Things not to do at an opening

This happened this past weekend at an art opening in the Mid Atlantic region.

An artist has been begging a particular gallery to include some of his work in one of the gallery's shows. The artist has a BFA and an MFA, both from really good art schools, and has recently moved to the area and wants to establish himself in this new area. The gallery is by far one of the top galleries in the city.

Finally the gallerist gives in and includes the artist in a group show. On opening night the show does well and several major pieces are sold (none of the artist's work). In fact it is the gallery's second best selling show ever and a welcomed relief in these austere financial times.

The opening is well-attended and supposed to end at 9PM, and the artist hasn't bothered to show up, but finally makes an appearance towards the end, around 8:30PM.

It appeared that he'd been celebrating in a nearby bar, and is quite inebriated. To make matters worse, he's been handing out show cards at the bar, and inviting all the bar flies to come to the gallery and enjoy free wine. Quite a few of the bar flies accompany the artist and they walk from the bar to the gallery.

They make quite an "impression" on the rest of the art clients still at the gallery, and soon all, except the barflies and the artist, leave as 9PM approaches. At 9PM the gallerist tells the artist that the opening is over and the gallery needs to close.

The artist begs the gallerist to stay open a little longer (and here's where the gallerist makes a huge mistake), and the gallerist agrees, perhaps believing the artist's claim that one of the bar flies will purchase a painting; and more wine flows.

Soon it is clear to the gallerist that the artist's posse is just interested in free wine and she kicks them all out and closes the gallery. In the process of doing so, some of the drunks become nasty to her.

Chances of this artist ever being invited to exhibit at this gallery again? The same chance as a snowball in hell.

Chances of this artist (once the gallerist tells the story at the next dealers' association meeting) of getting invited by another gallery? Slim to none.

Moral of the story? Pretty obvious, uh?

Tell Congress

Tomorrow the U.S. Congress is scheduled to return from their summer recess and the Senate will begin consideration of S. 1023, the Travel Promotion Act of 2009. The House of Representatives is expected to take up this legislation later this year. Please tell your Member of Congress to support inclusion of the nonprofit arts and culture sector in this bill!

Andersonian Video

Just watch it, will ya! Today is my birthday and this is one heck of a great B-day present!

Announcing the United States Mint’s 2009 Call for Artists

Application Period One: Nov. 9, 2009
Application Period Two: March 8, 2010
Application Period Three: July 6, 2010

The Call for Artists was officially launched last Friday, August 28th, and their brand new website which launched at this time as well. The Call for Artists invites artists from all over the country to apply for a paid position as an Associate Designer in the successful Artistic Infusion Program (AIP). Artists in the AIP program have the opportunity to take part in American history through the contribution of designs for coins that will be enjoyed by all Americans. In the past, AIP artists have submitted successful designs for coins released through the 50 State Quarters® Program and the Presidential $1 Coin Program. This year artists can apply online! The program will run year-long with three cut-off dates for applicant review. The first cut-off date is November 9th, 2009.

Here is a short description of the program:

The United States Mints invites artists to be a part of American history through coin design. The Artistic Infusion Program (AIP) provides gifted artists the opportunity to contribute creative and beautiful designs for coins that will be enjoyed by all Americans. AIP artists have submitted successful designs for coins released through the 50 State Quarters® Program and the Presidential $1 Coin Program. Honorariums are $2,000 for each design submission and $5,000 for each selected design. Visit www.usmint.gov/artists to apply.

Visit this website for more information.

The Art Consultant Is In

Allison Marvin has made a career out of helping people do just that. She is the founder of Sightline, an art consulting business started in 2004. Marvin works with clients across the country, helping them navigate the art world and offering guidance on buying works for their homes and offices. She also leads tours of art spaces and introduces beginning and seasoned collectors to galleries and dealers.

... Marvin recently spoke to us from her home office about collecting, hanging and framing art, and where to go to find it in the first place.

Read the WaPo article on Marvin and her advice here.

Marvin has some really good solid advice, but I find it interesting that in listing the resources, and I know that newsprint space is an issue, that Marvin left out her own backyard's galleries in Bethesda, and no mention of Georgetown or R Street, or the various artists cooperatives (since price point was a focus of the piece) and for that matter the Torpedo Factory. If she's not aware of these places she's missing some of the best priced good artwork around town. But I bet she had a list three pages long which was culled by the WaPo to the 2-3 best-known galleries DC, all great spaces by the way.

Framing? Average cost for a custom framer in the DC area is about $70 an hour for labor on top of the materials' cost. Is there such thing as an affordable custom framer?

You bet! Drop me a note and I'll refer you to the most affordable custom framer in the area - prices are about 75% cheaper than any other framer in the capital region... and I've tried them all for years before I found this most affordable joint, just a few minutes from 495. And when I say 75% I am not exaggerating... just ask all the photographers who do the annual DCist Exposed show. Example: Custom matted and framed photo to a 16x20 inches size, black metal Nielsen moulding under glass, pH-balanced acid free white museum mat and pH-balanced, acid free foam core backing board: $25-$30 bucks, not $100 or $150 which is what you'll pay at most other custom framers around the nation.

Talking about decorating... decorating a baby's room is somewhat of an issue for someone like me. Having been forced to look at dozens of saccharine sweet animal prints and reproductions for the baby's room, I decided to create my own saccharine sweet baby paintings for Anderson's room; at least he'll have original artwork on the walls:


Andersonphant, Acrylic on Canvas. 24 x 24 inches. Circa 2009

Anderson Monkey, Acrylic on Canvas. 24 x 24 inches. Circa 2009

Trawick Prize Winners Announced

The Trawick Prize: Bethesda Contemporary Art Awards announced the top four prize winners on Wednesday evening during the exhibition’s opening at the Fraser Gallery.

René Treviño from Baltimore, MD was awarded “Best in Show” with $10,000; Molly Springfield of Washington, D.C. was named second place and was given $2,000; Jessie Lehson of Baltimore, MD was bestowed third place and received $1,000 and the “Young Artist” award of $1,000 was given to Hannah Kim of Falls Church, VA.

Entries were juried by Dr. Doreen Bolger, Director of The Baltimore Museum of Art; Kevin Everson, Associate Professor at the University of Virginia and Joanna Marsh, The James Dicke Curator of Contemporary Art at the Smithsonian American Art Museum.

A public reception will be held on Friday, September 11, 2009 from 6-9pm in conjunction with the Bethesda Art Walk. The exhibit will be on display through October 3, 2009. The Fraser Gallery is located at 7700 Wisconsin Avenue, Suite E and gallery hours are Tuesday - Saturday from 11:30am-6pm.

The Trawick Prize: Bethesda Contemporary Art Awards was established by the amazing Carol Trawick in 2003 to honor the work of local artists and has become the region's top art prize and I am a huge fan of Carol Trawick.

The Trawick Prize is one of the first regional competitions and largest prizes to annually honor visual artists. To date, The Trawick Prize has awarded over $98,000 in prize monies and has received over 2,400 artist submissions. Founder Carol Trawick has served as a community activist for more than 25 years in downtown Bethesda; including working on legislation to designate communities in Maryland as Arts & Entertainment Districts. Additionally, she is past Chair of the Bethesda Arts & Entertainment District, past Chair of the Bethesda Urban Partnership, current Chair of Strathmore and Founder of the Jim and Carol Trawick Foundation.

Seth Rosenberg

On Tuesday, September 1, 2009, District Fine Arts lost its founder Seth Rosenberg to an apparent heart attack in Cleveland, OH at the age of 56.

A memorial service will take place this Sunday, September 6, 2009 at 11:30 am at the Mueum of Contemporary Arts in Cleveland, OH. The address is 8501 Carnegie Ave. #2, Cleveland, OH. 216-421-8671.

DFA is currently planning a memorial for the Fall. More details to follow when they decide on a date.

Seth had moved to Cleveland, OH four years ago and earlier this summer, based on a portfolio of his new paintings, he received a $20,000 Creative Workforce Fellowship from the Cleveland Partnership for Arts and Culture.

CuDC looking for intern

Cultural Development Corporation (CuDC), a nonprofit organization that creates opportunities for artists and arts organizations that stimulate economic development and improves the quality of life in the DC area, is accepting applications for a Marketing & Communications Intern. CuDC makes space for art. They manage Flashpoint and Source, two facilities that offer artists and arts organizations the tools and services, in conjunction with affordable space they need to thrive. They also facilitate artist housing and other arts development projects. This position reports to the Communications Manager, providing a unique opportunity to support CuDC’s institutional and programmatic marketing and communications efforts.

Responsibilities:

· Coordinating social media strategies for CuDC and its various programs;

· Creating and distributing weekly e-newsletter and compiling content for bi-monthly enewsletter;

· Updating content for organization websites, as well as content for blogs or social networking sites;

· Assisting with marketing around special events and activities;

· Researching online and print media outlets;

· Monitoring and archiving media coverage;

· Assisting with special events;

· Assisting with other administrative tasks, as appropriate.

Qualifications:

· Undergraduate or graduate student preferred;

· Interest in marketing, media and communications;

· Excellent writing & editing skills;

· Savvy using traditional and new media tools;

· Attention to detail;

· Comfort working in a cooperative environment that represents a broad range of artistic, cultural and social points of view; and

· Knowledge of Adobe Photoshop, InDesign and/or Illustrator a plus.

Commitment: Flexible schedule; minimum of 15 hours per week.

Compensation: Stipend

To apply: The deadline for applications is September 25, 2009.

To apply, submit a resume and writing sample with cover letter to emma@culturaldc.org. Writing sample should be 250 words or less. Mention “Communications Intern” in the subject line.

CHAW Arts Ball

The Capitol Hill Arts Workshop (CHAW) is holding its eighth annual Arts Ball fundraising gala on Saturday, October 3, 2009 from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. at its historic building on Capitol Hill. The Arts Ball supports CHAW’s tuition assistance, outreach, and education programs. The theme for this year’s event is Indian Nights and CHAW’s building will be transformed into an Indian odyssey, including a Taj Mahal gallery of art-to-be-auctioned, entertainment in the Bollywood Theater, dancing in the Bombay Palace, and shopping in the Delhi Bazaar. The silent auction and raffle features dinners at the Indian Embassy, airplane tickets to Italy, works from local artists and members of the Capitol Hill Art League, unique experiences, and a wide array of prizes from retail items to gift certificates and jewelry.

Tickets are $50 per person in advance and $75 at the door and can be purchased at www.chaw.org, by calling the Capitol Hill Arts Workshop at (202) 547-6839, or email to victor@chaw.org. CHAW is located at 545 7th Street SE, the corner of 7th and G Streets SE

Wanna go to an artsy wine tasting this Friday?

Touchstone Gallery will be having a closing reception for their 90 artist juried group show "My Space on 7th" together with a wine tasting offered by the Washington Wine Academy.

It's all free. Art & Wine starts at 6pm and goes through 8pm this Friday, Sept. 4th.

Labor Drawings

And nu?... you all knew that if I was having a new son at my early middle age, than in addition to a million photos I'd be doing some drawings, right?

Click on the drawings for a larger version of them... now to do some baby paintings for the boy's room...

Alida in Labor (Birthing Drawing Series).
August 27, 2009. Ink on paper by F. Lennox Campello

Alida after her Epidural (Birthing Drawing Series).
August 27, 2009. Ink on paper by F. Lennox Campello

Anderson Campello after he was cleaned up (Birthing Drawing Series).
August 28, 2009. Ink on paper by F. Lennox Campello

Hiltonian Lawsuit

Socialite and member of the prominent Hilton family Ann Hilton is the target of a lawsuit brought against her by artist Alexander Presniakov alleging she stiffed the artist out of $10 million in original artwork.

Read the Reuters story here.

Bird Brain

Is art criticism so easy that a pigeon can do it?

... Here's what happened. Shigeru Watanabe (a psychologist at Keio University in Tokyo and possibly a man in league with the birds) set up a nefarious experiment. Watanabe showed children's paintings to pigeons; a panel of adults had deemed each work either good or bad. He trained the pigeons to distinguish between them with a system of tasty rewards. When the pigeons pecked correctly, he gave them some seed. Later, he presented 10 paintings to the birds they had never seen. Five of these paintings had been deemed good by humans, five bad. The pigeons recognized the good paintings as “good” twice as often as they recognized the “bad” paintings. In short, they came off as pretty good critics.

Read Morgan Meis at Drexel University's The Smart Set here.

New Maryland gallery reviewing portfolios

Red Studio is reviewing portfolios for their upcoming gallery space which will be in Antique Row, Old Town Kensington, Maryland. Open to all artists and genres such as interdisciplinary, traditional, experimental, and functional art are welcome.

For art submissions:
Shara Banisadr
Red Studio Gallery
Antique Village
3758 Howard Ave
Kensington MD 20895

Or email shara@redstudio.org

From the LAPD Wanted List

Do you recognize this man?

The Los Angeles Police Department’s (LAPD) Art Theft Detail is searching for art dealer Matthew Taylor, 41, who lives in Vero Beach, Florida. An arrest warrant has been issued for Taylor for grand theft and receiving stolen property in connection with the theft of a Granville Redmond painting. Bail has been set at $500,000.

Taylor has worked as an art dealer who would visit various art galleries, obtaining art on consignment. In October of 2006, Taylor visited the L.A. Fine Art Gallery in Los Angeles where he was known to the owner and staff. Detectives believe that Taylor took advantage of this trust to remove [an] available painting out of a storage room that is not accessible to the public. He then borrowed a car and went to an art show in Santa Monica where he offered the painting for sale to William Karges who owns art galleries in Beverly Hills and Carmel. Taylor offered the painting for sale out of the trunk of his car in the parking lot, stating he was selling it for his mother.

Karges bought the painting for $85,000 and sold it to a client for over $236,000. The painting was not discovered missing and reported to the police until after Karges sold it to a client. Detectives posted a crime alert on the LAPD website. Karges gallery personnel stumbled upon the alert in 2007 and contacted police.

In 2009, detectives finished their investigation and obtained an arrest warrant for Taylor. However, before Florida police could respond to Taylor’s residence to take him into custody, detectives learned that Karges’ attorney had inexplicably tipped off Taylor of the criminal charges filed against him. As a result, police have thus far been unable to locate Taylor. Taylor’s attorney, Harlan Braun, has tried to arrange for Taylor’s surrender on several occasions but Taylor has repeatedly failed to appear.

During the investigation, L.A. Fine Art Gallery recalled several other thefts of art that coincided with visits to the gallery by Taylor. In 2004, paintings by Johann Mertz and William Malherbe, valued at $40,000, were stolen from the front showroom. A $20,000 Lucien Frank painting similarly disappeared from the showroom in 2006. Taylor had visited the gallery during both time periods.

Detectives would like to speak to anyone who may have been victimized by Matthew Taylor, who has also used the name Matthew Taylor Nelson. Detectives are also searching for Taylor’s mother, Patricia Taylor, 76 years old, to determine if she is being exploited by her son. Patricia is believed to be in poor mental and physical condition.

Read the LAPD report here and see images of the stolen paintings here.

One Sunday when I was sitting the desk at my old gallery in Bethesda, I got a phone call from a lawyer who explained that he was looking for Mr. ___________, whose name I recognized as a former well-known former DC art dealer, whose tendrils still have offspring in the DC art world.

The lawyer wanted to know if I knew that dealer. I told him that I knew of him, but that he predated me by at least a decade, and that I had never met the man. He then explained that he was trying to track the art dealer in question, as he had been hired by a former client of said dealer, who had been burned in a somewhat interesting scheme.

I asked him for details.

Apparently the DC art dealer had sold a small Picasso watercolor (or was it a set of prints?) to a collector for (all $ figures are for example purposes) $100,000. A couple of years later, the dealer called the collector and said that he had someone interested in purchasing the Picasso for $200,000.

The collector declined, and the art dealer called a few days later and stated that the interested party was now offering $300,000.

And so the Picasso was returned to the DC gallery, where the dealer told the collector to wait for the sale to take place.

Apparently the sale did take place, but for around $75,000 to a second buyer; a damned good deal for a Picasso piece. The DC art dealer then closed up shop.

So essentially, at least according to this lawyer's telephone story, the Picasso painting was sold twice to two separate collectors and the dealer kept both payments.

The police recovered the painting from the second poor buyer and returned it to the original owner.

The second buyer was the one burned in this deal and the one who hired the lawyer to track down the art dealer; I'm not sure if/why the police were not the ones doing the tracking down.

Keep your eyes on your fries.

Art Censorship?

I'm hearing some rumblings about what seems to be an overt form of art censorship in a regional area art gallery. More details as I dig out more info.

Wanna go to an opening in Frederick, MD?


Opening Reception: Saturday, September 5, from 5 - 8 pm at the Artists' Gallery, at 4 East Church Street in Frederick, Maryland.

"Minimalist yet complex, this exhibit is a showcase of Robert Sibbison's sculptures characterized by the shifting relationships between regular and irregular forms and space. Patterns are established, evolve and mutate within the deceptively simple forms. The play of light and gravity on steel and wood create visual ambiguity, beauty and tension. The result is a synergy of simple parts adding up to a compelling whole.

Robert Sibbison's work has been honored with national grants, commissions and prizes including a National Endowment for the Arts individual grant, and a large outdoor sculpture commissioned by Dayton Art Institute in Dayton, Ohio as part of their permanent collection. He received a BFA from the University of Colorado and a Masters of Fine Art from Cranbrook Academy of Art and has taught at various private schools and public universities. Robert is currently an adjunct professor at Frederick Community College, Frederick MD."

ICAFair DC09 Canceled

Citing the economic climate, the third iteration of the International Caribbean Art Fair, scheduled to be in DC next month, has been cancelled.

Pink Linin'

If you haven't seen the new Pink Line Project website, then you're missing one of the best resources for the visual arts in the nation's capital region.

And if you're a gallery or art PR person and you're not sending Philippa P.B. Hughes all your art press releases for the site's most excellent calendar, then you're missing out on a great venue to spread the art word.

Visit it here.

Economist on the Torpedo Factory

The Economist visits Alexandria's Torpedo Factory.

Don't anticipate anything game-changing or jaw-dropping here. Expect plenty of cats and cows in different media, as well as watercolours of beach houses, ersatz Abstract Expressionist paintings, stained glass made for the walls of large suburban houses, baubles and knick-knacks and thingummies galore. All of it is skilfully done; most of it is pleasant.

The photography is an exception: the Multiple Exposures Gallery is first-rate, displaying not merely beautiful pictures but inventive techniques as well. On a recent visit the gallery showcased landscapes, including an especially arresting wide-angle aerial shot of a field in Fujian after a storm. Crops glinted in the rising sun like rows of wet sapphires, the scalloped grey clouds echoing the terraced farming beneath.

Read the whole article here.

The last paragraph of the Economist article:

The Torpedo Factory’s biggest draw, however (particularly for visitors with children), is not on what is sold but in the demystifying access visitors have to artists. While the galleries function traditionally, the artists work and sell out of the same studio; their raw materials and works in progress—the artistry behind the art—are all on display. Many of them are happy and eager to talk; one was soliciting the help of passers-by to complete a work (she wished to know how to say and write a certain phrase in Hebrew vernacular—a quest that might take time to complete in a yachty southern suburb). A metal sculptor sat on a stool patiently working a piece of metal back and forth in his hands. The centre of his studio was filled with a huge hollow sphere made from hundreds of cylinders of perhaps anodised aluminium. It seemed we were witnessing the first step in a thousand-mile march.