This will be my last one

As a result of several personal decisions, the show that will open next Friday, July 14, 2006,(and which I juried) at the Fraser Gallery will be my last one associated with the gallery.

When Catriona and I opened the first Fraser Gallery in Georgetown in 1996, we did so with a well-defined focus and backed by the financial empire of Mr. Visa and Mrs. MasterCard. We also did it without stealing another gallery's mailing list to start with (in fact we did not have a mailing list at all!) and with a working list of what to do - number one on that list was (and is): "pay the artist first."

In spite of the tremendous apathy that our local media shows all art galleries, and the dreadful state of art collecting and support to local artists exhibited by our general public, the gallery did very well over the years, and in 2002 we opened a second, larger gallery in Bethesda. For the next four years we operated two art galleries concurrently, in a whirlwind of work and exhibitions. Earlier this year we closed the original gallery in Georgetown and concentrated our efforts on the Bethesda location.

The gallery continues to do well, and this year has so far been our best year ever, already surpassing comparisons with 2005, which has been our best year to date. Fraser Gallery remains one of the key independently owned commercial visual art galleries in our region and will be so for many years to come.

The show which opens Friday, and which I juried, is our annual juried competition, the first of which I also juried in 1996. Following this exhibition, I will no longer be associated personally or legally with the gallery, which will be continued to be directed (and now solely owned) by the talented and hardworking Catriona Fraser.

I am making this decision as a result of several key personal items, one of which is the fact that within the next couple of months I will commence a major shift in location, which will see me partially re-locate to the area in or around Swarthmore, Pennsylvania, a couple of hours north of here.

I am NOT "leaving" the DC area. In fact my tentative plans call for me working physically (and living) in the DC area most weekdays, and spending weekends and some weeks in Swarthmore.

This will leave me with some much needed time in my hands to do a couple of projects, one of which should be of interest to all readers of DC Art News.

(a) As some of you know, I have been receiving a handful of offers for the DC Art News "concept" to go national in the sense of associating the blog with a national entity and expand its coverage and concept to a national audience. I have resisted doing this for obvious reasons: lack of time.

And while I will not transform DC Art News into a national "art news" blog, with the help of two additional writers, who will help me add more content to the blog (content that I will edit and they will do the work to make it bloggable), I will expand DC Art News to cover more of the geographical area that I will be "living" in, and thus sometime soon I will start covering and calling it "Mid-Atlantic Art News."

More on this later.

(b) I will spend the next year investigating and deciding on how to re-invent myself as a private art dealer. This may end up with a new physical gallery space somewhere yet to be decided, but certainly will soon definately include both an online presence and a private presence representing several artists in art fairs around the nation and perhaps Europe along the Douz & Mille model and/or the Curator's Office model.

(c) I will finally (hopefully) have to some time in my hands to finish a couple of long-delayed book projects. The first is a guide to DC area art galleries and museums, for which I have been under contract to produce for now over a year. Tentatively titled "Art Around the Capital," the guide will list all visual art spaces around the DC area as well as details about the space, its artists, etc. More on that later as well. The second is my long-delayed art history book on the art of the Pictish Nations of pre-Celtic Scotland.

(d) I will also devote more time and effort to my own artwork.

And thus this Friday's opening will be my farewell show at Fraser Gallery, and I hope to see as many of you there as possible. The opening will feature the work of the following artists:

Collin Asmus, Boston, MA
Marina Bare, Salisbury, NC
Lisa Brotman, Bethesda, MD
Robert Cantor, Annandale, VA
Mary Chiaramonte, Broadway, VA
Anna Conti, San Francisco, CA
Jenny Davis, Hughesville, MD
Andrew Decaen, Orlando, FL
Roland Delcol, Knokke, Belgium
Linda Frost, Santa Monica, CA
Angela Grey, Cleveland, OH
James Halloran, Arlington, VA
Joseph Hamilton, Landover, MD
Amy Lin, Fairfax, VA
Gabrielle Mayer, Louisville, KY
Sharon Moody, McLean, VA
Nancy Reinke, Alexandria, VA
Peter Van Riper, Washington, DC
Paul Ryan, Baltimore, MD
Hannah Ueno-Olsen, Hammonton, NJ
Taryn Wells, Medfield, MA

The opening is this coming Friday from 6-9PM and will (of course) have loads of sangria and the terrific art of the above artists. Come by and say hello and farewell and hello again.

See ya there!

New Art Space

Opening on July 14, 2006 from 6:00 pm to 8:00 pm, Hillyer Art Space presents Scratching the Surface: a Survey of Artists in the Washington Region, the first show in their series of Washington Region Programs.

It will remain on view through August 24, 2006 and aims to bring recognition to a variety of artists living and working in the Washington region. The exhibition is dedicated to the memory of Kevin MacDonald, a well-known and much loved artist who worked in the DC area and who died recently.

The new art venue assembled a committee of some of the most prominent visual artists in the region to identify colleagues and other lesser exposed artists working in a variety of medium such as sculpture, screen prints, ceramics, painting, ink on paper, mixed media etc. for inclusion in the show. Scratching the Surface will feature works by Jiha Moon, Erin Root, Jody Bergstresser, Dan Dudrow, Zachary Jackson, Amy Lin, Mai Kojima, Jeffrey Meizlik, Conrad Meyers II, John Trevino, and Steven F. Kijek

The panel responsible for the selection of these artists is made up of some of the region’s most celebrated and respected artists, including: Bill Christenberry, Manon Cleary, John Dreyfuss, David Driskell, Bill Dunlap, Helen Frederick, Carol Brown Goldberg, Pat Goslee, Rebecca Kamen, Quentin Mosley, Dennis O’Neil, Wendy Ross, John Ruppert, Foon Sham, Renee Stout, Lou Stovall, Duncan Tebow, Mindy Weisel, and Frank Wright.

Me in American Weekly

American Weekly with a really cool article on The Real (Art) World exhibition at AU and a cool pic of yours truly.

Read it here.

Exploit and Click

Wish I had thought of the above title, but instead read this interesting article by Jim Lewis at Slate.

Congrats!

To Italy for winning its fourth World Cup.

Artists' Market is Today

Today is the Bethesda Artists Market- till 5PM.

Directions here.

Arts Beat

Rachel Beckman, who is the new writer for the Arts Beat column writes a superb profile of area artist Eric Finzi, who's currently exhibiting at Heineman-Myers.

Correcto Mundo

A twittering correction.

Boozer


I'll be damned if I didn't learn a thing or two from this great CP profile on area artist Margaret Boozer.

Not only do I think that Boozer is one of the key, really key, artists in our area... but also someone who's gonna leave a deep footprint on contemporary art, and also one of the most generous and kind spirits around.

Kudos to Capps and the CP for a really good profile on one of our top leading artists.

Funny thing about the Weekend online sessions

It seems to me that the Weekend staff is ignoring any art-related questions that they get via their online sessions.

I know this because some of you email me afterwards telling me that they asked questions and were ignored. A reader sends the following:

So I submitted a darn good comment to the Weekend Online thing...

1) about saying they are experts in art but when they introduced O'Sullivan they only talk about his interview of some actor/comedian, and

2) about how the NY Times somehow is able to publish lots of art articles every week even though NYC has much more food/theatre/music/etc than DC... how in the world can the Times possibly allocate such space to art??? :)

They ignored the comment and focused almost solely on water parks for 3 year olds... are they suppressing the inquiries about art coverage now?

I don't know, so my open question to Joyce Jones, editor of the Weekend section: "Are you suppressing/ignoring art related questions now?"

Artists Roundtable at AAC

Artists Roundtable: The MFA Graduate Experience in 2006
Date: Thursday, July 13, 2006, 7 PM
Location: Arlington Arts Center, 3550 Wilson Blvd, Arlington, VA
More Info: 703. 248.6800 or www.arlingtonartscenter.org
Cost: Free. Reservations not required, but are appreciated.

On July 13, several artists in the Center's current New Art Examined: Work by 2006 MFA Graduates in the Mid-Atlantic States discuss their work, the current academic environment, and the experience of entering the commercial art world when the market is hot. Exhibiting artists received degrees from VCU, Maryland Institute, College of Art, Carnegie Mellon, and Penn State, among others. AAC curator Carol Lukitsch will moderate the discussion, and audience participation is encouraged. If you’ve attended an AAC roundtable before, you know how interesting the dialogue can get.

The Artists’ Roundtable is free, but reservations are appreciated to ensure adequate seating. For more information, call 703.248.6800 or info@arlingtonartscenter.org.

Weekend Online

The Weekend staff will be online answering your questions today at 11AM. Ask them why they have two to three times more theatre and movie coverage than visual arts, and why they publish many freelancers (a good thing) who cover everything but the visual arts (a bad thing), which is only covered by Michael O'Sullivan.

Details here.

Job in the arts

Closing date is July 11, 2006

The Hirshhorn is looking for a new Director of Communications & Marketing. They seek an outstanding professional to lead their full-service communications and marketing department.

For a more detailed position description and application instructions please visit www.si.edu/ohr, Announcement number 06WJ-6180 and closing date is July 11, 2006.

Salary: $91,407.00 - $118,828.00.

Mail:
Smithsonian Institution Office of Human Resources
PO Box 50638
Washington DC 20091

Fax: 202 275 1114

Hand deliver or Fedex:
750 Ninth Street NW
Suite 6100
Washington DC 20560

Art In Embassies Program

Established by the United States Department of State in 1964, the Art In Embassies Program is a global museum that exhibits original works of art by U.S. citizens in the public rooms of approximately 180 American diplomatic residences worldwide.

To submit images to their staff for consideration in upcoming exhibitions please e-mail .jpg or .gif images of your works no larger than 50k in size, to: artinembassies@state.gov. Website here. Submissions accepted on a ongoing basis.

Financial Assistance

Deadline is ongoing.

This program assists artists financially in completion of MFA and Ph.D. programs. Grants of up to $5,000 are awarded to individual artists. Deadline is ongoing. For information, contact:

The College Art Association Fellowship Program
275 7th Ave.
New York, NY 10001
(212) 691-1051

Opportunity for Photographers

Deadline: July 15, 2006

The W. Eugene Smith Fund is an annual grant awarded to a photographer whose work follows the tradition of W. Eugene Smith's work as a photographic essayist. A grant in the amount of $30,000 is offered. For more information, contact:

The Howard Chapnick Grant
W. Eugene Smith Fund, Inc.
c/o International Center of Photography
1133 Avenue of the Americas
New York, NY 10036

Art Fair in DC

Last April I mentioned about a possible Art Fair coming to DC.

The organizers were sniffing around the various DC galleries and met with various art dealers to see what the level of interest for organizing a major art fair in the nation's capital area was.

Well, the nation's first major art fair is coming this April 27-30, 2007 at the Convention Center.

Applications can be downloaded here.

Sister, Sister

The painting sisters, Andrea Cybyk Sherfy and Jan Sherfy have an exhibition opening at the Jo Ann Rose Gallery at Lake Anne (1609-A Washington Plaza
Reston, VA 20190) July 9th, with a reception from 2-4pm.

This is not only a celebration of the bond of sisters creating art, but also a showcase of two exceptionally talented abstract painters.

By the way, go early, as these sisters sell a lot of their work.

Poconoing

Still in the Poconos for the 4th, but will return later tonight... I love all the antique shops and used book sellers that one runs into around this area... just scored about a dozen signed SK books at a helluva great deal!

Happy B'day US of A...