Bethesda Art Walk Tonight

Tonite is Bethesda's time to showcase their galleries, as it is time for the Bethesda Art Walk, with 17 participating galleries and art venues.

Free guided tours begin at 6:30pm. Attendees can meet their guide at the Bethesda Metro Center, located at the corner of Old Georgetown Road and Wisconsin Avenue. Attendees do not have to participate in tours to visit Art Walk galleries.

We'll have the winners of the Bethesda Painting Prize.

See ya there!

Course in Art Appreciation

School of Art and Design at Montgomery College: Summer Session II 2005

This course format sounds like fun! One full day a week for five weeks; lecture in the morning and field trips to local galleries in the afternoon for on-site discussion.

Taught by Dr. Claudia Rousseau, Professor of Art History and Art Critic for the Gazette Newspapers in Montgomery County

Per the school news release, students will look at art from an art critic’s point of view. Topics will include looking at design, themes, subject matter, and historical context in drawings, paintings, sculpture, and other art media.

Open to credit and non-credit students

Wednesdays, June 22 – July 20
Montgomery College Summer Session II
AR 127 School of Art and Design -
CRN# for credit 14143; CRN# for non-credit 14146

9-12:30: Lecture at the Montgomery College Westfield South Center, Room 306E (at Wheaton Mall)
1:30 – 5:30: Discussions on site at local galleries.

For more information call the School of Art and Design 301-649-4454
(For non-credit registration, ask for Yvette).

Open Studios This Weekend

The Mid City Artists Open Studios will be held on the weekend of June 11 and 12. Many artist studios within walking distance of the Dupont/Logan Circles will be open for visitors. This is a unique opportunity to see some of DC’s most exciting artists in their home environment.

The Mid City Artists participating in June’s Open Studio weekend are Sondra Arkin, Kristina Bilonick, Tanja Bos, Robert Cole, Gary Fisher, Glenn Fry, Charlie Jones, Regina Miele, Byron Peck, Miguel Perez-Lem, Brian Petro, Peter Romero, Nicolas Shi, John Talkington, Kelly Towles, and Colin Winterbottom.

Details here.

Nobody Asked Me, But...

Am I the only one thinking that GM needs to hire the desperate Cuban genius who designed and built this water taxi?

Arts Beat

Jonathan Padget in the WaPo today covers "Queering Sight -- Queer Insight," at the Warehouse Gallery.

Padget also announces the winners of the Bethesda Painting Prize.

Read it here.

Mobile back up and moving

The Calder mobile is back up at the National Gallery of Art.

Read it here.

Winners

The winner of the Bethesda Painting Award and other prizewinners from that award's $14,000 prize package will be announced tonight.

These are the finalists.

LRA Show

Last Monday night I curated an exhibition for the League of Reston Artists... they had about 300 entries, and I selected 62.

Best of Show was awarded to Andrei Shoumikhin, whose work I had never seen before, but that showed that superb technical skill that a lot of Eastern European artists seem to acquire in their educational systems, and it was coupled with a very unusual and noticeable artistic vision.

There was $1,500 in cash awards that I distributed among several artists. I'll get a list of award winners posted here a bit later. The opening reception is June 19 from 2-4 PM. Details here.

Seven Update Four

The entries are pouring in for Seven; the deadline is June 10.

I really want to include in this show as many (in terms of number) WPA/C members as possible, with a healthy measure of those who are not seen too often around DC area galleries, and couple them with some well-known names like Manon Cleary, Sam Gilliam, and others. That seems to be working well so far, but expect a very large show.

The latest addee is Margaret Boozer, whose brilliant last solo show at Strand On Volta Gallery I reviewed here.

Boozer will be making a long, low shelf/trough that turns a corner somewhere, and pouring the liquid slip in it, and maybe letting it run out just a little at the end and puddle on the floor. She's thinking it might run along about 18 inches above the floor, and it seems like a logical progression to a similar idea of the "wet" piece that she had at her last solo show.

David Cerny on Hirst

David Cerny is having fun with both Hirst and Saddam Hussein at the Prague Biennial.

Story in German here.

The Worst New York Gallery Experience in History

Herewith an email from a DC artist that I know well... it is a personal and sad story; but one that offers an experience... experienced!

The Worst New York Gallery Experience in History

I fully realize that beginning with that title is tantamount to throwing down a gauntlet to every artist who reads this, but bear with me.

In the end, you'll be the judge.

I will, for the sake of this article, remain nameless.... as shall the events and the gallery discussed here. This is not an effort to protect the gallery, but an attempt to make this experience a little more universal. Remember, this could have happened to you.

My tale begins with a common enough event... a charity auction. As artists, we participate in many such events. This one was particularly prestigious and national in scope. As luck would have it, my piece ended up in the live auction section and with spirited bidding created quite a stir. It was at this point that I was first approached by the "New York Gallery."

"Your work is incredible!" they said, "We would love to represent your work in our Chelsea gallery and also take you to Expo!" (the biggest show in New York in my type of art).

What a fantastic opportunity... finally New York representation... and at Expo to boot! All seemed right with the Universe.

As a non-New York artist I share a commonly-held belief that if I could just procure gallery sponsorship in the Big Apple that my career would definitely take a big leap forward. No longer would I be a regional artist; I would become nationally known. Naive perhaps, but I entered this ordeal with these rose-colored beliefs.

My first hint of unease came when the gallery insisted that I do an "installation." I knew that Expo is not about installation work and neither am I, but hey, what the heck? It's about time I moved in that direction. Don't all great artists? They also claimed to have many clients who were museum curators who bought installation work. Ok.....done!

And video..... they want a video from me. Not just a bio.... but a video art piece. Great again! I've had a video I've wanted to do in my head for years, so here at last was my chance. The gallery owners say that they had numerous clients for videos who pay from $5,000 to $7,000 dollars for a single copy.

Wow!

Ok..... sure... I was skeptical, but I wanted to believe so badly! Here I was heading to New York as a video and installation artist. Pretty cool, huh?

New York is just waiting for me! Unfortunately, the Universe has a tendency to punish such hubris.

Lessons need to be learned the hard way. Let me also clarify. This story is not about money... it is about validation that a New York gallery can imply to those of us outside of New York.

I spent the next 6 weeks making all the components for the big day. My regular art is quite labor-intensive. Throw in the video and I was kept very busy until the day I left for New York.

Now the fiasco begins.

Day One

My team gets to the Expo space an hour ahead of me and calls to say that no one from the gallery is there, and that all the artists are confused as to where to install.

We knew the exact size of the space for our installation, so they have measured and decide that only one space is the correct size. They begin to install.

I arrive to Expo..... not as an observer as in years past, but triumphantly as an honored participant! I get to the space and discover that my space is the only space in Expo that actually faces the wall... not the aisle where the people are.

The owners arrived about this time and tell me not to worry. Everybody sees everything at Expo. "Jeez," I think, "but what can I do? At least I'm at Expo....and it won't be the first time I've overcome bad placement in a show."

Now that the owners have arrived it is clear that they have had a huge fight. They are a couple going through a painful and public divorce. For the purposes of this story we will know them as Joe Young and Joe Old.

Not surprisingly, Joe Old is the one with all the money, but Joe Young is the one with all the power. For some inexplicable reason Joe Young (and I mean young) has been given total control over the gallery, without a clue how to accomplish this. He is on a mission to become the cutting edge gallery in Chelsea. (see prior notes regarding hubris).

By this time my team and I have installed my work..... a little tight and very hard to find, but I'm at Expo. So Joe Young says, "Hey, before you guys leave, could you help us move a pipe? Its another artists work, but its over at the gallery and we have to move it here."

"Ah.... ok, sure. We'd be happy to help!" and besides, I'm dying to see the gallery space. (I know.... and no, I hadn't ever seen the gallery).

It turns out there are six of us riding down in an SUV. Wow...this must be some pipe! This could not have been truer, as the pipe is 4ft high, 2ft. wide and 1/2 inches thick. This is one heavy pipe! With all of us helping (except the owners...who have strangely disappeared again), we get the pipe in the SUV. Now we enter the gallery.

It is in a wonderful building, filled with wonderful galleries. This is a good sign. This is a building I have always wanted to show in. Ok.... they have the smallest and most buried space in the building, but they are still here. We enter the gallery.

Standing in the middle of the gallery is a coat rack filled with coats and a picnic table covered in trash. Trash also covers the floor. Empty Coke bottles, mustard jars, Boone's Farm, Cheez-Whiz...... it's some explosive leftovers from a Tennessee picnic.

"Oh my God!", I say, "What on earth happened!?!?".

"What do you mean?" they say, "This is an installation. Its all about consumerism."

Oh Lord.... I remember when kids would put a box of S.O.S. pads on a pedestal and called it consumerism art.... is that fad back again? I sincerely hope not. Maybe I'm just out of touch; I mean after all, I'm a non-New York artist. What do I know?

My work has been thought out for weeks. Every piece has been scrupoulously made and the installation subtly and thoughtfully tells a story common to us all. Maybe this heavy-handed consumerism approach is back again. I hope that I haven't made a mistake!

OK.... home to bed... I want to get lots of sleep before the big day.

As I walk into the booth the next day, I see that the other artists have had time to install their work.

Boy have they!

I should say that there is a glass artist, a wood artist and a ceramic artist sharing my booth (and who also share my fate).

In front of the booth they have forced the ceramic artist to put her work into a structure that looks like a puppet theater.... complete with red velvet curtains.

Next to me is another pile of picnic refuse as well. It seems that it is the brainchild of the gallery owner.

It's what he thinks the wood guy should be doing. "It's all about chaos theory," he says. Well... I agree about the chaos part.

On the other side of me is a huge installation titled "Dictator." This consists of two walls completely crammed with coffee mugs, t-shirts, pillows, thongs and boxer shorts with the word "Dictator" on them. Again..... its about consumerism (they say).

The giant pipe is also there.

Now..... it's now very very tight to get into the booth..... maybe five feet of entry space left. Let's see..... how can they close it off more?

I know!...... let's paint a foosball table grey and completely cover four of the last five feet of entry space.

And let's put DVD players right at that last opening (although they never show the video that they had claimed they would show to curators).

The booth looks like a grocery store and a Thrift shop have mated. If you manage to wiggle in to see my work, it's extremely difficult to see it at all because it is surrounded by so much stuff.

The owners have also hired three youngsters to "sell" at the gallery. One seems to know what she is doing.... the other kids just talk about who's getting laid by whom while all the while congregating at the only one foot entrance into the booth.

Its now 5PM and the big black tie opening event has started.

All the big collectors, museum curators, etc. are there....... but no owners.

At 5:15; however, another 20-year-old kid runs in and says he's supposed to be hanging there too.

He's a painter..... and this is definitely not a painter's show..... but up go his paintings.

Nothing makes sense in this explosion.

There is no theme, there is no order (and there is no way to get into the space).

The owners finally arrive towards 6PM. In the meantime the painter has begun to drink heavily.

Meanwhile, the owners have decided that their space was too simple, so in order to create a "happening" they have hired a performance artist.

She is from Italy. It is her job to walk around the entire event and put red dots on all of everyone else's artwork.

Now people are getting upset.

So upset that she is escorted out of the event by the security director.

The security director believes that I am to blame because I am the only one at the booth.

I assure him I am not; this is not our last contact.

The painter.... very upset over the gallery's seeming inability to sell even one painting, has really started drinking. In fact he has had five large wine glasses filled with Scotch.

Straight Scotch.

The security director comes over to me again. "Is this your boy? " he asks. "He's peeing on the ground right over there. We are going to put him out for good."

Jeez....

I had better at least try to get him into a cab. After all, he is one of my fellow artists from the gallery (The owners are nowhere to be found).

I go outside and try to talk some sense into him and send him home to his girlfriend. He is immediately hot..... so I start to go inside. Out comes one of the gallery owners, Joe Old.

Bad timing.

The kid is really wound up about promises not kept by the gallery. The painter takes a swing at the gallery owner and knocks his cell phone into traffic. The painter dives for it, narrowly missing being hit by a passing cab.

The painter grabs the cell phone, and throws it onto the roof of the neighboring building. He then turns around and punches the gallery owner full in the face. The gallery owner runs inside. Now I am left with a screaming, flailing kid on the middle of the street.

I'm holding him back as he rants.

It looks like I'm having a huge lover's quarrel with my child bride.

As this thought crosses my mind, I look up.

There... on the corner... is the entire staff of the most prestigious gallery for my kind of work in New York. They do not look amused.

Great! .... perfect.... just what I needed to boost my career.

How on earth could this get any worse?

I know.... let's have the gallery owner from the biggest DC gallery for my type of work walk up.... and lets have her joined by the cops, who have arrived on the scene with flashing lights.

Ok...that's worse!

The cops don't know what's happening; they are just responding to a call.

Their belief is that he and I are both creating a disturbance. I tell the cop that I barely know this kid, I'm just trying to get him a cab. The cop says that I have one minute to do so or he will run us both in.

Great!

I hail a cab and pay the driver $40 out of my pocket to get this kid to Brooklyn; why I will never know. The cops finally say that I can go.

By this time the huge black tie party is over... my collar is torn... and I'm out 40 bucks. Time to go home, lick my wounds, and try again the next day. Thus ended the longest day in my art career.

Day Two

Day two started off much better. I was full of hope and determined to cast off the bad mojo from the first day. I arrived on time, and again... no owners.

But hey....who needs owners? I'm at Expo... I can sell my own work. Which I did almost immediately. Three pieces in fact. Alright.... this is gonna be great! Then in comes the three staff members.

Now the booth is too packed to get into again. This is when the testimonials begin.

All throughout the day artists keep coming up to me and pulling me aside. "Get your stuff out while you can!" they'd say, or "I had to sue them to finally get my money!" This happened six times that day.

And these are artists I respect; Where were all these guys when I was asking about this NYC the gallery in the first place?

And it's not just artists.

Its other gallery owners. They look at me consolingly and tell me how sorry they are for me. They without exception, they advise me to get my work out of there before the train wreck occurs. I sold nothing more that day; I left with a sick feeling.

Day Three

Day three continues along those lines, only today it's the other artists and gallery staff that offer tales of terror.

The most lucrative artist they show there tells me that while he has sold lots for them, he has yet to receive money. He is told his work is hanging in a millionaire's home and that the gallery hasn't been paid yet.

This was three months ago.

He also tells me that the owners are furious with me. "Why?," I ask.

"Because you sold three pieces of artwork."

Huh?

Seems that if you sell artwork and they don't, they get upset...supposedly because it points out they can't sell.

Huh?

The woman whom they have hired to run the gallery is pretty sharp. She tells me the ship is sinking... try to get your work out ASAP.

She says that the are the laughing stock of the Chelsea art scene.

Lord knows we are a laughing stock here; except to the art collector who came into the booth to loudly accuse the owners of stealing a 100 dollar bill off of his dresser while they were in his home.

Day Four

Day four is known as "Skank Day."

The owners have decided that they need more notice. They decide to hire two 20-year-old girls and have them dress in thongs and skimpy t-shirts and hand out water bottles with the booth number on it.

Being that the average age of collectors attending the event is 65, you can imagine how well this is received. Enter my new friend (the security director); Out they go.

Today the owner yells at the staff, "We are NOT here to sell artwork.... we are here to sell the gallery!,"

That sure explains a lot.

Wish they had told me that going into this. I am standing in the middle of a three ring circus, and there is nothing I can do about it.

Last Day

Last Day; Word has gotten out about this train wreck. Everyone comes by to offer advice. Unfortunately, I can't leave with my artwork because I have a contract with the gallery. People tell me to break my contract, but I know I can't. I check into the booth before heading to the train station. Since before I'd arrived and all during this event I have told the owners how to move my work when they de-install.

Now as I leave they start freaking out... they are uncomfortable moving it. God knows what will happen.

I am writing this on the train returning home. I have no idea if I will ever see my artwork or my money ever again. The general consensus was that they will shortly file for bankruptcy and fold me into that. So much occurred that I didn't even report here (in the interest of brevity). Suffice it to say they lied to me daily and obviously.

So..... you non-New York artists out there: Let this be a lesson to you all.

Learn the easy way for a change; not the hard way. Maybe being a regional artist is not so bad. And when you plan to stretch to the Big Apple, try and get a recommendation first. This was an incredibly costly mistake for me, but I won't stop trying. You can be sure though.... the next time I will have a lot more questions to ask.

Signed... an artist too embarrassed to sign his name.

LRA

Superbusy during the day today and then tonight I'll be jurying a show for the League of Reston Artists (LRA).

Tapemen Hit NYC

Mark Jenkins in New York City.

Mark Power on Hoi on Levy and the Corcoran

DC Art News reader Mark Power, a retired Professor of Photography at the Corcoran College of Art and Design, read former Corcoran Dean Samuel Hoi's letter about David Levy's resignation with interest, and he says, particularly this paragraph:

"The Corcoran owes its presence today to president and director David C. Levy. He took over a dysfunctional institution after the Robert Mapplethorpe fiasco, stabilized it, gave it new vision and built enough resources for the museum to aspire again. Both the museum and the art college expanded their programs and reached into the city as never before, becoming a renewed force in the region."

Power notes that earlier on DC Art News, former Corcoran teacher Rex Weil had this to say:

"...Levy's strategic plan: Treat your major constituencies (members, students, employees and faculty) with contempt and buy your way out of problems with a celebrity building. Well, it might have worked, but it hasn't. As the Corcoran's new Board Chairman learned recently "support for the Corcoran is 'superficial.'"

Weil continues:

"Meaning (I suppose), that, although everyone would like to see the Corcoran succeed, most people (a) just don't feel like they have a stake in it; and/or (b) are disappointed with current management. Let's face it: practically everybody in Washington knows someone who has left the Corcoran in frustration or disgust. (I left in December, 2004 after teaching there since 1996). That's bound to have a major snowball effect in terms of community support.

What Levy has apparently failed to grasp from the beginning: You have to build support from the bottom up with good programs and good relationships. Build the base - with satisfied, dedicated employees, enthusiastic students and their proud families, members invested in ambitious programming, and a committed long-term faculty advancing the institution. Those folks are, in turn, your best fundraisers.

Instead, (according to the Washington Post), the Corcoran has spent over 22 million on the Gehry addition. One way or another, a good deal of that 22 million has come out of the hide of students and their families, employees, faculty and admission paying visitors in poor facilities, shameful employment practices and dreary programming. All in all, the institution's core constituencies are bitter and alienated."

As a former teacher at the Corcoran myself, I {Power] find Weil's observations to be much closer to the reality I experienced. The Corcoran's press release on the current crises barely mentions the school which suggests business as usual with the new board. Being a photographer, of course I like Blake Gopnik's proposal to turn the museum into a center for photography which would address the identity problem and have the added virtue of making people forget about the Gehry debacle. Contrarily, it might even prompt some imaginative donor to revive the prospect of a Gehry building were it to be a museum of photography. Such a move could be financed by selling off the American Collection to the Smithsonian's Museum of American Art where it probably belongs anyway. But it would take a prodigious act of will and imagination for the board to take this action, qualities which have been conspicuously absent from previous boards.

Mark Power, Professor, Photography, Corcoran College of Art and Design (retired 1988)

M. Cameron Boyd on Gopnik on Intelligence of Art Public

A few days ago, Blake Gopnik, Chief Art Critic for the Washington Post, wrote a review of the Patriot show at the Contemporary Museum in Baltimore.

DC Art News reader M. Cameron Boyd responds to Gopnik's review with the following:

Does Mr. Gopnik know what time it is?
By M. Cameron Boyd

Blake Gopnik’s review of the "Patriot" exhibit at the Contemporary Museum ("In Baltimore, Delving Into the Notion of Patriotism") does little to help the cause of either contemporary art or art criticism. His cursory redress of this show fails to engage any of the worthy ideas the exhibition apparently represents, i.e., the social construction of national identity, or the redirection of mass media promotional material against the interests of capital.

Does Mr. Gopnik know what time it is?

Back in the '80's, art critic Brian Wallis called on "future critics" to "address particular audiences for art and criticism and establish new means of distribution to meet such audiences."

Instead, Mr. Gopnik contends that art is "set up to be basically powerless," that "we’re all taught that art is wacky," and that we (audience, critics and artists, I presume) avoid any art with the kinds of ideas that "make us uncomfortable." Besides being a disservice to both the art and the artists who make it, these broad generalities ignore the intelligence of a viewing public that is capable of developing their unique interaction with contemporary art.

I suggest that we artists and art critics begin to establish a community discourse on the "uncomfortable" ideas associated with contemporary art to foster the nascent art audience. Mr. Gopnik is aware, too, that the Washington Post is an institution that functions like a museum as a "high profile public space."

He could begin to direct his considerable energy and influence to exploring the potential connection of difficult art to "mainstream thought and culture" rather than avoiding the true critical issues and labeling "challenging ideas" as "officially marginal."

M. Cameron Boyd

BLOGebrity

I can't recall if it was Time or Newsweek, but a couple of days ago I read a piece in one of them about the newest BLOG in Cyberspace that ranks BLOGs by their celebrity status or importance.

There's an A-list, a B-list and a C-list...

It's all here.

And there are quite a few Washingtonians on the list too!

About Time...

Cudlin is back in the CP with a review of the Kehinde Wiley show at Conner Contemporary.

These are such a kewl couple of paragraphs (that an older art critic could have never birthed) because they deliver a great insight into the show:

As he once stated in an interview, "We live in an age where the distinctions between high art and popular culture are finally starting to melt. Thank God. In a sense, that’s the strength of my work."

As it turns out, it is. Wiley’s art is all about the erosion of such differences—between past tradition and present moment, masculine display and effete decoration, Fragonard and FUBU.

And (I for one) love having a skilled painter as an art critic (as well); an intelligent person who can quickly note that:

...it’s almost hard to believe that Wiley uses oils, not acrylics. There is no slow accumulation of glazed transparent layers here — only the flat immediacy proper to commercial illustration.

But it is this paragraph that drives the show home for me:

The tendency of much postmodern art has been to reject old hierarchies by making artistic activity more conceptual, less dependent on any one ancient medium’s troubled history. Wiley shows us that sometimes the most radical act is to continue with the seemingly insupportable.

Bravo Wiley, Bravo Cudlin, Bravo Painting.

Busy...

As you can tell from the relative brevity of postings, I have been incredibly busy with many things at once.

It will get better... I hope.

This weekend is the last weekend to see "Compelled by Content," which has really hit a new zenith for sculpture shows for us, and judging by the huge amount of discusssion it has caused in the online glass community, has also left an important footprint on fine art glass.

Laughing at Chris Burden

Laugh here.

Thanks Joe!

Hoi on Levy

The former Dean of the Corcoran College of Art and Design from 1991 to 2000 chimes in on the David Levy firing with a letter to the WaPo.

Read it here.