Review

Dr. Claudia Rousseau reviews Elaine Langerman and Willie Marlowe at Gallery Neptune.

DCist Arts Agenda

DCist Tuesday Arts Agenda is here.

Seattle first impressions

Spent Tuesday visiting my old alma matter (University of Washington School of Art, Class of 1981) and hoofing it around fifteen or so downtown Seattle art galleries and the Seattle Art Museum (SAM).

More on them later, let's just say that I am dumbfounded at the huge size of most Seattle art galleries (cheaper rent I discovered), the depth and breadth of its art scene, some of the common complaints that we share, and the wealth of its local art collecting scene (red dots everywhere).

And I've been rediscovering what an absolutely beautiful place this city is; today was a bright, sunny day (well, they do get them here once in a while) and the Olympics and Mount Rainier were out in full splendor.

More later...

Walter Hopps

Walter Hopps, a legendary name in the art world and a person who left a deep footprint upon our art scene, died last Sunday.

Update: The WaPo's Paul Richard pens a very eloquent, first-person piece about Hopps here.

Gig Harbor Gallery Walk Through

My daughter Elise lives in picturesque Gig Harbor, a beautiful waterfront small town about 45 minutes from Seattle, and yesterday I walked through its waterfront business district to see what the locals offer in the form of art.

I will admit that I expected to find what one finds in Annapolis: a couple of galleries and other artsy venues selling watercolors of sailboats, sunsets and seagulls.

And I found some of those, but I also found a surprising, and obviously vibrant, local art scene.

For starters, the galleries all have a 20 page full color publication called Art Gig Harbor that puts anything that we have (actually we don't have anything similar) in the DC area to shame.

The second thing: everyone knows that the Pacific Northwest is the center of the universe for fine art glass. And even in a small town like Gig Harbor, in the smallest of galleries located inside a quaint B&B, one finds terrific selections of glass.

The third thing: Sales. In talking to the various gallerists, it is obvious that around here, people are actively buying art. In fact, since most of the art galleries are withing walking distance of each other, during my Sunday afternoon walkthrough, I kept running into the same four or five sets of people. I asked one couple if they were locals, and they answered that they were, and that they came to the galleries once a month or so to buy a piece of original art.

The first place that I visited was The Harbor Gallery, located on the waterfront and kind of the mix of various artists and framing and gifts that one expects in a touristy town.

Almost across the street there's a really nice B&B and inside as one enters there's a tiny gallery called Fire N Light, and here's the first place where one finds some first rate artwork. This is the Pacific Northwest, and this tiny gallery represents and briskly sells the work of Tim O'Niell, whose "Dory Dreams" series made from gaffer glass was an unexpected find in a genre dominated by vessels. O'Neill is the casting coordinator at nearby Pilchuck.

Down the street, Gallery Row is a co-op representing 14 artists. My favorites among these were some of the works of Barbara Patterson and Rebecca Baumgartner.

The Ebb Tide Gallery is also a co-op of 22 local artists, and a naive artist named Emilie Corbin stands out from the work that I saw.

S.C. Elliott Fine Art is probably the best looking gallery in town, in the sense that it doesn't have that cluttered, horror vaccuui sense to its presentation, and the first place that I recall seeing an abstract artist. Here the artists who stood out were W.F. Stone, Jr., some of the landscapes of Mark Farina and the Rothkoish abstracts of Laura Taylor.

Every gallery that visited (there are a few more) had original fine art glass, even the cluttered Birdnest Gallery, more of the typical framing-shop-become-art-gallery space that I had expected to find everywhere. And yet Birdnest Gallery offers a pretty decent range of original glass by an Iraqui artist named Hassan, who apparently is now a local and is currently in Iraq searching for a bride.

Overall a very pleasant and unexpected series of surprises in the art scene in this beautiful seaside town. Their art walk is called "First Saturday Art Walk" and takes place once a month on the first Saturday (duh!) of the month from 1-5PM.

There are also some great cafes and restaurants in the area, and where else can one get a double expresso for 99 cents? (At Kelly's).

My daughter will soon be moving to a new house, and thus to finish the day, I went to a place called Art & Soul Pottery and Painting Studios, one of those pottery and ceramic studios (in this case co-located inside a nice cafe) where anyone can create a piece. I made Elise a ceramic plate for a housewarming gift; my first attempt to ceramics since I finished art school!

Airplanes, Booze and Teenage Drivers

Arrived in Seattle last night after a travel day that started horribly, got a bit better through the introduction of free alcohol and ended in an adrenaline rush.

By the way, in response to my request for anyone with Seattle area gallery knowledge, I've received three emails from local Seattlelites willing to share a beer and a walkthrough of some of the area's galleries. I went to art school here in the 80's but haven't been back here since 1993.

Anyway, I arrived at Dulles yesterday morning at 6:30AM, a little over two hours before my 8:43AM flight to Seattle, only to find the airport packed with families and kids all heading south for the spring break. Although one would figure that the airlines would have by now the a priori knowledge to predict this surge, they hadn't, and it took me nearly two hours just to check in and another 45 minutes to go through security and take the bus to the gates.

Of course I missed my flight (gate C1) and then I had to go to Customer Service (gate C22, on the other side of Northern Virginia), where there's another huge line.

While waiting in the line listening to horror stories about missing ship's movement for all the families going on cruises, I removed my new glasses to clean them, only to have them come undone, and one lens falls out and that miniscule screw disappears into the carpet of Dulles' floors.

Using the camraderie that had developed between the suffering passengers waiting in line (sort of an Airport Stockholm Syndrone, which I've dubbed Airport Stick-it-to-them Syndrome), about four or five of us got on our hands and knees to try to find that tiny screw so that I could attempt to put my glasses back together.

And through a miracle of someone in tune with quantum mechanics, the screw was found and glasses repaired by someone with a lot more finger dexterity than I.

Eventually I make my way to a Customer Service Representative, actually feeling a bit sorry for the hell that these people must catch on a daily basis. I tell her so, and she smiles and tells me how her throat is already sore from talking, and so I hand her a stick of gum, which will have a huge payoff for me later.

As she listens to my story, she taps into her keyboard and with the intensity of a doctor peering into an X-ray, and spends at least ten minutes tapping and searching.

"Mmmm," she says, sounding more and more like my medical analogy.

"What is it Doc, uh I mean miss?" says the patient worried.

"Well.... want the good news first or the bad news first"?

Crap.

"Bad news first," says I bravely.

"The only available flight doesn't leave until 5:45PM, but the good news is that they have one seat left."

Seven hour wait.

"I'll take it," I respond.

I thanked her and ticket in hand I now proceed to finish a couple of books, write a huge review of the Corcoran Biennial (which I had intended to do this week anyway, but I forgot the catalog at home, so unless the Corcoran can FEDEX me one here at my hotel, it will have to wait until I get back for publication) and eat crap food all day.

When finally the boarding takes place, to my surprise I discover that my sore-throated angel has upgraded my cheap seat to first class on a cross country, non-stop flight.

A bottle and a half of a good Sonoma Merlot later, I arrived, tired and boozy, to a gray, rainy and fresh-smelling Washington state night, where my daughter Elise picked me up and immediately revived me thanks to the wonders of the adrenaline charge caused by being driven at night, in the rain, by a 17 year-old-driver.

Airborne today

Somewhat emotionally and physically stressed, I am heading West to spend a week in Seattle for some much-needed rest and relaxation in America's cleanest (and wettest) city, where people don't tan but they rust.

I will keep posting and may even deliver a Seattle gallery walkthrough. If anyone from Seattle reads this BLOG, and would like to email me some info: I'll buy you a beer!

On the flight there I am reading The Elegant Universe by Brian Greene.