General Grievous in CA

General Grievous in Anderson Valley, California...

Rosemary Feit Covey at Evergreen Museum

Rosemary Feit Covey is without a doubt one of the foremost artistic minds of the region and in my opinion the top printmaker in the nation.

She currently has a retrospective at the Evergreen Museum at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore... The show opened last night and I am already getting emails about what an amazing and important show this is.

I plan to visit this show soon and hope that you do as well... It runs through May 25. 

Mayer Fine Art Relocation Show

My Virginia dealer is the very hardworking art gallery Mayer Fine Art, which also represents several other DMV artists and who is one the Commonwealth's hardest working art dealers, as Sebastian has been doing art fairs all over the nation (and soon overseas).

They are moving to a new location in Norfolk and their grand opening show for their exciting new space is March 22nd from 7-9 PM.

Mayer Fine Art
801 Boush Street 
Norfolk, VA 23510

Featured Artists:
Matthew Fine • Alexey Terenin • Judith Peck • Victoria F. Gaitán • Jose Antonio Sorolla Gallen • John R. G. Roth • Sheila Giolitti • Tanja Softic • Lenny Campello • Erin Schwinn • Blade Wynn • Mark Chatterley • Michael Fitts • Elizabeth Ryland Mears

Alchemical Vessels Opens Next Week

Opening April 4, 2014, the Joan Hisaoka Healing Arts Gallery will host the return of Alchemical Vessels. 

Alchemical Vessels brings together 125 local artists and 20 invited curators for a community dialogue on healing and transformation through the arts. Each artist will transform a simple ceramic bowl by means of his or her own personal aesthetic and medium, drawing inspiration from the bowl as a place of holding, open community, sacred space, and even the alchemical vessel. The show is an amazing grouping of Who's Who in the DMV art scene.

The ceramic bowl was selected as the fundamental element of the exhibition to symbolize creating a space where healing can take place—an idea at the heart of Smith Center's work and mission. Metaphorically speaking, Smith Center—the space and the work we do within our walls—resembles an alchemical vessel. People bring their everyday burdens, fears, and pains to us, and in this place of holding, we help transform those toxic elements into hope, light, wisdom and strength.

The Alchemical Vessels exhibition will open at the Joan Hisaoka Healing Arts Gallery on April 4th and run through May 16th, 2014, with the opening reception on Friday, April 4th, 7-9pm. The Alchemical Vessels Benefit will take place on Friday, May 2nd, with doors opening at 7pm. With a $125 Benefit-Vessel Contribution, guests will be admitted to the event and will select one of the 125 works on display to add to their own collections. 

For more information about the Alchemical Vessels 2014 Benefit, please visit www.smithcenter.org/benefit.

Artists: Eames Armstrong, Sardar Aziz, Karen Baer, Beth Baldwin, Michele Banks, Joseph Barbaccia, Carolyn Becker, Jessica Beels, Joan Belmar, Lori Anne Boocks, Anne Bouie, Amy Braden, Julia Brown, Karen O. Brown, Larry Brown, Amanda Burnham, Lenny Campello, Shanthi Chandrasekar, Mei Mei Chang, Peter Charles, Asma Chaudhary, Travis Childers, Eunmee Chung, Wesley Clark, Michael Corigliano, Sheila Crider, Candy Cummings, Anna U. Davis, Rosetta DeBerardinis, Tamara De Silva, Elsabe Dixon, Joel D'Orazio, David D'Orio, Chelsea S. Dobert-Kehn, Thomas Drymon, Nekisha Durrett, Victor Ekpuk, Laura Elkins, Dana Ellyn, Erica Benay Fallin, Felisa Federman, Jeremy Flick, Suzi Fox, Barbara Frank, Nancy Frankel, Shaunté Gates, Dawn Gavin, Bita Ghavami, Aziza Claudia Gibson-Hunter, Melissa Glasser, Janis Goodman, Pat Goslee, Sherill Anne Gross, John Grunwell, Nelson Gutierrez, Kristen Hayes, Eve Hennessa, Sean Hennessey, Linda Hesh, Matt Hollis, Leslie Holt, Jessica Hopkins, Karen Hubacher, Monica Jahan Bose, Barbara Johnson, Wayson R. Jones, J'Nell Jordan, Mila Kagan, Sumita Kim, Joan Konkel, Yar Koporulin, Walter Kravitz, Kate Kretz, Randall Lear, Heather Levy, Yue Li, Nathan Loda, Armando Lopez-Bircann, Laurel Lukaszewski, James Mahoney, J.J. McCracken, Donald McCray, Jayme Mclellen, Tendani Mpulubusi El, Komelia Okim, Amie Oliver, Luis Peralta, Michael Platt, Maryanne Pollock, Lynn Putney, Maria-Lana Queen, Beverly Ress, Kim Reyes, Glenn Richardson, Marie Ringwald, Amber Robles-Gordon, Pam Rogers, Lisa Rosenstein, Nicole Salimbene, Samantha Sethi, Matt Sesow, Amy Sherald, Shahin Shikhaliyev, Ellen Sinel, Casey Snyder, Susan Stacks, Dafna Steinberg, Jennifer Strunge, Lynn Sures, Lynn Sylvester, Ira Tattelman, Christine Buckton Tilman, Erwin Timmers, Ben Tolman, Novie Trump, Shinji Turner-Yamamoto, Laurie Tylec, Michael Verdon, Jodi Walsh, Jenny Walton, Ellyn Weiss, Stephanie Williams, Audrey Wilson, Sharon Wolpoff, and Carmen C. Wong.

Curators: Peggy Cooper Cafritz, Educator, Philanthropist and Founder of D.C.'s Duke Ellington School for the Arts | Jarvis DuBois, Independent Curator and Principal at J. DuBois Arts | Monica Jahan Bose, Artist and Activist | Anne L'Ecuyer, Arts Management Faculty at American University | Camille Mosley-Pasley, Photographer and Principal at Pasley Place Photography | B.G. Muhn, Professor of Art, Georgetown University | Michael O'Sullivan, Art Critic for The Washington Post | Dr. Frederick P. Ognibene, M.D., NIH Physician, Fine Art Collector and; Past Board Chair, Washington Project for the Arts | Michael Platt, Artist and Professor at Howard University | Jennifer Riddell, Writer and Interpretive Projects Manager at the National Gallery of Art | Adah Rose, Principal at Adah Rose Gallery | Laura Roulet, Independent Curator and Writer | Molly Ruppert, Artist and Gallery Director at the Warehouse Theater | Terry Scott, Cultural Organizer and Independent Curator | Judy J. Sherman, Art Consultant and Principal at j. fine art | Thomas Stanley, Professor at George Mason University | Nuzhat Sultan, Independent Curator | Tim Tate, Artist and Co-Director of Washington Glass School | R.L. Tillman, Artist, Teacher and Curator | Dolly Vehlow, Fine Art Collector and Principal at Gallery O on H 

Planning Committee: Helen Frederick, Deborah Lesser, Wendy Miller, PhD, Kim Schelling, Timothy Schelling, and Ellyn Weiss.

Airborne

Airborne today and heading to the Left Coast, where I will be part of a an anonymous international panel selecting visual artists for a well-known fine arts award.

6AM flight from BWI: That sucks!

Wanna go to a super cool opening tomorrow?

Where: 1429 Iris St., NW Washington, DC 20012-1409
When: March 7-April 26, 2014
Opening Reception: Saturday, March 8, 2:00-6:30 PM, 2014 and Sunday March 9, 2:00-4:00pm
Gallery Hours: Friday and Saturday 12-6 pm any other times by appointment

36 years, where has the time gone, hundreds of art shows, 1000’s of clients, vast new technologies in the art world. The artists’ still knock my socks off and creativity is thriving. How Washington and the world have changed. The artists keep on creating and astounding us at every turn. Art is more important than ever in this media over exposed world. That the artists can come up with an original thought and execute it in an original way fascinates me and keeps me enthusiastic and dedicated to the artists, my clients, Washington and the art world. Come celebrate with us and experience art, art and more art. The entire Zenith Family thanks you all for keeping us in business for all of these years.

                                               Gallery Owner, director and artist, Margery E. Goldberg

Lists of Artists: Kim Abraham, Lenny Campello Renee DuRocher, Eric Ehlenberger, Estella
Fransbergen, Robert Freeman, Julie & Ken Girardini, Margery E. Goldberg, Stephen Hansen,
Christine Hayman, Philip Hazard, David Hubbard, Robert Jackson, Katie Dell Kaufman, Peter
Kephart, Susan Klebanoff, Joan Konkel, Chris Malone, Joey Manlapaz, Michela Mansuino, Donna
McCullough, Davis Morton, Carol Newmyer, Tom Noll, Fernando Roman, Sica, Ellen Sinel, Paula Stern, Bradley Stevens, Cassie Taggart, Tim Tate, Marci Wolf-Hubbard, Paul Martin Wolff, Joyce Zipperer and more.

Zenith Gallery est. 1978

Celebrating 36 Years in the Nation’s Capital

1429 Iris St., NW, Washington DC 20012-1409

202-783-2963 www.zenithgallery.com art@zenithgallery.com

Dr. Jane Chu nominated to be NEA head honcho

Last month President B.H. Obama nominated a new candidate to be confirmed as the Chair for the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA): Dr. Jane Chu, the Chief Executive Officer of the Kauffman Center of Kansas City, MO.
 
President Obama said, “Jane’s lifelong passion for the arts and her background in philanthropy have made her a powerful advocate for artists and arts education in Kansas City.  She knows firsthand how art can open minds, transform lives and revitalize communities, and believes deeply in the importance of the arts to our national culture.  I’m proud to nominate her as Chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts.”
 
When confirmed, Dr. Chu will fill an NEA post that has been vacant since the 2012 resignation of Rocco Landesman.

Important tax news for Maryland artists

As a social liberal and a fiscal conservative who tries not to be seduced by either left wing nuts or the vast right wing conspiracy, it is ironic to me how in the one-party, tax-crazy Soviet Socialist Republic of Maryland, the Maryland Arts & Entertainment Districts (A&E), offers tax-related incentives that "attract and support artists, arts organizations and other creative enterprises within 22 creative places in 15 counties across the state."

So they "offer tax-related incentives" - that's Orwellian speak for tax cuts/breaks, but you can't say that, because that means something Republicanish, cough, cough. Don't get me wrong - this is a great idea and it generally works...

At a March 13 Senate Hearing, A&E District advocates will testify in support of HB-1516 (Economic Development – Arts and Entertainment Districts – Qualifying Residing Artists), a bill that would exempt qualifying artists from paying taxes on proceeds from the sale of artwork not only within the A&E District in which the artist resides and created the work, but within any of Maryland’s 22 Designated A&E Districts.

By expanding on the established definition of a “Qualified Residing Artist,” it is expected that the passage of the bill would stimulate investment, encourage revitalization of underutilized properties, increase economic impact and promote local tourism.

UMBC selects public art finalists

The University of Maryland Baltimore County (UMBC) joined the MSAC in announcing the names of three finalists selected to create a public art installation outside of the new Performing Arts and Humanities Building (PAHB). A national call was issued for the $397,000 commission.

The three finalists — Barbara Grygutis, Thomas Sayre and the collaborative Mags Harries and Lajos Héder — have previously created works of large-scale public art and were selected based on the merit of past work and the proposed vision for UMBC.

“The artists have had a month to create a site-specific design concept that supports a year-round destination where people can gather, sit, reflect and engage with each other in an outdoor setting,” says Lucas Cowan, public art program director at the MSAC.

UMBC partnered with the MSAC for guidance on commissioning the public art project. The Maryland Public Art Initiative (MPAI), signed into law last year, requires state-funded construction or major renovation projects to include a public art component. 

The University invited the MSAC to add its expertise to this highly visible public art project, and expects the project to be completed by August 2014.

Under the Influence

Opening on March 21, 2014, Under the Influence, curated by Kaitlin Filley and Ashley Wilson promises to be a very cool "back to the future" show.

Spread out between two locations, within the Catholic University community (Salve Regina Gallery, 620 Michigan Ave, NE, W, DC 20064, Victor L Selman Community Gallery, 3305 8th St, NE, W, DC 20017) , the show will serve as a catalyst for discussion and engagement with the legacy of the Washington Color School, and the effect on current artists in Washington, D.C. The show will feature the works of Jeffry Cudlin, Bill Hill, Ryan Carr Johnson, Barbara Januszkiewicz, Katherine Tzu-Lan Mann, Meg Mitchell, Robin Rose, and Samuel Scharf. 

Running through April 12, the show wil also feature a curator tour on closing day at 2:00 pm.

WHAT:  Under the Influence

RECEPTION: Friday, March 21, 2014 6:00 – 8:00 pm

SHOW DATES: March 21 – April 12, 2014

CURATOR’S TALK: April 12, 2014 2:00 pm

WHERE: Salve Regina Gallery, 620 Michigan Ave, NE, W, DC 20064
Victor L Selman Community Gallery, 3305 8th St, NE, W, DC 20017

I've seen this movie before...

One of my really deep personal interests is history... man I love history!

It's one of those things that I've always done good well in school and as a result I have incorporated that interest many, many, many times in my own artwork.

It is a nerdish thing I realize... to some anyway....  I read history as if they were novels, and of course...

You know where I'm going next: "He who does not learn from history is bound to repeat it" or something like that, goes the saying...

And is it me? ... or does the Russian invasion of the Ukraine seem a little familiar, from a historical perspective? Nikolai Kondratiev's famous "wave theory" (which is unfortunately usually just applied to economics, when it can actually be applied to almost anything such as art trends, history's cycles, etc.)... easily predicts what will happen next here... But first a little things that seems to have repeated itself rather recently...

• We have a former European evil superpower that a handful of years ago was taken apart and embarrassed by the West. They've since re-invented themselves on a fervent nationalistic fever.
• The Socialist dictator of that nation uses that embarrassment as a potent drive to not only stay in power (15 years so far), but also to convince the West that all is fine, while driving the flames of nationalism and craftily rearming and building its war machine.
• He then "tests" the will of the West by annexing large chunks of its neighbor, as Russia did to Georgia in 2008. Lots of verbal threats from the West lead to nothing.
• He then begins persecuting a segment of his nation's population... In Russia's case its gay citizens... And anyone who disagrees with Putin, and I would not be surprised if Jews are blamed next for something (or everything)... most probably the failure of the Russian economy, which will happen when the West imposes sanctions.
• He then hosts an Olympic game... As a showcase of national pride.
• He then invades yet another neighboring country under the pretext of protecting ethnic Russian citizens within its borders. 

Now... I expect that the West will react by trying to appease Putin, and someone will have to play the part of Neville Chamberlain in order for this unbelievable performance to reach its inevitable conclusion.

We've seen this movie and some of us know how it ends... Kondratiev must be laughing somewhere and Poland is getting a little nervous while France is probably already drafting a surrender treaty... cough, cough.. I was only serious.

Get ready to batten down the hatches!

Craig Kraft at VisArts

Craig Kraft, owner and founder of Craig Kraft Studio in Washington, DC, will unveil his new series of work Markings: Graffiti from the Ground Zero Blues Club, at an exhibition at the VisArts Center in Rockville, Maryland from March 5 - April 20, 2014.


“The exhibition marks the culmination of over a year's work exploring a new subject matter in a new style,” says Craig Kraft, internationally known light sculptor. “The inspiration for my work is based on the excitement of discovering the unknown, or unrecognized; such as the power of the graffiti at the Ground Zero Blues Club in Clarksdale, Mississippi.”

Curated by Claudia Rousseau, PhD, Professor of Art History, School of Art + Design at Montgomery College, Markings: Graffiti from the Ground Zero Blues Club, uses found graffiti and neon light to create an artistic expression that is truly one-of-a-kind.

Traveling last year to see the Ground Zero Blues Club firsthand, Kraft took thousands of photos of the graffiti covered walls, furnishings, ceilings and windows. From these he selected certain images—for him, “the most poignant”—and had them digitally printed on 3’ x 2’ matte enhanced paper and later mounted on wood. The artist has attached painted and scratched neon tubing to their surfaces, as he has said, "to highlight, deconstruct and reinvent the original images.”

Rousseau states, “The graffiti that Craig Kraft found at the Ground Zero Blues Club in Clarksdale, Mississippi, is heroic in its extent, density, and history. Layer upon layer of it covers every inch of its interior. It depicts a full range of human emotion in words, signs, signatures, and graphic renderings of figures and animals accomplished over decades of repetitive marking.”

“Kraft’s neon additions to photographed sections of the graffiti at Ground Zero give prominence to certain of these marks. A deliberate inversion or counter gesture, therefore, of Kraft’s neon tubes, being three- dimensional and, of course, lit, take precedence over everything beneath them,” she adds. “His intervention further brings attention to the graphic forms of the writing itself that now takes a certain priority over the significance of those messages. As works of artistic appropriation, the series transforms and transfers the ‘found graffiti’ on the walls of the Ground Zero Blues Club into new and complex juxtapositions of form and content in the changed environment of the art gallery.”

"Much like Bruce Nauman and other contemporary artists who have worked with light, Kraft treats the medium as both tangible (the glass tubes), and intangible (the light), conveying both its materiality as sculpture and its transparency in abstract form. The very flexibility of the medium has allowed the artist a range of possibilities from very minimal abstract compositions to his extremely complex Unintentional Drawings of 2010, also in this exhibit. His Ground Zero pieces are an exciting continuation in his exploratory trajectory."

36th Years on a Creative Journey

Where: 1429 Iris St., NW Washington, DC 20012-1409
When: March 7-April 26, 2014
Opening Reception: Saturday, March 8, 2:00-6:30 PM, 2014 and Sunday March 9, 2:00-4:00pm
Gallery Hours: Friday and Saturday 12-6 pm any other times by appointment

36 years, where has the time gone, hundreds of art shows, 1000’s of clients, vast new technologies in the art world. The artists’ still knock my socks off and creativity is thriving. How Washington and the world have changed. The artists keep on creating and astounding us at every turn. Art is more important than ever in this media over exposed world. That the artists can come up with an original thought and execute it in an original way fascinates me and keeps me enthusiastic and dedicated to the artists, my clients, Washington and the art world. Come celebrate with us and experience art, art and more art. The entire Zenith Family thanks you all for keeping us in business for all of these years.

                                               Gallery Owner, director and artist, Margery E. Goldberg

Lists of Artists: Kim Abraham, Lenny Campello Renee DuRocher, Eric Ehlenberger, Estella
Fransbergen, Robert Freeman, Julie & Ken Girardini, Margery E. Goldberg, Stephen Hansen,
Christine Hayman, Philip Hazard, David Hubbard, Robert Jackson, Katie Dell Kaufman, Peter
Kephart, Susan Klebanoff, Joan Konkel, Chris Malone, Joey Manlapaz, Michela Mansuino, Donna
McCullough, Davis Morton, Carol Newmyer, Tom Noll, Fernando Roman, Sica, Ellen Sinel, Paula Stern, Bradley Stevens, Cassie Taggart, Tim Tate, Marci Wolf-Hubbard, Paul Martin Wolff, Joyce Zipperer and more.

Zenith Gallery est. 1978

Celebrating 36 Years in the Nation’s Capital

1429 Iris St., NW, Washington DC 20012-1409

202-783-2963 www.zenithgallery.com art@zenithgallery.com 

Dubya gets an art show

Good for him!

The nation's 43rd president will be showing off his new painting hobby at his presidential library in Dallas starting in April, library officials announced Tuesday.

The exhibit is called "The Art of Leadership: A President’s Personal Diplomacy," and the show sounds as if it will feature paintings other than the ones Bush made depicting himself in the bathtub and in the shower, which a hacker obtained and blasted all over the Web last year.

"The exhibit will feature more than two dozen never-before-exhibited portraits painted by President Bush," the George W. Bush Presidential Library and Museum said in its Tuesday announcement. "Portraits will be accompanied by artifacts, photographs, and personal reflections to help illustrate the stories of relationships formed on the world stage."

Details here.

Rousseau on the Studio Art Faculty of Montgomery College

Capitol Arts Network, the Washington area’s fastest-growing organization for professional and emerging artists, will explore the impact of “significant encounters” on artists and their work during March, with an exhibition produced by studio art faculty members at Montgomery College.

“For this exhibit, we have defined a ‘critical contact’ as an encounter that has had a significant impact on an artist,” said Claudia Rousseau, Montgomery College.  “Such encounters might be with a place, a book, a person, a particularly galvanizing moment. The exhibit could also be a consideration of critical encounters between or among species, cultures, technologies, economies, natural elements and many other things.”

The March show opens on March 3rd with a First Friday opening reception on Friday, March. 7, from 6 to 9 p.m. at Capitol Arts Network’s Urban By Nature Gallery at 12276 Wilkins Avenue in Rockville.  The exhibit runs through the end of the month.

 “The variety of approaches among the 22 participants in this exhibit is extensive,” Rousseau said.  “Among the most prominent subthemes are memories of certain places and the ways in which contacts with those places have had a lasting impact. This can be seen, for example, in the ceramics of Vidya Vijayasekharan, who also relates the theme to the globalization of things once limited to a small part of the world.” 

“From a very different part of the world, Megan Van Wagoner’s Standing Production recalls her childhood in the American Midwest.  Judy Stone’s installation titled Transmission also carries memory of a pivotal trip to Mexico,” she said.  “Another subtheme concerns specific contacts with a person or persons.  Perhaps most striking in this group are the works of Kate Kretz for whom the birth of her daughter had a significant impact.”  

“The often silent interaction between men in India is the point of contact for Daniel Venne.  The theme of exploration, whether physical or emotional is also the key for a group of artists including painter Wil Brunner,” she continued.

“Critical contacts between elements of nature are also a common theme, as in the photographs of Mary Staley and Grace Graham. Yet, perhaps the most compelling results of setting out this theme are the numerous interpretations of it in terms of the contact of the self with inner self or introspective examinations, as evidenced in the work of exhibit participants David Carter and Michaele Harrington.”

_____________________________________________________________________________________

The Capitol Arts Network’s Rockville headquarters features studio space for more than 70 working artists artists plus classrooms, work and meeting areas and gallery and exhibition space where artists can work individually or side-by-side in a collaborative community setting. The center is conveniently located near Rockville’s Twinbook Metro station, in Montgomery County’s developing “Twinbrook Arts Zone,” which also includes the home of the Washington School of Photography.

Dulce Pinzon in Rolling Stone magazine

The amazing Dulce Pinzon is not only Mexico's leading young photographer, but also a very nice and cool lady... as this current interview in Rolling Stone magazine showcases!

See her work here.

Next fair in New York

We will be at the Affordable Art Fair in New York, April 2-6 at the Metropolitan Pavillion - come visit in booth I.28.

We will once again feature the work of DMV artists Jodi Walsh, Anne Marchand and introduce the work of DMV painter Georgia Nassikas.

"Moving On" by Jodi Wash

Ceramic on Panel

30X27 inches

The power of Pause

I know this is bad of me, but I can't help myself from taking a pic when I hit pause and some cool, weird expression is captured by the merciless power of the pause button --- 

Poor Meredith Vieira... it's your turn... cough, cough...

A little Art Wynwood mention...

Hey! I got another little line for my bibliography!

See: http://travelbig.com/2014/02/art-wynwood-festival-continues-to-thrive-in-its-third-year/

Shame the dude got me and Simon Monk a little mixed up ---- I only WISH that I could paint that well!

Vermeulen in NYC

My good bud and uber-talented DMV area artist Tim Vermeulen has a show in New York's George Billis Gallery and the HuffPost has a cool interview...

Tim Vermeulen's recent paintings -- on view at the George Billis Gallery, New York through March 15th -- are awkwardly confessional: just as the artist intends.

Strong autobiographical, psychological and spiritual elements charge his seemingly modest paintings with considerable narrative power.

 Details here...