Bailey, Bailey, Bailey...

Bailey at his best.

Read it here.

Metcalfe on Tolman

One of the most unique pieces in Seven is a spectacular drawing by Ben Tolman titled "Garden of Earthly Delights."

This is one artist with a singularly interesting Crumbesque vision. The current issue of the City Paper has a terrific piece on Tolman by John Metcalfe.

Read it here.

I bought three Tolmans at DCAC's current Wall Mountables show.

Seven side effects

One of the goals that I had hoped to accomplish for Seven (besides making it a success as a fundraiser and expose WPA/C members' work), was to also drag some of my fellow gallerists through the exhibition in the hope that they could find some artists of interest to them.

Thus far, I am told of at least five artists from Seven who have been signed up or offered contracts or exhibitions by area galleries.

Cool uh?

Mark Jenkins Opens This Friday

TAA Reviews

J.T. has some good reviews of a few area shows.

Read them here.

Torres Interview

Bailey has a terrific interview with Seven artist Alessandra Torres.

Read it here.

Seven on Film

Yesterday an international crew filmed the Seven exhibition at the Warehouse.

They seemed to prefer (and focused upon) Alessandra Torres' installation and photographs, Kathryn Cornelius' video, Tim Tate's glass sculptures, Margaret Boozer's floor "crack" installation and Joe Barbaccia's sculptures.

In the next few days they will be also filming Mark Jenkins' street sculptures around DC, which they also liked a lot.

It was interesting to me to get a sort of outsider "validation" about the quality of the show and the artists, from an experienced crew and director who have done a lot of traveling, filming, interviewing and art hopping around the world, and still have loads of praise for the artwork being created by our area artists.

Cool uh?

Opportunities for Artists

Deadline: September 10, 2005

The 2005 International Figure Exhibition. Red Dot Fine Art will hold its 2nd Annual International Figure Exhibition November 14th - December 3rd at Red Dot Fine Art located on historic Canyon Road in Santa Fe, NM.

The exhibition call is open to all individuals working in two dimensional and three dimensional work in a realistic figurative style in any media. There is a non refundable $30.00 entry fee for up to three works and additional $5.00 fee for each additional work. Exhibition Dates: November 14th - December 3rd, 2005. Fee: $30 for 1-3 images (slides or JPEG) $5 for each additional image submitted. Prospectus here or send a SASE to:
Red Dot Fine Art
ATTN: Figure Exhibition
616 1/2 B Canyon Road
Santa Fe, NM 87501

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Deadline: November 14, 2005

National Juried Art Exhibition. Slide deadline November 14, 2005. $8500 in cash awards divided in three separate categories for 2 and 3-dimensional Fine Art and Photography completed within the past 2 years. For prospectus send SASE to:
Baker Arts Center
624 N Pershing
Liberal KS 67901.

For more information call: 620/624-2810. E-mail: bakerarts@swko.net

National Association of Women Artists

The National Association of Women Artists is a non-profit organization founded in 1889. They are seeking membership applicants from professional women artists in all media. Members are provided with juried and curated exhibit opportunities in NYC and across the US.

Applications are due Sept. 15 and March 15. Download application at: www.nawanet.org or send SASE to:
NAWA
80 5th Av #1405
New York NY 10011

Moser in Canada

Congratulations to our own Lida Moser, who is currently having two separate solo shows in Canada.

The first is at the La Société historique de Québec, where dozens of Moser's photographs from the 1950's (of the province) are on exhibition.

More details (in English) here.

Lida Moser's works are in the collection of nearly 40 museums worldwide.

Locally she's in the permanent collection of the Library of Congress, the Phillips Collection, the Corcoran Gallery of Art and the National Portrait Gallery.

You can read the WaPo review of her last solo with us here.

Bethesda Art Walk

Tomorrow (Friday) is the Bethesda Art Walk.

The Bethesda Art Walk features 13 galleries and studios that open their doors from 6-9pm on the second Friday of every month. Dowtown Bethesda galleries showcase artwork created locally, nationally and internationally including painting, photography, sculpture and mixed media.

You can enjoy several galleries by walking throughout downtown Bethesda’s fun-filled streets. The free Bethesda 8 Trolley stops within a few blocks of each Bethesda Art Walk gallery, and runs continuously throughout the duration of the Art Walk.

We will have our annual Summer Group Show, which includes new work by David FeBland (his "Circle the Wagons" is pictured below), John Winslow, Tim Tate, Michael Sprouse, Maxwell MacKenzie, and others.

See ya there!

Seven in Art Film

Seven will be filmed this week as part of a documentary on contemporary art being produced by Deno Seder Productions.

Their art films and videos have won top honors at the Paris Art Film Biennial at the Georges Pompidou Center, the Berlin Film Festival, the Taipei International Film Festival, the Chicago and Houston International Film Festivals, the New York Underground Film Festival and others. One of their films, "Andy Warhol," was screened at the Corcoran during their Warhol exhibition.

Arts Agenda

The DCist Arts Agenda here.

Opportunity for Artists

Deadline: September 16, 2005.

My good friend Jonathan Binstock, who is the Curator for Contemporary Art at the Corcoran, will be the juror for Mid-Atlantic New Painting 2006.

The Mid-Atlantic New Painting 2006 exhibition is a juried competition highlighting new developments in painting throughout the mid-Atlantic region.

At least $2000 in awards will be distributed. An exhibition of the selected works will be on display in the Ridderhof Martin Gallery from January 26 to March 3, 2006. This will be the fifth contemporary art competition held by the University of Mary Washington Galleries. Entry fee is $30.

The deadline is September 16, 2005. Details and prospectus here.

Capps on Seven

Kriston Capps polices Seven.

Read his review here.

Bailey on Wolov and Brooks

Bailey interviews two of Seven's more controversial artists:

Samantha Wolov here

and

Scott G. Brooks here.

Wanna go to an Opening?

Tomorrow, Wed. Aug 10, from 5-8PM, Spectrum Gallery in Georgetown will be hosting an opening for Under the Influence: Photography by Tom Wolff & Friends.

Wolff taught photography at Glen Echo Park for 30 years, from 1975 until 2005, and this show showcases his work as well as some from his star students: John Borstel, Presscott Moore Lassman, Leta Osteen, and Emily Whiting.

Subject Matter

The visual arts carry a monkey on their back that none of the other genres of the fine arts have to deal with: the proprietarization of subject matter.

So, no contemporary artist would dare to, let's say, paint ballerinas (sorry but Degas closed that subject), or harlequins, etc.

And some subject matter, by the nature of the subject itself, would be labeled as saccharine by the nicest of critics. Say kittens, horses, puppies, mermaids.

Do we have a screwed up sense of what makes the visual arts tick or what?

This powerful painting, titled "Allegory of a Gay Bashing" by Scott Brooks has been receiving a lot of attention in the "nude gallery" in Seven. It is an homage by Brooks to the brutal murder of Matthew Sheppard.

And this painting swings representational painting's most formidable weapon (and the one that keeps painting as king of the hill in spite of all the critics and curators trying to kill it): The ability to convey an entire and diverse range of emotions with just one glance.

"Allegory of a Gay Bashing" delivers horror, beauty, politics, history and homage all in one swoop.

And this tremendous work will probably never be sold to anyone by Brooks, because it would take immense courage to display this work of art anywhere in this nation; not just DC, but anywhere. Someone can prove me wrong and buy it from Brooks and display it in their home, or office or even a museum somewhere - but I doubt that there's a collector or museum in the USA with the cojones to hang this work.

And to get to the beginning point of this ramble, in spite of the horror delivered by "Allegory of a Gay Bashing", many people get stuck on one area: the cute puppy and kitty at the bottom of the castrated nude.

I've been in the room when I hear people discussing it. It seems like the cute puppy and kitty sitting on the ground, and staring at the viewer, evoke a higher sense of revulsion than the castrated man himself.

I've noted people's sense of repulsion caused by juxtaposing the two disparate sets of images. I think that they are repulsed by the cute animals being forced to share a scenario with a tortured man. Why are they there? people ask each other, a note of discomfort in their voices. Even the eloquent Amy Watson was disoriented by the presence of the animals and (in her terrific review of the show) felt that they undermined the painting.

Cute kitty and cute puppy... taking the attention away from disturbing image. How dare Brooks paint cuteness, especially in this context?

I don't know why Scott did it, but I think that it is the key that makes this painting truly repulsive and immensely successful all at once. Take them out, and you have a strong, powerful painting. Put them in, and you create a million questions, enormous angst and a desire to physically remove the creatures from the canvas itself.

And maybe without even realizing it, Scott has also reclaimed an artist's right to paint or draw anything that he or she so desires, and take the unjustified saccharinity of a subject and turn saccharine into anthrax with a few deft strokes of a painter's brush and a disorienting sense of juxtapositioning of subject matter.

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Update: Sam Wolov has some thoughts on this subject.

Bailey on the WPA/C

Bailey jumps in on the issue raised last week by the City Paper on the subject of the WPA/C Directory, and in the process James gives a rousing endorsement to the WPA/C's current interim Executive Director (Kim Ward), which I second vociferously.

Read Bailey's posting here.

Containers/Contained at Target Gallery

"I had no particular impression of Containers/Contained in mind when I began reviewing the submissions for this show; so many potential directions were possible. But after repeated viewings, a common, and timely, approach to the theme began to emerge: artists working in a wide range of styles and materials were using the notion of containment as a tool of cultural, social and political critique."

So begins the juror's statement at the Target Gallery's current exhibition: Containers/Contained.

Comprised of 23 works by 19 artists from around the nation, and juried by Twylene Moyer (managing editor of Sculpture magazine), the exhibition opened yesterday and runs through August 28, 2005, and this is one juror statement that hits the focus of this show dead on: the notion of containment as a tool of cultural, social and political critique.

Take the work of the Best of Show winner, a piece titled For Those Who Serve (Evidence), by J. Barry Zeiger, comprised of old thread spools set atop a gold leaf frame on the floor of the gallery. The juror explained that the "spools came from an old New England factory out of business, and delivered a sense of nostalgia, and... [she] could appreciate a sense of things past and anonymous human beings."

Mmm... this is a very elegant and intelligent show, and in fact I think that this may be the best show of the year so far at Target, and a perfect good bye gift to area art lovers by the gallery's departing director, the fair Claire Huschle. However, considering the outstanding range of truly outstanding sculptures chosen by Moyer, the Best in Show choice left me a little baffled.

You see... it's a large, ah... gold leaf picture frame on the floor, with ... ah... some antique thread spools set atop it.

A bit baffling choice, especially when there are some truly outstanding sculptures in this show (and a couple of photographs too!).

My choice?

As I looked around the room, I realized that three of the 19 artists in the room are either represented by our gallery, or have exhibited there recently (Tim Tate, Mark Jenkins and Alison Sigethy). So let's leave them out of the running (although I must mention that Tim Tate's clever "One Day I Met the Devil at the Crossroads" glass reliquiary won one of the four prizes, as did Alison Sigethy's "Homeland Security").

And my eyes fell upon J. Barry Zeiger's neighbor on the floor of the gallery: Steve Dolbin's "Conduit," a large sculpture made of hollow concrete and stained with acrylic.

The concrete sculpture offers a hidden paradox; sort of a magician's box (the kind where the woman is sawn in half), but in this case Dolbin has the cast feet at one end, and a tangle of hands, fingers and otther objects poking out of the larger, other end. I found it not only visually interesting and technically superb, but also well within the notion of containment expressed by the juror. It would probably have been in the running for my choice as Best in Show.

In addition to Zeigler, Sigethy and Tate, other artists awarded mentions by the juror were Laiung-Chung Yen, for a small cigarrete case piece titled Cages, which has a clever sense of carrying your vices around your fingers at all times.

My kudos to Moyer for selecting a superb show. The exhibition is open to the public until August 28, 2005.