Vintage Che

To the left is the most reproduced photograph in human history. It's an image taken by Cuban photographer Korda (1928-2001) of Argentine mass-murdering guerrilla icon Ernesto Guevara de La Serna Lynch, known to most of the world as Che and to many Cubans as "El Chacal de La Cabana."

Che's photo has been reproduced in billions of T-Shirts, posters, postcards, cigar labels, vodka labels, etc. as the West's all-powerful ad machinery, driven mostly by an mystic love of all things Che by Italians and the French, has iconized this image beyond's Korda's wildest expectations (and until the very end of his life, he didn't get a penny for it, as in Castro's workers' paradise, the state, not Korda, had ownership of the image).

Would you be surprised to learn that the very first vintage photo of Che; the very first one; Korda's own personal print; the mother of all subsequent images of Che, has found a home in the DMV?

It does, living alongside 17 other vintage Korda photographs acquired directly from Korda's daughter soon after the legendary Cuban photographer died.

Artists 62 and older...

The Research Center for Arts and Culture at the National Center for Creative Aging
(NYC & DC Metro Area ) --- ART CART: SAVING THE LEGACY (www.creativeaging.org/artcart) will select professional visual artists from the NYC and Washington DC Metro areas for a 9-month project (September 2012-May 2013) run by the Research Center for Arts and Culture at the National Center for Creative Aging to help organize and document the artists' work.

Artists receive honoraria for public forums. To receive more information please send your contact information to rcac@creativeaging.org or leave it at 202-895-9489. Info materials will be sent in January for a February deadline.

Website: http://www.creativeaging.org/artcart

Graduate Arts Award

Deadline: 9 February 2012

The Graduate Arts Award - The Jack Kent Cooke Foundation Graduate Arts Award recognizes and rewards America's promising up-and-coming artists from lower-income backgrounds with the nation's leading graduate scholarships in the visual arts, performing arts, and creative writing.

The Graduate Arts Award enables students or recent alumni with exceptional artistic or creative promise and significant financial need to pursue up to three years of study at an accredited graduate institution in the US or abroad. Awards can be as much as $50,000 annually. In 2012, the Foundation will select up to 15 recipients for this award.

The award provides funding for tuition, room and board, required fees, and books. Scholarship amounts vary based on several factors, including cost at the institution each recipient attends and other grants and scholarships the student receives.

Students interested in the program must be nominated by the Jack Kent Cooke Foundation Faculty Representative at their school, and may not apply directly to the Foundation. Each college or university may nominate two students to be considered for this award.

SELECTION CRITERIA
A review panel of distinguished artists, arts faculty, and university administrators select Scholars using criteria including artistic or creative merit, academic achievement, financial need, will to succeed, and a breadth of interest and activities.

The online application is available now and the deadline for submission is February 9, 2012. For more information please visit the Jack Kent Cooke Foundation website.

Another Experiment: Frida After Frida

As I've discussed and reflected on this site many times, over the last year or so I have been experimenting with the marriage of technology and drawing. In the first trials, I have begun to embed a video player into drawings and use that technology to expand my interest in narrative art.

In preparation for the recent Aqua Art Fair in Miami during Art Basel Week, I also began to experiment with tiny LCD screens and software that would allow a Powerpoint-like presentation.


Here we see a shot of my studio with the first stage of a drawing of Frida Kahlo. I envisioned a Kahlo portrait that (like the Kahlo portrait with a small portrait of Diego Rivera on her forehead) that would amplify her obsession (and mine) with her own image.


And thus, here is the drawing - prior to the addition of the electronic component.


And here is the 1.5 inch LCD screen and the motherboard with rechargeable lithium battery.


Here is the drawing with the window cut into her forehead.


And here's a detail showing the embedded electronic component playing a continuous loop of all of Kahlo's self portraits.

This piece is now in the De La Torre Collection in Miami Beach. The Aqua Art Fair was a spectacular success for these new pieces.

What's next?

About a decade ago I did a huge drawing entitled "Last Supper for Dictators." The piece was exhibited at one of my solos at the old Fraser Gallery in Georgetown, and subsequently sold to a New York collector via Sotheby's auction. It depicted a last supper scene with the principals being Latin American dictators. Che Guevara was The Christ, Fidel Castro was Judas Iscariot, Evita Peron was The Magdalene, etc.

I am going to revisit that theme again, and this time the video or Powerpoint component will amplify the presence of the dictators.

The WPA 2012 Auction Jurors are...

Seth Adelsberger - Artist & Co-Founder, Nudashank (Baltimore, MD)

Molly Donovan - Associate Curator, National Gallery of Art

Sarah Newman - Curator, Corcoran Gallery of Art

Dennis O’Neil - Chair, Fine Arts Dept at Corcoran College of Art+Design, Director at Hand Print Workshop International

Stephen Phillips - Fine Arts Program Director, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System

Katy Murnane Reis - Curatorial Assistant, Wexner Art Center

Judy Sherman - Independent Curator, J Fine Art

Paul Thulin - Interim Chair, Dept. of Photography and Film at VCU

Tomorrow: Kahn & Goldberg at Addison Ripley


Wolf Kahn: paintings & pastels and Carol Brown Goldberg: sculptures

December 9, 2011 - January 21, 2012

Opening reception for the artists: Friday, December 9th, 6-8pm.

New Xmas Song

WGS Open House

The Washington Glass School will have its 10th annual Winter Sculpture Show and Holiday Open House, featuring works by artists and instructors of the Washington Glass School.

Some of the region’s leading mixed media sculptors and artists work from the studios on the edge of DC, and artwork both large and small will be on sale.

This event is more than an art open house – its an experience! I get a lot of Xmas presents there each year.

The adjacent artist studios - FluxStudios and Ellyn Weiss Studio will also be open on the day.

Washington Glass School Winter Sculpture Show
1pm – 5 pm
Saturday, Dec 10, 2011
Free and open to the public

Washington Glass School
3700 Otis Street
Mount Rainier, MD 20712
phone: 202.744.8222
website: www.washglass.com
email: washglassschool@aol.com

December 7

This story has been a perfect guiding example for me most of my life: seeing the silver lining in every possible aspect of life:

Sunday, December 7th, 1941--Admiral Chester Nimitz was attending a concert in Washington D.C. He was paged and told there was a phone call for him.

When he answered the phone, it was President Franklin Delano Roosevelt. He told Admiral Nimitz that he (Nimitz) would now be the Commander of the Pacific Fleet.

Admiral Nimitz flew to Hawaii to assume command of the Pacific Fleet. He landed at Pearl Harbor on Christmas Eve, 1941. There was such a spirit of despair, dejection and defeat—you would have thought the Japanese had already won the war.

On Christmas Day, 1941, Adm. Nimitz was given a boat tour of the destruction wrought on Pearl Harbor by the Japanese. Big sunken battleships and navy vessels cluttered the waters every where you looked. As the tour boat returned to dock, the young helmsman of the boat asked, "Well Admiral, what do you think after seeing all this destruction?"

Admiral Nimitz's reply shocked everyone within the sound of his voice.

Admiral Nimitz said, "The Japanese made three of the biggest mistakes an attack force could ever make, or God was taking care of America. Which do you think it was?"

Shocked and surprised, the young helmsman asked, "What do mean by saying the Japanese made the three biggest mistakes an attack force ever made?"

Nimitz explained: Mistake number one: the Japanese attacked on Sunday morning. Nine out of every ten crewmen of those ships were ashore on leave. If those same ships had been lured to sea and been sunk--we would have lost 38,000 men instead of 3,800.

Mistake number two: when the Japanese saw all those battleships lined in a row, they got so carried away sinking those battleships, they never once bombed our dry docks opposite those ships. If they had destroyed our dry docks, we would have had to tow everyone of those ships to America to be repaired. As it is now, the ships are in shallow water and can be raised. One tug can pull them over to the dry docks, and we can have them repaired and at sea by the time we could have towed them to America. And I already have crews ashore anxious to man those ships.

Mistake number three: Every drop of fuel in the Pacific theater of war is on top of the ground in storage tanks five miles away over that hill. One attack plane could have strafed those tanks and destroyed our fuel supply.

That's why I say the Japanese made three of the biggest mistakes an attack force could make, or God was taking care of America.

-- "Reflections on Pearl Harbor" by Admiral Chester Nimitz

Manon

Today at 3PM you can come to say a final Adios to Manon Cleary, a spectacular and talented artist, and wonderful mentor to many DMV artists. At Joseph A Gawler's Funeral Home, 5130 Wisconsin Ave NW, Washington, DC 20016.

Matta at AMA tomorrow

Art Jobs

Check them out here.

Campello for Christmas

My daughter Elise has been busy recording a Christmas Album by Sony Masterworks and Steinway Artist Andrew T. Miller.

Elise, along with a few other very talented artists, are featured on this album and you should get one today and play it often during Xmas.

Go to www.andrewtmiller.org for more info!

ABMB: The Last Day

And thus came Sunday - which is the art fair day where most ABMB Art fairs end... and there are always a bit of tremors in the minds of gallerists, as the packing out is always a complex chess game of vans, trucks, boxes and packing tape.

Over at Aqua, it was a very busy and well-attended day again, and I managed to sell a few more drawings including the remaining piece with an embedded digital component.

The fact that all the works with embedded digital elements (video or otherwise) sold, does not escape me... more on that later.

In fact, Sunday was the second best day of the fair.

Around closing time, the nightmare scenario (for closing day) began to develop: rain!

But I just took my time and took down the work, wrapped it, boxed it, filled in the holes on the wall, painted the walls, and went down to check out the loading scene on front of the Aqua Hotel.

There was a spot on the small front driveway.

I ran to the parking lot... full speed, both man and van on the return drive... overshot the hotel (yes I did) and had to back down on busy Collins Avenue, but nonetheless, after a lot of birds being flipped at me, managed to sneak the van into a Doris Day parking spot right in front of the door of the hotel.

With the rain pouring down, I grabbed a couple of guys to help (offering them some Samolians) and loaded up... then drove to Wynwood to unload into my shipper's van and by midnight it was all done.

This was my best Miami ever - More next December....

ABMB Day Four

This morning I shifted the Campello headquarters from Hollywood Beach to Little Havana, then started the art morning by delivering four sales from yesterday to the collector's home.

By the time I got back to Aqua, it was past one PM, and the gallery minder had sold not one, but three more Erwin Timmer pieces (he's now sold five pieces at Aqua).

I then sold a couple more drawings, one of Dulce Pinzon's cool photographs and a nice sculpture by Charles Flickinger. I also have the remaining large drawing of mine with an embedded digital element on hold.

Tomorrow is the last day of the fairs and the nightmare known as pack-out begins.

Luba Sterlikova

The art exhibit Innergism by Luba Sterlikova runs at the Parish Gallery in Georgetown, DC, December 7,2011 - January 17, 2012 with the opening reception on December 7, 2011. 6-8 p.m.

This the first exhibit of Luba's abstract art in Washington, but her paintings have already been exhibited and well received by the public in London, Paris, Moscow and Khanty-Mansyisk.

ABMB Day Three

Today the Pulse Contemporary Art Fair (which I hear is asskicking) announced that Alyssa Dennis (Kesting/Ray, New York), Brookhart Jonquil (Dorsch Gallery, Miami), and Larissa Nowicki (Man & Eve, London, UK) had been selected as the finalists for the Miami 2012 PULSE Prize. Selected from the thirteen exhibitors in the solo-artist IMPULSE section of the fair by Director Cornell DeWitt and PULSE Committee members Stefan Roepke (Galerie Stefan Roepke, Cologne / Madrid), Mark Moore (Mark Moore Gallery, Culver City, CA) and Thomas Von Lintel, (Von Lintel Gallery, New York, NY) the three artists "embody the exciting and ambitious works for which the IMPULSE Section was founded."

DCAN sends envious congrats to Baltimore artist Alyssa Dennis! She "creates colored graphite renderings of partial architectural elevations blended with animals and assorted objects, and is a frequent collaborator with noted artist Swoon. A resident of Baltimore, Maryland, she has exhibited extensively throughout the United States and is the recipient of numerous awards, including three selections by the Maryland State Council in the Arts Fellowship."

Today Aqua was humming with a constant flow of visitors. I got there at 11AM as usual, dropped $4.50 for a double cappuccino, tried to catch up with email (over 500 behind - most of them waaay old) and stood by to hawk artwork.

I checked with some of the other DMV galleries, and Heiner Contemporary (they're at Scope) reports that they've been:

"quite pleased with our experience at SCOPE thus far. Foot traffic picked up yesterday and has been increasingly heavy throughout today, which is great to see. We've also had lots of luck with the collector's edition video and Avery's gotten a bit of press (see: here, and here. In addition to the articles above, Avery and the gallery were interviewed for a new website about performance art, which is launching early next year: performanceartist.com. Several museum people and galleries have generally expressed interest Avery’s work, which has been quite exciting as well. Lastly, at SCOPE, I’ve been struck by how strong the DC galleries are… I think they’ve really “brought it” this year and we’re s happy to be a part of the DC gallery group!"

Back to Aqua, today was an excellent day as we started the day with sales of several individual drawings of mine, followed by sales of three of my new series of drawings with embedded videos (Obama Agonistes, Ave Frida and Batman & Robin) and one of Tim Tate's self contained video sculptures.

This was by far the best day so far, and tomorrow, early in the morning, before I head back to Aqua, I got to deliver and install all four pieces.

Yep...

You gotta watch this

ABMB Week Day Two

The celebs are all over town, as apparently "There's a new celebrity collecting frenzy. It's becoming a hot new symbol of status," said Alexander Gilkes, co-founder of online art marketplace Paddle8, a partner in Nada, one of the many satellite fairs that surround ABMB.

I don't know about "new" but whatever...

Anyway, read about the celebs and ABMB here.

The only sighting that was reported to me from the satellite fairs was that apparently Will Smith had dropped $63,000 on a rather patriotic piece that he acquired at Red Dot today.

I'm also hearing that the Pulse Art Fair is absolutely amazing this year. "This is the best Pulse ever," noted a well-known Miami art collector when I asked her about it.

I got to Aqua at 11AM this morning to open up the joint, and by the time I got there, a fully stocked bar was doing brisk business on the ground floor and some big limos were dropping people off busy Collins Avenue.

People trickled by all day, and I cracked the ice mid day with a sale of one of my drawings and later on, the collector who had placed the Cirenaica Moreira piece on hold, came back and bought it.

At exactly the same time, a local glass collector acquired one of Erwin Timmer's glass pieces that he does from glass that he reclaims and recycles from buildings being torn down.

When it rains it pours.

One more sale of one of my drawings follows and then the night is over and I'm heading back to Hollywood, spending the usual 25 minutes to go from 16th Street on Collins to 20th...

Tomorrow the weekend will ramp up, traffic will get worse and more people will be there.

O Yea... I got mentioned in the Nuevo Herald yesterday - read it here.

ABMB Week: Day Two

Last night was the Aqua Art Fair opening and I'm sure several others (heh, heh), but since I'm at Aqua, at Aqua I was all day and night.

The life of a gallerist: Since Monday I have been arriving at the Aqua Hotel in the morning and leaving at night, as setting up an art fair is a lot of work. And yesterday was no exception. I was there by ten AM and pretty much finished by 5PM or so, and since the opening was at 8PM, usually one would say: "Hey Lenster, pretty good for a one-man Army setting up a gallery show."

Not so fast.

There's always a crisis, right? So this time it was the fact that the amazing Mexican photographer Dulce Pinzon's gorgeous photographs, which I am for the first time exhibiting, had been "attempted to deliver" yesterday, but according to UPS, no one was at the address... never mind that my aunt has not left the house in several years and was thus the reason why I picked her house to have Dulce ship the photos from Mexico.

But I thought, that maybe she was in the bathroom when they came... and gave UPS the benefit of the doubt.

Crisis looming; now UPS would try to deliver on the same day that the fair opens.

Dulce calls me from Mexico, alarmed that the work has not been delivered - and she's been told that a second attempt has been made and no one was at home. That I cannot believe and I call UPS and track the package; it hasn't been re-attempted yet.

I enlist the extended family and ask cousins to come over and stand watch for the UPS truck as it comes by the streets of Hialeah. My cousin Carlos lives on the same street as my aunt, and he sits outside on the porch of his beautiful house and begins to stand guard while his son Andrew patrols the streets in his skateboard.

It is now 6PM or so and suddenly the UPS truck arrives and drives by my aunt's house, and Andrew begins to chase it in his skateboard. He catches up to it at the corner of LeJeune Road and asks the driver "Que Pasa?"

A garbled explanation later, Andrew has the box of photographs in his possession and he skateboards back to his Dad's house and they all get in the car and start the short drive to Miami Beach to bring the photos to me.

Short drive, but a long time because of the fact that this is, after all, South Beach, one of the hottest places in the world, somewhat because of the really bad traffic at all hours.

At 7:45PM, Carlos drops Andrew at the Aqua Hotel and with his help, by 8PM, when the fair opens, Pinzon's groundbreaking work is finally hanging on the walls of room 218.

Is that cutting it close or what?

An hour later Carlos arrives - he has been looking for parking all along... he gets a hug and an original Campello as a "gracias" from a very grateful cousin.

Aqua begins to rock as people pour in. DMV area uberartist Akemi Maegawa drops in, and across the hotel I see Andrea Pollan and Jeff Spaulding. Then Margaret Heiner from Heiner Contemporary drops in, as does uberblogger Joanne Mattera, whose work is also here at Aqua, as well as many good collectors dribbling in from the shuttle between Pulse, ABMB and Aqua.

Live music and booze and women in seven inch heels seem to be everywhere and the first sale of the night is one of my drawings, which is (of course) at exactly the same time that someone wants to buy an Andrew Wodzianski piece which I haven't had time to look up and price, so I ring Andrew and that piece becomes the second sale of the night.

Earlier on, Cuban photographer Cirenaica Moreira's work had attracted the attention of a curator from a German museum, and Cire now has an invitation for a group show at that museum... this is why art fairs are important beyond sales. And her streak continues, as one of her pieces is then put on hold by a well-known Virginia art collector with an extensive Cuban art collection.

Finally, a Dulce Pinzon photo is put on hold by a very nice Australian lady, and by midnight, even though the place is still packed, I'm exhausted and head to my hotel in Hollywood.

The 16 miles take me almost two hours.

WTF are all these people doing on A1A at one AM in the morning on a Wednesday/Thursday?