Sarah Cascone and others from ArtNet News pops in with their top bottom... cough... cough... artworks from around the world...
Who says criticism is dead? Sometimes, despite an artist’s best intentions, an artwork misses the mark—at least according to some opinions. Art is delightfully subjective, and we are sure that many people hold dear some of the art our editorial staff found, well, less than perfect.
It is with deep sadness that I share my father-in-law's passing on Christmas Eve, William H. Anderson (June 29, 1933 - December 24, 2022) - fair winds and following seas shipmate! RIP - we have the watch!
The Howard County Arts Council (HCAC) in Maryland manages two galleries at the Howard County Center for the Arts with over 21,000 square feet of exhibit space.
HCAC presents 11-12 exhibits per year of national, regional, and local artists, including two-person, small and large group, juried, curated, and community shows.Visit HCAC's application portal to apply.
As many of you know, when I was in the Navy I did loads of illustrations and cartoons for many newspapers (such as The Stars & Stripes and lots of base newspapers, etc.), and hundreds of sketches of my shipmates and other US Navy sailors in ports in the US and European ports.
Most of these drawings, cartoons, and paintings were given away to my shipmates over the years, but I also kept many of them, and I see them often being sold at auctions online and by galleries... this image was sent to me by someone who bought it at an auction in San Diego and it is part of this vintage group of Navy artwork! It is called "A Sailor and his date".
A Sailor and his date - 1980 drawing by Campello
Northern National Art Competition
The 36th Northern National Art Competition is a juried art exhibition in Rhinelander, Wisconsin, co-sponsored by Nicolet College and the Northern Arts Council. The Northern National Art Competition (NNAC) began in 1987 with a mere 37 entries. Today, the show attracts the work of artists from all across the United States with hundreds of entries as diverse as the artists themselves, and showcases a wide array of contemporary art in a variety of two-dimensional mediums.
MORE THAN $8,500 AWARDED WITH THREE $1,000 AWARDS OF EXCELLENCE
CALENDAR 2023
- Monday, January : Registration opens via CaFÉ
- (Call for Entry) online registration system
- Friday, March 24: Registration deadline
- Friday, April 21: Acceptance notification
- Friday, May 12: Hand delivery by appointment
- Monday, May 15: All shipped work due
- Thursday, June 15: Opening Reception
- Thursday, July 28: Show Closes
- Friday, July 29: Pick up hand delivered work by appointment
This article by Chris Cobb is a must read for everyone who has bought an original Frida Kahlo on Ebay for a few hundred bucks!
If you are in the business of selling fake art online, this is truly a golden age.
It’s especially true if you are selling images attributed to famous artists such as Andy Warhol, Keith Haring, or Jean-Michel Basquiat...
Application deadline: December 30Glen Echo Park Partnership Galleries invites artists to submit art that investigates the impact our environment has on identity and experiences. Themes can include place, identity, origins, routine, displacement, immigration, natural and manmade environments.Click here for more information and to apply.
Application deadline: January 18The Adolph & Esther Gottlieb Foundation welcomes applications for its 2023 Individual Support Grants program, which will award grants of $25,000 in support of mature painters, sculptors, and printmakers who are in financial need. To be eligible, applicants must be able to demonstrate they have been working in a mature phase of their art for at least 20 years.Click here for more information and to apply.
Below is a peek from Juicy Fruit Perfume: An American Remembers his Cuban Childhood, my biography, which is currently scheduled to be published in 2024 2026 (should I ever finish it!) - This chapter is titled "The Rock Magnet":
One of our favorite games was rock fights.
How in the world we survived countless battles without losing an eye or getting killed is both a miracle and mystery.
Rock fights would either be planned, between a couple of teams, or just start out of nowhere, first with one or two people, and slowly gathering impetus until broken up by either an adult, a cracked head, or a cracked window or windshield on a parked or passing car.
How many times would I wander out of my house, bored and with nothing to do, climb on the roof and survey the neighborhood from my own little kingdom. And if I detected Pepin or his brother Monguito playing down at the end of the block, or perhaps one of the Calixton brothers outside their house a block directly across from us, I would climb down from the roof, gather a few rocks, walk to the middle of the block, yell just one warning shout and launch an unexpected aerial attack.
Having been at the receiving end of these same attacks, it was not unfair to launch an unprovoked attack, and immediately the battle would begin.
Two solitary warriors lobbing rocks at each other, maybe 100-200 feet apart, throwing the rocks in long, elegant arcs that demanded attention – in order to avoid them – and guts – in order to appear unconcerned and avoid being hit just at the last minute by side-stepping the rock as it was about to hit you. Soon, one of the brothers would join in, and now I would have to start dodging two attackers while shouting for either my cousin Cesar or my best friend Jorge Cunningham to come to my aid.
As my best friend, Jorge, who was an excellent rock thrower, was feared for his skill; however, he lived about half a block down from Cuartel Street and would not always hear me. Cesar nearly always came to my aid, but he was not very good at aiming, and there was always a chance that he’d join the other guys – unless the Monguitos had done something to him recently.
The only guy in our neighborhood that you never started an unprovoked rock fight against with was Pupy.
Pupy was one of an endless horde of Haitians who lived in a huge house at the end of where the paved Cuartel Street ended. He didn’t usually play with us, as the Haitians tended to keep to themselves, and his house had a huge, fenced garden full of trees and space where he usually played his many brothers and cousins. A whole tribe of Haitians lived behind that walled fortress of a house and it was one of the few places in our neighborhood where we weren’t welcomed or allowed in.
But once in a while Pupy would come out and play with us, more often than not terrorizing us. We were all afraid of him, except the Monguito brothers, who were fearless and would fight anyone, anytime; and Jorge, who although skinny and small was very tough.
Pupy was mean and evil, and in rock fights would run close up to you and fire rocks at close range, rather than maintaining a respectable artillery distance. Our only means of revenge against Pupy was rather cowardly, but we all did it anyway.
It consisted of the ritual of lobbing a few anonymous rocks into his house’s back garden or their roof, nearly every night; or whenever we were playing around that corner of the street, which was unusual by itself, as we usually played around the other corner of the block, directly next to my grandparents’ house, which is where I lived.
There was an art to the rock fight that demanded a certain skill and grace in order to survive without being hit. This was especially needed when you were defending against two boys.
The idea was to throw your rock and then immediately and very quickly begin looking for a new one to throw. Because we lived on a paved street, strategy and location was important, such as beginning the fight from around one of the several empty lots in our block, with an abundant supply of projectiles. One was most vulnerable when bending down to pick up new rocks (ideally two at once), when you took your eyes off your opponent.
A well timed throw would arc towards you to try to catch you looking away for that final split second. Two throwers demanded intense concentration and skill, and an amazing dance around a rainfall of rocks.
One year, for a few delirious months, our street was torn and opened up as huge, new sewer lines were installed. For months these large cement pipes provided castles and forts from which massive rock fights took place – the open, torn streets providing an unending supply of rocks. It is amazing how few times we were actually hurt – of course we were hit, and it did hurt, but seldom were hits very serious or requiring stitches.
Except for Pepin.
Pepin was the youngest of the two Monguito brothers, his father was Mongo, who we would all make fun of, as he traveled back and forth to his job in a bicycle, becoming the proverbial Mongo en Bicicleta character. Mongo also wore the same thick, nerd glasses that Castro wore and that nearly every Cuban who needed glasses seemed to have in those years.
Later when I was in the US Navy we would see those glasses being issued in bootcamp and we would call them "birth control glasses."
Mongo also had an incredible resemblance to the American cartoon artist Robert Crumb. Pepin and Monguito were a key part of our pandilla, and we all played together, and of course this included rock fights, either on our side against other neighborhood’s kids or internecine battles in our own group.
But Pepin’s head seemed to be a rock magnet! I cannot recall the number of times that his poor mother Elba, had to take Pepin to the hospital to stitch his head close from rock wounds. It was astounding even to the doctors, and his crewcut was decorated with shiny white healed scars visible under the short cropped hairstyle that we all wore. It was so bad that one time, as Elba and Pepin where coming out of the most recent visit to the hospital (she madder than a hornet at yet another busted head, and he, recently stitched and bandaged), an amazing thing happened as they were waiting for the bus outside the hospital
Now, it must be made clear that buses were also good targets for rock throwing, and in our neighborhood we generously pelted the buses with rocks if they happened to drive by during one of our battles.
Apparently this was the case all over Guantanamo, as when the bus arrived at the hospital stop, and as Elba and the bandaged Pepin prepared to enter it, from across the street someone lobbed a rock at the bus, managed to miss it completely, arcing the rock over it and landing it squarely atop Pepin’s head, busting it open in a new spot and sending him back to the hospital amidst Elba’s cries of blue murder.
But the rock fight to end all rock fights was an incredibly huge rock fight that took place one warm, sunny summer early evening at the crossing of the river Guaso. It has remained, both in my memory and my father’s memory, as the largest, most intensive rock fight in Guantanamo’s history, and it literally involved nearly 100 people of all ages, sizes and colors. This rock fight was the mother of all rock fights.
This 1980 original drawing of an unicorn by yours truly just popped up on Ebay! I did these unicorn series in prep for a private, illustrated edition of a book on the subject being printed in Seattle in 1980!
I recall selling this drawing in 1980 while I was selling art at the Pike Place Market while I was an art student at the University of Washington.
Erika Denise Edwards is the author of the book "Hiding in Plain Sight: Black Women, the Law and the Making of a White Argentine Republic" and an associate professor at the University of Texas at El Paso. She is also the author of a baffling article in the Washington Post titled Why doesn’t Argentina have more Black players in the World Cup?
I shit thee not - the professor actually has a bee in her bonnet about this baffling question. And to make her impossible case, she digs deep into Argentine history, although the article was already once corrected because somehow initially the author made a math mistake that thought that 149,493 divided by 46 million was one percent... cough... cough... the article has now been corrected.
Dear professor Edwards, the reason that there are no black players in the Argentine national team is that for a soccer-crazy nation like Argentina, only the best of some of the best soccer players on the planet make it to that team. I can assure you that if there was a black Messi somewhere in Argentina with an Argentine passport, he would be on that team regardless of color.
Of that 149, 493 black Argentines, we would need a subset of men aged between 18-35 to sort of be able to even be counted. The miniscule mathematical possibility is now so low, that it takes a deep breath to try to figure out why some idiot at the WaPo thought that this was a valid question.
As one commenter notes: "For the same reason why there are no White or Asian or Latino players in nearly 50 African national teams: the demographics aren't there."
Another commenter strikes the article dead and demolishes the author's thesis in a few simple words: "Can’t say for Argentina’s FIFA team, but superimposing US racial categories on a Latin American country is an intellectual blunder the author should have easily avoided, almost the same mistake the racists make..."
Perhaps Professor Edwards needs to refresh her American-centric mindset, racialized by Americaness, deeply different from Latin American culture, and take a deep look at her flawed outlook and unsupported logic on this subject. I recommend that she starts with Jorge Luis Borges who once noted that "The Argentinian is an Italian who speaks Spanish, thinks French, and would like to be English.”
Shame on the WaPo for publishing such a silly article. And yet, there's part of me which "hears" what the Prof. is saying, although her arrow errs in her aim - I am talking to you, the rest of Latin America! That's who the Professer needs to aim her arrow at instead of the New World's "whitest" country! Cough... cough...
PS - Latin American newspapers are having a lot of fun with the Professor's article.
The Howard County Arts Council (HCAC) in Maryland manages two galleries at the Howard County Center for the Arts with over 21,000 square feet of exhibit space.
HCAC presents 11-12 exhibits per year of national, regional, and local artists, including two-person, small and large group, juried, curated, and community shows.Visit HCAC's application portal to apply.
The annual Annapolis county exhibition is returning and will be on display at the Lowe House building in Annapolis, MD from January 11- April 10, 2023.
PG County artists can submit an online entry application at: https://m-ncppc.submittable.com/submit.
All artists must be over 18 and either live, work, or have a studio in Prince George's County. You may submit up to 3 images of artworks for consideration and no more than 1 artwork per person may be selected for inclusion. Please review the entire call for entry for more information on the exhibition.
The deadline for applications will be this Friday, December 16, 2022, 11:59 pm.
The Howard County Arts Council, a multi-purpose non-profit arts agency, seeks a self-directed, outgoing individual for an entry to mid-level Exhibits and Programs position in a small, fast-paced office environment. View the full job description here.
Position open until filled. Send cover letter with resume and three references to Mary K Baxter at deputydirector@hocoarts.org
The Mighty Thor, issue 333, page 14 published in 1983. Terrific page showing Thor smashing his hammer and then flying away!
Calling all writers to submit your creative essays, short stories and poems to the Local Writer’s Showcase. Enter to win a chance to win a cash prize, a free membership to The Writer's Center, and first place winners get published in Bethesda Magazine and online on the Bethesda Urban Partnership and The Writer’s Center websites. Adults and high schoolers are encouraged to apply, with winners picked from each group.
The deadline for the Essay and Short Story Contest is January 10, 2023.
The deadline for the Poetry Contest is January 17, 2023.
Partners supporting the contests include Bethesda Magazine, The Writer's Center and The Trawick Foundation.
Weird War Tales, issue 57, page 5 published in 1977. Terrific page showing loads of action and great art! Set in the summer of 1944 in France during World War II, as well as France in 1247.
 |
| Havana street, 1950s |
"Once upon a time there was a Republic. It had its constitution, its laws, its civil rights, its President, a Congress, and law courts. Everyone could assemble, associate, speak and write with complete freedom. Public opinion was respected and heeded and all problems of common interest were freely discussed. There were political parties, radio and television debates and forums and public meetings. The whole nation pulsated with enthusiasm."
"Socialism is a philosophy of failure, the creed of ignorance, and the gospel of envy, its inherent virtue is the equal sharing of misery."
