Borrowing
With the stock market volatile and housing in a slump, many wealthy individuals are looking to tap another kind of equity — the kind hanging on their walls. Specialists at banks and auction houses say that more of their clients recently are interested in borrowing against their art collections.Read the NY Sun story here.
Master Swindler
"A True Story of Vermeer, Nazis, and the Greatest Art Hoax of the Twentieth Century"Read the WaPo review here and then buy the book here for $17.79.
Wanna arm wrestle an actual DC roller derby girl?
The Pink Line Project and Scion bring you Barrelhouse Magazine's Roller Derby issue launch this coming Friday, July 25, 6 - 10 pm at the District's Hillyer Art Space (behind the Phillips Collection on 21st Street, NW, between Q and R Street).
Check it out; there will be:
- a night of amazing roller derby themed stories and poems
- one gigantic roller derby mural (by Cory Oberndorfer)
- food eating
- beer (provided by Flying Dog Brewery) and wine drinking
- DJ dancing (music by DJ Adrian)
- video watching (Kyle Brannon!)
- Barrelhouse magazine buying.
All for a mere $10.
And of course, a rare opportunity to arm wrestle an actual DC roller derby girl!
Wanna go to a DC opening tomorrow?
Zenith's Alternative Gallery Space at 1111 Pennsylvania Avenue NW in the nation's capital has an interesting show opening tomorrow curated by the ubercollector couple of Steve and Linda Krensky. 
The show is titled "Reincarnations" as it features artworks created from found objects and recycled materials.
Meet the artists tomorrow, Wednesday, July 23, 5:30-8:30pm - the exhibition goes through September 28, 2008.
Work by Grif Bates, Chuck Baxter, Chris Bransome, Melissa Burley, Carolyn Cates, Scott Cawood, Randall Cleaver, Lee Connah, Rosetta DeBerardinis, Laura Dixon, Roger Doyle, Kristin Eager, Ed Gross, Jason Higgins, Andrew Krieger, SuAnne Lasher, Ara Laughlin, Susan Makara, Forrest McCluer, Bodil Meleney, Bogdan Miscevic, Elizabeth Morisette, John Pack, Jane Petit, Caitlin Phillips, George Sakkal, Rima Schulkind, Irma Spencer, Brad Taylor, Erwin Timmers, Mariano Perez Vivanco, Jodi Walsh, and Will Winton.
Commenting on the exhibit, Linda Krensky said, “For the most part, we chose the pieces based on the artists’ unusual interpretations and ability to create art from rather ordinary materials. Some of the pieces are beautiful, some amuse and others amaze.”
Mayor Nutter does good
Exciting news from Philly's City Hall Friday, as Mayor Michael Nutter announced the opening of the Office of Arts, Culture and the Creative Economy (Henceforth, OACCE), a Frankenversion of the old Office of Arts and Culture (OAC).Read the post from Drama Queen here.
Names needed!
A while back I had this call for artists to donate to an auction for a great cause.
The AIDS Action Committee of Massachusetts has a major arts fundraising event coming up called ARTcetera 2008.
So many of you donated artwork that they will be arranging a DC area pick-up and need to know the names of the DC area artists who will be interested in having their work picked up at a central location. If you donated a piece to ARTcetera, please drop me an email at lenny at lennycampello.com soonest!
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 had to fill out this form by July 3rd, 2008.
Let me know if you donated work.
Save the date
If you click on the image below, you'll get all the details on the coming production, "Hijos del Limbo" at Gala in DC.
Why am I promoting a theatre production in a visual arts blog? Because it involves the work of artist Alessandra Torres, who moved back to D.C. several weeks ago to work on this play, and has done all of the set designs, promotional photos, and designed the limited edition print below for the play. One of her photos appeared in the July 4th Weekend Section of the Washington Post, for upcoming entertainment events in the D.C. area.
It’s interesting to note that Alessandra, and the star of the show, Gabriela Fernandez, were good friends in Puerto Rico when they were children, and are now collaborating on this theater production in Washington, D.C., as adults! Needless to say, they are very excited about their work together, and I thought that you might like to come to one of the performances if you happen to be in D.C. from July 23-26. I think you would find the improvisational nature of the play interesting, and the theme intriguing!
This Week: Easton, MD
As I've discussed before, just four years ago Plein Air Easton got started as artists worldwide have begun to return to painting in the Plein Air style, and once again, as they did in 19th century Europe, are leaving their studios to paint and draw outside... on roadsides, on the beach, on top of mountains, in their gardens and yards, and even in city streets to capture landscapes, still lifes, figures and architecture in their natural elements.
I've said that I thought that the resurgence of this movement, much like it happened in Europe in the 19th century, may be a reaction to the overwhelming presence of technology in our daily lives. And that's OK; there's room for plein air painter and digital photographers and technogeeks artists in the art world.
Goss on Figurative/Narrative
Sizzling Heather Goss reviews Figurative/Narrative at DC's Healing Arts Gallery. Read it here.
Inactive Art Career Syndrome
Australian John: Art Scammer
Remember this art scam?
Now a "John" from Australia is doing the same scam... be careful if you get an email trying to buy artwork.
The address in the scam email is:
128 Salmon Street
Port Melbourne, Melbourne 3207
Australia
Phone: 61 2 9498 6830
Frida Kahlo Talk and Lecture
Come by tomorrow to the Smith Farm's Healing Arts Gallery, where you can not only check out "Figurative/Narrative: Memories of a Presence," featuring work by Billy Colbert, Michael Janis and Paul Andrew Wandless, but also starting at 5:30PM I will be giving a talk and presentation on Frida Kahlo, focusing on her pain and how it affected her artwork and life.
I will discuss Kahlo in terms of an artist defined and iconized by her artwork, in spite of tremendous hurdles and problems.
Free and open to the public.
See ya there!
Wanna go to a DC opening tonight?
The head out to Katzen Museum, where from 6-8PM there will be an opening at the Rotunda for the the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities FY2009 Visual Arts Applicants' Showcase.
Opening Reception: July 16, 2008, 6:30 PM
Exhibition Hours: 9:00 AM - 5:00 PM, Monday - Saturday July 17 - August 1, 2008
Katzen Arts Center
American University
4400 Massachusetts Ave., NW
Washington, DC 20016
See ya there!
My quote... mea culpa
It has been brought to my attention that a paraphrased quote that compares Tim Tate's groundbreaking advancement of fine arts glass to the groundbreaking work of Stieglitz in bringing photography to the fine arts arena, and which I have been generously attributing to a Washington and/or Washington Post art critic was actually initally coined by me several years ago for an essay on the exhibition "Compelled by Content."
After talking or emailing today to several of the folks who I thought had first coined the comparison, it's my memory who appears to be flawed and the comparison was initiated by me.
My fault and my apologies! An overzealous dealer with an overzelous mind. I enthusiastically believe that what Tim Tate is doing to glass is exactly what Stieglitz did to photography, but it is all my own biased opinion.
I will try to correct the source wherever it has appeared.
Gallery Closes: Gallerist Tells All
(Via J.T.) Chicago gallerist Lisa Boyle closes her gallery after four years and in frustration writes about the causes for her failure... here are some tidbits from her words:
Why is it so GOD DAMNED hard to sell a piece of art around here?...Read the entire piece here.
...Oh now. To consider Chicago alone, it would be very easy to slide into that familiar unison of voices about how collectors here don’t collect, museums here don’t connect with the galleries and local artists, there’s not enough critical attention, Chicago can’t compete with LA and NY, etc. Actually, it come out as easily as my breath to shout out a mental “Here, here!” to accompany these tired voices of disappointment. And I could maybe also choose to take a trip down the path of righteousness and talk about people who’ve started galleries with seemingly limitless free financial support and how all the successful galleries are connected in an incestuous web of nepotism and homosexual ego stroking. After all, these are the things I gossip about in my spare time (to people who can’t get back at me, of course)....
...There is also this sea change regarding art fairs’ role in the life of a gallery. While a great load of fun for some people, they have grown over everything like a suffocating mold and swallowed up a whole heap of what an art dealer has to do on any given day. All for the honor of showing work in ramshackle booths along with a fuckthousand other artists. It’s a different job, being a gallery owner, than it was even five years ago...
Jennie Rose on Southern Exposure at SF
As we continue to expand our coverage, we'd like to introduce Jennie Rose, who will be reporting regularly from California. And if her first piece is an example of the shape of things to come, we've lucked out onto a terrific new voice in the visual arts!
Southern Exposure
By Jennie Rose
In the late 1980s and early 1990s, San Francisco galleries and non profit arts support centers like Southern Exposure (SOEX) were filled with work by “state of the art bohemian poets, underground music heroes, revolutionary skaters, and graffiti kings and queens,” wrote Aaron Rose co-curator of Beautiful Losers: Contemporary Art and Street Culture.
Beautiful Losers, an exhibit first shown in San Francisco 2004, encapsulates that period twenty years ago when those at the edges of society were thought to be key to the forward movement of the culture in general.
Jo Jackson, Margaret Kilgallen and Barry McGee, Josh Lazcano, Alicia McCarthy, Clare Rojas, Thomas Campbell, Dan Flanagan, Symantha Gates, Nell Gould and Chris Johanson; These artists’ work showed that they shook off the parsing and packaging of the traditional art world.
The work attracted skaters, freaks and geeks, youth who made no distinction between a performance art piece by an industrial noise band and any other creative endeavors.
Though a few came to this through MFA prestige, Chris Johanson, a skateboarder with no formal art training, began by hanging up some drawings at Adobe Books, a bookshop in San Francisco’s Mission district.
Acting as a kind of ballast for the seismic seizures of the California arts scene, Southern Exposure stays true to its founding principles of the last 35 years: To provide artists--whether they are exhibiting, curating, teaching, or learning—an opportunity to realize ideas for projects that may not otherwise find support.
The organization, which started out like a coop and is now “a pillar in the arts community,” as described by the SOEX Associate Director Aimee Le Duc, is known for nurturing talent, which later becomes celebrated.
True enough, Johanson who has said that his work depicts “a world where nudist dancers, good vibes, emotionally centered people, forest energy and rainbows abut a sinister comic edge,” has a well- established career. In 2003 SF MOMA awarded him a SECA award, and his work was included in both the 2002 Whitney Biennial and the 2003 SITE Santa Fe biennial.
As one nurtured by the support for his ideas, Johanson is invested in the continued success of Southern Exposure. For its 15th annual fundraising auction this year, Johanson donated two pieces, one called “Perception #4,” a color sugarlift aquatint etching.
Other established artists, many who have affinity for or loyalty to SOEX, donated pieces including Catherine Wagner, Andrew Shcoultz, David Ireland and Ajit Chauhan. Chauhan donated “Safe Travels to the Now/Ass You Like It,” a piece in ink and graphite on paper.
The swath of work chosen for the auction always includes artists who participated in any SOEX exhibition of the last three years. Some are invited, such as Vanessa Marsh, a photographer and recent grad from California College of the Arts (CCA), who was invited to participate and is likely to have an exhibition in the future.
One of the most recent to come up through this tradition is Tara Foley who donated “Landscape number 12” a gouache, tape, pencil piece. A week ago Foley just wrapped up Say Hello to Neverending, a solo show at Fecal Face Gallery in downtown San Francisco. Say Hello… charts the symbiotic relationship between destruction and creation by mapping a world ruled by juxtapositions.
“Sometimes we do have work that is purely aesthetic, but then again, when it comes to the artist, it’s really about the work going on the community right now,” says Le Duc.
“Right now it is work which is socially aware, and politically active, such as the work by Hank Willis Thomas.” Thomas donated a digital print called “Black Power,” a close up of a mouth with a gold grill.
“Hank has an uncanny ability to unpack what it is about pop culture that institutionalizes racism,” says Le Duc. “He confronts the co-opting of the black male body. The words ‘black power’ in the grill, this hyper-hyper reality of seeing every pore and hair on this guy’s face takes it to ‘where is the power coming from?’”
Southern Exposure never worries about what sells or looks good, nor does it invoke ideas of a historic or aesthetic canon. “That’s more the business of a museum.”
As Le Duc simply puts it, “We’re in the business of supporting emerging artists and artists and as they create new work. There’s no sense of hierarchy. We stay focused on the overall goal.”
Beginning the move to a new space, Southern Exposure plans to open the doors to spacious Mission district digs in spring of 2009, where it will continue its self-described work as a “daring, nimble, and accessible arts organization.”
The best laid plans of mice and art dealers...
While I had intended to report everyday from Art Santa Fe, working these art fairs is such a constant hands on act, coupled with the fact that I'm always on my feet at these affairs, and a few other things all added up to a report-less experience on a daily basis from the fair.
Overall, this year's Art Santa Fe was not the commercial success that many of the art galleries and dealers who participated had hoped that it would be. It was not all the fault of the organizers, who I think did the best job that anyone taking the complex challenge of organizing such an event -- with its army of people in a chess game of movement and issues -- has to do.
But the talk in the dealers' break room and along the aisles was not good.
Like any art fair, I am sure that there were some galleries who did well, but I suspect that the vast majority did poorly as far as sales were concerned.
AN art fair is not all about sales, although when one puts out several thousand dollars in fees, travel, staff, etc., sales is damned well ahead of whatever is in second place.
Connections and networking is another good element of art fairs. In our case we made the direct connection with two of the top art collectors in the US.
Collectors with connections are even more important... in one case, he is not only a major photography collector about to become a collector of contemporary Cuban art (on the advise of his art advisers), but also on the board of a major museum. His wife is a major collector of glass, and also on the board of a major school.
All these bits and pieces help to cement a gallery's future; even as sales do not materialize at the frequency that one wishes for.
One negative thing about the fair that I did hear from the locals was the fact that according to them the organizers were "crazy to set the fair on the same weekend as the Fifth Annual International Folk Art Market," the largest international folk art market in the world, which was taking place at exactly the same time as Art Santa Fe. I'm not sure what, if any effect this had on the low sales experienced by most of the gallerists and dealers who confided in me.
Another good aspect for reputable dealers in fairs like this, is the ability, provided that the dealer is one who works for his/her artists, to find other dealers and galleries for our artists.
We managed to find and begin to cement a relationship with two new dealers, one in Britain, one in Santa Fe, for one of our artists -- as well as for an artist whose work I know. She will be happy once she calls me and finds out that she has a very good Santa Fe gallery very interested in her work.
Another thing that I kept hearing about was how poorly American fairs were doing in general, although it seems that some European fairs were doing better. We also heard some horror stories about some "hotel fairs."
Several hotel fairs will not be returning to Miami this December, although someone from Art Basel who was around the fair checking out the art and the fair itself, told me that Miami expects about 25 art fairs this December - that's a spectacular fair overload, and it also means that even though some of last year's fairs will not return, some new ones will pop up!
We had dinner one night with some gallerists from Europe and the US, as well as a few other artsy folks - a fair organizer, an art magazine editor, a curator or two, and someone who has a business of doing the booths at the fairs.
It was lively conversation, and I dropped a bomb of a rumor that I have been hearing about from people who do not want to be quoted.
"I've been hearing a rumor that Art Basel Miami Beach may be pulling out of Miami Beach and relocating to Los Angeles," I said.
"Nonsense!" said a very, very connected curator from Miami. "ABMB and the city have a six year contract - ABMB is not going anywhere!"
"I've heard the same thing," said a magazine publisher from Los Angeles.
"And," added the art magazine publisher, "there's only two years left on that contract." That info was backed by another person in the group, who also added that he thought that it was pretty much set that ABMB would be moving to LA after its contract with Miami Beach expires.
"It will never happen," said the vigorous defender of Miami. "Miami is a magnet for Europeans in the winter, and the crossroads for Latin America, Europe and North America... people and collectors, want to go to Miami in December."
"That's true," replied her tormentors, "but LA is the center point of the Latin American Pacific rim as well as Asia... and we have beaches as well."
And thus several plugged-in insiders seem to verify what I've been hearing about for months: that the heart of the Miami art fairs phenomenon - Art Basel Miami Beach - may be, and I repeat, may be, pulling out of Miami Beach once its six year contract ends and ABMB may thus be moving the American version of the European fair to Los Angeles.
