It is an all Madrid final

Has this ever happened before? 

Over in Europe, the UEFA Champions' League Cup is the world's second toughest soccer competition (after the World Cup), some would say the toughest...

And this year it is an all-Madrid final, as the city's storied Real Madrid Football Club (who destroyed the reigning champion - Bayern of Germany) will fight it out with Madrid's other soccer team, Atletico de Madrid (who beat England's Chelsea FC).

That's like the NY Giants vs the NY Jets at the next Superbowl... only bigger... or the Brooklyn Nets vs the NY Knicks.... cough, cough.... or the LA Clippers vs the LA Lakers...

Anyway... congrats to all the Madrilenos!

Iranian Campaign Medal Ribbon finds a home

"Iranian Campaign Ribbon" by F. Lennox Campello
Oil on Canvas, c. 2007
24 x 48 inches

This painting was exhibited first in 2008 at the "Color Invitations" exhibition at the R Street Gallery in Washington, DC and subsequently at the Red Door Gallery in Richmond, VA at my solo show there. It continued the series commenced in 1999 based on my own military awards. With this 2007 work, this series began to create new imaginary military awards conceived as future ribbons and medals to be awarded in future military campaigns. I call this series "The Colors of Wars to Come" and it is discussed here.  

That show at Richmond's Red Door Gallery was reviewed in the Richmond Style Weekly by Amy Biegelsen. Read it here.

The painting is now heading to a major collection in New Jersey.

The Iranian Campaign Medal was established by Executive Order 13875 signed by the President on 13 January 2015. It may be awarded to American military and naval personnel for participating in prescribed operations, campaigns and task forces ranging in dates from 2 November 2014 to present.

The area of operations for these various campaigns includes the total land area and air space of Iran, and the waters and air space of the Persian Gulf and Indian Ocean within 12 nautical miles of Iranian coastline.

Personnel must be members of a unit participating in, or be engaged in direct support of, the operation for 30 consecutive days in the area of operations or for 60 non-consecutive days provided this support involves entering the area of operations or meets one of the following criteria:

• Be engaged in actual combat, or duty that is equally as hazardous as combat duty, during the operation with armed opposition, regardless of time in the area of operations;

• While participating in the operation, regardless of time, is wounded or injured and requires medical evacuation from the area of operations;

• While participating as a regularly assigned aircrew member flying sorties into, out of, within, or over the area of operations in direct support of the military operations.

One bronze service star shall be worn on the ribbon for qualifying participation during an established campaigns. However, that if an individual's 30 or 60 days began in one campaign and carried over into another, that person would only qualify for the medal with one service star. The medal is not awarded without at least one service star. 

The executive order provides that service members who qualify for either the Armed Forces Expeditionary Medal or the Armed Forces Service Medal for service in Iran between 2 November 2014 and 12 January 2015, remain qualified for those medals. 

However, upon application, any such member may be awarded the Iranian Campaign Medal in lieu of the Armed Forces Expeditionary Medal or the Armed Forces Service Medal, but no Service member may be awarded more than one of these three medals for the same period of service in Iran.

The suspension ribbon for the medal's purple and gold colors were suggested by the historical Imperial colors of Iran’s millennial Persian history and the golden sunsets of the Persian Gulf.

Copy Me: a Web Series about Copying

Copy Me: a Web Series about Copying recently launched a crowd-funding campaign on Indiegogo. Their goal is to develop eight informative animated shorts on the questions people have surrounding copying. Is copying a file fair? Is copyright hurting anyone? Is the public domain a good thing? They hope to debunk the myths of copying and look at copyright in the context of the new “sharing” generation. The Copy Me Indiegogo Campaign lays out some of the topics they will cover including: fairness in the digital realm, how artists can make money without restricting their work, and the effect of copyright on society.

On the surface, these topics sound innocuous, but the producers may be hiding a more controversial message, as this quote written by the producer in the site’s comment section suggests; it’s not wrong to ASK people to pay, it’s wrong to MAKE people pay for creative works.  That message may not go over very well with many production companies, galleries, studios or other business entities who want more control over their properties’ pricing, marketing, production and distribution efforts.  But alternate approaches are starting to become very popular.

Read the whole article here.

Opening this weekend at Kaller Fine Arts

Latin America's most racist government continues its oppression...

Another piece of evidence against one of the planet's most racist and oppressive dictatorships...

(Via)Citizen journalist Juliet Michelena Díaz was detained earlier this month shortly after photographing a police operation in Havana. Díaz is a contributor to the Cuban Network of Community Journalists (La Red Cubana de Comunicadores Comunitarios or RCCC), a group known for its critical coverage of the government that has fallen victim to government harassment in recent months.

Díaz's arrest followed an incident on March 26 in which she and other contributors to RCCC witnessed police officers using dogs to break up a neighborhood brawl. The Miami-based daily El Nuevo Herald said the use of dogs resulted in one person being bitten. Díaz was briefly detained after the incident along with other observers and people involved in the fight, but she was able to hide her photographs from the police. However, two weeks later, the director of the group Martha Beatriz Roque Cabello said police returned to Díaz's home to arrest her after they learned that she still had photographs and was writing a report about police violence.

Who were the police dogs being used against? - Black Cubans.

Who was the only RCCC reporter arrested? - A Black Cuban woman.

Actually, I meant to say: A hero! Juliet Michelena Díaz: You are stronger than they are...

Why Gabriel Garcia Marquez is an "hijo de puta" to me...

The gift that we humans have to express and have opinions, and use our subjectivity to apply to all sorts of themes, issues and people are the perfect weapon to express my intense dislike and repugnance for Gabriel Garcia Marquez's personal behavior and standards, while at the same time admiring his written words, although I must admit that my "admiration" is often colored by my intense dislike for the man. 

Charles Lane's article in the WaPo details the main reasons for this attitude:

In 1968, just as “One Hundred Years of Solitude” was propelling García Márquez to fame, Padilla published a collection of poems titled “Out of the Game.” Cuba’s cultural authorities initially permitted and even praised Padilla’s book, despite its between-the-lines protest against the official thought control that was already suffocating Cuba less than a decade after Fidel Castro’s 1959 revolution.

Then instructions changed: The Castro regime began a campaign against Padilla and like-minded intellectuals that culminated in March 1971, when state security agents arrested Padilla, seized his manuscripts and subjected him to a month of brutal interrogation.

The poet emerged to denounce himself before fellow writers for having “been unfair and ungrateful to Fidel, for which I will never tire of repenting.” He implicated colleagues and even his wife as counterrevolutionaries.

Intellectuals around the world, led by García Márquez’s fellow star of the Latin American literary “boom,” Mario Vargas Llosa, condemned this Stalinesque spectacle. Many cultural figures who had backed the Cuban revolution soured on it because of the Padilla affair.

For García Márquez, however, it was a different kind of turning point. When asked to sign his fellow writers’ open letter to Castro expressing “shame and anger” about the treatment of Padilla, García Márquez refused.

Thereafter, the Colombian gradually rose in Havana’s estimation, ultimately emerging as a de facto member of Castro’s inner circle.

Fidel would shower “Gabo” with perks, including a mansion, and established a film institute in Cuba under García Márquez’s personal direction.

The novelist, in turn, lent his celebrity and eloquence to the regime’s propaganda mill, describing the Cuban dictator in 1990 as a “man of austere habits and insatiable dreams, with an old-fashioned formal education, careful words and fine manners, and incapable of conceiving any idea that isn’t extraordinary.”

To rationalize this cozy relationship, García Márquez offered himself as an ostensible go-between when Castro occasionally released dissidents to appease the West.

What Gabo never did was raise his voice, or lift a finger, on behalf of Cubans’ right to express themselves freely in the first place.

Far from being “a representative and voice for the people of the Americas,” he served as a de facto spokesman for one of their oppressors.

García Márquez went so far as to defend death sentences Castro handed out to politically heterodox Cuban officials — one of whom had been personally close to the writer — after a 1989 show trial.

 Read the entire article here.

72 Grams Per Pixel at Gallery B

"72 Grams Per Pixel" is a group exhibition by seven fine art photographers at Bethesda's Gallery B. The title playfully indicates the idea behind the exhibition to explore photographic images using a variety of mediums including prints, hand-made photo books, table-prints and a newly developed multi-screen display system. The gallery show is sponsored by ISProductions, the publisher of the popular FolioLink website service for artists and photographers.

There are some seriously blue chip photogs in this show:

•     Joe Cameron, fine art photographer and Professor at the Corcoran College of Art and Design for over 30 years.   
•     Stephen Crowley, award winning photojournalist of the New York Times.   
•     Muriel Hasbun, fine art photographer and Professor and Chair of Photography at the Corcoran College of Art and Design.   
•     Laurie Hatch, fine art photographer who has documented at length two of the world's great astronomical observatories.   
•     Raul Jarquin,fine art photographer, founder of FolioLink, and photo book maker.   
•     Pablo Ortiz Monasterio, fine art photographer and the founder of the Centro de la Imagen, a well-known venue in the field of photography in Mexico.   
•     Terri Weifenbach, fine art photographer, author of multiple photography books and educator at Georgetown University.

The sale of all photographic work will be conducted directly by the artists (neither the gallery nor ISProductions will be charging commissions) with the exception of subscription sales that provide subscribers with five surprise table print objects and a signed limited edition book, all delivered during a one-year subscription term. The subscription model is managed by ISProductions.

Private Opening Reception May 10th from 6-9pm

To request an invitation to the private opening please send an email to: reception@foliolink.com.

Alchemicals!!!!

Preview the works created for Alchemical Vessels 2014, make a list of your top choices, and visit http://www.smithcenter.org/benefit to learn how you can have a chance to own one of the pieces featured in this video!

Eyes On The Border

Opening Reception: Friday, May 16 from 7–9 pm
Show Dates: May 16 – June 1, 2014

Beyond landscapes, cultures, borders and boundaries lies the artistic language of the human race. Eyes On The Border art exhibit opens Friday, May 16 with a reception from 7-9pm at Del Ray Artisans gallery. In this collaborative exhibit, artist members from Del Ray Artisans (DRA) and Art Latin American Collective Project (ALACP) were invited to explore universal themes from the individual perspective of each artist. The show runs May 16 through June 1, 2014.

Eyes On The Border is both a celebration of Latin American art and culture and a look at how we are all influenced by places, borders and boundaries, political, or cultural, real or imagined. Latin American artists living and working in this area, and Del Ray Artisans with their own immigrant experience share their roots and translate their realities into a vision influenced by the virtual world and globalization.

The ALACP curator is David Camero; the DRA curators are Michele Reday Cook and Lesley Hall. A special display of masks from the collection of David Camero will accompany this exhibit.

The art exhibit is at Del Ray Artisans gallery in the Colasanto Center, 2704 Mount Vernon Avenue, Alexandria, Virginia 22301. Gallery hours are Thursday, noon to 6pm; Friday and Saturday, noon to 9 pm; and Sunday, noon to 6 pm.  The gallery is free, open to the public and handicap accessible.

For more details, please visit www.TheDelRayArtisans.org or contact the curators: David Camero (mactrovattore@yahoo.es), Michele Reday Cook (President@TheDelRayArtisans.org), and Lesley Hall (Curating@TheDelRayArtisans.org).

Iran is having an art fair!

I kid thee not... The Most Islamic and Only True Islamic Republic (cough, cough) of Iran is having an art fair!

It runs from 26-29 June 2014 and they are actually paying journalists to come to Iran and write about it! 

According to the invitation that I received via email (and no... fuck you, brutal Iranian Theocracy that enslaves the beautiful Iranian people and have kidnapped its brilliant culture... but I'm not going), someone will pay "selected media professionals" (I suspect Jewish and/or Ahl as-Sunnah are encouraged NOT to apply) to following perks to come to the art fair and write about it:

• round-trip economy-class airfare / train fare;
• accommodation for the inclusive dates of stay; lodging and meal
• transportation to and from airport

The fair is in cooperation with the Iranian Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance... cough, cough. They might have their own "art critics," who instead of writing a bad review of artists whom they don't like, might also arrest the gallerist and if the artist is not there and can't be arrested, then put the artist on a holy hit list, which would then at least give Molly Norris some neighbors, wherever on the planet she's hiding from those who have kidnapped Islam and continue to try to keep it in the 7th century.

Opportunity for Artists

CALL FOR ENTRIES: Strange Bedfellows

ORGANIZED BY WASHINGTON PROJECT FOR THE ARTS

CURATOR: Blair Murphy, Independent Curator, New York, NY

ELIGIBILITY: Open to all artists regardless of media

ENTRY FEE: None

DEADLINE FOR SUBMISSIONS: June 6, 2014 by 5:00pm

EXHIBITION DATES: October 17 - November 2, 2014

LOCATION: VisArts at Rockville, 155 Gibbs St., Rockville MD 20850

ONLINE SUBMISSION HERE

STRANGE BEDFELLOWS

The notion of intimacy is simultaneously idealized and fraught. It describes human relationships, acting as a metric of the physical closeness, emotional bonds, or personal knowledge shared by two people. It can refer to the accumulation of knowledge about complex topics or--as in the phrase intimately aware--a familiarity with difficult truths. Though we strive for it, it can be difficult to achieve and painful to sustain. It provides us with unbelievable joy and immense disappointment.

Strange Bedfellows will explore intimacy in its various incarnations, approaching the topic from a variety of angles. What do we expect from our closest relationships and how have those expectations changed over time? How are knowledge and intimacy intertwined? How does technology impact the way we build connections and what we expect from relationships? How do we build deep knowledge of other times and places? How do our political and civic institutions cultivate closeness (or, alternately, distance)?

The call is open to all artists regardless of media used or geographic location. Artists do not need to be WPA members and there is no submission fee.

Frida, Frida, Frida

I also found a few prints from another printmaking class assignment at the U-Dub - this one (of course), my girl Frida. This plate from around 1980.

"Frida Kahlo." Intaglio Etching. Edition of 10. 8 3/8 x 61/2 inches. Circa 1980 by F. Lennox Campello

Rodin After Rodin

"Rodin After Rodin" Intaglio Etching 1979 F. Lennox Campello

Every time that I'm looking for something in my studio, I find something else that I didn't know I still had... Above is the proof to an art school assignment from printmaking class. That's the proof from an edition of 10 prints that I pulled in 1979. All were sold by 1981 at the Pike Place Market in Seattle.

WPA News

WPA has some new faces as Jeremy Flick as their new Membership Director, and Mary Resing is the new Development Director.

A practicing artist, educator, and seasoned arts administrator, Jeremy has been an active member of the DC arts community since 2006. 

Mary comes to WPA from Active Cultures Theatre, where she served as artistic/executive director for the past seven years. Prior to running Active Cultures, Mary worked at Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company.

WPA takes great pride in its devoted volunteers, interns, supporters, and our talented artist members. And as we continue to work in service to our mission, we're thrilled to welcome Jeremy and Mary.  

Artist Talk with Michael Janis

When: Sunday, May 4, 2014, 2pm

Join the Smithsonian American Art Museum and Michael Janis, an architect-turned-glass-artist who has become one of the DMV's uberartists - he works with powdered glass, high-fire enamels, and decals to create dreamlike imagery, as he elaborates on his techniques, work, and career.




If you collect DMV artists and don't own a Janis, you have a big hole in your collection. He is represented locally by Maurine Littleton, the premier art glass gallery on the planet.

Location: Smithsonian American Art Museum, McEvoy Auditorium

Tickets: Free

Event Link: http://americanart.si.edu/calendar/event.cfm?trumbaEmbed=view%3Devent%26eventid%3D109063429

Shame on Brandeis University

Below is a brilliant letter written to Brandeis president Fred Lawrence by historian and UM Professor Jeffrey Herf, who received his PhD from Brandeis, in regards to Lawrence’s decision to withdraw the offer of an honorary degree to Ayaan Hirsi Ali, the courageous Somali-born American who is perhaps the world's leading advocate for women's rights in the Islamic world - and shame on CAIR, for demanding this action and enlisting the drive to kick her to the side:

Dear President Lawrence:

As a scholar whose 1981 PhD comes from Brandeis, I read the news that you rescinded the offer of an honorary degree to Ayaan Hirsi Ali with particular disgust and anger. Your decision is an act of cowardice and appeasement to those 85 faculty members who signed their document of intolerance, and it has done deep and long-lasting damage to a university whose very existence is predicated on redressing the damage that discrimination within the academy had done to American Jews for so many years. Unless you can find some way to repair the damage you have done, I will not identify with or support Brandeis as long as you are its President.

Ms. Hirsi has had the courage to say unpopular things about the religion of Islam and the ideology of Islamism. In two of my prize-winning books, Nazi Propaganda for the Arab World (Yale University Press, 2009) and The Jewish Enemy: Nazi Propaganda during World War II and the Holocaust (Harvard University Press, 2006), I have had occasion to address the role of Islam and Islamism in fanning the flames of Jew-hatred. In publishing work that documents the role of the Islamist interpretation of the Koran in promulgating the most absurd and idiotic ideas about the Jews, I have faced intolerance from scholars working on the Middle East. They have denounced well-founded scholarship as “Islamophobia” or “Zionist propaganda” and denied that the Koran or Islamism could possibly have anything to do with anti-Semitism. 

Like Tony Kushner and Desmond Tutu, to whom Brandeis has given honorary degrees, they have erroneously argued that Arab and Islamist antagonism to Israel is exclusively the result of the alleged sins of Israel. As far as I know, neither has had anything of substance to say about the role of Islam and Islamism in fanning the flames of hatred of the Jews and of Israel. These critics have said that those of us who point to the anti-Jewish elements of the Koran and the Jew-hatred of modern Islamists are guilty of intolerance towards Muslims. I have seen this up close for years now. The last place I expected to find groveling, embarrassing appeasement of this rubbish was from the president of Brandeis University.

No doubt, Hirsi’s comments about Islam offend many believers. The same was true of Sigmund Freud’s Future of an Illusion. Freud, you will recall, dismissed religion as the product of a universal infantile neurosis of humanity. Yet I doubt that if Freud were alive today, those 85 faculty members would have protested his honorary degree. On the contrary, his criticism of religion in general, especially of Judaism or Christianity, would be seen as simply an entry ticket into intellectual respectability.

Your decision reflects a now-widespread double standard of broad criticism of Judaism and Christianity combined with fear—yes it is fear—to write and speak with equal critical spirit about Islam. We historians of modern Germany and Nazism know that the Nazi interpretation of Christianity as well as the core texts of the Christian tradition itself, were used by the Nazis to justify their mass murders. In our own time, Hamas, Hezbollah, the Muslim Brothers, Al Qaeda and the government of Iran, despite their differences, all draw on phrases from the Koran and in the texts of subsequent Islamic commentaries to find theological justification for antagonism to Jews, Zionism and the state of Israel.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali has been willing  to point this out, something Kushner and Tutu have never done. That the president of a university founded by Jews in the immediate aftermath of the Holocaust should have rescinded an honor to a woman who has had the courage to attack the most important source of Jew-hatred in the world today is a disgraceful act and a failure of leadership. Instead of appeasing intolerance in your faculty, you should have taken this moment to reaffirm the values for which Brandeis has stood for so long and reconfirm the place of universities as models of tolerance and enlightenment in our troubled society. Once a proud alumnus, I will be forced to disavow my relationship with Brandeis in the future.

Sincerely,
Jeffrey Herf
Professor, Department of History
University of Maryland
College Park

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Coupon here. Only on orders taken 4/15 - 4/19!

Free Ivan Fernandez Depestre

The brutal and racist Cuban dictatorship has once again shown its true colors.

Cuban political prisoner Ivan Fernandez Depestre has been brutally beaten and placed in a small, inhumane punishment cell (known as a "tapeada") in the infamous Guamajal Prison of Santa Clara.

Fernandez Depestre, held without charges or trial since July 30th of last year, has been designated by Amnesty International as a "prisoner of conscience."  

He had simply protested against the brutal beating of two fellow black inmates by the Cuban prison authorities.

Once again, I call upon the Black Congressional Caucus to stop treating the racist dictatorship of the Castro Brothers with kid gloves and step up pressure on the Cuban regime to release this brave man and all other prisoners of conscience!

Walk a mile

“Before you criticize someone, you should walk a mile in their shoes. That way when you criticize them, you are a mile away from them and you have their shoes.”

 Jack Handey

East DC Open Studios