Jury Duty

Next month I will be the juror for "Paint Alexandria," which will be on display from June 6 - July 2, 2007 at the Art League Gallery in the Torpedo Factory. I will be selecting pieces from both Art League School instructors and member artists.

Artists can join the Art League here.

Talking about the Torpedo Factory, I've been hearing good things about the Target Gallery's current exhibition, in which Target has teamed up with the Northern Virginia Chapter of the American Institute of Architects (AIA) to join in the celebration of the AIA 150th Anniversary by presenting the exhibition Sense of Place. This exhibition showcases artists and architects from across the country portraying their perspective and personal interpretations on the idea of a sense of place. The exhibition goes through June 10, 2007.

DC Mural Looking for a home

DC artist Rita Elsner writes:

I'm sending out this general inquiry to some of you in the DC arts community to see if anyone may have information as to where I might be able to relocate a mural. I hope to find an organization, school, library, marketplace, etc, or possibly a grant opportunity, if one exists.

A mural that I produced for a local WholeFoods (72'w x 3'h, on 18 consecutive masonite panels), was recently removed for renovation purposes and I was fortunate to be able to retrieve it. The subject matter is a landscape depicting the four seasons and includes a small reference to the DC skyline. You can see it on my website (Go to Murals --> WholeFoodsMarket, Georgetown).

I would deliver the mural and advise/take part in its installation. In looking for a spot to relocate this painting, my priority of concerns are:

1) To find a location, in DC or w/in the beltway, that offers a "safe environment" for the piece (an indoor setting with an average amount of temperature/humidity control, away from the elements/direct sunlight) with the need to physically alter the mural for fitting/placement kept to a minimum, preferably zero.

2) To find an existing call for public art or grant that this piece may be applied to.

3) To find a recipient to accept this piece as a donation. If a recipient is found, depending on their profit status, a cash donation may be negotiated to be made to a charity of my choice in return for the mural.

If you have any suggestions/insight as to where a new home for this might be found, please let Rita know at info@ritaelsner.com.

For this Saturday in DC

Go see Robert Mellor’s opening, New Scenarios, this coming Saturday at Irvine Contemporary in DC. I am told that this Chatham, Virginia-based, Claremont MFA’s new body of work is an amazing leap forward in his multi-layered figural abstraction painting approach. He was also an awardee in last year's Trawick Prize.

The opening reception is Saturday, May 26, from 6-8 PM and the show goes through June 27, 2007.

Bethesda Painting Award Finalists

The Bethesda Painting Award finalists have been announced. They are:

Heidi Fowler, Reston, VA
Matthew Klos, Baltimore, MD
David Krueger, Hyattsville, MD
Maggie Michael, Washington, D.C.
Cara Ober, Baltimore, MD
Phyllis Plattner, Bethesda, MD
Fiona Ross, Richmond, VA

The jurors are Dr. Brandon Brame Fortune, Associate Curator of Painting and Sculpture at the National Portrait Gallery; Professor W.C. Richardson, Professor of Painting and Drawing at the University of Maryland; Professor Tanja Softic’, Associate Professor of Art at the University of Richmond.

The finalists will be invited to display their work from June 6 - July 7, 2007 in downtown Bethesda at the Fraser Gallery. There will be an opening exhibition and announcement of the Bethesda Painting Awards winners on Friday, June 8 from 6-9pm at the gallery, held in conjunction with the Bethesda Art Walk.

Congratulations!

As far back as 2004 I have been telling you about this amazing young DC area artist named Jenny Davis, whom I consider to be wunderkind of an artist. When I first wrote about her, she was 15 years old, but already showing the signs of spectacular talent, and back then she was completely self-taught too.

Since then she has exhibited in several DC area art galleries, is now in college, and continues to grow as an artist at the ripe old age of 18.

And Jenny Davis just won first prize in the National Society of Arts and Letters Career Awards Competition May 19th in Tempe, Arizona.

Her watercolor painting titled Portrait of Tess was selected from a field of 19 finalists from across the country. The jurors were M. Stephen Doherty, Editor-in-Chief of American Artist Magazine; artists Robert and Louise McCall; and Dr. Mel Yoakum, Director of the F. Gilot Archives.

Before naming Jenny as the top national award winner, the NSAL presented Robert McCall with the 2007 National Gold Medallion Award for his lifetime achievements. Mr. McCall is well known for his six story tall mural in the National Air and Space Museum, among many other career highlights.

An exhibition featuring the work of the finalists is on display through June 8 in the City Hall Gallery in Tempe, Arizona.

Dawson on the Washington Body School

The WaPo's Jessica Dawson comes through with a really good review, in fact one of the better ones that she's ever delivered, of Meg Mitchell and Jeffry Cudlin's Ian and Jan: The Washington Body School at District of Columbia Arts Center.

Read Jessica's review here.

Wanna go to a DC opening tomorrow?

The Nevin Kelly Gallery, located at 1517 U Street, NW, Washington, DC, will host a solo exhibition of works by Chilean-born, Washington, DC artist Joan Belmar from May 23 until June 17, 2007. The exhibition, titled Color Transparencies presents Belmar's recent work in paint, acetate and Mylar.

The gallery will host an opening reception with the artist on Thursday, May 24, from 6 until 9 o'clock p.m. The public is invited. Show runs May 23 – June 17, 2007. Opening Reception Thursday, May 24 from 6 – 9 pm.

Eve and The Lilith

In this charcoal drawing (which I also sold last week at Reston) I have tried to use all of my technical skills and creative schemes to deliver a drawing full of clues and information.

I have also used many psychological clues to deliver the full meaning of this work, at least as I intend it to be viewed. Click on it if you wish to see a larger version.


We see Eve to the left of the composition, an apple in the middle, and the mythical Lilith to the right.

According to biblical legend, after God created Adam from the dust, in response to Adam’s request for a mate, he then created Lilith from the same dust, which by then had been trod and made dirty by both Adam and the animals of Eden.

Adam and Lilith never found peace together; for when Adam wished to lie with her, she took offence at the recumbent posture that the first man demanded.

"Why must I lie beneath you?" she asked. "I also was made from dust, and am therefore your equal."

Because Adam tried to compel her obedience by force, Lilith, in a rage, uttered the forbidden and magic name of God, rose into the air and left him.

God then creates Eve from Adam’s rib and the biblical mother of the human race is thus born.

In the drawing Eve is to the left, while Lilith is to the right. The left side is closest to the heart and thus the preferred position.

Eve is solid and present, while the mythical Lilith is ephemeral and almost vanishing, as if predicting her dismissal from not only Adam’s side but from Genesis as well.

She is also covered in forbidden tattoos, as Lilith, after leaving Eden, had been living near the Red Sea, a region abounding in lascivious demons, to whom she bore children known as “lilim,” as described by the angels Senoy, Sansenoy and Semangelof.

The drawing is full of light as evidenced by the minimalist composition, and the light sources are blinding to Lilith, almost erasing her from the composition.

The light is also strong but from a different source to Eve, but this light is defining her as if the shadows have come to her life. Yet another source of light illuminates the apple.

The apple lies between Eve and Lilith, a little closer to Eve than to Lilith. We see Eve agonizing over the temptation of biting the forbidden fruit, while Lilith, quiet but resourceful, awaits the first Sin.

Opportunity for Artists

Deadline: June 30, 2007

McLean Project for the Arts has a Call for Entries for their MPA Artfest in McLean, Virginia.

This is a one day juried fine art and craft show and sale featuring the work of 40 local and regional visual artists. This is a brand new community festival focusing on fine art from around the mid-Atlantic region. To be held on Sunday, October 14, 2007 10 am - 5 pm in McLean Central Park, McLean, VA. (In the event of inclement weather, MPA artfest will be held in the McLean Community Center) For entry form and more information, visit this website or call 703-790-1953.

Art for the new DC baseball Stadium

Deadline: Monday, June 18, 2007 at 5 pm.

Suspended Installation. Total Budget: $200,000. The DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities, in collaboration with the Washington Nationals, the DC Sports and Entertainment Commission, and Hellmuth Obata and Kassabaum, P.C., seeks an artist or artist team to design and create a suspended public art installation along the main concourse of the new Washington Nationals baseball stadium. The goal of this public art project is to provide an exciting arts enhancement to the interior of the ballpark while celebrating the spirit of our national pastime. The work will be visible along the main concourse, across the field from Baseball Plaza, and from street level on the south side of the ballpark.

The total budget for the project is $200,000. Download the New Baseball Stadium: Suspended Installation Call for Artists here. For more information, contact Emily Blumenfeld or Meridith McKinley at art@viapartnership.com or call (314) 664-5902.

Opportunity for Artists

Deadline: July 6, 2007

"Driven" Call for Entries for emerging artists with disabilities. $60,000 in awards!Deadline: July 6, 2007 (midnight, MST). Sponsored by VSA arts and Volkswagen of America, Inc. Open to emerging artists with disabilities, ages 16 -25, living within the United States. No entry fee. "Driven" challenges artists to pinpoint the motivational force behind their artistic expression and to identify the catalyst that sustains their creative energy. Art must be an original work that has been completed in the last three (3) years. Eligible media includes: paintings, drawings, fine art prints, photography, computer-generated prints, and mixed media; must be presented in two dimensions. Artwork should not exceed 60 inches in either direction. Fifteen (15) finalists will be awarded a total of $60,000 in awards during an awards ceremony on Capitol Hill in September 2007, and artwork will be displayed in a nation-wide touring exhibition that debuts at the Smithsonian.

For additional information and to access the application, please visit this website. Phone 800.933.8721 x3885; Email: jenniferw@vsarts.org. Alternative formats of the application are available upon request.

Some comments on outdoor fine arts festivals

Video by the Right Reverend... to my left you can see both "St. Sebastian" and "Superman Flying Naked." They're both now in a private collection in Northern Virginia.

Superman Flying Naked

Below is "Superman Flying Naked," charcoal on paper with a little conte crayon. The same collector who last weekend bought "St. Sebastian," also picked up this drawing of the man of steel in the nude. Click on it for a larger image.

Two "new" collectors

New to me anyway.

This WaPo article by Allan Lengel discusses the fact that "an 11-story, 136,000-square-foot office building under construction at 10th and K streets NW in downtown Washington will include two art galleries.

The galleries, located in hallways on the lobby and the penthouse floor, will be lined with black-and-white pictures by the late Ezra Stoller, a renowned architectural photographer known for his use of light and space."

Good for the buildings and the people who will work there. But the key intelligence item in this article is that we also learn that the building is being developed by the Tower Cos. of North Bethesda and the Lenkin Company Management of Bethesda.

"Both owners are heavy art collectors," said Marnie L. Abramson, a principal at Tower.

Did all you gallerists and art dealers hear that?

Let the Googling of the owners of these two companies begin, let the invitations to openings begin to flow, and let's see if they're really "heavy art collectors."

I hope so... DC needs them.

Tuss on Weiss

Katie Tuss recently spoke with artist Ellyn Weiss at the Touchstone Gallery, where Weiss and fellow Touchstone artist Rima Schulkind are showing recent work in the main gallery space through June 3, 2007. Weiss’s Fortune Cookies series is comprised of 11 large panels and three sets of smaller panels, all brimming with striking colors and layers of additive and subtractive pigment, text, and ephemera.

Katie Tuss: You seem to be having a very busy spring with your current show at Touchstone, your involvement with Artomatic both as an artist and as a board member, and your role as an artist and curator for the current show No Representation at the Warehouse Gallery. As if this isn’t enough, what else do you have coming up?

Ellyn Weiss: It has been a very busy spring! All great, all fun experiences! Any time you can meet other people and see other people’s work, you have to do it. In June, I will also have 12 to 15 monoprints from my Time of War series in the back room at the Nevin Kelly Gallery. They are all one of a kind prints and use a reductive process. After June, my life is over!

KT: What was it like being on the curatorial side of No Representation?

EW: I had co-curated the Artomatic poster show at the Warehouse, but I was amazed by No Representation. We just got together and made lists of who we would love to have, paired it down and emailed everyone. I think everyone, except one person, was ready to participate. The show really demonstrates what’s happening in abstract art in DC, everyone really rose to the occasion. There are so many talented artists, we just need more people to buy.

KT: You have a JD from Boston University and previously practiced law. How did you come to be involved in the arts and specifically in the art scene in the DC area?

EW: I practiced law for 25 years, but I have always been involved in art. I made art on weekends, in the summer, and I took a lot of classes. I practiced law until I had enough money to quit and do this full time.

KT: How did quitting change things?

EW: Quitting and going full time was important. Art is like anything, the more you do it, the better you get. And things changed when I discovered these large 40 by 60 pieces of paper. The size allowed for my gestural movements. Then I discovered the pigment sticks—they have the consistency of butter. I don’t use brushes, haven’t used them in years. I found the pigment sticks on accident on R&F’s website.

KT: Your artist statement says that you admire art that speaks directly to the viewer without mediation or explanation. Do you think that art becomes more valid when the viewer understands the concepts behind the work, or should the visual experience speak for itself?

EW: I can not get myself interested in work that doesn’t capture me viscerally; if it doesn’t work in the first five seconds.

KT: Are you conscious of this when creating your own work?

EW: Yes. I’m conscious of the visceral as I work. Sometimes a work can get to a place that is seductive, yet unfinished, and I just keep going. It’s hard, but I know it can get better.

KT: Why is layering important? What do you learn about the paintings as you add and subtract?

EW: The paintings always start with words, words that have meaning. The letters inform the first shapes. The Fortune Cookie series is the first time I have used readable text.

KT: The Fortune Cookie series is bold and colorful, with wide marks and layers of mixed media, including hundreds of fortunes you have collected over the years printed on pattern paper and collaged into your paintings. In June, the Nevin Kelly Gallery will show some of your Time of War monoprints. These works seem very different. Are the two series or styles of work connected or influenced by the other?

EW: They are very different. The Time of War series comes from feeling frustrated with the war, with innocent people dying, people that we don’t even count. Michael Mazur, one of the founding spirits of the Fine Arts Work Center was teaching a print making workshop that I participated in and he said to do whatever moves you, and I started with wanting to use this reductive process, got into it, and he didn’t say anything to me for the week long duration of the workshop. At the end of the week, Mazur said that he wanted to talk to me. He told me that it was an impressive body of work and that he hadn’t said anything to me because he could tell I was so focused. The goal of the Time of War series was to convey strong emotion as simply as possible. They are dark, there isn’t a lot of happiness in that work. I don’t know if I will do it again.

All done

Done with two days of sunny and windy weather at the 16th Annual Greater Reston Arts Center Fine Arts Festival, where I had a great fair and sold over twenty drawings and an equal amount of prints. More later...

Heading to DC this weekend

I'll be in the DC area this whole weekend, as I will be hawking drawings at the 16th Annual Greater Reston Arts Center Fine Arts Festival on the streets of the Reston Town Center, May 19 and 20, 2007.

Around 60,000 people are expected to come to the fine arts festival, which features around 160 artists' booths from all over the country as well as several Chinese artists.

I'll be in booth 508.

The 0 Project

Rosemary Feit Covey is one of those wizard artists that when you see their work, you are left speechless by both the imagery and also by the technical skill. She is by far, my favorite printmaker in the DC region.

And as if this master printmaker wasn't accomplished or acclaimed enough, she has now undertaking the "The 0 Project."

Check it out here.

Selected from among hundreds of applicants in the mid-Atlantic region, the 0 project will premier as a printed piece wrapping the Arlington Arts Center in the fall of 2007. Printed on Tyvek on an HP 500 printer, upon installation it will be fifteen feet high, wrapping 300 feet around the outside of the art center.

The 0 Project is without a doubt the most ambitious outdoor project that the AAC has taken on. And they're asking for arts supporters to join them on Friday, May 18 from 6 to 8 pm to learn more about the 0 Project and ways in which you might be involved. They're looking for help with promotion, participation, some grass roots fundraising, and various other tasks. RSVP to 703.248.6800

Photography Superstars

The remainder of the tragic Joshua P. Smith collection is being auctioned off here starting on the 19th.

Every big name in photography is included in the auction, now working its way through the auction world food chain. If memory serves me right, a while back either Sotheby's or Christie's or maybe Phillip's disposed of a large number of them, but there are still 347 lots from some of the world's best-known photographers and collected by an amazing collector.

Two DC area masters are in this auction: the legendary Lida Moser and uberphotographer Chan Chao; Smith had a great eye for photographic talent.

I don't know how many of Chan's brilliant photos Smith had in his collection, but I do know that a few years ago he bought 120 of Lida Moser's best vintage photographs. Most of those were recently acquired via auction by a German gallery.

There are some deals to be had in this auction. Don't say that I didn't warn you!

And for you vastly overpriced emerging painters out there, get a hint from this really nice Gene Davis painting in a separate auction estimated to go between $4 - $5K which is less than some Washington Color School look-alikes get these days.

The Collector

The WaPo's Amy Argetsinger and Roxanne Roberts (the Reliable Source columnists) describe the hijinks involved in ransoming off a Tim Tate sculpture and their fleeting meeting of a new DC arts activist of sorts calling himself "The Collector."

A note from this new art entity stated:

"Only through the loss of art does society value its art," it began. "This is not the end but the beginning. Whenever art is undervalued the collector will appear to remind this city that one of its most valuable assets is the creative community that is so deeply ingrained in its fabric."

Read the story in today's WaPo here.