New Alexandria, Virginia gallery

New to me anyway, but open since June of last year is DelRay's Blueberry Gallery (gallery website coming soon I am told) in Alexandria, VA.

The gallery is having a closing reception for their current exhibit of works by Nihal Kececi on Feb. 29 from 5:30-7:30PM.

The Art League's Patrons Show


If you were crazy enough to be hanging around Old Town Alexandria about 4 AM on a cold morning last month you would have noticed people forming a long line in the brutal cold outside the Torpedo Factory. They were waiting for a chance to get original art for their collections – or perhaps some brave souls starting to collect art.

"A line for art?" you must be asking, "who is crazy enough to freeze lining up at Oh-dark-thirty just to buy artwork?"

Hundreds.

They were lining up for one of the great art deals of the year: the Annual Patrons' Show. It's very simple: artists donate original artwork to the Art League, who inspects it, selects it and often frames it. It is quality stuff, ranging from huge abstracts to delicate pencil drawings. The Art League represents nearly 1,800 artists in the area, so there's plenty of possible sources of art donated by generous artists.

It is one of the largest art events in the country, with around 600 original works of art finding a new home in one day.

Usually about 600 pieces are donated and hung salon style in the Art League’s gallery on the first floor of the Factory. Then raffle tickets go up for sale at 10 AM, and they usually disappear within an hour or two; and each ticket equals a guaranteed a work of art.

And on Sunday, February 17 at 5PM, people who have a ticket begin gathering into the main floor of the Factory and they bring chairs, tables, food and loads of booze (this is like an art pic nic) as it will be a long, loud, fun, cheery and boozy evening as the tickets are drawn at random; and as they are called, ticket-holders select a piece of art from the work on display on the walls.

Everyone with a ticket is guaranteed a work of art. The tickets cost $175 each - an amazing deal once you see the work that you can get.

The first ticket called gets the first choice and so on - you get to pick the best piece (to you) from around 600 works of art). You better pick one quickly, or the crowds begin to shout and whistle and demand a choice be made.

It is without a doubt, the most sought after art ticket in town, and often incredible acquisitions are made... and I hear that there are some tickets left!

Call the Art League at 703/683-1780.

Curatorial Fellowship in Philly

Deadline: March 28, 2008

The Philadelphia Museum of Art has announced the two-year (first year renewable) Dorothy J. del Bueno Curatorial Fellowship in the Department of Prints, Drawings, and Photographs, beginning on July 1, 2008.

An M.A in art history or related field is required; the Fellow should have demonstrated a commitment to scholarship in art history and an ability to work collaboratively. The fellowship provides firsthand experience with curatorial work in the graphic arts. Fellows participate in all activities of a large, active curatorial department with a collection of over 160,000 works of art on paper: exhibition and loan preparation; object research and cataloguing; study room supervision and daily administrative tasks. Fellows have the opportunity to organize an exhibition from the permanent collection during the second year of the fellowship. Travel stipend and benefits.

Fellowship for Philly Artists

Deadline March 8, 2008

The Center for Emerging Visual Artists and New Courtland Elder Services (NCES) are offering Philadelphia area artists the opportunity to participate in a new community-based fellowship. Through the New Courtland Artist Fellowship, eight artists will be selected to bring innovative/engaging art-making to residents of NCES.

Artists are asked to develop an intergenerational project that brings NCES residents together with school age children/teens to create an exciting artistic project. Work created during the fellowship will be exhibited with the work of the artists in a large, well publicized exhibition. For more details contact CFEVA at 215 546-7775 x11 or email Genevieve@cfeva.org.

Grant for Artists

The Pollock-Krasner Foundation invites painters, sculptors, mixed media, installation artists, and artists who work on paper to apply for grants ranging from $1,000 to $30,000. The sole purpose of the foundation is to provide financial assistance to individual working artists of established ability. For more information, contact:

Pollock-Krasner Foundation
863 Park Ave.
New York, NY 10021

Fax (212) 288-2836; email: grants@pkf.org

Sculpture NOW 2008

DC opening reception for this key Washington Sculptors Group show is on Thursday, February 14, 2008 6:00pm to 8:30 pm and the awards presentation by David Furchgott, President of International Arts & Artists, is to take place at 7:15pm... where did you ask?

Washington Square, located at 1050 Connecticut Avenue NW (18th and L Streets)in Washington, DC.

Sculptures by Christian Benefiel, Brent Crothers, Joel D'Orazio, Pattie Porter Firestone, Frank Fishburne, Breon Gilleran, Michael A. Guadagno, Len Harris, James Kessler, Jin Lee, Carol Gellner Levin, Mitra M. Lore, Phelan Meek, Judy Sutton Moore, Bill Moore, Lincoln Mudd, Mahasti Y. Mudd, Pokey Park, Tom Rooney, Richard Schellenberg, Mike Shaffer, Craig Schaffer, Bo Simeon, Frances Sniffen, Pamela Soldwedel-Barrett, George Tkabladze, Ron van Delden, Raymonde van Santen, Sarah Wegner, Elizabeth Whiteley, and Joyce Zipperer.

Also congrats to Brent Crothers, who is also a Sondheim Prize semifinalist!

Conservation

This is one of the best art conservation articles that I have read in a long time.

Read the Washingtonian article by Harry Jaffe here.

ArtClash Fun-A-Day in Philly

What is Fun-A-Day? The event grew out of a December 2004 potluck dinner in West Philly, where artist Kara Schlindwein and three friends were searching for some mid-winter inspiration.

Drawing on an idea that had taken hold among comics creators, they dared each other to create one artwork each day during the month of January. To seal the commitment, they planned a show in mid-February. Then they started spreading the word.

"We thought we'd get maybe 14 people," Kara said. Instead, 47 people brought their creations to her friend Nick's living room, and those were just the participants. "We had about 200 people come -- not all at once, thank God."

The success of the first show spawned Artclash!, a West Philly-based artists' collective established, essentially, to keep Fun-A-Day going.

Four years later, the Fun-a-Day concept has spread beyond Philadelphia: this year, artists in Houston, Pittsburgh, and even Amsterdam will hold Fun-A-Day events. In Philly, some 70 people -- professional artists and casual funlovers alike -- signed up to participate in 2008.

"That usually means about 50 to 60 projects will make it to the show," Kara said (See some photos from 2006's Fun-a-Day 2 here).

This year's creations run the gamut from thirty-one haikus composed on SEPTA, to a daily leaf-quilt-square, to a month of different breakfast pastries. Others are entitled "neon paper cut designs," "a walk and a photo," and "flowchart-a-day."

The Fun-a-Day show has moved from a living room into Studio 34 Yoga | Healing | Art, a new 5,000-square-foot space at 4522 Baltimore Avenue in West Philly.

Named for the adjacent trolley line, Studio 34 offers yoga and Pilates classes, massage and other healing services, and community spaces for meetings, art shows, and live performances.

Its grand opening will be in March, but the Fun-a-Day show will offer a "sneak preview" of the KBAS-designed studio.

What: The 4th Annual Fun-a-Day Show, hosted by The Artclash! Collective

When: Saturday, Feb. 16, from 7 to 11 p.m.

Where: Studio 34

Neon for Obama

I guess we know who DC area neon sculptor Craig Kraft is voting for...


Don't forget to vote today if you are in the MD, DC and VA region...

Laurie Lipton Can Draw

I'm a sucker for artists that can really, really draw well. Laurie Lipton in an American artist based in London. Her work will be on view in a group show entitled Pop Surrealism at the Robert Berman Gallery, in Santa Monica, CA that opens March 28.

And Laurie Lipton can draw with the best of them...

"I had been trying to teach myself how to paint like the early Renaissance masters, but failed miserably. Then I decided to try to draw the way the masters painted, using tiny little lines to build up areas of tone. It was crazy and took ages. It was worth the effort, though. The detail and clarity of the images became luminous. I got excited. I drew and drew until I made myself ill, but I didn't care."

Visit her website here.

2008 Presidential Campaign Positions on the Arts & Sciences

I had no idea where the current Presidential candidates stand on the arts, and a while back I emailed all of them asking for some positions, but so far they have farted me off.

However, Marc Molino over at the RP Muse has done his homework and has the campaign's positions -- where there is one -- on those subjects here.

More Bad Things Artists do to Galleries

This actually happened to a gallery in Georgetown, in Washington, DC in the 1990s:

Back when there were eight galleries in Canal Square, one of the galleries had given a show to a local -- at the time "hot" artist -- who was a painter (I say "was" because I haven't heard of the dude in years).

The artist was supposed to deliver and help hang all the paintings on a Wednesday, in order to be ready for the Georgetown third Friday openings. He did show up on Wednesday with about 50% of the work, and brought some more (freshly finished) on Thursday and to the gallerist's horror, even brought some more on Friday, and even as the show was opening at 6PM, was adding the last painting touches to several of the works.

Needless to say, several of the oils were actually wet when people starting showing up. On opening night, it was crowded, and someone apparently rubbed against one of the paintings and smeared some of the oil paint.

Now the gallerist was faced with a very irate person, demanding that his suit be cleaned (it eventually had to be replaced) and with a furious artist, demanding that the gallery pay him in full for the damaged painting.

If I am to believe the gallerist, the case actually went to court, where the judge threw it out.

More Bad Things Galleries do to Artists

This has happened to artists several times in my memories, both in the US and in Europe:

Artist and gallery owner agree to do a show of the artist's work. The gallery, like many all over the world, also has a side business as a framing shop, and tells the artist that they will take care of the framing.

The artist agrees on a handshake, and never asks for a contract, or costs, assuming that the gallerist knows what he is doing.

On opening night the artist shows up and is not too keen about the framing, but it's too late for any real discussions, as people are beginning to show up. Several pieces are sold, and the artist is very happy with the opening.

At the end of the show, the artist gets a letter in the mail from the gallery. Excited to see the payment for the sold work, the artist opens the envelope and finds a framing bill.

The bill details the cost of the framing, substracts from that amount the artist's commission from the sold work, and bills the artist for the remaining amount, as framing is very expensive.

Anger follows...

More bad things that (a) galleries do to artists or (b) artists do to galleries or (c) galleries do to collectors here, and here and here.

Congrats!

To all the semi-finalists for the $25,000 Sondheim Prize:

Becky Alprin, Laura Amussen, Rachel Bone, Ryan Browning, Mandy Burrow, Linda Day Clark, Brent Crothers, Melissa Dickenson, Eric Finzi, Laurie Flannery, Shaun Flynn, Dawn Gavin, Geoff Grace, Maren Hassinger, Kay Hwang, Courtney Jordan, Bridget Sue Lambert, Youngmi Song Organ, Beverly Ress, James Rieck, Christopher Saah, Lynn Silverman, Molly Springfield, Pamela Phatsimo Sunstrum, Calla Thompson, Edward Winter, and Erin Womack.

DC area artist Eric Finzi is having an opening for his latest works with a show titled "My Double Life: Musings on Sarah Bernhardt" at Bethesda's Heineman-Myers Contemporay soon. The opening is March 1, 2008 from 6-9PM. See the exhibition catalog here.

Never seen this before...

Amongst the most spectacular sights that I have ever, the Northern Lights, which I saw for a couple of hours during a magical night in Scotland in the early 90s, as well as seeing snow paint the ocean white, and then coming up to the Arctic ice edge -- which I did one summer in 1988 and then again in 1989 while aboard an icebreaker somewhere North of Novaya Zemlya -- are right up there.

But last night in the Poconos I saw and heard something new and wondrous to me: Lightning and thunder in the middle of a snow storm!

Freaky and beautiful and a little scary.

Tim Tate pre-Heart Day Talk

Wednesday, February 13, 5 p.m.

Join artist Tim Tate as he discusses his work Sacred Heart of Healing and other artworks inspired by romance and commitment.

Sacred Heart of Healing by Tim Tate
At the Smithsonian American Art Museum's Luce Foundation Center for American Art in DC — Third Floor.

When galleries go bad

Check out this horror story in Atlanta's Creative Loafing.

Touchstone opening and wine tasting is tonight

Touchstone Gallery's opening for their "10th Annual All-Media National Exhibition," which also features a wine tasting courtesy of the Washington Wine Academy, is tonight from 6-8:30PM and the show goes through March 8, 2008.

"Frida and Me - Common Threads," at Projects Gallery

"Frida and Me - Common Threads," currently on display through February 23, 2008 at Projects Gallery in Philadelphia, showcases the work of four contemporary Philadelphia area artists of Latina/Hispanic heritage.

Organized by Helen Meyerick, Project's director, as a prequel and inspired by the massive Frida Kahlo exhibition which opens at the Philadelphia Museum of Art on Feb. 20, this interesting exhibition gives these four local artists an opportunity to display work which although not executed in a "Kahlo style," nonetheless touch on many of the issues of culture and identity and iconic portraiture that Frida Kahlo so successfully delivered through her own work in the last century.

The exhibit features work by Doris Noguiera-Rogers, Michelle Angela Ortiz, Marilyn Rodriguez-Behrle and Marta Sanchez. All four artists work in radically different styles and media, but all four manage to find -- at least in their words -- a thread back to Kahlo as a source of inspiration.

Marilyn Rodriguez-Behrle mixed media works on found objects -- and paper bags affixed in some cases to what appears to be some form of tree bark -- at first appear to fit neatly the category of "outsider art."

That is until one starts gathering information about the artist and her environment, and we find out that there's more than that.

Sacred Haunting Images VI, Mixed Media on Paper Bag
by Marilyn Rodriguez-Behrle
The images, such as Sacred Haunting Images VI, are harsh and disturbing, and often done in the iconic portraiture composition of Kahlo's best-known works. But that's where the visual relationship ends and Rodriguez-Behrle's talented vision takes over. In this artist's works, everything matters and everything tells a story and is related to itself -- like a recursive sequence of art.

Rodriguez-Behrle works in a psychiatric medical environment, and the imagery of her works is directly influenced and stamped by her experiences with patients and co-workers. Even the substrate is related to her environment: the bags upon which she paints are the bags given to patients when they check in and out to contain their personal property.

It's a fascinating mixture of additional hints that she offers the viewers; in her work there are clear signs of religious portraiture, evidenced by the gold leaf background of several of the images. The use of bark immediately reminded me of some of the Santeria pieces of Ana Mendieta, and together the two seemed to cement the fact that perhaps Rodriguez-Behrle is subconsciously (or on purpose) elevating her subjects to a higher place in her canon.

Although the cultural backgrounds of the four women on this show are different (as I recall Puerto Rican, Colombian, Argentinean and Mexican-American), it was easy to pick the powerful influences of Mexican art upon Marta Sanchez.

La Virgin y Las Corpus Oil and enamel on metal
by Marta Sanchez
Painting on metal is a traditional Mexican media, and for many years Mexican artists painted -- and continue to do so -- religious retablos on tin, often by taking a tin can, cutting it open, hammering it flat and then painting or cutting it into a religious portrait.

Sanchez carries the retablo tradition to the 21st century, elevating it both in scale and in imagery. Raised on the Texas side of the Mexican border, her works are full of narrative imagery and powerful colors influenced both by her childhood memories and the cultural ties to a Mexican palette. In La Virgin y Las Corpus we are flooded with narrative imagery: we see the iconic Virgin as the central focus of the piece, surrounded by a swirling world of color, information and history. The train that goes back and forth between Mexico and the US is there; so is a man dancing at a wedding - or is it a young girl's "quince" celebration? Is that Diego Rivera poking his "El Sapo" face at the top of the painting?

It has been said by many that Argentina, as a nation, belongs more in Europe than in South America, and that complex and diverse nation is home not only to the largest Italian migration in the world, but also home to more Cymri people than Wales. In Doris Nogueira-Rogers' works more of an European footprint -- than a Latin American one -- emerges.

It's OK; Frida Kahlo was three quarters European and one quarter Mexican, but no one has ever worn her Mexicanity more furiously and proudly than La Kahlo.

Of Lace and Layers VII, mixed media on paper
by Doris Nogueira-Rogers
Doris Nogueira-Rogers' contributions to the exhibitions are coolly crafted and beautifully presented - they also walk a different path from an already diverse group, perhaps aiming more to an interest in pattern and color than in narrative and information.

Let me not mix words here: the stand-out in this exhibition is Michelle Angela Ortiz.


La Madre, La Hija, Esperito Buscando Acrylic on wood
by Michelle Angela Ortiz
In her large triptych La Madre, La Hija, Esperito Buscando, Ortiz flexes not only superbly honed painting skills, but also succeeds in bringing together a marriage of the already discussed religious and iconic portraiture that tie her work to both Kahlo and a Latin American culture, to a contemporary dialogue.

The generations of her family are represented: we see her mother and her grandmother and also Ortiz. The older generations offer gifts to the viewer in their hands, while Ortiz's hands, held in the same position, await her gifts or perhaps her destiny.

It's also a story of family strength and power; these are not supplicants, but strong women with strong faces, and Ortiz's face, more than the others, also show a proud footprint of native indigenous bloodlines taking over, through the generations, from the invading European genes.

She awaits her gifts, but will not beg for them; she will make her own destiny.

Bad things galleries do to artists

Unethical galleries will take in a piece of artwork by an artist, and when the price is discussed, the gallery says: "What's the price?" and the artist says: "$1000" The gallery nods OK and the artist leaves, knowing that if sold, he'll get $500 (most commercial galleries charge 50% commission -- in NYC some are as high as 70%). The gallery then sells the piece, but for $2,000, sends the artist a check for $500 and pockets the extra $1,000. That is why artists should insist on having a contract with a gallery, and the contract must specifically address that the artist will get 50% of the actual sale price.

Bad things artists to do galleries

A reputable gallery gives an artist a show, and goes through all the various expenses associated with doing so (rent, electricity, staff salaries, publicity, ads, post cards, opening reception catering, etc.) So far the gallery has put forth a considerable investment in presenting the artist's works. An interested novice collector meets the artist at the opening and expresses interest (to the artist) in buying some of his artwork. The artist, wishing to stiff the gallery for their commission says: "See me after the show and I'll sell it to you directly and save myself the gallery commission." This is not only unethical, but it's also guaranteed to ruin the artist's reputation in the city, as these things always come out in the wash, and soon no gallery will exhibit any work by this artist.

What's Your Problem?

I really, really like this new series of articles at the Washington City Paper by Amanda Hess titled What's Your Problem?