Richard on Newman

The WaPo's former Chief Art Critic delivers a rare and welcomed thing: an unexpected review.

Paul Richard reviews William Newman at Adamson.

More please...

P.S. And the current WaPo Chief Art Critic, Blake Gopnik, last Sunday delivered a really good review of Alice Neel at the NMWA.

Openings this week

On Thursday, November 17, Susan Calloway Fine Arts has Alison Hall Cooley: Recent Works – Abstract Oil Paintings opening from 5-8PM. Cooley has exhibited in Washington, DC, Virginia, and Massachusetts. She is the winner of several awards, including the Charles C. McDougall Award for Promising New Artist. Cooley attended the Corcoran School of Art in Washington, DC, and Sarah Lawrence University.

Also on Thursday, The League of Reston Artists has the opening for their Annual Juried Theme Exhibition: "Edges". The awards reception is at Walker & Company from 6-8PM.

On Friday, being the third Friday of the month, the Georgetown Canal Square Galleries have their extended hours and openings.

We will have an amazing show by Scott Hutchison, perhaps one of our area's most innovative and talented videopainters; more on that later.

Opportunity for Artists

Deadline: December 9, 2005

Stretched Tight is an exhibition that is open to all artists in the United States and abroad working in the ancient medium that refuses to die: painting.

Artists are encouraged to submit work that challenges conventional notions. Work may represent a broad range of subjects, genres, concepts and/or processes.

Juror: My good friend Jack Rasmussen, Director and Curator of the Katzen Arts Center at American University, Washington D.C.

Jack has also served as the Executive Director of the di Rosa Preserve: Art & Nature, Napa, CA and the Maryland Art Place (MAP) in Baltimore.

Deadline December 9, 2005. Show dates February 24 - March 26, 2006. Entry fee $30.00 for three images (slide or CD). $500.00 in award money.

For a prospectus send a SASE to the:
Target Gallery
Torpedo Factory Art Center
105 North Union St
Alexandria VA 22314

Or call 703-838-4565 x 4, or E-mail: targetgallery@torpedofactory.org

This looks like fun

Deadline: November 30, 2005

The Masters Mystery Art Show 2005 is an international exhibition that will coincide with Art Basel Miami Beach 2005.

Artists are invited to donate original work in any medium in a 6 x 9 postcard format to be sold for the affordable price of $50. All artists names will be published at the time of the exhibition but the works will be displayed anonymously and the identity of the artist will only be revealed to the purchaser after the completion of the sale.

The event is organized for the sole benefit of the prestigious Master of Fine Arts in Visual Arts (MFA) program at Florida International University, Miami. In its remarkably successful 2004 inaugural edition, which took place at the Ritz Carlton South Beach, over 1000 artworks by more than 500 artists and celebrities from art related fields were featured and over $20,000 was raised for the MFA program.

It's so easy to participate! Just download the Entry Form and the Artist Info Form from this website.

Wanna go to an opening?

Salve Regina Gallery at the Catholic University of America presents: Hollow Work with an opening reception on Wednesday, November 16 2005 from 6-9PM.

Artists include: Joan Ganzevoort, Lancelot Coar, Mary Frank and Phoebe Esmon.

The Salve Regina Gallery
Catholic University of America
620 Michigan Ave NE
Washington, DC 20009
202.319.5282

South American Holiday

South American Holiday opens at the Anne C. Fisher Gallery in Georgetown this coming Friday, 18 November with an opening reception from 6-8pm.

The exhibition features South American artists Joan Belmar (Chile), Patricia Secco (Brazil), Luis Scotti (Uruguay) and Helga Thomson (Argentina).

The exhibition hangs through 13 January, 2006.

Deadline Approaching

The deadline for receiving applications for the 2006 Bethesda Fine Arts Festival is Friday, December 16, 2005.

For more information and to download an application form, visit this website.

Art Job

Bedford Gallery, City of Walnut Creek, California. Part-Time, 30 hours per week, $25.65 - $30.97 per hour plus benefits!

Coordinate and implement promotion of Bedford Gallery exhibitions; plan and present events and arts education programs. Supervise volunteers. Requires: Bachelors and/or Masters of Art or fine arts, and 2 to 3 years direct experience. City application required, apply by 11/18/05. For more information and a city application go to: www.walnut-creek.org.

Worldwide

I am somewhat amazed as to the number of visits that DC Art News gets from all over the world (from outside the DC area that is).

We're now approaching around 1,000 visitors a day, and a random check on the world map shows visits from all over the planet.

See the 100 most recent visitors here.

Power of the Web

Terry Teachout in the Wall Street Journal: "You, Too, Can Be a Critic - Regional arts journalists now have competition -- the 'artblog'"

"Few regional papers, after all, can afford to hire more than a handful of arts staffers, and even fewer editors know enough about the arts to make informed hiring decisions, much less intelligently oversee the writers they do hire."

Read it here.

Bootcamp today

I'll be at Warehouse all day co-presenting the "Success as an Artist" seminar, also known around these parts as Bootcamp for Artists.

This seminar is fully booked, but we have a wait list for the next one. Email Catriona for details.

More later...

Ursy

A while back I met a very talented lady, who has not only an important history as one of our area's top potters and ceramic wizards, but is also an amazing kayaker.

And slowly but surely she has taught herself a separate wizardry: digital manipulations of her own nascient photography.

If you want to see how an artistic vein can course through many different genres, don't miss Ursy Potter's exhibition at the Unitarian Universalist Congregation Fairfax 2709 Hunter Mill Road, Oakton, Virginia and on the phone at (703) 281-4230. The reception is Sunday, November 13 from 12:30-3PM.

Wanna go to an opening tonight?

The show is "Threesome: A Girl, a Guy, and a Gay" at Studio One Eight, a new gallery in Adams Morgan located at 2452 18th St. NW, and the opening is tonight, from 7-10pm. The show features new paintings and drawings by Dana Ellyn Kauffman, Gregory Ferrand and Scott G. Brooks.

This show brings together three figurative artists living and working in DC. Each approaches their work in a unique style from a different point of view, with equally distinct results:

- Dana Ellyn Kauffman is a full time painter, living and working in Washington, DC. and we last saw her work at Art-O-Matic... she's a narrative painter whose works usually tell a story and have powerful visual meaning, and sometimes the message may come as a shock... don’t let her pigtails fool you.

- Gregory Ferrand, a Washington, DC artist, is a graduate of Virginia Commonwealth University’s School of the Arts. After living in Buenos Aires, Argentina for two years and traveling through Latin America, he began to paint in earnest. His paintings and drawings for this show deal with emotional, physical, and societal insecurities.

- Scott G. Brooks is originally from Flint, Michigan, and graduated from the University of Michigan with a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree. He moved to the D.C. area in 1990 and currently lives and works in the U Street corridor. His work has been exhibited in New York, Los Angeles, and many venues in the D.C. area, including the recent "Jumping Through Hoops" at Gallery Neptune, the WPA/Corcoran show "Seven," "Drawing National 2" at Montgomery College, and the last three Artomatic exhibitions. Scott has also illustrated two children’s books: The Three Armadillies Tuff, and The Ring Bear. For "Threesome," Scott focused purely on the figure, creating six new paintings based on models that he has worked with recently.

While I was gone

Leave it to Blake...

Last Sunday, the WaPo's Chief Art Critic looked at the Katzen and it got a bunch of artsy folks arguing online.

Read it here.

For a different perspective, Joanna Shaw-Eagle at the Times (and who has been writing about art since Blake was in diapers), offers this view.

Tate in the Blade

The Washington Blade has a good article on Tim Tate in today's paper.

Read it here.

Tate's new solo show "Caged by History," which is already nearly a third sold prior to the actual opening (his previous two solo shows sold out) opens to the public tonight with an opening reception as part of the Bethesda Art Walk, from 6-9PM.

If you only come to see one of our shows this year, come see this one, and see what develops when the power of narrative art is brought, for the first time, to the genre once segregated to the craft side of the arts and focused only to the vessel.

Details on the Art Walk here.

DC Arts Grant Recipients

Congrats to these artists, who were recently awarded an average of $4,700 as part of individual art awards by the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities.

Trends in Contemporary Drawing

Next Thursday, November 17, from 7-9 pm, join the Arlington Arts Center for an evening of challenging definitions and preserving traditions as four leading artists and curators from the Washington, D.C. area discuss trends in contemporary drawing.

The latest AAC exhibition Drawing: Tradition & Innovation opens on November 15 and features diverse work by 21 artists from the Mid-Atlantic region. The roundtable is free of charge and open to the public.

Panelists are:

Margaret Boozer - Ms. Boozer is a contemporary sculptor whose work in clay exploits the natural occurrence of line as the material hardens. Her work is included in the collection of the Renwick Gallery of the Smithsonian American Art Museum and in many private collections. She was also an exhibiting artist in Seven. She is the director of Red Dirt Studio in Mt. Rainier, MD, and has been a visiting artist and lecturer at local and national institutions.

Richard Dana - Mr. Dana has exhibited his art extensively regionally, nationally and internationally. He has had over 16 solo exhibitions and participated in over 65 group exhibitions. Most recently, he has shown his work at the Pretoria Museum of Art in South Africa in June and at Tribes Gallery in New York in October and locally in Seven. Mr. Dana is a participating artist in Drawing: Tradition and Innovation.

Janis Goodman - Ms. Goodman is an Associate Professor at the Corcoran College of Art. She has received an NEA support grant and DC Commission on the Arts grants to individual artists. Her own work is deeply rooted in the traditions and extensions of the drawing process. For the past three years she has been a visual arts reviewer for WETA’s TV program Around Town,

Karey Kessler - A Washington, D.C. based artist, Ms. Kessler uses the tradition of mapping to underscore the organizing principles of line. Though based on the science of topography, her intimate drawings depict imagined, dream-like locales. Her work has been exhibited throughout the United States. She currently serves as Gallery Manager at the District of Columbia Arts Center (DCAC), and independently curates in the region regularly.

The evening, part of the AAC's Bridges to Contemporary Arts series, will be moderated by AAC Curator, Carol Lukitsch. For more information, contact AAC via email at info@arlingtonartscenter.org or by phone at 703.248.6800.

Montgomery County Local Cultural Policy Forum

What: "Cultural Policy at the Grassroots: The State of the Cultural Community in Montgomery County"

When: Thursday, November 17, 2005, 6:00-9:30 pm

Where: Room 204 Resource Center, Montgomery College, Takoma Park Campus, Takoma Park, MD.

The Center for Arts and Culture, a cultural policy think tank affiliated with George Mason University, the Arts and Humanities Council of Montgomery County, and Montgomery College will hold an evening forum for leaders of the cultural community, private supporters, and local government agencies.

The theme of the forum, "Cultural Policy at the Grassroots: The State of the Cultural Community in Montgomery County," will revisit the County Cultural Plan, now five years in action and focus on three primary issues: (1) individual artists and scholars, (2) partnerships, and (3) ethnic diversity.

The purpose of the forum is to discuss these issues with outside experts and move to a consensus on future action steps for the County. Local cultural leaders as well as speakers from outside of the Washington region will participate in moderated panel discussions. This event is a part of a series of cultural policy forums being held in the Washington region.

The forum is free and open to the public, however, seating is limited. For more information about this event or to RSVP, please contact Susie Leong at sleong@culturalpolicy.org.

More information about this project can be found at the Center’s website.

Need a job?

The Arlington Arts Center, a leading contemporary visual arts center located in Arlington, VA, is seeking a part time administrative coordinator. Responsibilities include maintaining database, keeping membership records, coordinating class registration, and organizing exhibition materials and artist applications. This position involves regular public interaction in person and on the phone.

An ideal candidate will be well-organized with an ability to work on different projects simultaneously. A working knowledge of all Microsoft Office Suite programs is essential (particularly Access and Excel), previous experience/internship in an arts organization desirable.

This is a 20-hour/week hourly position. Schedule is flexible, but some evenings and occasional Saturdays are required. Interested candidates should submit a cover letter and resume via fax to: 703-248-6849 or via e-mail at info@arlingtonartscenter.org. No phone calls, please.

Mid City Artists Open Studios

The next Mid City Artists Open Studios will be held this weekend (November 12 and 13). During Open Studios, many artist studios within walking distance of the Dupont/Logan Circles will be open for visitors.

I also hear that Wendy Rieger of NBC News will cover the Mid City Artists Open Studios on NEWS4 at 5pm, Friday and on Saturday morning. Watch for the newscast!

Details of the open studios here.