Teresa Oaxaca at The Art League

Many years ago, I was at the old Washington Post building meeting with the then WaPo Chief Art Critic. He was going through dozens and dozens of postcards and letters (this was at the dawn of the email age), and he'd glance at them, and then drop them into a waste basket... there was a 99% rejection rate at first glance. I sat there, a little hypnotized by the sad reality of the event.

Years later, after having written about DMV area artists for almost three decades, like most art critics, writers and symbiots of the visual arts, I am also now bombarded with emails, news releases, post cards, letters (yep! old fashion snail mail) and other assorted paraphernalia designed to let me know that an artist is showing somewhere.

And like most people and that former WaPo art critic, time management is a delicate issue, and thus over the years I’m fairly sure that I’ve actually only seen about 1% of the shows that I have actually been interested in, or which have caught my attention.

A while back, one of those shows which snared my interest was an embassy show by a “new” – or at least new to me – artist whose work (at least online) seemed to be quite good.

 It wasn’t just that it “looked” quite good because of the subject matter (it did), or that it looked like the artist had some really good painting skills (it did), or even because it was eye catching in a different frequency from most works (it was) that I would usually be exposed to.

And thus, I decided to pay a visit to this embassy show (these days it involves arranging for baby sitters, planning the drive, and there's very little room for error, etc.), and to say that the work at the embassy show floored me is an understatement.

In fact, it forced me to put my nose close to the canvas; it forced me to step backwards and far away to see how the tight compositions worked together; and it even scratched my inner eye and forced me to look around to ensure that I hadn’t been transported to the past, or perhaps to the future of contemporary realism.

Teresa Oaxaca was the artist, and her paintings and etchings were the subject that dazzled my eyes, seduced my imagination, punched the solar plexus of my mind, and filled my curiosity with inquiries about all that revolved around the paradox-filled universe of this "new to me" artist.




"Pursuit" ​ by Teresa Oaxaca

Oil on canvas with artist-made frame

​28"x28"

Oaxaca... and this is clear to the most casual observer, and even clearer to someone who has seen the works of thousands and thousands of painters, is an artist with formidable painting skills.

Her energetic brushwork and fearless attitude towards an aggressive employment of color should be the first chapter in the lesson book to anyone aspiring to pick up a brush and apply anything to a canvas.

Look at the apple in "Pursuit."

It's not the brilliance of the fruit that makes it sing with erotic gusto; in fact it is too shiny - it is like a waxed fruit, prepared to sensualize the first bite by first decorating the visual senses.

It is not its stylized perfect shape, also designed to capture our human check points from the times that we shared the planet with Neanderthals and Denisovans.

It is in fact, those two delicate touches of white paint on the fruit, and it is also the manner in which the cloth caresses the fruit.

Oaxaca’s paintings and prints are at first sight a prism focusing the refracted colors back in time; or are they? To the fantasist, they could also be the work of an artist who has been traveling from a Victorian era to the present; or is it a future time traveler, bathing in the luxuries of the Baroque period, sending us her impressions from her latest voyage to the past?

Whatever the answer, the DMV gets an expanded opportunity to see her work, as her second solo exhibit at The Art League in Alexandria, “Misfits”, will be on view April 6-May 1, 2016.

According to The Art League’s news release, the show “explores the themes of clowns and dolls, human effigies, and painted faces, integrating human emotions and passions with allegorical storytelling. Oaxaca’s style has greatly grown and evolved since her first solo exhibit at The Art League in 2010. She’s interested in breaking the boundaries of traditional realism, and is succeeding through her choice of subject matter, compositional choices, and painterly style.”

Since I’ve just discovered this painter, I have no idea what her first solo show was about, but I suspect that it was but a bridge to her most recent work. Make no mistake, this is an artist who is deeply embedded in the world that she depicts through her art; she lives in that world.

“My work is about pleasing the eye. I paint light and the way it falls. Simple observation reveals beauty, which I often find in the unconventional. Because of this, I have learned to take particular delight in unusual pairings of subject matter,” she notes.

In that previously discussed apple, there are hours of work, but it is the final two applications of white which seal the deal.

"Laughing Queen" by Teresa Oaxaca
Oil on canvas with artist-made frame
 60" x 40"

Oaxaca’s compositions are described as spontaneous. “When a person comes to me, they occupy a space in my mind. Arrangements form from there until I excitedly see and conceive the idea for the piece. The design is both planned and subconscious. For this reason, I surround myself with Victorian and Baroque costumes, bones, and other things in which I find fascinating. I want subject matter to always be at hand, always around me.”

All of Oaxaca’s paintings will be shown within unique frames that the artist designed, built, and painted herself. She feels that the individually designed frames truly complete the one-of-a-kind piece.

Do not miss this show... More later.


Update: Ms. Oaxaca will be doing a demo in the Art League Gallery on the 13th and they will be live streaming on their YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ZYoRm8aY5w

Tim Vermeulen opens in LA

Congrats to DMV artist Tim Vermeulen, whose solo show Alphabet, (inspired by the 1727 New England primer) opens April 9 at the George Billis Gallery in Los Angeles. 

 

Tim Vermeulen, J. Job Feels the Rod, Yet Blesses God. 2016, oil on panel, 19 x 23 inches framed

 You can see the show online here.

Ladybird

In NYC? Come visit us at the Affordable Art Fair, booth 1.54

"Ladybird" 2016 by Lauren Levato Coyne
Colored pencil on blue toned paper
11" x 9"

Cars I've owned

Fiat X1/9 (1977-1985)
Citroen Palas (1982-1985)
Seat (1982-1985)
Saab 900S (1985-1997)
Lada (1989-1992)
Dodge Caravan (1996-1998)
Ford Windstar (1998-2005)
Chrysler Town & Country (2005 - ?)

Reds

In NYC? Come visit us at the Affordable Art Fair, booth 1.54

"Reds" Oil on Linen, 14,11 inches by Rory Coyne

Did President George W. Bush release a new series of dog portraits?

They almost fooled me with the below news release - a very clever April's Fool prank by Artfinder... it was when their CEO started referring to Dubya as "George" that I smelled a prank!

Following the high profile exhibition of his work at the Presidential Library and Museum in Texas in 2014:

Artfinder is delighted to announce that George W. Bush will join the site as an artist from 1 April 2016. To mark the occasion, George has released a new series of technicolor dog portraits, including a Scottish Terrier, in homage to his dog Barney, who sadly passed away in 2013. The portraits will be on sale from midnight GMT 31 March.

George W. Bush comments:

“I wanted to make sure the last chapters of my life were full, and painting, it turns out, has helped occupy not only space but opened my mind.  

Dogs are a subject close to my heart, and frankly they make better subjects for portraits than politicians, who are all very much alike. I am delighted to have been accepted to join Artfinder’s vibrant community of 6,000 artists around the world.”

Jonas Almgren, CEO of Artfinder comments:

 “We have long been admirers of George’s work and are delighted to see him join the site. Our mission is to create a world of art for everyone – and we anticipate George’s pieces being incredibly popular.”

Artfinder is the largest global marketplace for original art, connecting over 500,000 subscribers worldwide with 180,000+ pieces of art from 6,000 artists. 

To view Bush’s Artfinder shop please visit: https://www.artfinder.com/george-bush

Update: Artfinder actually has a pet portrait painter who has joined them - Arizona based Alicia VanNoy Call a.k.a Dawg Art - she is the one behind these canine portraits.

Here's a link to her Artfinder shop: www.artfinder.com/dawgart

Spring exhibits at the American University Museum at the Katzen Arts Center

Spring exhibits at the American University Museum at the Katzen Arts Center are open April 2 through May 29, 2016.


Popular and critically acclaimed Washington artist, Kevin MacDonald, gets a posthumous career retrospective in Kevin MacDonald: The Tension of a Suspended Moment. Created out of unorthodox materials like coffee and tea, representational paintings, lithographs and silkscreens, capture unpeopled interiors, still-lifes, industrial landscapes, and cubist and surrealist representations of daily life. At the time of his death from cancer in 2006, MacDonald, 59, was at the height of his artistic powers and planning an ambitious body of work related to the shared, unwritten, and personal history of Silver Spring, Maryland, where he had spent most of his life. MacDonald’s work is in the permanent collections of The National Gallery of Art, the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, The Phillips Collection, the Smithsonian American Art Museum, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the Baltimore Museum of Art.


Coinciding with the retrospective of Kevin MacDonald, the Alper Initiative for Washington Art (AIWA) presents Twisted Teenage Plot. Besides being an excellent artist, MacDonald also played in bands, most notably Twisted Teenage Plot. Twisted Teenage Plot will showcase the work of visual artists who played in bands in Washington in the late 70s and early 80s, including Dick Bangham, Michael Baron, Jay Burch, Kim Kane, Clark Vinson Fox (aka Michael Clark), Steve Ludlum, Michael McCall, JW Mahoney, Michael Reidy, Robin Rose, Judith Watkins Tartt, and Joe White. Sound recordings, posters, videos, and memorabilia are also featured.

Free Parking, a new series of salon-style conversations, will host its second session in the AIWA space on the museum’s first floor at 5:30 p.m., Thursday, May 5. AU Museum Curator and Director Jack Rasmussen will lead a review of the life and art of musicians in 1970s and 80s D.C. The event, free and open to the public, features special guests Bill Warrell and Michael Olshonsky. RSVP is required: www.tinyurl.com/Alpertickets.


William Dunlap: Look At It – Think About It is a survey exhibition of paintings, works on paper, constructions and sculpture by the artist from the 1970s through the present. Both found and fashioned objects reflect Dunlap’s interest in the narrative tradition in visual arts and modernist concerns with remote association and conceptualism. The exhibition coincides with the release of Dunlap’s book of short stories, Short Mean Fiction, Words and Pictures (Nautilus Press).   


Elsewhere: Southern Constellations is the third exhibition in Transformer’s four-part ‘Do You Know Where Your Art Comes From?’ series, presented in partnership with American University Museum. Southern Constellations profiles the work of Elsewhere Museum and Residency and highlights a curatorial initiative to extend experimental practices and creative networks in the South.


Elsewhere Museum and Residency is an artist-run non-profit contemporary art organization set in a former thrift store in downtown Greensboro, NC. Six artists, born or based in the Southern United States, are brought to the living museum and residency each year to create new site-specific works that explore the museum, its collection and communities. Connecting a regional network of experimental artists and arts spaces, Southern Constellations considers the conditions and context for experimentation in the south, as well as the resources that sustain and engage practitioners in the region. Victoria Reis, executive & artistic director of Transformer, is curator, in collaboration with Tim Doud, associate professor of art and coordinator of the Visiting Artist Program at American University.


MASTER OF FINE ART FIRST YEAR AND THESIS EXHIBITIONS features the work of Master of Fine Art candidates in American University’s Department of Art. The First Year MFA exhibition will run April 2 through 20, and the MFA Thesis exhibition will run from April 30 through May 29. 

Our booth at the Affordable Art Fair NYC - Wishing that I was there! Good luck to Lori Ehrlich Katz, Rory Coyne and Lauren Levato Coyne - make us proud! Booth 1.94 on the first floor.

AAFNYC

As we have been for the last decade, we'll be doing the Affordable Art Fair New York again this Spring (March 30 - April 3 at the Met Pavilion). 

Because of my recent medical issues, I won't be there, but the gallery will be well-represented by DMV artist Lori Katz and Chicago-based artists Lauren Levato Coyne and Rory Coyne.

We'll be in booth 1.54 on the first floor; if you'd like some free passes to the fair, please send me a note.

18"x24"\
Graphite on Maple
by Rory Payne

Call to Artists

John Kelly on Mark Felner

The rare DMV area visual arts article in the WaPo:

Mark didn’t want to read Fitzgerald’s classic tale, even though he gathered 50 copies. Like many of us, he read it in high school. Rather, he wanted to shred the books, soak them in water, grind them into a gray slurry and turn that slurry into a large, rectangular piece of thick, deckle-edged handmade paper.

Read the piece here.

The Second Annual Athenaeum Invitational

Underwritten by TTR | Sotheby's International Realty, The Athenaeum Invitational celebrates the arts of Virginia, Maryland, the District of Columbia and West Virginia in the Athenaeum Gallery in Alexandria, VA. It is a theme-based event featuring the works of both specially-invited artists who have exhibited in the Athenaeum Gallery in the past, as well as works selected through a call for submissions open to anyone living or working in Virginia, the District of Columbia, or Maryland.  A $1500 prize for the best work will be awarded to an invited artist, and a $1000 prize will be awarded to an artist from the open call. 

The show is juried by Athenaeum Gallery Director, Twig Murray.  Prize winners will be selected by a noted art expert, who has yet to be determined.

Theme: Oh! The joy!

The theme asks artists to reflect on a moment of pure joy. It is inspired by the Lewis and Clark expedition across the unchartered North American continent to reach the Pacific Ocean. After an arduous, two-year trek, William Lewis crested a hill, saw the vast body of water and cried, “The Ocean in view. Oh! The joy!”

Entries might explore that singular burst of relief and satisfaction after enduring a difficult task, or the magic of being struck by something unexpected and delightful, or the sudden transformation that is experienced in sheer ebullience. It is the ephemeral and evanescent quality of a joyous moment we invite artists to respond to.

In fact, at the moment those words were uttered by Lewis, the expedition was actually facing an estuary of the Columbia River, not the open ocean. This presents another aspect of the theme for artists to consider, whether a moment of joy is ‘valid’ when it is later learned that the reason or impetus for the emotion was wrong or undeserved.

Selection Criteria

Works will be selected based on artistic excellence, innovation, creativity, and a demonstrated relevance to the theme as revealed in a brief artist statement.

The call is open now with a submission deadline of August 28, 2016.

Apply here.

The Athenaeum Gallery

201 Prince Street, Alexandria, VA, 22314

703 548 0035

nvfaa.org

The virulent case of Communist Cuba's racism

Much has been written about racism in Cuba, and it was one of the earliest subjects addressed by the Washington Post's Eugene Robinson upon his arrival to the DMV a few years ago from his various Latin American postings.

In his article Cuba Begins to Answer Its Race Question, Robinson, a clearly very extreme left-wing oriented writer, tried hard to find excuses for the dictatorship, but nonetheless admits that:

Academics say that black Cubans are failing to earn university degrees in proportion to their numbers--a situation to which Castro has alluded publicly. The upper echelons of the government remain disproportionately white, despite the emergence of several rising black stars. And while perceptions are difficult to quantify, much less prove true or false, many black Cubans are convinced that they are much less likely than whites to land good jobs--and much more likely to be hassled by police on the street, like Cano's husband, in a Cuban version of "racial profiling."

But how about some Cubans inside Cuba discussing the subject?

In primary [Cuban] education, skin color is not mentioned," ... If we are still living in a society where white people have the power, and we don't mention color in education, we are in practice educating [Cuban] children to be white.

Cuban history as we teach it is a disgrace, because it is predominantly white history, and explaining the role of black people and mulattoes in building this society and its culture is not given its due importance.

Esteban Morales
University of Havana
Centre for the Study of the Hemisphere and the United States

A lot of hopes have been pinned by many people (who know little about Cuba and the repressive nature of its government) on President Obama's recent monumental decision to re-establish diplomatic relations with the unfortunate Caribbean island prison of Cuba; but first another Cuban quote:

...to carry on "hiding" the issue [of racism in Cuba] would lead black people to think that "they belong to another country, and that there are two Cuba’s as there were in the 19th century, a black Cuba and a white one."

Roberto Zurbano
Director
Casa de las Américas publishing house
Havana

And thus, it is curious to me that in re-establishing diplomatic ties, our socially conscious President (and his cadre of advisors) appear to know little or nothing about the way that Afro-Cuban citizens are treated in their own country.

In reference to the President's visit, Odette Casamayor-Cisneros, an associate professor of Latin American and Caribbean literatures and cultures at the University of Connecticut and a scholar at Harvard University notes that  

“The images of the meetings, the agreements, they’re all shameful for many black Cubans — I’m including myself in this — because it’s difficult to feel represented.”

Will the expected flow of American tourists help? Zurbano writes in his 2013 New York Times article that:

Most remittances from abroad — mainly the Miami area, the nerve center of the mostly white exile community — go to white Cubans. They tend to live in more upscale houses, which can easily be converted into restaurants or bed-and-breakfasts — the most common kind of private business in Cuba. Black Cubans have less property and money, and also have to contend with pervasive racism. Not long ago it was common for hotel managers, for example, to hire only white staff members, so as not to offend the supposed sensibilities of their European clientele.

That "not long ago" is still the case, as anyone who has been to Cuba recently can testify to - it is very rare to see a black face in any of Havana's "tourist only" hotels and nearby beaches. Discussing those lucrative jobs, Yusimí Rodríguez López, an Afro-Cuban independent journalist, said in a 2016 New York Times article that there were job listings on Revolico — sometimes called Cuba’s underground Craigslist — “where they say they only want whites.”

In the same NYT article we read:

“They talk a lot here about discrimination against blacks in the United States. What about here?” said Manuel Valier Figueroa, 50, an actor, who was in the park on Monday. “If there’s a dance competition, they’re going to choose the woman who is fair-skinned with light, good hair. If there’s a tourism job, the same.”

He added: “Why are there no blacks managing hotels? You don’t see any blacks working as chefs in hotels, but you see them as janitors and porters. They get the inferior jobs.”

One would hope that our President's dealings with a nation with one of the world's worst human rights records, where Amnesty International has been denied access to (except to that bit of Cuba where the Guantanamo Naval Base is located); a nation where gay people were once given lobotomies to "cure" them; and where HIV+ Cubans were detained and segregated in guarded colonies away from the general public, could at least receive a little attention on the status of blacks in their nation.

Fact: Twice as many African slaves were brought to Cuba than to the United States... twice!

And what really bugs me, in my own pedantic hell, is how a bunch of historically and socially clueless American negotiators orchestrate deals with the leaders and the government of one of the world's most racist dictatorships (a government which talks a talk of equality while walking a walk of institutionalized racism against its own black population) without even mentioning the issue of racism.

Cuba has a long and agonizing history of racial issues, starting with its long bloody history of slavery, which didn't end on the island until 1886, and continuing through its freedom from Spain, birth of the Republic, and the triumph of the Castro Revolution in 1959. It continues to this day.

Cuba even had its own race war.

General Antonio Maceo, known as "the Bronze Titan." He was the true warrior leader of the Cuban Wars of Liberation. His father was white of French ancestry; his mother was black, of Dominican ancestry. After the first Cuban Liberation War ended in a truce with Spain, some say that Maceo was so disillusioned with the realities of life in Cuba as a black man, that he left Cuba and lived in Panama, until he was called back to lead the Cuban rebels in a new rebellion in 1895. He returned to Cuba and was killed in battle against the Spanish Army in 1896.

In 1912, black Cubans in Oriente province had enough of the new Cuban government's racist practices and the degrading treatment of Cuban black veterans, who had been the bulk of the Cuban rebels in the wars of independence against Spain. The Cuban government moved on a path of genocide and eventually the United States had to send in troops to end the war between the white Cuban government and the black rebels in Oriente.

As I recall from the CIA Factbook of 1959, on that year the island was about 70% white, about 20% black and mixed, and the rest Chinese, Jewish and other. The Cuban Diaspora which started a few months after the Castro takeover and continues to this day, with the exception of the Mariel boat lift of the 1980s, saw a mass exodus of mostly white Cubans, and as a result the island's racial balance shifted dramatically that although 65% of Cubans self-identified as white in the last census, many experts estimate that today the island is about 60% black or biracial.

But Cuba's black population has not seen a proportionate share of the power and a quick review of the governing Politburo/Parliament reveals few black faces in the crowd. In fact, "the Cuban cultural journal Temas published studies by the governmental Anthropology Centre in 2006 that showed that on average, the black population has worse housing, receives less money in remittances from abroad and has less access to jobs in emerging economic sectors like tourism, in which blacks represent barely five percent of managers and professionals, than the white population."

"I think silence is worse. The longer nothing is said, the more the racism fermenting underground is rotting the entire nation..."

Gerardo Alfonso
singer/songwriter
Havana

While the Cuban constitution of the 1940s (since then abolished by the Communist government) outlawed segregation and racism, and the current Cuban Constitution guarantees black Cubans the right to stay in any hotel and be served at any public establishment, as it has been documented by many foreign journalists, black Cubans will tell you in private that those rights exist only on paper.

The harsh Cuban reality today, they claim, is that "black Cubans won't be served" and that Cubans, regardless of race are in general barred from places frequented by tourists.

Unfortunately, these things [disparities in the treatment of blacks and whites] are very common in Cuba.

Ricardo Alarcón Quesada
President of the National Assembly of People's Power
Cuban Parliament

Do these Cuban voices from within Cuba itself sound like the subjects of a government whose murdering tyrants' atrocities should be dealt in silence?, especially in view of our nation's own racial history? Would we be silent in dealing today with the criminal government leaders of the apartheid South Africa of the 20th century?

We have practically apartheid in this country sometimes... racism is deeply rooted in Cuba's history and will not disappear overnight.

Rogelio Polanco Fuentes
Director
Cuban Communist Party-owned Juventud Rebelde newspaper.

Human rights and racism should be at the top of the agenda (if there's one) in our diplomatic discussions with the Havana tyrants.

What will this "change" bring to the "permanent and shameful police harassment of young Cubans of African descent in our streets..." - Leonardo Calvo Cardenas, Cuban National Vice-Coordinador of the Citizens' Committee for Racial Integration (Comité Ciudadanos por la Integración Racial (CIR))?

Fellowship

The Bogliasco Foundation's Study Center provides residential fellowships to gifted artists and scholars working on projects of any subject area in the following disciplines: Archaeology, Architecture/Landscape Architecture, Classics, Dance, Film/Video, History, Literature, Music, Philosophy, Theater, and the Visual Arts.

Details here.

Fact Checking the President's Cuba Speech

Whoever wrote the speech for the President needs a lesson in baseball history. 

The Prez said in his speech: "We share a national past time, la pelota, and later today our players will compete on the same Havana field that Jackie Robinson played on before he made his major league debut." 

That's actually incorrect. 

While Robinson did his 1946 spring training in Cuba while he was with the Montreal Royals, it was not at the same stadium where the Prez and the dictator Raul sat together (back then named El Gran Estadio de La Habana and now called Estadio Latinoamericano).  I believe that Robinson's spring training was at another stadium, perhaps the one known back then as El Cerro?

Later on, after the Dodgers bought his contract from Montreal, Branch Rickey toured the Dodgers and Robinson through some Latin American countries and had Robinson play. However, when they arrived in Havana, as it was the case back then, most Cuban hotels were segregated, and the Dodgers stayed in one hotel and Robinson stayed in a separate one, a blacks only hotel in Havana. 

He got food poisoning at his hotel and wasn't able to play in Cuba - as a Dodger - before his MLB debut in 1947. 

It is ironic that today many Cuban hotels (all of which are owned by the Cuban military - including part ownership in all the foreign corporation hotels from Spain, Canada, France, etc. as the Cuban military own all of Cuba's tourist income) are still segregated - not by race, but now by "Tourists Only" hotels where Cubans are not allowed to stay... in their own country. 

Another brutal "benefit" of the Castro Brothers' Workers Paradise.

NEXT Thesis Exhibition

NEXT Thesis Exhibition
April 20, 6:30pm – 9pm

This annual exhibition showcases work by the graduating students of the Corcoran School of the Arts and Design at the George Washington University. NEXT includes the thesis work of undergraduate and graduate students.

 The NEXT Thesis Exhibition runs April 6 - May 15 

HOURS:
Wednesdays: 10am - 9pm Thursdays - Sundays: 10am - 5pm

See more of NEXT on this website

Corcoran School of the Arts and Design
The George Washington University
500 Seventeenth Street, NW
         Washington, DC 20006       

Say what?

"in America, there are no cats..."
- Papa Mousekewitz, c. 1986

"in Iran, there are no homosexuals..."
- Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, September 24, 2007

"in Cuba, there are no political prisoners..."
- Raul Castro, March 21, 2016

Affordable Art Fair New York

As we have been for the last decade, we'll be doing the Affordable Art Fair New York again this Spring (March 30 - April 3 at the Met Pavilion). Because of my recent medical issues, I won't be there, but the gallery will be well-represented by DMV artist Lori Katz and Chicago-based artists Lauren Levato Coyne and Rory Coyne.

We'll be in booth 1.54 on the first floor; if you'd like some free passes to the fair, please send me a note.

Selvedge
Lauren Levato Coyne
22x18 inches, Pencil on Watercolor Paper, c. 2015

Turning Seven
Rory Coyne
36x36 inches, Oil on canvas, c. 2013

Wall of Small Squares
Lori Katz
Ceramics, c. 2015

Cuban by ancestry...

Latest work - this is heading to a museum show...  the show focuses on immigrant artists to the DMV. In this piece, the embedded video component plays a video loop (6.5 minutes) covering my life so far, with a special focus on why my family had to leave the brutal world of the Castro Brothers' Workers Paradise in the 1960s. The small boy to the left is me (as a four year old) running around my grandfather's farm just outside of Guantanamo.

As I usually do, I've used the "cracks" on the background wall to (employing the Navy's Falcon Codes) double encrypt a background message... more on the show later...

"Cuban by Ancestry, But American by the Grace of God."
Charcoal and Conte and Embedded Video. 18x24 inches, circa 2016.

"Cuban by Ancestry, But American by the Grace of God."
Charcoal and Conte and Embedded Video. 18x24 inches, circa 2016.

"Cuban by Ancestry, But American by the Grace of God."
Charcoal and Conte and Embedded Video. 18x24 inches, circa 2016.

"Cuban by Ancestry, But American by the Grace of God."
Charcoal and Conte and Embedded Video. 18x24 inches, circa 2016.

Another example of WaPo suckosity...

Wanna another example of how the Washington Post really feels about the DMV visual art scene?

Mark Jenkins wrote this review (see https://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/museums/in-the-galleries-three-artists-become-one/2016/03/16/e599d20a-e99b-11e5-a9ce-681055c7a05f_story.html)   of a super interesting show at Glen Echo, among others, but the Post chose to publish it solely online.

Fortunately, I have a direct line to the newspaper's new owner, and as soon as he bought the paper, I complained to him about the WaPo's history of diminishing coverage of the area's visual arts.  He told me to compile some samples and feed it to him and to two other folks that he has "working" the WaPo.

This Jenkins example will make the list.

Looking for a chance to hone your figure drawing skills?

Del Ray Artisans (DRA) offers a range of open life drawing sessions for just this purpose. Both nude and clothed models are featured. These sessions operate on a drop-in basis so there is no need to register in advance. Bring your supplies and join us at the gallery to draw or paint from our live models. We don't supply easels but you are welcome to bring your own if you want to use one.  Please no acrylics or oils; pastels, watercolor and ink are permissible. All skill levels are welcome.
 
The fee for each three-hour session is $10 for DRA members and $12 for non-members. Two-hour sessions are $8 for members and $10 for non-members.
 

Session Types­

Gesture Sessions (two hours)

These two-hour sessions are composed primarily of dynamic 1 to 5 minute poses.

 

Short/Long Pose Sessions (three hours)

The three-hour short/long pose sessions start with some short 1 to 5 minute warm-up poses and progressively move into longer poses lasting 10 to 45 minutes.

 

Long Pose Sessions (three hours)

These sessions are generally composed of two long poses with perhaps a few warm-ups at the start.

Upcoming Spring 2016 SessionsSessions feature nude models unless otherwise noted.

• Sunday, March 20, 9:30-11:30am, Gesture
• Wednesday, March April 23, 2:00-5:00pm, Short/Long
• Wednesday, March April 23, 6:30-9:30pm, Long
  
• Wednesday, April 6, 2:00-5:00pm, Short/Long
• Wednesday, April 6, 6:30-9:30pm, Long
• Wednesday, April 13, 6:30-9:30pm, Long
• Sunday, April 17, 9:30-11:30am, Gesture (clothed)
• Wednesday, April 20, 2:00-5:00pm, Short/Long (clothed) - The April 20th session will be FREE! Come early to get a spot!
  
• Wednesday, May 11, 2:00-5:00pm, Short/Long
• Wednesday, May 11, 6:30-9:30pm, Long
• Sunday, May 22, 9:30-11:30am, Gesture
• Wednesday, May 25, 2:00-5:00pm, Short/Long
• Wednesday, May 25, 6:30-9:30pm, Long
  
• Wednesday, June 8, 2:00-5:00pm, Short/Long
• Wednesday, June 8, 6:30-9:30pm, Long
• Sunday, June 19, 9:30-11:30am, Gesture (clothed)
• Wednesday, June 22, 2:00-5:00pm, Short/Long (clothed)
• Wednesday, June 22, 6:30-9:30pm, Long

If you have any questions, please contact Katherine Rand (Life Drawing Coordinator) at LifeDrawing@DelRayArtisans.org.

A letter from the new WPA Director

In the past 100 days, I have met with 100 DC-area artists. Not individually, but in groups. We've met in studio buildings, in bars, here at WPA's new gallery. I asked them lots of questions. I listened and took notes. It was a real wake-up call.

 

One of the things I heard time and again was that artists are fleeing our city. There are two principal reasons for this. First, DC has gotten too expensive, so they are moving to the Virginia and Maryland suburbs. Or they are migrating to Baltimore or Los Angeles. The point is, while the population of DC grows, its artist population shrinks.

 

The second reason artists are leaving is because there just aren't many opportunities left for them here. The Corcoran and a number of  important galleries have closed. The (e)merge art fair is on hiatus. Where are artists to exhibit? How can they sell?

 

These conversations underscored for me WPA's great responsibility to this community. It isn't enough for us to simply present exhibitions and events. We need to find ways to retain the existing talent so vividly in evidence in the Auction Gala Exhibition.

 

"But how?" you ask.

 

Well, one immediate way is to attend our Auction Gala on April 9  and buy some art. Proceeds from that event are split 50-50 between the artists and WPA. You can buy tickets here.

 

Beyond that, this is a much longer conversation that I look forward to having with you over the coming year. Stay tuned for more on this subject. In the meantime, let's celebrate and support the artists still in our midsts. I will see you at the Gala.

 

Yours,

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 Peter Nesbett, Executive Director

Airborne

Heading to Sedona, Arizona for some vortexin' and red-rockin'