Open Studios
Today, Saturday, May 14th from 12 to 5pm the artists of The Washington Glass School and all the dozens of other artists in the Gateway Arts District will be having their annual spring open studio event in Mt. Rainier in the Gateway Arts District. The Washington Glass School figures prominently in this event, as well as such popular studios as Red Dirt and Flux Studio.
This will be a relaxed open house, featuring mostly the principal artists at Washington Glass School, Michael Janis, Erwin Timmers and Tim Tate. They will all be working on current projects.
Saturday, May 14, 2011
Friday, May 13, 2011
Washington Glass School: The First 10 Years
About the event: The Washington DC area has become internationally renowned as an emerging center of glass art. At the forefront of this charge is the Washington Glass School, where the instructors, artists and students have brought narrative and content into glass, dragging it away from decorative craft and into the rarefied atmosphere of the contemporary fine art scene. The Washington Glass School has produced artists whose art can be found in museums and collections world-wide and is advancing the Studio Glass Movement with its explorations of narrative, technology and skills. This represents the largest and most important movement in the Washington art scene since the Color School of the 70's/80's.
This May, the Washington Glass School celebrates a momentous milestone - its 10th year. DC’s Long View Gallery presents “Artists of the Washington Glass School – The First Ten Years” showcasing over 20 artists and 10 years of integrating glass into the contemporary art dialogue. While it recognizes the past and present, The First 10 Years is intended to instigate – and celebrate – the new directions contemporary glass is exploring through various artistic metaphors.
Featured artists include: Tim Tate, Michael Janis, Erwin Timmers, Elizabeth Mears, Syl Mathis, Lea Topping, Robert Kincheloe, Alison Sigethy, Dave D'Orio, Anne Plant, Jeffery Zimmer, Teddie Hathaway, Jackie Greeves, Kirk Waldroff, Debra Ruzinsky, Tex Forrest, Diane Cabe, Robert Wiener, Nancy Donnelly, Sean Hennessey, Cheryl Derricotte, Jennifer Lindstrom, Michael Mangiafico, Allegra Marquart and m.l.duffy.
In bringing The First 10 Years to Washington, DC, Long View asks artists and audience alike to cast aside traditional notions of glass art and participate in a new form of dialogue; one that looks to the future and not the past.
The Washington Glass School Movement has focused almost entirely on the narrative content aspects of glass, breaking away from the technique-driven vessel movement of the last millennium. By focusing on cross-over sculptural work, mixed media and new media (such as interactive electronics and video), the impact this movement has had on the work of contemporary art has been felt internationally. This is the perfect chance to see a cross section of artists who have led this evolution.
Washington Glass School: The First 10 Years
LongView Gallery
1234 9th Street, NW, Washington, DC
May 19 - June 19, Opening Reception, May 19th, 6:30-8:30 PM
Closing Reception Sunday June 19, 2-5 PM
phone: 202.232.4788
email :info@longviewgallery.com
Thursday, May 12, 2011
Critique the Critics
On the evening of Saturday, May 14, Arlington Arts Center (AAC) -- in partnership with DC Magazine -- hosts its annual Critique the Critics fundraiser.
Eight DC notables, opinion makers, and trendsetters go head-to-head in timed, amateur art competitions using childhood art supplies. In a mix of NCAA March Madness and American Idol, "critics" battle it out using play-doh, finger paints, legos, etc. Winners of each round are selected by the audience. The night will feature amazing contemporary art, an exciting silent auction, designer cocktails and open bar, delicious catering, and sexy tunes. Tickets are limited and can be purchased here.
This year's "Critics": ABC7/WJLA-TV's Maureen Bunyan, DC Magazine Publisher Peter Abrahams, the Newseum's Sonya Gavankar McKay, Delegate Patrick Hope from the VA House of Delegates, Svetlana Legetic from Brightest Young Things and Justin Young from Ready Set DC, Mary Beth Albright, contestant in the new season on Food Network Star, Kelly Rand and Ian Buckwalter, writers for DCist. Warming the "bench" will be David Foster from the VA Board of Education, and Peter Winant from WETA's Around Town. Philippa Hughes, the Pink Line Project's Chief Creative Contrarian will emcee the competition.
Wednesday, May 11, 2011
Firings at the WaPo
Just heard from a source who heard it from a friend who heard it from a cousin who is dating someone who works at the Washington Post that one of the freelancers who has been covering the DMV art scene has been fired.
Hard to tell who it is, since the WaPo employs so many different freelancers to cover various parts of the DMV art scene.
I've asked the WaPo for the name; let's see if they respond.
Enough is Enough!
It has been over a month since the Communist thugs who run China arrested artist Ai Weiwei and he hasn't been heard since.
It is time for all the museums and artists and art organizations which do business with China to boycott the ruthless bastards who run that beautiful nation. The fact that the ChiComs have brutalized their own people for generations, and that the world looks the other way in our thirst for cheap labor and commodities is the harsh reality.
But the art world should be better. We should all stop doing art business with China: no more art fair participation by non Chinese galleries, no more cultural exchanges, no more museum dealings, no more anything in the art world.
Boycott the whole damned gigantic country and send a small but powerful message to the criminals who run that Communist hell.
Hijos de puta!
Latino Art Museum: Still a Bad Idea!
Eight years ago, when the story first surfaced in the Washington Post about a Latino Museum on the National Mall, I opposed it.
Back then, Rep. Xavier Becerra (D-Calif.) introduced the bill to set up a commission to study the idea’s feasibility. The museum would be based in Washington, around the National Mall and “might be under the umbrella of the Smithsonian Institution.”
According to the 2003 article by Jacqueline Trescott, “This is one issue that unites our community,” said Raul Yzaguirre, the president of the National Council of La Raza.
In 2008, the Washington Post updated the issue and reported that “President Bush
... signed legislation yesterday establishing a commission to study the feasibility of a National Museum of the American Latino.Since we're still arguing about it, let me once again disagree and state for the record that this is one of the worst, most divisive artsy ideas to have come out of creative Congressional & Hollywood minds in years.
The measure, part of a larger legislative package, creates a 23-member bipartisan panel that will give the president and Congress recommendations about the scope of the project.
Over a two-year period, it will consider the location, the cost of construction and maintenance, and the presentation of art, history, politics, business and entertainment in American Latino life.
Why have a separate, segregated museum for Latinos? Why not get more Latinos into the national museums, period.
I note once again, the use of the word “Latino” as opposed to the now almost not PC term- “Hispanic.” Otherwise we may have to take all the Picassos, and Dalis, and Miros, and Goyas and Velazquezs out of the mainstream museums and put them in a “Hispanic” museum…. gracias a Dios for that.
As it is now, we may have to take all the Wifredo Lams, Roberto Mattas, Frida Kahlos, etc. out of the “other museums” and put them in the “Latino Museum.”
But ooops! the Frida Kahlo in the nation’s capital is already in a segregated museum - in this case segregated by sex.
The misguided semantic/ethnic/racial debate about Latino or Hispanic is a good, if somewhat silly bucket of ignorant fun.
Anyway… Latino is (I think) now associated with people of Latin American ancestry… it apparently includes the millions of Central and South Americans of pure Native American blood (many of who do not even speak Spanish), and the millions of South Americans of Italian, German, Jewish, Middle Eastern and Japanese ancestry. It also includes the millions of Latin Americans of African ancestry.
It doesn’t include Spaniards, Portuguese, French or Italians…. you Europeans Latins are out!
According to the Post, “Felix Sanchez, the chairman of the National Hispanic Foundation for the Arts, said, “The museum is really a long-overdue concept. There is a void of presenting in one location a more in-depth representation of the culture and its presence in the mainstream of American consciousness.”
Mr. Sanchez: There is no such thing as a single “Latino culture.” In fact, I submit that there are twenty-something different “Latino” cultures in Latin America - none of which is the same as the various Latino mini-cultures in the US.
We "Latinos", no matter how hard you politicians and label-makers try to assemble and push us and label us into one monolithic group, are not such a group; we are as different from each other as the English-speaking peoples of the world are different from each other.
Call a Scotsman "English" and see what will happen to your face.
As an example, anyone who thinks that Mexico’s gorgeously rich and sometimes proud native heritage is similar to Argentina’s cultural heritage is simply ignorant at best. In fact Argentina purposefully nearly wiped out its own indigenous population in an effort (according to the war rallies of the times) “not to become another Mexico.”
And the cultural heritage of the Dominican Republic is as different from that of Bolivia and Peru as two/three countries that technically share a same language can be.
And for example, Mexican-Americans’ tastes in food, music, and politics, etc. are wildly different from Cuban-Americans and Dominican-Americans, etc.
Would anyone ever group Swedes, Danes, Germans and Norwegians and create a “Nordic-American Museum”? Ahhh… they have; silly ideas are not restricted to Congress, are they?
Or how about French, Spaniards, Rumanians and Italians for a “Latin-European-American Museum” - hang on - that doesn’t fit or does it? Makes my head hurt.
For the record, as I did in 2003 when I first learned about this issue, I still don’t believe in segregating artists according to ethnicity, race or religion. How about letting the art itself decide inclusion in a museum. And if not enough African American, or Native American, or Latino/Hispanic or “fill-in-the-blank”-American artists are in the mainstream American museums, then let’s fight that good fight and not just take the easy/hard route of having “our own” museum.
Comemierdas... What does Little Junes think about this issue?
Tuesday, May 10, 2011
Things we learned in New York
It never ceases to amaze me how often I run into stories of what I thought were ethical gallerists only to discover otherwise from artists.
One of the most common things that unethical art dealers do at art fairs is to inflate prices. This allows them to "deal" with interested buyers, and offer them discounts on the art. Facing galleries that inflate their prices up to 40% or more... in order to then appear to offer great deals, ethical gallerists then have to deal with collectors "used" to getting 40% price chops.
"I decided a while back to just add 40% more to my prices," confessed a dealer in New York last week. "I got tired of explaining to buyers that I couldn't give them a 40% discount."
Feh.
Then there's the very cool NYC photographer who has exhibited several times in DC. She relates the story of how her DC dealer sold some of her work, then decided to move from DC, and told her that he couldn't "afford to pay her." A few years later she's still waiting to get paid. "Now I just tell everyone that I know to stay away from this gallery," she adds.
Monday, May 09, 2011
AAFNYC: Sunday Report
Yesterday was the final day for the Affordable Art Fair NYC, and the fair was pretty packed with mothers all day long. Sales seemed to be brisk along our immediate area, with the British galleries that surrounded the Mayer Fine Art booth all doing gang buster sales.
MFA sold a few more of my drawings, two more wood engravings by DMV artist Rosemary Feit Covey and a very cool aluminum sculpture by Norfolk area artist and Old Dominion University professor John R.G. Roth.
The two DMV area galleries in the fair (Fraser Gallery and Honfleur Gallery) both reported excellent sales as well, so it seems like this fair paid off for the local galleries as well.
Tear down and packing was the usual nightmare when you have 80 galleries or so all trying to bring all their stuff down one elevator from the 11th floor down to the loading dock on super busy 35th street.
Back to the DMV by midnight and heading out to San Diego tomorrow.
Sunday, May 08, 2011
AAF: The Saturday report
Yesterday was another well-attended day, with a good stream of visitors all day long, although they tapered off by 7PM.
Mayer Fine Art sold yet another sculpture by Norfolk artist Christine K. Harris, a wood engraving by DMV artist Rosemary Feit Covey and one more of my drawings.
Today is the last day of the fair.
Saturday, May 07, 2011
AAFNYC: The Friday report
Yesterday there were good crowds again; and once again they picked up at night. Mayer Fine Art sold my largest drawing in the show, plus another sculpture by Norfolk artist Christine K. Harris and a painting by Russian painter Alexey Terenin.
Eve, Agonizing Over The Sin.
Charcoal on Paper. 13 x 49 inches.
Now in a private collection in New Jersey
Highlights from the Affordable Art Fair New York City
Founded 12 years ago by London gallerist Will Ramsay (who also does the Pulse Art Fair), the Affordable Art Fair New York City holds fairs not only in New York and London, but also Amsterdam, Bristol, Brussels, Melbourne, Milan, Paris, Singapore, Sydney and for the first time later this year, Los Angeles.
I've been attending this fair (the New York version) since 2006, and it has never disappointed me. With a price ceiling of $10,000 USD, the term "affordable" is relative in more ways than one, but one can find a lot of art in this fair which starts as low as $75!
This year there were quite a few European galleries (see the exhibitors' list here) as well as a variety of American galleries, including two from the DMV.
In walking around the fair, I particularly liked the photography of Giuseppe Mastromatteo at New York's emmanuel fremin gallery.
They are subtly surreal without being overtly commercial, as a lot of this sort of photography tends to be. This NYC gallery has a whole host of photographers that share this sensibility, and they all work together in a very elegant booth display.
Britain's Fairfax Gallery also has a standout in the technically breath-taking work of Mary Jane Ansell, who manages to capture a sexy Lolita feel to her portraits of young women with a play on stares deeply submerged in psychological innuendos.
Another European gallery with super work, in this case by a photographer, is Spain's Villa de Arte Gallery. The minimalist work of Marc Harrold.
Louise Lawton at New York's Stricoff Fine Art also fits within the same minimalist niche occupied by Harrold, but this brilliant work is charcoal on gesso board. 
Finally, Michelle Mikesell's paintings, with Dallas' DeCorazon Gallery, get my vote for best in show.
Mikesell's work spans an interesting narrative offering full of hidden clues within her paintings. They are superbly well painted, and as a devoted fan of technical skill, that always becomes attractive to me.
Technical skill alone does not a great artist make, say the Yodas of the art world, and they are right.
That is why that hard to describe ability to marry technical mastery with intelligent composition and the magic to grab a corner of our minds, is such a key component of what makes an artist's work go beyond well executed to begin to reach the first steps of the ladder to being a true visual art gem that stands above the rest; Mikesell is way up that ladder.
The fair runs through Sunday.
Friday, May 06, 2011
AAFNYC Opening Day
Yesterday was the "official" opening day for AAFNYC and through most of the day the crowds were very thin (some folks guessing that a lot of folks were avoiding NYC during Pres. Obama's visit to ground zero, due to the traffic snarls).
From 6-8PM, entry to the fair was free and the crowds poured in for the last two hours of the show, more than compensating for the thin crowds during the day.
Mayer Fine Art scored some sales, including a spectacular painting by the DMV's Sharon Moody and later in the day they sold my Frida Kahlo video drawing - my first ever sale of the new series of drawings with embedded narrative videos). Later on the night they also sold two more of my drawings.
And check out Maura Judkis' account of the acquisition of one of my pieces by a celeb that I didn't recognize.
Thursday, May 05, 2011
AAFNYC Preview Day
Last night it was packed to the gills (in fact I am told that the attendance exceeded the maximum number of people allowed in the building).
Mayer Fine Art broke the ice even before the fair opened up to the public when they sold one my drawings to a member of the press during the press preview.
The rest of the night they also sold a really cool sculpture by Norfolk sculptor Christine K. Harris and a painting by Russian painter Alexey Terenin.
Wednesday, May 04, 2011
Funny
In reference to the historic image below (by White House photog Peter Souza), notice the look in VP Biden.
I'm in New York and today, while waiting to cross the street at 34th and Eighth Avenue, I overheard a New Yorker say to his buddy: "I heard that the reason that Biden looks so pissed off is because Obama took the remote away from him because Biden kept changing the channel asking "What else is on?"
American humor at its best.
Tuesday, May 03, 2011
Close call
From now on, I'm doing this first before confirming a hotel room anywhere: Check them out in Bed Bug Registry.
I'm heading to NYC today for the Affordable Art Fair, and had booked my hotel months in advance. Yesterday I decided to check them out for bedbugs and here's what I found (one of four reports):
My friend ( who is a licensed pest control professional in the UK) checked in here tonight (7/3/10). Being a professional, he inspected the room and found a severe infestation of bedbugs in several locations. He informed management, and was moved to another room, which he inspected. It too was infested with bed bugs. After nearly an hour on the phone with the front desk person who informed me management would not be in for a few days but they would help me then, and begging the hotels.com people to help me (the hotels.com people were really sympathetic and very helpful, unlike the people at hotel 31) we managed to get switched to a new hotel for the remaining 4 days of the trip, but will have to take a loss on tonight. He cannot stay there, as these creatures are excellent hitchhikers, and even with great precaution can make their way home with you, which will cost thousands of dollars to deal with. THIS HOTEL SHOULD BE SHUT DOWN AS A HEALTH HAZARD.I called them immediately and cancelled, and then began the process of hunting for a new hotel at the last minute.
I ended up in one without any bed bug reports, but at twice the price; but better safe than itchy. Nonetheless, as soon as I check into the room, I'm inspecting it for the little bloodsuckers, which I've been doing anyway for the last few years since these bugs began showing up everywhere.
Monday, May 02, 2011
History in a Photograph
I don't know who took this photograph, but this is an amazing marriage of technology, history, narrative art and drama.
Here we see the President, Vice President, Secretary of State, Secretary of Defense, Chief of Naval Operations, and other staff watch the operation to kill Osama bin Laden live at the White House.
Technology brought a life and death reality show to our leaders, safe in the White House, while superbly well-trained and highly qualified young men (Navy Seals) do what they do so well: their job.
The look on these faces, and what they were watching live, thanks to man-wearable technology, is now part of history, and it is a visual art genre which records it for us.
I wish that I knew the name of this photographer, so that I could give him or her a well deserved "Bravo Zulu"!
Update: This photograph is by Pete Souza, the official White House photographer
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