Opportunity for Artists

Dumbarton Concert Gallery
Deadline for submissions: June 1, 2005

Dumbarton Concert Gallery call for artists for art exhibitions for 2005-2006 season. Deadline for submissions: June 1, 2005. Dumbarton Concert Gallery is accepting applications from MD, DC, and VA artists for the 2005-2006 concert season. The Concert Gallery is operated in conjunction with Dumbarton Concerts, a series of chamber and jazz musical performances held in Georgetown's historic Dumbarton Church.

The artist's opening occurs in conjunction with a one-night concert performance, with an average attendance of 350 people. The exhibit stays up for one and a half weeks, during which time the gallery is open by appointment. Artists can submit slides independently or as a group. Decisions are made by jury. Eight shows will be installed, October 2005 through April 2006.

The gallery takes a 25 percent commission on sales. Submission requirements:
1. Ten to twenty images, on slides or CD
2. Name, address, phone, email, and curriculum vitae.
3. Dimensions, price, and medium of each piece (if pieces shown on slides are not available, they must be an accurate representation of the type of work that will be hung).
4. Enclose SASE for return of materials.
5. Only work that can be hung on walls will be accepted--no free-standing sculpture.

Mail to:
Eric Westbrook
2325 42nd St. NW #419
Washington, DC 20007

Questions? email: Eric here. Notifications: After July 1, 2005

Another GRACE Director bites the dust

Edie McRee Bowles, President and CEO of the Greater Reston Arts Center, has been fired by the Board of Directors.

Former Fairfax County Board of Supervisor, Kate Hanley, has been named interim director of GRACE.

I think the world about GRACE, which is a cultural jewel in that wealthy suburb, and I have curated a show for them, and their Northern Virginia Fine Arts Festival hosted 180 artists and attracted over 60,000 visitors last year, and it is one of the best fine arts festivals in the nation (I am participating in the 2005 version next May).

But there's something wrong at GRACE, or maybe within its Board of Directors (I don't know), as this is their fourth director since Anne Brown was released in August of 2002. That's a clear indication that someone or something (besides the directors) is/are doing something wrong.

It has nothing to do with the visual arts, but...

Congrats to DC area Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Lorraine Adams, whose book Harbor, was rated Fiction Book of the Year in the Entertainment Weekly Best of 2004 issue.

Bravo Ms. Adams!

Opportunity for Artists

Hispanic Heritage Poster Contest
Deadline: February 11, 2005

Washington DC, Maryland and Virginia artists throughout the metropolitan area now have the opportunity to compete for the $2,500 grand prize of the First Annual VEGA Hispanic Yellow Pages Poster Contest sponsored by the VEGA Hispanic Yellow Pages, DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities and The Mayor’s Office on Latino Affairs. The deadline is February 11, 2005.

The poster theme should be the artist’s interpretation or rendition of Hispanic Heritage in the Greater Washington DC Metropolitan Area.

The winning poster will be featured on the front cover of the VEGA Hispanic Yellow Pages. The design may also be used for other promotional items such as billboards, T-shirts, programs, etc. Only one work may be submitted per artist.

For more information contact Jose Dominguez at (202) 724-5614 or email Jose here. You can also download the prospectus here.

Artists need not be Hispanic/Latino/Latins/Spanish/Latin-American/Spaniards/Iberians in order to submit entries (I hope).

Critical Alignment II

In response to my thoughts on Critical Alignment, a friend emailed me a very interesting essay by Dave Eggers (co-founder of the now-defunct Might Magazine and editor of McSweeney's, and author of "A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius").

It is too long to post in its entirety here, but the essence of it can be beautifully distilled to:

"What matters is that you do good work. What matters is that you produce things that are true and will stand. What matters is that the Flaming Lips's new album is ravishing and I've listened to it a thousand times already, sometimes for days on end, and it enriches me and makes me want to save people. What matters is that it will stand forever, long after any narrow-hearted curmudgeons have forgotten their appearance on goddamn 90210.

What matters is not the perception, nor the fashion, not who's up and who's down, but what someone has done and if they meant it. What matters is that you want to see and make and do, on as grand a scale as you want, regardless of what the tiny voices of tiny people say.

Do not be critics, you people, I beg you. I was a critic and I wish I could take it all back because it came from a smelly and ignorant place in me, and spoke with a voice that was all rage and envy. Do not dismiss a book until you have written one, and do not dismiss a movie until you have made one, and do not dismiss a person until you have met them. It is a fuckload of work to be open-minded and generous and understanding and forgiving and accepting, but Christ, that is what matters. What matters is saying yes."

Bravo Mr. Eggers!

DCist has a nice write-up of the new AOM artists show that opened last weekend at the Anne C. Fisher Gallery in Georgetown.

This is the first of a triple gallery show about AOM artists. Next Friday we will open most of the artists from our lists with a show opening Friday, October 14 from 6-9PM at Fraser Bethesda, and the Friday after that opening at Fraser Georgetown.

And wait until you see the installation that Ira Tattelman has done in our Bethesda gallery!

And (Yawn) Painting is Hot Again...

Because Blake Gopnik firmly believes that painting is dead, he is going to hate this, but like it happens every few years, all the critical voices are aligning again to say: "sorry, we were wrong and painting is not dead... so sorry."

Tap, tap... Critical alignment happening here... Watch for art critics and curators who have dismissed painting over the last few years now try to re-invent themselves and desperately try to catch up. And art mogul Saatchi has already publicly chastised Blake Gopnik for having such a traditional and outdated view of painting's death.

This Telegraph article discusses that:

To suggest that painting has triumphed over other media would require a rather outdated notion of hierarchy. But it is certainly receiving a flurry of attention. The art periodicals Contemporary Art, Flash Art and Modern Painters all broke with regular practice and ran large special issues on it last year. Remarkably, it was Modern Painters' first ever issue devoted exclusively to painting.

Even painters themselves, who won't admit that painting ever went away, agree that it is back in focus. "There are always artists making interesting paintings – sometimes they attract little attention, sometimes, as now, a lot," wrote Michael Craig Martin in the New Statesman this month.

"There's certainly a lot of talk about painting being back," says Pablo Lafuente, curator of a much smaller painting show than Saatchi's now on at London's Haunch of Venison gallery. "It suffered a lot during the 1990s, but in the last few years it's been changing: there's a buzz in both the market and museum worlds. Before, painters used to explain that they also worked in other media. Now, there's an unapologetic-ness."

Read the whole article here.