Our Small Rooms

Two D.C. artists, Michele Banks and Kendall Nordin, whose work "focus on the delicacy and complexity of autonomic cellular processes: Banks through jewel-toned watercolors, and Nordin via a site-specific mixed-media installation" opened tonight at the gorgeous Open Gallery at the Cafritz Arts Center, Montgomery College, and I've already heard some good things about it.

The show goes through March 9, 2012 and the reception is Feb. 9; more details here.

Open Gallery
Cafritz Arts Center, Montgomery College
Hours: Monday–Friday, 8 a.m.–4 p.m.; Saturday, 10 a.m.–4 p.m.
Location: The Open Gallery is on the ground floor of The Morris and Gwendolyn Cafritz Foundation Arts Center located at 930 King Street on the west side of the Takoma Park/Silver Spring Campus. Parking is available in the West Garage, located immediately behind the center. For more information: Call 240-567-5821 or visit this website.

Calls for Entry: Experimental Media 2012

Interactive Installation Deadline: Friday, January 13, 5pm
Video Screening Deadline: Friday, February 10, 5pm

Curators: Max Kazemzadeh, Assistant Professor of Media Art & Technology, Gallaudet University and Jonah Brucker-Cohen, Assistant Professor at Parsons MFA in Design and Technology and Parsons School of Art, Design, History, and Theory.

Washington Project for the Arts is currently accepting submissions for two open calls as part of Experimental Media 2012. Consisting of an exhibition of interactive installation works, a video screening program, and a series of workshops, Experimental Media 2012 will explore recent developments in the field of art and technology, including the growth of open source software and hardware, the emergence of grassroots do-it-yourself hacker communities, and the increasing ubiquity of networked devices in daily life. While highlighting the creative potential of this new technology, Experimental Media 2012 also seeks projects that explore the broader social and cultural implications of these rapid changes.

Experimental Media 2012: Exhibition Component

Exhibition Dates: April 12 - May 20, 2012
Location: Artisphere, 1101 Wilson Boulevard, Arlington, VA, 22209
Submission Deadline: Friday, January 13, 5pm
Download the full call here
Submit Online here

AU opens 2012 season

The American University Museum at the Katzen Arts Center will open its 2012 season on Saturday, January 28, with four new exhibitions, including Anil Revri: Faith and Liberation through Abstraction, an exhibition of introspective works by artist Anil Revri, a native of New Delhi, India.

Revri, an alumnus of Washington’s Corcoran College of Art and Design, constructs his paintings on a grid, and the repetition of finely detailed geometric elements offers viewers numerous optical rewards. But these are also contemporary spiritual paintings analogous in their functions to Tantric Art, and its distant relation the Byzantine icon.

Byzantine icons were thought to be windows into heaven. Through the icon, the viewer could know God and experience the miraculous. It was expected the Byzantine iconographer would lead a life of prayer, meditation, and fasting. For Revri, too, as a Tantric Artist, painting is a spiritual act, an act requiring discipline and devotion.

“They are beautiful, their craft is breathtaking, but their success depends on whether they further us, and the artist, along in the process of enlightenment,” said Jack Rasmussen, director and curator of the American University Museum at the Katzen Arts Center.

The exhibition is sponsored by the Indian Embassy.

In addition to Anil Revri: Faith and Liberation through Abstraction, three other exhibitions will open January 28 at the American University Museum — Gabarrón’s Roots, Raoul Middleman: City Limits, and Regaining our Faculties: Zoë Charlton, Tim Doud, Deborah Kahn, and Luis Manuel Cravo Silva.

Anil Revri: Faith and Liberation through Abstraction and Gabarrón’s Roots close Sunday, April 15.

Raoul Middleman: City Limits and Regaining our Faculties: Zoë Charlton, Tim Doud, Deborah Kahn, and Luis Manuel Cravo Silva close Sunday, March 18.

(dis)figure

Jessika Dené Tarr
(dis)figure
Jan 13, 2012 - Opening Reception 6pm - 9pm

Curated by Jacqueline Hoysted, this exhibition showcases thirty-four new works on paper by Jessika Dené Tarr. Each piece explores the human figure by presenting ideas about its invention and reinterpretation.

CountDown Artspace
4526 Cheltenham Drive
Bethesda MD 20814

Nome is frozen!

...and the Coast Guard has ice breaker issues... read the NYT story here.

World’s first Art Decathlon to be at DC Arts Center

Four artists compete in 10 categories to claim the title of best artist.

If the best all-around athlete is one who most efficiently balances speed, strength, technique, and endurance, then what defines the best all-around artist?

This good-natured competition sparks the debate around the issue of what it means to be the best all-around artist, challenges individuals to try their hand at new disciplines, and gives exposure to artists who embrace working in various media.

In the spring of 2011 DCAC posted an open call for individual artists in the DC metropolitan area to submit proposals that explore the significance of what “unspecialized” means to being a working artist today. Artists were told they had to “compete” in ten artistic areas: Textiles/fiber art, Painting, Drawing, Video, Printmaking, Photography, Collage, Sound, Conceptual Art, and Sculpture.

Applicants from diverse backgrounds were narrowed by DCAC’s Visual Arts Committee to four semi-finalists: Shanthi Chandrasekar, Lee Gainer, Lisa Rosenstein, and Mary Woodall. During the six-month run-up to the exhibition, designated commentators Buck Downs, Patrick McDonough, Karen Joan Topping , Hays Holladay and Ryan Holladay, covered the progress of the decathletes on a blog as the artists created work for the show, with each commentator being assigned an artist to visit once a month. Shanthi Chandrasekar likened her experience to "learning to drive on the expressway" and Lisa Rosenstein states "this competition has changed the way I look at my whole working process."

The opening reception for The DCAC Art Decathlon will take place on Friday January 13, from 7:00 – 9:00 and will culminate in an artist’s talk and awards ceremony on Sunday, February 5 at 5:00.

The work of all the semi-finalists will be on view at DCAC from January 13 to February 5, during which time it will be viewed and judged by an eight-person panel including George Hemphill, Andrea Pollan and Vivian Lassman. Two discussion panels will be held during the exhibition, one focused on the relationship of athletic competition and a second on art and the creative process for the four finalists. Dates to be determined.

Follow the decathletes and their progress at dcacdecathlon.wordpress.com.

Great lecture and discussion

Yesterday's talk and discussion by the very talented Magda Campos-Pons at the National Museum of African Art was amazing!

And it was really well-attended.

Go to this today...

This Saturday, January 7, at 2 pm in Mezzanine, Sublevel 1 of the National Museum of African Art: The human hurricane known as María Magdalena Campos-Pons!!!

Cuban-born American artist Maria Magdalena Campos-Pons discusses her work of the last 20 years, focusing on the installation art, performative photography, and cultural activism that have gained her international recognition. Art historian Steven Nelson (University of California at Los Angeles) joins the artist in a conversation about her family history in Nigeria, Cuba, and Boston and its influence on her poignant artworks. This program is free, spread the word!!!

Image: still from "Not just Another Day", 1999, Version #2, silent video projection, María Magdalena Campos-Pons.

My 2008 studio visit with Maria Magdalena Campos-Pons can be read online here. Read it and prepare to be impressed by this dynamo of an artist.

“When I am not here/Estoy Alla” c. 1994 by Maria Magdalena Campos-Pons

SELECT: WPA 2012 Art Auction Gala


SELECT: WPA 2012 Art Auction Gala - March 3, 6:30pm - 11:30pm

Don't miss your opportunity to purchase original works of art by top talents and support the work of Washington's premier not-for-profit organization dedicated to supporting artists and presenting the best in contemporary art!

New location: 1800 L Street NW, DC (Special Thanks to Somerset Partners)

Click Below To Purchase Gala Tickets Online

Individual Patrons

Corporate Patrons

For More Information or to Purchase by Phone or Email

Contact Christopher Cunetto at ccunetto@wpadc.org or 202-234-7103 x 5

Still damaged

A 36-year-old woman was accused of causing $10,000 worth of damage to a painting by the late abstract expressionist artist Clyfford Still, a work valued at more than $30 million, authorities said on Wednesday.

Read the whole story here.

US Rep. Ros-Lehtinen on the SI

U.S. Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-FL), Chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee (and who is a Cuban-American), made the following statement on the Smithsonian Institution’s upcoming trips to Cuba under a so-called People-to-People Cultural Exchange Program:

“The Smithsonian's 10-day trips to Cuba will amount to little more than a tropical vacation. Americans participating in these trips will not see the brutal reality of the Castro dictatorship. They will not be visiting run down hospitals where sick Cubans have to bring their own bed sheets and medications, nor will they have the opportunity to sit in a court room where peaceful pro-democracy advocates are sentenced because due process and a real judicial system are non-existent.

The nature of the Smithsonian's upcoming trips to Cuba becomes clear merely by looking at the ad promoting it. The ad fails to mention that Cuba is a state-sponsor of terrorism or that Castro's thugs repeatedly and routinely beat and harass the innocent Ladies in White while they peacefully march down a street. It does not mention that an American citizen is being held hostage by the regime simply for seeking to lift the veil of censorship that the dictatorship imposes on the Cuban people.

Americans will not be able to interact with a typical Cuban family as they conduct their daily desperate search for food, stop by a dormant newspaper's office that no longer operates because there is no freedom of the press, or visit the ever-growing prisons where countless political prisoners languish in their cells for exercising freedom of expression. These are the real cultural experiences in Cuba. Instead, these tourists will experience a false depiction of Cuba through a biased and censored 'tour' of the island.

It is deeply disappointing that the Smithsonian Institute, primarily funded by American taxpayers, is facilitating access to U.S. dollars, which enables the Castro regime to make a hefty profit. The trips not only illustrate a blatant disregard for human rights conditions on the island by an entity that receives U.S. government funding, but provide the deplorable Havana tyranny a sense of legitimacy.

Why is this US Rep. doing this? Not that you'd ever see this on American television, which for some reason focused a lot of time and effort on the uprisings in Egypt, Libya and Syria... but chooses to ignore the ever-growing uprising, led by Cuban women, going on 90 miles south of Florida.

Witness this (Via):

This week, female pro-democracy leaders took to the streets of the central Cuban town of Santa Clara to demand the release of their colleague, Ivonne Malleza, who remains imprisoned without charges since November 30th.

As a result, they too were arrested, albeit for short term.

Here's the disturbing testimony of their arrest:

Idania Yánez Contreras described her time behind the bars as "horrible." According to the dissident, in her cell "the guards, under the orders of State Security, were screaming obscenities at us" and even threatened with raping the women. Yanez denounced that one of the obscene threats she has not been able to forget was that "they began to tell me 'I am going to sleep with Idania because she has the largest ass.'" She added that the guards were "raffling" the women amongst themselves, choosing which one they would rape.

Meanwhile, Damaris Moya also suffered verbal and physical attacks. "I was treated horrible under the orders of Captains Andro, Yuniel Monteagudo and another by the last name Gil," denounced the co-president of the Central Opposition Coalition, adding that the initial violence occurred in front of her young son who is only 13 months old. "He was desperately screaming in the arms of his grandmother while the agents were applying martial arts immobilization locks on me. And that’s how they dragged me to the police vehicle and later to the detention center." In the case of her husband, Yanoisi, he was beaten and "choked and he now has his face swollen... they also punched him on the stomach and in the testicles."

The same official - Yuniel Monteagudo - was also responsible for the brutality against Antunez, even while he was detained in the back seat of a police vehicle. "That official told one of the Rapid Response agents: ‘punish him during the entire trip,'" explained Antunez, "and then they started to punch me the entire way. While he was hitting me he was saying 'piece of shit [N-word], scream 'Fidel Lives.'" The dissident responded with the contrary. "I started to scream 'Down with Fidel,'" amid even more blows, "and that’s how the entire trip was until we reached the police unit of Santa Clara." The blows against Garcia Antunez resulted in numerous swellings on his head, and he is currently suffering from dizziness and lack of vision in his left eye, where he was also hit.

However, the dissident affirmed that although 2012 began with lots of violence against the peaceful Resistance, something positive was that during one of the marches in demand for freedom of those who were detained on that morning, "neighbors of Santa Clara were also fed up with the violence and joined the protest…they would scream 'abusers,' 'hunger and misery' and some of these citizens were even arrested." Antunez, like Idania Yanez and Damaris Moya also affirmed that they would not give in or give up in the face of the terror that the Cuban dictatorship tries to impose on its people. "Despite the beatings," assures Antunez, "I feel satisfied and convinced that now, more than ever, we are witnessing the final days of the tyranny." The dissident classified 2012 as a year of "importance" for the Cuban Resistance.

Damaris Moya also sent out a direct message to dictator Raul Castro. "If the supposed measures which Castro was enforcing are just to massacre us, well then we will be massacred because we are going to continue with our marches demanding food for the people, demanding justice and always out on the street." Idania Yanez echoed this same attitude: "Here we are, and we are going to continue with our actions."

Notice how the N-word was used against one of the Afro-Cubans while he was being beaten... another example of the mostly ignored racist nature of Castro's Workers Paradise.

For what it's worth, I've got a feeling that 2012 is the end of the reign of the longest-lasting dictatorship in the world, and in that end, it will be courageous Cuban women who will drive a stake through the heart of the Castro vampires and their enforcers.

Free Bootcamp for Artists Seminar

On February 11, 2012 from 1-5pm, The Brentwood Arts Exchange and I will be once again hosting my well-known “Bootcamp for Artists” seminar at no cost to the artists.

This seminar is suitable for all visual artists interested in taking their careers to the next level.

Ever wondered how to maximize the attention your work gets from the press, galleries, and museum curators? How to present your work in a professional manner and save money in the process? How to tap into grants, awards and residencies? How to approach a gallery?

Then this is the seminar for you! This program is free, but space is limited to 40 persons, and last year lots of artists were turned away because it filled up so quickly! You can sign online here.

This program will be held in MNCPPC’s Brentwood Arts Exchange on the 1st Floor of the Gateway Arts Center, 3901 Rhode Island Avenue, Brentwood, MD 20722, just over the District line on Rhode Island Avenue.

See ya there!

For your Saturday: Do this!

This Saturday, January 7, at 2 pm in Mezzanine, Sublevel 1 of the National Museum of African Art: María Magdalena Campos-Pons!!!

Cuban-born American artist Maria Magdalena Campos-Pons discusses her work of the last 20 years, focusing on the installation art, performative photography, and cultural activism that have gained her international recognition. Art historian Steven Nelson (University of California at Los Angeles) joins the artist in a conversation about her family history in Nigeria, Cuba, and Boston and its influence on her poignant artworks. This program is free, spread the word!!!

Image: still from "Not just Another Day", 1999, Version #2, silent video projection, María Magdalena Campos-Pons.

My 2008 studio visit with Maria Magdalena Campos-Pons can be read online here. Read it and prepare to be impressed by this dynamo of an artist.

“When I am not here/Estoy Alla” c. 1994 by Maria Magdalena Campos-Pons

GRACE gets a new Director

The Greater Reston Arts Center (GRACE) is pleased to announce leading arts advocate and administrator Damian Sinclair has been named the new Executive Director of GRACE effective February 6. Sinclair will replace President and CEO John Alciati who will retire after a six year tenure. Alciati will rejoin GRACE’s Board of Directors where he had served prior to his appointment to his executive position.

Sinclair, 34, was the Arts & Events Director of the Reston Community Center in Reston, Virginia since 2008. Before that, he served as the Director of Development at Arena Stage in Washington DC. Prior to Arena, Sinclair was the Executive Director and brainchild behind the region’s recognized Capital Fringe Festival, creating and growing the event into one of the largest and most exciting annual cultural art offerings in the Washington DC region.

"Under Alciati’s leadership, GRACE and its highly rated Northern Virginia Fine Arts Festival are recognized for bringing high caliber arts programming to the region,” said GRACE’s Board Chair Holli Ploog. “Damian has the experience and skills to maintain this momentum. His experience, coupled with his passion and enthusiasm for GRACE will help guide the organization to the next level, focusing on the importance of arts within communities, expanding our reach and increasing our brand identity.”

"I am excited to come to GRACE," said Sinclair. "This organization is poised to make a major cultural impact on Reston and the Greater DC Region. The coming of METRO to the area and the potential growth of our community means that GRACE will need to meet the artistic and cultural needs of a larger and more diverse audience. I am thrilled to have the opportunity to drive that process."

As the Arts & Events Director of the Reston Community Center, Sinclair programmed a Professional Touring Artist Series, expanded artistic outreach into Reston area schools and the greater community, and helped provide performing elements for many of Reston’s annual festivals. He designed an exciting and innovative performance component for GRACE’s Northern Virginia Fine Arts Festival which helped raise the profile of the already successful event.

As Director of Development at Arena Stage, Sinclair served as a major gifts officer and a leader in the organization responsible in part for an annual budget of $3.3 million and a capital campaign of $125 million. He was part of the team that helped guide the organization through a nomadic transition that saw it depart its longtime home in Washington, DC to take up temporary residence in Crystal City, VA.

As Co-Founder and Executive Director of the Capital Fringe Festival, Sinclair built an organization from scratch that in its first year featured over 100 performing artists (in theater, dance, music, puppetry, and experimental art) presenting over 400 performances in more than 30 venues over 10 days. In his role at Fringe' Sinclair was selected by Washingtonian Magazine as one of its 2006 People Who Made a Mark on DC and Capital Fringe was awarded the 2007 DC Mayors Arts Award for Innovation in the Arts and the 2007 Momentum Award from the Downtown DC BID.

His career in the DC area began as the Director of Marketing for Woolly Mammoth Theater Company where he grew audience participation to record levels and helped move the organization into its new home at 7th& D Streets, NW. Sinclair moved to Reston, Virginia in 2003 with his wife after beginning his career in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania as the Director of Communications at The Wilma Theater and as Managing Director of the critically acclaimed and award winning experimental interdisciplinary ensemble, Pig Iron Theatre Company.

We send Damian our best wishes to continue to take GRACE forward!

Torpedo Factory Art Center Visiting Artist Program – Summer 2012

Deadline: February 15, 2012

Emerging and experienced artists are invited to apply for one, two, or three-month residencies between June 1 and August 31, 2012.

The Torpedo Factory Art Center (www.torpedofactory.org) in Alexandria Virginia is home to more than 140 visual artists working in 82 studios. Artists create in a wide variety of media including painting, fiber, jewelry, ceramics, printmaking, and sculpture. The Torpedo Factory is open to the public every day; visitors are invited and welcomed into studios to watch artists at work, ask questions, and purchase original art – allowing the public an opportunity to share in the excitement and fascination of the creative process.

The projects undertaken by Visiting Artists for this self-directed, creative residency must be compatible with available working studio spaces and facilities.

Visiting Artists will be provided with studio space and will be able to display and sell original work.

Finalists will be selected by juror Paula Amt, owner of gallery plan b in Washington DC.

There is no application fee.

Download the Prospectus and Application Form from www.torpedofactory.org/vap.

Send questions to: vap@torpedofactory.org. No telephone calls please.

Manon Cleary's Memorial

Manon's memorial is Friday, January 20, 2012, 6:30pm at the Arts Club of Washington. It is fitting that one of the DMV's greatest artists gets remembered at the District's most classical arts venue.

Last Supper for Dictators

As I've discussed before, about a decade ago I did a huge pen and ink 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.

For 2012, once I resolve the electric and wattage issues associated with having 13 LCD screens all in one circuit, I am going to revisit that theme again, and this time the video (or Powerpoint) component of the drawing will amplify the presence of the dictators.

The original drawing from a few years back focused on Latin American dictators, and this second version will do the same; however, it will be slightly updated historically, as version one had some historic dictators in the piece, such as Haiti's Papa Duvalier, the Perons from Argentina, Fulgencio Batista from Cuba, etc.

The selection process is now open, and once again I plan to have Che Guevara as The Christ (he's a natural for it) and Fidel Castro as The Judas (also a natural for it, since it was Castro who had a hand in Guevara's betrayal in the Highlands of Bolivia).

Who else will make the tableau? Perhaps Hugo Chavez from Venezuela? The issue in "modernizing" the imagery is that Democracy - other than in Cuba and Venezuela - seems to have finally taken root in Latin America, and modern dictators are not as abundant as they once were.

Maybe I'll have to expand the search to include the entire world and add that new weird little fat guy from North Korea, and behind the scenes' dictators like Russia's Putin.

Any ideas?

Happy New Year's... and on this date:

Rodrigo Llançol de Borja was born on 1 January 1431 in the town of Xàtiva in the Kingdom of Valencia, one of the component realms of the Crown of Aragon, in present-day Spain.

He would become not only one of the most controversial Popes of all time, but also the man who would seed the legend known as the Borgias!

His parents were Jofré Llançol i Escrivá and the Aragonese Isabel de Borja. His family name is written Llançol in Valencian and Lanzol in Spanish.

Rodrigo adopted his mother's family name of Borja in 1455 following the elevation to the papacy of his maternal uncle Alonso de Borja as Calixtus III, the first Spanish-born Pope (and here you thought that until recent times all Popes were Italian!).

Even though for years Rodrigo was a Cardinal and eventually became Pope Alexander VI, he had multiple mistresses, and his children from one of them, Cesar (which was his name and how he signed documents, but known in Italian as Cesare) and Lucrezia, continued his seed and presence in a family destined to become one of western history's most nefarious names.

Via Alexander VI was known for his patronage of the arts, and in his days a new architectural era was initiated in Rome with the coming of Bramante. Raphael, Michelangelo and Pinturicchio all worked for him.[18] He commissioned Pinturicchio to lavishly paint a suite of rooms in the Apostolic Palace in the Vatican, which are today known as the Borgia Apartment.

In addition to the arts, Alexander VI also encouraged the development of education. In 1495, he issued a papal bull at the request of William Elphinstone, Bishop of Aberdeen, and King James IV of Scotland, founding King's College, Aberdeen. King's College now forms an integral element of the University of Aberdeen.

Alexander VI, allegedly a marrano according to papal rival Giuliano della Rovere, distinguished himself by his relatively benign treatment of Jews. After the 1492 expulsion of Jews from Spain, some 9,000 impoverished Iberian Jews arrived at the borders of the Papal States. Alexander welcomed them into Rome, declaring that they were "permitted to lead their life, free from interference from Christians, to continue in their own rites, to gain wealth, and to enjoy many other privileges." He similarly allowed the immigration of Jews expelled from Portugal in 1497 and from Provence in 1498.

New Year's Prayer

While you're hopefully enjoying welcoming 2012 at parties or with your loved ones tonight, please remember Cuban pro-democracy leader Ivonne Malleza Galano, who is currently on a hunger strike in a punishment cell of the infamous maximum security prison of Manto Negro.

Throughout 2011, Malleza, a member of the Ladies in White, has led a series of peaceful protests in Havana parks that have been met with great popular support.

That led the criminal Castro regime to brutally arrest her on November 30th (here's a video of the protest and arrest).

Also arrested (and still in prison) was her husband Ignacio Martinez Moreno and fellow activist Isabel Hayde Alvarez Mosquera.

Consider dedicating your New Year's prayer and wish to Ivonne's release and to the freedom of all the Cubans who have been now brutalized for over five decades.

DC in American Contemporary Art Magazine

The current issue of American Contemporary Art magazine has a focus piece on DC area shows and discusses the recent FALL SOLOS 2011 at the Arlington Arts Center, Percy Martin's solo show at Parish Gallery in Georgetown, and Frederick's version of Art-O-Matic.

Read it online here; starts in page 16.