Borf's Dad?

Seen yesterday at W.34th and 9th Avenue in NYC:



Seen in DC everywhere a while back:

Kim Ward's Fave Artwork

Kim Ward is the hardworking Executive Director of DC's amazing Washington Project for the Arts and she responds to my request for readers' favorite artworks. Kim writes:

I have many local favorites, but if asked to pick one --- I am a huge fan of Louise Bourgeois' Spider in the NGA Sculpture Garden for several reasons; viewing it is free, it is a fabulous piece that you can see from many vantage points, it is appropriate in scale and placement---appearing as though some gigantic spider has crawled across the mall, yet mostly because it looks like it is advancing on the Archives building and will be walking across the street at any moment.

Louise Bourgeois - Spider, 1996, cast 1997
National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC
Gift of The Morris and Gwendolyn Cafritz Foundation

Ashley Peel Pinkham's Fave Artwork

Ashley Peel Pinkham is the Asst. Director at Philly's acclaimed Print Center and she responds to my request for readers' favorite artworks. Ashley writes:

My pick would be Philadelphia artist Matthew Suib’s video Heston, 2004, from his solo exhibition, ReVisionist Cinema/Triple Feature that was on view at the Philadelphia Art Alliance from May 18 to August 8, 2004. Suib spliced video from the Hollywood Bible epic The Ten Commandments and created an awkwardly non-verbal, anti-climatic video of Moses parting the Red Sea. It kept you on the edge of your seat waiting for something to happen in some kind of oddly looped dimension.

Here’s the official blurb on the piece with installation image:

Heston, Matthew Suib, 2004 (from the ReVisionist Cinema series) Color video w/ Dolby Digital 5.1 surround audio on DVD for projection Running time: 11:00

Comprised of silent, interstitial moments from Demille’s The Ten Commandments (1956)--extended through subtle looping and matting--Heston critiques Judeo-Christian mythology’s claim of divine origin/inspiration. Building on concepts from Thomas Paine’s infamous 1794 tract The Age of Reason: Being an Investigation of Both True and Fabulous Theology, both “the words” and “The Word” have been excised from Demille’s epic, stranding American icon Charleston Heston (Moses) amidst the grandiose artifice of theology and Hollywood splendor. The awkward tension of these altered scenes makes mockery of the inherent profanity of theological portrayals and the conceit of the self-righteous.

Installation view of Matthew Suib’s exhibition ReVisionist Cinema/Triple Feature

Major International Fine Arts Glass Show Coming to DC in 2008

You saw it here first... and it needs a little background first...

First and foremost: There's an important International Fine Arts Glass Show coming to the DMV. This event's start is a bit complex, so pay attention!

The British sister city to Washington, DC is Sunderland.

Why Sunderland and not London? After all, most other sister cities to DC are the capitals of other countries - but Sunderland is George Washington's ancestral hometown, so that's why!

Sunderland is also where the United Kingdom has their National Glass Centre and, by the way, glass has been made in Sunderland for around 1,500 years.

George Koch is one of the District's true art icons: he's a talented painter, the founder of A. Salon, Ltd., a board member of the Cultural Development Corporation, a founding board member of the Cultural Alliance of Greater Washington, a Commissioner of the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities, board member of Hamiltonian Artists, and the Board Chair of Artomatic.

They don't get much bigger, influential, or harder working for the District's artists and arts organizations than George Koch.

And George has been working very hard to get the British to bring the United Kingdom's premier glass artists to an exhibition in the US, while at the same time bring some attention to the many and talented glass artists working around the Greater DC region.

So Koch has been orchestrating the process to bring the Brits to DC in a major show, somehow tie it to the Artomatic organization, use it to showcase Washington area glass artists, and also tie the whole effort into a nascent Toledo, Ohio Artomatic-type organization.

If you paid attention in art school, then you know that Toledo, Ohio is also historically one of the glass centers of the colonies, and an important placeholder in art history.

In 1962, Harvey Littleton, Professor of Art at the University of Wisconsin, (and DC gallerist Maurine Littleton's father) and Dominick Labino (a glass scientist with the Johns-Manville Fiber Glass Corporation), presented a glass workshop in conjunction with the Toledo Museum of Art.

These men are recognized internationally as the "fathers" of the American Studio Glass Movement and certainly the first two to take the seminal steps to bring glass from the high end crafts to the fine arts world.

Convinced that it was finally possible for an individual artist to undertake glass art by working entirely alone - as compared to being part of a glass factory, Littleton and Labino provided information on furnace construction, glass formulas, tools, techniques, etc. They sowed the seeds that eventually sprouted thousands of individual kilns, furnaces and glass studios and schools around the United States and the world.

The Toledo workshop was the beginning of the American Studio Glass Movement. Since then, American glass artists are acknowledged worldwide as the undisputed leaders in creativity and originality and the continuing battle to bring glass to the fine arts dialogue.

The final key player in this showcase of three glass centers is the Washington Glass School, bringing to the show about 15 area glass artists who are instructors of the now nation wide famous content-driven art glass facility.

Bottom line: a historic event is about to take place in Washington, DC. Three educational leaders in today's Contemporary Art Glass movement are joining forces to present a representative survey of the exciting artists and techniques surfacing at these three facilities. Two of these institutions, the Toledo Glass Pavilion and Sunderland Glass School represent hundreds of years of a rich glass-making tradition while the Washington Glass School has emerged as a new and vibrant player on this field.

The show will take place at Georgetown Park Mall in Washington, DC from February 21, 2008 to March 16th, 2008 and this "International Glass Invitational" will be presented as a partnership with Art-O-Matic, the Sister City Program, etc. The opening date is set to coincide with the birthday of George Washington.

Mark your calendars for this one.

Tapedude in the news

The talented and ubiquitous Mark Jenkins is interviewed in the current issue of Juxtapoz Magazine.

Check out some of Mark's amazing videos of his street art and what they do to people... here.

Frank Warren's Favorite Work of Art

They don't get much bigger on this planet than Frank Warren's PostSecret and in response to my call for favorite artwork, Frank writes:

I have been captivated by James Hampton's "The Throne of the Third Heaven of the Nations' Millenium General Assembly" at the Smithsonian American Art Museum for about a decade. I think partly because it was closed-off for so long and I began to miss seeing it.

It was the first piece of Folk or Visionary Art that I fell in love with. I like art that expands how we define it, and challenges who can create it. I like how the piece is so unselfconscious and at the same time ambitious. I like how it uses what some might see as trash to express a high spiritual calling. And I like how seeing it in a museum makes me think, "hey, maybe my stuff it good enough to be here too."

The Throne of the Third Heaven of the Nations' Millenium General Assembly by James Hampton

Sidney Lawrence's Fave Artwork

Art critic and artist Sidney Lawrence responds to my request for readers' favorite artworks. Sidney's favorite work of art:

Bellini's St Francis of Assisi in the Desert at The Frick Collection‏.

Cindy Ann Coldiron's Fave Artwork

Attorney and glass artist Cindy Ann Coldiron responds to my request for readers' favorite artworks. Cindy writes:

My favorite works of art in general are anything by Gustav Klimpt. But my favorite is below. It reminds me of little bits of glittering falling glass. I guess I am biased there.

The Kiss by Gustav Klimpt

Shauna Lee Lange's Fave Artwork

Arts writer, critic, coach, and consultant Shauna Lee Lange responds to my request for readers' favorite artworks. Shauna writes:

Without a doubt, hands down, and also in the NGA, is Picasso's "The Tragedy."

If I ever show up on the news as "missing" - you can claim the big "finder's reward" as now you know I'll really be sitting in front of this one!

Do you agree that sincerity is not to be found outside the realm of grief?

Ha - Saddish thought for such a festive season, no?

I'm always surprised at the oddity of the hands and feet, and at different times have waivered between aligning my perspective with each character. Hard to believe 1901 - 1903 - over 100 years ago, and still so completely timeless.

"The Tragedy" by Pablo Picasso

Zoe Strauss' Fave Artwork(s)

Philly's brilliant photographer Zoe Strauss responds to my request for readers' favorite artworks.

The Large Glass by Marcel DuChamp


Nude Descending a Staircase (No.2)/Nu descendant un Escalier. No.2. 1912, Marcel Duchamp


Nigredo by Anselm Kiefer, c.1984

No one asked me...

Nobody asked me, but Michael O'Sullivan's "Conversation Pieces" in today's WaPo lists some A-list folks' favorite art in the Greater DC area.

My favorite?


Watson and the Shark by John Singleton Copley at the National Gallery of Art. It seeks to depict an event that took place in Havana, Cuba, in 1749.

The naked guy in the water is fourteen-year-old Brook Watson, who was attacked by a shark while swimming alone in Havana harbor. Lucky for Watson, some of his mates were already at sea waiting to escort their captain ashore, and were able to fight the shark and rescue Watson, although the shark bit one of his legs off. On his return to England, he got his fifteen minutes of fame and Copley painted this work.

If you study the painting carefully, you will realize that Copley probably had never seen a shark in his life, and his depiction of the great white in Havana harbour yields one of the most ungainly and ugliest non-sharks fish things ever painted.

I love to sit in front of this painting and watch people as they walk by and get mesmerized by the brutal event taking place and kids making fun of the shark.

What is your favorite work of art? Not just DC, but from wherever you [reader] hail from? Email me your favorite and I'll post it!

Wanna go to an Alexandria opening this Saturday?

At the beautiful Athenaeum in Old Town Alexandria, VA: "Wild Imagination - Works of Six Self-Taught Artists from the American South," curated by Ginger Young and featuring work by Howard Finster, James Harold Jennings, Nellie Mae Rowe, James Arthur Snipes, Jimmy Lee Sudduth, and Mose Tolliver.

The show goes through January 27, 2008 and the Opening Reception is Saturday, December 15th, from 6 - 8 pm with a gallery talk by Ginger Young at 7pm.

The Shape of Things to Come

The WaPo's art critic Michael O'Sullivan shows and tells us not only about a few of his favorite art objects and places in the Greater DC area, but also the shape of things to come in art reporting and writing with this beautiful multimedia piece in the Washingtonpost.com.

A well done to whoever came up with this idea!

WPA Registry

The Washington Project for the Arts (WPA) has announced the recent public launch of the WPA ArtFile Online, an interactive web-based image registry of WPA members’ artwork, accessible 24 hours a day through the WPA’s website.

As I recall, back in the 1900s, Jack Rasmussen, then the spry young Assistant Director of the Washington Project for the Arts established the original ArtFile Slide and Media Registry, conceived as a centrally located repository containing slides of local artists’s work.

For many decades the original ArtFile has served as a go-to resource for curators, gallerists, collectors, artists, and members of the general public to see a cross-section of the artwork being produced in and around Washington DC.

In 2005 I used it to review about 20,000 slides (twice) in order to select the artists for the "Seven" show that I curated for the then WPA/C.

Funded by a grant from the Philip L. Graham Fund and developed by database firm ClearDev, the new WPA ArtFile Online contains over 3,800 images from more than 400 artists -- numbers that are growing daily. Visitors to the ArtFile Online can:

- browse alphabetically by artist’s last name
- search for artists by name or keyword
- sort artists by media (drawing, painting, etc.)
- sort artists by style (abstract, conceptual, etc.), or
- view artists by geographic location.

Visitors also have the option of registering -- free of charge -- as a Curator, allowing them to maintain a “Lightbox” -- a saved folder of their favorite artists’ portfolios.

Portfolio pages in the WPA ArtFile Online are one of the membership benefits given to WPA member artists, who are able to log in at any time from any computer with an internet connection to update their images, image captions, artist statement, resume, contact information, and the style and media keywords that best describe their artwork. Each artist’s portfolio page displays up to 12 images, and allows the artist to provide a link to their own external website where more images and information can be found.

Direct link to the WPA ArtFile Online: artfile.wpadc.org.

For additional information, please contact David William at dwilliam@wpadc.org

Photos of Miami Beach Art Fairs

The Cappster has many photographs of the various art fairs from ABMB; see them all here.

Baltimore struggles over public art

The Baltimore Sun, has a fascinating insight into what happens behind the scenes when someone wants to add a work of public art to a city.

In a nutshell, a group wants to honor former mayor and governor William Donald Schaefer by commissioning and putting a 9 foot statue of him on a prominent corner in Baltimore's Inner Harbor? This is all at no cost to the tax payers, other than perhaps as a eye sore to people who didn't like Schaefer.

Sculptor Rodney Carroll rough proposal concept sketches for the Schaefer statue
But seriously, it seems that every time that these issues on public art become, ah... public, the following happens:

(a) if the proposed honoring statue is an abstract work of art, someone complains because it doesn't really reflect clearly enough the intent or focus of the honoree.

(b) if the proposed honoring statue is a representational work of art, and actually looks like the person being honored, then someone complains that it is too traditional.

To that effect, Darsie Alexander, a sculptor on the panel, apparently took course (b) and stated one of the most traditional of lines and one of the dumbest arguments consistently taken by the boring "representational versus abstract" soldiers (note that I did not say "traditional," as it is clear to the most casual student of art history that abstract art, because of its age and proliferation in academia and public art these days, is as "traditional" as representational art).

According to the article Darsie Alexander said that:

"she saw a disconnect between the groundbreaking nature of the Inner Harbor redevelopment and the 'old-fashioned' quality of Carroll's sculpture. She warned that putting a traditional statue along the refurbished shoreline isn't likely to help put Baltimore on the map as a destination for cutting-edge art - and therefore she feels Carroll's piece may be inconsistent with what the Inner Harbor is all about."

Please... an interesting art destination, even a "cutting edge art" destination, is a tapestry of many colors and textures, not just one kind of artwork or style or genre; whatever happened to diversity?

And now let me take the other side.

Say that Mayor Sheila Dixon and the Baltimore city fathers all nod their head to Darsie Alexander's traditional opinion on this issue. Then I hope that Alexander's influences and opinions are educated enough to go past the "if we put an abstract work on the Inner Harbor and a plate that says it's William Donald Schaefer so that people actually know what it's all about" notion.

How about some really cutting edge art?

No, not a just a video piece of Hizzoner... that's also traditional stuff by now; it has been around for over half a century - let's get modernized folks!

Let's maybe explore some robotics, some motion sensors, some audio and video combos... I envision a moving statue of William Donald Schaefer; either a solid robotic one or a holographic one, with some sophisticated software and robotics properties (the art geeks from Dorkbot DC can design this part), which interacts with people as they pass by.

To really make it realistic, and consistent with Schaeffer's past actions, the statue could be equipped with some visual recognition algorithms to recognize attractive young women and issue a cat call every time that a pretty girl walks by.

Rousseau on Lin

I've been telling you all about Amy Lin for a long time now. And now Dr. Claudia Rousseau, writing for the Gazette newspapers reviews her current exhibition at the Heineman-Myers Fine Arts in Bethesda, a takes an indepth look at the sources for Lin's works:

"The work of emerging regional artist Amy Lin, now on view at the Heineman Myers Gallery in Bethesda, presents something of a conundrum. The interest it has generated, and the sales, threaten to make it suspiciously too popular to be taken seriously. Couple that with a widespread fascination with the artist’s technique — hundreds of small circles of varying sizes hand-drawn in curving strings with little tail-like ends — discussions of Lin’s work tend to be on the level of a ‘‘temple of toothpicks” rather than the kind of analytical response usually accorded abstract compositions. What passes for commentary on her work has tended to focus on the amazing number of dots, the sort of thing that could be done with a computer in short order, but which Lin tediously, obsessively, draws with colored pencils. But does this emphasis on the ‘‘wow” effect do it justice? If there were no more interest here than the dazzlingly meticulous way they are made, would they really be worth looking at? The fact is, once past that level, there is much to be seen and thought about here, and the artist’s much overlooked serious intent, particularly in terms of self-expression, deserves some attention."

Read the review here and you can meet Lin on these two dates at the gallery:

Friday, December 14, 6-9pm (Bethesda Arts Walk)
Sunday, December 16, 2-4pm (wine/cheese reception - artist talk at 2pm)

Buy Amy Lin now!

Miami Art Fire

Among the hundreds of paintings destroyed in a post Art Basel fire at the Harold Golen Gallery in Miami are apparently works by former DC area hanger about Ron English.

More Art for your Buck

See this and then join something!

Open Studios

Join the Washington Glass School's open house and annual Washington Glass School Holiday Party and Glass Sale. Lots of fine arts glass, class specials, artwork from a dozen prominent and emerging artists, music, food! This yearly event is always their biggest bash of the season and I am told that this is the largest sale that they have ever had! The perfect way to pick up original holiday gifts!

What: The Washington Glass School's Annual Holiday Sale and Party

Where: The Washington Glass School (3700 Otis St. Mt. Rainier, MD 20712; just across the DC city line; tel: 202-744-8222)

WashGlass.com for more info on the school.

Plenty of free parking and just 4 miles up Rhode Island Ave from Logan Circle.

When : Saturday, Dec 15th from 2 to 6pm