Listen

If you missed Heather and I yesterday at WAMU's Kojo Nnamdi show, you can hear it online here.

New York Comments

After you read this article by Sewell Chan in the NYT -- about the debut of “New York City Waterfalls,” Olafur Eliasson’s $15.5 million of temporary cascades around New York Harbor -- continue reading the few hundred comments about the work and price tag.

Opportunities for Photographers

Deadline: Friday, August 15, at 5:00pm.

The 2nd Annual Plein Air–Easton! Photography Contest is open to professional, amateur, and student photographers. All images must depict aspects of the 2008 Plein Air-Easton! Festival. Cash prizes will be awarded and selections will be displayed in a touring exhibit which will continue through the Plein Air–Easton! Competition and Arts Festival 2009.
Deadline for submissions is Friday, August 15, at 5:00pm.

Winners will be announced September 5, 2008, during First Friday Gallery Walk. For more information and contest guidelines click here or email dorbin@paragonlight.com or
call 410-820-7738.

2008 Talbot County Abstract Photography Contest and Exhibition

The 2008 Talbot County Abstract Photography Contest, held by Traces of Us Gallery – Fotografia de Arte and Hobby Horse Photography, is open to all photographers interested in capturing the beauty of Talbot County and downtown Easton from an abstract and contemporary viewpoint. Registration will be held on Sunday, July 20 at Traces of Us Gallery – Fotografia de Arte from 10:00am – 4:00pm and is free with a donation of nonperishable food item(s).

Participating photographers will be required to take their pictures in Talbot County on July 21 and July 22 and in downtown Easton on July 23 and July 24. Each artist must submit one image taken in each location.

An exhibition and sale of all competition photographs will run at the Traces of Us Gallery – Fotografia de Arte from July 26 through August 8. Hobby Horse Photography will exhibit and sell the 1st, 2nd, 3rd place and honorable mentions from August 9 through September 1. For details click here.

On the air tonight at WRNR

I will be on the air around 6:30PM tonight on Annapolis' WRNR 103 FM in Michael Buckley's "Voices of the Chesapeake" show where I will be discussing the coming Plein AirEaston! event in beautiful Easton, Maryland.

If you've never been to Easton, you should seriously consider planning a trip anywhere from July 21-27, and witness as this beautiful seashore town becomes a magnet for thousands of art lovers and collectors as well as the nation's top plein air painters. Check it out here.

On the air today

Together with the fair Heather Goss from DCist, later on today I'll be on the Kojo Nnamdi Show discussing the Greater Washington area visual arts and artists and art stories as I usually do several times a year.

Tune in to WAMU 88.5 FM around noon - we're supposed to be on air around 1PM.

If you have any questions or art issues, you can call Kojo during the show at (800) 433-8850 or you can email him questions to kojo@wamu.org.

We hope to be able to discuss issues such as the search for a new Executive Director for the DC Arts Commission, also talk a little about that new effort to launch a new DC Art Fair Expo at the Convention Center, talk up some interesting shows and take as many questions and calls as possible.

Brooklyn!

One of mine is in this open show at the Brooklyn Museum.

On the air tomorrow

Tomorrow once again I'll be on the Kojo Nnamdi Show discussing the Greater Washington area visual arts and artists and art stories as I usually do several times a year.

Tune in to WAMU 88.5 FM around noon - I'm supposed to be on air around 1PM.

If you have any questions or art issues, you can call Kojo during the show at (800) 433-8850 or you can email him questions to kojo@wamu.org.

Also tomorrow I will be on the air around 6:30PM on Annapolis' WRNR in Michael Buckley's "Voices of the Chesapeake" show where I will be discussing the coming Plein AirEaston! event in beautiful Easton, Maryland.

From July 21-27, this beautiful seashore town becomes a magnet for thousands of art lovers and collectors as well as the nation's top plein air painters. Check it out here.

On the DC Arts Commission Director

Ethelbert Miller, one of the District's key arts personalities and a current DC Arts Commission commissioner pipes in with some good reflections on getting a new Executive Director. Read it here.

Grants for Artists

Deadline: July 31, 2008.

Awards up to $1,500 to visual and craft artists living and working in the U.S. Funds are to be used in the planning or a craft or visual arts project. Film projects are ineligible. For more information, send a SASE to:

The Ruth Chenven Foundation
7505 Jackson Avenue
Tacoma Park, MD 20912

Donate to this

The AIDS Action Committee of Massachusetts has a major arts fundraising event coming up called ARTcetera 2008.

ARTcetera is a biennial creative black-tie contemporary art auction created and supported by a unique partnership between the visual arts community and the AIDS Action Committee. Guests enjoy fine food and beverages and bid on more than three hundred fresh works by acclaimed local, national and international artists. An exciting live auction and two silent auctions present works in a variety of media, sizes, and styles.

To donate work you have to fill out this form by July 3rd, 2008. As far as shipping work to them, I am working a deal with them where they will take care of shipping of any artwork donated by artists through this blog; work must be shipped by the end of July. You can also choose to receive 25% of the auction price. They will also need an image of the work for the auction catalog. When you fill out the form, make sure to skip data items 13-16 and put "Courtesy of the Artist" in Question 12 unless your gallery or a collector is donating it.

So if you donate a piece, then drop me an email and also put the following in the donation form's box 18:

This work is being donated through a call to artists in Lenny Campello's "Daily Campello Art News" blog and will be shipped to ARTcetera after shipping arrangements have been finalized with Kevin Hudson.

I plan to donate, and since donating artists get a ticket to the black tie gala, I may even swing by Boston to see how the auction goes. There is also a preview party for artists, donors and acquisition committee members happening on October 30 that artists will be invited to attend.

Be generous!

Resignations and Stepping Downs

Betsy Baker, editor of Art in America magazine since 1974, has resigned. Marcia Vetrocq, one of five senior editors, has become the new editor. Read the Lee Rosenbaum scoop here.

Also, Leonard Downie Jr., the longtime executive editor of The Washington Post, is stepping down in September. Read that bit of news here.

Living Without Them

Read the discussion on this Katzen Museum installation here. Comments welcomed!

The Washington Post's Critics Shame

Artomatic 2008 attracted a record-breaking 52,500 visitors as the Washington, D.C. area's homegrown arts extravaganza came to a triumphant close this month, setting new records and breaking new ground for artists in the region.

"Artomatic 2008 was a phenomenal event and it exceeded even our expectations," said Veronica Szalus, Artomatic president. "We are glad to be able to provide this opportunity for artists and to enrich the D.C. creative community."

In all, about 1,540 individual artists took part in Artomatic — also a new high. The total included 740 visual artists — such as painters, sculptors and photographers — who showed thousands of artworks. The event also included individual 800 performing artists, such as dancers, poets, theatre groups, drummers, comedians, fire troupes and musicians. Highlights of Artomatic 2008 included an art-themed fashion show, blood drive, art car foot race, marketplace, book signings and on-site tattoo parlor.

For the first time, Artomatic had a full schedule of free children's events every weekend, including popular workshops on mobile-making, Peeps dioramas, drawing and sculpting. More than 20 children's events were held, attracting hundreds of participants and budding artists.

Adult educational workshops and lectures were also held, focusing on topics such as art collecting and photography techniques. I participated in a couple of these...

And kudos to the Washington Post's Lavanya Ramanathan for providing most of the Post's scant critical coverage of the city's largest arts event.

How my good friend John Pancake, the Arts Editor of the Washington Post, can justify the fact that his two art critics can ignore the largest homegrown arts event in the city, is beyond me. As critical as I am of the WaPo's visual arts coverage, this apathy towards such a large event is beyond belief for even the Post, allegedly the world's second most influential newspaper.

Somewhere in the apathy is a mix of disdain for almost anything that smells of open, public, hands-free, artist-run, uncurated democratic event. The officers and shock troops of the contemporary salons cannot allow such an event to be a success.

Too bad that it is, even with their antipathy.

You reap what you sow; if you don't get it, you don't get it.

Update: John Pancake, the long time Arts Editor of the Washington Post is on the way out, as he took the recent set of buyout offerings from the WaPo administration.

George Carlin

I’m always relieved when someone is delivering a eulogy and I realize I’m listening to it.
- George Carlin

I'm really gonna miss that funny dude.

Opportunity for DC Artists

Deadline: Wednesday, July 9, 2008 at 5:30 pm

The DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities (DCCAH) is purchasing artwork that captures archetypes of Washington DC. Subjects include specific neighborhoods, parks and circles, festivals, gathering places, or cultural events. Less obvious motifs include downtown redevelopment, restaurants, shops and businesses, work places, or Metro stations. Artists should consider a broad range of subject matter as long as the works have an unmistakable subject reflecting life in the District. Artists should also consider submitting images of Washington that depict the changing neighborhoods and the parts of the city that are disappearing. The Committee is very interested in depictions of all wards of the city. The collection serves to honor and embrace life in the District.

This opportunity is open to all artists who reside and have their studio in the District of Columbia.

For more information and to download the Call to Artist, please visit www.dcarts.dc.gov or to request an application in HTML format, email Beth Baldwin or call (202) 724-5613.

New Drawing

And in a huge development to my own artwork, color returns to it!

For years I painted in oils and watercolors and also did drawings... but around 1992-1993 all my artwork began to focus on just black and white drawings.

Not any more; color has returned to my artwork...

"Last Copy of the Constitution"
Charcoal, Conte Crayons and Colored Pencils Drawing by F. Lennox Campello.
Matted and Framed to 24 x 18 inches

Congrats!

To B.G. Muhn, winner of the 2008 Bethesda Painting Awards.

Read the Washington Post review here. The show goes through July 5, 2008.

Scene from Bethesda has the story and images as well. See it here.

PMA Announces Interim CEO

Gerry Lenfest, Chairman of the Board of Trustees, Philadelphia Museum of Art, yesterday announced the board’s unanimous vote to appoint Chief Operating Officer Gail Harrity as the Museum’s Interim Chief Executive Officer, and Associate Director of Collections Alice Beamesderfer as Interim Head of Curatorial Affairs.

These appointments, effective immediately, follow the unexpected death on June 1 of Anne d’Harnoncourt, The George D. Widener Director and Chief Executive Officer. A selection committee co-chaired by Trustees Martha Morris and Keith Sachs will be organized in the coming weeks to search for a permanent successor.

Congrats!

To the winners of the 41st annual Art of the State: Pennsylvania 2008 exhibition, showcasing the talent, creativity and diversity of Pennsylvania's established and emerging artists. The exhibition opens to the public on Sunday, June 29, at The State Museum of Pennsylvania in Harrisburg.

The exhibit includes 166 works of art which were selected from over 2,400 entries. This represents 160 artists from 28 counties.

The exhibition runs through Sept.21. For more information, visit this website.

Let's help Hizzoner

A few days ago I noted that Tony Gittens, the executive director of the D.C. Commission on the Arts and Humanities, announced a couple of days ago that he is leaving that post after 11 years.

Mayor Fenty will now appoint a new EA for the DCCAH and we're all hoping that it's not a typical politico nepotista appointment for the $110,000 a year job.

We're all hoping for someone who is qualified for this important job and who also cares deeply about the capital arts presence and its artists.

I have nominated George Koch, but I am curious to learn about other potential nominees out there, so feel free to post some comments with names of those who you think may be candidates.