Opening Today

Prof. Sarah Stecher of Montgomery College has curated Drawing National II at Montgomery College and selected 41 artists, and the opening reception for the show is today, Monday, February 21, 6-8PM. Directions to the campus are here.

In addition to yours truly, the following artists will be exhibiting in this show: Kelly Adams, Lila Oliver Asher, Alastair Bolton, Scott Brooks, Warren Craghead III, Elli Crocker, Pamela DeLaura, Haig Demarjian, Jan Dove, Laura Evans, Sondra B. Gair, Javier Gil, Mikhail Gubin, Sharon Harper, Jeffrey Haupt, Candace Keegan, Richard Keen, Ronald Keeney, Kathleen King, J.T. Kirkland, Mary Kate Maher, Allison Miner, Sarah Oldenburg, Mary Ott, Sky Pape, Susan Due Pearcy, Mark Pomilio, Selena Reames, Mari Richards, Jacqueline Saunders, Terri Schmidt, John P. Semple, Marc Snyder, Caroline Thorington, Adrienne Trager, Michael Voors, Yida Wang, Maya Weber, and Alice Whealin.

Lions and Tigers and Bears

Oh God!

From the Himalayan Times (thanks AJ):

Eight elephants in northern Thailand have painted their way into the Guinness Book of World Records after an art lover living in the United States shelled out a jumbo 1.5 million baht ($39,000) for their canvas creation — the highest price ever paid for elephant art.

Art lover?

Where did I leave that sharp knife?

Another Noguchi Review

And now it is two differing from the one.

Read Michael O'Sullivan's excellent take on Isamu Noguchi at the Hirshhorn, published yesterday in the WaPo.

O'Sullivan correctly points out Noguchi's innovative track record and writes:

"Solar's inclusion is notable for two reasons. Yes, it's a fine piece, characterized by the kind of dynamic stillness found in Noguchi's best, most Zen-flavored work, but it also serves Fletcher's thesis that Noguchi was probably more innovative than people generally give him credit for. Is there the influence of Constantin Brancusi (for whom Noguchi briefly worked as a studio assistant while in Paris) in some of Noguchi's earliest pieces? Certainly, and the biomorphic iconography of the surrealists makes more than one appearance in Noguchi's later art as well.

But art isn't a horse race, or at least it shouldn't be. What Noguchi did well he did very well. Whether works represent his fascination with the pure refinement of form, as in the gestural simplicity of 1970's "The Bow," or express the gut-punch racial politics of 1934's "Death (Lynched Figure)," or whether they lie somewhere in between, as in the phallic squishes and fleshy plops of his work of the 1940s, Noguchi's most powerful sculptures beg for extended viewing.

Yep! Art isn't a horse race, and it doesn't have to be "new" to be good.

Case slammed shut!

Seminar Postponed

Because of the threat of snow tomorrow, the Success as an Artist seminar scheduled for tomorrow has been postponed until next Sunday, February 27, 2005, starting promptly at noon.

Carib Nation

Next Monday, Feb. 28 at 6PM, do not miss the Carib Nation program on WHUT Howard University Television. It will feature a profile of DC area photographer Nestor Hernandez.

Tic Toc

Home from the Georgetown opening of Mary Lang.

Opening was a little slow, mostly due to the cold and the hint of the S-word in the air (snow), but there was some good company, JT from Thinking About Art was making the gallery rounds, there was a nice artist's talk by Lang, and photography was purchased!

At closing time I quite forgot all about my usual Friday need to rush home and watch Battlestar Galactica (yes, yes geeky, I know...) and I damned near forgot about Galactica (it starts in five minutes)... but I made it... sigh.

Next Tuesday I head out to California again, and thus I wanted to let all of you know before that of the fact that Prof. Sarah Stecher has curated Drawing National II at Montgomery College and selected 41 artists, and the opening reception for the show is Monday, February 21, 6-8PM.

See ya there Monday!

Third Friday Openings

Today is the third Friday of the month and thus the Canal Square Galleries (31st Street NW and M Street in Georgetown) will have their monthly openings.

We will have the photography of New England photographer Mary Lang in her Washington, DC solo debut.

Our gallery neighbors in Canal Square in Georgetown (MOCA, Anne C. Fisher, Parish and Alla Rogers) all will have new shows or extended hours.

Come join us for a glass of Washington's best Sangria to welcome Lang to Washington.

See ya there!

Television

Tonight my interview with Valerie Fletcher, Curator of the Isamu Noguchi Exhibition at the Hirshhorn aired on three different local TV stations, maybe some of you saw it.

I missed it because on Thursdays I have martial arts classes from 8-9:30PM and the show runs on MHz TV at 8:30 in my area.

The Thursday Reviews

In the WaPo, Jessica Dawson has her set of third Thursday mini reviews here. This will be all that we get in the Style section for two weeks.... Sigh.

In the WCP... Jeffry where are you?

A new critic (new to me) named Hetty Lipscomb, writes about "Rembrandt’s Late Religious Portraits" at the National Gallery of Art.

In the Georgetowner, John Blee reviews Nathan Richardson, Joan Cox, and Marcia Dullum at Results Gallery (at Results Gym, 315 G Street SE, 202/669.4226) while Gary Tischler does Andre Kertesz at the National Gallery of Art.

Congratulations!

To the following photographers, who have been selected by juror Connie Imboden to exhibit in the Annual Bethesda International Photography Competition:

Tim Castine
Don Bensman
John Borstel
Gabriela Bulisova
Mei Mei Chang
Kathy Cudlin
John Davis
Sharon Lee Hart
Herbert Hoover
Stephen Komp
Lynda Lester-Slack
Rita Maas
Jocelyn Matthews
Bruce McKaig
Benjamin Montague
Meredith Montague
Leah Oates
Steve Ozone
Alexi Pechnikov
Carol Samour
Tal Schneider
Gregory Scott
Bert Shankman
Judy Silverstein
Elena Volkov
Cara Lee Wade
April Wilkins

Thursday, Thursday...

I'm on the road most of the day on Thursday, but there are lots of good things happening around DC for visual arts lovers. Check out some openings and venues at DCist.

Olive Ayhens' opening at the Watkins Gallery at AU seems specially interesting. Ayhens is a visiting Professor in the University's Department of Art for the 2004-05 academic year. Her most recent one-person shows were at Gary Tatintsian Gallery in NYC in 2004 and 2002.

And because her opening is from 5-7PM, if you are a really skilled gallery opening hog, then you can probably hit her opening and then head out to 7th Street for the 3rd Thursday Openings, which go from 6-8PM.

Interesting Panel Next Week

Meeting Places: Cross-Disciplinary Thinking in Contemporary Artmaking Practices

Date: Thursday, Feb. 24, 2005

Time: 5 - 6:30PM

Location: Prince George's room, Stamp Student Union

Featuring: Billy Colbert, artist and co-owner of Cubicle 10, a contemporary art gallery in Baltimore (sorry, I initially couldn't find a gallery web site - but a placeholder is here); Patrick Craig, painter, professor and graduate director of the UM Department of Art; Tyler Green, art critic for Bloomberg News and blogger at Modern Art Notes; Greg Metcalf, artist and UM adjunct professor for the Departments of English and Art History and Archaeology (could't find a website either).

3rd Thursdays

Tomorrow is the third Thursday of the month and all the galleries and art venues around the 7th street corridor will be having their openings and extended hours.

See the participating galleries and art venues here.

And also tomorrow, at Watkins Gallery at AU, from 5-7PM there will be a reception for artist Olive Ayhens.

For directions to the Watkins Gallery, click here.

My kingdom for a sharp knife

Read this

Somebody please slit my throat now...
_____________________________
Update: AAAAARGH!!!.... click here.

Opportunities for Artists

Deadline: April 1, 2005

FOCUS: PHOTOGRAPHY TECHNIQUES & TRENDS Juror: Sarah Kennel, Assistant Curator, Department of Photographs, National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. This exhibition is open to artists working in all photographic processes. Artists are encouraged to expand parameters and traditional definitions. Award amounts up to $500. Exhibition dates: June 9 to July 17, 2005. Submission fee: $25 for images of 3 works. Deadline: Friday, April 1, 2005. For prospectus, e-mail: targetgallery@torpedofactory.org or send SASE to:
Target Gallery
105 North Union St
Alexandria VA 22314

Boot Camp for Artists

Next Sunday we will host another version of our highly successful "Success as an Artist" Seminar." The next seminar will be hosted at Fraser Gallery Bethesda on Sunday, February 20, 2004 from 12-7 PM.

The seven hour seminar, which has been taken by over 2,000 artists and arts professionals from all over the Mid Atlantic is designed to deliver information, data and proven tactics to allow artists to develop and sustain a career in the fine arts. The seminar costs $80 and is limited to around 50 people. For more details please visit this website. For this seminar, sometimes called "Boot Camp for Artists" by the attendees, people as far as Arizona, New York and South Carolina are attending.

In its seven hour format, the seminar covers a wide range of structured issues including:

1. Materials
Buying materials – strategies for lowering your costs, where and how to get it, etc.

2. Presentation – How to properly present your artwork including Conservation issues, Archival Matting and Framing, Longevity of materials, a discussion on Limited editions, signing and numbering, Prints vs. Reproduction, discussion on Iris Prints (Pros and Cons).

3. Creating a resume - Strategy for building your art resume, including how to write one, what should be in it, presentation, etc.

4. Juried Shows – An Insider's view and strategy to get in the competitions.

5. How to take slides and photographs of your artwork

6. Selling your art – A variety of avenues to actually selling your artwork, including fine arts festivals, corporate acquisitions, galleries, public arts, etc.

7. Creating a Body of Works

8. How to write a news release

9. Publicity – How to get in newspapers, magazines, etc. Plus handouts on email and addresses of newspaper critics, writers, etc.

10. Galleries – Discussion on area galleries including Vanity Galleries, Co-Operatives, Commercial Galleries, Non-profit Art spaces, etc.

11. How to approach a gallery – Realities of the business, Contracts, Gallery/Artist Relationship, Agents.

12. Outdoor Art Festivals – Discussion and advice on how to sell outwork at fine arts festivals, which to do, which to avoid, etc.

13. Resources - Display systems and tents, best juried shows and ones to avoid.

14. Accepting Credit cards – How to set up your art business.

15. Grants – Discussion on how to get grants in DC, Regional and National, including handouts on who and where and when.

16. Alternative Marketing - Cable TV, Local media

17. Internet – How to build your website at no cost, how to establish a wide and diverse Internet presence.

The seminar has been a spectacular success, and the feedback from artists can be read online at here and we continue to receive tremendous positive feedback on the practical success that this seminar has meant for those who have taken it.

Fraser Gallery Bethesda is located at 7700 Wisconsin Avenue, Suite E, Bethesda, MD 20814, one block north of the Bethesda Metro Stop. You can contact the gallery at 301/718-9651 or via email at info@thefrasergallery.com.

Aware at Last?

I may be just imagining this, but it seems to me that all of a sudden, galleries are selling work all over the place. Have DC area residents finally realized that there's great art for sale in our area galleries?

Last Friday, I saw a lot of red dots in the two galleries I visited, and Kriston reports good sales for Ian Whitmore, and Scott Treleven also did superbly at Conner Contemporary.

In 2004, two of of Georgetown shows were a sell-out/near sell-out. Both were by Cuban artists (Sandra Ramos and Aimee Garcia Marrero). And two of our Bethesda shows were also sold out/near sell out: Tim Tate and David FeBland.

So far 2005 has started out like gangbusters, and the Tim Tate avalanche shows no sign of slowing down, and even the current Contemporary Drawing show sold very well on opening night. By the way, the image to the left shows Adam Bradley's spectacular three dimensional drawing assemblage titled "Return of Turu." Behind it you can see Richard Dana's large wall installation charcoal "Option Trader."

If this observation holds, then all I can say is about time!

Gopnik Doesn't Like Noguchi

Tomorrow's WaPo Sunday Arts has a review by Blake Gopnik of the new Isamu Noguchi exhibition at the Hirshhorn.

Gopnik makes some strong but perhaps unfair points about Noguchi, and tips his card early when he writes:

Noguchi was not one of the great innovators of the 20th century. Most of his work built on ideas that others had before him. But he had a wonderful hand and eye. "Deft" is the word that springs to mind in looking at Noguchi's art, rather than "inspired."

And this thread of Noguchi being a follower, rather than an innovator (if it's not new, then it can't be good), is the backbone of tomorrow's review.

I disagree. Gopnik's art history knowledge has been challenged in the past, and I respectfully submit a new challenge.

Before I submit my evidence, let me reaffirm that I completely disagree with the premise that art has to be new to be good. That is just silly and pompous, and even old fashioned. And Gopnik sort of punches a hole in his own argument when in discussing a series of illuminated works that Noguchi made between 1943 and 1944 (and for the first time since they were made brought together in one place in this exhibit) he admits that

The biomorphic shapes on view in "Lunar Fist" come out of earlier works by Jean Arp; the aggressive id the sculpture seems to flaunt had been a staple of surrealism for years already. But the simple gesture of making the whole work light up gives it an energy that wasn't in its static sources.

...But put a light bulb in a blob of cast cement and colored plastic hanging on the wall, as Noguchi did in "Lunar Fist," and you get somewhere distinctly new. Make a work of art recall the lamps that light the modern world, and it gets a novel kind of leverage.

But let's give more credit where credit is due, and if we are to judge Noguchi solely on "What did you do that's new Isamu?" - then I submit two facts as evidence that both a young Noguchi and an elder Noguchi accomplished this overrated achievement.

Fact one: In my TV interview (which will air next Thursday) with Dr. Valerie Fletcher, the Hirshhorn's Curator of Sculpture and the curator of the Noguchi exhibition, she made a point of discussing that as early as 1929, a 25-year old Isamu Noguchi was creating sculptures made of neon (none of them are in the show). This fact was new to me, and perhaps Gopnik is not aware of it, but it is evidence of a young artist with something new to offer.

So we'll forgive that Gopnik may not be aware of this fact.

But.

Fact two: There's a burnished stainless steel freestanding sculpture in the exhibition (It is titled "Solar" and I'll see if I can get an image of it), that most people would not associate with a "Noguchi style" but more akin to the sculptures of Noguchi's well-known friend David Smith.

It looks so much like a David Smith, that it could be a brother to all these Smith sculptures, which at the time were something "new" as a result of both composition and material and the treatment of the material. The first of these Smith pieces is from the early 60s; the Noguchi piece is from 1958.

Unless someone that I am not aware of was making large, geometrical, highly burnished steel sculptures en masse prior to 1958 (in which case Smith unfairly got the "credit of the new"), it appears that Noguchi again brings something new to this hackneyed dialogue about the importance of the "new."

Case closed.

Washington Post Photographers Sweep Awards

Congratulations to Washington Post photographers Andrea Bruce Woodall, Jahi Chikwendiu, Michael Robinson-Chavez, and Carol Guzy. They had images that won all four top spots in the overall portfolio category of the 2004 White House News Photographers' Association awards -- as well as photographer of the year for first-place winner Andrea Bruce Woodall.

See the photos here. See all other award winners and their photos here.

The award for the political photo of the year went to Liz O. Baylen of the Washington Times for a picture of John Kerry awaiting the start of President Bush's inauguration.

Wall

Paul Richard, who used to be the Chief Art Critic for the WaPo (he retired a few years ago and was replaced by Blake Gopnik), still does the random freelance piece for the Post once in a while.

And a couple of days ago he wrote a really beautiful piece about the new Andy Goldsworthy sculpture "Roof" being built at the National Gallery of Art.

"Roof" is the largest work of art commissioned by the gallery in a quarter-century. Its designer is an art star who, unusual for art stars, is as much admired by the broad art public as he is by the pros. The English wallers he has hired to build his dry stone sculpture are more than mere assistants. "Roof" pays homage to their muscles, their steadfastness, their history. To watch them is to know that they are core to what it is."

I lived in Scotland between 1989-1992, and my home was a large farmhouse near the village of Brechin in Angus. The farmhouse had been built in 1681. It was called Little Keithock Farmhouse, and the dovecot next to it was even older by a couple of centuries, meriting an entry in the Scottish Ordnance Map as an "antiquity," not an easy thing in Europe's most ancient nation.


Anyway, the farmhouse (to the left is a drawing I did of it in 1990 or 1991) had a beautiful garden, which was surrounded by a tall stone wall.

One day, one of the trucks that used the dirt road that ran in front of the house, and led to the nearby potato and turnip fields, lost control, and slammed into the wall, destroying a couple of feet of wall.

A couple of days later, another truck dumped a small pile of new rocks, and soon afterwards an elderly gent showed up, and using nothing but a small hammer, began to rebuild the wall. He re-used the old rocks that had been disturbed by the accident, as well as some of the new ones.

Slowly but surely, over a few days, the wall was rebuilt before my eyes. When it was done, other than the fact that the moss on the stones had been re-arranged, it was impossible to tell that an accident had happened. A year later, the moss was back everywhere and no visual evidence that a chunk of the wall was "new" existed.