Opportunity for Artists

Deadline: December 12, 2008.

The Athens Area Arts Council of Athens, Georgia, in partnership with the Athens Transit System and the Unified Government of Athens Clarke County, announces its second Art Bus Shelter Design Competition. This year's theme, Art Rocks! asks designers to pay artistic tribute to the musical talent of Athens. Eight bus shelters will be installed along two major arteries near downtown Athens. Winning designs will receive an award of $5,000 per shelter. Bus shelter fabrication, materials and shipping budget limited to $9,160 per shelter. This is a nationwide competition open to all artists, architects, students and designers. Deadline for submissions is December 12, 2008 (extended from November 30). Details are available on the Arts Council website at www.athensarts.org.

Art Sales

Not surprisingly, last week's Impressionist and modern art sales in New York were unable to live up to the price estimates set months ago, when the full scale of the credit crisis had yet to affect the upper end of the art market. In the summer it seemed possible these sales would make at least $800 million (£508 million) - the same amount as this time last year. But by the time the art had been hung, billions of dollars had been lost in financial markets worldwide. As Marc Porter, president of Christie's America, put it before the sales: "Prices of assets have fallen - stocks, gold, oil, real estate - and it would be unrealistic to expect art to be immune to the market's pressures."

The extent of the downturn, from $800 million to a final count of $470 million by Friday night, looked bad. Seven lots estimated to fetch more than $10 million each did not sell, and the total accumulated was the equivalent to the amount fetched in New York two and a half years ago.

Read the Telegraph story here.

Veterans Day

I went into a public-'ouse to get a pint o' beer,
The publican 'e up an' sez, "We serve no red-coats here."
The girls be'ind the bar they laughed an' giggled fit to die,
I outs into the street again an' to myself sez I:

O it's Tommy this, an' Tommy that, an' "Tommy, go away";
But it's "Thank you, Mister Atkins", when the band begins to play,
The band begins to play, my boys, the band begins to play,
O it's "Thank you, Mister Atkins", when the band begins to play.

I went into a theatre as sober as could be,
They gave a drunk civilian room, but 'adn't none for me;
They sent me to the gallery or round the music-'alls,
But when it comes to fightin', Lord! they'll shove me in the stalls!

For it's Tommy this, an' Tommy that, an' "Tommy, wait outside";
But it's "Special train for Atkins" when the trooper's on the tide,
The troopship's on the tide, my boys, the troopship's on the tide,
O it's "Special train for Atkins" when the trooper's on the tide.

Yes, makin' mock o' uniforms that guard you while you sleep
Is cheaper than them uniforms, an' they're starvation cheap;
An' hustlin' drunken soldiers when they're goin' large a bit
Is five times better business than paradin' in full kit.

Then it's Tommy this, an' Tommy that, an' "Tommy, 'ow's yer soul?"
But it's "Thin red line of 'eroes" when the drums begin to roll,
The drums begin to roll, my boys, the drums begin to roll,
O it's "Thin red line of 'eroes" when the drums begin to roll.

We aren't no thin red 'eroes, nor we aren't no blackguards too,
But single men in barricks, most remarkable like you;
An' if sometimes our conduck isn't all your fancy paints,
Why, single men in barricks don't grow into plaster saints;

While it's Tommy this, an' Tommy that, an' "Tommy, fall be'ind",
But it's "Please to walk in front, sir", when there's trouble in the wind,
There's trouble in the wind, my boys, there's trouble in the wind,
O it's "Please to walk in front, sir", when there's trouble in the wind.

You talk o' better food for us, an' schools, an' fires, an' all:
We'll wait for extry rations if you treat us rational.
Don't mess about the cook-room slops, but prove it to our face
The Widow's Uniform is not the soldier-man's disgrace.

For it's Tommy this, an' Tommy that, an' "Chuck him out, the brute!"
But it's "Saviour of 'is country" when the guns begin to shoot;
An' it's Tommy this, an' Tommy that, an' anything you please;
An' Tommy ain't a bloomin' fool -- you bet that Tommy sees!

-- Rudyard Kipling

Matchmaker Finds Patrons for Artists’ Work

They also represent a small success story for a new arts fellowship program, United States Artists, a nonprofit group in Los Angeles that has developed a knack for bringing patrons and artists together. Ms. Early discovered Mr. Millepied’s work just over a year ago, not onstage but in the Los Angeles boardroom of United States Artists, where she agreed to provide a $50,000 fellowship for him.

Such relationships are “bridge builders,” said Katharine DeShaw, executive director of United States Artists. “It’s a great thing for artists to find someone who cares deeply about the arts, who might introduce them to others who care deeply about arts, who might support other projects of theirs, who could really open doors.”

Read the NYT story here.

Los Cubanos

Video of the work at "Aqui Estamos" (Here We Are) at H&F Fine Arts.

The show is on exhibit through November 30, 2008. Go buy some artwork.

Sidney Lawrence at DFA

I hear that Sidney Lawrence is a pretty good jazz vocalist, but Lawrence has visual arts in his genes and this coming Nov. 15, from 5-8PM he opens his second solo show with DC's District Fine Arts gallery in Georgetown.

Tribe, 2008 by Sidney Lawrence.
Oil and modeling paste on paper canvas and compressed board, 17 3/4 x 22

This show of oil portraits, including a small painting of Martin Luther King Jr., an island wall relief, a dog head, ink drawings of cities, and an illustrated travel diary is Lawrence's first solo exhibition at DFA since 2005.

One of DC's key arts presences, Lawrence is also a writer, curator and art-PR specialist. He served as the Hirshhorn Museum's press officer from 1975 to 2003 and as an occasional curator there, and more recently organized "Roger Brown: Southern Exposure," for the Jule Collins Smith Museum at Auburn University, Alabama.

For over two decades he exhibited at Gallery K (until that venerable gallery closed when both owners suddenly died) and other DC venues and has also exhibited work in Massachusetts and California. Lawrence's self-revealing, funky style draws from influences as diverse as Red Grooms, JMW Turner, Lucian Freud and Edward Koren.

Sidney Lawrence, Recent Works, through January 17, 2009 at DFA, with an opening reception, on Saturday, November 15, 5 - 8 pm and an Artist Talk, 5:30 - 6 pm and a Book Signing, Ink Cities on Saturday, December 13, 4-6 pm.

FotoWeekDC

The week of November 15-22, 2008 will mark the launch of FotoWeek DC, the first annual gathering of a diverse and wide-ranging photography community in the nation’s capital, including photographers, museums, universities and all those involved in the profession across the metro D.C. area, including Virginia and Maryland. Unique among American cities, Washington, D.C. is a nexus of artistic, business, political and public sector energy, in which photography plays an integral role. FotoWeek DC seeks to bring together all photographers and imaging professionals from every discipline to join with the public in celebration of the medium.

Details here.

There are dozens and dozens of gallery shows, dozens of lectures by famous photographers, loads of book signings, many workshops for all you photo geeks and everything associated with making lovers of the silver gelatin happy.

This is a massive, city-wide event and clearly a ton of work by the organizers has taken place; my kudos to all of them!

Now let's see how the (a) city fathers and mothers, (b) DCCAH and (c) the media add their part to the event so that (d) the local collectors and buyers react to it so that (e) the international photography market and (f) other collectors and (g) curators and (i) national museum curators pay attention and thus make it impossible for (j) for local DC area museum curators to ignore it.

This is a once in a decade opportunity for DC area museum curators to get off their butts and go visit a couple of dozen art venues and see a myriad of photography shows (and earn their pay) and perhaps discover a good local photog here and there, and even a gallery here and there. Get the fuck out of your offices and do your jobs!

This is a once in a decade opportunity for the Washington Post and the Washington Times and the Washington City Paper and Washingtonian magazine and all those other thick, full of ads DC area magazines to record for posterity this important local effort on behalf of art and photography in a city and region where the moniker "local" raises semantic eyebrows. And yes... I know several of these media outlets are "sponsoring" the event - thank you! But now I'd like for all of them to leave a newsprint and digital footprint of the event.

Visit this website, learn all about it, and visit DC, Bethesda, Virginia and all of that great artsy area known as the Greater Washington DC region to see some great photography and then buy some photos!

Cheerleader in Chief and proud of it.

Mona Lisa painted in 80 milliseconds

You gotta see this to believe it (wait until end of video):

Wanna go to a Russian opening in DC this week?

"Inspired by Russia" is a show that features both paintings and sculpture by eight Russian artists from around the world - Natalia Vetrova (Canada), Serguei Zlenko (Finland), Vladimir Popov (France), Galina Lopatina (Russia), Vladimir Fomichev (Russia), Evgeny Vereshchagin (Russia), Olga Karpeisky (USA), Luba Sterlikova (USA). The exhibit official opening for registered guests is on November 12,2008 at 6 p.m at the Embassy of Russia.

The reception to meet the artists is on Saturday, November 15, 2008, 4-7 p.m. at the Russian Cultural Centre at 1825 Phelps Place NW, Washington, D.C. 20008.

You must RSVP to (202) 265-3840 or rcc@rccusa.org. The show runs at the Russian Cultural Centre through November 22, 2008.

DC area debut

As far as I know, two of the Cuban artists that I have included in the "Aqui Estamos" (Here We Are) exhibition at H&F Fine Arts are making their Greater DC area debut, even though they are both rather important artists in the rarified upper artmosphere.

Alexis Leyva Machado, known to the art world as Kcho, was born in Nueva Gerona, Isla de la Juventud (nee Isla de Pinos), Cuba in 1970. He studied at the National Art School in Havana from which he graduated in 1990. Five years later Kcho won the Grand Prize at the Kwang-Ju Biennial in South Korea and began attracting international attention.

A year later, at age 26, he became the youngest Latin American artist ever to be included in the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art in New York.

His work has been exhibited worldwide in dozens of solo shows in galleries and museums in Europe, the Americas, and Asia. His work is often associated, because of its recurring use of boats and rafts, as referencing the plight of the Cuban Diaspora, which has seen the largest per capita migration of any nation in modern history since the Castro takeover in 1959. Kcho lives and works in Havana, Cuba.

Maria Magdalena Campos-Pons was born in Matanzas province in Cuba in 1959. Her work has been described as bearing a powerful familial history that is intermingled and mixed with the sugar industry’s omnipresence in her hometown of La Vega. The focus and roots of her work can be traced from the US, where she has resided since 1992, to a Cuban homeland, to the enslaved Africans who were brought to Cuba by white Spanish colonists and finally back to what is today Nigeria.

She has also been described as "one of the most significant artists to emerge from post-Revolutionary Cuba. Her evocative works probe questions of race, class, cultural hybridism, and national identities in African diasporic communities."

Campos-Pons has been exhibited internationally since 1984 when she won the Honorable Mention at the XVIII Cagnes-sur-Mer Painting Competition in France, and the Bunting Fellowship in Visual Arts at Harvard 1993.

At the age of 29 she had a solo show at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, and subsequently at the Venice Biennale 2001, Johannesburg Biennial, the First Liverpool Biennial, and the Dak’ART Biennial in Senegal.

Most recently the Guangzhou Triennial in China hosted her work. A 20-year retrospective of Campos-Pons’s work, Everything is Separated by Water: Maria Magdalena Campos-Pons, opened at the Indianapolis Museum of Art in 2006 and traveled to the Bass Museum in Miami. A new museum show will open in Nashville in 2010.

Campos-Pons has been celebrated as one of the upcoming young leaders of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts by the Women’s Chapter, is usually included among the 100 Most Influential Latinos, and was honored in 2008 as Harvard launched its campaign to build the new Harvard Art Museum, as well as the Indianapolis Museum of Art’s 125th Anniversary Gala in 2008.

Last year, Campos-Pons was selected to receive the Rappaport Prize. She has lectured in many museums worldwide, including MoMA, the Tate Modern, the Brooklyn Museum and the School of Art in Dakar. She works and lives in Boston.

The opening is tonight, Saturday Nov. 8 from 5-8PM at H&F Fine Arts, located at 3311 Rhode Island Avenue, Mount Rainier, Maryland and their gallery phone is 301/887-0080.

See ya there!

Come join me tonight

Tonight H&F Fine Arts proudly and elegantly hosts artwork by some of the best known Cuban artists from Cuba and from the Cuban Diaspora. I called the show "Aqui Estamos" or "Here We Are," as sort of a footprint statement for these important artists making an exclamation point to the Greater DC area.

On the walls are drawings, photographs, paintings and etchings by Magdalena Campos-Pons, Kcho, Sandra Ramos, Cirenaica Moreira, Marta Maria Perez Bravo, Aimee Garcia Marrero and Roberto Acosta Wong.

Read this about Magda Campos-Pons and then come see the gorgeous triptych titled "Island Treasure" that I selected for the show.

María Magdalena Campos-Pons. Island Treasures. Large Format Polaroids
The opening is tonight, Saturday Nov. 8 from 5-8PM at H&F Fine Arts, located at 3311 Rhode Island Avenue, Mount Rainier, Maryland and their gallery phone is 301/887-0080.

See ya there!

Podcasting

My good friend Sharon Burton interviewed me recently for "New ArtCast: Art Collecting 101 - Navigating the Art Fair".

Listen to it here.

El Mejor Arte Cubano

The work is hung and looks beautiful, and the usual hiccups are mostly out of the way, and the really cool spaces of H&F Fine Arts look great full of work by some of the best known Cuban artists from Cuba and from the Cuban Diaspora.

On the walls are drawings, photographs, paintings and etchings by Magdalena Campos-Pons, Kcho, Sandra Ramos, Cirenaica Moreira, Marta Maria Perez Bravo, Aimee Garcia Marrero and Roberto Acosta Wong.

"Isla" Mixed media collage by Sandra Ramos
As far as I know, these will be the first time that both Kcho (Alexis Leyva Machado) and Magda Campos-Pons have exhibited in the Greater DC area, although they are both in the permanent collection of MoMA and other major museums around the world.

The opening is tomorrow night, Saturday Nov. 8 from 5-8PM at H&F Fine Arts, located at 3311 Rhode Island Avenue, Mount Rainier, Maryland and their gallery phone is 301/887-0080.

See ya there!

Wanna go to an opening tonight in Baltimore

Recent artworks by Dan May, Jason Limon, Michael Page, Benji Williams, Martin Wittfooth, Andy Kehoe, Benjamin Lacombe, Chris Ryniak and Colin Johnson will be on view at Baltimore's Definition Gallery's "Dreamscapes", an exhibition featuring nine national artists that explore surreal landscapes and the creatures that inhabit them. Opens Friday, November 7th from 7-11pm.

This Saturday in DC

While we hold our breath for the photographic orgy coming to DC in Fotoweek, you can get a good vision of what the medium can deliver as Heather Goss' Ten Miles Square opens their second show with Looking Sideways by Cesar Lujan at Big Bear Cafe. Saturday, opening reception 6:30 to 8:30 p.m.

Opportunity for artists

New deadline: Saturday, November 15, 2008

Details The Arlington Arts Center has extended the deadline for their "Unlimited Edition" juried show. This "is a juried show about the relationship of the art world to reproduction and marketing. They are looking for artists who produce lots of unnumbered multiples of an image or an object...or who incorporate mass-produced products into their work...or who simply explore the commodification and mass-reproduction of art through various means."

Eligibility: Artists living or working in Virginia, DC, Maryland, West Virginia, Delaware, and Pennsylvania may submit up to 5 jpegs, along with a statement-max length: 300 words-explaining what they propose to exhibit, and how it addresses the show's theme. Existing works must have been completed after 2005. Proposals for new work that take into account the AAC's exhibition spaces are encouraged.

Details here.

Friday opening in DC

"Visions of Paradise: National Geographic Contemporary Masters" at the Joan Hisaoka Healing Arts Gallery, Nov 5 - Jan 2 at Smith Farm Center,, 1632 U St NW, DC

Opening Reception with National Geographic Photographer David Doubilet on Friday, Nov 7, 5:30-8:00pm.

This collaboration between Smith Farm Center and National Geographic brings the work of nine photographers to the Healing Arts Gallery in participation with FotoWeek DC.

Asterism at Gallery Four in B'more

Gallery Four's newly renovated 4,000 sq.ft. gallery in Baltimore will feature work by five artists from Chicago, New York, Washington D.C., and Baltimore. The show will include site specific painting and recent sculpture by Maggie Michael, new sculpture and installation by Bryan Savitz, Jan Razauskas, Nikki Romanello, and photography by Steve Nyktas.

Opening Reception: November 8th, from 5 - 10 pm.

New DC gallery

Caos on F is a new artist owned, artist operated collective at 923 F St. NW in DC launched last September as part of F St|arts, the suite of art studio spaces in the newly developed Carroll Square building.

On exhibit at Caos on F for its inaugural show will be the work of painters Michael Berman and Quint Marshall, ceramic artist Joe Hicks and furniture by Matthew Falls. The show continues until January 5 and is open to the public every Friday 2-8 pm and by special appointment.

Starting Friday November 7 and continuing every first Friday, Caos on F will host an open studio event featuring Fine Art, Fine Furniture and Fine Friends. Lively and provocative discussions are sure to abound and will feature wine and treats from our neighbors: gourmet cheeses from Cowgirl Creamery and delectible chocolates from CoCo Sala.

Frieze Report

"Two weeks ago, the Death Star that has hovered over the art world for the last two years finally fired its lasers. It was October 15, the day the stock market fell more than 700 points—again—and a month after Lehman Brothers and Merrill Lynch collapsed and Damien Hirst pawned off $200 million worth of crapola on clueless rubes at Sotheby’s. Against this backdrop, at 11 a.m., the gates of London’s Frieze Art Fair opened, and in streamed the international traveling circus of bigwigs, collectors, curators, advisers, museum directors, trustees, models, movie stars, and critics like moi.

Talk of financial doom filled the air. Karl Schweizer, UBS’s head of art banking, told one reporter, “We are in a liquidity crisis.” Money manager Randy Slifka added, “There is blood on the streets on Wall Street.” Collectors talked about “sewing up our pockets.” Yet much of the art world was playing on as if nothing had happened. A German dealer told Artforum.com, “This economic mess will all be over by January.” Christie’s Amy Cappellazzo spun her house’s recent sales: “If you bought something, you bought something real.” In truth, most of the speculators are buying something real bad or badly overpriced.

In fact, though, things were different. Those of us who have frequented Frieze could see that something was off. Dealers and assistants who in recent years were always busy with clients now stood or sat quietly. Sales were happening, but slowly, one at a time. The claim of “It’s sold” was replaced by “I have it on several holds.” Although the megagalleries like Gagosian and White Cube teemed with moneyed types and very tall women in very high heels, many younger dealers looked perplexed. A gallerist who entered the field in the go-go aughts and who had sold only two pieces by 5 p.m. that first day asked, 'What’s going on?'"

Read Saltz on Frieze here.