Last Friday

I went to a couple of openings in Georgetown. First I dropped by Addison Ripley, now and for many years one of the best galleries in our area, and where a large crowd was leaving a lot of red dots behind as they were picking up the paintings of John Borden Evans. That's Evans with gallery co-owner Chris Addison (photo by Holly Foss) on the right.

Evans' paintings depict farm animals (chickens, cows, sheep, hens) as well as ordinary landscapes. The artist likes to float between scratchy, airy paintings (mostly the landscapes) and thicker, impasto works, such as in some of the paintings of cows.

In some of these thicker paintings he has crossed a debatable line. Let me explain.

In a few of the cow paintings, Evans has built up enough paint so that the two dimensional painting crosses into a third dimension (in these cases usually the head of a cow), so that the head of the animal sticks out, making the painting become a sculptural bas relief piece.

Were Evans an abstract painter, building thick, three dimensional goops of paint on canvas (as we all did in art school to create a response to an assignment that we left to the last minute), it is considered texture, or adds dimensionality to the dialogue.

But in the already fragile art world where representational painting has to defend itself everyday, and when an artist chooses a representational subject of such plebian character as a cow, and then goops on the paint to have the cow's head stick out of the canvas, warning bells begin to ring.

And I know that this is perhaps unfair to Evans, clearly a talented and skilled painter, but the cow's heads sticking out of the two dimensional plane, is just too overpowering for me, and makes me forget the rest of the show; not a good thing.

Almost across the street from Addison Ripley, the inaugural exhibition of art at the furniture concept store called "Space" was going on, and I went in.

Space was packed!

The owners, Tami Iams and Francesca Oriolo (pictured on the left), were by the door greeting everyone as they walked in, and I noticed that some of the cream of the DC gallery-art-opening world, and strangely enough, none of the grubs (for some strange reason they didn't know about this opening) were there.

And case after case of good Champagne flowed through the night, as more and more people came in, making the viewing of the artwork quite difficult.

Oh yeah... the artwork.

The exhibition, curated by Rody Douzoglou is titled Chill, and features works by Amalia Caputo, Marc Roman and one of the most talented young DC area painters that I know: Rachel Waldron.

Of the three, Waldron steals this show.

And Waldron has reinvented herself, at least for this show.

Rachel Waldron has exhibited widely around the DC area, including at our galleries, in group shows. After she graduated from GWU, she sort of disappeared, and re-emerged recently at the Arts Club of Washington and even more recently at the re-opening of the Arlington Arts Center.

And both the work at the Arlington Arts Center and the work at Space offer us a new Waldron.

The earlier Waldron was full of color and energy and a Boschian appeal to her work.

The new Waldron retains the energy, and the power and the sense of oddity owed to Hieronymus Bosch. But she has pushed it a step forward by employing a new approach that dismisses color and marries painting and drawing.

The best piece in the show is a perfect example. It is a Gulliverian work titled "All the Little Things" and it is charcoal, ink, acrylic and spray paint on paper (pictured to the right). The work is bursting with energy and movement, and that odd sense of subterranean sexuality that populates the Boschian Universe.

Waldron, clearly a gifted and technically skilled artist, marries her formidable technical skills with a tentative step into the demanding arena of the experimental artist. Her drawings/paintings are now populated by a mass produced process of spray painted, repetitive cut outs that hark of some of Sam Gilliam's most recent work. A Waldronesque bridge across the gulf of repetitive abstraction towards the shore of contemporary realism.

And it works!

And later, Waldron (perhaps pushed by a looming deadline) relaxes and just gives us an even more basic wedding of spray painted cut-outs atop abstracted backgrounds, cleverly switching them around to create unique works from the masters.

And in the process she helps Space, at least for this exhibition, leave a strong footprint on our art scene, and re-introduces Rachel Waldron to our universe of talented artists.

Welcome back.

So Many Things...

There are so many interesting things going on around our art scene these days... and I am so busy!

Here are some postings coming soon:

Review of the opening at the new art venue Space in Georgetown.

Review of Isamu Noguchi at the Hirshhorn.

A public art proposal.

A Story That Must Be Told

As mentioned here, the McLean Center for the Arts sponsors a very good painting competition every couple of years called "Strictly Painting." It is now in its fifth iteration.

A few years ago, around 1999 or 2000, the juror for that year's version of "Strictly Painting" was Terrie Sultan, who back then was the Curator for Contemporary Art at the Corcoran. I thought that this choice was a little odd, as Ms. Sultan, in my opinion, was not "painting-friendly." In fact, with all due respect, I blame her for diminishing the Corcoran Biennials, which used to be known as the Corcoran Biennial of Painting.

As such, they were essentially the only well-known Biennial left in the nation that was strictly designed to get a look at the state of contemporary painting, which was somehow surviving its so called "death."

It was Ms. Sultan who decided to "expand" the Biennial and make it just like all other Biennials: Jack of all trades (genres) Biennials. In the process, depending on what side of this argument you're on, she (a) did a great service to the Corcoran by moving it into the center of the "genre of the moment" scene - like all other Biennials, or (b) gave away the uniqueness of the nation's top painting Biennial title.

I'm aligned with the minority who supports camp (b) but understand those who defend her decision to become just another player in camp (a). Most people think that her decision and drive were the right thing to do in order to bring the Corcoran to a world stage, and perhaps it was.

But I digress.

When she was announced as the juror, I decided to see if I could predict her painting selectivity, sensitivity, process and agenda. It was my thesis that I could predict what Ms. Sultan would pick.

So I made a bet, and decided to enter the exhibition with work created specifically to fit what I deduced would be agreeable to Ms. Sultan's tastes. I felt that I could guarantee that I would get into the show because of the transparency of the juror's personal artistic agenda. It is her right to have one; I have them, in fact, we all have them.

I was trained as a painter at the University of Washington School of Art, but around 1992 or so, I stopped painting and decided to devote myself strictly to my love for drawing. So I had not picked up a brush in several years when I decided to enter this competition, designed to survey the state of painting in our region.

It was my theory that Ms. Sultan would not be in the representational side of painting. It was also clear that she (like many curators) was seduced by technology in the form of videos, digital stuff and such trendy things.

And so I decided to see if I could marry digital stuff with painting.

And what I did was the following:

I took some of my old Navy ribbons, and scanned them in to get a digital file. I then blew them up so that the final image was quite pixilated. I then printed about five of them and took slides of the printed sheets of paper.

I then submitted these slides to the competition, but identified them as oil on canvas paintings. My plan was that if accepted, how hard could it be to whip up a couple of paintings after the fact? I titled them with such titles as Digitalism: National Defense and Digitalism: Expeditionary Medal and so on.

From what I was later told, several hundred painters submitted work. And Ms. Sultan selected about only about seven or eight painters in total. And not only was I one of them, but she picked two of my entries.

I was elated! I had hit the nail right on the head! I felt so superior in having such an insight into this intelligent woman's intellect that I (a painter no more) could create competition-specific work to get accepted into this highly regarded show.

And then I began the task of creating the two paintings, using the pixilated images as the guide.

And it turned out to be a lot harder than I thought.

For one thing, I had submitted the "paintings" in quite a large size; each painting was supposed to be six feet long.

And it didn't take me long to discover that there are a lot of color nuances and hues in an average pixilated image.

And I went through dozens and dozens of rolls of tape as I pulled off the old Washington Color School trick of taping stripes (in my case small one inch square boxes of individual colors - hundreds upon hundreds of them) in a precise sequence to prevent smudging and color peeling, etc.

I painted for at least six hours every day, switching off between paintings to allow the previous day's work to dry off enough to allow a new layer of tape to be applied. I did all the varnishing outside, which usually attracted all the small neighborhood ruffians.

It was incredibly hard work, and I was ever so sorry that I had even gotten this crazy idea. All my nights were consumed.

But eventually they were finished and delivered to MPA and Ms. Sultan even wrote some very nice things about them in the exhibition's catalog.

Me? I was in a mix of both vindication and guilt; exhausted but fired up with the often wrong sense of righteousness of the self-righteous.

After the show, I had no idea what to do with them, and they didn't fit my "body of works," but I ended up selling both of them through Sotheby's.

And today, some art collector in South Carolina and another one in Canada, each have one very large, exhausting and handsome oil painting of pixilated naval ribbons hanging in their home, in happy ignorance of the interesting story behind them.

I mentioned the adjective handsome in describing them, because a few years ago I was telling this story to Prof. John Winslow, who asked to see the images of the real paintings. When I showed him, he said that they were actually "quite handsome paintings."

I had never had my work described as "handsome" (although the Washington Post once described it as "irritating"), so it stuck in my head.

So there you have it: The story of a former painter with a point to prove about a local curator, the subsequent hard-labor punishment of the process, and a hidden story behind two handsome paintings.

Tuesday Arts Agenda

The Tuesday DCist Arts Agenda is out with a plug for yours truly (Thanks DCist!).

I'll be filming a TV review of the new Isamu Noguchi show at the Hirshhorn soon. It should air next Thursday.

The Gallery at Flashpoint Call for Proposals

Deadline: March 15, 2005.

The Cultural Development Corporation (CuDC) is requesting proposals for exhibitions in the Gallery at Flashpoint for the September 2005 to August 2006 season. This request is open to artists, independent curators, arts organizations, private galleries or anyone choosing to present contemporary work in any medium. Deadline for proposals is 6pm on March 15, 2005.

For a 2005-2006 Request for Proposal application, please visit their website or email them

And yet another new magazine

In addition to the new glossy Capitol File, soon to appear on DC newsstands, DCist reveals that yet another new magazine DC Style, will be publishing soon in our area.

Welcome to DC!

Opportunities for Artists

Raise the Roof
Deadline: March 1, 2005

Raise the Roof: Recreating Home in Prince George's County, Maryland. This is a national public art competition that seeks innovative and creative house designs. Selected designs will be developed into sculptural, 3-dimensional models for public art exhibition in 2005. Up to $10,000 in cash prizes will be awarded for outstanding houses in these specific categories: Artistic, Green, Historical, Fanciful and Peoples Choice. Raise the Roof will recognize personal interpretations of home and hopefully, provide public awareness of the vital importance of house design and its connection to our quality of life. The competition is open to all artists, architects, designers, engineers, homebuilders, students and homebodies of all ages are encouraged to enter. Each selected artist/designer will be awarded up to a $1,600 honorarium to construct a 3-dimensional scale model and be eligible for the cash prizes. For more info and prospectus, click on "House Call for Entries" at www.pgparks.com.

---

Bethesda Painting Awards
Deadline: March 11, 2005

The Bethesda Arts & Entertainment District is currently accepting applications for the inaugural Bethesda Painting Awards. Eight finalists will be selected to display their work in an exhibition during the month of June 2005 at the Fraser Gallery in downtown Bethesda, and the top four winners will receive $14,000 in prize monies. Best in Show will be awarded $10,000; Second Place will be honored with $2,000 and Third Place will receive $1,000. Additionally, a "Young Artist" whose birthday is after March 11, 1975 will be awarded $1,000. Artists must be 18 years of age or older and residents of Maryland, Virginia or Washington, D.C. All original 2-D painting including oil, acrylic, watercolor, gouache, encaustic and mixed media will be accepted. The maximum dimension should not exceed 60 inches in width. No reproductions. Artwork must have been completed within the last two years and must be available for the duration of the exhibition. Selected artists must deliver artwork to exhibit site in Bethesda, MD. Each artist must submit five slides, application and a non-refundable entry fee of $25. Submissions must be received by March 11, 2005. For a complete application, please send a self-addressed stamped envelope to:
Bethesda Painting Awards
c/o Bethesda Urban Partnership
7700 Old Georgetown Road
Bethesda, MD 20814

Or visit www.bethesda.org or call 301/215-6660.

---

Strictly Painting V
Deadline: March, 15, 2005

The McLean Center for the Arts has the call for artists for its fifth installment of its acclaimed Strictly Painting juried show (I was in number one or two a few years back). My good friend Jonathan Binstock, Curator of Contemporary Art at the Corcoran is this year's juror. Fee is $25, entry is via slides, and there are $1500 in cash prizes. Get the entry forms and details here