The District of Columbia Arts Center is one of the great cultural jewels in our city, and next Friday they will be celebrating their 15th anniversary with a gala at historic Halcyon House in Georgetown.

Since its inception in 1989, DCAC has presented more than 100 visual art exhibitions and well over 500 performance events. Poets, painters, actors, storytellers, sculptors, and performance artists have been drawn to DCAC, which features an 800-square-foot gallery and a 50-seat black-box theater. This interdisciplinary arts space is a vital cultural asset in our area. Last year alone, the DCAC gallery's programming included 11 visual art exhibitions featuring six D.C. artists, as well as artists from Cuba, Miami, Philadelphia, Croatia and Taiwan.

The gala will feature food, open bar, 10 piece band, outdoor performance, and the huge studio of artist John Dreyfuss - the largest artist studio in DC and possibly one of the largest in the world. I've been to Halcyon many times, and just a visit to this gorgeous house is worth the admission price. For more details, contact DCAC at 202.462.7833.

Next Friday, on May 14, from 6-9 PM we're hosting an opening reception for the second solo show by Tim Tate.

Tim Tate, the 2003 Washington DC Artist of the Year, is an openly gay artist who has been HIV-positive for over 20 years and who now finds himself as one of the hottest and rapidly rising artists in our region.

Tate has had an extraordinary couple of years, with some spectacular accomplishments. Amongst these, in addition to being selected as the "Washington DC Emerging Artist of the Year" at the last Annual Mayor's Arts Awards, Tate also recently won the international design competition for the International AIDS Monument to be built in New Orleans, he also founded the Washington Glass School - already a prime arts force in our community. He is also the Founder of the Gay and Lesbian Artist Group in Washington, DC.

His work has recently been acquired for the permanent collection of the Smithsonian's American Art Museum's Renwick Gallery and last week, together with Whitney Museum Curator Lawrence Rinder, he was a key panelist in the Hirshhorn Museum's panel on Arts and Healing.

Tate works in glass, and nearly all of his imagery deals with HIV and healing. He is considered by many to be the finest contemporary glass artist in the region, and is a brilliant creative talent who has gone beyond mastery of the technical skills of the art of fine art glass and is now pushing the genre into new areas where content is the prime force behind the work. Tate marries his artwork with intelligent ideas and conceptual dialogues that bring forth reactions, opinions and set forward a whole new conversation and path for the genre of fine art glass.

Using events and details from his personal life as well as public issues, Tate incorporates this as a rich set of conceptual ideas so that his work is no longer about the technical frontier of the art glass genre, or the use of colors and forms – it is all that and more.

How? Tate breaks new ground by adding a new vocabulary to the genre: A vocabulary made of content that requires and understanding of what the artist wants to express. In doing so, Tate has absolutely changed and refined his art and vision, a change that was first kindled by the death of his mother, which he expressed by an obsessive desire to create small, beautiful glass hearts, which have nothing to do with religion, but childhood memories of JFK imagery in his home. In another series of works, dealing with HIV, undefined forms within tall cylindrical towers of nebulous glass come into focus as the towers are spun – defining symbols and crosses that represent cures for diseases, both physical and cultural.

Tate studied at Dale Chihuly’s Pilchuck Glass School in Washington State, Corning Glass in New York and Penland School of Crafts in North Carolina.

His first solo exhibition at Fraser Gallery Georgetown in 2003 sold out, and we currently have him scheduled to open this new show at Fraser Gallery Bethesda on May 14 through June 8, 2004. Titled "I Never Claimed to Have a Map to Get to The Heart Of This Or Any Other Matter...." at this exhibit Tate will open a new series of works in glass addressing his obsession with HIV and healing.

Ken Trapp, former Curator in Charge of the Smithsonian's American Art Museum's Renwick Gallery has written the following about Tate's new work that we will be exhibiting this next month:

"HEART-SHAPES WITH FLAMES ATOP AND WORDS ACROSS THEIR FRONT, SLICES OF GLASS LAID ONE ATOP THE OTHER TO CREATE A SOLID VESSEL IMPRISONING A FIGURE, AND STILLED BODIES EMBEDDED IN A GLASSY TOMB, ARE SOME OF THE SUBJECTS IN TIM TATE'S MOST RECENT EXHIBITION "I Never Claimed to Have a Map to Get to The Heart Of This Or Any Other Matter...."

AND YET THESE OBJECTS ARE NOT MORBID OR REPULSIVE. BY TAKING ON THE CLICHES OF OUR CULTURE TATE LAYS DOWN A CHALLENGE FOR HIMSELF, A CHALLENGE HE IS UP TO. IT IS EASY TO MISREAD HIS IMAGES: HE MUST BE A DEVOTED CATHOLIC, FOR INSTANCE.

FOR TATE, THE OBVIOUS IS NEVER SO CLEAR. HE SUBVERTS THE SACRED BY TREATING ICONS AS SECULAR IMAGES---A HEART IS NOT NECESSARILY A HEART, BUT AN IMAGE FILLED WITH CONTENT. HIS USE OF TEXT IS NEVER TRITE OR PANDORING, BUT RATHER TAKES US ON HIS PERSONAL ODISSEY OF HEALING.

IN OTHER PIECES, HIS FIGURES ARE VEILED AND COVERED, ONE WITH THEIR MATERIAL OF IMPRISONMENT, REMINDING US OF TATE'S FEELINGS OF INVISIBILITY IN SOCIETY. IT IS IMPOSSIBLE TO SEE SUCH FIGURES AND NOT BE REMINDED OF HOW MUCH THE DISCOVERY OF SELF IS A DAILY EXERCISE OF UNCOVERING LAYERS WE HAVE ASSUMED OR IMPOSED ON OURSELVES. THIS SHOW REPRESENTS A JOURNEY WORTH EMBARKING ON......

Sandra Ramos, one of the leading Cuban artists in the world, and whose American debut takes place at Fraser Gallery Georgetown this coming May 21, made the national news recently when she had her visiting visa denied to attend her solo show opening reception.

And now Ramos has enlisted a powerful friend in her effort to get a chance to attend her American gallery debut: Senator Paul Sarbanes from Maryland.

In a letter to the gallery, Senator Sarbanes directed the gallery to request that Ramos apply again for a visitor's visa and Sarbanes wrote: "If Ms. Ramos is willing to reapply, I will be pleased to provide a letter in support of her application by email to the Consulate on her behalf."

The US Department of State has been denying visiting visas to Cuban artists since the beginning of the year. Ramos is considered by many to be the leading Cuban artist of her generation and has previously visited the US many times. Her work, which deals with many taboo issues of Cuban society and government, is in the collection of several American museums, including MOMA in New York and MFA in Boston.

For figurative artists...

2nd Annual Figurative Art Online Competition from www.Atelier-rc.com. The First Prize winner will be the featured artist for the Summer 2004 Edition to be launched on 28 June 2004, the 427th anniversary of the birth of Peter Paul Rubens. For details visit:this web site.

After a long anticipated wait, one of our area's best printed resources, the 2004/2005 Artist Directory will be delivered to WPA\C on Friday, May 7, 2004.

Distribution of pre-paid directories begins at their Artist Directory Launch Party from 4-8 PM at the Gallery at Flashpoint, 916 G Street, NW, Washington, DC, 20001. Please bring family and friends and stop by the launch party to pick up or purchase the new 2004/2005 Artist Directory as well as check out the WPA\C sponsored show, Anonymous.

Many DC area art galleries, including us will also be selling the directory. Any artists wishing to be included in next year's directory, should contact the WPA/C.

Just back from two days at Arts in the Park in Richmond, still going strong after 34 years. A bit rainy and windy, but still managed to sell a few pieces of artwork.

Later on today I'm heading down to Richmond for Arts in the Park.