More good stuff from Annie Adjchavanich...

For the last year, Trevor Young sent more than 500 embellished envelopes with images of urban landscapes, portraits, cartoons, all autobiographical over the course of a year to Annie Adjchavanich.

They will be on exhibition January 8 - 31, 2004 at Flashpoint in a show titled "Trevor Young has gone postal" which is Flashpoint's second gallery show. Trevor also scanned them before sending them and thus discovered that a couple of dozen envelopes are missing and were never received by Annie (and may be framed and adorning some postal employees homes?). Those images will be printed out and put in a "missing in action" section. The opening reception for the artist is tonite, Thursday, January 8, from 6 - 8pm.

The annual WPA/C Art Auction is online. The exhibition, which raises funds for the WPA/C, will open with a preview celebration on Thursday, January 22, 2004, at the Corcoran. This event, which is free of charge, allows guests to take an advance look at the artwork available, meet the artists, and hear the curators discuss their selections. The auction actually takes place on Saturday, January 31, 2004. See the details here.

This is a "curated" auction and the artwork then is contributed by area artists (although this year there are some very nice pieces from some very well known non Washington artists as well, such as Spencer Tunick and former porn star turned into a damned good artist Annie Sprinkle) who have been pre-selected by the curators, which this year are: Chan Chao, 2002 Whitney Biennial artist and Adjunct Professor of Photography at the Corcoran College of Art & Design (who also donated a piece); Andy Grundberg, Administrative Chair of Photography at the Corcoran College of Art & Design; Paul Roth, Associate Curator of Photography and Media Arts at the Corcoran Gallery of Art; Virginia Shore, Chief Curator of the Art in Embassies Program at the US Department of State; and Grady T. Turner, independent curator and critic.

A bit Corcoran-heavy in the curating department, but all for an excellent cause, as the WPA/C and its tireless leader, Annie Adjchavanich, is one of the cultural jewels of this area.

Some of the better known artists in this year's list are: Richard Misrach, Spencer Tunick, and William Christenberry. Some of the locals invited to donate a piece include: Graham Caldwell, Andres Tremols, Trawick Prize finalist James Huckenpahler, Judy Jashinsky, and Colby Caldwell.

My favorite piece in the auction is this very funny and sexy photo by Lucien Perkins.

In today's "Galleries" column Jessica Dawson destroys a couple of local shows, including one of the McLean Project for the Arts' shows that I briefly mentioned yesterday.

And some local shows that you may not hear about and which may be interesting not only for the art, but also because they are in venues usually out of the mainstream:

At Goodwin House West's Gallery West in Falls Church, which is managed by Allison Miner, herself a pretty good artist, Ira Tattleman has a solo show titled "Ruminations: Photography Rethought, Regrouped, and Imagined" and runs from January 15- March 1, 2004, with an Opening Reception: Thursday, January 15 from 7 - 9pm.

And Miriam Martinez Zapata has a solo titled Zapata's Portraits at Kramer's & Afterwords Café in the heart of the Dupont Circle area. Opening on Tuesday, February 17th, 2004 From 6:30-8:30pm. Light refreshments will be served and drinks will be at happy hour rates. The show will be up from February 9th-March 7th, 2004. Half of all personal profits will go to Mercy Corps which is providing immediate relief efforts to help the 100,000 people left homeless by the earthquake that hit southeastern Iran on December 26.

See more work by Miriam here.

McLean Project of the Arts has three interesting exhibitions that can be caught all at once in that very nice Virginia non-profit space. They are all there until Jan. 17.

First is the MPA/Corcoran Student Show at the Ramp Gallery and it features many of Barbara Januszkiewicz's students. Barbara is a one-woman tornado - she's an exceptional artist, a terrific teacher, an award winning television producer of an arts program and a key arts activist in our area.

At the Emerson Gallery they have "Plastic Memory," feauturing work by Greg Carbo, Susan Crowder, Craig Pleasants, Lynn Schmidt, Jeff Spaulding, M. Jordan Tierney and Rex Weil.

Weil is the person who often reviews DC shows for ArtNews magazine, although generally he seems to only review museums, while I've noticed that Louis Jacobson (who also reviews for the City Paper) does galleries. Weil is also an Adjunct Professor at the Corcoran School of Art where he has taught painting and theory.

At the Atrium Gallery is "Holding Places" by Marie Ringwald.

Roberta Flack, a graduate of Howard University and former DC Public School Music teacher received the Mayor’s Special Recognition Award last night at the nineteenth annual Mayor’s Arts Awards at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. The award recognized her lifetime achievement in the world of music and commitment to music education.

“Artists and cultural institutions are the heart and soul of this great city," said Mayor Anthony A. Wiliams. “I am honored that so many talented artists have made DC their home.”

Mrs. Alma Powell, Vice Chairman of the Kennedy Center Board and Dana Gioia, Chair of the National Endowment for the Arts, were also in attendance last night as Washington’s finest artists and arts organizations received accolades and applause from their peers and supporters.

Glass sculptor Tim Tate, who had a spectacular year in 2003, won the Outstanding Emerging Artist award. In 2003 Tate had his first solo show (with us), had his first major museum sale, opened the Washington Glass School and won the international design competition for the AIDS Monument in New Orleans. There are articles about Tate coming in 2004 in both a US and an European glass art magazine.

A complete list of all the categories and the individual and organizational winners are listed below:

Excellence in an Artistic Discipline
Winner: Joy Zinoman

Outstanding Contribution to Arts Education
Winner: DC Youth Orchestra

Outstanding Emerging Artist
Winners: CityDance Ensemble and Tim Tate

Excellence in Service to the Arts
Winners: Whitman Walker Clinic, Art for Life Program and the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority Board of Directors, Art in Transit Program and The Washington Sculptors Group

Innovation in the Arts
Winner: 48 Hour Film Project Inc.

Mayor’s Special Recognition
Roberta Flack

Special Recognition
Patton-Boggs LLP and Roland Celette, Director of La Maison Francaise

Linda Yablonsky, the Contributing Editor of ArtNews has a piece on nudity and art which is a bit revealing, a bit surprising and overall a good read.

It's revealing in the sense that it shows the writer's dependency on New York to anchor most of her issues, points and references. It's surprising to have her tell us that "with male nudes in full display, pornography a common source material, and explicit imagery the norm in galleries and museums, sex in art has become fun, disturbing, raunchy, even cerebral." Two standards of nudity exist: one for men and one for women.

She quotes artist Carroll Dunham, (in whose paintings the penis has been a recent motif, as he's better known as an abstract painter) as saying: "male sexuality has been one of the least represented things in our culture except in pornography. Historically, painters were men getting women to take off their clothes to paint them. But I see a phallus as part of who I am, and I have a right to make it as an image. Why weren't they interested in their own bodies?"

Dunham may be right, but in an art world obsessed with the trend of the new and who did what first, I have a nepotic and provincial bitch with the penis painting issue, as anyone who is anybody in Washington, DC knows that our own Manon Cleary has painted the male penis for many years, and even appeared on an HBO special about sex, painting the penis in her own unique neo-classical manner. Problem is that Manon shows in Washington, DC and since ArtNews magazine all but ignores the DC area, she would have never come within the radar of Ms. Yablonsky, although Manon's penis paintings received enough press and interest that they came to the attention of HBO!

And if the "new" issue of marrying pornography to art is raising eyebrows lately in Gotham, then they certainly raised them here as well, as this 1997 review in the Washington Post notes:

Fraser Gallery is showing charcoal drawings of nudes by F. Lennox Campello. The subjects are mostly women Campello found on X-rated Web sites. He then arranged to meet and draw them. The drawings are very dark and the artist's abundant use of shadow effects can be heavy-handed and irritating. But in a few of the works he manages to find a delicate balance between the black charcoal and cream-colored paper resulting in a grainy, film-noir effect, making his subjects, traffickers in mass-consumption prurience, seem tough but vulnerable, like a flowering plant in a sexual wasteland.

And more recently of course, was the whole flap caused by the Scott Hutchison nudes in Bethesda, which even merited a spot in our TV local news.

So Yablonsky is essentially right in isolating this trend, but what's "new" or "trendy" is sometimes a re-hash of what has been outside the tunnel vision of the writer. And just as I am tunnel-visioned to mostly what happens in the Washington, DC area visual arts, her vision and time is, as one would expect, focused upon NYC and art world superstars.

This could be partially solved if her magazine paid more attention to the rest of the nation's art scene(s), and became somewhat less NYC-focused, but that will never happen.

Opportunity for Native American Artists (from all over the Americas, not just US).
Deadline: Ongoing
The Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian is looking for artists for its DC opening in September 2004. They are looking for Native American artists to participate in the museum's six day opening ceremonies.

To commemorate the opening of this new museum, the NMAI will present "Songs, Steps and Stories" - The Festival of Native American Music, Dance and Storytelling." The opening festival is designed to strengthen and celebrate the Native cultures of North, South and Central America.

The six day festival (September 21 - 26, 2004), will feature over 200 singers, dancers and storytellers, representing 30-40 American Indian communities from throughout the Western Hemisphere. An audience of one million people is expected. There is no official application form for groups and individuals that are interested in participating in the museum's opening events.

However, the museum is asking those who are interested to send a promotional kit that should include their biography and performance history. Some reviews and written endorsements from places they have performed would be useful. In the case of performing groups, especially dance groups, a performance video is very important. For musicians a compact disc or cassette is important, but video is also a good idea. Plans for the opening focus primarily on music, dance, and storytelling, but fine artisans whose work relates to music and dance (drum makers, etc.) are of interest as well.

The museum is also interested in radio personalities and comedians who might be interested in acting as host/emcees for the performance stages. Interested artists can send their promotional kits to:

Howard Bass
Public Programs Producer
National Museum of the American Indian
470 L'Enfant Plaza
Suite 7103
Washington, DC 20560-0934