workshops, and individual consultations with photographers whose goal is to grow as an artist. Updates to his schedule and programs available in your area can be found at www.CuratorialEye.com
Warholian bucks
An Andy Warhol painting of 200 dollar bills was sold for $43.8 million at a New York art auction by London-based art collector Pauline Karpidas, more than 100 times what she paid in 1986.Read about it here.
Cuba as the focus of art
Re-discovering these watercolors from my 1981 art school project has re-triggered that art school interest of Cuba as the focus of work and I've returned to watercolors for a couple of new pieces which I intend to take down to the fairs in Miami in December.
Bird on Cuban Art
Michelle Bird, who is a Curatorial Assistant at the Department of European Paintings, National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC, pens a gorgeous article on collecting Cuban art for Caribbean Art World Magazine.
Many years ago at Rutgers University, through research for a paper on Wifredo Lam, I learned that Alfred H. Barr, Jr., visited the island in the early 1940s. In addition to purchasing works of art by Cuban artists, he also organized an exhibition called “Modern Painters of Cuba” in 1944, bringing the island and its arts to the attention of the international market. During this period, he acquired Lam's "The Jungle" for the Museum of Modern Art. It was hung near Picasso's Guernica, to which it was compared. The relationship barely had time to produce little more than name recognition for its author and his native country when the connection was severed by the 1959 Revolution and subsequent political changes. By the mid-eighties, the painting was hanging in a hallway leading to the museum's coatroom. This single action shows how easily Cuban art was marginalized and made inaccessible to the public.Read the article here and buy Cuban art here or here.
Braggin'
I know that this is just braggin' and name throwin', but I get to go to a black tie gala tonight (the Lab School's 25th Annual Gala honoring Outstanding Achievers with Learning Disabilities) and not only is George Stephanopoulos the MC, but Vice President Biden is the Keynote Speaker.
Now where is that tuxedo again?
Thank you!
To all US veterans, both those who have served and those who are serving in all corners of the planet while we're home with our families. A well-deserved thank you to all the soldiers, sailors, airmen/women, Marines and Coasties.
This Veteran's Day is especially somber in view of the terrible terrorist attack executed by Dr. Hasan in Ft. Hood last week and we should be even more thankful to those who wear and who have worn the uniform with honor.
Below is Petty Officer Third Class Lenny Campello back in 1975!
And then Lieutenant Commander Lenny Campello back in 1992!
Portraiture 2.0
Portraiture 2.0, curated by Michael Pollack, and part of FotoWeek DC opens this coming Thursday November 12th from 6:30-8:30PM at Pyramid Atlantic Art Center’s Main Gallery, 8230 Georgia Avenue, Silver Spring, MD 20910-4511, and runs until December 5th 2009.
Work by Victoria F. Gaitán (that's her work above), Chan Chao, Matt Dunn, Nicholas Pye & Sheila Pye, Paul Vinet and Josh Yospyn.
Novie Trump at MPA
Titled "Uncharted Sky: Recent Sculpture by Novie Trump", the exhibition that just closed at the McLean Project for the Arts certainly charts a new path for this talented DC area artist and in my opinion can be considered as the breakthrough exhibition by Trump.
At McLean Trump flexes her artistic muscles in 11 works in ceramic, porcelain, glass, found objects, metal, stoneware, cork and an elegant assortment of porcelain bees. She also joins an emerging new movement centered around the Greater DC area that is breathing artistic life into genres of art historically associated with craft rather than high art. It is clear to see that over the years, artists like Margaret Boozer and the various artists working out of her Red Dirt Studio, as well as the wondrous Laurel Lukaszewski have begun to do to clay and to porcelain what the artists of the Washington Glass School, DC Glassworks and others have been doing to glass over the recent last few years. They are all the Alfred Stieglitzes of their genres.
And you can add Novie Trump to that select list of new revolutionaries dragging clay and porcelain away from the "crafts only" realm and erasing the lines that segregate craft from high art.
The exhibition is not only a triumph of technical skill, an inherent part of the genre itself, but sheer minimalism begins to emerge from some of the work as well. In "Out of the Fire," a gorgeous porcelain set of wings installed in a row on the wall, Trump uses the repetitive motif of the wings to set a sense of order to the piece and extend that sense of order and alignment to the rest of the show. It is the key work in the exhibition, the simplest and inherently the most elegant. It was also red-dotted, and so it will soon adorn a collector's home somewhere in the area.
And the award goes to...
On Saturday I dropped by the Potomac Valley Watercolorists annual exhibition at St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church in Arlington, VA to select the awards for the show.
It was a lot more difficult than what I had anticipated, as the talent and skill was abundant in nearly every member of the PVA and I spent quite a lot of time walking around and debating with myself.
In the end the award winners that I selected were:
OUT Auction NYC 2009
The Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD) is staging their 8th annual OUTAuction NYC - their annual art event to celebrate established and emerging artists, while recognizing GLAAD’s Top 100 Artists.
Since 2002, GLAAD has produced this annual fund raising event to support their programmatic work. Part art auction and part glamorous cocktail reception, I am told that OUTAuction NYC is one of those NYC "must attend events" of the fall season. Vanessa Williams, and others are on this year’s Honorary Committee and will be there that night as will the brilliant artist Ross Bleckner, who will be there to accept their "OUT In Art" award that will be given on the night of OUTAuction.
This is a great cause. You can view the works online and bid for them here.
And I have been honored to have been invited and selected as one of their 100 artists this year, which include:
Joshua Abelow, Liam Alexander, Ron Amato, Jennifer Andrews, Dee Ann and Tom McCarthy, Drora Bashan, Mark Beard, Jazzmine Beaulieu, Mikeal Beland, Bruce Bellas, Matthew Benedict, Bob Brisley, JaclynBrown, Jessica Burke, F. Lennox Campello, Luis Carle, Marc Van Cauwenbergh, Michael Cavayero, K-soul Cherix, Chad Chisholm, Meagan Cignoli, Juliette Conroy, Cesar Cornejo, Francisco Correa-Cordero, Aaron Czerny, Gabriel Dawe, Guerra De La Paz, Peter Doig, Favi Dudo, Troy Dunham & Jeff Eason, Dan Elhedery, Jeff Elliott, Hugo Fernandes, Eric Freeman, Ted Gahl, Gina Garan, Keith Haring, Hugh Hysell, Chasen Ingleheart, Leslie Jenchel, Wassily Kandinsky, Justin Kim, Michael Kirwan, Steven Klein, Lars Klingstedt, Aaron Krach, Enrique Limon, Marc Lodovico, Aimee LoSecco, Frank Louis, Richard Lund, Jane Martin, Caroline McAuliffe, James McKissic, Patrick McMullan, Trevor Messersmith, Emmy Mikelson, Matthew Miller, Adia Millett, Joan Miro, Daniel Monteavaro, Dave Muller, Kenneth Nadel, Math-You, Namie, Patrick Neal, Olek, Stephen Olivier, Kenneth Pietrobono, Pedro Pena, Adam Pendleton, Haq Qureshi, Benjie Randall, Gina Raphaella, Akili Richards, Pau Richmond, Herb Ritts, David Rohn, Kay Rosen, Lisa Ross, Heidi Russell, Andrew Salgado, Jamison Sarteschi, Chris Schiffelbein, Laurie Schorr, Larry Schulte, Jay Shinn, Deborah Sosower, Deborah Standard, Greg Stephens, Christopher Stout, Rivka Tabak, Nikki Terry, Jeffrey Teuton, James Totulis, Glenn Tramantano, Matteo Trisolini, Ryan Turley, Joel Voisard, Corey Willis and Becky Yazdan.
Check it all out online and bid for artwork here.
I have this piece in the auction... it would be nice if it stayed local and one of you would put up a good bid for it.
What to call this dish?
It started with about two pounds of pork chops... I deboned them and cut the pork meat into strips.
Meanwhile in a big frying pan I heated some olive oil... a generous portion, and added salt and pepper to the oil. Once it was hot I put the pork strips in the pan and browned it in the hot oil on high for a few minutes.
Once the meat wasn't raw on the outside, I added a few shakes of paprika and a few generous shakes of La Cena brand Adobo seasoning plus a few good shakes of powdered garlic and a couple of dashes of Lawry's seasoned salt. I then turn the heat to low, covered it and cooked it for about 15 minutes.
Once all that was reduced, I added a few shakes from a bottle of lemon juice, turned the heat really low and covered it and let it cook for about 15 minutes.
Meanwhile I cut some leftover baked potatoes into cubes and threw them in. Mixed everything in, stirred it and covered it all up.
Then I got a box of cleaned, sliced mushrooms and threw them in. Mixed everything in, stirred it and covered it all up. Cut up a huge Walla Walla sweet onion and threw that wonder of Nature in there as well.
I tasted it and it was really good so far.
Things were getting a little dry, so I added more lemon juice, and stirred everything up.
Cut up a lot of cilantro and added it to the mixture.
Heat down to minimum... it's ready to eat now essentially, but I want some starches and thus I cook some white rice and cook up some Cuban black beans (that recipe will be up soon... my shortcut is super fast and easy).
The pork was amazing! I am sure this is a new discovery, at least for me. And so what should I call this new pork recipe?
Let me know in the comments.
Things We Find in the Move One of the great things about moving (probably the only good thing) is that we often find things that we'd forgotten about. These pieces below are from a set of about 100 small watercolors that I did for one of my senior year exhibition projects at the University of Washington School of Art in 1981. Probably 40-50 of these have sold over the years. They all have the map of the island of Cuba as the focus.
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"Isla Prision (Prison Island)" c. 1980, Ink wash and wood rods on paper In the collection of The Cuban Studies Institute, Miami, Florida |
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| "Isla Prision" Monoprint enhanced with Charcoal and pins, c.1980 In a private collection in New Jersey |
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| "Isla Prision" Monoprint enhanced with watercolor and pins, c.1980 In a private collection in Florida |
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| Isla Encadenada Acrylic on paper with metal chain, c. 1979 |
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| Isla Encadenada Colored pencils on paper with metal chain, c. 1979 |
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| "Isla Herida" c. 1978 |
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| "Donde crece la palma" 1978 |
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| "The Island that Time Forgot" 1981 |
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"Mi verso es un ciervo herido Que busca en el monte amparo" 1979 |
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| "Isla Llorona", oil on board c. 1978 |
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| "Isla Clavada (Nailed Island)" 1980 Color pencils and embedded nails |
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| "Isla Abandonada (Abandoned Island)" Oil and Acrylic on Gessoed Board, 8x10 inches, c.1979 In a private collection in Hialeah, Florida |
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| Nubes Lloronas, Oil on board, c.1979 |
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| "Isla Llorona", oil on board, c.1978 In the collection of Queens' University, Charlotte, NC |
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| Isla Prisionera In a private collection in Miami, Florida |
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| Isla Balsera Location Unknown (Sold at Pike Pace Market, Seattle in 1978-79) |
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| "Isla Balsera (Raft Island)" - Happy Birthday America, Wishing We Were There! Collage on Paper, Framed to 30x40 inches, c. 1976 Was in a private Collection in New Jersey - donated to American University Art Museum in 2015
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Wanna go to an opening this week?
Opening Reception: Wednesday, November 11, 6 - 8 pm
Curator's Office will have the third solo exhibition of Korean-born artist Jiha Moon. For this exhibition, the gallery will
... present works exploring the nature of place and its inspiration on creative output. Works include three square-format Hanji paper over canvas pieces and four horizontal works on Hanji paper. There is a special emphasis on abstraction in many of these works. As Moon is currently an artist-in-residence at The Fabric Workshop in Philadelphia, the influence of textiles is subtly apparent as several works incorporate small embroidered areas, a departure for the artist.
The works in the exhibition were created both in her Korea and Atlanta-based studios. This division in working locations provoked the artist to explore the cultural influence of a precise place in an increasingly dizzying global world. For example, in the ironically titled work, An Exact Place, Moon looked at different national flags and how these vibrantly colored but mostly abstract images try to represent a specific culture. An interchangeable quality emerges for the artist as she notes, "if you change around the positions of some colored stripes, one flag can represent different nations, for example the similarities between Italy and Mexico or France and Russia." She deconstructs the flag stripes and situates them sinuously through the work and its many focal points thereby creating an invented universality where the nexxus of culture and location allows for hybrid cultures to emerge. This visual universality includes stars, moons, suns, animals, plants and weapons -- also derived from specific flags -- but germane to us all.
Another great source of inspiration for the artist is dancheong, an ancient Korean style of decorative painting using 5 primary colors and specific elaborate patterns. Going back more than two thousand years, the murals are found mostly on the exteriors of ceremonial wooden buildings.
Jury Duty today
Potomac Valley Watercolorists artists from the greater Washington metropolitan area will exhibit original paintings at St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church, 4000 Lorcom Lane, Arlington, VA, on Saturday, November 7, 3:00-7:00 p.m., and Sunday, November 8, 12:00-4:00 p.m.
A wide variety of sizes and styles (including both framed and unframed paintings) will be available for sale (cash, check or credit card). Admittance is free, refreshments will be provided and exhibiting artists will be on site.
It will be my honor to award the prizes at this exhibit and to chat with the artists and discuss the work after the awards ceremonies.
Potomac Valley Watercolorists (PVW) is a regional organization of water media painters who have been selected for membership through a highly competitive process. Members have exhibited extensively at the local, national and international levels.
When: Saturday, November 7, 3:00-7:00pm, and Sunday, November 8, 12:00-4:00pm
Details here.
Civilian Moves
Cat's out of the bag about Civilian Art Projects move to the 7th Street, NW block... details here.
