Audrey Wilson's first solo show

The Washington Glass School will host “The Aberrant Collection of the Spurious Calamus”, by Audrey Wilson. 

This new collection of works will be her first solo show and will feature her mixed media sculptures. The opening reception will be held at the Washington Glass School on January 11, 2014 from 6-8pm. The exhibition will be on view through January 31, 2014 and is free and open to the public.

I've become very familiar with both Audrey Wilson and with her work in the last two years, since we've exhibited her work at both Aqua in 2012 and most recently at Context Art Miami in 2013.

Let me summarize this right now: if you are an art collector and do not buy one of her pieces at this show, her first (and thus historic) solo show, then you are a fool... un bobo!

I've only made this recommendation (as far as I can recall) twice... once for Tim Tate years ago when he was selling for $400-$600 (now up to $51,000 at auctions and starting at around $4,000 for smaller pieces) and once for Michael Janis when he was selling for around $500 (now you can't touch his work for less than $5,000 to start... or more).

"Why does he say this... what's with this maven?", you must be asking... let me explain why.

Over the years I think that I have developed a pretty damned good eye at spotting what makes an artist click (or not)... 

Dudes and Dudettes... I have empirical evidence and not just hearsay or anecdotal data to back that statement.... 

And what I have noticed about Wilson and her work have several components - all critical - that help to make her a "BUY NOW."

• She has enviable work ethic - that, my learned friends, is a key seasoning to the success soup recipe... nothing beats hard work.
• She is a hard worker - does it sound like I am repeating myself? It's on purpose...
• She has a powerful "artistic IT" - that's that undefinable (except by me) element that separates the good from the truly intelligent.
• Her work is intelligent... it just is! When you get into a discussion with the Audreymeister about all the elements and components and titling of her pieces, one is left salivating like a Pavlov dog hearing a bell that signifies greatness...
• Her work looks GREAT! -- I say this with some reticence, as these days, some art symbiots still have issues with beauty, but Wilson's work stand out with some sort of undefinable beauty.
• She appeals to young collectors: OK ---> you're gonna have to trust me on this... but at the fairs I have sold her work to clients who have told me: "This is the first piece of art that we've ever bought!"
• She appeals to important major collectors: At Context Art Miami, on the second day, when I got to the booth there was a MAJOR (caps well deserved) collector waiting for me at the booth. She told me that this was the first time in over two decades of art collecting that she had waited for someone at an empty booth (this while I was wondering how she got into the fair before official opening time)... "I want this artist," she said in her usual brusque manner... and she got her.
• She appeals to curators: At Aqua, her work was invited to a major curatorial project.

You will never see her prices at the level that they will be at this first solo show... spend the money now and then thank me in a few years... 

Here's the press release:

Audrey Wilson sculptures are a blend of created and altered elements that reflect evolving science and machinery and explore the relationship between man and technology. Technology is merely an extension and reflection of mankind. In fact, no objects contain more human essence than do tools.

Audrey’s sculptural projects and multi-media works are metaphors evoking our endless manipulation of environment, our need for control, and our longing for a meaningful union with nature and the other, in a supreme balance of power and delicacy. People are becoming increasingly alienated from the objects which surround and sustain them, as they have lost the emotional link to technology.

“The Aberrant Collection of the Spurious Calamus” captures our complicated relationship with technology, mirroring it back with poetic glances.

________________________________________________________________

Audrey Wilson (b.1987) has a BA in Crafts with a Glass Concentration from Kent State University. Originally from Columbus, Ohio, Audrey has worked at the Chrysler Museum Glass Studio as the studio and teaching assistant, working with the museum's visiting glass artists. Audrey's artwork references nature and organic forms with mixed media.She is represented in the DC area by Alida Anderson Art Projects, LLC.

2014 Baker Artist Awards

Just a friendly reminder that nominations close January 15th which means there are less than two weeks left to nominate yourself for the 2014 Baker Artist Awards!

You may setup your nomination by visiting the "Sign-up" page on the Baker site HERE. As always nominations are FREE and come with a professionally designed online portfolio. Additional instructions on nominating yourself may be found on the help page on our Baker Blog HERE.

If you have any questions, you may email me at bakerartistawards@gmail.com.

 

Please feel free to forward this message to anyone you think may want a chance to win a piece of the $90,000 in prize money!

We hope to see your work on the Baker Artist Awards site very soon.

Best Regards,

David London
Program and Marketing Manager
Greater Baltimore Cultural Alliance 

 

www.BaltimoreCulture.org

www.BakerArtistAwards.org

Transformations

Transformations exhibition with Megan Peritore, Mary Freedman, Jackie Hoysted and 

Lisa Rosenstein in the Galleries at Takoma Park Community Center.  
 
Where:  Galleries at Takoma Park Community Center

7500 Maple Avenue, Takoma Park MD
When:  Thursday, January 9, 7-9 pm

Brutal drive

The drive home tonight was brutal in the snow with DMV drivers!

I was coming from the north, and 95 South was looking pretty grim and WMAL was hollering about how bad the beltway was, so I took 32 West to 29 South and then onto the new and super-expensive Intercounty (or whatever it is called) Connector (MD 200), which as usual, was deserted, which tonight was a good thing.

Because there was no one on it, the snow was piling up a little more and that was rather interesting, but I got off at Rockville Pike and then headed down 355 South, which was also pretty empty heading South and miserable going North... "it's all good," I'm thinking, but nonetheless fearing what may happen once I get into my own hood; after all, the Soviet Socialist Republic of Montgomery never clears, or salts my street, and some of my neighbors seem to want to drive around our hilly neighborhood whenever it starts snowing.

Not to disappoint me, the last few blocks were the most dangerous... the snow had accumulated, and there was at least one neighbor trying to make an U-turn on a snowy downhill road... Feh!

A few skids later, a few cuss words later, the old Vanster and I got home OK and safe.

I little Southern Comfort and water later, I was able to finally breathe...

Will 2014 be the end of the Castro dictatorship?

A while back the brutal and racist Castro Brothers' regime released an unbelievable (for people who live in free societies that is) video, where it depicts the leader of The Ladies in White, Berta Soler, who is Afro-Cuban, as some sort of "ignorant gorilla" character.

The Ladies in White are a peaceful democracy movement composed of the wives, daughters, mothers and relatives of Cuban political prisoners. Many of the members of this valiant group are Afro-Cuban women.

Why is a dictatorship so afraid of a group of mostly elderly women?

Because these courageous Cuban mothers and grandmothers refuse to back down in spite of being beaten, jailed and smeared. They know that they are perhaps the seed to the end of the world's longest existing dictatorship.

This video (below)  is part of the Castro regime's heavy-handed efforts to smear and destroy courageous pro-democracy women leaders such as Berta Soler and Cuban blogger Yoani Sanchez.

This racist video should be not only condemned internationally, but also adds more evidence to the disturbing racist heavy boot of the Cuban dictatorship. I call for President Obama and the Congressional Black Caucus to make the treatment of Afro-Cubans and all Cubans one of their top International Human Rights policy priorities for 2014!

Hours away...

#Cuba We are hours away of commemorate a live corpse, the so called Cuban #Revolution , a zombie that was fed with ourselves
                                                      — Yoani Sanchez (@yoanifromcuba) December 31, 2013

Happy New Year's to all of youse!

Dulce Pinzon at Art Wynwood

MARIA LUISA ROMERO from the State of Puebla works in a Laundromat in Brooklyn, New York. She sends 150 dollars a week.

This and all other photos from Dulce Pinzon's historic Superheroes series will be at the Art Wynwood Art Fair in Miami this coming February.

On PBS

PBS Newshour has a very cool interview that features Sebastian Stant, the very young New York-based entrepreneur who is also the owner of Mayer Fine Arts (which represents my artwork); check it out online here.

Jody Mussoff

Legendary DMV artist Jody Mussoff is offering all kinds of terrific vintage artwork (including some brilliant ceramics) at great prices... Check them out here.

Her amazing work was included in the exhibition Graphic Masters III, held at the Smithsonian Institution's American Art Museum in 2010, and has been exhibited at many museums and galleries, including:

• Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden
• National Museum of Women in the Arts
• Kunsthalle Nürnberg
• Orlando Museum of Art
• Princeton University Art Museum
• Tokyo National University of Fine Arts

Great idea

From Jesse at ardc... another most excellent idea:

I love buying art. It's an exhilarating experience to find a work, learn about the artist, and make an educated decision to purchase a work of art. I find it to be equally exciting to see a work, and make a crazy gut leap of faith and pull out my credit card and buy it! Oh beleive me yes, I do have a list of artists who I need to buy from, that I haven't yet!

So you're asking, are you going to buy my art? If you read these emails, there's a small possibility. If you are involved in the exhibitions and art projects we develop, the possibility gets higher. If you make amazing work, the chances are even higher.  That said, those who know me, understand my volume of art purchases are limited. I buy what I can afford, and I think that's an interesting fact that many of us share in common. Art collection is no longer an "elite only" experience. Everyone can own a work of art.

Before this note runs on into a confession, or another pitch, I'd like to say that I really do think the acquisition of art is a valuable and very important experience.

I've wanted to share this mentality with the world, which is why I started the site www.artacquired.com .  It's time for the site to grow!

I'm looking for people who buy art, small or large, affordable, or expensive. 

No, I don't want to sell art to you. (Well ok, if you see something, in one of our shows, I'll be glad to help). I need to find a few people who buy art, and would like to write about the experience on artacquired.com 

I'm not looking for a scholarly tome, but a few thoughtful paragraphs about the art work that you've recently purchased, and some images of the work. 

 

I'd expect that the writing would be relatively well written. I do think this is a fun and exciting process, or I wouldn't do it. There's something great about sharing the passion about acquiring art.

 

Take a look at my site, and let me know if you are interested, and we can talk further about expectations.  To start, the focus should be on contemporary art, the process of acquisition, who you bought it from, the artists, and links to the gallery and artists.

 

I'd like to see a bit of a track record. That is, email me a bit about your collection.  Take a look at the link above to read more about mine.

 

Drop me an email to talk further about this.  Food for future thought, are owning art and collecting it the same thing? If you have a friend who you think might be into this, please do forward this note.

 Cheers and thanks,

 

Jesse

@artdc

Coming down to Miami

"Despite the ignorance of others, she knew that inside they were all the same" by Elissa Farrow-Savos will be at Art Wynwood in February.

Next in the next year...

Getting ready with the preps for Art Wynwood as we return to Miami for yet another art fair!

A Chihuly for Xmas

The Virginia Museum of Fine Arts board of trustees has voted to acquire the work Red Reeds, by Dale Chihuly which was created for the Anne Cobb Gottwald reflecting pool outside the Best Café. The internationally renowned artist created over 100 red glass reeds as part of the Chihuly at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, October 20, 2012- February 10, 2013. Since that time Red Reeds has been on loan to VMFA.

This dynamic, site-specific work by Dale Chihuly was an instant success at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts,” said Alex Nyerges, director.”It is beautiful in every season, and is a wonderful addition to the Lora Robins Sculpture Garden. I am especially pleased that this is the first site-specific outdoor installation by Chihuly to be acquired by an art museum.”

Red Reeds was purchased with private funds from the Arthur and Margaret Glasgow fund. Private funds are always used for art acquisition, but upon purchase the work becomes the property of the Commonwealth of Virginia for its ongoing care. 
The reeds were blown by team Chihuly at the Nuutäjarvi Glass Factory in Nuutäjarvi, Finland because of the excellent clarity of glass there and to take advantage of their annealing ovens, the largest in the world. The annealing process facilitates the curing of these large-scaled elements, which are as much as 10 feet in height. Also, the red glass in Finland has a particularly brilliant quality, due to the ruby red pigment and the added chemical element neodymium.

 Details here.

On this Christmas we demand freedom for this heroine

Today, we remember Sonia Garro, who is currently spending her second Christmas in a political prison and is another example of the targeted repression of the world's longest lasting dictatorship; not only against all of its enslaved people, but also even more venomous against Afro-Cubans.

Sonia Garro, a member of The Ladies in White pro-democracy movement, has been imprisoned by the Castro regime -- without trial or charges -- since March 18th, 2012.

In the wave of repression leading up to Pope Benedict XVI's trip to Cuba, Castro's secret police raided her home, shot her with rubber bullets and imprisoned her.

She has been repeatedly abused and beaten in the infamous Manto Negro women's prison.

Garro's husband, Ramón Muñoz González, was also imprisoned on that day.

He is being held -- without trial or charges -- in the Combinado del Este Prison.

Demand their freedom now.

Merry Christmas!

Nochebuena

Since tonight is Nochebuena, I usually prepare the classic Nochebuena Cuban feast for the night.

Cuban Roasted Pork
Mariquitas with Mojo Sauce for Dipping
Sweet Corn Tamales
Broiled Yucca with Garlic Mojo
Broiled Ňame with Olive Oil
Moros y Cristianos (White Rice and Black Bean Soup)
Cuban Nochebuena Salad

For 2013 I will substitute Ropa Vieja instead of pork... and yeah, I will use a lot of ajo (garlic)...

There is a long cultural tradition assigned to the Moros y Cristianos side dish, and even its Cuban Spanish name (Moros y Cristianos or "moors and Christians") tell you something about the dish (rumored to honor the 100th anniversary in 1592 of Queen Isabella's final victory over the Moors in 1492). 

And (at least in Oriente province) Ropa Vieja is a dish attributed to Cuban Jews, so we'll have a cool culinary diversity night encompassing all three major world religions on Nochebuena!

For once, Christians, Jews and Moslems will work together, in this case in my belly... cough, cough...

And from our family to all: a Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays and a Terrific 2014 to all!

Funny Faces

I've got this ever growing collection of funny faces that get captured on TV when you press the pause button... heh, heh...

This proposes legal changes to copyright laws...

OK folks... I need you lawyer types to read, interpret and report the gist of this new report ASAP!

Channeling Pollock Part II

Remember that proposal for a piece of art for a new cruise ship being constructed? It was part of the (e)merge art fair "wake" effect... Details here.

Anyway... seems like we're past the first stage and now they've requested some additional amplification and thus the two rough sketched of what the actual piece would look like.

Morris Louis (cough, cough) finds a home

In 1980 I did this piece as part of an assignment at the University of Washington School of Art. The assignment (and the class) was to create work in the style of the "masters" which at the U-Dub included modern masters... I did some "easy" ones such as Pollock, most of the Washington Color School stripe painters, Willem de K, etc. plus some really tough ones, such as El Greco.

Anyway... “Preparatory Watercolor for the Frida Kahlo Inside a Morris Louis Assignment” is an original watercolor painting on 300 weight paper. The painting measures 9.5 x 13.5 inches and it is signed and dated on the verso, and it is now heading to a collector in Crystal Bay, Nevada - 33 years after it was painted!

There is a companion piece to this work somewhere in New York.

An Abbreviated History of Moca DC

MOCA DC as we have known it for 21 years will end this week... There is a farewell party at Art Overnight - at 2328 Ontario Rd in Adams Morgan on Saturday, Dec 21st starting at 6 pm. Be on the lookout for the Grand Opening of Big Moca in the Sky.

Here is a guest post by MOCA's director David R. Quammen:

December 1, 2013

An Abbreviated History of Moca DC

Part One: 1992 to 2004 – The Formative Years

I’ve been sifting through records and media accounts of Moca DC from the time that Michael V. Clark started it in 1992, except he called it Clark & Company. That changed in 1995 after he married Felicity Hogan and they incorporated it as a 501 (c) (3) nonprofit corporation, naming it the Museum of Contemporary Art.

It has always been a gallery, never a museum so over time the name was shortened to MOCA DC, since it’s a bit of a stretch answering the phone or discussing it in any other context. Michael changed his given name to Clark Hogan, later shortening it to Clark when he and Felicity split in 2003. He was going to close the gallery December 31^st, 2004, having a tough time keeping it going, what with health issues and the divorce. He now calls himself Clark V. Fox, a name chosen when he was a co-exhibitor at a gallery in Houston.

I started modeling Halloween day 2000, shortly after turning 60; I enjoyed being part of a creative process but there were no directions for a novice and no list of places to model so I accumulated as much information as I could and started publishing a newsletter, Artists & Models, in February, 2002. It was well received but I published only 6 issues, terminating it after finding that it was going to take $300 a month to publish and deliver; I closed it the same month that the Figure Models Guild was formed.

In 2002, Clark let me use the gallery to form the Guild; the first formal meeting was in July of that year, a resounding success with about 50 models and artists in attendance. It continued to grow to the point that most of the colleges, universities, schools and groups from Baltimore to Annapolis and Winchester to Richmond were using it as a guide for their models. I told Clark that I would guarantee the rent and operate the gallery. He owned a condo in New York, so he agreed, moved to New York and on January 1, 2005 my status changed from model to model-gallery operator.

Part Two – 2005 to 2010 – A New Horizon

David R. Quammen

The end of MOCA DC

MOCA DC as we have known it for 21 years will end later this week... There is a farewell party at Art Overnight - at 2328 Ontario Rd in Adams Morgan on Saturday, Dec 21st starting at 6 pm. Be on the lookout for the Grand Opening of Big Moca in the Sky.

Rosemary Feit Covey's retrospective coming in 2014

In March 2014, a retrospective of the last fifteen years of Rosemary Feit Covey's work will be on display at Johns Hopkins University's Evergreen Museum in Baltimore. Covey is one of the great, master artists of the DMV.

Featured artwork will include engravings, paintings, mixed media and installations. A catalog with commentary by curator James Abbott will accompany this exhibition.

Rosemary Feit Covey will also be a featured artist in MFA's group exhibition Focus Africa which will open at the gallery April 25th, 2014. Included are artworks inspired by the artist's South African heritage.

$37M a day!

This dude made $37M a day...

Five Curators. One Exhibition. No Art. Zero Dollars.

Five Curators. One Exhibition. No Art. Zero Dollars.

Can they Crowdfund a Crowdsourced Exhibition of Crowdfunding Rewards?

Artists, technologists, and business people, tired of stagnation from the
traditional funding models of investment, grants, and representation, have
turned to crowdfunding as a means to supplement or fully support their
ventures.  Today's world of connectivity creates a fluid landscape of
ideas, incentives and, even money. Small ideas and small amounts of money
can amass to a grandiose scale as individuals are united even fleetingly
for common cause. This is unique to our time, and our era.  “Mining the
Crowd” seeks to bring together the audience and the funder for a
discussion of the sustainability of crowdfunding, especially, but not
limited to, how it pertains to the arts.

Currently, “Mining the Crowd” is in the middle of its 30-day make-or-break
fundraising Kickstarter campaign, the sole financial source for a future
Kickstarter and Indiegogo based art exhibition, which will present
materials from artists actively engaged in their own crowdfunding
campaigns. Fiscal sponsorship for this project will be provided by
Maryland Art Place (MAP), allowing donations to Mining the Crowd’s
crowdfunding campaign to be partially tax deductible.

While the culminating exhibition is scheduled for February 2015 in the
Sheila & Richard Riggs and Leidy Galleries in the Graduate Studio center
at MICA (Maryland Institute College of Art), funding must be completed as
soon as possible.  The second phase of this project involved investing in
the artists who will ultimately exhibit.  Not only will the artist need to
be sought out in crowdfunding circles, but they will need to be given time
to create their art.

Through this meta-Kickstarter social experiment, social media, and the
exhibition, the curatorial team aims to educate artists and facilitate
critical discourse about the challenges to financially supporting one’s
artistic practice. Additionally, like most campaigns, the team desires to
build a community of supporters for this project and this conversation.

More information about the project and links the Facebook, Twitter, and Tumbler pages can be found at http://miningthecrowd.org.

The ongoing Kickstarter campaign can be found at
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/miningthecrowd/mining-the-crowd-artifacts-of-crowdfunding-exhibit

Contrails...

There were like a dozen contrails in the sky at once this evening on the drive on I-95S -- probably all heading to Dulles...

You gotta see this...

Click here.

Sigh...

Spiderman Naked finds a home

Spiderman Naked
Charcoal, conte and embedded appropriated video. 13x8 inches matted and framed to 26x20 inches
2013 by F. Lennox Campello

Detail of Spiderman Naked

Now in a permanent collection in Miami, Florida!

What's in a name...

This post is truly the result of me finding some slides from 1980 and 1981, which is when I was doing some artwork about identity and labeling and ethnicity, etc. when I was a student at the University of Washington School of Art in Seattle, Washington.

I've been recently trying to digitize my art slides, and to my distress, I've been finding out that some of those slide-holding binders have succumbed to mold and moisture, and those two moist diseases have robbed me of a lot of my own artistic history.

I am sure that the fact that between 1980 and now I've moved about 30 times, including twice to Europe and back, has something to do with it, but it still sucks.



"Las Siete Fridas (The Seven Fridas)"
Pen and Ink Wash, F. Lennox Campello
Univ. of Washington Art School assignment circa 1980-1981
Collection of Seeds for Peace. What hurt the most was the loss of slides documenting a series of pen and ink drawings, such as the above one, that I did on the thematic focus of surnames and what immediate impact is attached to them as soon as people hear them. Most of them, except for the dozen or so Frida pieces such as the one above, were sold at the Pike Place Market in Seattle, which is where I used to sell my art school assignments back then. The last name identity series was anchored around my documented passion for Frida Kahlo, and we must remember that not too many people outside of a certain artistic sphere was familiar with her back then... certainly not too many of my fellow Washington art students knew about her and her work back then. Her last name gave rise to some interesting questions about her... "She was Mexican?" was a common question after I gave her name at a class review or talk... I knew that it was the last name throwing them off... a Mexican whose last name was Kahlo?
Having been raised in two distinct places of immense ethnic and racial diversity (Easternmost Cuba and Brooklyn) I was a little surprised at their surprise. "How can she be Mexican with a German (well, really Austrian... but) last name?" they might as well have asked... some did.
And so, starting in my junior year (I think) I commenced a series of portraits of faces migrating across a spectrum of ethnic, racial, cultural and even fantasy diversity. The Seven Fridas is a good example of that... as we see her as Nordic, Moslem, African, Punk, Native American, Vulcan and Beatle.
Many of the pieces were akin to this one, but the portraits were of either some fellow students, or sometimes borrowed from popular imagery. And they had titles such as "Portraits of Peddrossah" instead of Pedrosa and Rhoddrighez instead of Rodriguez, and "The Seven Stages of Dellauhehrtah" instead of De La Huerta, etc.
As soon as a De La Huerta becomes a  Dellauhehrtah, I discovered, his/her whole ethnicity, and in some cases, his/her race shifts tremendously, regardless of the race, ethnicity or national origin of both the subject and the ones being subjected to my name and visual puzzlement. By the way, to this day, that name/word does not exist in all of the Internets.
Get my drift?
The Kahlo name issue, was of course somewhat kindled by my own last name issue.
"Is that Italian?" is the question that I'm used to getting, except in New England, where it is usually a more blunt "What are you?"

PLAY BY PLAY at Project 4

Project 4 will host Play by Play, a pop-up FLEX focus collaboration developed by guest curator Kayleigh Bryant. The show runs Jan 11 - Feb 1, 2014, with an opening reception Saturday, Jan. 11 from 7-9PM.

This exploration of the darker side of children's playtime features the work of Amy Hughes Braden, Bridget Sue Lambert, Janelle Whisenant, and Mark Williams. The sticky place between childhood innocence and adult realism is examined through different exercises in subverted play.

The artists in Play by Play dig into the malaise, mediocrity, sexuality, and violence implied by commonplace toys and imagery of childhood by re-appropriating these objects within complex juxtapositions of adult ideals. Braden's paintings of children and families offer a stark glimpse into the transitional moment straddling childhood and adulthood. Lambert's staged doll and dollhouse photography exposes the sexual and sexist implications of such toys. Whisenant's mutant stuffed-animal creatures question the cycle of childhood materiality. Williams' toy soldiers mock the implied oversimplification of war as a child's play.

FLEX is a group of artists and curators who come together to produce a series of exciting temporary exhibitions. Focusing on projects that do not rely on a stationary base of operations, FLEX is able to adapt to different locations to engage a variety of audiences and contexts. FLEX's loose framework provides a platform for an ever-changing cast of independent curators and artists to test the boundaries of visual expression and probe new ways of connecting with the viewer. As an open model, FLEX allows exhibitions to be dynamic and adapt to the spaces they inhabit. Mobile gallery spaces, outdoor projection units, site-specific installations, drawing machines, and 3D Printing are some of the tactics employed.  The curator, Kayleigh Bryant is a young Washington, DC-based curator, arts professional and freelance arts critic for outlets including Examiner.com, CBS Local DC Online and Brightest Young Things.com.

Getting ready to haul the Xmas tree home!

Lessons learned at AU

American University was locked down on Wednesday night when a person with a gun was spotted on campus at the same time that faculty member Alida Anderson and her class of future teachers were undertaking their final presentations for the semester. Alida’s course was taking place ...

Read the WaPo story here... 

AU now has the opportunity to do a full scrub on this issue and gather some great lessons learned from this event... one clear one is that something easy and simple has to be developed and placed in each classroom to allow the class to lock the doors from the inside... but in any event, I am very proud of my wife!

Obama selfie...

Notice how I'm not saying anything about the Obama selfie with that Danish lady at the Mandela funeral?

Cough, cough.... Heh, heh... Very Clintonian....  

Havana in ruins... 55 years and counting...

Almost every picture I’ve ever seen of Cuba’s capital shows the city in ruins. Una Noche, the 2012 gut punch of a film directed by Lucy Mulloy, captures in nearly every shot the savage decay of what was once the Western Hemisphere’s most beautiful city.

 Read this sad report at http://www.worldaffairsjournal.org/blog/michael-j-totten/once-great-city-havana

I shudder at this...

I cannot believe that my President shook hands with a murdering, racist dictator who has been brutalizing his people and enslaving a whole nation for almost 55 years... sigh.

 Three years ago Princeton professor Cornel West, actress Ruby Dee and director Melvin Van Peebles and 60 other African-American artists and leaders issued a public statement (titled "Acting on Our Conscience") that criticized the Castro dictatorship for its "increased violations of civil and human rights for those black activists in Cuba who dare raise their voices against the island’s racial system." 

People in the US are just not aware of Cuba's bloody racial history and the way that Afro-Cubans (who make up 35% of the Cuban population) have been and continue to be brutalized. POTUS should have been advised about what to do if this came up: what President Carter did decades ago when faced with the same situation and a different Castro: Ignore him.

General Grevious in the snow

General Grevious in the Snow

Opportunity for sculptors

The Capitol Hill Alphabet Animal Project will commission ten artists to produce sculptures that will be permanently installed on selected street posts in DC. 

These are paid commissions, and the project is working with a historian, will have a launch event, as well as produce a book. 

Funding for this phase is from the DDOT and the DC Humanities Council. 

More details here: https://sites.google.com/site/alphabetanimalsdc/home