For your Friday art...

Tomorrow is March Madness at the Torpedo Factory in Old Town Alexandria.

* Artwork - 200 pieces of artwork on 10" square panels – each only $100
* Prizes - many of the panels will be loaded with prizes donated from local businesses (I will be one of the jurors for the prizes)
* Music - awesome beats by DJ Stylo
* Food & Drinks – wings, pizza, beer & more, provided by local businesses
* Beer - sposored by Old Dominion Brewing Company
* Games – join in the fun with a little fun competition!

March Madness is an exhibition of approximately 200 10x10-inch works of art. Torpedo Factory and DCarea artists, as well as local high school students and college students will create the artwork. It will be on display in the Target Gallery from March 17 – March 27. All work will be for sale for $100 with 10% of all sales being donated to the March of Dimes. In addition, several of the artworks will be “loaded” with prizes donated by local businesses. The goal of this fundraiser is to raise money and awareness for the March of Dimes, a charity that helps children in need, and to raise money for the Target Gallery’s 2011 outreach programming.

They have two main events to accompany this fundraiser:

#1. Kids Art Activity: The first is a March of Dimes sponsored art activity for kids whose families benefited from the March of Dimes. This activity was held at the Torpedo Factory Art Center’s main hall on March 19th from 11am to 1pm. This was used as a tool to help raise awareness for their annual “March for Babies” walk held in May 2011.

#2. Art Party: The second event will be a March Madness Art Party, which will be held tomorrow, March 25th from 7-11pm, and will be a ticketed event. This party will be held at the Torpedo Factory Art Center’s main hall right outside of the Target Gallery. The theme of the evening will have a NCAA March Madness Tournament pub like atmosphere, to include games, pub faire, live band, prizes and more. Click Here to learn about the Torpedo Factory’s Target Gallery Community Outreach.

Dates: March 25, 7-11pm
Where: Main hall of Torpedo Factory Art Center, right outside of the Target Gallery
Cost: $15 in advance; $20 at the door

Details here.

Coming to Gallery 555

Early look

American University Museum at the Katzen Arts Center will have the AU Art Department's Student Exhibitions opening soon, with first year MFA students: April 2 through May 15
and MFA theses: April 23 through May 15.

Victor Gomez opening at Cafritz

I keep hearing good things about an exhibit of gorgeous monoprints by Miami based Cuban artist Victor Gomez which are on view right now in the atrium gallery at the Cafritz Art Center.

The artist is coming in for the opening reception, which is being held on March 24th (Thursday) in coordination with another exhibit of Latin American art "El Corazon del Pueblo" which is up in the main gallery.

Opening Reception: Thursday, March 24, 5:00—7:30 PM.

The cost of art fairs

I was just talking on the phone to gallerist friend who's been doing the Scope Art Fair for the last few years, and as a result of sales at the art fairs, barely being able to keep her gallery open, as sales in her hometown are all but non-existent.

Last December she had a small booth in Miami. This basic booth (200 Sq. ft.) has a basic cost of $10, 600. That's the start.

In her case she didn't add any extra walls (additional cost), but just added some extra lights (additional cost). By the time she finished paying the additional mandatory advertising fee ($1,000 for a small booth - it grows proportionally as the booth gets larger), and the mandatory insurance, she was looking at $12,000 for a basic small booth.

Now add airfare for her and an assistant (it is physically nearly impossible to do an art fair with just one person manning the booth - believe me... I've done once and know the impossibility of this task). Then add hotels (share the room) and transportation (share the rental car) and food for her and her assistant. Now tack on the shipping price for the artwork from the Mid Atlantic to Miami, Florida (and back for unsold work). The cost is now around $15,000 for this basic booth, plus the assistant's salary (undisclosed).

She had decided to take just one artist to Scope (the fair has a pretty tough minimalist hanging policy), and had applied with just the one name. She was glad that Scope accepted this "new" artist, because this was an artist with strong representational imagery and thus good possibilities for sales.

When they hung the works - you can't overhang at Scope, so about seven paintings were displayed - she realized that she had made one major error. More on that later...

In the first two days of Scope, all of the paintings sold, and the "extra" two which had been shipped also sold later on. The artist was jubilant.

What was the gallerist's mistake?

With a $15,000 (plus the assistant's salary) expense, she needed to sell at least $30,000 worth of artwork in order just to break even (plus more to cover the assistant's salary).

With her artists' prices starting at $800 for a small oil and $3-4,000 for the other larger paintings, even though she sold out of all the work that she had shipped, she still lost about $4,000 in the event, and considered herself lucky to escape with this loss, which she attributed to failing to deduce that she had to sell at least $10,000 per wall in order to break even; a very basic mistake for an experienced gallerist.

In the old days, when an artist sold out, you raised his/her prices up a little the next time (she did this for the second hanging of the extra paintings); in these days of extreme financial austerity, that's not always a perfect formula anymore.

This is one of the many reasons why galleries go under: the enormous financial risk involved in participating in just about the only venues left where a gallery can sell art.

Art Scam

Some artists in the DMV and Baltimore area are being seduced by this scam email; make sure you ignore it:

From: Nelson Bateman
Date: March 20, 2011 8:13:24 AM EDT
To: undisclosed-recipients: ;
Subject: Interested in your work

Hi
The images in your website is so fascinating and so vivacious looking at each piece of work make me know you added so much dedication in making each work come out to life but unfortunately i lost the weblink but i was able to save your email address am writing you because i need your help to get back to your website so that i can be able to see more of your work and purchase some for my apartment. I reside in Queensland Australia hope to read from you soon.
Regards
Nelson

For a link explaining how the scam works, click here.

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.