And the winners are:

The ten award winners from the 200 artists at the 20th Annual Northern Virginia Fine Arts Festival are:

Jorge Caligiuri, Philadelphia, PA
Ronald Dekok, Belleville, WI
Elissa Farrow-Savos, Sterling, VA
Tom Hlas, Philadelphia, PA
Ning Lee, Livingston, NJ
Steven Olszewski, Pinckney, MI
John Petrey, Chattanooga, TN
Joyce Stratton, New Bern, NC
Gary Stretar, Spencer, OH
Andrew Zimmermann, Arlington, VA

WGS Students at Gallery 555DC

“The Washington Glass School is known for its excellent student program and the quality of creative work its students produce. I wanted to celebrate their 10th anniversary by giving students an opportunity to exhibit their work in Gallery 555dc. Running and managing a school takes hard work, long hours and dedication – then more hard work. To celebrate a 10th Anniversary in the art world is a rare thing and a tribute to the founders and teachers of the Washington Glass School. ”

Jodi Walsh
Owner
Gallery 555dc

The gallery is at 555 12th Street NW Lobby, Washington DC 20004, 202-393-1409 or 240-447-6071 Gallery555dc.com. The reception is Saturday, June 4th, noon to 5pm; Artists present 3 – 5pm.

Argentina

The Embassy of Argentina now has their first exhibition of the year, All Come in Color, celebrating the month of their May Independence Revolution.

The exhibit features abstract and figurative paintings created by local DMV Argentine artists. The show is on now through June 30th - check out all the other good stuff going on here.

Embassy of Argentina
1600 New Hampshire Ave, NW
Washington DC 20008

Fighting words

this post is from 2004 and yet artists, art dealers and other folks are still posting and arguing over it.

It's on the subject of "Vanity Galleries" and you can read it all here.

Top 10

Jamon Serrano: Quite possibly one of the top ten foods on planet Earth and one of the top 25 in this galaxy and one of the top 100 in the Universe.

MOCA DC Plea

After receiving the below press release from Georgetown's MOCA DC gallery, I asked its director, Dave Quammen, for permission to post it in this blog. Although it is raw and to the bone, and courageously reveals intimate personal issues, it also goes to show the amazing extent that some gallery owners go to in an effort to keep their art spaces open and running:

June Exhibit - Why Not?
The gallery has been in the same financial straits for a long time, but I could pick up the slack before. I can't do that anymore without major changes to the way that MOCA DC operates.

So, beginning with the June exhibit, I will accept one piece of art free from anyone, member or not. Art must be 36 x 40 max and meet the theme of the exhibit. Additional pieces may be entered for a nominal fee.

As of the June exhibit, I have kept the gallery open for 6 1/2 years, at a personal cost during that time well in excess of $25,000 - out of my pocket, not to mention the at least 70 hours per week, at no income from the gallery.

Well, folks - beginning right now, I ain't gonna do it anymore. Income this month and last has fallen a lot, mostly rental of the gallery, etc. If no one comes up with the $2,625 for rent by June 1, I ain't gonna pay it at all and let the chips fall where they may.

Same goes for the Figure Models Guild - which will be 10 years old this July. At the beginning, I made copies of the Model Registry, bought envelopes and paid the postage out of my own pocket. I also made copies of the guide I put together for models, held events and etc - all for nothing. No cost to models, no cost to all those who got a free ride - all the colleges, universities, schools, teachers, et al --- all for nothing.

I don't know how many know that in 2008 I was diagnosed with prostate and colon cancer - beat em both. In 2009, I had to have heart surgery on 2 different occasions. This year, or late last year, I was diagnosed with lung problems - emphysema and COPD, or pulmonary fibrosis. They put me on an inhaler for a while, but last month they changed it to a stronger one and added a 2nd. Problem is, this is one thing I can't beat, and it's a crap shoot as to how much time I have left - will be 72 in October, so I can't complain about longevity - I've done more in my life than most people do, so I don't have any regrets.

But I do have some other things I want to do, but I can't with this albatross around my neck. So if you want this to continue, figure out what these things are worth and come up with the cash, or I'm in the wind.

Well, Joe - this one's for you. Thanks for the push!

MOCA DC is one of the Canal Square Galleries at 1054 31st Street & M Street, NW in Georgetown.

Update: Kriston Capps reports on this issue here.

New Art Gallery in Georgetown

Today, the DMV welcomes its newest contemporary art gallery, Heiner Contemporary. The gallery is now open to the public, launching with a solo exhibition of work by Brooklyn-based artist Elizabeth Huey. The exhibition will run through July 2, 2011.

Located in the Book Hill neighborhood of Georgetown, "Heiner Contemporary features emerging and mid-career artists working in a range of media. The gallery is the culmination of owner and director Margaret Heiner’s long-term interest in promoting an understanding and appreciation of contemporary art. Her desire to make art accessible, which was at the heart of her business Aesthetica Art Consulting, remains an important facet of Heiner Contemporary."

“I want visitors to the gallery to feel the push-and-pull of the art displayed and to engage with the works on both a visual and emotional level,” says Heiner. “We want to forge connections and foster dialogue between individuals and artists, but we also want our clients to feel comfortable regardless of their collecting or art experience.”

In addition to exhibitions, Heiner Contemporary maintains an inventory of secondary market works available for sale. These pieces range from prints by well-established artists such as William Kentridge and Kara Walker, to paintings by up-and-comers including Allison Reimus.

Heiner Contemporary is located at 1675 Wisconsin Ave, NW. For more information about the gallery and upcoming exhibitions, email info@heinercontemporary.com or visit the website at www.heinercontemporary.com.

Next month!

The 100 Washington, DC Artists book should be out next month!

Pre-order your copy here.

This weekend

This weekend is the 20th Annual Northern Virginia Fine Arts Festival, one of the highest ranked outdoor art fairs in the nation.

Together with Judith Forst, who started it all 20 years ago and DMV area artist Erwin Timmers, I will be one of the judges awarding the prizes to the artists from all over the country who come down to Reston each year for this festival - expect around 50,000 people to come by over the weekend, as in addition to the fine arts and fine crafts there's all kinds of food and entertainment.

See ya there!

Read more about the festival here.

Tonight at Long View

I hear that about 300 people have RSVP'd to this opening tonight, so you may be a little crowded, but do not miss this show:

About the event: The Washington DC area has become internationally renowned as an emerging center of glass art. At the forefront of this charge is the Washington Glass School, where the instructors, artists and students have brought narrative and content into glass, dragging it away from decorative craft and into the rarefied atmosphere of the contemporary fine art scene. The Washington Glass School has produced artists whose art can be found in museums and collections world-wide and is advancing the Studio Glass Movement with its explorations of narrative, technology and skills. This represents the largest and most important movement in the Washington art scene since the Color School of the 70's/80's.

This May, the Washington Glass School celebrates a momentous milestone - its 10th year. DC’s Long View Gallery presents “Artists of the Washington Glass School – The First Ten Years” showcasing over 20 artists and 10 years of integrating glass into the contemporary art dialogue. While it recognizes the past and present, The First 10 Years is intended to instigate – and celebrate – the new directions contemporary glass is exploring through various artistic metaphors.

Featured artists include: Tim Tate, Michael Janis, Erwin Timmers, Elizabeth Mears, Syl Mathis, Lea Topping, Robert Kincheloe, Alison Sigethy, Dave D'Orio, Anne Plant, Jeffery Zimmer, Teddie Hathaway, Jackie Greeves, Kirk Waldroff, Debra Ruzinsky, Tex Forrest, Diane Cabe, Robert Wiener, Nancy Donnelly, Sean Hennessey, Cheryl Derricotte, Jennifer Lindstrom, Michael Mangiafico, Allegra Marquart and m.l.duffy.

In bringing The First 10 Years to Washington, DC, Long View asks artists and audience alike to cast aside traditional notions of glass art and participate in a new form of dialogue; one that looks to the future and not the past.

The Washington Glass School Movement has focused almost entirely on the narrative content aspects of glass, breaking away from the technique-driven vessel movement of the last millennium. By focusing on cross-over sculptural work, mixed media and new media (such as interactive electronics and video), the impact this movement has had on the work of contemporary art has been felt internationally. This is the perfect chance to see a cross section of artists who have led this evolution.

Washington Glass School: The First 10 Years
LongView Gallery
1234 9th Street, NW, Washington, DC
May 19 - June 19, Opening Reception, May 19th, 6:30-8:30 PM
Closing Reception Sunday June 19, 2-5 PM
phone: 202.232.4788
email :info@longviewgallery.com

Claire Huschle stepping down from the AAC

The Arlington Arts Center (AAC) has announced that its Executive Director, Claire Huschle, will step down as of August 1, 2011, after six years in that capacity.

What Huschle has done at the AAC over the last six years has been spectacular, to say the least. She took over the organization just after it had reopened after an unexpectedly prolonged renovation, and we're told, had limited earned income and very little foundation or corporate support.

Huschle not only turned that around, but she also put the AAC on the arts map of the DMV with a professional ferocity that nearly eclipsed everything else going on the visual arts in Arlington, and then (by example) led the way to make that city an unexpected rising artstar, some would say a leader, of the cultural tapestry of the greater DMV.

She leaves the AAC, a private, non-profit visual arts organization, on stable financial footing with a healthy operating reserve and respected exhibition, education, and studio residency programs. Board President Penne Nelson states, "The AAC has been privileged to have Claire Huschle serve as our Executive Director during the last six years. Her enthusiasm, professional leadership, and insight have guided the AAC through a period of incredible development, marked by increased community outreach and recognition. She has assembled a fantastic staff and cultivated new donors. The Board has enjoyed immensely working with Claire, and wishes her the best in her future endeavors."

Because I have known Huschle since she worked as the gallery director for the Target Gallery in Alexandria, and because I saw (over her tenure there) what a terrific job she did to change the rudder orders for that gallery and aim it in a direction which put Target at the head of all Alexandria galleries, that I knew that she was going to do great things at AAC when she took over that organization six years ago.

And because of what she has done now at AAC, I have little doubt that Claire Huschle will excel at whatever her next position or assignment is. I am told that "Huschle will continue teaching as an adjunct faculty member at George Mason University's Arts Administration graduate program and is considering a number of new projects in the arts."

A transition committee has been assembled and plans to appoint a new Executive Director this summer.

On behalf of all art fans around the DMV: Thank you Claire!

Tim Tate at the Taubman


See that gorgeous museum to the left that looks like it has been transplanted from Bilbao?

That's Virginia's breathtaking Taubman Museum of Art, and from Friday, June 3, 2011 through Sunday, August 14, 2011 they will be hosting Tim Tate's first museum solo show: "The Waking Dreams of Magdalena Moliere."

According to the museum press release:

For the Taubman project, Tate plans to create a room-sized environment, featuring his most ambitious video work to date, as well as five new glass reliquaries. Six projections will include three works referencing the films of surrealist artist Jean Cocteau, and three pieces continuing his interest in dreamers and sleepwalkers.

The Amazing Sharon Moody

The current issue of Elan magazine has the spectacular work of DMV artist and Georgetown faculty Sharon Moody. She fools your eye beyond "fooling" with a technical virtuosity that leaves the rest of us panting with envy.



Moody is represented nationally by Mayer Fine Art and in New York City by Bernarducci Meisel Gallery.

Celly Campello sings "Don't Cry For Me Argentina"

Celly Campello: Don't cry for me Argentina - Watch more Videos at Vodpod.

Open Studios

Today, Saturday, May 14th from 12 to 5pm the artists of The Washington Glass School and all the dozens of other artists in the Gateway Arts District will be having their annual spring open studio event in Mt. Rainier in the Gateway Arts District. The Washington Glass School figures prominently in this event, as well as such popular studios as Red Dirt and Flux Studio.

This will be a relaxed open house, featuring mostly the principal artists at Washington Glass School, Michael Janis, Erwin Timmers and Tim Tate. They will all be working on current projects.

Airborne
Heading back home from the Left Coast and flying on Friday the 13th... feh!

Washington Glass School: The First 10 Years

About the event: The Washington DC area has become internationally renowned as an emerging center of glass art. At the forefront of this charge is the Washington Glass School, where the instructors, artists and students have brought narrative and content into glass, dragging it away from decorative craft and into the rarefied atmosphere of the contemporary fine art scene. The Washington Glass School has produced artists whose art can be found in museums and collections world-wide and is advancing the Studio Glass Movement with its explorations of narrative, technology and skills. This represents the largest and most important movement in the Washington art scene since the Color School of the 70's/80's.

This May, the Washington Glass School celebrates a momentous milestone - its 10th year. DC’s Long View Gallery presents “Artists of the Washington Glass School – The First Ten Years” showcasing over 20 artists and 10 years of integrating glass into the contemporary art dialogue. While it recognizes the past and present, The First 10 Years is intended to instigate – and celebrate – the new directions contemporary glass is exploring through various artistic metaphors.

Featured artists include: Tim Tate, Michael Janis, Erwin Timmers, Elizabeth Mears, Syl Mathis, Lea Topping, Robert Kincheloe, Alison Sigethy, Dave D'Orio, Anne Plant, Jeffery Zimmer, Teddie Hathaway, Jackie Greeves, Kirk Waldroff, Debra Ruzinsky, Tex Forrest, Diane Cabe, Robert Wiener, Nancy Donnelly, Sean Hennessey, Cheryl Derricotte, Jennifer Lindstrom, Michael Mangiafico, Allegra Marquart and m.l.duffy.

In bringing The First 10 Years to Washington, DC, Long View asks artists and audience alike to cast aside traditional notions of glass art and participate in a new form of dialogue; one that looks to the future and not the past.

The Washington Glass School Movement has focused almost entirely on the narrative content aspects of glass, breaking away from the technique-driven vessel movement of the last millennium. By focusing on cross-over sculptural work, mixed media and new media (such as interactive electronics and video), the impact this movement has had on the work of contemporary art has been felt internationally. This is the perfect chance to see a cross section of artists who have led this evolution.

Washington Glass School: The First 10 Years
LongView Gallery
1234 9th Street, NW, Washington, DC
May 19 - June 19, Opening Reception, May 19th, 6:30-8:30 PM
Closing Reception Sunday June 19, 2-5 PM
phone: 202.232.4788
email :info@longviewgallery.com

Uh?

I don't know what's going on with Blogger, but it has been down for quite a while and now it seems like a bunch of posts have been deleted.

Critique the Critics

On the evening of Saturday, May 14, Arlington Arts Center (AAC) -- in partnership with DC Magazine -- hosts its annual Critique the Critics fundraiser.

Eight DC notables, opinion makers, and trendsetters go head-to-head in timed, amateur art competitions using childhood art supplies. In a mix of NCAA March Madness and American Idol, "critics" battle it out using play-doh, finger paints, legos, etc. Winners of each round are selected by the audience. The night will feature amazing contemporary art, an exciting silent auction, designer cocktails and open bar, delicious catering, and sexy tunes. Tickets are limited and can be purchased here.

This year's "Critics": ABC7/WJLA-TV's Maureen Bunyan, DC Magazine Publisher Peter Abrahams, the Newseum's Sonya Gavankar McKay, Delegate Patrick Hope from the VA House of Delegates, Svetlana Legetic from Brightest Young Things and Justin Young from Ready Set DC, Mary Beth Albright, contestant in the new season on Food Network Star, Kelly Rand and Ian Buckwalter, writers for DCist. Warming the "bench" will be David Foster from the VA Board of Education, and Peter Winant from WETA's Around Town. Philippa Hughes, the Pink Line Project's Chief Creative Contrarian will emcee the competition.

Firings at the WaPo

Just heard from a source who heard it from a friend who heard it from a cousin who is dating someone who works at the Washington Post that one of the freelancers who has been covering the DMV art scene has been fired.

Hard to tell who it is, since the WaPo employs so many different freelancers to cover various parts of the DMV art scene.

I've asked the WaPo for the name; let's see if they respond.

Enough is Enough!

It has been over a month since the Communist thugs who run China arrested artist Ai Weiwei and he hasn't been heard since.

It is time for all the museums and artists and art organizations which do business with China to boycott the ruthless bastards who run that beautiful nation. The fact that the ChiComs have brutalized their own people for generations, and that the world looks the other way in our thirst for cheap labor and commodities is the harsh reality.

But the art world should be better. We should all stop doing art business with China: no more art fair participation by non Chinese galleries, no more cultural exchanges, no more museum dealings, no more anything in the art world.

Boycott the whole damned gigantic country and send a small but powerful message to the criminals who run that Communist hell.

Hijos de puta!

Latino Art Museum: Still a Bad Idea!

Eight years ago, when the story first surfaced in the Washington Post about a Latino Museum on the National Mall, I opposed it.

Back then, Rep. Xavier Becerra (D-Calif.) introduced the bill to set up a commission to study the idea’s feasibility. The museum would be based in Washington, around the National Mall and “might be under the umbrella of the Smithsonian Institution.”

According to the 2003 article by Jacqueline Trescott, “This is one issue that unites our community,” said Raul Yzaguirre, the president of the National Council of La Raza.

In 2008, the Washington Post updated the issue and reported that “President Bush

... signed legislation yesterday establishing a commission to study the feasibility of a National Museum of the American Latino.

The measure, part of a larger legislative package, creates a 23-member bipartisan panel that will give the president and Congress recommendations about the scope of the project.

Over a two-year period, it will consider the location, the cost of construction and maintenance, and the presentation of art, history, politics, business and entertainment in American Latino life.

Since we're still arguing about it, let me once again disagree and state for the record that this is one of the worst, most divisive artsy ideas to have come out of creative Congressional & Hollywood minds in years.

Why have a separate, segregated museum for Latinos? Why not get more Latinos into the national museums, period.

I note once again, the use of the word “Latino” as opposed to the now almost not PC term- “Hispanic.” Otherwise we may have to take all the Picassos, and Dalis, and Miros, and Goyas and Velazquezs out of the mainstream museums and put them in a “Hispanic” museum…. gracias a Dios for that.

As it is now, we may have to take all the Wifredo Lams, Roberto Mattas, Frida Kahlos, etc. out of the “other museums” and put them in the “Latino Museum.”

But ooops! the Frida Kahlo in the nation’s capital is already in a segregated museum - in this case segregated by sex.

The misguided semantic/ethnic/racial debate about Latino or Hispanic is a good, if somewhat silly bucket of ignorant fun.

Anyway… Latino is (I think) now associated with people of Latin American ancestry… it apparently includes the millions of Central and South Americans of pure Native American blood (many of who do not even speak Spanish), and the millions of South Americans of Italian, German, Jewish, Middle Eastern and Japanese ancestry. It also includes the millions of Latin Americans of African ancestry.

It doesn’t include Spaniards, Portuguese, French or Italians…. you Europeans Latins are out!

According to the Post, “Felix Sanchez, the chairman of the National Hispanic Foundation for the Arts, said, “The museum is really a long-overdue concept. There is a void of presenting in one location a more in-depth representation of the culture and its presence in the mainstream of American consciousness.”

Mr. Sanchez: There is no such thing as a single “Latino culture.” In fact, I submit that there are twenty-something different “Latino” cultures in Latin America - none of which is the same as the various Latino mini-cultures in the US.

We "Latinos", no matter how hard you politicians and label-makers try to assemble and push us and label us into one monolithic group, are not such a group; we are as different from each other as the English-speaking peoples of the world are different from each other.

Call a Scotsman "English" and see what will happen to your face.

As an example, anyone who thinks that Mexico’s gorgeously rich and sometimes proud native heritage is similar to Argentina’s cultural heritage is simply ignorant at best. In fact Argentina purposefully nearly wiped out its own indigenous population in an effort (according to the war rallies of the times) “not to become another Mexico.”

And the cultural heritage of the Dominican Republic is as different from that of Bolivia and Peru as two/three countries that technically share a same language can be.

And for example, Mexican-Americans’ tastes in food, music, and politics, etc. are wildly different from Cuban-Americans and Dominican-Americans, etc.

Would anyone ever group Swedes, Danes, Germans and Norwegians and create a “Nordic-American Museum”? Ahhh… they have; silly ideas are not restricted to Congress, are they?

Or how about French, Spaniards, Rumanians and Italians for a “Latin-European-American Museum” - hang on - that doesn’t fit or does it? Makes my head hurt.

For the record, as I did in 2003 when I first learned about this issue, I still don’t believe in segregating artists according to ethnicity, race or religion. How about letting the art itself decide inclusion in a museum. And if not enough African American, or Native American, or Latino/Hispanic or “fill-in-the-blank”-American artists are in the mainstream American museums, then let’s fight that good fight and not just take the easy/hard route of having “our own” museum.

Comemierdas... What does Little Junes think about this issue?

Things we learned in New York

It never ceases to amaze me how often I run into stories of what I thought were ethical gallerists only to discover otherwise from artists.

One of the most common things that unethical art dealers do at art fairs is to inflate prices. This allows them to "deal" with interested buyers, and offer them discounts on the art. Facing galleries that inflate their prices up to 40% or more... in order to then appear to offer great deals, ethical gallerists then have to deal with collectors "used" to getting 40% price chops.

"I decided a while back to just add 40% more to my prices," confessed a dealer in New York last week. "I got tired of explaining to buyers that I couldn't give them a 40% discount."

Feh.

Then there's the very cool NYC photographer who has exhibited several times in DC. She relates the story of how her DC dealer sold some of her work, then decided to move from DC, and told her that he couldn't "afford to pay her." A few years later she's still waiting to get paid. "Now I just tell everyone that I know to stay away from this gallery," she adds.

Airborne


Heading to the Left Coast with an unenviable 5:25AM departure... more later.

AAFNYC: Sunday Report

Yesterday was the final day for the Affordable Art Fair NYC, and the fair was pretty packed with mothers all day long. Sales seemed to be brisk along our immediate area, with the British galleries that surrounded the Mayer Fine Art booth all doing gang buster sales.

MFA sold a few more of my drawings, two more wood engravings by DMV artist Rosemary Feit Covey and a very cool aluminum sculpture by Norfolk area artist and Old Dominion University professor John R.G. Roth.

The two DMV area galleries in the fair (Fraser Gallery and Honfleur Gallery) both reported excellent sales as well, so it seems like this fair paid off for the local galleries as well.

Tear down and packing was the usual nightmare when you have 80 galleries or so all trying to bring all their stuff down one elevator from the 11th floor down to the loading dock on super busy 35th street.

Back to the DMV by midnight and heading out to San Diego tomorrow.

AAF: The Saturday report

Yesterday was another well-attended day, with a good stream of visitors all day long, although they tapered off by 7PM.

Mayer Fine Art sold yet another sculpture by Norfolk artist Christine K. Harris, a wood engraving by DMV artist Rosemary Feit Covey and one more of my drawings.

Today is the last day of the fair.

AAFNYC: The Friday report

Yesterday there were good crowds again; and once again they picked up at night. Mayer Fine Art sold my largest drawing in the show, plus another sculpture by Norfolk artist Christine K. Harris and a painting by Russian painter Alexey Terenin.

Eve, Agonizing Over The Sin.
Charcoal on Paper. 13 x 49 inches.
Now in a private collection in New Jersey

Highlights from the Affordable Art Fair New York City

Founded 12 years ago by London gallerist Will Ramsay (who also does the Pulse Art Fair), the Affordable Art Fair New York City holds fairs not only in New York and London, but also Amsterdam, Bristol, Brussels, Melbourne, Milan, Paris, Singapore, Sydney and for the first time later this year, Los Angeles.

I've been attending this fair (the New York version) since 2006, and it has never disappointed me. With a price ceiling of $10,000 USD, the term "affordable" is relative in more ways than one, but one can find a lot of art in this fair which starts as low as $75!

This year there were quite a few European galleries (see the exhibitors' list here) as well as a variety of American galleries, including two from the DMV.

In walking around the fair, I particularly liked the photography of Giuseppe Mastromatteo at New York's emmanuel fremin gallery.

They are subtly surreal without being overtly commercial, as a lot of this sort of photography tends to be. This NYC gallery has a whole host of photographers that share this sensibility, and they all work together in a very elegant booth display.

Britain's Fairfax Gallery also has a standout in the technically breath-taking work of Mary Jane Ansell, who manages to capture a sexy Lolita feel to her portraits of young women with a play on stares deeply submerged in psychological innuendos.

Another European gallery with super work, in this case by a photographer, is Spain's Villa de Arte Gallery. The minimalist work of Marc Harrold.

Louise Lawton at New York's Stricoff Fine Art also fits within the same minimalist niche occupied by Harrold, but this brilliant work is charcoal on gesso board.

Finally, Michelle Mikesell's paintings, with Dallas' DeCorazon Gallery, get my vote for best in show.

Mikesell's work spans an interesting narrative offering full of hidden clues within her paintings. They are superbly well painted, and as a devoted fan of technical skill, that always becomes attractive to me.

Technical skill alone does not a great artist make, say the Yodas of the art world, and they are right.

That is why that hard to describe ability to marry technical mastery with intelligent composition and the magic to grab a corner of our minds, is such a key component of what makes an artist's work go beyond well executed to begin to reach the first steps of the ladder to being a true visual art gem that stands above the rest; Mikesell is way up that ladder.

The fair runs through Sunday.

AAFNYC Opening Day

Yesterday was the "official" opening day for AAFNYC and through most of the day the crowds were very thin (some folks guessing that a lot of folks were avoiding NYC during Pres. Obama's visit to ground zero, due to the traffic snarls).

From 6-8PM, entry to the fair was free and the crowds poured in for the last two hours of the show, more than compensating for the thin crowds during the day.

Mayer Fine Art scored some sales, including a spectacular painting by the DMV's Sharon Moody and later in the day they sold my Frida Kahlo video drawing - my first ever sale of the new series of drawings with embedded narrative videos). Later on the night they also sold two more of my drawings.

And check out Maura Judkis' account of the acquisition of one of my pieces by a celeb that I didn't recognize.

AAFNYC Preview Day

Last night it was packed to the gills (in fact I am told that the attendance exceeded the maximum number of people allowed in the building).

Mayer Fine Art broke the ice even before the fair opened up to the public when they sold one my drawings to a member of the press during the press preview.

The rest of the night they also sold a really cool sculpture by Norfolk sculptor Christine K. Harris and a painting by Russian painter Alexey Terenin.

Wanna go to an opening this week?

Funny

In reference to the historic image below (by White House photog Peter Souza), notice the look in VP Biden.


I'm in New York and today, while waiting to cross the street at 34th and Eighth Avenue, I overheard a New Yorker say to his buddy: "I heard that the reason that Biden looks so pissed off is because Obama took the remote away from him because Biden kept changing the channel asking "What else is on?"

American humor at its best.

Close call

From now on, I'm doing this first before confirming a hotel room anywhere: Check them out in Bed Bug Registry.

I'm heading to NYC today for the Affordable Art Fair, and had booked my hotel months in advance. Yesterday I decided to check them out for bedbugs and here's what I found (one of four reports):

My friend ( who is a licensed pest control professional in the UK) checked in here tonight (7/3/10). Being a professional, he inspected the room and found a severe infestation of bedbugs in several locations. He informed management, and was moved to another room, which he inspected. It too was infested with bed bugs. After nearly an hour on the phone with the front desk person who informed me management would not be in for a few days but they would help me then, and begging the hotels.com people to help me (the hotels.com people were really sympathetic and very helpful, unlike the people at hotel 31) we managed to get switched to a new hotel for the remaining 4 days of the trip, but will have to take a loss on tonight. He cannot stay there, as these creatures are excellent hitchhikers, and even with great precaution can make their way home with you, which will cost thousands of dollars to deal with. THIS HOTEL SHOULD BE SHUT DOWN AS A HEALTH HAZARD.

I called them immediately and cancelled, and then began the process of hunting for a new hotel at the last minute.

I ended up in one without any bed bug reports, but at twice the price; but better safe than itchy. Nonetheless, as soon as I check into the room, I'm inspecting it for the little bloodsuckers, which I've been doing anyway for the last few years since these bugs began showing up everywhere.

History in a Photograph


I don't know who took this photograph, but this is an amazing marriage of technology, history, narrative art and drama.

Here we see the President, Vice President, Secretary of State, Secretary of Defense, Chief of Naval Operations, and other staff watch the operation to kill Osama bin Laden live at the White House.

Technology brought a life and death reality show to our leaders, safe in the White House, while superbly well-trained and highly qualified young men (Navy Seals) do what they do so well: their job.

The look on these faces, and what they were watching live, thanks to man-wearable technology, is now part of history, and it is a visual art genre which records it for us.

I wish that I knew the name of this photographer, so that I could give him or her a well deserved "Bravo Zulu"!

Update: This photograph is by Pete Souza, the official White House photographer

Ditto

"I've never wished a man dead, but I have read some obituaries with great pleasure"

Mark Twain

How to Eat a Mango

Here's another peek at some of the writing that I've been doing about my early childhood in Guantanamo, Cuba. This particular chapter has a section which deals with the art of mango-eating which I think you may find of interest.

The chapter in question essentially describes my neighborhood and the below segment picks up on a house up the street from my grandparents' house which had a huge mango tree:

Next to Mongo’s house was another walled house where Enrique “El Manco” lived. His nickname was slang for someone missing a hand, although Enrique had both hands, but was missing several fingers from one of them. His front yard boasted a huge mango tree. It was easily the largest tree for blocks around, and during mango season, the huge branches, loaded with fruit, that hung above the street were an unending supply source of mangos for everyone with a good aim to knock some of them off with rocks and then pick them off the street.

But soon all the mangos from the branches that over hanged onto the streets were gone, and then we had to actually sneak into the walled garden and climb the tree and knock some mangos to the ground, climb down, grab them and scram back to the street before anyone in the house noticed the intrusion. This was nearly impossible, as it seemed that every member of Enrique’s family was always on the lookout for mango thieves, as the mango tree was a source of income, since they sold them by the bag-full from the side of their house.

The art of eating a mango deserves some attention.

There are several ways. The first one, and the most easy to perform by amateur mango eaters, is simply to take the mango, cut into it with a knife and slice off the meaty parts, peel the skin off and eat the hard slices.

Seldom did a mango knocked off Enrique’s tree make it to any house to be eaten this way.

Once you knocked off a mango, and provided that no one grabbed it before you got to it – as there was always a group of mango rock throwers, and anytime a mango came down, it was always a debate as to exactly whose rock had brought the fruit down. Cubans love to debate just about anything, and the mango debates provided very good training on this art. Anyway, once you had a mango, then you ran to either the shade of my grandparents' house’s portico or the bakery’s veranda to enjoy the fruit.

Here’s the proper way to eat a mango.

First roll it back and forth on the ground, a tiled floor is perfect, to mush up the inside of the mango. Then, using you fingertips, really liquefy the mango pulp by gently squeezing the mango over and over. Once that pulp is almost nothing but juice, with your teeth puncture a small hole at the tip of the mango.

You can now squeeze the mango and suck the juice through that hole. It’s sort of a nature-made box drink!

Once all the mango juice is all gone, now comes the messy part. No one, not even the British, have ever discovered a way to eat a mango without making a mess.

Once the juice is gone, then you bite the skin, strip it away from the seed, lick it clean and then begin to bite away all the strands of mango fiber still attached to the seed. By the time a good mango eater is done with a mango, the mango seed looks like a yellowish bar of used soap, slick and fiber-less.

Of course, your face and chest area are now completely covered in dried up, sticky mango juice, so then you'd usually head back home to clean up with the garden hose and drink water to quell the thirst that the mango sugar causes.

That’s how one eats a mango – at least in my childhood neighborhood.

Tic Tac Toe

“We will be relentless in defense of our citizens and our friends and allies. We will be true to the values that make us who we are. And on nights like this one, we can say to families who have lost loved ones to al-Qaeda’s terror: Justice has been done.”

President Obama

Next Week in New York

Next week is the Affordable Art Fair in New York City, right across the street from the Empire State Building.

The Affordable Art Fair is always a very interesting art fair to me, from the psychological point and from the commercial point of view.

AAFNYC (as it is known, since there are versions of this fair in Europe and Australia as well) is put together by the same people who bring you the Pulse Art Fair, arguably the second best Miami art fair after ABMB.

And I say Miami on purpose to put it geographically in Miami, since there are some top notch European-based art fairs which are clearly higher than Pulse in the art fair food chain. But, when it comes to the first week of December in Miami, after ABMB, Pulse is clearly the number two darling of the art cognoscenti.

AAFNYC has an "affordable" ceiling price for art of $10,000 (used to be $5,000); this tells you a lot about the art world.

This NYC and London versions of this fair have a reputation as really good selling fairs, where galleries do fairly well, in spite of the current economic blues enveloping the world. From my own experience with this NYC-based fair (which goes back to 2005), it has always been a very successful art fair for the galleries that I have been associated with (sorry about the dangling preposition).

And if you review the list of galleries who have exhibited at AAFNYC over the years, you'll discover a lot of blue chip galleries, in fact, some of the same galleries which show at Pulse!

Yet some snooty galleries stay away from it. "I wish they'd change the name of the fair," told me a gallery owner once when I asked her why she didn't do the fair.

Enough said.

And yet, galleries from all over the planet (including a lot of British galleries) will come to New York next week, and a lot of savvy New York art collectors will come to the fair and a lot of artists and art galleries will do very well, since this is the only NYC art fair at this time of the year (among other things).

My work will be there, represented by Norfolk's top independently owned commercial fine arts gallery: Mayer Fine Arts, who will be showcasing work by Sheila Giolitti, John Roth, Alexey Terenin, Judith Peck, Rosemary Feit Covey, Sharon Moody, Rosalie Shane, Joey Manlapaz and Andrew Wodzianski... note that there are several DMV artists in that mix (Peck, Feit Covey, Moody, Manlapax, Wodzianski and I).

If you want some free tickets to the fair, send me an email and I'll make sure that the gallery leaves some free passes at "will call".

Open House

Walking Off the Artistic Cliff

Wednesday, June 1, 7:00 - 9:00pm

Panel Discussion - Walking Off the Artistic Cliff
Making good art requires taking risks. Join Jack Rasmussen, Director of the American University Museum at the Katzen Center, Claudia Rousseau, Ph.D., Professohttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gifr of Art History at Montgomery College and art critic for the Gazette Newspapers and Welmoed Laanstra, Curator of Public Art for Arlington County, and moderator Ellyn Weiss, as they discuss what it means to commit to the new and unknown.

Free. Open to the Public.

Brentwood Arts Exchange @ Gateway Arts Center
3901 Rhode Island Avenue
Brentwood, MD 20722
301-277-2863/ tty. 301-446-6802

Top Ten Artists to Watch

Bruce Helander, Editor-in-Chief of The Art Economist and a White House Fellow of the National Endowment for the Arts picks ten artists to watch for The Huffington Post and picks DMV area artist Hadieh Shafie!

Shafie is represented locally by Morton Fine Art (MFA). Read the article here.

TV Drawings


Above is "Devil Posing with a Mariachi Hat." This is a TV drawing (ink and finger smears) and done while watching a TV show at a tire shop while my van's rear tires were being replaced.

Big Ideas

Opening Reception: Saturday, May 7 - 5:00 - 8:00pm

Public Programs

Saturday, May 14, 12:00 - 5:00pm
Gateway Arts District Open Studios Day

2:00pm - Artist Talk: Sondra N. Arkin, Susan Finsen, & Ellyn Weiss will talk about their art work and walk guests through their exhibition.

4:00pm - Join the Community Spirit: A dialogue with the three artists about their installation, Community Spirit, where you are invited to leave your mark.

Go see this Saturday

Three major DMV artists showing at Reston's gorgeous GRACE.


Place: Greater Reston Arts Center (GRACE)
Date and Time: Saturday April 30, 5-7pm
Address: Greater Reston Arts Center, at the Reston Town Center,12001 Market Street, Suite #103 in the DMV's burb known as Reston.

Challenge for the WaPo's freelancers: make your way out to this exhibit and impress us all.

The Jerusalem Fund Gallery will have a special exhibition titled Breaching the Wall from May 20 - June 24, 2011 and the opening reception is Friday May 20, 6 – 8 p.m.

This show should attract some attention.

The gallery invited artists from around the U.S. including Rajie Cook, Mona El-Bayoumi, Najat El-Khairy, Elena Farsakh, Adib Fattal, John Halaka, Michael Keating, Ellen O’Grady, Ammar Qusaibaty, Mary Tuma and Helen Zughaib to create a work of art reflecting their perceptions of the separation wall in Palestine. Interpreted in painting, sculpture, video, photography, porcelain and other media, each artist’s work speaks in their own unique voice to the theme of the exhibition.

You like political art?

Then, look for several of these artists to use their art to deliver their personal political agendas, from the exceptionally uninformed, to the historically incorrect, to the haters who use words like "occupiers" in their statements, to the dreamers who hope for peace, rather than hate between the Biblical brothers who currently inhabit this historical land.

Look for Helen Zughaib and Rajie Cook to steal this show.

Point Nine

The gas station next to the Watergate has regular gas at $4.99.9 a gallon. I wonder how the whole point nine thing started in gasoline pricing.

I'm just saying...

Congrats!

Congrats to Transformer, which was awarded the Mayor's Arts Award for Excellence in an Artistic Discipline on Wednesday evening April 20, 2011 as part of a beautiful ceremony at the Kennedy Center to celebrate the diversity of arts activities in our nation's capital. I was there, and as usual, it was a terrific and fun evening packed with entertainment ranging from classical music, ballet, an amazing jazz-rock virtuoso performance by ELEW, and salsa music!

The Mayor's Arts Awards are the most prestigious honors conferred by the city on individual artists, organizations, and patrons of the arts.

Landscapes Light up Edison

A new exhibit called “The Illuminated Landscape” opens this week at the Edison Place Gallery in the Pepco building at 701 Ninth Street, NW in Washington, DC. Thirty members of the Washington Society of Landscape Painters have contributed their interpretations of the landscape for the show, which runs from April 19 through May 27. The oil, pastel, acrylic, and watercolor paintings will be on view Tuesday through Friday from 12 to 4. The exhibit is free and open to the public, with a reception on April 28th from 6 to 8 p.m.

The 4000-square-foot gallery is located near the National Portrait Gallery and the Gallery Place metro. The entrance to the Edison Place Gallery is on Eighth Street between G and H streets, directly behind the Pepco headquarters entrance.

Josip Broz Tito's Unusual Art Legacy

Tito's iron hand on the former Yugoslavia left behind more than the usual brutal and bloody Communist legacy.

Crack Two has a gorgeous posting of 25 or so of these rather futuristic public art works done in the 1960s and 1970s. Check them all out here.

Update: The key site to learn more about these brutal massive sculptures is this one.

The Mother of All Rock Fights

For about five or six years now I've been working on writing down my memories of my early childhood in Cuba, which is where I was born and lived my early years before my family escaped to the United States in the 60s. I hope to one day pitch it to some publisher. The below piece is a second peek at a chapter draft somewhere in the middle of the book. It is titled "The Mother of All Rock Fights," and feedback, suggestions and criticism is welcome!

The Mother of All Rock Fights

Depending on who you believe, the mother of all rock fights started with either a push, or a slip into the dirty, sewage waters of the Guaso River in Guantanamo, Cuba.

Even now, nearly forty years later, it stands out as vividly, as spectacular, as surreal and as immensely impossible, as on the day that it happened.

Sometimes in the early 1960’s a new baseball stadium was built in the outskirts of Guantanamo. At the time, to us local children, it was beautiful new place, a shrine to the love of baseball that all Cubans have. We didn’t notice or care, that all seats were made of cement, and that it was a grim, stark and bare bones space.

But at least to us boys it was a wonderful, beautiful place, where once in a while even the Orientales, the provincial team that represented our honor in the national baseball leagues (and always seemed to lose to the hated Havana teams), played.

My father also loved baseball, and he was the un-official baseball escort for all the boys in the neighborhood, and often he would lead a dozen of us ruffians to a game at the stadium, which was named Van Troi, in honor of a shadowy slain North Vietnamese guerrilla fighter who had been killed in the Viet Nam war.

Why name a baseball stadium after a man who probably never heard of baseball was also a mystery to us, especially since we all knew the names of all the real baseball gods, both Cuban and Americans. But more on baseball later.

As I said, Van Troi Stadium was a few miles outside of the city, and we all usually caught the bus that stopped at the bottom of Second Street, directly across from the side of our house that ran downhill through that street. We took that bus to the edge of the city and from there we all walked, usually with hundreds of other people, to the Stadium.

From Guantanamo the trek to the Stadium could be made via two different routes. The longer and safer route was through the metal bridge that spanned the Guaso River. Crossing this bridge was always a thrilling adventure to me. The bridge was a metal arch, and the walkways on either side were made of metal grilles that allowed you to see the river below you as one crossed the bridge.

Because the bridge was – at least in my eyes – just a few feet above the rushing water, there was always a sense of immediacy – and danger – from the fast flowing Guaso River rushing underneath your feet. It was also quite a wide crossing, as the Guaso was a rather wide river at that point and often, when augmented by tropical rains, as when the Flora hurricane passed through Oriente province in the early 60’s, would flood the city. In fact, the metal bridge of my memories may have been a "new" bridge built after Flora, which may have wiped out the older bridge.

Anyway, the bridge crossing was adventurous, and I would always plan it ahead at the beginning of the crossing. I always had a strategy in case I fell off the bridge or in case the bridge collapsed while I was in the middle of it. This always demanded knowing exactly where on the bridge I was, and which direction (backwards or forwards) was the shortest path to land.

Once we crossed the bridge, the road to the Stadium was through a slightly hilly unpaved street, almost a country road, and sometimes we would stop and rest at a house where my father was friends with the family who lived there.

There we would always buy a bottle of pru, which is a homemade Cuban soft drink. We would usually bring the drinks along the rest of the walk to the stadium and sometimes carry extra bottles with us to drink later.

Once, my cousin Cesar had the task of carrying all the extra bottles, and when we arrived at the Stadium, we discovered that he had drunk all of them on the way to the ballpark.

As pru is actually some kind of a fermented non-alcoholic drink, and being homemade, possibly not the purest of drinks, he immediately developed a tremendous case of diarrhea halfway through the game and never made it to the stadium’s bathroom, and managed to shit all over his pants, much to his embarrassment and our delight.

In any event, this route was the safer, but the longer of the two ways to get to Van Troi Stadium. The second route was a short cut that involved crossing the river though a series of rocks that had been strategically placed at a narrower portion of the river, about half a mile downriver from the bridge.

Now, these weren’t (by any stretch of the imagination), large, flat rocks, but a series of mossy, slippery rocks that sometimes even demanded a slight jump from rock to rock, rather than just steps. In fact sometimes, one could actually step from rock to rock, while other times you needed a synchronized ballet to jump to a small rock, and use it as a spring to the next, larger safer rock, as there was no room in the small rock to actually land and stabilize one’s body. It was a dangerous and almost incredible risk, and yet at the time it seemed as natural as crossing the bridge.

The choice was always based on the availability of the rocks themselves. If the river was too high, then we took the bridge, if the river was low and the rocks exposed, then we’d all cross the river at the rock crossing. Hundreds of people, usually all men and boys and all heading to the game through the river shortcut.

To add an ever greater sense of danger to this crossing, was the repugnant fact that the city’s raw sewer lines came out somewhere between the bridge and the rock crossing.

And this was completely untreated, raw sewage at its most luxuriant stage of smell and visibility. The river, which was clean and clear when we looked at it from the bridge, became shit brown and foul by the time it arrived at the rock crossing and turds floated like brown torpedoes all around you as you gingerly made your way across the rocks.

It never occurred to us why the rock crossing had been built after the sewage lines, rather than before it – who knows, perhaps it pre-dated the sewage lines, but the immense danger of crossing the river by skipping across slippery, mossy rocks was multiplied by a million when one considered what would happen if one had the misfortune to slip and fall into the shitwater.

And it did happen quite often! Someone would be a little too cavalier in the crossing, or sometimes someone too tipsy from drinking too much beer at the games, lose concentration, slip and fall, to the cheers and laughter and applause of the rest of us. And falling near the riverbed was the worst, as the shit tended to concentrate there, while the river current, although faster and more dangerous in the middle, tended to keep the middle of the river cleaner.

The edges were absolutely gross. A luxuriant, rich, thick mixture of shit and mud demanded strict attention and concentration. In response to this, whoever had originally placed the rocks to build the crossing, had thankfully placed larger rocks at the edges, some of which actually could accommodate several persons at once. This had an indirect cause in the overall accumulations of tiny events that all led to the greatest rock fight in history.

I always recall the crossing of the river at this point as a true adventure. Sometimes I was a pirate, usually Emilio Salgari's El Corsario Negro, getting away from the Spanish soldiers; at other times I was an astronaut discovering another planet. But I was always in a high state of concentration, always ensuring that I never slipped and always focusing on the next rock, especially when we neared the edges, and the river became a mass of mojones, which is what we called turds, and birds eating all the gross insect life that lived amongst it.

Sometimes a particularly spectacular mojon would float by, or a fleet of mojones, to the delight of us kids crossing the river. We would shout in unison and point to the mojones and exaggerate their sizes and speed. The word mojon is an interesting one, and I’m not sure where it comes from, or if it is a Cuban slang or a true Castilian word. It literally means someone or something that is wet, and has no relation that I can think of to the Spanish word for shit, which is mierda.

Regardless, the river at this point was full of mojones, and stinking of mierda and we would always be alert and I never recall any of our gang falling into the river.

Until the greatest rock fight in history. Truly the mother of all rock fights.

On that particular day, we had all trekked to the stadium not to watch a baseball game, but to watch something different in our perception of sports, at least to Cubans: a soccer match.

While soccer is a big thing in nearly all Latin American countries, in fact nearly a religion in most, it was and probably still is, a curiosity and ignored as a sport by most Cubans.

This arises from the fact that soccer – like bullfights – was a "Spanish sport" enjoyed by Spaniards in Cuba, and thus disliked immediately by Cubans, who wished to remove all things Spanish from the young republic. Spaniards like soccer and bullfights while Cubans preferred baseball and cockfights; Spaniards drank wine, Cubans drank beer and rum, etc.

Anyway, on the day of the greatest rock fight in history, there was a soccer match staged at Van Troi stadium, and as most of us had never seen a soccer match before, a curious crowd of several thousand local men and boys made the trip, either through the bridge or through the rock crossing, and congregated at the ballpark to watch the game.

It was a disaster.

One of the teams had traveled from Havana, and was on a nationwide tour to help spread soccer among Cubans. The second team was made up at the last minute from Guantanamo men from the Institute (the local junior college) or local baseball players who had not been selected for any of the national league teams. I bet that for some of the locals, it was the first time that they had ever actually played soccer.

It was the most boring sports spectacle that I recall ever witnessing, played on a baseball field, with the pitching mound still in place, and soccer lines marked at the last minute with white chalk lines.

I recall the entire game consisting of the ball being kicked from one extreme end of the field to the other, with little of the precision and foot skills that only experienced soccer players can display. One just can’t show up one day and decide to dribble with your feet – it just doesn’t happen, and it showed.

And Cubans are just not culturally designed to play soccer, which demands precise teamwork and strategy, as opposed to individualism on the field, which is what the inept soccer players on the soccer pitch, I mean baseball field turned soccer pitch for that day, attempted to do.

The crowd was bored and delighted us by hurling insults at the players, and booing throughout, and only applauding when a fight broke out on the field, which was practically every few minutes, when aggressive, inept Cuban men kicked each other’s shins in futile attempts to get to the ball.

The soccer experiment was a boring disaster, and when the game ended, scoreless as I recall, the crowd was in a dark mood as it left the Stadium and headed back to the city, most of us through the river rock crossing.

And this mood was the second ingredient in the recipe for the chain of events that led to the greatest rock fight in history.

Here is what happened.

I had just crossed the river, and along with my father behind me, begun the slight climb from the river slopes towards the streets above it. At that point, one had a great view of the river and I recall turning around to see the long line of people, like ants, crossing the river, jumping rocks and making their way back to the city.

And then it happened.

Monguito fell into the shitwater; not the middle, cleaner part of the river, with fast moving water and smaller rocks, but near the banks of the river, with turgid, stagnant mud and shit.

Whether he slipped or fell is a matter of debate. As I said before these bank rocks were larger and thus "safer" than the smaller, middle-of-the-river rocks, and Monguito claims that as he was standing on one of these rocks, Gustavito, who lived in the house directly below our house on Second Street, and who was a perennial enemy of the Monguito brothers, pushed him from behind.

Gustavito, who was a feisty (and always ready to pick a fight), scruffy, short bulldog of a boy, with a flat top blonde haircut, and he looked like a miniature of his father, who was a professional boxer, has always denied pushing Monguito, claiming that he was nowhere near Monguito when Monguito fell or was pushed in.

Anyway, Monguito emerged from the river completely covered in shit and mud and looking for revenge. The people who were still on the rocks were dying of laughter as he made his way up the banks of the river, and the crossing momentarily stopped as the elder of the two Monguito brothers emerged from the muck.

And he turned to face his laughing tormentors, and he was looking for revenge.

He then spotted Gustavito, still on a rock on the river, also laughing and in fact doubled over with laughter. And in Monguito’s mind, somehow, it became clear that his archenemy had some hand in his fall.

And he picked up a rock, and with the brilliant aim of someone with a thousand previous rock fights of experience, lobbed it in a long arch towards Gustavito, who was too lost in laughter to notice the incoming missile as it hit him and made him fall into the river.

Now the other river crossers really exploded in laughter – this was too much! Two falls in one crossing – this alone was worth the boring experience of the soccer game!

But Gustavito, who had not seen who had thrown the rock, emerged from the river also looking for revenge, and incredibly enough began picking up rocks from the river itself and pelting the crowd with shit covered missiles.

And suddenly pandemonium broke out as people began to fall into the river and more rock throwers were added to the battle. From our safe side on the land, we all joined in to try to nail those still clinging to the relative safety of the rocks.

Some tried to turn back and head to the other side, colliding with crossers coming over and more and more people fell into the water, creating several water battles as men fought each other in the water, on rocks and on the shore. And the people already on the banks of the rivers were also good targets for us, as we were higher above them on the streets that ran parallel to the river.

And thus, from the relative safety of those streets above the river, we were on a superior position to rain rocks on all of those unfortunate souls below us while being able to dodge all incoming rocks; all except Pepin, who as usual got his head cracked open by a rock, even though he was with us on the streets, desperately, from his superior position, trying to help his brother Monguito below.

And for a glorious ten minutes or so, the greatest rock fight in history went on along the shitty shores of the Guaso River, involving perhaps one hundred men and boys of all ages, with the distinct advantage to those on the shore, many of whom were covered in shit, having at one point been on rocks and knocked off either trying to avoid a rock, or being hit by one or pushed by another person attempting to cling to the rock.

If the latter was the case, then it was a matter of honor to get to the shore and attempt to knock off your pusher by nailing him with a rock.

At some point in the battle, even flying turds were being lobbed, to the horror of some of the participants, already covered in shit, who were now being pelted by flying turds and mud.

I cannot remember how and when the greatest rock fight in history ended, perhaps the militia or the cops showed up, but I do recall walking back all the way from the edge of the city to our neighborhood, because there were three in our group completely covered in shit: Monguito, Gustavito and Cesar, who somehow had ended up in the river as well, and Pepin covered in blood from his head wound.

Because of shit and blood, the bus driver would not allow them in, and my father couldn’t leave them to walk alone from that far. It was quite an interesting trek, and we made them walk downwind behind us, only stopping once in a while to break up the occasional fights between Monguito and Gustavito.

When we got home, my grandmother gave my father hell over his supervision of us, and Elba, Pepin’s mother, swore blue murder at my father for not taking Pepin directly to the hospital.

My grandmother then took Cesar to the back garden, where he was hosed down with the garden hose, while the rest of us, less the other two who had fallen in, and Pepin who was on his way to the hospital for his usual visit to stitch up his head, climbed to the roof of the house to watch Cesar being scrubbed clean from head to toe while we drank cold lemonade that my mother had just made.

Thus truly ended the greatest rock fight in history.

For your Cinco de Mayo

Connie is 100

My great uncle (or is it great great uncle), Conrado Marrero is 100 years old today.

And that makes him the oldest Major League Baseball (MLB) player alive! He played for (where else?) the Washington Senators from 1950 to 1954.

He started playing baseball rather late, making his debut as a pitcher in Cuba when he was 27 years old. In 1950, when he was a Senators MLB rookie, he was 39 years old! A year later he was selected to play in the 1951 All Star Game.

By the time he finished his professional baseball career, he had 367 professional baseball wins (including 97 shut-outs and 39 wins for the Senators) and 197 losses (40 of them with the hapless Senators).

Coming next month

Judith H. Dobrzynski on the Hirshhorn

The Hirshhorn Museum sent me an email a while back that boggles the mind. It was an invitation to buy tickets to the Apr. 29 "After Hours" event, running from 8 p.m. to midnight. The picture looks, to me, more like a rave than anything to do with art, but that's not the topic I'm taking up here. It's not even the high ticket price of $18.

What's most bothersome about this invitation is the statement about members: "Members get in free and have access to VIP area."

You can see that line for yourself in the picture at left.

"A VIP area"? At a public museum, an arm of the Smithsonian Institution?

For years, museum officials have been droning on about the need to dispel the notion that art museums are elitist. To me, it's more of a museum image problem than anything real: some people think that they have to dress up, have a college diploma, or have other so-called elite attributes to feel welcome. Mostly, that's pure fantasy -- or an excuse.

And now, the Hirshhorn -- no doubt in an effort to raise money (the lowest level of membership costs $100 to $249 a year ) -- is creating a VIP lounge within an already questionable activity?

Read the whole piece (and see the image) at Real Clear Arts here.

Lecturing

Yesterday I had the honor to deliver a presentation (as a guest lecturer) to a Literature class at American University (my second time around for this class).

When I got to AU I was fine, then I started sneezing like crazy, obviously allergic to the myriads of flowers blossoming all over the place (or perhaps the trees).

Handkerchief in hand I started talking and somehow the drippy nose and sneezes went away and at the end I got a round of applause.

Makes me feel warm and fuzzy.

New gallery to open in DC

Heiner Contemporary is launching in DC on May 20th with an exhibition of new work by Brooklyn artist Elizabeth Huey. The opening reception will be from 6-8pm that evening.

Heiner Contemporary is located at 1675 Wisconsin Avenue NW, Washington, DC 20007 in Georgetown and we all welcome them to the DMV art scene and look forward to many great shows.