I am not an angel

I live in a cul-de-sac.

My last four houses have been in a cul-de-sac.

There are a lot of "walkers" in our neighborhood... people who walk around, just walk and enjoy their walks.... sometimes I am one of them.

Early this morning, I went out to put something in my mailbox for the mailman to pick up. After spells of sunshine, it was Seattle-like, gray and brooding.

I heard a woman sobbing as she rounded the trees in the center of the cul-de-sac... so I delayed a little, and when she got close to me, I asked her if she was OK.

She came to me and hugged me and cried on my shoulders. She was a stranger, but the two or three generations of the women who raised me (my grandmother, my mother, and all my wives) popped through, and I hugged her back, and soothed her and said, "It will be OK."

She cried for a few seconds, then gently pulled away, sniffed... and asked me, "Are you an angel?"

She was serious - I felt the seriousness of the question.

"Fucking far from it", I thought to myself (thank God that I didn't say it out loud!)... but I just smiled and said no and asked her again if she was OK.

"Yeah", she sniffed again and started walking away slowly... then the stranger turned around and said to me, "Thank you Lenny."

Andy Warhol at auction

This 40-year-old work of mine just showed up at auction in Houston! This 1980 art school assignment is a signed and numbered litho of a portrait of Andy Warhol done for printmaking and also for portrait class - a steal at $50 opening bid!

https://www.liveauctioneers.com/item/86459829_f-lennox-campello-jr-andy-warhol

Art Bank call for artists!

Deadline is Friday, August 7, at 4:00 pm. 

I am pleased to announce that the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities (CAH) Art Bank Program grant application is now open. 

The Art Bank Collection is the District of Columbia’s fine art collection. Acquired through an annual request for applications, Art Bank works are loaned to District Government agencies for display in public areas and offices of government buildings. The Art Bank has been a source of recognition and support for local artists since 1986. It now includes nearly 3,000 artworks - none of which is mine, as the city has always declined to acquired any of my works. 

Please view this video (and more here!) to see examples of recently acquired works, or explore the entire Art Bank Collection here - note the lack of any work from yours truly!

The request for applications is now open - including both established and emerging artists living within a 50-mile radius of Washington, DC. District art galleries and nonprofit organizations may also apply on behalf of artists.

The application deadline is Friday, August 7, at 4:00 pm. 

The Commission will be offering free workshops on Wednesday, June 24, 10:00-11:30 am, and Wednesday, July 1, 4:00-5:30 pm. These session provide information on the grant and guidance on the application process.

Good luck!

Artist Relief Emergency Grants: Cycle III

Deadline: June 18, 2020

Artist Relief Emergency Grants: Cycle III
Organization: Artist Relief
Submission Deadline: June 18, 2020
Award Info: $5,000
Type: Grants & Fellowships
Eligibility: National
Categories: Craft/Traditional Arts, Photography, Drawing, Film/Video/New Media, Mixed-Media/Multi-Discipline, Painting, Sculpture
Online Only: Yes

Details here.

How One Artist is Preserving Her Legacy

I would imagine everyone has had to reflect on their own mortality during this pandemic. 

But, as it was, I spent significant time at the end of 2018 and a good part of 2019 thinking about my own impermanence. Not that I was ill or anything like that. But, my father, who was a cartoonist, passed away in 2018 from a long battle with cancer. As did my brother-in-law that same year, also from cancer. 

Maybe it was part of the grieving, but my husband and I decided it was time to think about our own “not being here anymore.”

What would happen to everything?

Read the insightful article in Artwork Archive here.

WHAT IF? The prison drawings of Carlos Walker

OPENING JUNE 10 - 6 pm - 8 pm 

THE  CENTER FOR CONTEMPORARY POLITICAL ART presents

WHAT IF? The prison drawings of Carlos Walker

CARLOS WALKER is a 38-year-old self-trained African-American artist who was released last year after spending 13 years in prison for drug trafficking. The inspiration for these drawings came to him after seeing a black prison guard discipline a white inmate.

"What if" traditional racial relationships wexre reversed, he thought to himself. And then set to work. Using chalk pastel. he completed 48 drawings while still in prison, before his release. Only 36 of them are currently on display because he couldn't afford to frame the other 12. He would be most grateful, as would we, if someone would donate $1,000 so the remaining drawings can be framed in time for them to be shown at CCPArt before WHAT IF closes July 5th.

10 June - 5 July 2020
CCPArt is located at
916 G Street NW / DC 20001

CCPArt is a 501-c-3 nonprofit corporation and donations are fully tax deductible

Glen Echo Park Partnership Gallery Request for Proposals 2021

Deadline: June 12, 2020

Glen Echo is seeking proposals from individuals, groups of artists or curators for their 2021 exhibitions.
>>> Details here

Call for Artists: Foundry Gallery Artists’ Choice 2020

Deadline: Jul 8, 2020

Open Juried Online Exhibit - >>> Details here

Artists’ Choice 2020 —Open Juried Online Exhibit
Exhibition dates August 5 – 30

About: Due to Covid 19 Artists’ Choice 2020 will be exhibited entirely online via The Foundry Gallery’s website www.foundrygallery.org

Eligibility : A National Juried Competition open to all artists 18 and up. There are no size restrictions or themes. Categories to include all 2-D and 3-D work.
All art will be for sale, and the gallery retains a 40% commission. Shipping arrangements made between artist and buyer.

On the anniversary of a superwoman's death

A few years ago my courageous mother died... this is my eulogy from that day:

When my father died last year, I began his eulogy by noting that another oak had fallen.

This morning, around 1:25AM, Ana Olivia Cruzata Marrero de Campello, his wife of over 60 years, and my beloved mother, passed on on the day of her 97th birthday.

If my father was an oak, then my mother was an equally strong, but also very pliable, and elegant tree.  When hurricanes attack the mainlands of the world, the strong tall trees often fall, but the pliable ones, like plantain trees, always give with the wind, and survive the storms, and thrive in the drenching rains.

My mother was like a an aged plantain tree, not only immensely strong and pliable, but also giving and nurturing.

Like many Cuban women of her generation and her social-economic background, she had never worked for a living in Cuba, and yet within a few days of our arrival in New York in the 1960s, she was working long hours in a sewing factory, putting her formidable seamstress skills, honed in the social sewing and embroidery gathering of young Cuban girls, to use in the "piece work" process of the New York sewing factories.

As soon as we saved the money, one of the first things that my mother bought was an electric sewing machine - a novelty to her, as she had always used one of the those ancient Singer machines with a foot pedal.

I remember as a child in Brooklyn, that women used to bring her fabric and a page from a magazine with a woman wearing a dress. Without the benefit of a sewing pattern, my mother would whip up a copy of the dress that was more often than not probably better made than the original. As the word of her skills spread, so did her customers and soon she was making more money working at home than at the factory - but she kept both jobs.

I once noted to her that I admired the courage that it must have taken  her to leave her family and immigrate to the United States. "We didn't come here as immigrants," she corrected me. "We came as political refugees, and I initially thought that we'd be back in Cuba within a few years at the most."

When the brutal Castro dictatorship refused to loosen its stranglehold on her birth place, she became an immigrant, and from there on an American citizen from her white-streaked hair down to her heel bone (that's a Cuban saying). Like my father, she loved her adopted country with a ferocity, that I sometimes feel that only people who have been bloodied by Communism can feel for a new, free homeland.

As as I've noted before, Cubans are archaic immigrants... we love this great nation because we recognize its singular and unique greatness; perhaps it is because our forebears had the same chance at greatness and blew it.

I remember as a teenager, once I started going out to parties and things at night on my own (around age 16 or so), that my mother would wait up for me, sitting by the third floor window of our Brooklyn apartment, where she could survey the whole neighborhood and see as far as the elevated LL subway station a few blocks away, to watch me descend the station stairs and trace my way home.

My mother was always fit and, as once described by my father, "flaca como un fusil" (as slim as a rifle). She was strong and fast. She was also quiet, but never silenced, and when needed, could and would command attention.

My mother was always well dressed and superbly coiffed. When we'd go to parties and events, women would always ask her where she'd gotten that dress! The answer was always the same: she'd made it!

At least once a week, to my father's dismay, and in spite of his demands that my mother stop it, she'd get her hair done at the nearby peluqueria (hair dresser).

My dad knew, and respected his limits with my mother. 

I remember one time that my father and I were returning from shopping at the supermarket, dragging one of those wheeled folding carts that could carry four full paper grocery bags. It had been snowing, so the Brooklyn streets were wet and muddy.

When we got to our apartment my father opened the door. He then stood there.

"Go in!" I demanded.

"We'll have to wait," he said gloomily, "Your mother mopped the floor and it's still wet." This giant, tough, street-brawling Galician then looked at me sheepishly, "I'd rather walk through a mine field than step on your mother's wet floor."

I learned a lesson there.

She used to delight in telling stories how, as a child, she would often win the horse races that kids staged around the small country towns where she was raised in Oriente province, where her father was a Mayoral.

"I almost always won," she'd say, and then would add: "Even though I was a skinny girl."

Once, in her seventies, back in the days where you could actually accompany people to the departing gates at airports, we were escorting my oldest daughter Vanessa, who had come to visit, and we were running late. As we got to the airport, we ran to the gate, and to everyone's surprise, Abuela got there first. I still remember how delighted my daughter was that her grandmother could still run like a gazelle.

When I joined the Navy at age 17, my first duty station was USS SARATOGA, which at the time was stationed in Mayport in Florida, and thus my parents decided to migrate south to Florida and moved to Miami... just to be close to me.

They spent the next 40 years in the same apartment while I was stationed all over the world.

The mostly Cuban-American families that lived over the years in that apartment loved my mother, and would always tell me stories about my mother, ever the nurturer, bringing them food when she knew that they were going over tough times, or riding the buses with them, just to show them the routes.

This week, when I arrived in Miami, already somewhat knowing that this was approaching the end, I saw her with tubes coming out of her mouth and her eyes closed. When I spoke to her she opened her eyes, and in spite of the visuals that my eyes were seeing she somehow still managed to look strong. 

I showed her photos and movies of her grand children, and talked to her for a long time.

I thanked her for having the courage to leave her motherland and afford me the opportunity to grow as an American.

When she was being extubated, a young woman came into the room with a guitar and played and sang the haunting free prose of Guajira Guantanamera (The peasant girl from Guantanamo); a most fitting song, since my mother was from Guantanamo, and she came from strong Cuban peasant stock.

"Guajira pero fina (A peasant, but a very refined woman)", noted a neighbor and loving caretaker. 

The song, which can start with just about any prose, started with the Jose Marti poem:

 Yo quiero, cuando me muera, sin patria, pero sin amo, tener en mi tumba un ramo de flores y una bandera

I want to, when I die, without my motherland, but without a master, to have on my tomb a bunch of flowers and a flag.

She died without a master, a strong and pliable woman who not only gave me the gift of life, but also the gift of freedom.

And as my mother died in her sleep in the early hours of the morning, in the capital city of the bitter Cuban Diaspora, all that I could gather to say to her was mostly the same that I said to my father when he passed last year: "Thank you for your courage... from me, and from my children... and soon from their children. You opened a whole new world for them."

I love you Mami... Un Abrazo Fuerte! Thank you for your gifts to me and my children, and happy birthday in Heaven!

Silhouette

Anderson Lennox Campello

Space-X

Space-X launch: For me it launched memories of me as a kid watching them on TV with my Dad in Brooklyn and us cheering when those Apollos lifted off.

At one point it also reminded me of the horror of watching the Challenger blow up on live TV when I was in Postgraduate School in Monterey in 1986.  I hope it all remains going great for the crew and the program!

Covidism

I've got an ass-kicking epic article coming in the Crier Media newspaper chain this June - as soon as link is up, will publish it -- get a hard copy anywhere... loads of illustrations.

Subject?

Here's a taste of the article:

In the nation, the pandemic has had an interesting, if not unexpected American twist: it has become a political issue of sorts. The angry left blames the President – just the President – for everything, and the angry right mirrors it right back to whoever is/are the leaders of the Democrat party these days.

Leave it to artists to actually do something positive not only with these two political interpretations of a disease, but also with a myriad of interpretations of the Covidian Age and Covidism – and I suspect that a millennia from now, when perhaps even more dark events have been survived by the human race, it is the First Covidian Age artwork which will truly tell the story and mark the crowning spot (pun intended) of the Coronavirulization of art.

TILA Studios COVID-19 Fund: Support for Black Women Artists

Deadline: July 1, 2020

Award Info: $1000
Type: Grants & Fellowships
Eligibility: National
Categories: Craft/Traditional Arts, Photography, Drawing, Film/Video/New Media, Mixed-Media/Multi-Discipline, Painting, Sculpture

TILA Studios is launching a recurring monthly fund beginning at $1,000 to support black women artists nationwide.

THIS FUNDS SUPPORTS BLACK WOMEN WHO HAVE:
Experienced a stalled gig or opportunity
Lost of income from day job being temporarily closed
Stipend for on-going art project with a specific purpose and direction

Artist Relief Emergency Grants

Deadline: June 18, 2020

Artist Relief Emergency Grants: Cycle III
Organization: Artist Relief
Submission Deadline: June 18, 2020
Award Info: $5,000
Type: Grants & Fellowships
Eligibility: National
Categories: Craft/Traditional Arts, Photography, Drawing, Film/Video/New Media, Mixed-Media/Multi-Discipline, Painting, Sculpture
Online Only: Yes

Details here.

Creative in Quarantine conversations

Join Hirshhorn Museum curator emerita Phyllis Rosenzweig for a Creative in Quarantine conversation Thursday May 21 4-5pm. 

This is one in a series of weekly conversations produced by Day Eight’s Arts Writing Fellowship project and Cove Coworking during the corona quarantine. 

All events are free and to ensure interaction among attendees attendance is capped at 10. After registering a private link is provided to join on Zoom. The events are hosted by Robert Bettmann.

Phyllis Rosenzweig - Thur May 21 4-5pm

Phyllis Rosenzweig is curator emerita at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden. At the Museum she organized exhibitions by contemporary artists such as Byron Kim, Louise Lawler, Sherrie Levine, Sol LeWitt, Glenn Ligon, Thomas Struth, and Lawrence Weiner. She has taught at George Washington University and at the Corcoran College of Art + Design and remains active in curatorial and publication projects. Register here.

Full series is in the “event” on Facebook and the next ones are:

Edward Winkleman - Wed May 27th 4-5pm

Edward Winkleman is Director of Digital Operations at John Wiley and Sons, an American multinational publishing company founded in 1807. He began his career in the art world with a series of guerilla-style exhibitions organized in New York and London under the name 'hit & run' and in 2001 co-founded Plus Ultra Gallery in the Williamsburg district of Brooklyn, New York. Moving into Manhattan's gallery district in Chelsea in 2006, he changed the name of the gallery to Winkleman Gallery and the gallery's exhibitions were reviewed in the New York Times, Artforum, Art in America, Flash Art, the New Yorker, TimeOut New York, and Art on Paper, among others. He authored an eponymous and highly influential blog about the art world and politics and was a contributing editor to the international blog Art World Salon. He lives in New York City.

Ron Charles - Tue June 2nd 4-5pm

Ron Charles is a book critic at The Washington Post. Prior to joining the Post, Charles was the book review editor and staff critic for seven years at The Christian Science Monitor. In 2010 he began a series of video book reviews for The Washington Post called "The Totally Hip Video Book Review". Sometimes featuring his wife, high school English teacher Dawn Charles, the videos are humorous reviews of books in the news and the art of book reviewing.

Maura Judkis - Thursday June 11 Noon-1pm

Maura Judkis is a features reporter covering culture, food, and the arts for the Washington Post. She has also received recognition as a humorist, essayist, food taster, and video presenter. In 2018 she won the James Beard Foundation media award for humor for her article about pumpkin spice. Since 2011, she has written for the Washington Post as a general assignment reporter in the Style section.

The Covidian Age: $5,000 grants

Artist Relief will distribute $5,000 grants to artists facing dire financial emergencies due to COVID-19; serve as an ongoing informational resource; and co-launch the COVID-19 Impact Survey for Artists and Creative Workers, designed by Americans for the Arts, to better identify and address the needs of artists. 

No Entry Fee. 

Details: http://bitly.com/3bLqUVh

Transformer's 13th annual Collector's View series

Transformer's 13th annual Collector's View series -- which offers a glimpse into the private collections of prominent contemporary art collectors in the DC area -- is online. While in previous years this series was held in the homes of their collector Hosts, this year, Transformer has re-imagined this series in response to current events.

Collector's View 2020 Reimagined Online is a series of daily videos in which a different Host will share a favorite artwork in their private collections. This year's diverse lineup of Hosts include: Molly Donovan, Curator of Contemporary Art at the National Gallery of Art, Svetlana Legetic, Co-Founder and CEO of Brightest Young Things, and Lucian Perkins, a two-time Pulitzer Prize winning independent photographer and filmmaker. 

Collector's View 2020 Reimagined Online is free and registration is required. People who register will have access to a new video every Monday - Friday at 4pm throughout the month of June. 

Unique opportunity to have an intimate glimpse into the homes and collections of their Hosts!

Artist Booster Grant 2020

Just a reminder that tomorrow at midnight is the deadline to apply for an Artist Booster Grant 2020. Submissions to-date have been both fascinating - amazing artists - and heart breaking stories.

Please share with any and all you would like to encourage and support in the arts.

A View from the Inside Out, will award two unrestricted $500 grants to artists who are persisting in their work and community despite the turbulent times:

Two $500 unrestricted grants to support artists and their ongoing work in these challenging times. Organized by A View from the Inside Out, a mentor-mentee program that builds community art projects while advocating for ethical labor policies and practices.

Open to all artists. Period. No application fee. No restrictions on how the funds are used.

Deadline to apply: May 15 2020
Awards Announced: May 29 2020
To apply click here.

Call for funny animal pics

Deadline: May 31, 2020 

The Comedy Wildlife Photography Awards are looking for funny wildlife images. The competition has six categories: 

• The Alex Walker’s Serian Creatures of the Land Category 

• The Spectrum Creatures in the Air Category 

• The ThinkTank Photo Junior Category 

• The Amazing Internet Portfolio Category 

• The Olympus Underwater Category 

• The Video Clip Category. 

No Entry Fee. 

Details: http://bitly.com/32hjLJ5

Art Scam Alert!

Beware of this would be rip-off asswipe:

Beacon Actis - beacarctt00@outlook.com

Good Day,

How is work and family? I picked interest in your artwork and decided to write you. I will like to know if your artwork can be purchased and shipped internationally?. I can email the artwork of interest and payment will be completed in full once you confirm my purchase order with a quotation. Kindly let me know when you are in office and ready to take my artwork order also let me know if you accept either Visa Card/MasterCard or PayPal for payment

Best Regards

Beacon

Available $$$ for Virginia Arts and Humanities Organizations

More Than $1 Million Available for Virginia Arts and Humanities Organizations Struggling Due to COVID-19

Virginia’s state-wide arts and humanities councils will receive more than $1 million in federal funds designated for emergency relief to arts and cultural organizations affected by the COVID-19 health crisis, according to a joint statement by Virginia Humanities and Virginia Commission for the Arts.

The funds are part of the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act (CARES Act) passed by Congress in March. The $2 trillion aid package includes $75 million each for the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) and National Endowment for the Arts (NEA), a portion of which will be sent to state and territorial arts and humanities councils to redistribute to nonprofit organizations in need.

Application information and eligibility requirements are now available on VirginiaHumanities.org and Arts.Virginia.gov. The deadline for museums, historic sites, and educational and cultural institutions to apply to Virginia Humanities is April 30 and the deadline for arts agencies to apply to the Virginia Commission for the Arts is May 8.

Virginia arts and cultural organizations can also apply directly to the NEH and NEA for aid of up to $300,000 (NEH) and $50,000 (NEA).

MORE DETAILS, ONLINE HERE

The Coronavirulization of the American Art Scene

National impact of COVID-19 on the arts is $4.8 billion... and rising! 

According to a study by Americans for the Arts (AFTA), the economic impact of the Wuhan Flu Coronavirus (COVID-19) on the arts and culture sector is significant, with over 42.3 million lost attendance and close to 27,000 people furloughed or laid off from jobs with cultural organizations.

From Margery Goldberg

A note from DMV art icon Margery Goldberg - click anywhere on the below to see some great ideas:

Dear Zenith Friends,

 Mother's Day. What do Mothers want the most? To see their children happy, healthy, successful, fulfilled, engaged in life.They want grandchildren, but probably should not ask when!

 They want to be with their family no matter how large or small. Now this is the hard part given our current situation. Some cannot be together now. Even though in some families they have not spent this much time with their children in a long time. They say there will be a surge of homeschooling now that people have the handle on it.  

 Mothers are all ages. Our children are mothers, our sisters and cousins are mothers, and even some fathers have to be mothers!

I believe that being a mother is as much of a state of mind as a physical actuality. I am a stepmom to wonderful men; they have families and I have grandchildren. Being a mom does not mean you had to give birth to them. If that were true then everyone who gives birth would be a great mom. Fortunately, most are fabulous moms. Some over-mom and they hover, and as a dear friend says, you give them roots so they grow wings.  

 The preeminent mother of them all is Mother Nature. She is all wise and she is in control. If anyone had any doubt, these last few months should leave no doubt in your mind. We will either abide by her demands or we will perish.  

 What does your mother, daughter, sister or any woman that means something to you want?

Something personal, no matter how small. Zenith is here to help you with that. Whether it be a piece of jewelry, a work of art, a gift certificate so she can pick out her own. How about a commissioned portrait of Mom or the entire family? Today you can see a number of those artists to choose from. Hubert Jackson, Davis Morton or Bradley Stevens have very distinctive styles, so you have a lot to choose from.

 It is time to show your mom or any mom in your family some appreciation. They are doing more than ever.

The Coronavirulization of the Self Portrait - Call for Artists!

The Corona Portrait Project invites submissions of self-portraits created in response to the current pandemic. Accepted entries will be exhibited online and select entries will be featured. Submissions accepted on a rolling basis, do not wait to submit. See website for submission instructions. 

No Entry Fee. 

Details: http://www.coronaportrait.com/

From the DC Art News files

The above photo was taken in 2011 at the home of a DMV art collector who threw a nice book opening party for my 100 Artists of Washington, DC book.  In the pic's background we see Andrew Wodzianski, Tim Tate, Pat Goslee, me and Victor Ekpuk's arm. In the foreground, Chawky Frenn is hugging the late, great Lida Moser!

Wear a mask!

Please show respect to our essential workers every day during this Coronavirulization of the planet pandemic by wearing a mask!

http://www.ufcw.org/coronavirus/shopsmart/

Call for photographers

Deadline: May 31, 2020 

The California Academy of Sciences in San Francisco has launched a grant for emerging photographers, aged 18-25, to support the creation of photographic images around the themes of conservation, science and sustainability of the natural world. They are looking for proposals for multi-media Projects around the theme of conservation, science and sustainability of the natural world. 

No Entry Fee. 

Details: http://bitly.com/2VoTNlc

Explore a Post-Pandemic District or Connect with Local Artists on Facebook

Check out this great little blurb by Lou Jacobson in the Washington City Paper about what artists are doing online during the Covidian Age and its associated Coronavirulization of Art!

Read it here!

Art I am looking at every day - COVID19

That DMV area jewel known as Judith Olivia Heartsong has created a very cool Facebook page for everyone to share some of the artwork that is helping them to survive the quarantine of the Covidian Age.

See it here.

I've been posting including...

I generally do not hang much of my own work in my house - this piece is one of the exceptions: It is a rather large Frida Kahlo portrait collage done in 1979 at a collage class by Prof. Jacob Lawrence when I was a student at the University of Washington School of Art. I used it both for the collage class and for a portrait class project... I used paper from art magazines of that year, and the pieces all have clues about Frida's life and impact... she wasn't as well-known back then...

Art Scam Alert!

Beware of this scammer:

From: james anderson -- jamesanderson361@hotmail.com

Hi, I'm  James from PA I noticed my wife viewed your website on my laptop and i guess he likes your piece of work. I'm also amazed to have seen your nice works too. I would like to purchase the piece attached as a surprise for my wife on our Anniversary, is the piece available and what is the final price? Thanks and best regards