Monday, October 04, 2004

Tyler Green does a tiny DC gallery walk-through.

Sunday, October 03, 2004

DCARTNEWS reader Shark chimes in with a very funny comment on the Flavin Retro at the NGA:

"I've always wondered: Have museums and collectors stocked up on replacement bulbs for their Flavin works?

What happens in a hundred years or so (a decade, even?) -- when nobody can find a flourescent tube?

PS: Shark's Prediction: Flavin won't even be a minor blip on the art history landscape. He and the likes of Donald Judd will be lucky to be footnotes.

(But Marfa [Santa Fe without the scenery] is nice this time of year!)"

Saturday, October 02, 2004

The power of the Internet surfaces again...

Ernesto Guevara de La Serna LynchI received a studio email (I think) thanking me for pointing out to the world that the movie trailers for the new Motorcycles Diaries movie were mispronouncing Ernesto "Che" Guevara de La Serna Lynch's name, and Lo and Behold: there's a new voice over the same movie trailer.

Now... Che's name is not mentioned at all!

GE-varah, GE-varah, GE-varah (soft "G"... like in "get").

Blake Gopnik at the Washington Post with an excellent video review of Dan Flavin at the NGA.

Poor Flavin's show will soon come down in history as the exhibition that everyone loved but that was cursed with the cheesiest headlines in art history.

Gopnik's is "Glowing Review" while Kimmelman was "To Be Enlightened, You Pull the Switch."

By the way, in case you missed it, a few days ago Gopnik dissed "imperious art critic Clement Greenberg." Read it here.

The pot calling the kettle black?

Last night I went gallery hopping around Dupont Circle and managed to catch a few shows, drink some free cheap white wine and nibble on some cookies.

Jane Bowles by Judith RichelieuI started at Gallery 10, a terrific cooperative, artist-run gallery. The current exhibit is by Judith Richelieu, a former librarian at the Library of Congress.

She has 25 portraits of women artists, writers, etc. as part of a series called "Eligy." Richelieu complements them with carved wood saints that accompany the portraits. I overheard the artist discuss the fact that she "wasn't a portrait artist," which I found a little odd in terms of her current exhibition.

I'm not really sure what to think of the portraits. Richeliu obviously works from published photographs (nothing wrong with that), but every single one of her portraits is done in the same odd, unsual grayish skin tone for all the women, as if they all share a shark somewhere in their family tree.

It is a bit disorienting, but perhaps Richelieu wants to use the common gray skin color as a unifying force. My favorite piece was the portrait of Spanish artist Remedios Varos. The works are on exhibition until October 30.

Up the street, Kathleen Ewing Gallery has photographs by contemporary Native American artists Zig Jackson, Victor Masayesva, Jr. and Hulleah Tsinhnahjinnie. Michael O'Sullivan wrote about this exhibition:

"For Indian art with a bit of an edge (something you won't find at the new museum, by the way), try Kathleen Ewing Gallery's "Contemporary Native American Art." Along with the photographs of Victor Masayesva Jr. and Hulleah Tsinhnahjinnie, the show includes several selections from some of photographer Zig Jackson's more pointed black-and-white pictures, including his shots of tourists taking snapshots of Indians in full regalia, which turn the exploitative gaze back on the exploiter, and his conceptual series featuring the artist in feathered headdress and sunglasses posing in front of a customized sign demarking "Zig's Indian Reservation," which happens to be wherever the artist sees fit to stand."
The exhibition closes October 9.

Marsha Mateyka yet again has an exhibition from the Gene Davis estate. See them here, and you can see some recent results of Gene Davis' auctions at Sotheby's here.

Elizabeth Roberts Gallery is having its farewell show, as the gallery is closing at the end of this show as ELizabeth is moving to the Bay Area. On exhibition are works by Alice Oh. Her paintings are derived from the behavior and morphology of infected blood cells as seen under the microscope and are fascinating to study how nature and art align to deliver some very interesting results. I am sure that Ms. Roberts is hoping NOT to get the same sort of cosa nostra goodbye review that Jessica Dawson gave the Sally Troyer gallery when it closed.

Below the Elizabeth Roberts Gallery things were going gangbusters for The Studio Gallery; several sales took place in the few minutes that I was there. The current exhibition is "Works on Paper" by Phyllis Jayne Evans.

The Studio Gallery is celebrating its 40th anniversary this year - this is a spectacular achievement and in "gallery years" something rare and noteworthy, as most galleries close within a year of opening and a hardy few survive past four or five years.

I then visited Fondo del Sol, fully aware that once I said hello to Marc Zuver it could possibly be another week before I'd leave. Fondo del Sol is one of the cultural jewels of our city, and the current exhibition(s) do not disappoint. Zuver has curated a fascinating grouping of works under a exhibit titled "In Search of Lost Iberia," where he submits a theory that the peoples of ancient Iberia and ancient Georgia (the former Soviet republic, not the Southern state) share a common name, bloodlines and history in a distant past. There are some striking works of art by Alejandro Arostegui, Rogelio Lopez Marin ("Gory"), Vladimir Kandelaki and Mumumka Mikeladze.

Of these, Kandelaki's works stand out by their sheer complexity and by the powerful ant-Soviet and pro-Georgian messages they delivered when first created in the 1980s. They are courageous works that represented the brutal Soviet repression of the Georgian people and the decay of Soviet Communism.

And if you want to see one of the most powerful exhibitions around the theme of Native Americans (in fact so powerful that you'll never see anything like it in the new National Museum of the American Indian), then go see Michael Auld's installation "Surviving Genocide: Remembering Anacaona."

For the last several years Michael Auld has been researching and documenting the indigenous people of the Caribbean; some, such as the Tainos, were thought to be extinct, until "discovered" by Auld, in small mountain pockets of people.

When I first saw Auld's works a few years ago, what stuck in my mind was an extraordinary wooden sculpture of Itiba Cahubaba, the legendary Earth mother of Taino legend. This stunning piece depicted the Earth mother giving birth simultaneously to two sets of twins, who became the fathers of mankind. This was a gripping piece not only because of its artistic value, but more importantly because it marked the rebirth of Taino culture after nearly 500 years of being nearly forgotten, erased and virtually destroyed.

Auld's current exhibition adds another powerful installation based on a sculpture of Anacaona, the famous Taino queen who was the wife of one of the five caciques of Hispaniola and one of the first recorded Native American characters met by the Spaniards when they first landed on that unfortunate island. She was subsequently murdered by the Conquistadors, whom she had invited to her village.

In Auld's installation, a life-sized cherry wood sculpture of Anacaona sits in a cohoba trance in a traditional bohio (house) made from sixteen carved large lizards and snakes. The queen is adorned with conch jewelry and feathers, and delivers a stern message to contemporary viewers. It left me feeling uncomfortable and thinking that at one point Father Bartolome de las Casas estimated that there were six million Tainos in the Caribbean when the Spaniards first arrived.

Bruno PerilloWhen I managed to escape Zuver's animated discussion I headed over to Irvine Contemporary Art, which has a spectacular exhibition by one of the most talented young painters that I have seen in years: Bruno Perillo.

The Brooklyn-based Perillo brings a superbly talented brush to the revived genre of painting. He was recently reviewed by Michael O'Sullivan in the Post who wrote that Perillo has "witty, conceptual works that allude to both highbrow and lowbrow culture." O'Sullivan nailed it, and the show has nearly sold out, reviving my hope that Washingtonians are discovering that they can actually buy art here in the city!

Next I went to the Washington Printmaker's Gallery, where Jen Watson gave me a quick tour of the main show (monoprints by Christine Giammichele) and the always strong group show in the back gallery by the gallery's member artists.

My last stop was at Conner Contemporary where Avish Khebrehzadeh's show has also sold very well. The show was reviewed by Dawson here and by Cudlin here, but I think that it was this article on art collectors Tony and Heather Podesta that drove the collectors to one of the best galleries in the city.

Keep coming back.

Friday, October 01, 2004

I know, I know... I keep bashing the Post on their miserably tiny coverage of our area's art galleries and artists, but I must admit that at least Michael O'Sullivan, who covers the museums and sometimes galleries for the Post's Weekend section, does a pretty good job of keeping a finger on the pulse of DC's visual arts.

Today he covers five separate shows in Indian Art Beyond the Museum.

He also reviews "The Dream of Earth: 21st-Century Tendencies in Mexican Sculpture." at the Cultural Institute of Mexico. That is one show that I do not want to miss.

If you haven't been to the Cultural Institute of Mexico, please do so; it is one of the most beautiful buildings and most attractive gallery spaces in DC.

© Stephen Flavin/Artists Rights Society, New York
Other than the really cheesy headline, this is a pretty eloquent review by the New York Times' Michael Kimmelman of the Dan Flavin traveling retrospective exhibition now at the East Building of the National Gallery.

Even some humor: In discussing Flavin's impact, Kimmelman writes that ... "It also helped to open the way for installation art, but you can't blame only Flavin for that."

Who else do we blame? We want names!

Tonite is the Dupont Circle Art Galleries' crawl... from 6-8 PM. Most galleries will have wine and food as well as the artists will be there to meet the public.

Go and buy some art.

In a major new visual arts initiative for the Northern Virginia region, the League of Reston Artists (LRA) announces its first Call for Curated and Solo Art Exhibition Proposals for exhibits to be presented during its 2005 season at its sponsoring venue, The University of Phoenix Northern Virginia Campus, in Reston, Virginia.

LRA Board Member and spokesperson, James W. Bailey, says that individual artists, groups of artists, artist collectives, and independent emerging curators are invited to submit proposals for a curated exhibition by the postmarked deadline of Monday, January 17, 2005. Bailey also says proposals for solo artist exhibitions will be considered and are strongly encouraged from regional artists as part of this call.

"Those interested in submitting proposals are encouraged to visit the site at the University of Phoenix first to see how the space would work with their ideas," says Bailey. "Interested curators and artists can download the proposal application form from our web site."

Proposals should include a brief narrative exhibition statement, artist statements from key participants, a proposed budget, a proposed timeframe for the exhibition and relevant support materials, including representational slides, photographs, CD’s or videos. The LRA Board will select shows based on a representation of the proposed works included in the proposal.

Congratulations to Tyler Green, Washington, DC's first art BLOGger, who has been designated as the art critic for Bloomberg News.

The Vampire Rises Again

"A group of works by Damien Hirst, including his famous tiger shark suspended in formaldehyde and "Hymn," his monumental bronze anatomical model, as well as pieces by fellow British artists Tracey Emin, Jenny Saville, Sarah Lucas, Jake and Dinos Chapman, Marc Quinn, and Chris Ofili, among many others, are to be removed from display at the Saatchi Gallery. In their place comes an exhibition, "The triumph of painting" which opens in January 2005 to mark the 20th anniversary of the gallery."
The new show is devoted to the work of five painters, Peter Doig, Luc Tuymans, Marlene Dumas, Jörg Immendorf, and Martin Kippenberger, described by Charles Saatchi as "key European artists."

If you are one of those critics or curators who have been trumpeting the "death of painting" for the last four decades: your flag-bearer just went to the other side.

Read the entire Art Newspaper story here. (Thanks AJ).

The Washington City Paper continues to take over the vacuum created by the continuous Washington Post's poor coverage of the area's galleries and artists with several interesting reviews in the current issue.

Louis Jacobson reviews our current show of Hugh Shurley's DC debut of his photographs at our Georgetown gallery. He also reviews Kristi Mathews at Flashpoint.

And Jeffry Cudlin has a very good and interesting review of Avish Khebrehzadeh at Conner Contemporary Art.

Thursday, September 30, 2004

Todd Gibson at From The Floor has a very interesting survey about art and BLOGS. You can (and should) take it here.

By the way, don't miss Gibson's funny comments on Gopnik and Chelsea galleries!

At the risk of sounding pedantic...

click here to buy the book I find it incredible that the voice over for the movie trailers for the new Che Guevara movie The Motorcycle Diaries mispronounces Guevara's last name!

The "u" in Guevara is silent - It is not GUeh-varah; it is GE-varah (soft "G").

And I haven't seen the movie yet, but I bet that Hollywood glosses over one of the key aspects of Che's motorcycle trek: His (then) racist attitude towards Indians and Blacks.

In 1952, together with his friend Alberto Granado, Che took a wandering trip through South America, begging, drinking and borrowing their way through Argentina's northern neighbors. The book "Motorcycle Diaries" is about this trek, and the movie is based on this book.

Peru, with its largely pure Indian population had a profound effect on Guevara, and he refers to the Andean Indians as the "beaten race" in his diary. Since Argentina's own Indians had long been destroyed and overwhelmed by the millions of white immigrants from Spain, Germany and Italy which populated his homeland, it was in Peru where Che first met an oppressed people, and he notes in his writing that although he and Granado were usually broke, they were able to get by on "favors and concessions" based on their white skin.

South America's Caribbean coast provided him with his first exposure to black people, and oddly enough, the man who was later to fight alongside Africans in the Congo made some harsh observations, deeply fragmented with stereotypical Argentinean white racism:

"The blacks, those magnificent examples of the African race who have conserved their racial purity by a lack of affinity with washing, have seen their patch invaded by a different kind of slave: The Portugese.... the black is indolent and fanciful, he spends his money on frivolity and drink; the European comes from a tradition of working and saving which follows him to this corner of America and drives him to get ahead."

In his defense, as Che grew, his native racism towards people of color was discarded, and eventually he even married a mestiza.

But I suspect that the movie misses this area of this fascinating and iconic man's life.

I'll let you know when I see it.

The 48th Corcoran Biennial

Another sign that some sort of sanity may be returning to contemporary art can be read between the lines in the focus of the coming 48th Corcoran Biennial.

The 48th Corcoran Biennial: Closer to Home apparently takes as its focus contemporary artists making use of "traditional arts methods" (their words).

This coming Biennial also marks somewhat a return to the exhibition’s origins (it was America's only painting Biennial at one point) and "considers the familiar territories of traditional media – such as canvas, paint and wood – while giving prominence to the work of Washington, DC-based artists."

And I like that! And a well-deserved thank you to curators Dr. Jonathan Binstock and Stacey Schmidt for finally taking the lead and looking in their own backgarden for a major "local" museum exhibition. The previous Biennial (and Binstock's first) only had one area artist: the Corcoran's own Susan Smith-Pinelo (represented locally by Fusebox).

Per Corcoran Associate Curator of Contemporary Art and exhibition co-organizer Stacey Schmidt: "As the first museum in the nation’s capital, the Corcoran is especially committed to supporting the work of DC-based artists."

We've been noticing this change from Binstock and Schmidt's predecessor and saying under our breath: "About time!"

Area artists included in the Biennial are James Huckenpahler (represented locally by Fusebox Gallery and who got reviewed today in the Post), Colby Caldwell (represented locally by Hemphill Fine Arts), and Baltimore-based photographer John Lehr.

Both Lehr and Huckenpahler were also finalists in the 2003 Trawick Prize, which was also juried by Binstock (one of three jurors).

All together, Closer to Home showcases the following artists: Rev. Ethan Acres (represented locally by Conner Contemporary), Chakaia Booker, Matthew Buckingham, Colby Caldwell, George Condo, Adam Fuss, James Huckenpahler, John Lehr, Iñigo Manglano-Ovalle, Richard Rezac, Dana Schutz, Kathryn Spence, Austin Thomas and Monique van Genderen.

At the Corcoran Gallery of Art from March 19 – June 27, 2005.

I'll be damned if Glenn Dixon didn't surprise me today with his reviews in the "Galleries" column at the Post.

We've all been waiting for Dixon to review Fusebox, which for whatever reason, has never been reviewed by Jessica Dawson, even though we all know that Fusebox is one of our city's top galleries and certainly one of the hardest working galleries. And we also know that Dixon is a well-published Fusebox enthusiast. So it's no surprise that Fusebox and Dixon would come together.

And yet, surprisingly enough (to me), in today's review, Dixon throws a well-deserved wet-blanket upon James Huckenpahler's photographs, which may have gone to the same well once too often. Bravo Glenn!

Dixon is a bit more positive about Maggie Michael at G Fine Art:

"Maggie Michael keeps it new for us by keeping it new for herself. A couple of years ago she was an American University graduate with a passable gimmick. Since then her work has developed at a rate that is little short of astonishing. Right now she is one of the best painters in town."
From gimmick to astonishing in a couple of years... at least we are getting a positive review about a painter (and a good one) in our town.

lucy hogg

There’s such a dichotomy in this name; such a contradiction of stereotypes: Lucy, soft, feminine and flowing.

Hogg: heavy, masculine and powerful. And once you discover her artwork, you'll realize that seldom has a person been so aptly named.

Hogg is a tiny person, almost elfin-like; a complete reverse of what pops into the mind when it tries to visualize someone named Lucy Hogg. My mind came up with two characters: The first was as a sister or close kin of that big, fat, greasy character (Boss J.D. Hogg) in the Dukes of Hazzard TV series.

Because Hogg is Canadian, the other image was that of a secondary character in Robertson Davies’ fictitious small Canadian village of Deptford. A village that he creates superbly in The Fifth Business (part one of the Deptford Trilogy).

And this dichotomy, this Ying Yang of words and mental imageries, translates well to Hogg’s American solo debut currently on exhibition until October 30 at Georgetown’s Strand on Volta Gallery.

Hogg recently moved to Washington from her native Canada. She has exhibited widely in Canada, Asia and Europe, and in a town [DC] where most critics and curators continue to preach the death of painting as a viable contemporary art form, she brings something new and refreshing, pumping some new energy to the ancient medium.

Let me explain.

Salvador Dali once said that "those that do not want to imitate anything produce nothing." This is the Ying of Hogg’s exhibition.

And George Carlin added that "the future will soon be a thing of the past." This is the Yang of her show.

Titled "Sliding Landscapes," the exhibition consists of nearly twenty paintings segregated into two different canvas shapes: oval shapes on the gallery’s left main wall and rectangular shapes on the right wall. Each set of paintings deliver individual ideas, and although tied together by the subject matter, they nonetheless express superbly two sets of thoughts and impressions that I think Hogg wants us to see.

Painting by Lucy HoggHogg’s imagery are copies of Old Master paintings, "sampled" (a new word introduced into art jargon from rap music’s habit of using other people’s music or someone else’s lyrics in your music) from a series of capriccios, or fantasy landscapes by 18th century Venetian painters Canaletto, Francesco Guardi and Marco Ricci.

"Fantasy" in the sense that the landscapes only existed in the artists’ minds until created by them and re-invented two centuries later by Hogg.

I must clarify from the very beginning that these paintings are not "copies" in the same sense that you see people sitting in front of paintings in museums all over the world, meticulously copying an Old Master’s work, stroke by stroke.

Therein lies another dichotomy in this exhibition: Reading a description of Hogg’s subject matter brings that image to mind; seeing them destroys it. This is one show where the most erudite of news release spinmeisters will be challenged to separate the two visions.

So what are they?

Hogg starts with a capriccio painting that she likes. I suspect that she works from a reproduction, even a small one, or from an art history book or catalog, and thus cleverly avoids the pitfall of becoming a true copier rather than a sampler.

She then re-creates the capriccios in their original format (rectangular), but completely replaces the color of the original with a simple tint or combination of tints.

Simple enough... Riiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiight.

It isn’t simple at all.

What Hogg has cleverly done again is to offer us two visual main courses. Sure, she's recreating the original painting, overly-simplified and yet still complex with the seed of great painting and composition planted by the original Masters. But she has also provided herself with a radical new vehicle to flex some very powerful painting and creative skills of her own.

The overly simplified paintings offer her ample room and opportunities to bring a 21st century perspective to these works. Not just her very modern colors (cleverly incorporated into the titles such as "Fantasy Landscape (pthalo green/chrome oxide green) 2004"). Her scrubby, energetic brushwork is everywhere, especially the open skies of some of the works, and where 18th century masters would have reacted in horror, a modern audience takes their middle age glasses off so that we can better try to absorb the quality of the brushwork and peer at the under layers, often left exposed, that reveal the virtuosity of being able to deliver an exciting painting with a very limited palette.

Even within these rectangular recreations, Hogg has a Ying Yang thing going. A group of the pieces are truly monochromatic, using only ultramarine blue or yellow ochre.

In these, the simple associations of cool and warm colors mapping to respective emotions is what anchors our responses to them. But there are some pieces where she has ventured into two distinct colors (such as violet and burnt sienna orange). In these, the opposite position of these hues on the color wheel, and their well-known association with eye-brain responses in creating tension and movement, position these works as a very successful venture into the exploration of color, never mind the landscape that is the vehicle.

Vision two of the exhibition are the oval paintings. Here we again see the same explorations in color and painting that Hogg offered us in the rectangular pieces. But then she opens a new door for us; perhaps even a new door for contemporary painting.

I would have dared to write that she has opened the lid in the coffin of painting, but that would lend tacit approval to the claim that painting is like a "vampire that refuses to die." So I won’t.

In the oval paintings Hogg introduces us to a combination of two (again with the two) elements: the re-visualization within a limited, psychological palette plus a new methodological visual cropping and angling of compositional elements within the original paintings, placed in a new format (oval) and haphazardly hung at crazy angles on the gallery’s left wall. By the way, at the risk of becoming too pedantic, I didn’t like the tilted, askew, haphazard hanging of these pieces. It was a bit heavy handed and went too far to push the fact that they are indeed "sliding" landscapes.

another painting by Lucy HoggSuddenly we discover two effects (i.e. she has another duality thing going here for the dimwits in the audience): Combine the psychological effect of color with a reorganization of the actual image's presentation and you have suddenly changed the entire character and effect of the painting!

This is the punch to the solar plexus that every artist hopes to accomplish in any exhibition. It is the moment when you stand in front of a piece of artwork, riveted to a sudden discovery that this, whatever "this" may be, has never been done, at least not this well, before.

Here is what I mean.

In the oval pieces, Hogg repeats the paintings from different perspectives or angles; suddenly her choice of colors is not the main driving force; but the relationship between the choice and the subject and the perspective and angle is the new driving force(s).

For example, in one oval piece she offers a calm, cool agrarian view, somewhat disorienting us by the angle and crop, especially when we try to find her source on the left wall's rectangular paintings. Within this painting, a horseman rides up an incline. He is deftly rendered in cool, quick brushstrokes to deliver a placid Sancho Panza character before he had the misfortune of meeting Don Quixote.

Slightly above and to the right of that painting there's another painting, which although it is exactly the same scene, and because it is offered from a slightly different perspective and in a completely different palette, it takes us a minute or two to realize that it is the same scene.

But what a different scene it is! The sky is now a turbulent hellish nightmare of cadmium red and quinachrodne red exaggerated so that the clouds have almost become flames, and the happy farmers of the companion piece are now haggard, beaten figures toiling in a new Dantasque level of hell, where the Sancho Panza horseman is now tired, beaten and barely staying atop his poor horse.

And this is all happening in our mind. Because all that this gifted painter has done is change the perspective and offer us colors that complete different neural paths that create different reactions in our brain.

And the best thing of all is that she didn’t need a video, or an installation, or dioramas of two-dimensional works, or ten pages of wall text to explain the concept. And in these pieces, the finished works are as interesting and successful as the concept itself; not a trivial accomplishment by the way.

All she needed were superbly honed painting skills, a deep understanding of the relationship between color and emotions, an intelligent perspective on composition, and a grab at art history to offer us (yet again) something new and refreshing from that never ending source of surprises: the dusty coffin of painting.

Bravo Lucy! ... Well Done Hogg!

Wednesday, September 29, 2004

Those of you who have met me know that I sport a Dali-type moustache (most of the time).

Salvador Dali and Andy WarholAnd although I met Dali several times when I lived in Spain (once he asked me if I could help him fix his phone); and I curated the Homage to Dali exhibition in 1999; and I am a great, unapologizing fan of the great Catalan, my moustache is not because of Dali - if you want to know, next time you see me, buy me a beer and I'll tell you about the Druze.

Anyway, Alan Riding has a terrific article in the New York Times that discusses Dali's powerful impact as perhaps the 20th century's second most important artist (Picasso being the first) and two ongoing exhibitions on the centenary of his birth: "Dalí and Mass Culture," which tracks his impact on today's visual language, was shown in Barcelona this spring and Madrid this summer and will be at the Salvador Dalí Museum in St. Petersburg, Fla., from Oct. 1, 2004 through Jan. 30, 2005. And "Dalí," which focuses on his paintings, is at the Palazzo Grassi in Venice through Jan. 16 and will be presented at the Philadelphia Museum of Art from Feb. 16 through May 15, 2005.

DCist tips us that WTOP has a contest to re-name the Montreal Expos baseball team once they move here next year.

Enter your suggestion here.

My suggestion? The Washington Ex-Expos.

Opportunity for Artists

Deadline October 15, 2004 and April 15, 2005

Exhibition opportunities at Howard County Center for the Arts, a 27,000 sq.ft. facility located in Ellicott City, MD.

They are seeking proposals from artists and curators nationwide for solo and group exhibits for the 2006-2007 gallery season. All original artwork in any media, including installations, will be considered. The Arts Council is also accepting slide submissions for two specific upcoming exhibits: Illuminations, a juried exhibit of artworks with light/illumination as the primary medium, and an untitled exhibit of book arts.

Work previously shown will not be accepted, nor will work previously submitted. No fee to apply. Artists must be at least 18 years old. Submit up to 20 slides with an accompanying slide list, an artist/curator statement, resume and application to exhibit, along with a self-addressed stamped envelope with sufficient postage for the return of materials.

Call 410-313-2787 for an application. Deadlines in the next two reviews are October 15, 2004 and April 15, 2005. A calendar of upcoming HCCA exhibits can be found on their website. Or email Amy Poff at amy@hocoarts.org if you have questions.