2020 Trawick Prize Finalists announced and Baltimore dominates!

Seven Baltimore artists and one DC artist have been selected as finalists for The Trawick Prize: Bethesda Contemporary Art Awards, a juried competition and exhibition produced by the Bethesda Arts & Entertainment District. More than 300 artists from Maryland, Virginia and Washington, D.C. submitted work to the 18th annual competition.

2020 Trawick Prize Finalists

• Erick Antonio Benitez, Baltimore, MD

• Cindy Cheng, Baltimore, MD

• Elliot Doughtie, Baltimore, MD

• Danni O’Brien, Baltimore, MD

• Nara Park, Washington, D.C.

• Ginevra Shay, Baltimore, MD

• Bria Sterling-Wilson, Baltimore, MD

• Daniel Wickerham & Malcolm Lomax, Baltimore, MD

The award winners will be announced on September 2, 2020. The Best in Show, first place winner will be awarded $10,000; second place will be honored with $2,000; third place will be awarded $1,000 and a Young Artist, a finalist who is younger than 30, could win $1,000.

The exhibit will be on display Sept. 4 – 26, 2020 at Gallery B, located at 7700 Wisconsin Avenue, Suite E. Gallery hours for the duration of the exhibit will be Friday-Saturday, 12 – 4pm. During operational hours, social distancing will be enforced and face masks must be worn by all visitors.

The 2020 Trawick Prize jurors are:

Larry Cook, 2017 Trawick Prize Winner; Assistant Professor of Photography, Howard University

Carrie Fucile, Professor of Digital Art & Design, Towson University

Noah Simblist, Associate Professor of Art and Chair of Painting & Printmaking; Virginia Commonwealth University.

Founded by the amazing Carol Trawick in 2003, the regional competition is one of the largest prizes to annually honor visual artists. Ms. Trawick, a longtime community activist in downtown Bethesda, also established the Bethesda Painting Awards in 2005. She has served as the Chair of the Bethesda Arts & Entertainment District, Bethesda Urban Partnership, Strathmore and the Maryland State Arts Council. She founded the Jim and Carol Trawick Foundation in 2007 to assist health and human services and arts non-profits in Montgomery County. The Foundation has awarded grants to more than 90 nonprofits in Montgomery County and funds the annual Trawick Prize and the Bethesda Painting Awards.

To date, The Trawick Prize has awarded more than $220,000 in prize monies and has exhibited the work of more than 135 regional artists. 

Previous Best in Show recipients include Richard Clever, 2003; David Page, 2004; Jiha Moon, 2005; James Rieck, 2006; Jo Smail, 2007; Maggie Michael, 2008; Rene Trevino, 2009; Sara Pomerance, 2010; Mia Feuer, 2011; Lillian Bayley Hoover, 2012; Gary Kachadourian, 2013; Neil Feather, 2014; Jonathan Monaghan, 2015; Lauren Adams, 2016; Larry Cook, 2017; Caroline Hatfield, 2018 and Oletha DeVane, 2019.

For more information, please visit www.bethesda.org or call 301-215-6660.

ARTOMATIC 2.0 IS OFFICIALLY OPEN

ARTOMATIC 2.0 IS OFFICIALLY OPEN!

They have nearly 300 visual artists registered at www.artomatic.org! Take a scroll online and consider purchasing art to support our artist community.

BUY ART!

Top 10 Craft Artists at Artomatic 2.0!!!

ARTOMATIC 2.0

https://www.jra.org/jra-news/top-10-in-craft-artomatic-20

TOP 10 IN CRAFT: ARTOMATIC 2.0The James Renwick Alliance jurors selected their top 10 best craft to see at Artomatic 2.0

Jurors :

- Interior designer and collector, Judy Weisman

- Artist and past Artomatic awardee, Rania Hassan

- Collector and past JRA president, Clemmer Montague

- Collectors Sandy and Norman Michell

- Collector, photographer and arts consultant, Leslie Lane

RHODA BAER

LAUREL LUKASZEWSKI

MICHAEL JANIS

JOHN LITTLETON AND KATE VOGEL

SUSAN LARSEN AND PATRICK COLLENTINE

ERWIN TIMMERS

SHARRON PARKER

BOB TROTMAN

HILLARY STEEL

JRA Artomatic Committee : Rebecca Ravenal, Chris Shea, Tim Tate

Upcoming ARTOMATIC 2.0 JRA events

__________________________

Wednesday, July 29^th @ 7pm

The History of Craft in Washington, DC

The JRA presents an online ZOOM discussion on the history of art and craft in Washington DC by some of the leading experts on the subject: Brett L. Abrams, Rebecca Cross, Jaimianne Jacobin and Jack Rasmussen.

Zoom link: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/87935799872?pwd=R0FHYTRjQzRzKzQ3QUpMRDlkOHArZz09

Meeting ID: 879 3579 9872
Password: JRAart2020

__________________________

Wednesday, August 5^th @ 7pm

What Makes a Piece of Craft Exceptional?

The JRA will moderate an online ZOOM panel conversation on how craft collectors decide what makes a piece of art exceptional enough to add to their collection. The Conversation will have artists Rebecca Ravenal, Chris Shea, and Tim Tate, arts collectors Jere Gibber and J.G. Harrington and Dr. Jeffrey Bernstein and Dr. Judy Chernoff. This event will be moderated by arts supporter Chris Rifkin. Chris currently serves on the board of The South Shore Art Center and the Fuller Craft Museum, and is a Founding Chair of CraftBoston, a juried biennial exhibition of well-known and emerging artists in the United States.

Zoom link: ​https://us02web.zoom.us/j/83922305669?pwd=MTdYRnBzRnREMEFxS3ZQd0lMRXVDQT09
Meeting ID: 839 2230 5669
Password: JRAart2020

_______________________

The James Renwick Alliance (JRA) is an independent national non-profit organization that celebrates the achievements of America’s craft artists and fosters scholarship, education, connoisseurship and public appreciation of craft art. The JRA is made up of art enthusiasts, collectors, artists, educators, students and art professionals who share a passion for contemporary American craft. Founded in 1982, the Alliance fulfills its mission through public programs, educational trips, publications, recognition of craft artists, and financial support of museums and other non-profit organizations, including the Renwick Gallery of the Smithsonian American Art Museum. 

Artomatic 2.0 Registration is Officially Open

Visual Artist Registration is officially open!

The glitches have been fixed! Please note that you can register on a laptop or an Ipad; not on a mobile device just yet. I will let you know when mobile capability is ready. 

If you registered during the "glitch period", please do not re-register. You can now go into your artist profile and make edits. 

They will provide each visual artist with an "artist tool kit" of images to help you promote your work to your networks. These images include some generic art mediums and a customizable graphic for your own images or headshot. 

Registered artists: Look out for that email in the coming days. 

If there are any questions, please email info@artomatic.org. 

Artomatic website.

Rejected!

Bummerstein! But Artists need thick skins!

Dear Lenny Campello, 

Thank you so much for your submission to MPA's online exhibition, SHIFT. 

Unfortunately, your work was not chosen by the jurors. We received a very large number of submissions and choosing from among them was very difficult. 

The exhibition will be online from July 15 - August 27. 

The virtual opening of SHIFT will be held on Zoom on Wednesday, July 15 from 7 - 8 PM. If you are interested in attending, please register on our website, www.mpaart.org. 

We very much appreciate your interest in MPA's programs and exhibitions.  

Best regards, 

Nancy Sausser,
Curator and Exhibitions Director

Call for Montgomery Artists!

Yuri Schwebler Curatorial Project at AU

My good bud John Anderson passes the following:

I'm pleased to announce that the Yuri Schwebler curatorial project I have been working on the last few years is “open," and that the catalog is now available online. 

Although originally scheduled to open in June, because of the pandemic the American University Museum canceled all their summer exhibitions. As a result, I offered to create a virtual exhibition (fancy words for "slideshow") to substitute for what was no longer going to be on exhibit. You can find links to the slideshow, and the exhibition catalog, on the museum's exhibition page.

This exhibition is, in many respects, an extension of my earlier Jefferson Place Gallery research, which has expanded to included monographs of Hilda Thorpe, Mary Orwen, and Jennie Lea Knight (each at Marymount University, co-curated with Meaghan Kent and Caitlin Berry), and a catalog essay about Rockne Krebs and Sam Gilliam, for Day Eight's exhibition Built and Unbuilt.

On Thursday, at 12:30 Eastern, there is a virtual discussion between the Museum's Director, Jack Rasmussen, and myself. Registration can also be found on the exhibition page.

Opportunity: Yarn Bomb 2020!

Spanish dealer claims to find long-lost Frida Kahlo painting

A Spanish art dealer named Cristian López claims that he has located the “holy grail” of Frida Kahlo’s oeuvre, the long-lost painting La Mesa Herida (The Wounded Table) from 1940 that went missing 65 years ago. The painting is currently in a warehouse in London, according to López, and its anonymous owner is requesting around $45m for it. Meanwhile, experts question the painting's authenticity.

Read the story here. 

MEG Group Exhibition

Multiple Exposures Gallery Reopening and Group Exhibition of Photography  July 2020 Update

"MEG Group Exhibition" Exhibition Dates:  July 1 to September 1, 2020 Craig Sterling, Juror The uncertainties arising from COVID-19 outbreak continue to affect us all and have had a significant impact on the arts community throughout the Washington DC metro area.  The City of Alexandria, VA is currently in Phase 3 of the state’s Forward Virginia reopening plan and in accordance with these guidelines, the Torpedo Factor Art Center has reopened. The public may visit the Torpedo Factory Art Center from Wednesday to Sunday, 10 am to 6 pm.  Entrance to and exit from the Torpedo Factory are via sliding doors on the Waterfront and on Union Street only.  There is no capacity limit in the Art Center, but masks are required for admittance and social distancing should be observed for the duration of the visit. Multiple Exposures Gallery is now exhibiting our recently featured online Group show in our gallery.  MEG member photographs are now up on the walls and we think it is a beautiful exhibition.  Visitors may view and enjoy the show at our gallery in the Torpedo Factory Art Center.  Please note however that gallery access is currently by appointment only.  To schedule a visit, please send an email to: info@multipleexposuresgallery.com. About the Gallery Exhibition: Our current Group Exhibition has been juried by Craig Sterling.  Craig is an artist, photographer and educator whose works are held in numerous public, private and corporate collections in the United States and abroad. His photographs are included in the permanent collections of the Corcoran Gallery of Art (now part of The National Gallery of Art’s Archive Collection), The Oakland Museum of California and the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of American History.  Craig Sterling lives in Sarasota, Florida where he continues to photograph and teach, and is currently an instructor at The Osher Lifelong Learning Institute at The Ringling College of Art and Design.  Of the images submitted by MEG artists, Craig Sterling selected 36 photographs that comprise our Group exhibition now on display at our gallery.  For those unable to visit Multiple Exposures Gallery at the Torpedo Factory Art Center, the exhibition may also be viewed online at the MEG website. To view the exhibition online please click here. Art Inquiries and Acquisition: All photographs in the exhibition are available for acquisition from the individual artist through Multiple Exposures Gallery.  Information about photograph image size, edition, pricing and framing is provided online in the exhibition.  For additional information regarding art acquisition, please send an email request to Multiple Exposures Gallery at info@multipleexposuresgallery.com.

I am not an angel

I live in a cul-de-sac.

My last four houses have been in a cul-de-sac.

There are a lot of "walkers" in our neighborhood... people who walk around, just walk and enjoy their walks.... sometimes I am one of them.

Early this morning, I went out to put something in my mailbox for the mailman to pick up. After spells of sunshine, it was Seattle-like, gray and brooding.

I heard a woman sobbing as she rounded the trees in the center of the cul-de-sac... so I delayed a little, and when she got close to me, I asked her if she was OK.

She came to me and hugged me and cried on my shoulders. She was a stranger, but the two or three generations of the women who raised me (my grandmother, my mother, and all my wives) popped through, and I hugged her back, and soothed her and said, "It will be OK."

She cried for a few seconds, then gently pulled away, sniffed... and asked me, "Are you an angel?"

She was serious - I felt the seriousness of the question.

"Fucking far from it", I thought to myself (thank God that I didn't say it out loud!)... but I just smiled and said no and asked her again if she was OK.

"Yeah", she sniffed again and started walking away slowly... then the stranger turned around and said to me, "Thank you Lenny."

Andy Warhol at auction

This 40-year-old work of mine just showed up at auction in Houston! This 1980 art school assignment is a signed and numbered litho of a portrait of Andy Warhol done for printmaking and also for portrait class - a steal at $50 opening bid!

https://www.liveauctioneers.com/item/86459829_f-lennox-campello-jr-andy-warhol

Art Bank call for artists!

Deadline is Friday, August 7, at 4:00 pm. 

I am pleased to announce that the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities (CAH) Art Bank Program grant application is now open. 

The Art Bank Collection is the District of Columbia’s fine art collection. Acquired through an annual request for applications, Art Bank works are loaned to District Government agencies for display in public areas and offices of government buildings. The Art Bank has been a source of recognition and support for local artists since 1986. It now includes nearly 3,000 artworks - none of which is mine, as the city has always declined to acquired any of my works. 

Please view this video (and more here!) to see examples of recently acquired works, or explore the entire Art Bank Collection here - note the lack of any work from yours truly!

The request for applications is now open - including both established and emerging artists living within a 50-mile radius of Washington, DC. District art galleries and nonprofit organizations may also apply on behalf of artists.

The application deadline is Friday, August 7, at 4:00 pm. 

The Commission will be offering free workshops on Wednesday, June 24, 10:00-11:30 am, and Wednesday, July 1, 4:00-5:30 pm. These session provide information on the grant and guidance on the application process.

Good luck!

Artist Relief Emergency Grants: Cycle III

Deadline: June 18, 2020

Artist Relief Emergency Grants: Cycle III
Organization: Artist Relief
Submission Deadline: June 18, 2020
Award Info: $5,000
Type: Grants & Fellowships
Eligibility: National
Categories: Craft/Traditional Arts, Photography, Drawing, Film/Video/New Media, Mixed-Media/Multi-Discipline, Painting, Sculpture
Online Only: Yes

Details here.

How One Artist is Preserving Her Legacy

I would imagine everyone has had to reflect on their own mortality during this pandemic. 

But, as it was, I spent significant time at the end of 2018 and a good part of 2019 thinking about my own impermanence. Not that I was ill or anything like that. But, my father, who was a cartoonist, passed away in 2018 from a long battle with cancer. As did my brother-in-law that same year, also from cancer. 

Maybe it was part of the grieving, but my husband and I decided it was time to think about our own “not being here anymore.”

What would happen to everything?

Read the insightful article in Artwork Archive here.

WHAT IF? The prison drawings of Carlos Walker

OPENING JUNE 10 - 6 pm - 8 pm 

THE  CENTER FOR CONTEMPORARY POLITICAL ART presents

WHAT IF? The prison drawings of Carlos Walker

CARLOS WALKER is a 38-year-old self-trained African-American artist who was released last year after spending 13 years in prison for drug trafficking. The inspiration for these drawings came to him after seeing a black prison guard discipline a white inmate.

"What if" traditional racial relationships wexre reversed, he thought to himself. And then set to work. Using chalk pastel. he completed 48 drawings while still in prison, before his release. Only 36 of them are currently on display because he couldn't afford to frame the other 12. He would be most grateful, as would we, if someone would donate $1,000 so the remaining drawings can be framed in time for them to be shown at CCPArt before WHAT IF closes July 5th.

10 June - 5 July 2020
CCPArt is located at
916 G Street NW / DC 20001

CCPArt is a 501-c-3 nonprofit corporation and donations are fully tax deductible

Glen Echo Park Partnership Gallery Request for Proposals 2021

Deadline: June 12, 2020

Glen Echo is seeking proposals from individuals, groups of artists or curators for their 2021 exhibitions.
>>> Details here

Call for Artists: Foundry Gallery Artists’ Choice 2020

Deadline: Jul 8, 2020

Open Juried Online Exhibit - >>> Details here

Artists’ Choice 2020 —Open Juried Online Exhibit
Exhibition dates August 5 – 30

About: Due to Covid 19 Artists’ Choice 2020 will be exhibited entirely online via The Foundry Gallery’s website www.foundrygallery.org

Eligibility : A National Juried Competition open to all artists 18 and up. There are no size restrictions or themes. Categories to include all 2-D and 3-D work.
All art will be for sale, and the gallery retains a 40% commission. Shipping arrangements made between artist and buyer.

On the anniversary of a superwoman's death

A few years ago my courageous mother died... this is my eulogy from that day:

When my father died last year, I began his eulogy by noting that another oak had fallen.

This morning, around 1:25AM, Ana Olivia Cruzata Marrero de Campello, his wife of over 60 years, and my beloved mother, passed on on the day of her 97th birthday.

If my father was an oak, then my mother was an equally strong, but also very pliable, and elegant tree.  When hurricanes attack the mainlands of the world, the strong tall trees often fall, but the pliable ones, like plantain trees, always give with the wind, and survive the storms, and thrive in the drenching rains.

My mother was like a an aged plantain tree, not only immensely strong and pliable, but also giving and nurturing.

Like many Cuban women of her generation and her social-economic background, she had never worked for a living in Cuba, and yet within a few days of our arrival in New York in the 1960s, she was working long hours in a sewing factory, putting her formidable seamstress skills, honed in the social sewing and embroidery gathering of young Cuban girls, to use in the "piece work" process of the New York sewing factories.

As soon as we saved the money, one of the first things that my mother bought was an electric sewing machine - a novelty to her, as she had always used one of the those ancient Singer machines with a foot pedal.

I remember as a child in Brooklyn, that women used to bring her fabric and a page from a magazine with a woman wearing a dress. Without the benefit of a sewing pattern, my mother would whip up a copy of the dress that was more often than not probably better made than the original. As the word of her skills spread, so did her customers and soon she was making more money working at home than at the factory - but she kept both jobs.

I once noted to her that I admired the courage that it must have taken  her to leave her family and immigrate to the United States. "We didn't come here as immigrants," she corrected me. "We came as political refugees, and I initially thought that we'd be back in Cuba within a few years at the most."

When the brutal Castro dictatorship refused to loosen its stranglehold on her birth place, she became an immigrant, and from there on an American citizen from her white-streaked hair down to her heel bone (that's a Cuban saying). Like my father, she loved her adopted country with a ferocity, that I sometimes feel that only people who have been bloodied by Communism can feel for a new, free homeland.

As as I've noted before, Cubans are archaic immigrants... we love this great nation because we recognize its singular and unique greatness; perhaps it is because our forebears had the same chance at greatness and blew it.

I remember as a teenager, once I started going out to parties and things at night on my own (around age 16 or so), that my mother would wait up for me, sitting by the third floor window of our Brooklyn apartment, where she could survey the whole neighborhood and see as far as the elevated LL subway station a few blocks away, to watch me descend the station stairs and trace my way home.

My mother was always fit and, as once described by my father, "flaca como un fusil" (as slim as a rifle). She was strong and fast. She was also quiet, but never silenced, and when needed, could and would command attention.

My mother was always well dressed and superbly coiffed. When we'd go to parties and events, women would always ask her where she'd gotten that dress! The answer was always the same: she'd made it!

At least once a week, to my father's dismay, and in spite of his demands that my mother stop it, she'd get her hair done at the nearby peluqueria (hair dresser).

My dad knew, and respected his limits with my mother. 

I remember one time that my father and I were returning from shopping at the supermarket, dragging one of those wheeled folding carts that could carry four full paper grocery bags. It had been snowing, so the Brooklyn streets were wet and muddy.

When we got to our apartment my father opened the door. He then stood there.

"Go in!" I demanded.

"We'll have to wait," he said gloomily, "Your mother mopped the floor and it's still wet." This giant, tough, street-brawling Galician then looked at me sheepishly, "I'd rather walk through a mine field than step on your mother's wet floor."

I learned a lesson there.

She used to delight in telling stories how, as a child, she would often win the horse races that kids staged around the small country towns where she was raised in Oriente province, where her father was a Mayoral.

"I almost always won," she'd say, and then would add: "Even though I was a skinny girl."

Once, in her seventies, back in the days where you could actually accompany people to the departing gates at airports, we were escorting my oldest daughter Vanessa, who had come to visit, and we were running late. As we got to the airport, we ran to the gate, and to everyone's surprise, Abuela got there first. I still remember how delighted my daughter was that her grandmother could still run like a gazelle.

When I joined the Navy at age 17, my first duty station was USS SARATOGA, which at the time was stationed in Mayport in Florida, and thus my parents decided to migrate south to Florida and moved to Miami... just to be close to me.

They spent the next 40 years in the same apartment while I was stationed all over the world.

The mostly Cuban-American families that lived over the years in that apartment loved my mother, and would always tell me stories about my mother, ever the nurturer, bringing them food when she knew that they were going over tough times, or riding the buses with them, just to show them the routes.

This week, when I arrived in Miami, already somewhat knowing that this was approaching the end, I saw her with tubes coming out of her mouth and her eyes closed. When I spoke to her she opened her eyes, and in spite of the visuals that my eyes were seeing she somehow still managed to look strong. 

I showed her photos and movies of her grand children, and talked to her for a long time.

I thanked her for having the courage to leave her motherland and afford me the opportunity to grow as an American.

When she was being extubated, a young woman came into the room with a guitar and played and sang the haunting free prose of Guajira Guantanamera (The peasant girl from Guantanamo); a most fitting song, since my mother was from Guantanamo, and she came from strong Cuban peasant stock.

"Guajira pero fina (A peasant, but a very refined woman)", noted a neighbor and loving caretaker. 

The song, which can start with just about any prose, started with the Jose Marti poem:

 Yo quiero, cuando me muera, sin patria, pero sin amo, tener en mi tumba un ramo de flores y una bandera

I want to, when I die, without my motherland, but without a master, to have on my tomb a bunch of flowers and a flag.

She died without a master, a strong and pliable woman who not only gave me the gift of life, but also the gift of freedom.

And as my mother died in her sleep in the early hours of the morning, in the capital city of the bitter Cuban Diaspora, all that I could gather to say to her was mostly the same that I said to my father when he passed last year: "Thank you for your courage... from me, and from my children... and soon from their children. You opened a whole new world for them."

I love you Mami... Un Abrazo Fuerte! Thank you for your gifts to me and my children, and happy birthday in Heaven!