Artomatic is back for 2008

Time for all the art critics and art bloggers who think that an open, all inclusive, unjuried, everything-hangs art show is a bad thing for art to start gritting their teeth.

The NoMa (north of Massachusetts Avenue) Business Improvement District (BID) will host this year's Artomatic, the Washington, D.C. area's homegrown art extravaganza. From May 9 through June 15, 2008, up to 800 local and regional artists will exhibit their works on eight floors of the Capitol Plaza 1 building, located at 1st and M Streets, N.E., just one block from the New York Avenue Metro station.

Held regularly since 1999, Artomatic transforms an unfinished Greater DC area indoor space into an exciting and incredibly diverse arts event that is free and open to the public. In addition to displays and sales by hundreds of artists, the event features free musical, dance, and theater performances; holiday celebrations; films; educational presentations; and much more.

Anyone can become part of AOM. It's a democratic, all open show... and this is what many art critics and writers hate, because they want to see the external hand and discipline of a curator (otr team of curators) applied to such a massive endeavor.

But there's room for both. There are plenty of large curated show and precious little amount of gargantuan art shows such as AOM.

This year’s Artomatic, occupying 200,000 square feet at Capitol Plaza 1, will be the largest to date. Designed by renowned architect Shalom Baranes and owned by an affiliate of The Polinger Company, Capitol Plaza 1 offers 293,000 rentable square feet of Class A office space, with dramatic Capitol and city views from the upper floors.

“We are thrilled to partner with Artomatic in an event that will bring tens of thousands of people to NoMa,” said Elizabeth Price, president of the NoMa BID. “It is a great opportunity to showcase the transformation that is underway in NoMa and infuse it with the energy and creativity of the artistic community.”

"Artomatic has come back to its roots in D.C. with our largest event ever,” said George Koch, Chair of Artomatic. “We are excited about our partnership with the NoMa BID and their help in bringing this new space to our attention. Artomatic 2008 will have an abundance of exhibit and performance space that will be open to all — from recognized artists to undiscovered talents.”

Registration for artists and performers who wish to participate in Artomatic will be open soon. To stay up to date on the event details and schedule, visit www.artomatic.org and sign up to receive the Artomatic newsletter.

Her First Time

Her First Time, Charcoal on Paper. 3 inches x 2 inches. c.2008
By F. Lennox Campello

Celebrity sighting

One of the formerly best-kept dining secrets of Media, Pennsylvania is a terrific Indian restaurant called Shere-E-Punjab. My wife lived in India and is a good arbiter of Indian food, and when we first moved here, she actually wrote a note to the local paper about this modest but most excellent restaurant (the paper had done a Media restaurant issue and skipped the small Indian place).

The paper's food critic then visited Shere-E-Punjab and was so impressed that she wrote a whole article/review on them.

And then earlier this year the Philly Inky wrote a favorable review of it.

Shere-E-Punjab has really good, authentic Indian food at excellent prices.

And yesterday we had lunch there (excellent as usual) and as we were leaving, noticed that several of the key cast members of "It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia," one of my favorite TV shows, came in to have lunch. This is one of the funniest, oddest and most innovative TV shows on cable.

And no... Louie wasn't one of them.

Artists' Websites

"Virgie" by Christopher Goodwin
Former DC area artist Christopher Goodwin is also the creator of the innovative Trashball! art project.

Visit his website here.

Curatorialism

So far this year I've curated/juried a couple of shows (Color Invitations at R Street Gallery in DC and currently "Five Senses" at Target Street in Alexandria, VA).

Loads more efforts to come in 2008.

Next I'm helping to select the artists for the Johns Hopkins book and two city exhibition of the Innovators Combatting Substance Abuse Program next month in Baltimore.

In April I am curating the grand opening show for the new Mayer Fine Arts gallery in Norfolk, Virginia. Titled "Common Ocean: From Havana to Norfolk," the exhibition will showcase the work of four leading contemporary Cuban women: Sandra Ramos, Aimee Garcia Marrero, Marta Maria Perez Bravo and Cirenaica Moreira.

Also in April I am jurying Derivative Composition for VSA arts.

In June I will be curating Early Look, a student show for DC's Longview Gallery.

In September I am doing the jurying for the Maryland Federation of Artists' (MFA) annual Landscape Show in Annapolis.

In November I will be curating "Aqui Estamos" (Here We Are): Contemporary Cuban Art" for Mt. Rainier, Maryland's H&F Fine Arts, showing some very well-known as well as some new and emerging Cuban artists.

And in between all that I am fitting in six art fairs, a boatload of art panels and two solo shows (more on those later).

Mellema on Moser

Kevin Mellema writes an interesting review of the current Lida Moser show at Fraser Gallery.

Moser's work often depicts motion and displays an unusually strong depth of field. Some of her best works include foreground objects that go hopelessly out of focus yet retain all the information we really need. A photo of two Tennessee girls standing beside the road includes the interior car door and window frame. Another shot out the front window of a bus shows a motion blurred man crossing the street before the bus. Both photos would be greatly diminished were they shot in a more typical fashion.

Likely to her detriment, Moser never shot fashion work, but was asked to shoot a fashion portfolio for a young head strong aspiring model named Judy. Moser agreed, as long as she could shoot it on a truck loading dock. During the shoot the two ladies encountered a band of irrepressible, and equally headstrong boys. Not quite being able to shake them off, Moser used them to her advantage and made a wonderful series of shots with Judy posing while the boys mocked her poses. No doubt it wasn't exactly what Judy had in mind, but since Moser was doing the work as a favor she didn't have much choice but to go along with it. Moser recalls that images from the series sold to several magazines, and Judy went on to model ... then setting her sights on marrying a millionaire, did that as well.

Read it here.

Henry Miller

Henry Miller, charcoal on paper. 2 inches by 2 inches. c. 2008
by F. Lennox Campello

Lotta Art

Details here.

MFA Shows at Tyler

Temple University’s Tyler School of Art has a series of solo and two-person Masters of Fine Arts thesis exhibitions, occurring weekly from March 19 to May 24, 2008.

The series includes students from all Tyler departments and an array of media: painting, sculpture, glass, printmaking, metals, graphic design, fibers, photography, ceramics, and more. A listing of exhibitions is located here.

Texas MADE: Spotlight on 10 Texas Based Emerging Artists

ArtWhino, Alexandria's massive art gallery will launch Texas MADE: Spotlight on 10 Texas Based Emerging Artists, on March 21st, 2008 from 6 to 12p.m. The show runs until - April 4th, 2008. Music by DJ SMK.

Texas Made is "a sampling of the prominent, graffiti-based contemporary Texan art culture. For the most part, the artists featured in Texas Made all have graffiti and street art backgrounds and have now broadened their scope to include works on canvas. Keeping in the vein of graffiti, these artists employ much of the same media and techniques one might expect to find outdoors, such as spray paint with stencils."

Found Prints

A while back a good friend of a friend found a portfolio containing eight prints at the Red line Metro in DC. She brought them home instead of taking them to the Metro counter thinking that they were going to be safer in her hands. Below are three of the images from the set. If anyone knows who the artist may be, they can get in touch directly with Paula and her email is paulamjo@hotmail.com.

Meet the Artist - DC

Argentinean artist Felisa Federman will be at Gallery 10 - Dupont Circle‏ in DC this Saturday and Sunday, to discuss her work currently on exhibit there. Call 202/232-3326.

Felisa Federman, "Barcode." Mixed media on canvas. 11" by 14", 2008

Meet the Artists - Philly

Join Sarah Steinwachs and Joshua Marsh at Cerulean Arts to discuss their current exhibition “Drawing Near” featuring work by them and fellow Yale graduates Tamar Miller and Kathranne Knight. For more information about the exhibition, please visit this website or call 267-514-8647.

Sunday, March 16, 1-4pm and Gallery Talk at 2pm.

Five Senses

Yesterday I was down at the Torpedo Factory in Old Town Alexandria; first I spent about half an hour checking out a couple of very good Art League shows juried by Jack Boul and Sarah Tanguy; review coming later.

Then I went to Target Gallery to see "Five Senses," which I had juried from digital files, and was really pleased with the show; you gotta go see this really cool exhibition - it's not what you'd expect and let me give you a hint: it makes the entire building smell of mouthwash!

I awarded Best in Show to an amazing piece by Illinois artist Pamela Paulsud. Titled "Touchstones," the work is comprised of 50 altered books and some real stones, and it is an imaginative and smart work that fools the visual senses, and then demands tactile interaction.

"Touchstones" by Pamela Paulsud
Those are mostly books, not stones in the above image of the winning piece.

See the short video of the show below and you'll see why I am so excited about this show - I hope that some of the area's art critics and art bloggers get a chance to see it, and I also think that some of my fellow art dealers should pop in - there are a couple of really, really good pieces in this show, and those artists definitely need some further exploration.

Judy and the Boys


The above photograph by Lida Moser is known as "Mimicry" or more commonly "Judy and the Boys." It his perhaps her best-known image, and for a while it was the most popularly requested photograph from the Library of Congress archives.

I've seen this photo described as "dancing in the streets."

Here's the real story.

Circa 1961, the model (named Judy) hired Lida Moser to shoot a publicity portfolio, and Moser convinced Judy that the streets of the Bowery in NYC would be an ideal location.

So they began posing and shooting, and soon a small band of New York City urchins approached them.

"Hey Lady," says Lida the oldest one said to her, "take my pichurr."

"Get lost," answered Moser, "We're working here."

"C'mon lady," the kids now insisted, "take our pichurr."

Soon, to the irritation of Judy, the eldest boy started to mimic her poses. "See lady," he said, "I can pose too."

Moser is not a photographic genius for nuthin' and she recognized the photographic opportunity and started backing up slowly to include the boys in the frame. Judy was now really pissed, and look at her dainty gloved hand, as she gives the street ruffians the finger.

Eventually Moser included the boys in other photographs (all part of a series loosely called "Judy and the Boys") and the images became part of the portfolio. The first photo (imaged above) captures the beginning of a brilliant photo that has little to do with dancing in the streets but loads to do with the eye of a savvy street photographer.

Lida Moser opens tonight at 6PM at Fraser Gallery in Bethesda.

Bethesda Art Walk Tonight

Tonight is the Bethesda Art Walk with openings and late hours and a free walking tour to over a dozen Bethesda art galleries and art venues.

My pick: Lida Moser at Fraser Gallery. Also, I learned from DCist that Moser will discuss her work on Saturday at 1 p.m., followed by a screening of two documentaries about her work.

"Along a Road in Tennessee," c. 1965 by Lida Moser

Weston and Modotti

Two tiny recent drawings, each about 2.25 square inches representing Edward Weston and Tina Modotti, who for a while were lovers while in Mexico City. Modotti was eventually executed by the Nazis in Germany died in Mexico under suspicious circumstances in 1942.

I like this

WaPo Chief Art Critic Blake Gopnik interviews Charles Cohan, a 47-year-old printmaker and art professor based in Hawaii, and currently exhibiting in DC's micro-gallery with a huge presence, Curator's Office.

Cohan's installation at Curator's Office
Read the interview here. The gallery reception for Cohan is Saturday, March 15 6:30 - 8:30 pm.

Wanna go to a gallery opening tonight?

Come to the opening of "Five Senses," the exhibition that I curated for Alexandria's Target Gallery.

The exhibition is up now and through April 6, 2008, and the opening reception (free and open to the public) is tonight, Thursday, March 13, 6-8pm and I will give a gallery talk tonight at 7PM and present the awards. You can start by attending the reception, having some munchies and wine, and then, after the reception, head out for the nightlife of Old Town Alexandria.

The artists that I selected come from all over the nation; they are: Participating Artists: David Bausman, Adam Bradley, Mirella Monti Belshe, Travis Childers, Julie Hitchcock, Laura Huff, Sun Kyoung Kim, Jenny Mastin, Scott Mickelson, Pamela Paulsrud, Thomas Schlotterback, Gary Schott, Anjali Srinivasan, J. Lewis Takahashi, Jennifer Williams, and Damian Yanessa.

This promises to be a terrific show and I can't wait to see the actual work later today.

See ya there!

Artists' Websites

"Intemperance" by Carrie Ann Baade
The recipient of a recent National Endowment of the Arts Fellowship granted through the Delaware Division of the Arts. Carrie Ann Baade received her B.F.A. from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and her Masters in Painting from the University of Delaware. Carrie is currently an Assistant Professor of Painting and Drawing at Florida State University.

Visit her website here.