Torpedo Factory Holiday Open House Tomorrow

Giant head finished



On Monday I showed you Philly artist Frank Hyder working on his giant inflatable sculpture for the Giants in the City art project at Bayfront Park in Miami this week. As you can see, Hyder finished his work, and the piece looks great.

Giants in the City

That city is Miami and tomorrow the Giants in the City project, curated by my good friend Alejamdro Mendoza, returns to the ABMB festivities with the mobile sculpture project at Bayfront Park in Miami.

Inflatable art sculptures by Gustavo Acosta, Angel Ricardo Rios, Miguel Fleitas, Maite Josune, Tony Kapel, Anaken Koenig, Frank Hyder, Karen Starosta Gilinski, Maki Hachizume, Noor Blazekovic, Tomas Esson, Federico Uribe, Jose Bedia and the curator, Alejandro Mendoza.

By the way, these inflatable sculptures are looking for a venue to be shown in Washington, DC. Everything travels in suitcases and it is super easy to set up, in case some DC gallery or museum is interested in hosting these gigantic works.

Report from the war art front

And nu, so today was hanging day at the Red Dot Art Fair in Miami, and by the time that I got there at 1PM or so, most studious gallerists had already done a lot of hanging so I got a sweet Doris Day parking spot right by the door.

Red Dot is right across the street from Art Miami and nearby to Scope,. Art Miami is celebrating its 20th anniversary this year. All three fairs in such a new area of Miami's Wynwood Arts District that the Garmin GPS couldn't find it and I had to find the fair the old school way, which reminded me how scary it is to rely on GPS and then one forgets how to navigate the old fashioned way.

Inside it was a sauna, as the air conditioning won't be turned on until all doors are closed sometime tomorrow.

Anyway, by seven PM or so most of the hanging, wiring, light adjusting, etc. was done, and I walked around the fair to get an early look at what was being displayed. It was a quick look, and certainly more will come later.

The first glance found some really excellent artwork in some galleries and some really questionable work in a small number of booths.

Of early note, I saw some very good Mendives, Fabelos and a great Kcho at Miami's Oñate Fine Art. These were really world class pieces by some of the biggest names in contemporary Cuban art and so far stay in my head as some of the top work at Red Dot.

Tomorrow is press preview at 5PM and VIP party from 6-9PM.

Big Head

Remember that I told you about the "Giants in the City" art project which opens later this week an will be at Bayfront Park in Miami from 2-7 December?

Below is my good friend and well-known Philadelphia artist Frank Hyder working on his giant head inflatable sculpture.

Room with a view

Done with the 1100 or so miles of driving in two days. Done with the mandatory visiting of relatives. The fair installation and VIP preview is tomorrow. Meanwhile, just to make you jealous, here's the view outside my hotel room door, about ten feet from the beach.

Ernesto Lecuona

There is more to Cuban music than salsa, mambo, rumba, son, guaracha, danzon, cha cha, bolero, habanera, zapatilla, zapateo, punto guajiro, criolla, contradanza, and the other many Cuban music genres that have worked their way into daily Western culture.

Today marks the anniversary of the death of Ernesto Lecuona, a Cuban composer and pianist of worldwide fame who composed over six hundred classical pieces, mostly in what he described as "the Cuban vein."

And yet it is an interesting paradox that perhaps his most famous work is Malagueña (The Girl from Malaga) from the Suite Andalucia.

I say paradox because this classical piece has been now interpreted as being the music that bares the soul of Spain in the piano, rather than Cuba, but betrays the island's cultural chains to the colonial mother.

But Lecuona wrote hundreds of other classical piano pieces that incorporated Cuba's unique musical legacy. Perhaps Siboney (a tribute to Cuba's lost Native American tribes) is his best.

Below is Thomas Tirino, Pianist, recorded live November 14, 2003 at the University of Miami, Gusman Concert Hall performing Malagueña. Below that is the great Placido Domingo performing Lecuona's most Cuban work Siboney. If you'd rather listen to just the piano (as it was intended) then the great Ruben Gonzalez plays it last.

Queen Isabella II pulls one on the Pope

“New research reveals that Queen Isabella II of Spain (1830-1904) knowingly gave Pope Pius IX a fake painting of a 16th-century original in her collection. It has also emerged that ten years after her “generous” gift, the Spanish queen gave the original work by Bartolomé Esteban Murillo to King Luis of Portugal.

Read about it here.

Opportunity for Artists

Deadline: January 11, 2010.

The Public Trust of Jacksonville, Florida seeks artists. All participants will electronically submit a detailed pencil drawing of one of the three Le Moyne/de Bry original works, together with 4 other examples of your past paintings so the judges can select the ten best artists to be commissioned.

Artists must also submit an entrance form which may be downloaded from their menu under "Art Contest Entrance Form." No entry fee.

If you are selected as one of the ten commissioned artists, you will complete a painting (sized 24" by 30") by June 11, 2010. At that time you will be paid your $2,500 commission and shortly afterward be featured with your fellow top ten artists in showings of all the new art work at two premier art galleries in Jacksonville.

For complete guidelines, please visit this website. Questions? Contact Andrew Miller at adm@publictrustlaw.org or call (904) 247-1972 ext. 418.

Happy Thanksgiving

I hope that you all have the luck to spend today with your families and that we all think a thought for all those who can't.

Below is how pumpkin pies are made, source unknown, but clever!

Cuban art: Still caliente!

Cuban art continues to rise and gain importance in the international market. Last week, during the New York Latin American Art sales, on November 17 and 18, two major Cuban masters from the vanguardia period reached new world auction records.

My friends from Cernuda Arte in Miami tell me that a work titled Guajiro con Gallo (Cuban Peasant with Rooster), a signature oil on canvas, 24 ¼ x 20 inches, by Mariano Rodríguez, was offered at Sotheby’s November 18 sale. It reached a final hammer price of $482,500, exceeding the artist’s previous record of $354,500 attained eleven years ago.

Another success was, Carnaval (Carnival), an oil on canvas work, 20 x 16 inches by the revered Father of Cuban Modernism, Víctor Manuel García, offered at Christie’s November 17 sale. The painting logged enthusiastic bids before setting a new auction record of $182,500. The former record for a Víctor Manuel painting was $141,900 six years ago.

Heading to Miami

On Friday I'm driving down to Miami for the Art Basel frenzy of art fairs with a van load full of artwork. I will be at Red Dot Art Fair in the Wynwood Arts District and the location of the fair is 3011 NE First Avenue at NW 31st Street, Miami, FL 33137, really close to the massive Art Miami and the elusive Scope.


If you'd like some free passes to Red Dot, drop me an email to lenny @ lennycampello.com and I'll leave them at "will call" at the fair. I'll be in booth B105, so if you are in Miami, please drop by.

I'll be writing from the fairs as much as I can and as time allows. I have free passes to all the art fairs, so I hope to do some writing about some of them.

What the Bader Fund said...

This is what the Franz and Virginia Bader Fund said to my application:

Long Live Freddy Mercury

Man... I wish this guy was still alive and making music. He died on this day in 1991.

Giants in the City

I'm heading down to Miami later this month for the Art Basel Miami Beach frenzy of art fairs and art events, and one of the things that I'm looking forward to seeing is the Giants in the City project, curated by my good friend Alejamdro Mendoza, which returns to the ABMB festivities with the mobile sculpture project at Bayfront Park in Miami from 2-7 December.

Inflatable art sculptures by Gustavo Acosta, Angel Ricardo Rios, Miguel Fleitas, Maite Josune, Tony Kapel, Anaken Koenig, Frank Hyder, Karen Starosta Gilinski, Maki Hachizume, Noor Blazekovic, Tomas Esson, Federico Uribe, Jose Bedia and the curator, Alejandro Mendoza.

By the way, these inflatable sculptures are looking for a venue to be shown in Washington, DC. Everything travels in suitcases and it is super easy to set up, in case some DC gallery or museum is interested in hosting these gigantic works.

Migrations at the Embassy of Chile

This is the last week to see the "Migrations", a mini retrospective of the works of my good friend Joan Belmar, with works from 1995-2009. The exhibition is open from 8:30am to 6:30pm Monday-Friday and is closing on Nov 27th 2009 at 6:00pm.

The Chilean Embassy is located at 1732 Massachussets Ave., N.W., Washington D.C. 20036. Phone: (202) 785-1746.

Laurel Lukaszewski at Project 4

I first fell in love with the movies of Akira Kurosawa when I was a kid. Both my father and I really liked the action-packed masterpieces of Japan's best-known director and little did we know that his minimalist samurai sagas would be the artistic precursors of the martial arts films of today.

I fell in love with Laurel Lukaszewski’s work when I first discovered it in one of the past Artomatic free-for-all mega art shows in Washington, DC. Back then, I picked her work as the key find of that particular Artomatic, and then I sat back in self-righteous pleasure as I saw Lukaszewski continue to grow as an artist and artistic force around the DC region. Back then I had no idea that Kurosawa and Lukaszewski would one day share a moment in my mind's eye and live together forever in this review.

In the past I have also pointed to Lukaszewski as one of the District's artistic powerhouses that are dragging clay and other "crafty" substrates away from the craft world and into the rarified upper artmosphere of the blue chip fine arts world. I call them the Steiglitzes of the other side of the art tracks, dragging their media away from the craft and unto the fine arts arena.

For a couple of years after that Artomatic, in the DC region we all marveled at Lukaszewski’s spectacularly complex interwoven forms, which managed to take the visual sense of the Byzantine into a minimalist context – that’s an almost illogical bridge which would ruin most Vulcan minds.

But the sheer sharpness of this artist’s prowess did exactly that: she delivered these complex, tubular (not in the Californian sense) forms that interlocked in gorgeous wall hanging mazes that pulled us with a new found magnetic attraction to the media of clay.

“There is magic in them works,” someone wearing a Caterpillar ball cap and chewing on a chunk of grass might say, and that magic served Lukaszewski well as it pulled us very close to her work to examine how impossibly complex and how cleverly minimalist they were at the same time.

And now for the exhibition at Project 4.

“God is really only another artist,” Picasso once said. “He invented the giraffe the elephant and the ant. He has no real style. He just goes on trying other things.”

And that is what artists, real fire-in-the-gut artists, are supposed to do. And the fire that burns in Laurel Lukaszewski’s belly really came to a high roar in this exhibition at Project 4 gallery on U Street, NW in DC. And to say that I was left reeling from seeing what a huge new artistic footprint this artist has made in one show would be the understatement of the year.

There are only four pieces in the show: Sakura (a sculptural cherry blossom installation); Pause (a hanging ribbon installation); Ghost (sculptural leaves); and Floridan (an outdoor floor piece).

I’m going to take a chance and write about only one of them, because that one piece describes the new impression that the artist has left on me.

Sakura (detail) by Laurel Lukaszewski
In Sakura, the two-level gallery is used to showcase hundreds of small cherry blossom sculptures, each one individually pinned to the wall, to float and rise up from the main level, like a wave of starlings, from floor to floor. On the edges of the walls where the blossoms grow from, the floor is covered in delicate lost petals. Sakura is Japanese for cherry blossom.


Sakura (detail) by Laurel Lukaszewski
Each individual cherry blossom is a gorgeous example of a master sculptor at work - hundreds of them, floating up in a swirl of shadow-casting flowers is something else more akin to an Akira Kurosawa film come to life in a minimalist dream (for all you Kurosawa fans, I am referring to Sanjuro, specifically the part of the film where the camellia flowers in bloom are cut from the tree and dropped by the hundreds in the river to float down stream, as the signal for attack).

In this piece the artist bridges a paradox: minimalism is less – and she accomplishes that in the art form. And yet, her minimalism requires, no… demands - an entire “home” as its home.

What do I mean by that?

This gorgeous and enormous piece is a re-arrangeable work of art that can be set and re-set and re…ahhh… reset in many shapes, each one of which will yield new results, but the “less” part of minimalism in this case needs and covets more and more of the wall that it requires to anchor itself to.

I submit that Sakura is such a spectacular work of art that when a collector purchases it, and I hope that a savvy one will soon, the only way that it should be showcased would be as the only work of art in that room, home, condo, house or setting. Anything else hanging on those walls around Sakura would diminish the artistic power punch to the solar plexus that Sakura delivers.

It is the triumph of minimalism over space. And it is the triumph of a courageous artist not afraid to flex her own artistic muscles.

The exhibition goes through December 18, 2009. Go see this show and see the trailer for Sanjuro below:

Dramatic Dining

Now in its fifth year, the Food Glorious Food art show and associated 2010 calendar will be unveiled by the Zenith Community Arts Foundation (ZCAF) at Woolly Mammoth Theatre on Thursday, December 3, 6-10pm, with a Calendar Launch Celebration and Silent Auction to benefit the Capital Area Food Bank, celebrating its 30th anniversary in 2010.

Emcee for the evening will be WUSA 9 News Anchor Andrea Roane.

Cooked up by ZCAF in 2005, Food Glorious Food’s menu of food, art and charity is a recipe for success that has raised more than $100,000 for the food bank in four years, while pleasing the palates of art patrons and foodies through a unique collaboration between artists and restaurants. Area businesses add spice to the mix by sponsoring the calendar and donating items for the auction.

The overall project raises money through calendar sales, a percentage of proceeds from a related month-long food art exhibition and the Calendar Launch Celebration.

This year’s theme, Dramatic Dining, was inspired by ZCAF’s new partnership with Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company, who also in its 30th year, shares the same commitment to community values and the arts as ZCAF.

The new alliance, prompted by Food Glorious Food’s move from its former home on Seventh Street NW at Zenith Gallery, will bring a new audience of theatre goers to the show and event, and raise more money for the food bank to help feed the hungry.

Artists: Bert Beirne, Leslie Exton, Cassandra Gillens, Brenda Gordon, Philip Hazard, Robert C. Jackson, Life Pieces To Masterpieces, Chris Malone, Joey Manlapaz, Donna McCullough, Bill Mead, Davis Morton, Stephen Hansen, Michela Mansuino, Ron Schwerin, Bradley Stevens and James Tormey.

Restaurants: Recipes in this year’s Dramatic Dining Calendar have been donated by Acadiana, Bastille, BestCookie.com, Black Salt, Bourbon Steak, Central Michel Richard, Chef Geoff’s, Equinox, The Oceanaire Seafood Room, Oyamel, Teaism, Through the Kitchen Door and Zaytinya.

Calendar Launch Celebration: Highlights of the festive evening will include an exhibition of art in all media, created for the calendar; a silent auction with irresistible items; tastings of the chefs’ recipes featured in the calendar; a cooking demonstration of Central Michel Richard’s recipe and a complimentary calendar for each guest. Tickets, $75, can be purchased by calling the Zenith Community Arts Foundation at 202-783-8005 or emailing zenithcommunityarts@zcaf.org

Artworks on Display: December 3 – January 3, 2010. More details at Zenith Community Arts Foundation (ZCAF).

Little Junester in a drawing

Anderson Campello as a Merman Fingerling
Charcoal on Paper. 3 inches by 2 inches

The Creative List

Washington Life Magazine has a piece titled The Creative List: Visual Arts in its current issue.

They rave about John Smith, Director of the Archives of American Art, and DC area artists Maggie Michael and husband Dan Steinhilber, Manon Cleary, Chawky Frenn, Mark Jenkins, Laurel Lukaszewski, Lida Moser, Jefferson Pinder, Tim Tate and Postsecret's Frank Warren.

Check it out online here.

There's also a The Creative List: Written Word here.

Neptune Artist Market Place Starts Tonight


Over in Bethesda, hard working gallerist Elyse Harrison is having a whole bunch of events starting tonight at 7PM. Click on the image above for a whole schedule of events.

You can also pencil December 13 at 2 PM, which starts with a presentation and tasting with Cacao, fine European Chocolates immediately followed by "A Conversation with Lenny Campello" in which I will answer any and all questions about anything dealing with art: framing, approaching galleries, collectors, collecting, etc.

Wanna go to an opening today?

"Quiet Little Stories: The Art of Graham Francoise" opens today at Art Whino with an opening reception starting at 6:00pm.

Miniatures

THINKSMALL5 is the fifth Biennial International Miniature Invitational Exhibition at art6 and artspace galleries located in Richmond, Virginia. I was honored to have been invited to exhibit.

If you, like me, love to give art as Christmas presents (or any and all present-giving activities), this show is a terrific opportunity to grab some small works at really affordable prices.

Check all the artwork online here and then buy some.

Opportunity for Artists

Deadline: February 15th, 2010

Wanna be in the permanent collection of the Brooklyn Art Library?

We’ll send you a lined Moleskine journal. Fill it up with a narrative of some sort and send it back to us. It will be shown at the exhibition and then permanently reside at the Brooklyn Art Library for the public to see.

Details here.

Things that piss me off...

When you spend an hour framing something under glass, and no matter how much you clean and blow, there's always some debris under the glass trapped between the glass and matted artwork.

One worse than that: you've finally checked it a million times and it's all good, and so you go ahead and finish the framing, turn it over, and discover a hair that has magically materialized under the glass.

One worse than that: So you take it all apart and get rid of the hair, and re-do it all and check it and it looks great. And so you seal the back of the frame, put all the hardware on and bubble wrap it for transportation to the Miami art fairs.

Then you remember that you've forgotten to photograph the new artwork for your records and in order to have a digital image for the Certificate of Authenticity and the gallery's website.

Makes my head hurt...

Come again?

I was just looking at a contract sent to me by an artist. The contract was in response to a "portfolio review" for a group show in a New York City gallery.

The "curator" for the group show was very complimentary of this artist's work and selected a few pieces for the show. So far so good.

The contract details the following (somewhat edited to avoid court costs):

* Press Release will be written for the NYC group exhibition project and distributed via e-mail to World Art Media mailing lists consisting of select museums, galleries, curators, dealers, collectors, writers, art publications, artists, and art fair organizations around the globe. This release will be posted on www.---------- and other websites such as ......... to announce the event.

* ------------ Newsletter Listing announcing the ------ Gallery group exhibition mailed to subscribers in the U.S. and Europe.

* ------------ Daily Newsletter Listing announcing the group exhibition mailed to subscribers in the Far East.

* 500 invitation cards designed, printed and distributed for the show.

* Reception hosted by ------- Gallery.

* Artist’s Reception hosted by -------- Gallery.

* Review / Article: Selected writer will view the exhibition and write an essay on the participating artists’ works and the exhibition. This article will be published both online at ---------- and in print in --------- Magazine.

* Complimentary copies of the magazines with the feature article mailed to artist’s address.

Schedule & Payment Options

Total of $1,900 includes all features listed above. A deposit is due upon acceptance and signing. The payment can be made in full latest by --------.

The hefty $1,900 fee to exhibit immediately makes this gallery (and this show), a "vanity gallery" and certainly a "vanity exhibition" as the artists that will eventually end up in this show will be there based on their ability to fork $1,900 each to cover the costs of what are essentially the normal costs associated with running an independently owned commercial fine arts gallery.

That makes this a vanity show. This by itself is not illegal and there are dozens and dozens of vanity galleries in NYC operating mostly on the dime of the exhibiting artists.

But what caught my eye was the fact that the contract claims that a "Selected writer will view the exhibition and write an essay on the participating artists’ works and the exhibition. This article will be published both online at ---------- and in print in --------- Magazine."

The magazine in question is what (until now) I thought was a reputable NYC-based art magazine. I am puzzled as to how the organizers of this show, months ahead of the exhibition itself, already know that a writer from ------------ Magazine will write an essay about the group show and publish it both in the magazine and the magazine's website.

Words count. The contract never says "review." Instead they use the words "essay" first and then "article." So it appears that the author of this "article" or "essay" is in fact being paid by the organizers of the show to author the piece.

Paying someone to write an essay for an exhibition catalogue, or an essay for an artist's book, etc. is an ordinary event and happens all the time and I myself have been paid to do this dozens of time.

Paying someone to write an "essay" or "article" for a magazine devoted to write about art and artists and art reviews is (in my opinion) something else and I feel dishonest. The fact that the piece would appear in print in this magazine immediately relays to the readers that the author is writing about the show because of its merits (or because it is a bad show) but in all cases from a critical or examinatory viewpoint.

Not because the organizers paid him/her to write about the show.

Makes me wonder if (a) is this a common practice at ---------- magazine? or (b) if not, do the editors know that this writer is doing this?

Only way out of this mess: That the "article" or "essay" is a paid advertising page, and "boxed" in by a line all around it that says "paid advertising" as some newspapers and magazines do when someone takes out an ad and the ad looks like it's an article.

Makes my head hurt... any comments?

Update: The artist in question just discovered that the "curator" actually works for the magazine!

Makes my head hurt...

... an Arts Council project that typifies the standards we’ve come to expect from publicly funded art. Jarvis Cocker, the country’s foremost socialist pop musician, was sent to the Arctic for “inspiration” and to raise planetary consciousness, along with another two dozen artistic luminaries:

The ambition of the expedition was to inspire the creative team to respond to climate change... It was an amazing journey; 10 days of artistic inspiration, debate, discussion and exploration.

The ecological insights gleaned by Mr Cocker?

Men have produced a lot of great art over the centuries, or whatever... but... an iceberg kind of, basically, pisses on it.

Apparently this was a $250,000 publicly funded art project. Read all about it here.

Opportunity for Artists - Last Day to Apply!

Deadline: Nov. 20th, 2009

If you read this blog then you know that I've been always very impressed with the BlackRock Center for the Arts gallery's 1500 square feet of exquisite gallery space. With its high white walls and beautiful windows strategically placed, this gorgeous gallery allows in just the right amount of natural light. BlackRock Center for the Arts is located at 12901 Town Commons Drive Germantown, MD in upper Montgomery County, about 20 minutes from the Capital Beltway (495).

They currently have a call to artists and the call is open to all artists residing in Maryland, Virginia, and Washington, DC over the age of 18.

Original artwork only. All work must be ready for sale and to be presented in a professional manner to the public at the time of delivery.

This call will cover exhibits in the gallery from September 2010 through August 2011. An exhibit may include one applicant or a combination of applicants, based on the judgment of jurors (i.e., 1 or 2 wall artists may be combined with a pedestal artist). A jury will select the artists and create eight exhibits to be included in the exhibit year. The jury panel is comprised of my good friend and gallerist Elyse Harrison, Jodi Walsh, and yours truly.

Jurying: First Week of December
Notification: Early January
Exhibit Year: Sept. 2010 – Aug. 2011

How to apply: All correspondence will be done by e-mail, so contact Kimberly Onley, the Gallery Coordinator at konley@blackrockcenter.org and ask her to email you a prospectus.

Don't wait to the last minute! Get the prospectus now!

Wanna go to an opening today?

Georgetown ARTS 2009 has an Opening Reception on Thursday, November 19, 6-9pm, and my good friend and Govinda Gallery owner Chris Murray will talk about the Georgetown art scene at 7pm.

The Show continues on Friday, November 20, noon-8pm, Saturday November 21, 11am-6pm at 1209 31st Street NW in G'town at the former Smith and Hawken space.

As noted above, the opening reception this evening will feature Govinda Gallery owner Chris Murray talking about the history and evolution of the Georgetown art scene - drawn from his 34 years as a central presence in the ever-changing Georgetown art world.

And the show will feature more than 25 Georgetown artists and will include painting, photography, and sculpture. CAG's Georgetown ARTS 2009 will also be highlighted in the new Georgetown Gallery Gaze that takes place on Friday evenings.

Artists in the show include:
Michele Banks ~ Dede Caughman ~ Betsy Cooley ~Arthur Day ~ Barbara Downs ~ Anne Emmet ~ Heidi Hess ~ Michele Jacobson ~ Bo Jia ~ Sidney Lawrence ~ Wendy Plotkin-Mates ~ Christopher Matthews ~ Starke Meyer ~ Elba Molina ~ Rosie Moore ~ Johanna Mueller ~ Emma O'Rourke ~Isabella Page ~ Larry Parlier ~ Hayley Pivato ~ Joan Shorey ~ Elizabeth Smythe ~ Polly Townsend ~ Dariush Vaziri and Homayoun Yeroushalmi.

Opportunity for Artists

Deadline: February 5, 2010

What is disability? -- An International Call for Postcards

VSA arts invites your participation in a collaborative art project. They’re taking a creative approach to investigate the different ways people interpret the same word: disability. The call is open to everyone around the world — people of different cultures, ethnicities, geographic locations, and abilities. You do not have to consider yourself an “artist” to participate.

Please contact Liza Key, Artist Services Coordinator, at efkey@vsarts.org to receive a shipment of printed calls for the project (available while supplies last). Additional copies of the postcard and alternative formats are uploaded to this website.

The deadline for receipt of postcards is February 5, 2010. VSA arts will curate an exhibition, both online and in Washington, D.C., to represent the submissions as part of the 2010 International VSA arts Festival held June 6-12, 2010.

Everybody is a curator

Shaquille O’Neal, the 7’1” all-star center with the National Basketball Association’s Cleveland Cavaliers, has discovered that art is no slam dunk.

Moonlighting for the first time as a curator, O’Neal is overseeing “Size DOES Matter,’’ an exhibition on the theme of scale in contemporary art coming in February to New York’s nonprofit Flag Art Foundation.

Read about it here.

Tape Sotheby's: Go to jail

An artist's attempt to turn the exterior of Sotheby's into a piece of art by stringing masking tape across it Tuesday morning gained something other than artistic recognition--20 hours in jail...

Read all about it here.

WOW Mr. Gopnik!

"That makes her show one of the best I've ever seen in a commercial gallery in Washington."

Read the Washington Post's chief art critic do something he rarely does, review a local DC gallery as he raves about the photographs of Terri Weifenbach at Civilian.

Read it here.

More please Mr. Gopnik.

Studio Visiting...

At the end of the day I had some time to sneak a quick visit to Red Dirt Studio, Flux Studios and the Washington Glass School.

At Red Dirt my real reason was to hope to meet little Kyle, the newest addition to the studio, but the cute two-month old was asleep in the middle of a noisy, creative artmosphere. He did look very handsome in his blue hat and mom Margaret Boozer should be justifiably proud of the little feller.

At the Washington Glass School I sneaked a preview of Tim Tate's newest videos, as well as Michael Janis' latest work (Janis was the star of the recent SOFA Chicago, where Maurine Littleton Gallery sold nine of his pieces). I also saw the newest Erwin Timmers' works as he pursues his "green art" line of work.

At Flux Studios, I chatted with the very talented Novie Trump, whose recent solo at MPA so impressed me. There were huge clay bones being created for what sounds like an amazing installation in support of a performance. More on that later.

I also saw the really cool new work, a very minimalist work that boasts loads of elegance, by Elena Patiño, the newest member of Flux, and also discovered the newest work of Mia Kagan, which was also quite impressive and then went gaga over the amazing Laurel Lukaszewski, whose current solo show at Project 4 is a significant and intelligent new conceptual work for this very talented artist and a show that I will review soon..

Wanna go to an opening tomorrow?

Wanna go to an opening this Sunday?


Friday, November 20 – Sunday, January 10
Where: DCAC, 2438 18th St. NW Washington, DC 20009
Opening Reception: Friday, November 20, 7:00 pm-9:00 pm
Artists Talks/Closing Reception: Sunday, January 10, 5:00 pm-7:00 pm

Jurors: Renee Stout, Blake Kimbrough, and Marvin Bowser
Curator: Amber Robles-Gordon
Co-Curator: Daniel T. Brooking
Judges: Teresia Bush and Eugene R. Vango

Featuring work by John Earl Cooper, Arcmanoro Niles, Cedric Baker, Jacqueline Lee, Valentina Andaya, Akili Ron Anderson, Viola Leak, Bruce McNeil, Gloria C. Kirk, Stanley Squirewell, Claudia Gibson-Hunter, Michael Platt, Sonya Clark, Ann Marie Williams, Alec Simpson, Daniel T. Brooking, Amber Robles-Gordon, Prelli Williams, Kristen Hayes, Serinity Knight, Anne Bouie, James Brown, Jr., T. H. Gomillion, Adjoa J. Burrowes, Deidra Bell, Willard Taylor, Carlton Wilkinson, Constance Porter Uzelac, and Juilett Madison.

Emerging Arts Leaders Symposium Networking Social

Thursday, November 19, 2009
6:00pm - 9:00pm
Blackfinn Restaurant & Saloon
4901 Fairmont Ave, Bethesda, MD

Join other emerging arts leaders for a networking event at Blackfinn of Bethesda.

For a suggested $10 donation to the Emerging Arts Leaders Symposium, you will be able to schmooze and socialize with other area young professionals who share a passion for the arts. All while enjoying great free appetizers and specials. To RSVP join the event on Facebook.

Blackfinn is located near the Bethesda Metro stop along the red line. Walk north on Old Georgetown Road, take a right onto Fairmount and join the party! Street and garage parking are available in the area as well.

The Emerging Arts Leaders Symposium, now in its third year, is an annual meeting for young professionals who work in the arts, held at American University. It is an opportunity to discuss the issues, unique or universal, that affect arts organizations, with students, peers, and experienced professionals. For more information click here.

New DC gallery

Artists/Owners Natasha Mokina and Victor Pakhomkin envision their recently opened gallery, Winter Palace Studio, as "a sanctuary for realist art that combines classical craftsmanship and contemporary concepts." The gallery will exhibit paintings by Mokina and Pakhomkin and group shows by local and international artists who share the gallery's philosophy. It will also hold realistic painting and drawing classes, workshops and seminars.

The two artists have worked in the Washington, DC area for nearly twenty years creating highly realistic oil paintings, murals, portraits by commission and teaching academic painting and drawing in their studio in Bethesda. Natasha Mokina is also on the faculty of the Corcoran College of Art and Design.

“It still feels like a dream to see ourselves and our paintings in this beautiful historic courtyard, says Natasha Mokina. This is the prettiest place in Georgetown. I just cannot get over the sense of this fantastic mix of times and places: the C&O Canal reminiscent of canals in St. Petersburg (our birth place), old brick buildings of Georgetown evoking “The Little Street“ by Vermeer… ”

Winter Studio Contemporary Realism gallery is located at “Galleries 1054” in Canal Square at 1054 31st Street NW. The gallery hours are Tuesday - Saturday 12:00 to 6:00 pm.

The opening reception for a new exhibition ”Black Kitchen Magic, Etc” featuring the paintings by Natasha Mokina and Victor Pakhomkin is Friday, November 20, 2009 from 6 pm to 8 pm.

Staged History

It's the iconic photo that captures the essence of the Spanish Civil War: a soldier falling to his death, arms splayed out behind him, gun still in hand, after being shot on a grassy hill.

But new evidence now claims to prove once and for all that the camera does lie - and Robert Capa's famous Falling Soldier was faked.

Read the fascinating detective story in the Daily Mail here and then read George Will's take on the whole issue in the WaPo here; Will writes:

Capa was a man of the left, and "Falling Soldier" helped to alarm the world about fascism rampant. But noble purposes do not validate misrepresentations. Richard Whelan, Capa's biographer, calls it "trivializing" to insist on knowing whether this photo actually shows a soldier mortally wounded. Whelan says that "the picture's greatness actually lies in its symbolic implications, not in its literal accuracy."

Rubbish. The picture's greatness evaporates if its veracity is fictitious. To argue otherwise is to endorse high-minded duplicity -- and to trivialize Capa, who saw a surfeit of 20th-century war and neither flinched from its horrors nor retreated into an "I am a camera" detachment. As a warning about well-meaning falsifications of history, "Falling Soldier" matters because Capa probably fabricated reality to serve what he called "concerned photography."

I'm still debating what side to take on the whole issue... it does seem to deflate the whole image a bit... any thoughts on the subject? Leave me some comments.

And speaking of comments, like almost everything in the nation these days, this photographic issue has become a barbarous debate between the vast right wing conspiracy and the equally vast kooky left wing nuttery. Read the WaPo's comments to Will's point of view here and have fun with the kooks from the extreme right and the nuts from the extreme left.

Opportunity for Artists

Deadline: Nov. 20th, 2009

If you read this blog then you know that I've been always very impressed with the BlackRock Center for the Arts gallery's 1500 square feet of exquisite gallery space. With its high white walls and beautiful windows strategically placed, this gorgeous gallery allows in just the right amount of natural light. BlackRock Center for the Arts is located at 12901 Town Commons Drive Germantown, MD in upper Montgomery County, about 20 minutes from the Capital Beltway (495).

They currently have a call to artists and the call is open to all artists residing in Maryland, Virginia, and Washington, DC over the age of 18.

Original artwork only. All work must be ready for sale and to be presented in a professional manner to the public at the time of delivery.

This call will cover exhibits in the gallery from September 2010 through August 2011. An exhibit may include one applicant or a combination of applicants, based on the judgment of jurors (i.e., 1 or 2 wall artists may be combined with a pedestal artist). A jury will select the artists and create eight exhibits to be included in the exhibit year. The jury panel is comprised of my good friend and gallerist Elyse Harrison, Jodi Walsh, and yours truly.

Jurying: First Week of December
Notification: Early January
Exhibit Year: Sept. 2010 – Aug. 2011

How to apply: All correspondence will be done by e-mail, so contact Kimberly Onley, the Gallery Coordinator at konley@blackrockcenter.org and ask her to email you a prospectus.

Don't wait to the last minute! Get the prospectus now!

Ernesto "Che" Guevara de la Serna Lynch

“ASEre ¿SI o NO?
6x16 in. framed to 14x22. Charcoal and Conte on Paper. 2009.
F. Lennox Campello
Asere is a Cuban street slang word that means something akin to dude, or friend, or buddy, or "bro"... you get the drift. In this drawing, the wall graffiti asks "Asere, Yes or No?" while the question itself answers by the capitalization... and Che laughs.

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?

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.

Cost: $95 (Students: $47)
No reservations necessary
Payments can be made by check or cash at the door

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Workshop
Critical Looking: The Art of Conscious Creativity
Saturday, November 14, 9:00 a.m. – 4:30 p.m.

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.

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.

Cost: $375
Class size limited to 15; to make a reservation call 310/200-9477

BIOGRAPHY

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.

Jones on New Realism

Rula Jones reviews New Realism at Irvine Contemporary.

Read 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.

Cuba, Isla Desbaratada (Cuba, Disassembled Island). Pen and Ink. 2009.


Cuba, Isla Encarcelada (Cuba, Jailed Island). Watercolor and Wire. 2009.



Cuba, Isla Judia (Cuba, Jewish Island). Watercolor. 2009.

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.

Novie Trump. Out of the Fire. Porcelain. 7" x 50" x 2"
It happens again in "The Way Home", a dizzying wall piece of dozens of porcelain bees and a Stoneware hive that makes us wrestle with the visual idea offered in such elegant stylized manner that it allows Trump to marry a traditional piece in the Stoneware hive with a minimal and repeatable bee form that distills the art to its simplest offering. This piece also begins to demolish the Berlin Wall of art between art and craft.


Novie Trump. The Way Home. Porcelain bees, Stoneware Hive. 6' x 6' x 8"
And here is a quick 49 second walk through the show...

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:

Best in Show - Jill Poyerd
Second Prize - Julie Smith
Third Prize - Jane Thomas
Honorable Mention - Carolyn Grosse Garewicki
Honorable Mention - Jackie Saunders
Honorable Mention - Barbara Sullivan
Honorable Mention - Peter Ulrich
Clearly the men got their palette's kicked by the female artists and it was good of Mr.Ulrich's gorgeous "Contemplating Calder" watercolor to save a shut out by the female members of PVA.


When the doors opened to the public at 4PM, I was astounded to see artwork fly off the walls as sales started right away from both the work on display on the walls as well as the many bins.

I say astounded because one rarely sees a buying frenzy like that in a gallery exhibition anymore. This exhibition is a perfect example of an organization looking for alternative venues for their members' work to be exhibited and sold, and after several years of doing this, they have a set of collectors who puts their money where their art collecting sensibililites tell them to.

As always, I was honored to be asked to jury the show for the awards. Here's a quick walk through the award winners: