Come again?

I was just looking at a contract sent to me by an artist. The contract was in response to a "portfolio review" for a group show in a New York City gallery.

The "curator" for the group show was very complimentary of this artist's work and selected a few pieces for the show. So far so good.

The contract details the following (somewhat edited to avoid court costs):

* Press Release will be written for the NYC group exhibition project and distributed via e-mail to World Art Media mailing lists consisting of select museums, galleries, curators, dealers, collectors, writers, art publications, artists, and art fair organizations around the globe. This release will be posted on www.---------- and other websites such as ......... to announce the event.

* ------------ Newsletter Listing announcing the ------ Gallery group exhibition mailed to subscribers in the U.S. and Europe.

* ------------ Daily Newsletter Listing announcing the group exhibition mailed to subscribers in the Far East.

* 500 invitation cards designed, printed and distributed for the show.

* Reception hosted by ------- Gallery.

* Artist’s Reception hosted by -------- Gallery.

* Review / Article: Selected writer will view the exhibition and write an essay on the participating artists’ works and the exhibition. This article will be published both online at ---------- and in print in --------- Magazine.

* Complimentary copies of the magazines with the feature article mailed to artist’s address.

Schedule & Payment Options

Total of $1,900 includes all features listed above. A deposit is due upon acceptance and signing. The payment can be made in full latest by --------.

The hefty $1,900 fee to exhibit immediately makes this gallery (and this show), a "vanity gallery" and certainly a "vanity exhibition" as the artists that will eventually end up in this show will be there based on their ability to fork $1,900 each to cover the costs of what are essentially the normal costs associated with running an independently owned commercial fine arts gallery.

That makes this a vanity show. This by itself is not illegal and there are dozens and dozens of vanity galleries in NYC operating mostly on the dime of the exhibiting artists.

But what caught my eye was the fact that the contract claims that a "Selected writer will view the exhibition and write an essay on the participating artists’ works and the exhibition. This article will be published both online at ---------- and in print in --------- Magazine."

The magazine in question is what (until now) I thought was a reputable NYC-based art magazine. I am puzzled as to how the organizers of this show, months ahead of the exhibition itself, already know that a writer from ------------ Magazine will write an essay about the group show and publish it both in the magazine and the magazine's website.

Words count. The contract never says "review." Instead they use the words "essay" first and then "article." So it appears that the author of this "article" or "essay" is in fact being paid by the organizers of the show to author the piece.

Paying someone to write an essay for an exhibition catalogue, or an essay for an artist's book, etc. is an ordinary event and happens all the time and I myself have been paid to do this dozens of time.

Paying someone to write an "essay" or "article" for a magazine devoted to write about art and artists and art reviews is (in my opinion) something else and I feel dishonest. The fact that the piece would appear in print in this magazine immediately relays to the readers that the author is writing about the show because of its merits (or because it is a bad show) but in all cases from a critical or examinatory viewpoint.

Not because the organizers paid him/her to write about the show.

Makes me wonder if (a) is this a common practice at ---------- magazine? or (b) if not, do the editors know that this writer is doing this?

Only way out of this mess: That the "article" or "essay" is a paid advertising page, and "boxed" in by a line all around it that says "paid advertising" as some newspapers and magazines do when someone takes out an ad and the ad looks like it's an article.

Makes my head hurt... any comments?

Update: The artist in question just discovered that the "curator" actually works for the magazine!

Makes my head hurt...

... an Arts Council project that typifies the standards we’ve come to expect from publicly funded art. Jarvis Cocker, the country’s foremost socialist pop musician, was sent to the Arctic for “inspiration” and to raise planetary consciousness, along with another two dozen artistic luminaries:

The ambition of the expedition was to inspire the creative team to respond to climate change... It was an amazing journey; 10 days of artistic inspiration, debate, discussion and exploration.

The ecological insights gleaned by Mr Cocker?

Men have produced a lot of great art over the centuries, or whatever... but... an iceberg kind of, basically, pisses on it.

Apparently this was a $250,000 publicly funded art project. Read all about it here.

Opportunity for Artists - Last Day to Apply!

Deadline: Nov. 20th, 2009

If you read this blog then you know that I've been always very impressed with the BlackRock Center for the Arts gallery's 1500 square feet of exquisite gallery space. With its high white walls and beautiful windows strategically placed, this gorgeous gallery allows in just the right amount of natural light. BlackRock Center for the Arts is located at 12901 Town Commons Drive Germantown, MD in upper Montgomery County, about 20 minutes from the Capital Beltway (495).

They currently have a call to artists and the call is open to all artists residing in Maryland, Virginia, and Washington, DC over the age of 18.

Original artwork only. All work must be ready for sale and to be presented in a professional manner to the public at the time of delivery.

This call will cover exhibits in the gallery from September 2010 through August 2011. An exhibit may include one applicant or a combination of applicants, based on the judgment of jurors (i.e., 1 or 2 wall artists may be combined with a pedestal artist). A jury will select the artists and create eight exhibits to be included in the exhibit year. The jury panel is comprised of my good friend and gallerist Elyse Harrison, Jodi Walsh, and yours truly.

Jurying: First Week of December
Notification: Early January
Exhibit Year: Sept. 2010 – Aug. 2011

How to apply: All correspondence will be done by e-mail, so contact Kimberly Onley, the Gallery Coordinator at konley@blackrockcenter.org and ask her to email you a prospectus.

Don't wait to the last minute! Get the prospectus now!

Wanna go to an opening today?

Georgetown ARTS 2009 has an Opening Reception on Thursday, November 19, 6-9pm, and my good friend and Govinda Gallery owner Chris Murray will talk about the Georgetown art scene at 7pm.

The Show continues on Friday, November 20, noon-8pm, Saturday November 21, 11am-6pm at 1209 31st Street NW in G'town at the former Smith and Hawken space.

As noted above, the opening reception this evening will feature Govinda Gallery owner Chris Murray talking about the history and evolution of the Georgetown art scene - drawn from his 34 years as a central presence in the ever-changing Georgetown art world.

And the show will feature more than 25 Georgetown artists and will include painting, photography, and sculpture. CAG's Georgetown ARTS 2009 will also be highlighted in the new Georgetown Gallery Gaze that takes place on Friday evenings.

Artists in the show include:
Michele Banks ~ Dede Caughman ~ Betsy Cooley ~Arthur Day ~ Barbara Downs ~ Anne Emmet ~ Heidi Hess ~ Michele Jacobson ~ Bo Jia ~ Sidney Lawrence ~ Wendy Plotkin-Mates ~ Christopher Matthews ~ Starke Meyer ~ Elba Molina ~ Rosie Moore ~ Johanna Mueller ~ Emma O'Rourke ~Isabella Page ~ Larry Parlier ~ Hayley Pivato ~ Joan Shorey ~ Elizabeth Smythe ~ Polly Townsend ~ Dariush Vaziri and Homayoun Yeroushalmi.

Opportunity for Artists

Deadline: February 5, 2010

What is disability? -- An International Call for Postcards

VSA arts invites your participation in a collaborative art project. They’re taking a creative approach to investigate the different ways people interpret the same word: disability. The call is open to everyone around the world — people of different cultures, ethnicities, geographic locations, and abilities. You do not have to consider yourself an “artist” to participate.

Please contact Liza Key, Artist Services Coordinator, at efkey@vsarts.org to receive a shipment of printed calls for the project (available while supplies last). Additional copies of the postcard and alternative formats are uploaded to this website.

The deadline for receipt of postcards is February 5, 2010. VSA arts will curate an exhibition, both online and in Washington, D.C., to represent the submissions as part of the 2010 International VSA arts Festival held June 6-12, 2010.

Everybody is a curator

Shaquille O’Neal, the 7’1” all-star center with the National Basketball Association’s Cleveland Cavaliers, has discovered that art is no slam dunk.

Moonlighting for the first time as a curator, O’Neal is overseeing “Size DOES Matter,’’ an exhibition on the theme of scale in contemporary art coming in February to New York’s nonprofit Flag Art Foundation.

Read about it here.

Tape Sotheby's: Go to jail

An artist's attempt to turn the exterior of Sotheby's into a piece of art by stringing masking tape across it Tuesday morning gained something other than artistic recognition--20 hours in jail...

Read all about it here.

WOW Mr. Gopnik!

"That makes her show one of the best I've ever seen in a commercial gallery in Washington."

Read the Washington Post's chief art critic do something he rarely does, review a local DC gallery as he raves about the photographs of Terri Weifenbach at Civilian.

Read it here.

More please Mr. Gopnik.

Studio Visiting...

At the end of the day I had some time to sneak a quick visit to Red Dirt Studio, Flux Studios and the Washington Glass School.

At Red Dirt my real reason was to hope to meet little Kyle, the newest addition to the studio, but the cute two-month old was asleep in the middle of a noisy, creative artmosphere. He did look very handsome in his blue hat and mom Margaret Boozer should be justifiably proud of the little feller.

At the Washington Glass School I sneaked a preview of Tim Tate's newest videos, as well as Michael Janis' latest work (Janis was the star of the recent SOFA Chicago, where Maurine Littleton Gallery sold nine of his pieces). I also saw the newest Erwin Timmers' works as he pursues his "green art" line of work.

At Flux Studios, I chatted with the very talented Novie Trump, whose recent solo at MPA so impressed me. There were huge clay bones being created for what sounds like an amazing installation in support of a performance. More on that later.

I also saw the really cool new work, a very minimalist work that boasts loads of elegance, by Elena Patiño, the newest member of Flux, and also discovered the newest work of Mia Kagan, which was also quite impressive and then went gaga over the amazing Laurel Lukaszewski, whose current solo show at Project 4 is a significant and intelligent new conceptual work for this very talented artist and a show that I will review soon..

Wanna go to an opening tomorrow?

Wanna go to an opening this Sunday?


Friday, November 20 – Sunday, January 10
Where: DCAC, 2438 18th St. NW Washington, DC 20009
Opening Reception: Friday, November 20, 7:00 pm-9:00 pm
Artists Talks/Closing Reception: Sunday, January 10, 5:00 pm-7:00 pm

Jurors: Renee Stout, Blake Kimbrough, and Marvin Bowser
Curator: Amber Robles-Gordon
Co-Curator: Daniel T. Brooking
Judges: Teresia Bush and Eugene R. Vango

Featuring work by John Earl Cooper, Arcmanoro Niles, Cedric Baker, Jacqueline Lee, Valentina Andaya, Akili Ron Anderson, Viola Leak, Bruce McNeil, Gloria C. Kirk, Stanley Squirewell, Claudia Gibson-Hunter, Michael Platt, Sonya Clark, Ann Marie Williams, Alec Simpson, Daniel T. Brooking, Amber Robles-Gordon, Prelli Williams, Kristen Hayes, Serinity Knight, Anne Bouie, James Brown, Jr., T. H. Gomillion, Adjoa J. Burrowes, Deidra Bell, Willard Taylor, Carlton Wilkinson, Constance Porter Uzelac, and Juilett Madison.

Emerging Arts Leaders Symposium Networking Social

Thursday, November 19, 2009
6:00pm - 9:00pm
Blackfinn Restaurant & Saloon
4901 Fairmont Ave, Bethesda, MD

Join other emerging arts leaders for a networking event at Blackfinn of Bethesda.

For a suggested $10 donation to the Emerging Arts Leaders Symposium, you will be able to schmooze and socialize with other area young professionals who share a passion for the arts. All while enjoying great free appetizers and specials. To RSVP join the event on Facebook.

Blackfinn is located near the Bethesda Metro stop along the red line. Walk north on Old Georgetown Road, take a right onto Fairmount and join the party! Street and garage parking are available in the area as well.

The Emerging Arts Leaders Symposium, now in its third year, is an annual meeting for young professionals who work in the arts, held at American University. It is an opportunity to discuss the issues, unique or universal, that affect arts organizations, with students, peers, and experienced professionals. For more information click here.

New DC gallery

Artists/Owners Natasha Mokina and Victor Pakhomkin envision their recently opened gallery, Winter Palace Studio, as "a sanctuary for realist art that combines classical craftsmanship and contemporary concepts." The gallery will exhibit paintings by Mokina and Pakhomkin and group shows by local and international artists who share the gallery's philosophy. It will also hold realistic painting and drawing classes, workshops and seminars.

The two artists have worked in the Washington, DC area for nearly twenty years creating highly realistic oil paintings, murals, portraits by commission and teaching academic painting and drawing in their studio in Bethesda. Natasha Mokina is also on the faculty of the Corcoran College of Art and Design.

“It still feels like a dream to see ourselves and our paintings in this beautiful historic courtyard, says Natasha Mokina. This is the prettiest place in Georgetown. I just cannot get over the sense of this fantastic mix of times and places: the C&O Canal reminiscent of canals in St. Petersburg (our birth place), old brick buildings of Georgetown evoking “The Little Street“ by Vermeer… ”

Winter Studio Contemporary Realism gallery is located at “Galleries 1054” in Canal Square at 1054 31st Street NW. The gallery hours are Tuesday - Saturday 12:00 to 6:00 pm.

The opening reception for a new exhibition ”Black Kitchen Magic, Etc” featuring the paintings by Natasha Mokina and Victor Pakhomkin is Friday, November 20, 2009 from 6 pm to 8 pm.

Staged History

It's the iconic photo that captures the essence of the Spanish Civil War: a soldier falling to his death, arms splayed out behind him, gun still in hand, after being shot on a grassy hill.

But new evidence now claims to prove once and for all that the camera does lie - and Robert Capa's famous Falling Soldier was faked.

Read the fascinating detective story in the Daily Mail here and then read George Will's take on the whole issue in the WaPo here; Will writes:

Capa was a man of the left, and "Falling Soldier" helped to alarm the world about fascism rampant. But noble purposes do not validate misrepresentations. Richard Whelan, Capa's biographer, calls it "trivializing" to insist on knowing whether this photo actually shows a soldier mortally wounded. Whelan says that "the picture's greatness actually lies in its symbolic implications, not in its literal accuracy."

Rubbish. The picture's greatness evaporates if its veracity is fictitious. To argue otherwise is to endorse high-minded duplicity -- and to trivialize Capa, who saw a surfeit of 20th-century war and neither flinched from its horrors nor retreated into an "I am a camera" detachment. As a warning about well-meaning falsifications of history, "Falling Soldier" matters because Capa probably fabricated reality to serve what he called "concerned photography."

I'm still debating what side to take on the whole issue... it does seem to deflate the whole image a bit... any thoughts on the subject? Leave me some comments.

And speaking of comments, like almost everything in the nation these days, this photographic issue has become a barbarous debate between the vast right wing conspiracy and the equally vast kooky left wing nuttery. Read the WaPo's comments to Will's point of view here and have fun with the kooks from the extreme right and the nuts from the extreme left.

Opportunity for Artists

Deadline: Nov. 20th, 2009

If you read this blog then you know that I've been always very impressed with the BlackRock Center for the Arts gallery's 1500 square feet of exquisite gallery space. With its high white walls and beautiful windows strategically placed, this gorgeous gallery allows in just the right amount of natural light. BlackRock Center for the Arts is located at 12901 Town Commons Drive Germantown, MD in upper Montgomery County, about 20 minutes from the Capital Beltway (495).

They currently have a call to artists and the call is open to all artists residing in Maryland, Virginia, and Washington, DC over the age of 18.

Original artwork only. All work must be ready for sale and to be presented in a professional manner to the public at the time of delivery.

This call will cover exhibits in the gallery from September 2010 through August 2011. An exhibit may include one applicant or a combination of applicants, based on the judgment of jurors (i.e., 1 or 2 wall artists may be combined with a pedestal artist). A jury will select the artists and create eight exhibits to be included in the exhibit year. The jury panel is comprised of my good friend and gallerist Elyse Harrison, Jodi Walsh, and yours truly.

Jurying: First Week of December
Notification: Early January
Exhibit Year: Sept. 2010 – Aug. 2011

How to apply: All correspondence will be done by e-mail, so contact Kimberly Onley, the Gallery Coordinator at konley@blackrockcenter.org and ask her to email you a prospectus.

Don't wait to the last minute! Get the prospectus now!

Ernesto "Che" Guevara de la Serna Lynch

“ASEre ¿SI o NO?
6x16 in. framed to 14x22. Charcoal and Conte on Paper. 2009.
F. Lennox Campello
Asere is a Cuban street slang word that means something akin to dude, or friend, or buddy, or "bro"... you get the drift. In this drawing, the wall graffiti asks "Asere, Yes or No?" while the question itself answers by the capitalization... and Che laughs.

Janis, Marquart and Baker at the MPA

The three artists included in this exhibition, curated by Nancy Sausser and which just closed last Saturday at the McLean Center for the Arts in McLean, Virginia, Michael Janis, Allegra Marquart and Tom Baker, are all, according to the curator, storytellers. She is not only right, but I would add that they are superb storytellers who employ the visual arts in their own distinct ways to narrate their stories.

Both Janis and Marquart are commonly associated with the revolutionary artists of the Washington Glass School. It is people like them, along with artists like Tim Tate and Erwin Timmers, who have been redefining the way that we think, interpret and discuss glass in the modern dialogue of contemporary art.

For the revolutionary minds of the 20th and now 21st century, glass in the context of the postmodern art world has nearly always been defined as craft, rather than art. This absurd designation, in my opinion, has been levied upon this entire substrate because of the spectacular success of a couple of "crafty" glass artists such as the gigantic figure of Dale Chihuly.

A few years ago a former Hirshhorn Museum curator told me that the "Hirshhorn does not collect glass." Replace the word glass with any other art medium and you see how nearsighted that statement was.

And the "craft" brand has also stuck because the successful names of the craft world drifted apart over the years, and also over the years built a formidable collectors' base developed at fairs such as the Smithsonian, SOFA, etc. These fairs generally predated the now common "high art" art fairs such as Art Basel Miami Beach, Pulse, Scope, Red Dot, etc.

The "craft" world was doing hugely successful art fairs many years before it became more common for the "high art" world (and yes, I know that Art Basel in Basel itself has also been going on for decades).

And thus, for years glass artists and other "crafty" artists were happy with their vessels and bowls and organic marine forms that commanded good prices from a very specific (and limited) set of collectors.

And then a few years ago, centered around the Greater Washington, DC region, a new glass movement began to emerge. This group of artists saw glass as just another substrate to create artwork, all kinds of artwork, not just bowls and vessels and pretty organic forms.

They used those materials to develop narrative stories, as Janis and Marquart do in this show. And they married glass to technology, as Tim Tate does with his self contained video installations. And they had glass emerge as a powerful new form of "green art," as Erwin Timmers does with his recycled materials glass sculptures.

In this MPA exhibition, Janis shows us what he contributes to that incendiary new group of narrative galss artists, if we can even call them just "glass artists" any longer. In this show he exhibits seven pieces from his Tarot Card series. These wall hung glass panels, elegantly bordered in metal, each depict a card from the ancient fortune telling card system. Using the traditional process of sgrafitto, Janis essentially draws on glass with glass dust and then fuses it all to deliver what can best be described as a glass drawing. They are simply rendered in a minimalist style on sheets of translucent glass that forges a brilliant aura of ethereal context to his subjects.

Marquart is an enviable technician and astute artist who searches the world of fairy tales to discover and present in a new visual way a subject matter that often resides in our childhood memories. In this show she exhibited both kiln formed glass and relief printmaking to deliver the tales. It was a superb partnership of genres. These are sculptural stories.

Tom Baker had eleven intimate and exquisite silkscreen relief prints which unfortunately were a little overpowered by the larger works of Marquart and Janis, and yet, probably because of their intimate size, still managed to attract those of us who like to get nose-close to a work of art to explore it deeply and precisely. His dizzying visual dialogue includes pyramids, electric mixers, ballistic missiles, etc. all waiting for close inspection and interrogation to deliver the narration component of this artists works.

And the same narrative thread that joins all three artists' works into a cohesive exhibition, is the glue that joins the viewer to the conversation in the viewing of the show.

Here's a quick, minute-long video walk through the exhibition.

Civilian: Be there tonight!

Join Civilian Art Projects as they debut their new digs and the first exhibitions in their new space in the Warehouse Arts Complex at 1019 7th Street NW (at NY Avenue). Civilian is one of the District's hardest working galleries and we all wish them the best in their new spaces, which I can't wait to see.

And for the debut show Jayme will have Terri Weifenbach's "Woods" (with an essay by Gareth Branwyn) and new sculptures by artist, super chef and musician Carole Wagner Greenwood in a show titled "A Little Give and Take."

Nov. 13 - Dec 19, 2009

Opening Reception: Friday, Nov. 13, 7-9pm.

Mellema on local art shows

Kevin Mellema reviews several DC area shows and as usual hits the nail on the head on all of them and agrees with me on the key Novie Trump piece.

Nice as that series is, it's Trump's "Out of the Fire" piece that packs the hardest punch. Here we find 11 white bird wings singed by fire. Like several other pieces here, it deals with personal hardships, survival and the ability to fly onwards in the aftermath. It's a notion that all of us have to deal with in some capacity throughout our lives.

Read Mellema here.

Black & WTF


Trust me, you're going to be glad that I pointed you to this very weird photography website.