Wanna go to an opening tonight?

The place to go tonight in the DC area is the opening reception at the Katzen Arts Center at AU.

The Mid-Atlantic's best looking arts venue will host the opening receptions from 6-9PM to welcome:

Life After Death: New Leipzig Painters from the Rubell Family Collection
Eberhard Havekost: New Works from the Rubell Family Collection
Hungarian Revolution, 1956
Mindy Weisel: Words on a Journey
Athena Tacha: Small Wonders

Just the fact that Don and Mera Rubell may be there (they will be at the Katzen on Sept. 19 to discuss "their very personal process of selecting and collecting art") probably means that every art dealer within a 200 mile radius will probably show up.

I am particularly interested in Life After Death: New Leipzig Painters from the Rubell Family Collection. In 1989, the seven artists represented in this exhibition: Tilo Baumgärtel, Tim Eitel, Martin Kobe, Neo Rauch, Christoph Ruckhäberle, David Schnell and Matthias Weischer — all rejected the trendy genres of today's art critics and museum curators: video, photography and installation art, and instead chose to study figurative painting at the Leipzig Art Academy.

The resulting work goes completely against the grain of what a lot of art writers, critics and curators try to force-feed us as the only viable contemporary art forms, and reflects the fact that as long as talent is given room to grow, there is room for all genres and visual interests, including the much maligned realism.

It will be interesting to read what the chief art critic of the Washington Post, a leading town crier for the "painting is dead" mob, writes about this show. However, if his review of fellow German painter Gerhardt Richter's 2003 show is an indication (which Gopnik should have hated), Gopnik won't step out of line and will conveniently join the international applause chorus to the Leipzig boys.

Kudos to the Katzen for bringing a top-notch show to the capital area.

Wanna go to a DC opening this weekend?

The read Heather Goss over at DCist as she has a list of the top shows opening this weekend as the "arts season" kicks in with a bang at the Greater DC area's top galleries.

Read the openings list here.

Signs

I don't know if it is true or not, but a friend of mine told me a while back that some of the subjects in Trawick prizewinner James Rieck send hidden signals/messages via their hands' depictions.

If you know how to read that sort of stuff, go here and tell me if the top two paintings of the little girls are "messaging" anything.

Is it just me or...

This recent Zippy comic strip looks influenced by like Mark Jenkins' "Embed."





When Zippy references something -- like Mark Cline's Foamhenge out in the Virginia country, there is a tiny "Tip of the Pen" credit of thanks to the person who made the reference. There is no tip of the pen here so he probably came up with idea without knowing about Mark Jenkins' tapework. Nonetheless, the Tapedude rocks!

Update: The Tapedude informs me that the Zippy comic "is a drawing of a bronze sculpture that exists in LA... and when I did my 'embed,' I had people asking me if that piece had inspired mine (it hadn't)." Jenkins just had a show in Rotterdam, Holland last week and the below piece is from that show.

Trawick Prizewinners

The winners of this year's Trawick Prize were announced yesterday and they are James Rieck of Baltimore, MD, who was named as the Best in Show winner of $10,000; Kristin Holder of Washington, D.C. was awarded the Second Place prize of $2,000; Molly Springfield of Washington, D.C. was honored with the Third Place prize of $1,000 and Jason Zimmerman of Washington, D.C. was given the Young Artist Award of $1,000.

The work of fourteen finalists will be on display at Creative Partners Gallery from September 5-29, 2006.

The 2006 Trawick Prize was juried by Ashley Kistler, Director of the exhibition program at the Visual Arts Center of Richmond; Dr. John Rasmussen, Director and Curator of the American University Museum, Katzen Arts Center and Gerald Ross, Director of Exhibitions at Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA).

Rieck has won a ton of money from Ms. Trawick this year, as he was also the Second Prize winner in the Bethesda Painting Awards, which this amazing lady also sponsors.

As a quick search shows, this is a widely exhibited artist, with a solid gallery record in New York and other major markets (and apparently seldom exhibiting in the Greater DC area). I'm not too familiar with his work, other than what I saw at the Bethesda Painting Awards exhibition, but it was clear to me that this was the work of a very gifted artist, both technically (which is so easily dismissed by those that can't accomplish or understand how difficult it is to do) and in its intrinsic sense of delivering mental ideas and messages through intelligent composition and dramatic cropping of imagery.

What impressed me the most about the work, once we get past and recognize the enviable technical expertise (which was also shared in this year's prizewinning crop by the amazing and also technically-gifted Molly Springfield), was the sense of questioning (and foreboding) that his paintings planted in my mind. This is an artist whose work is intended not only to impress with technical finesse, but also reach deep into accepting minds and plant the seeds of understanding how the power of visual art can make the chemical connectors in our brains cause us to gasp at the realization that we are truly being awed by a master artist.

A good choice and well-deserved, and had I been the juror, I'm pretty sure that he would have won a prize, although I would have given the Trawick to Molly, who shares nearly all of the same attributes, skills and subtle bravado as Rieck, but whose work I know better and understand on a deeper level.

And that's how prizes are won or lost.

PS - Capps on the Trawick.

New art charity

This is such a great and generous country.

A new organization called United States Artists, announced yesterday an plan to offer support to working artists, starting with a grant program that will be one of the most generous in existence and a brilliant example of what can happen when the private side of our society takes over from what the public side fails to do.

50 American artists will receive $50,000 each, no strings attached. The first recipients will be announced on Dec. 4. They will be chosen by "panels of artists, critics, scholars and others in the arts [that] are reviewing the applications of 300 artists who were nominated by 150 anonymous arts leaders around the country."

Fellowships will be awarded across a broad array of disciplines: Architecture, Design, and Fashion; Crafts and Traditional Arts; Dance; Literature (fiction, nonfiction, and poetry); Media Arts (film, media, and radio); Music; Performing Arts (performance art and theater); and the Visual Arts (yay!).

According to the NYT story:

Four foundations — Ford, Rockefeller, Prudential and the Alaska-based Rasmuson— have put up a total of $20 million to create the organization and seed its initial operations, but the goal is for it to become a conduit between artists and individual donors.

Read the story here and visit United States Artists here.

B-day

Almost forgot! Today is my birthday!

Either 30, 40 or 50... I can't seem to remember exactly.

Anyone wishing to send me original artwork as a b-day present, email me.

Wanna go to an art event tonight?

Go to The Common Share located at 2003 18th St. NW (in Adams Morgan), DC (upstairs). Featured artist is Barry Bishop and music by DJ 2-Tone Jones. 8pm - 1am and no cover charge.

D A N G L I N G

Pyramid Atlantic Art Center, in Silver Spring, MD, will be hosting D A N G L I N G (as in suspense), an exhibit by 20 artists from the Washington region "commenting on critical challenges to the global human condition including militarism, economics, environmental degradation, and personal, philosophical, and political conflicts."

The opening reception will be held on Friday, September 8th from 6:30-8:30pm and will feature remarks by participating artists as well as performance art and poetry. The exhibit is on display through September 29th.

Exhibiting artists include Anonymous, iona rozeal brown, William Christenberry, Graham Boyle and Alex Curtis of the Submissive Generation, Richard Dana, Joan Danziger, Behnam Farahpour, Susan Firestone, Dalya Luttwak, Nan Montgomery, Adrienne Mills, Brian Petro, Michael Platt, Wendy Ross, Renee Stout, R.L. Tillman, Kelly Towles, Genna Watson, Jamie Wimberly, and Jason Zimmerman.

The show is curated by Carolyn Alper and Helen Frederick, who in early April invited artists to Pyramid Atlantic to discuss ideas for an exhibition that might grow out of the DADA movement that had influenced most of them during their lives. There was agreement that although the DADA exhibition (presented this spring at the National Gallery of Art) made a huge impact on them, Dada could not be "re-created."

"I thought that artists should have the opportunity to express their dissatisfaction and disillusionment with the current state of our world. It seems that such a show would be not only interesting but essential," stated curator Carolyn Alper.

Although I am not "disillusioned with the current state in our world," I am nonetheless looking forward to seeing this exhibition.

I am especially looking forward to seeing the living paintings of Adrienne Mills, who (in addition to her work on the gallery walls) will have two "living paintings" at the reception. Spoken word artist Charisse Carney-Nunes will be covered in her words and Mills' model Jaye will be on display as well.

I am also looking forward to seeing the new work of Jamie Wimberly, who in addition to his piece for the show (titled "Art History," and which is a direct comment on contemporary art) is also contributing an essay on contemporary art.

Jamie tells me that his "intention is to start a dialogue." To that end, he has created a blog: Provocations, where "people can be as nasty or nice as they want to be."

See ya there!

Congratulations

To Richmond-based sculptor Kendall Buster, who was just announced as the winner of the 2006 Kreeger Museum Artist Award.

If you haven't heard much of the Kreeger Museum Artist Award, it is because (in my opinion), the museum has done a pretty poor job of disseminating info about it.

The Kreeger Museum "established the award, a biennial cash prize to be given to a Washington metropolitan area artist deserving of recognition and to honor its founders (Carmen and David Kreeger) generous commitment to the arts in Washington, D.C. An independent five person jury made the selection based on demonstrated consistent artistic excellence, and significant influence and contribution to the Washington arts community. The $10,000 award is being underwritten by Fleishman Hillard International Communications."

An example of Kendall Buster's work will be on view at the museum October 6 through November 25, 2006. The artist was selected by an independent five-person jury: Andy Grundberg, Milena Kalinovska, Robert Lehrman, Jim Sanborn (who was the first recipient of the award) and Sarah Tanguy.

Another superb choice for this award and congrats to Kendall and my kudos to the Kreeger for institutionalizing a great art prize for the DC area.

P.S. Capps polices the award here.

P.S. Kirkland makes a good point on what the definition of the "Washington metropolitan area" is. Read it here.

Farewell Russell

The fair Heather Russell, gallerina extraordinaire for Irvine Contemporary in DC, is returning to the NYC area after a year in the District.

As of this Thursday, she will be in NYC, as the Assistant Director of the Williamsburg-based Black and White Gallery. She will be running the new ground floor Chelsea space, and also their Williamsburg gallery

She will also have a small art advisory business, based out of her home, for works not related to the gallery, and she will be hosting events and helping clients find artworks as well.

MAAN wishes Heather all the best, hopes that she stays in touch, and we're sure that she will be a great success in NYC.

NYT on daily painters

And now the New York Times chimes in with yet another story on the whole genre of "daily painters" which was birthed by Richmond's Duane Keiser.

Read the story here.

And in DC area, add another artist to the daily artist genre: Pamela Viola. Visit her daily artwork often!

Street Secrets

There is a public art project going on in Philadelphia now and its focus is "confessions" and they are collecting secrets from people and then posting them.

Sound familiar?

The Philly Inky's Natalie Pompilio has an excellent story on the subject here.

She writes:

"Hundreds of collected confessions - written on anything from toilet paper to postcards, scrawled with pens or pencils or markers, crafted both from the heart and as pranks - are on display at the 3rd Street Gallery, on Second Street in Old City. These stories were gathered from 12 confession boxes across Center City."

She also reveals that:

The artists shaping the project said their aim was to have a dialogue with city dwellers - or to encourage residents to have a dialogue with each other. The writings are called "confessions" according to the definition of making oneself known or disclosing one's identity, said Michael Sebright, one of the project's leaders.

"We hoped that people in Philadelphia would find it intriguing," Sebright said, "not in the Catholic sense of confessing something wrong, but in the sense of telling a story about themselves or making themselves known to other Philadelphians."

She also quotes Frank Warren, who essentially invented the whole "secret-as-art" genre as art during the last Art-O-Matic and then made it a worldwide phenomenom through the PostSecret website and through the best-selling book PostSecret: Extraordinary Confessions from Ordinary Lives.

What the story does not say is that the organizers had invited Frank Warren's PostSecret to be a major participant in the whole Philly street secret event, but when Warren said that he "did not want to water down the content of the secrets in order to show them in public spaces," he never heard from them again - "until they they started their own secret project."

Anyway, for anyone who wants to see the real PostSecret project, the Reading Public Museum still has a large PostSecret exhibit on until October 8th.

And two more books by Warren will be coming out soon:

My Secret: A PostSecret Book , comes out next month. You can pre-order it here.

And The Secret Lives of Men and Women comes out on January of 2007 and you can pre-order it here.

DCing

Heading back to DC tomorrow.

Unpacking

Moving is such a mess, no matter how well planned! I've calculated that this is my 35th move since I turned 17 and left Brooklyn to join the US Navy a few years ago.

Anyway, the kitchen is nearly set up now.

The new house is great (built in 1961), although it needs some work here and there, like most homes do. My biggest issue is ensuring that water flows away from the house, as this is the most effective way to keep your basements dry and this is very important to me, since I do a lot of work (my studio will be ther), framing, etc.

My previous house in Potomac is still up for sale, although now that I've reduced the price by over $100,000, it's a hell of a good deal and it's getting tons of showing, as it is priced at least $175,000 less than any other house in that neighborhood.

Yesterday I drove to State Street in downtown Media, where the Franklin Mint Federal Credit Union has an amazing little bank that looks like no bank I've ever seen before, it is so nice, open and welcoming, including having a terrific little coffee shop on the entrance with free WiFi!

Media is quite a charming little town, and State Street is really attractive and I look forward to exploring it later.

Just don't ask anyone in town for directions.

Medians must rank amongst the friendliest, nicest people on this planet, and amongst the worst direction-givers that exist on this Universe and all the other infinite Universes that probably exist out there.

At the coffee shop I asked for directions from State Street to Rose Tree Park on Providence Road.

Ten minutes later I was completely confused, as the two nice attendants each gave a different set of directions, further complicated by a customer, as all three argued over the issue of whether Baltimore Pike (also called Baltimore Avenue when in crosses Media) and Route 1 were the same.

Confused I thanked them, and went inside the bank, and asked three people who were waiting around, including the kid whose job is to greet customers as they come in (yes - this bank has a door greeter). He was very nice and told me that he lived near Rose Tree Park.

And then he and the other two began arguing about how to get there.

And so, armed with around six sets of directions, I go on Baltimore Avenue and turned right, which was the wrong way.

By the way, I eventually found my way home, and discovered in the process that both streets on either side of the bank (Baltimore and State itself) run into Providence Road.

When I asked how to get there, someone should have said at the same time that they'd be pointing to State Street through the huge windows: "Follow State Street to the right and it ends on Providence Road."

Maybe that's what they were trying to communicate to me.

All six of them.

Every Curve, Every Dot

The Jerusalem Fund Gallery presents Every Curve, Every Dot, the modern Arabic calligraphy designs of Nihad Dukha from September 8 – October 27, 2006 with an opening reception and artist presentation: Friday, September 8, 6:30 – 8:30 p.m.

Space of Change

The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts has awarded the District of Columbia Arts Center (DCAC) $45,000 over two years to support new Curatorial Initiative program.

And now DCAC opens its third Curatorial Initiative Exhibition, titled "Space of Change" with an Opening Reception on Friday, September 8, 7-9pm and an artists' and curators' talk at 7:30pm.

The show, curated by Claire Huschle, Margaret Boozer and Anne Surak, will introduce the work of five artists: Amy Kaplan, Martin Brief, Justin Rabideau, and the collaborative team of Wendy Weiss and Jay Kreimer.

Factory Work

I'm looking forward to visiting the Brandywine River Museum and seeing "Factory Work: Warhol, Wyeth and Basquiat," which opens Sept. 9, 2006.

The exhibition explores the collaboration between Warhol and the these two artists in the 70's and 80's (with Wyeth) and in the 90's with Basquiat.

WPA/C All Members Meeting

1st blog from PA...

The WPA/C is having their first All Members' meeting on September 14, 2006 at 6:30 p.m. at the Corcoran Gallery of Art in the auditorium.

Paul Greenhalgh, the new director of the Corcoran will be there to meet the WPA/C members and invites them and see the current show: "redefined: Modern and Contemporary Art form the Collection."

Details here and see ya there!

Packing Out

Today is moving day for me. By tonight I'll be living about two hours away most of the time, although spending a few days a week in the DC area.