A Story That Must Be Told

As mentioned here, the McLean Center for the Arts sponsors a very good painting competition every couple of years called "Strictly Painting." It is now in its fifth iteration.

A few years ago, around 1999 or 2000, the juror for that year's version of "Strictly Painting" was Terrie Sultan, who back then was the Curator for Contemporary Art at the Corcoran. I thought that this choice was a little odd, as Ms. Sultan, in my opinion, was not "painting-friendly." In fact, with all due respect, I blame her for diminishing the Corcoran Biennials, which used to be known as the Corcoran Biennial of Painting.

As such, they were essentially the only well-known Biennial left in the nation that was strictly designed to get a look at the state of contemporary painting, which was somehow surviving its so called "death."

It was Ms. Sultan who decided to "expand" the Biennial and make it just like all other Biennials: Jack of all trades (genres) Biennials. In the process, depending on what side of this argument you're on, she (a) did a great service to the Corcoran by moving it into the center of the "genre of the moment" scene - like all other Biennials, or (b) gave away the uniqueness of the nation's top painting Biennial title.

I'm aligned with the minority who supports camp (b) but understand those who defend her decision to become just another player in camp (a). Most people think that her decision and drive were the right thing to do in order to bring the Corcoran to a world stage, and perhaps it was.

But I digress.

When she was announced as the juror, I decided to see if I could predict her painting selectivity, sensitivity, process and agenda. It was my thesis that I could predict what Ms. Sultan would pick.

So I made a bet, and decided to enter the exhibition with work created specifically to fit what I deduced would be agreeable to Ms. Sultan's tastes. I felt that I could guarantee that I would get into the show because of the transparency of the juror's personal artistic agenda. It is her right to have one; I have them, in fact, we all have them.

I was trained as a painter at the University of Washington School of Art, but around 1992 or so, I stopped painting and decided to devote myself strictly to my love for drawing. So I had not picked up a brush in several years when I decided to enter this competition, designed to survey the state of painting in our region.

It was my theory that Ms. Sultan would not be in the representational side of painting. It was also clear that she (like many curators) was seduced by technology in the form of videos, digital stuff and such trendy things.

And so I decided to see if I could marry digital stuff with painting.

And what I did was the following:

I took some of my old Navy ribbons, and scanned them in to get a digital file. I then blew them up so that the final image was quite pixilated. I then printed about five of them and took slides of the printed sheets of paper.

I then submitted these slides to the competition, but identified them as oil on canvas paintings. My plan was that if accepted, how hard could it be to whip up a couple of paintings after the fact? I titled them with such titles as Digitalism: National Defense and Digitalism: Expeditionary Medal and so on.

From what I was later told, several hundred painters submitted work. And Ms. Sultan selected about only about seven or eight painters in total. And not only was I one of them, but she picked two of my entries.

I was elated! I had hit the nail right on the head! I felt so superior in having such an insight into this intelligent woman's intellect that I (a painter no more) could create competition-specific work to get accepted into this highly regarded show.

And then I began the task of creating the two paintings, using the pixilated images as the guide.

And it turned out to be a lot harder than I thought.

For one thing, I had submitted the "paintings" in quite a large size; each painting was supposed to be six feet long.

And it didn't take me long to discover that there are a lot of color nuances and hues in an average pixilated image.

And I went through dozens and dozens of rolls of tape as I pulled off the old Washington Color School trick of taping stripes (in my case small one inch square boxes of individual colors - hundreds upon hundreds of them) in a precise sequence to prevent smudging and color peeling, etc.

I painted for at least six hours every day, switching off between paintings to allow the previous day's work to dry off enough to allow a new layer of tape to be applied. I did all the varnishing outside, which usually attracted all the small neighborhood ruffians.

It was incredibly hard work, and I was ever so sorry that I had even gotten this crazy idea. All my nights were consumed.

But eventually they were finished and delivered to MPA and Ms. Sultan even wrote some very nice things about them in the exhibition's catalog.

Me? I was in a mix of both vindication and guilt; exhausted but fired up with the often wrong sense of righteousness of the self-righteous.

After the show, I had no idea what to do with them, and they didn't fit my "body of works," but I ended up selling both of them through Sotheby's.

And today, some art collector in South Carolina and another one in Canada, each have one very large, exhausting and handsome oil painting of pixilated naval ribbons hanging in their home, in happy ignorance of the interesting story behind them.

I mentioned the adjective handsome in describing them, because a few years ago I was telling this story to Prof. John Winslow, who asked to see the images of the real paintings. When I showed him, he said that they were actually "quite handsome paintings."

I had never had my work described as "handsome" (although the Washington Post once described it as "irritating"), so it stuck in my head.

So there you have it: The story of a former painter with a point to prove about a local curator, the subsequent hard-labor punishment of the process, and a hidden story behind two handsome paintings.

Tuesday Arts Agenda

The Tuesday DCist Arts Agenda is out with a plug for yours truly (Thanks DCist!).

I'll be filming a TV review of the new Isamu Noguchi show at the Hirshhorn soon. It should air next Thursday.

The Gallery at Flashpoint Call for Proposals

Deadline: March 15, 2005.

The Cultural Development Corporation (CuDC) is requesting proposals for exhibitions in the Gallery at Flashpoint for the September 2005 to August 2006 season. This request is open to artists, independent curators, arts organizations, private galleries or anyone choosing to present contemporary work in any medium. Deadline for proposals is 6pm on March 15, 2005.

For a 2005-2006 Request for Proposal application, please visit their website or email them

And yet another new magazine

In addition to the new glossy Capitol File, soon to appear on DC newsstands, DCist reveals that yet another new magazine DC Style, will be publishing soon in our area.

Welcome to DC!

Opportunities for Artists

Raise the Roof
Deadline: March 1, 2005

Raise the Roof: Recreating Home in Prince George's County, Maryland. This is a national public art competition that seeks innovative and creative house designs. Selected designs will be developed into sculptural, 3-dimensional models for public art exhibition in 2005. Up to $10,000 in cash prizes will be awarded for outstanding houses in these specific categories: Artistic, Green, Historical, Fanciful and Peoples Choice. Raise the Roof will recognize personal interpretations of home and hopefully, provide public awareness of the vital importance of house design and its connection to our quality of life. The competition is open to all artists, architects, designers, engineers, homebuilders, students and homebodies of all ages are encouraged to enter. Each selected artist/designer will be awarded up to a $1,600 honorarium to construct a 3-dimensional scale model and be eligible for the cash prizes. For more info and prospectus, click on "House Call for Entries" at www.pgparks.com.

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Bethesda Painting Awards
Deadline: March 11, 2005

The Bethesda Arts & Entertainment District is currently accepting applications for the inaugural Bethesda Painting Awards. Eight finalists will be selected to display their work in an exhibition during the month of June 2005 at the Fraser Gallery in downtown Bethesda, and the top four winners will receive $14,000 in prize monies. Best in Show will be awarded $10,000; Second Place will be honored with $2,000 and Third Place will receive $1,000. Additionally, a "Young Artist" whose birthday is after March 11, 1975 will be awarded $1,000. Artists must be 18 years of age or older and residents of Maryland, Virginia or Washington, D.C. All original 2-D painting including oil, acrylic, watercolor, gouache, encaustic and mixed media will be accepted. The maximum dimension should not exceed 60 inches in width. No reproductions. Artwork must have been completed within the last two years and must be available for the duration of the exhibition. Selected artists must deliver artwork to exhibit site in Bethesda, MD. Each artist must submit five slides, application and a non-refundable entry fee of $25. Submissions must be received by March 11, 2005. For a complete application, please send a self-addressed stamped envelope to:
Bethesda Painting Awards
c/o Bethesda Urban Partnership
7700 Old Georgetown Road
Bethesda, MD 20814

Or visit www.bethesda.org or call 301/215-6660.

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Strictly Painting V
Deadline: March, 15, 2005

The McLean Center for the Arts has the call for artists for its fifth installment of its acclaimed Strictly Painting juried show (I was in number one or two a few years back). My good friend Jonathan Binstock, Curator of Contemporary Art at the Corcoran is this year's juror. Fee is $25, entry is via slides, and there are $1500 in cash prizes. Get the entry forms and details here

Now stealing art is a "conceptual art project" by itself. I'm not kidding! Read it here.

Congratulations!

To DC area photographer Noelle Tan, whose series of black-and-white landscape photographs of desert areas in Nevada, Utah and Arizona processed using techniques that nearly obliterate the images, leaving only a hint and subtle marks of the original scenes have earned her a prestigious Creative Capital grant.

Curators Wanted

The Smithsonian American Art Museum, which I think is scheduled to re-open next year after extensive refurbishment, is looking for three new curators.

They are seeking two art curators and one photography curator. Salaries range from $41K to $50K. See the details of these three and lots of other art-related jobs here.

And as Martin points out, the Whitney Museum in New York is looking for a Biennial Coordinator.

And the Corcoran (cough, cough) is looking for an accountant.

The annual WPA/C Art Auction is online. The exhibition, which raises funds for the WPA/C, will open on February 24 through March 5 at the Corcoran. The auction actually takes place on Saturday, March 5, 2005. See the details here.

This is a curated auction and the artwork then is contributed by area artists (although this year there are some very nice pieces from some very well known non Washington artists as well, such as Spencer Tunick.

Two of my favorite pieces in the auction are Aylene Fallah's brave piece on her recurring work on the treatment of women in Islamic societies and Michael Fitts gorgeous trompe l'oeil icon.

The Patrons' Show


If you were crazy enough to be hanging around Old Town Alexandria about 4 AM on a cold morning last month you would have noticed people forming a long line in the brutal cold outside the Torpedo Factory. They were waiting for a chance to get original art for their collections – or perhaps some brave souls starting to collect art.

"A line for art?" you must be asking, "who is crazy enough to freeze lining up at Oh-dark-thirty just to buy artwork?"

Hundreds.

They were lining up for one of the great art deals of the year: the Annual Patrons' Show. It's very simple: artists donate original artwork to the Art League, who inspects it, selects it and often frames it. It is quality stuff, ranging from huge abstracts to delicate pencil drawings. The Art League represents nearly 1,200 artists in the area, so there's plenty of possible sources of art donated by generous artists.

It is one of the largest art events in the country, with around 600 original works of art finding a new home in one day.

Usually about 600 pieces are donated and hung salon style in the Art League’s gallery on the first floor of the Factory. Then raffle tickets go up for sale at 10 AM, and they usually disappear within an hour or two; and each ticket equals a guaranteed a work of art.

And on Sunday, February 20, people who have a ticket begin gathering into the main floor of the Factory and they bring chairs, tables, food and loads of booze,as it will be a long, loud, fun, cheery and boozy evening as the tickets are drawn at random, and as they are called, ticket-holders select a piece of art from the work on display on the walls.

The first ticket called gets the first choice and so on. You better pick one quickly, or the crowds begin to shout and whistle and demand a choice be made.

It is without a doubt, the most sought after art ticket in town, and often incredible acquisitions are made. While 500 tickets for the show sold out within a couple of hours after going on sale last month, the Art League keeps a waiting list (and continues to sell more tickets, as they become available when more artists donate work, through Feb. 20). In addition, "First Choice!" raffle tickets will be on sale in the gallery Feb. 10-20.

Call the Art League at 703/683-1780.

Weekend Round-Up

Tonight there's an opening at Space in Georgetown starting at 7PM. Details here.

Tomorrow, Tuesday and Wednesday are the last two days to see our "Best of Artomatic" exhibition. Mark Jenkins installation of plastic men just outside the Fraser Gallery Bethesda is shown to the left.

On Wednesday, February 9, from 6-8 PM, Evolving Perceptions will launch the long-awaited "Synergy" Art Project. The event will be launched at Karma Lounge (19th and I Street, NW in DC) from 6-8 PM. The Call for Art was launched last month and artists or teams of artists are requested to submit information to the jury panel for consideration. The "Call" is available online here and can also be obtained by contacting Maryam Ovissi at 202-607-0754 or via email at info@evolvingperceptions.com.

Airborne

Flying back today and should be back in the Soviet Socialist Republic of Montgomery County later tonite.

The Thursday Reviews

Dawson returns to two of her favorite galleries and reviews Numark Gallery and Irvine Contemporary in today's WaPo:

There's one question that leaps to mind upon seeing "The Motley Tails," Sharon Louden's quirky extravagance of an installation at Numark: Exactly how many My Little Ponies died for this?

That is funny and I for one applaud humor in "Galleries" once in a while.

In the WCP, Jeffry Cudlin reviews Billy Colbert at Pyramid Atlantic while Louis Jacobson reviews Robert Olsen and Jitka Hanzlova at G Fine Art.

And at grammar.police, Kriston reviews Kelly Towles at Adamson.

And my ArtsMedia News TV review of the Arlington Arts Center reopening aired tonight at 8:30PM on MHZ Networks.

SPACE Opening this Saturday

The concept store Space in Georgetown in one of the alternative art venues in our area, and this coming Saturday, they will host an opening by three artists curated by Rody Douzoglou. The show, titled Chill, will feature recent works by Amalia Caputo, Marc Roman and one of the most talented young DC area painters that I know: Rachel Waldron.

Space is located at 1625 Wisconsin Ave, NW in Georgetown, and the opening is Saturday, February 5, 2005 at 7 PM and runs until March 6, 2005. For more information, call 301.980.9574 or visit this website.

And don't forget the First Friday openings!

Tuesday Gallery Walkthrough

Starting last week, DCist commenced a Tuesday Arts Agenda, which consists of a regular Tuesday posting of galleries and museums events. See the most recent one here.

A ship, a radio and a sigh...

Today was a brilliant day in San Diego. Bright, almost pure white sunshine like only seems to exist in Southern California and Andalusia.

I caught the spectacular sight of USS Carl Vinson (from the great vantage point of Point Loma) as that huge carrier got underway, with the Air Wing already embarked, which is unusual, since they usually fly onto the carrier after it is a few miles out to sea. Hundreds of small sail boats crowded the bay, saying farewell to the ship (and making the job of the Officer of the Deck twice as hard as he or she has to steer a floating airport gingerly and avoid the hundreds of well-wishers).

But what really struck me today, was that as I was driving around, the local NPR radio station had a gallery and museum walk-though! And this is in a town where at best there are half a dozen good art galleries and a couple of good museums!

I don't know if this is a regular feature or not here, since it is apparently "museum month" in San Diego, but I thought to myself: wouldn't it be nice if some of our local NPR outlets (there are several that cover the DC area) had regular gallery walk-thoughs on the air, just to let their listeners know that art galleries do exist in Washington?

Just to let people know that we have well over 100 fine art galleries, museums, non profits and other art venues around our area.

Wishful thinking...

Mexican Food

The last time that I was in San Diego I found a small mom & pop place to eat Mexican food that was incredible. But I wanted to give it a second visit before I revealed my newly discovered secret, and thus tonight, after I arrived in San Diego, I had dinner there.

It is a very small space inside Midway Plaza, right on Midway and about a block from Pacers. A small kitchen where a husband and wife cook, while the daughter tends the food and the drinks, and in between customers helps her little sister with her homework.

And the food is spectacular! And obviously San Diegans are discovering this little spot, as while I was there, a constant flood of people filed through the place.

Why? For one thing, they make three or four different kinds of mole, including a poblano mole that takes 30 ingredients to make! On the menu tonight were two kinds of soup: Menudo (I pass) and a spicy Mexican Steak Soup with vegetables that was divine. The previous time that I was here, they had Albondigas Soup, which was terrific.

But the mole is what makes this place special.

I then had lamb cooked in a mole BBQ sauce, plus a real tender Carnitas pork in a green mole sauce, chicken in a blackened chocolate mole sauce, plus all the fixings for less than $10, and a pint of draft beer is a buck and a half.

The name of the place: Ortega's located at 3445 Midway Drive #D, San Diego, CA 92110, Tel: 619-224-4394

Airborne

Flying to the Left Coast today. On the way there I'll be reading Gerardo Arenado's Cada Quien Con Su Destino.

State of the Arts

Three years ago the Arlington Arts Center closed down for repairs and refurbishment. It was supposed to take nine months to complete the task.

Three years later, the newly renovated space re-opened its galleries (all nine of them) with a 69-artist group show showcasing 104 works by artists from various Mid Atlantic states. I am told that the opening night was huge, with around 800 people attending throughout the night.

Curated by five different curators, this re-opening group show nonetheless manages to hang together well and as with most group shows, offers a tremendous range of quality, subject matter and skill.

Titled "State of the Arts, A Mid Atlantic Overview," the exhibition was curated by Symmes Gardener, Director of the Center for Art and Visual Culture and an Associate Professor at the University of Maryland at Baltimore, Carole Garmon, Associate Professor at Mary Washington University in Fredricksburg, Virginia, J. Susan Isaacs, Consulting Curator at the Delaware Center for Contemporary Art, and also an Associate Professor of Art History at Towson University, by Cindi E. Morrison, the Executive Director of the Lancaster Museum of Art in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, and the DC area curator was Stephen Phillips, Curator of the Phillips Collection.

And orchestrating this massive effort to cover all the states (and DC) that are the Center’s geographic focus was Carol Lukitsch, the Center’s curator and a DC area painter who exhibits with Gallery 10.

Of the 69 artists, 34 are from the District, Virginia and Maryland, and of these, I recognized 15. I was not familiar with the work of any of the artists from the other states.

The exhibition, like most group shows, has some superb work as well as some head scratchers, but unlike a lot of group shows, especially shows in a nine-gallery venue, it is rare when the best piece in the show is the first one that you see as you enter the Center.

I am referring to Claire Watkins' "Untitled (Parasites)," a kinetic, electrical wall sculpture that weds motors, magnets, painting, iron shavings, pins and a sharp, professional presentation that draws you in by its intimate size, and then fascinates and somewhat repulses you, with its almost organic, planned movement.

Watkins writes about her work:

The digestive system turns food into eyelashes.

I am in awe of the minutiae and delicate actions that make up everyday life. The machines I build reflect this awe and wonder. My work is intimate, curious and mesmerizing in its movement and gesture. The translation of energy is both a functional and conceptual part of my work. The circular movement of a motor is translated into a gesture that turns peacock feathers into entomological organisms. With movement, I make machines that become creatures.

Watkins is right, and she has brilliantly translated her awe of the minutiae into a superb vision with a work of art that boasts technical skill, beauty, repulsion and a hypnotizing ability to grab your attention. It is a rare marriage of these things, but it works well. The piece sold, and whoever acquired it got a steal and has a very good eye for an up and coming artist.

One does not have to walk far from Watkins to come across another strong piece, in this case Rachel Waldron’s large charcoal and acrylic painting of a group of girls playing the children’s game "Dog Pile." I haven’t seen Waldron’s works since she graduated from GWU a while back (and disappeared), but this piece marks a significant departure from her previous works, as its absence of any color is a full reversal of Waldron’s lavish employment of color in her previous works. The painting, full of movement and energy, does continue Waldron’s interest in narrative and action, and is one of the best paintings in the show.

Walking straight through, one enters the Tiffany Gallery, so named because one of the walls in the room is made of three large stained glass windows.

And there's a story worth telling here.

Three years ago, Arlington County staff rescued 13 stained glass windows from the Abbey Mausoleum, which was slated for demolition. Upon closer examination, someone discovered a signature pane on one of the windows that read "Louis C. Tiffany, NY."

Today three windows have been restored to their original beauty and are now installed at the renovated Center. It is a great story and we're lucky to have saved them. Unfortunately for the artwork, during sunny daylight hours, it casts a confusing blanket of colors all over the room, which is somewhat distracting.

Here Charles Ritchie's Self-Portrait with Night II and Self-Portrait with Night III stand out in an otherwise somewhat weak room. These mixed media pieces seem to employ anything that paper will hold, and Ritchie mixes watercolor, litho crayons, gouache, ink and graphite on paper to come up with dark, brooding works in spite of the colorful lights from the stained glass windows.

Also in this room are three pieces by Jiha Moon that are sort of a contemporary Sumi-esque (I think). I found them somewhat bland and lacking presence, but it proves the truth in the trite saying that "art is in the eyes of the beholder," as two of the three pieces had sold, proving that some art lover obviously disagrees with me! Good for Jiha, and good for art.

Most of the other artists in this gallery, mostly from Delaware and Pennsylvania, tend to come under the representational umbrella, but in my opinion fall too deep into the chasm that haters of representational work like to label “traditional,” such as Stephen G. Tanis’ "Lillies, Bowl and Vestment," a superbly crafted painting that offers only that. Interestingly enough, some of the other work in the artist's own website is a lot more interesting to me, so I think that the choice of a still life was perhaps a bad one.

The Upper Level Gallery offers us more work from Linda Hesh’s well-known "Safe and Suspect" series where she pushes racial and ethnic buttons through the manipulation of photographic portraits to morph the subjects into various skin and racial characteristics. Also in this gallery is Andy Moon Wilson’s small drawings (over a thousand of them) for five bucks a pop. Placed inside small zip-lock bags and then mounted onto the wall with pushpins, the drawings cover all subjects, styles and ideas and are a joy to anyone who takes the time to study the work of an artist clearly in love with art.

Other than Hesh’s works, photography is one of the weak areas in this group show, overcrowded with boring snapshots of buildings, walls and other mundane subjects, but one notable exception is the funny and contrived photography of FEAST, a Virginia collective of five artists (Terral Bolton, Terry Brown, Sherry Griffin, Stephanie Lundy and Chris Norris). In "Drunk on Doughnuts (lick)," a voluptuous, well endowed woman (looking remarkably like the actress that plays Karen in Will & Grace) licks her fingers as she’s about to embark in a massive doughnut consumption orgy.

In the lower level, the Experimental Galleries A and B are host to five installations, the best of which is Galo Moncayo's clever marriage of sound art with powdered pigments.

In this "Richard Chartier meets the Dumbacher Brothers" installation, Moncayo has arranged a series of speakers on the floor, and placed small amounts of powdered pigment on the diaphragms of the speakers. As sounds pop from the speakers, the diaphragms moves, constantly rearranging the pigment, in a pleasant organized cacophony of pops and movement. I was somewhat distracted by the mess of speaker wires all over the floor, but Lukitsch assured me that Moncayo slaved over the right placement of the wires. I am somewhat curious as to what this installation would be in a wireless environment.

Finally, I also liked Andrew Christenberry’s "Cross Wall Cabinet," a gorgeous wall sculpture showing a remarkable exploration of the cross as a symbol, and Annet Couwenberg’s "Act Normal and That’s Crazy Enough," a set of seven large cotton pieces that look remarkably like those neck ruffles that one sees Spanish nobles wearing in El Greco’s Burial of Count Orgaz. Each piece also has embroidered within it one of the words in the title. Couwenberg is the Chairperson of the Fiber Department at Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA).

The new Arlington Arts Center brings back a familiar voice to our area’s art scene, and if this show is a vision of things to come, that voice comes back full of strength, diversity and vigor.

Welcome back!

Capitol File: New Magazine Coming to Town

From today's Reliable Source in the WaPo:

For the High-Gloss Lifestyle, a High-Gloss Magazine

Jason Binn publishes slick city mags that cater to glamorous people: He's behind Ocean Drive in Miami, Gotham in New York, Hamptons on Long Island, Aspen Peak and Los Angeles Confidential. Now he's wagering that his formula will work in Washington. During inauguration week, Binn, 37, came here to schmooze and talk up Capitol File, a quarterly that he says will launch in the fall.

"We're going to bring together some of the biggest boldface names in Washington as contributors," Binn tells us. "We're looking to give Washington a really luxe, full-color, glossy, comprehensive read. It'll be like a coffee-table book." The fast-talking, name-dropping Binn, a fixture on the New York party circuit, says Capitol File won't just focus on pretty faces, social climbers and fashionistas but also will cover politics, business and art. (Local angle: Binn's older brother, Jonathan P. Binstock, is curator of contemporary art at the Corcoran; he uses the family's original name.)

In competing with Washington Life and the monthly Washingtonian, Binn says his mag will be mailed free "to all the homes valued at over $1 million." He's also craving another rich market: Capitol File's promo for advertisers boasts of "a unique distribution partnership with NetJets," a private jet outfit. "With an average customer's net worth of $25 million, you will be in good company." Lofty targets indeed.

If Binn will really cover art in this new magazine, then he's already one up on Washington Life and Washingtonian, neither one of which have regular art coverage, much less reviews, etc.

Welcome to DC!