New Arlington gallery

Duality Contemporary Art is a new art gallery in Arlington, Virginia.

Coming November 10, 2007 they have "Natural Selection — Art Inspired By Nature," which is a group show featuring the work of several Washington D.C. area artists such as Lynden Cline, Joy Every, Sharon Fishel, Dirk Herrman, Lucy Herrman, Nancy Sausser, Jeff Smith and Paula Wachsstock

The Artists’ Reception is Saturday, November 10, 2007 from 5-7 pm.

Wanna go to a Virginia opening this Friday?

It's a new gallery to me, but it has been around for alomost 15 years, which in gallery years is a superb accomplishment by itself, and the Hermitage Design Gallery in McLean, Virginia has Estrella Dannon opening this coming Friday, October 26, 2007, with a reception from 6 PM to 9 PM.

Artists' Condos

Three condos available for purchase by artists only. The condos are located at 915 E St NW in DC's Penn Quarter, and are listed at $289,900 with the developer prepared to offer $15,000 in down payment assistance or other incentives. These 574 sq ft apartments include large open kitchens with gas cooking stainless steal appliances, maple cabinets and granite countertops. There is bamboo flooring over the whole studio space, large closet and roomy full bath.

Space also includes washer and dryer in each unit, 24/7 concierge, fitness room, and rooftop deck. Condo fee of $280/month includes gas, water, trash removal, snow removal, and building management and maintenance. Floorplans are available at www.artisancondo.com – Floorplan A1.

For more information, or to schedule a visit, please contact Kathy Olmstead at 202.253.2502 or kolmstead@mcwilliamsballard.com.

International Caribbean Art Fair

The first annual International Caribbean Art Fair will take place at The Puck Building, 295 Lafayette Street, in New York this coming November 1 - 4, 2007.

Miami's Cernuda Arte will be in Booths 18 through 21 showcasing a selection of over 45 Cuban artworks by established and emerging artists. Participating artists include: Wifredo Lam, Víctor Manuel García, Amelia Peláez, Mario Carreño, Roberto Diago, René Portocarrero, Mariano Rodríguez, Agustín Cárdenas, Agustín Fernández, Manuel Mendive, Tomás Sánchez, Flora Fong, Clara Morera, Vicente Hernández, Ismael Gómez Peralta, Miguel Florido, Ramón Vázquez, David Rodríguez, Gabriel Sánchez, Li Domínguez Fong, Giosvany Echevarría, Juan Miguel Suárez, Reynier Ferrer, César Santos, and Irina Elén González.

Other than some of the satellite fairs for Art Basel Miami Beach, this may become the key art fair for collectors and galleries showcasing Latin American art.

Fabbri on Mancini

There's a gorgeous exhibition at the PMA on Neapolitan artist Antonio Mancini (1852-1930).

This is the first exhibition in the United States devoted exclusively to an artist considered by many to be one of the most prominent Italian painters of the late nineteenth century.

And the Broad Street Review's Anne Fabbri has an equally interesting and intelligent review here.

Re-name?

As early readers know, this visual art blog started in October 2003 as "DC Art News." When I moved to the Philly area last year I re-named it "Mid Atlantic Art News."

A review of the site's stats reveals that I am now gathering regular readers from all over the nation and a significant number from overseas. Daily visits float between 1800 to 3000 a day - no idea why such wild stat swings.

And as I expand my own lifestyle to possibly include (in the future) some physical presence in the Southwest, I'm toying with the idea of one last name change for the blog.

The URL is dcartnews.blogspot.com - and so I'd like something to work with the "dc" part. So far I've come up with:

- Don Campello's Art News

- Da Campello Art News

- Drawing Campello Art News

- Direct Campello Art News

See my drift? Anyway, I need some ideas along this vein or some other catchy, creative name. Email me your ideas here.

Wanna go to an opening in DC Saturday?

Brooklyn photographer Lori Nix "creates meticulous dioramas handcrafted from plaster, cardboard, and styrofoam and detailed with found objects, such as, fur, plants, and cat whiskers. These scale models, which take upwards of 4 months to produce, are carefully photographed using an 8x10" large format camera. Eventually the models are broken apart and stuffed into garbage bags to be hauled away."

Her exhibition at the Randall Scott Gallery in DC opens this coming Saturday, Oct. 27 with a reception from 7-9PM. The show goes through Dec. 8, 2007.

Medal of Honor

A day of silence here in honor of Lt Michael Murphy, US Navy, who was awarded (posthumously) the Medal of Honor today for his extraordinary valor in Afghanistan.

Fair winds and following seas mate.

Blog B'day

October 16, 2003 was my first ever blog post as I began to learn the nuances of Blogger.com and began to gather readers for this effort.

The blog's anniversary passed and I forgot all about it until someone emailed me today to wish me a blogaversary - it's been four fruitful years and well over a million readers!

Loads more to come in the next forty years!

Two Princes

Two influential art critics review Richard Prince's retro at the Guggenheim and, as if often happens, come away with wildly different opinions.

Read the WaPo's Blake Gopnik here.

Read the New Yorker's Peter Schjeldahl here.

Guess Who?

Just back from the weekend fair and not only did I sell around 40 drawings, but also was awarded a nice four-figure Helen G. Gifford Foundation Best of Show award.

More later; I haven't checked email in three days and Hotmail seems to be having log-in issues this morning!

Heading South

Travelling today for an art fair this weekend. I'll try to post throughout, so keep coming back.

Deadline Approaching

The deadline for receiving applications for the 2008 Bethesda Fine Arts Festival is December 15, 2007. This festival draws around 30,000 to 40,000 people to the streets of Bethesda and has rapidly become one of the top fine arts outdoor festivals in the Mid Atlantic.

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

New Spaces

"The Metropolitan Center for the Visual Arts, formerly Rockville Arts Place and now known as VisArts, has moved into its flashy new quarters in Rockville Town Center. The new galleries are spread across the second floor, including a large but divided main space, and two smaller spaces along the corridor. Filling these at the moment is the inaugural exhibit 'Zapp! Comic Books and the Arts,' created and curated by gallery director Harriet Lesser."

Read the entire review by Dr. Claudia Rousseau here.

John Blee & Marie Ringwald

Cowboys, the rich, and buying artwork

I was listening to the radio today and heard some amazing statistics from a recently released report on who pays what taxes on this country. A Wall Street Journal writer was discussing the stats from the latest release of Internal Revenue Service data on individual income taxes and (I think) a WSJ article will discuss them tomorrow in an editorial.

One of my pet peeves is the fact that in super wealthy areas such as Bethesda, Reston, Potomac, and generally most of the Greater DC area, it still takes a lot of work to get the same people who don't think twice about dropping a few grand for a sofa, to spend a couple of hundred bucks for a fine arts photograph.

There are nine million people in the United States who are classified as millionaires. If memory serves me right, there are around 125,000 of them living within the Greater Washington, DC area.

Don't believe everything that politicians tell you - from neither party! According to the WSJ reporter summarizing from the IRS report, the top 1% income earners in this nation pay 39.4% of all income taxes - an all-time high.

And they're not all the uberrich getting away with tax murder via offshore investments, blah, blah, blah, that politicians from both parties are always so fond of discussing.

The dirty little secret is that most of this 1% are folks who make $350K a year or higher and 2/3 of them are small business owners.

The top 5% (people who make $175K or higher) pay 59.5% of all income taxes. The bottom 50% of Americans, or half of all income tax payers below the median, pay 3% of all income taxes in this nation.

Those are hard, cold facts - not party-colored slogans burying the truth in search for votes.

And here's an idea for that top five percent of Americans carrying almost 60% of the American tax burden; specifically to the business owners in the bunch: support your local galleries and local artists! There's a tax benefit in there for you.

Instead of hanging motivational posters and pretty reproductions in your offices and factories and workplaces, buy original artwork from your local galleries and artists and that expense is not only a tax write-off, but also helps to kindle the local arts in your hometowns and neighborhoods.

Willie Nelson sings "Mama don't let your babies grow up to be cowboys; Don't let 'em pick guitars and drive them old trucks; Make 'em be doctors and lawyers and such..."

And then let them use their doctorin' and lawyerin' dough to buy some local artwork for their offices and support their local artists.

And cowboys can buy Western art.

WPA Membership Meeting

On Monday, October 29th at 6:30 PM the Washington Project for the Arts is having an important meeting - open and free to the public. The details are here. RSVP to info@wpadc.org.

The event will focus on membership, Art File Online, the WPA\C's separation from the CGA, and their new website.

Missa Pro Pace Forum

A forum discussion accompanying Prof. Chawky Frenn's solo show "Missa Pro Pace" exhibition at the Arlington Arts Center will take place tomorrow, Oct. 18th from 7 to 9 PM at the Arlington Art Center.

If you have not seen Frenn's brutal socio-political works, this is a good chance to see them and also listen to the GMU professor discuss them.

The forum also has uberprintmaker Rosemary Covey discussing her amazing "0 Project," the interactive cross-disciplinary project that she debuted at the AAC this month. Robert Parrish (Hoppervideo.net) will also screen his video documentary of Bosma Dance performing in front of what is undoubtedly The 0 Project’s most visible component: the 300 foot long, 15 foot high banner currently encircling the AAC’s historic Maury school building.

Impressionists by the Sea

On Saturday, The Phillips Collection' newest exhibition, Impressionists by the Sea, opens to the public. The exhibition explores the impact of the newly fashionable French seaside on the Impressionists, and traces the progression of the way the seaside is portrayed throughout the 1800s. It is a chance to see how masterpieces by Courbet, Manet, Monet, Renoir and others chartered the dramatic change in the French seaside as it became more and more popular to go the the beach. Through January 13, 2008.

Mark your calendars

Marc Pachter, Director of the National Portrait Gallery, and Thomas Lutz, Head of the Memorial Museums Department at Berlin’s Topography of Terror Foundation, will participate in a discussion on monuments, museums and the culture of memory at the Goethe-Institut Washington on Tuesday, October 30 at 6:30 pm.

Washington is a city of monuments and memorials – and so is Berlin, though by and large the purpose of the institutions in the two cities is quite different, given their vastly contrasting histories. The discussion will focus on why we build memorials, monuments, and museums, and who they are for. The purpose of memorials in the cultural and educational life of two capital cities looking both to the past and to the future will also be addressed.

Free and open to the public, but RSVP to 202-289-1200 ext. 169