The Lenster in the news

His piece in the exhibit is made from a newspaper dated July 4, 1976, and has as its central focus the island of Cuba. 

Campello told CNS that if he had stayed in Cuba, his art would be controlled by the government there because it dictates everything, including what constitutes art work. "It would have been my work with an approval stamp by some bureaucrat in the communist dictatorship," he said. The artwork was his proposal for admission to the University of Washington School of Art in Seattle, where he studied.  

A newer piece by Campello in the exhibit is titled "Running Towards Freedom (Heading to the New American Embassy)," showing a young Cuban girl running away from her country to freedom. 

"She has left everything behind, naked, and there is nothing but light in front of her and she is leaving all the darkness behind," he said.

Read the whole article by Ana Franco-Guzman in the Boston Pilot about the Looking Glass: Artists Immigrant to Washington exhibit at the Katzen Museum here. By the way, that collage (see below), which was part of The Andres Fernandez Collection in New Jersey, has been gifted to American University!

Isla Balsera (Happy Bicentennial America - Wishing We Were There)
1976 by F. Lennox Campello
Collage. 26x34 inches
Courtesy of Alida Anderson Art Projects

At the Altar

Here's my newest work... it will soon be heading to New York (unless you intercept it and buy it from the gallery now). The latest in my marriage of drawing and technology (in this case still digital photography from Google Images with some specific search parameters).  

Send me an email if you'd like to add it to your collection and I will put you in touch with the gallery.

Young Photographer, Overwhelmed by the Diversity of Photography
Charcoal, Conte and Embedded Electronic Components
F. Lennox Campello. 19x38 inches, c. 2016

Young Photographer, Overwhelmed by the Diversity of Photography
Charcoal, Conte and Embedded Electronic Components
F. Lennox Campello. 19x38 inches, c. 2016

Young Photographer, Overwhelmed by the Diversity of Photography
Charcoal, Conte and Embedded Electronic Components
F. Lennox Campello. 19x38 inches, c. 2016

Young Photographer, Overwhelmed by the Diversity of Photography
Charcoal, Conte and Embedded Electronic Components
F. Lennox Campello. 19x38 inches, c. 2016

Young Photographer, Overwhelmed by the Diversity of Photography
Charcoal, Conte and Embedded Electronic Components
F. Lennox Campello. 19x38 inches, c. 2016

Young Photographer, Overwhelmed by the Diversity of Photography
Charcoal, Conte and Embedded Electronic Components
F. Lennox Campello. 19x38 inches, c. 2016

Young Photographer, Overwhelmed by the Diversity of Photography
Charcoal, Conte and Embedded Electronic Components
F. Lennox Campello. 19x38 inches, c. 2016

Young Photographer, Overwhelmed by the Diversity of Photography
Charcoal, Conte and Embedded Electronic Components
F. Lennox Campello. 19x38 inches, c. 2016

Opportunity for Artists

Deadline August 1, 2016.


The Fitton Center for Creative Arts is accepting proposals in all media for solo and group exhibitions for 2017-2018. A community art center on the Great Miami River in arts-driven downtown Hamilton, Ohio, the Fitton Center provides experiences in the arts through exhibitions, classes, performances and other events. Four galleries provide 2,600 square feet of space. Solo artists generally are asked to exhibit 10 – 30 works, depending on scale, media and available space. We also offer group shows of existing guilds or organizations and for individuals willing to be selected into a curated group.


For full requirements, please contact Cathy Mayhugh, mailto:cathy@fittoncenter.org or visit http://www.fittoncenter.org, click on Exhibitions and download the Exhibition Proposal Form. 101 S. Monument Ave., Hamilton OH 45011, (513) 863-8873 ext. 122.

Trawick Prize announces 2016 finalists

Award Winners to be Named during September Exhibit

 

The Bethesda Arts & Entertainment District and the Bethesda Urban Partnership will showcase the work of The Trawick Prize: Bethesda Contemporary Art Awards eight finalists in a group exhibition. The exhibit will be on display August 31 – September 24, 2016, at Gallery B, located at 7700 Wisconsin Avenue, Suite E.

2016 Trawick Prize Finalists

Lauren Frances Adams, Baltimore, MD

Cindy Cheng, Baltimore, MD

Leah Cooper, Baltimore, MD

Sarah Irvin, Springfield, VA

Dean Kessmann, Washington, D.C.

Ben Marcin, Baltimore, MD

Tony Shore, Baltimore, MD

William Wylie, Charlottesville, VA

 

The award winners will be announced on Wednesday, August 31, 2016. The first place winner will be awarded $10,000; second place will be honored with $2,000 and third place will be awarded $1,000.

The public opening reception will be held Friday, September 9 from 6-8pm. Gallery hours for the duration of the exhibit are Wednesday through Saturday, 12 – 6pm.

 

The 2016 Trawick Prize jury includes Stéphane Aquin, Chief Curator, Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden; Hasan Elahi, Associate Professor, Department of Art at University of Maryland and Rebecca Schoenthal, Curator of Exhibitions at The Fralin Museum of Art at the University of Virginia.

 

The Trawick Prize was established in 2003 by Carol Trawick, a longtime community activist in downtown Bethesda. She is the past Chair of both the Bethesda Arts & Entertainment District and Bethesda Urban Partnership, and also the Founder of the Bethesda Painting Awards. In 2007, Ms. Trawick founded the Jim and Carol Trawick Foundation to assist health and human services and arts non-profits in Montgomery County.

The Trawick Prize is one of the first regional competitions and largest prizes to annually honor visual artists. To date, The Trawick Prize has awarded $192,000 in prize monies and has exhibited the work of more than 130 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 and Jonathan Monaghan, 2015. 

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

Del Ray Artisans Indoor Art Supplies Yard Sale

Dates: June 27 - July 15, 2016 

 

Paints, crayons, papers...a real potpourri!  Gently used art supplies for you and for me!  Artists et al, take a look through your closets and art bins!  Gather those things you’ve been meaning to use but never do and donate them to Del Ray Artisans’ Indoor Art Supplies Yard Sale!

 

Please drop off your donations at Del Ray Artisans gallery on June 23 from 12-6pm, June 24 & 25 from 12-9pm, and June 26 from 12-6pm. Donations will also be accepted June 27 through July 9 a half-hour before (and immediately after) each Grown Ups Art Camp (GUAC) workshop. You can view the schedule of GUAC workshops (and sign up for a few!) at www.TheDelRayArtisans.org/GUAC

 

Come to shop the art supplies sale a half-hour before or immediately after a GUAC workshop. They will also host a “last chance” sale on Friday, July 15 from 12-3pm.  All proceeds support Del Ray Artisans, a non-profit, 501(c) (3) organization.

 

The gallery is handicap accessible. For questions on the art supplies sale, please contact Betsy Mead at egmead@gmail.com. For more information on Del Ray Artisans, please visit www.TheDelRayArtisans.org

Come to this opening tonight and get free artwork

You gotta come to this group show at American University’s Katzen Art Museum, since I am honored to be part of it... and there's free art involved... buah, ah, ah!


By the way, that gorgeous museum was built thanks to a major gift from Cyrus and Myrtle Katzen, he a brilliant collector of art who could teach lessons on how to collect; and she is a very talented artist with a refined eye for great artwork. 

The Katzen’s head honcho, Jack Rasmussen, continues to shame all other DMV museum directors and curators when it comes to them tending their own artistic back garden.

At the risk of repeating myself: most DMV museum curators would rather take a cab to Dulles Airport to fly to Berlin in order to visit an emerging artist’s studio than to take a cab to the Gateway Artists’ Studios, or to any area artists’ studios, to look at local artists.

Are you hearing me Stéphane Aquin? Taína Caragol? E. Carmen Ramos? Eleanor Jones Harvey?, etc. Learn to tend your own artistic back garden.


The show is titled The Looking Glass:  Artist Immigrants of Washington and it runs June 18–August 14, 2016. It is part of the amazing Alper Initiative for Washington Artists (if you don’t know what that it, and you are a DMV artist, you should! – contact the Katzen).

The opening is June 18 from 6-8PM. There will be plenty of adult beverages and munchies, and the artists will be there to talk about their work. And in a shameless act of free artwork distribution, I will be giving a free limited edition lithograph from a set of various lithos (you get to pick one) that I did in art school in the 1980s if you say: "Hi Lenny, where's my print?"

They are all signed and numbered in tiny editions... all circa 1977-1981.

The exhibition celebrates ten artists who left Latin America for many different reasons over the last sixty years – primarily for safety, freedom, and opportunity – and made their homes, and their artistic careers and contributions, in the Washington region. 

Ric Garcia, Los Santos, 2012.
Acrylic on canvas, 40 x 30.
Photo by Pete Duvall, Anything Photographic.

They include Joan Belmar and Juan Downey from Chile, Carolina Mayorga from Colombia, Ric Garcia, Jose Ygnacio Bermudez, and yours truly from Cuba, Muriel Hasbun from El Salvador, Frida Larios from El Salvador/Honduras, Irene Clouthier from Mexico, and Naul Ojeda from Uruguay. They brought with them artistic traditions that took root and bore fruit here in the United States.

See ya there! Don't forget to ask me for your free artwork!