Opportunity for Artists

Out of Order is the Maryland Art Place's Annual free-hung Benefit Exhibition, Silent Auction and Party!

Silent Auction and Gala: Friday, April 1st, 8 – 11pm. Join them for a fantastic evening of great art, music, food, and an open beer & wine bar.

Hanging Dates and Times: March 29, 7am – midnight. All Artists are invited to participate. During the One Day Only, Do‐It‐Yourself installation, March
29, 7am – midnight, each participating artist hangs one original piece in the MAP galleries. For submission guidelines, please visit MAP’s website www.mdartplace.org. Note: Artists are asked to support MAP by paying $10 to participate in Out of Order. Each participating artist receives one free ticket to the April 1 event.

Participation: There is a $10 participation fee to hang artwork in Out of Order. As a participating artist, you will be given one complimentary ticket to the gala on April 9th. ($40 value!). Proceeds will be split 50/50 between the artist and MAP.

How to Get Tickets: Purchase Tickets Online: www.brownpapertickets.com/event/156249
Current MAP Members must call to reserve their tickets. New or renewing members must join MAP by March 24 to receive complimentary ticket(s) to the event. Artist/Student/Individual members receive 1 Free Ticket; higher membership levels receive 2 Free Tickets. No tickets are mailed; names of ticket holders are held at the door.

For More Details: access their website: www.mdartplace.org or call 410-962-8565.

Patricia Tobacco Forrester (1940 - 2011)

Patricia Tobacco Forrester, one of the DMV's best-known artists, and one with a huge artistic footprint outside the DMV as well (represented by some of the top art galleries in Los Angeles, San Francisco, New York, London, New Mexico, and locally by Addison/Ripley) died yesterday.

Born in 1940 in Massachusetts, Patricia Tobacco Forrester received her B.A. from Smith College (Phi Beta Kappa), where she had gone via a scholarship, in 1962 and her B.F.A. in 1963 and M.F.A. in 1965, both from Yale University. A 1967 Guggenheim Foundation Fellow, she focused her artistic eye with a love for nature that translated into gorgeous and daring watercolors of fauna from a viewpoint that transformed what she saw into grand fields of color.

She painted directly from nature, usually on very large scale sheets of up to 40 x 60inches paper. And she painted all the way until the end of her life, as she became as almost daily visitor to the The U.S. Botanic Garden, on the National Mall across from the U.S. Capitol. Even though Tobacco Forrester's last years were difficult as a result of a seizure that she suffered while visiting Costa Rica (to paint that antion's lush flowers and fauna), she nonetheless and almost daily carried her paints and paper to the Botanic Garden, set up and continued to create art all the way to the end of her immensely creative life.

Her travels, such as the trip to Costa Rica, was part of her routine to travel to exotic locales seeking the beuty of nature, though her home base has been Washington, DC, since 1982.

Prior to that (from the mid-sixties to 1981) she lived in San Francisco and she often returned to the Northern California region to paint the rocky coast of Santa Barbara or the rolling hills of Napa and Sonoma valleys.

Forrester became a member of the National Academy of Design in New York in 1992. Her work has been shown widely in hundreds of museum and gallery exhibitions across the United States and abroad for over thirty-five years.

Her work is in the collection of many major museums, including the Art Institute of Chicago, British Museum, London, Brooklyn Museum, Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, Indianapolis Museum of Art, Library of Congress, National Academy of Design, Oakland Museum, Yale University Art Gallery, the National Museum of Women in the Arts, the Smithsonian American Art Museum, the Corcoran Gallery of Art, and The White House, Executive Office Building in Washington, DC.

Forrester was also the recipient of a 2005 and 2009 Artist Grant from the DC Commission on Arts and Humanities and she is represented locally by Addison/Riple Fine Art in Georgetown, where she had a solo show earlier this year in January.

I've curated her work into a few exhibitions in the last decade or so, most notably at my "Survey of Washington Realists" which I organized about a decade ago and which hung, in a gorgeous salon style manner, work by over a hundred noted Washington realist artists. For that show Patricia submitted one of her gigantic watercolors, which due to its brilliant colors and size, managed to catch a lot of attention in a show full of gems from floor to ceiling.

About her life and her work, she said it best when she observed that "You cannot get closer to a landscape than sitting within it while you are painting it."

Corridor

Corridor, an unusual exhibition showcasing the work of twelve established artists, six from Baltimore and six from Washington, D.C., a show that flips the conventional artist‐curator relationship on its side with enticing results.

The exhibit was conceived by Baltimore‐based artists Bernhard Hildebrandt, Soledad Salamé and Joyce J. Scott working jointly with AMA; the premise being to challenge the artist and curator relationship, allowing for participating artists from each city to select another artist to exhibit in an “artist choose artist” format.

Once all twelve artists were in place, one curator from each city, Irene Hofmann, Director and Chief Curator at SITE, Santa Fe, and former Executive Director of the Contemporary Museum in Baltimore; and Laura Roulet, independent DC curator and art historian, was selected to work with the artists of the opposite city.

Corridor features the work of D.C. artists Martha Jackson Jarvis, Brandon Morse, Phil Nesmith, Michael Platt, Susana Raab, and Jeff Spaulding; and Baltimore artists Oletha DeVane, Bernhard Hildebrandt, John Ruppert, Soledad Salamé, Joyce J. Scott, and Sofia Silva. The selected artists’ work represents a wide range of media and approaches, from sculpture, installation, printmaking and photography to video. The resulting exhibition showcases exceptional examples of some recent trends in art from the region.

Thursday, March 24 at 5:30pm: Gallery talk and exhibition preview
Thursday, March 24 at 6:30pm: Opening reception

On view March 24 ‐ June 26, 2011
Art Museum of the Americas
201 18th Street, NW Washington, DC 20006
Hours: Tuesday‐Sunday 10 AM‐5 PM

Artists' Talk

Last Saturday "Material World" opened at artdc Gallery in Hyattsville. Two artists talks will be held in conjunction with the show: Michael Janis, Sherill Anne Gross and Marie Ringwald on Saturday, March 19, and Matt Langley on Saturday, April 2.

So, this Saturday from 2-3 pm there will be a gallery talk featuring three artists: Sherill Anne Gross, Marie Ringwald and Michael Janis.

The group show, curated by Stephen Boocks, deals with artistic media & how it relates to the artist's work - why does the artist choose that medium to make their artwork? Does the material support the work or does it get in the way? Do all elements work in concert with each other? And how do they achieve their own balance?

A number of familiar DMV artists are featured - from the 100 Washington, DC Artists book: Marie Ringwald & Michael Janis and from the Sondheim Prize shortlist - JT Kirkland and Hamiltonian Projects Fellow Katherine Mann.

Also featured are the very talented paper artist Sherrill Gross and painter Matthew Langley.

Material World
artdc Gallery at The Lustine Center
5710 Baltimore Avenue
Hyattsville, Maryland 20781

Click here to jump to the gallery website.

Congrats!

DMV area artist Hadieh Shafie has been shortlisted for the Victoria & Albert Museum’s prestigious Jameel Prize 2011.

The exhibition of artworks will be on view at the V&A from 21 July to 25 September, 2011 and will then travel to Paris, Riyadh, Damascus, Beiteddine, Sharjah, Istanbul and Casablanca. The winner of The Jameel Prize 2011 will be announced at the V&A on 12 September 2011.

The Jameel Prize is a £25,000 international art prize for contemporary artists and designers inspired by Islamic traditions of craft and design.

Shafie is represented locally by and her art is currently available at MFA: Morton Fine Art in DC.

Congrats!

Wanna go to a DC opening tomorrow?

Here we go again

This time in Vashon Island, Washington (the other Washington):

The owner of the building that houses Two Wall Gallery abruptly removed several works in the gallery's latest show last week, prompting an outcry from the artists, the curator and other members of the Island's arts community.

Louise Rice, who owns the property along with her husband Ray Rice and daughter Wendy Rice, paid a visit to the building with her daughter last Tuesday morning and became upset after viewing "Go Figure: Body of Work," a group show by eight artists that contains numerous nude portraits.

"It was pornography, and I won’t put up with it,” Rice said later from her Burien home. “It’s our hallway, and my husband and daughter and I don’t like it.”

But Jack Strubbe, the show's curator who has mounted exhibits off and on for the past three years in the space, said he was baffled by Rice's actions, especially since the gallery has been the site of many other exhibits with political and other controversial content.

“She has never expressed anything like this in the past, and I’ve had work that I’ve considered much riskier than this,” he said.

Read the whole story here and an excellent report by a local blog with lots of images here.

I hope that I don't have to defend my position when it comes to censorship and art, especially in this great nation, which in the last 20-30 years seems to me, has regressed enormously in that area, and, as an example, public artwork that was once considered acceptable for public display (by that I mean public art such as statues, murals, etc.), specifically nudes, are seldom if ever to be seen in a contemporary public art commission, airport, etc.

The only public art nudes around this town are all the artwork done in the 1800s and as late as the WPA. I suspect that this is pretty much the same for the rest of the nation; certainly for airportism.

But privately owned spaces are a different animals, and as much as I hate what the owners of this space have done to the curator and to the community, they do own the walls and he who owns the walls makes the rules. It is somewhat alike a restaurant owner who puts up a sign that says "no shoes, no service."

OK, OK, that may be an over simplification, but you get my drift. Bottom line: shame on the owners of this building, but as much as I hate it, they do own the building, and they do offer the two walls (for free) to local artists and curators and thus they do have a right to be troglodytes.

The response should be a boycott of the two walls: no more art.

Survival Guide for Artists and Arts Organizations

On Tuesday, March 29th @ 7pm, Adam Natale, Director of Partnerships & Business Development at Fractured Atlas, will speak about key services, programs, and resources that can help artists with the business side of their art -- the "unsexy" side that artists generally do not like thinking about, but allow them to focus more easily on the creation of their art, while also maintaining the infrastructure of their "arts business."

To start, Adam will introduce the services offered through Fractured Atlas, a national, nonprofit arts organization that provides fund raising, education/professional development, insurance, and other services to both performing and visual artists. Adam will then talk about other local, state and national organizations that offer similar resources on arts advocacy/civic engagement, fundraising, jobs in the arts and arts administration, tips on grant writing, social media/new technology, networking, emerging arts leaders, and general career and resume guidance. They are looking forward to a lively Q & A!

RSVP to jackie@hamiltoniangallery.com

Hamiltonian Gallery
1353 U Street, NW
Washington, DC 20010
202.332.1116

It's Only Rock ‘n’ Roll, But I Like It!

Del Ray Artisans will pay homage to all things rock ‘n’ roll during their April show It's Only Rock ‘n’ Roll, But I Like It!. This open, all-media juried show will celebrate the bands, instruments, lyrics, rebellious youth culture and life style dedicated to glamour and excess.

Schedule of show activities:

* Show Opening and Artist Reception: Friday April 1, 2011 7 -10 pm. Light snacks and beverages will be available. Rock attire encouraged, but please "No Smokin' in the Boys Room."

* Rock Movie Marathon: Sunday April 10, 2011 12:00 noon -9 pm. Specific itinerary to be announced. Stop by to enjoy a day of rock-themed movies. Come for one; stay as long as you please. Popcorn concessions.

* Open Mic Lyric Slam: Sunday May 1, 2011 2 -4 pm. This interactive program will honor the poetry, words and anthems of rock music. Participants will have the opportunity to read and recite their original songs or slam the lyrics of their favorite songs.

The show will be at the Del Ray Artisans gallery at the Nicholas A. Colasanto Center, 2704 Mount Vernon Avenue, Alexandria, Virginia 22301. Gallery hours are: Thursdays, 12 noon to 4 pm; Fridays, 12 noon to 9 pm; Saturdays, 10 am to 9 pm; and Sundays, 12 noon to 6 pm. The gallery is free, open to the public and handicap accessible.

For more information, please visit www.TheDelRayArtisans.org; or contact show curator Fierce Sonia Fiercesonia@aol.com at 703-314-9175; Jennifer Chappell at Jen.chappell@cox.net or contact dracuratorcoordinator@gmail.com

Opportunities for Artists

Deadline: April 30, 2011.

Call for Entries: The Graceful Envelope Contest - Artists everywhere are invited to participate in the 2011 Graceful Envelope Contest, conducted by the Washington (DC) Calligraphers Guild under the sponsorship of the National Association of Letter Carriers.

There is no entry fee.

This year's theme is "Time Flies," so design an envelope that explores good times, quality time, the times of our lives, time travel, or any other idea you have time to develop.

Address the envelope artistically to:
The Graceful Envelope Contest
Washington Calligraphers Guild
P.O. Box 3688
Merrifield, VA 22116.

This is the contest's 17th year. The Smithsonian Institution's National Postal Museum created and administered it until delegating responsibility to the Washington Calligraphers Guild in 2001. The National Association of Letter Carriers exhibits the winners, which are also exhibited online at www.calligraphersguild.org. The complete Call for Entries (including categories for children) is posted on the Washington Calligraphers Guild website or you may contact contest coordinator Lorraine Swerdloff at swerdloff@gmail.com.

Opportunity for Artists

Deadline: March 31, 2011

Call for Entries: Open to all artists 18 years or older working or living in Virginia, Maryland, DC, Delaware, Pennsylvania, or West Virginia.

To Enter: Each entry requires an on-line application through Juried Art Services.

Exhibition Theme: “BITE: identity and humor” asks artists to use irony, sarcasm, and wit to shed light on issues of personal struggle in mainstream society. Artists are asked to create and share work that challenges historical, societal, and cultural norms that dictate expectations of who we are supposed to be. The selected work does not have to be “funny” as much as insightful. The work will be juried by DMV artist Jefferson Pinder.

Full Prospectus: detailing Acceptable Works, Entry fees, and Special Instructions located here

GreaterRestonArtsCenter
Reston Town Center
12001 Market Street
Suite #103
Reston, VA 20190
703.471.9242
fax 703.471.0952

New gallery to open in DC

Lamont Bishop Gallery, a new art space opening up later this week, appears to be off to a good start -- its beautiful centrally located storefront space in Shaw (1314 9th St NW, a few doors down from Longview Gallery and only two blocks from the green line metro) is enviable. We spoke with gallery director Alexandra Giniger about the gallery, their upcoming inaugural show, and what is in their future.

Read the Pinkline interview here.

The WPA Auction

Last Saturday's WPA auction was packed to the gills with seemingly everyone who's anyone in the DMV art scene attending, including most of the area's top art collectors as well as some out of town familiar collectors' faces, including one good friend who also happens to be a prominent Cuban-American collector who calls Boston his home.

"What are you doing here?" I asked surprised at seeing him at the auction.

"I always fly in for this event," he replied.

Muy bien!

Anne Collins Goodyear, Assistant Curator of Prints and Drawings, National Portrait Gallery and Philippa Hughes, Chief Contrarian, Pink Line Project
It appears to me that the auction itself was quite a success. I saw a lot of bids, which drawing from my memory banks, seemed to be more than usual. I am happy to report that my piece in the show, "Eve, Running Away from Eden," received so many bids that in fact it maxed out the bidding sheet and sold for 350% above the initial bidding estimate.

Eve, Running Away from Eden. 15 x 39 inches. Charcoal on paper.
Circa 2010 by F. Lennox Campello
The auction's artistic highlight was definitely when Dan Steinhilber and a small groups of helpers began assembling Steinhilber's piece for the auction, which he was going to construct right on site. The work, made up of a wood pallet and shrink wrap, began appearing before our eyes as the crew wrapped the pallet in shrink wrap of various colors.

At one point I was sure that it was finished, as Steinhilber was initially using shrink wrap of various colors, and for a brief instant the pallet almost looked like a "back to the future" version of a Morris Louis painting!

But the Steinhilber crew continued to add more shrink wrap and slowly the piece began to turn white, ending up as a handsome three dimensional white sculpture.


Read the report from Daily Art Muse here.

Wilmer Wilson IV

Last Friday, along with artists Tim Tate ( whose work just opened in the Milwaukee Art Museum's The New Materiality: Digital Dialogues at the Boundaries of Contemporary Craft two days go) and Susana Raab (whose work from her "Cholita" series will be in the Corridor exhibition at the Art Museum of the Americas opening March 24), we got together with four young artists whom we're mentoring as part of Strathmore's new visual arts mentorship program.

I'll be discussing all four throughout the next few months, but let me start with the work of the very young Wilmer Wilson IV, from Chesterfield, Virginia, and currently a student at Howard University in Washington, DC. Before I start discussing his work, you start by viewing the below video of his installation titled Machine: Bad End.

Wilson is very young, but already appears to possess an artistic vision well beyond his years, and at the present his work seems to fit into that genre of contemporary art which would label him as a WalMartist; that is, artists which use common, everyday materials (such as one would find in WalMart) to create elegant and intelligent artwork.

In his installation titled "Bundles" (detail to the left, see the whole installation here), WIlson uses plastic forks and spoons to create an elegant and minimalist installation which uses the repetitive power of these two objects, together with black tape, which when attached to the wall transforms the objects into a energetic and planned modern bas relief of disposable design.

See more of these utensil installations here and check out his website here.

Keep your eye on this artist.

Trawick Prize Call for Artists

The Bethesda Arts & Entertainment District is accepting submissions for The Trawick Prize: Bethesda Contemporary Art Awards. The 9th annual juried art competition awards $14,000 in prize monies to four selected artists. Deadline for submissions is Friday, April 8, 2011 and up to fifteen artists will be invited to display their work during the month of September in downtown Bethesda.

The competition will be juried by Amy Hauft, Chair of the Sculpture Department at Virginia Commonwealth University; Dr. Sarah Newman, Curator of Contemporary Art at the Corcoran in Washington, D.C.; and Sue Spaid, Executive Director of the Contemporary Museum in Baltimore, MD.

The first place winner will be awarded $10,000; second place will be honored with $2,000 and third place will be awarded $1,000. A “young” artist whose birth date is after April 8, 1981 may also be awarded $1,000.

Artists must be 18 years of age or older and residents of Maryland, Virginia or Washington, D.C. Original painting, drawing, photography, sculpture, fiber art, digital, mixed media and video are accepted. The maximum dimension should not exceed 96 inches in any direction. No reproductions. Selected artists must deliver artwork to exhibit site in Bethesda, MD. All works on paper must be framed to full conservation standards. Each artist must submit five slides or five images on CD, application and a non-refundable entry fee of $25.

The Trawick Prize was established by Carol Trawick, a community activist for more than 25 years in downtown Bethesda. She is the past Chair of the Bethesda Arts & Entertainment District and past Chair of the Bethesda Urban Partnership. Additionally, the Jim and Carol Trawick Foundation was established in 2007 and has endowed the Trawick Prize indefinitely.

For questions regarding the Trawick Prize, please visit www.bethesda.org or call
301-215-6660.

Conan The Barbarian

When I was about ten, I discovered Robert Ervin Howard's saga of Conan The Barbarian books, written in the 1930s, first published in the 1950s, and really selling well in the late 1960s after they were reprinted with spectacular new cover art by artist Frank Frazetta, perhaps the most sought-after cover artist in history and a cult art figure amongst his millions of followers.

Frazetta's covers set Howard's grim sword & sorcery (a sub-genre that Howard invented) novels on fire. One of those paintings by Frazetta recently sold for one million dollars.


Above is "Conan The Destroyer" which is perhaps Frazetta's iconic image of Howard's brooding hero. A really good analysis of this painting in The Cimmerian can be read here.

Why am I writing about this? Because I've just found out that a new Conan The Barbarian movie (in 3D) is set to be released later this summer. See the trailer below.

As a Conan fan, I'm really looking forward to this film, but I already have a complaint. In the Conan saga, Howard goes to extreme details in describing the savage hero of the series, but it was the Frazetta book covers which burned the Conan image into the minds of its readers, and in this new film, this Conan (portrayed by actor Jason Momoa) is missing the barbarian's most prominent feature: bangs.

This film's directors should have done their homework, as Conan fans, who otherwise loved the 1980s Conan movies starring Arnold Schwarzenegger, howled back then because their hero also lacked the iconic bangs of Cimmerian men's hair styles as invented by Frazetta, not Howard (who actually described Conan's hair as “tousled,” “matted” and “lion-like").

So who's right?

"…a man whose broad shoulders and sun-browned skin seemed out of place among those luxuriant surroundings. He seemed more a part of the sun and winds and high places of the outlands. His slightest movement spoke of steel-spring muscles knit to a keen brain with the co-ordination of a born fighting-man. There was nothing deliberate or measured about his actions. Either he was perfectly at rest–still as a bronze statue–or else he was in motion, not with the jerky quickness of over-tense nerves, but with a cat-like speed that blurred the sight which tried to follow him."
– Robert E. Howard, “The Phoenix on the Sword”

(e)merge now accepting applications

(e)merge, the new, DC-based art fair focused on emerging artists and galleries with emerging art, just announced that it is now accepting applications from galleries, nonprofits and artists without gallery representation.

The Fair will take place September 22-25, 2011, at the Rubell family's Capitol Skyline Hotel in Washington, DC.

Applications are available on (e)merge's Web site and the deadline to apply is Monday, May 2nd and acceptances will be sent out by early June.

It is clear to me that this is a prime opportunity for unrepresented DMV area artists (well... any unrepresented artist!). In fact, my advice to every single one of you who is not represented by a gallery and who thinks that their work merits to be examined and vetted, is simple: do not miss this golden opportunity.

Why?

As an experienced art fair participant, art fair visitor, art fair rejectee, and art fair observer, I know that this fair model is a new model. This is something new... the goal here, as implied by the cool fair title with the even cooler parenthesis around the (e) - I must find out whose brilliant idea that was - is to put the loupe on galleries who show emerging artists and on unrepresented artists.

What is the ultimate goal? I would guess that at least a partial goal would be to expose (maybe (e)xpose?) the huge numbers of highly talented and original artists out there whom are unrepresented and who may do well with the right gallery.

I am such a fan of this novel idea. Remember when I curated "Seven" for the WPA in 2005? That was one of my goals as well, and one that in my not so humble opinion I succeeded beyond my wildest expectations.

I selected 66 artists for "Seven" - the vast majority of whom had never (or rarely) exhibited in the DMV - I then took my then fellow gallerists in personal tours of the huge exhibitions in the seven galleries of the Warehouse complex... by my last count, about a dozen then unrepresented artists found gallery representation because of that show, including a couple which arguably have become the art star of their respective galleries.

Of course, I scored the biggest hit of them all... I found my wife and the love of my life because of that show...

See what can happen when you mix good people, good thinkers, and good ideas with art?

No one ever did this before

I've invented some new descriptors...

Spitoidal Glucosoids is what I call whatever substance seems to always clog up one of the two basin drains in my bathroom.

According to Google, that combo of words (as a descriptor) does not exist at all in Al Gore's internet.

From now on, whenever some geek types Spitoidal Glucosoids into Google (or any other search engine) it will only come here!

The Lenster just invented Google Word Searchartism....

Who'd thunk it? The Beatles were wrong!

Weekend duties

Tomorrow night: Meet the various artists selected for the Strathmore Fine Artist in Residence Program Mentorship. Those artists are:

Minna Philips (drawing/installation)

Wilmer Wilson IV (mixed media/installation)

Brittany Sims (painting)

Solomon Slyce (photography)

Saturday & Sunday: Review the work by the 43 artists from all over the USA and Scotland who have applied to the Torpedo Factory Art Center's Visiting Artists Program of one, two, or three-month residencies between June 1 and August 31, 2011 - then select about a dozen for the residencies.

Tonight: Mirror art at ARTiculate Gallery

There's a cool upcoming exhibition opening tonight at VSA's ARTiculate Gallery. The show, "Reflections" was inspired by local artist Bob Benson and his work at the American Visionary Art Museum.

Benson worked with the artists in the ARTiculate Program (which provides artistic and vocational training to youth and adults with special needs) to create "mirror art" using glass-cutting techniques in a variety of styles, and the artists have created a unique body of work.

The opening will take place tonight Thursday, March 10th between 5:30 and 7:30pm at the ARTiculate Gallery, located at 1100 16th St NW. The reception will be free, open to the public, and light refreshments will be served.