Secret Visit

Yesterday I snuck away from the Georgetown gallery and visited the PostSecret exhibition at the former Staples store on M Street.

The place was packed!

I cannot recall a gallery or non-blockbuster museum event in the DC area (ever) where -- after the opening night -- there are actually hundreds of people in the art venue, hypnotized by the work on display, as what I saw yesterday around 4PM at Frank Warren's exhibit.

I was almost as mesmerized by the intensity on the faces of the visitors, as they went from card to card, reading funny secrets, sad secrets, gross secrets, silly secrets, shared secrets. I made several circuits through the exhibition: the first to look through the cards; the second and third to look at the people reading the cards, and how they became part of the exhibit itself.

Warren has really tapped into something here, and it couldn't have happened to a nicer person. And the WPA/C should be congratulated for bringing this spectacular event to the eyes and attention of Washingtonians; Kim Ward and her crew are really doing a spectacular job over at the WPA/C since Ward took over.

Whatever you do through January 8, 2006 - DO NOT MISS this exhibition, and bring people along with you.

And I sincerely hope that our area museum curators set aside their Washington apathy and also come and visit what is perhaps the greatest interactive public art project in the history of the genre.

Warren is making art history in our own backyard, and so I'm shouting to the Hirshhorn, to the SAM, to the NGA, and to the Corcoran: WAKE UP!

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Exhibition Information:
Location: 3307 M St. NW Washington DC (The former Georgetown Staples store)
Exhibition Dates: December 15, 2005 – January 8, 2006
Exhibition Hours: Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday 6:00 – 10:00 p.m., Saturdays and Sundays 2:00 p.m. – 10:00 p.m. or by appointment through WPA\C.

Text in Art

As most of you know, I've become very interested over the last year or so in art that works with, or incorporates text. In Seven, I dedicated an entire gallery room to a group of artists working with text in their work. Next year I am taking those artists to an exhibition at the new Greater Reston Arts Center, and I am working now to also do it in a Virginia museum after that.

And speaking of text in art, I've been hearing good things about the exhibition by Rose Folsom at The Mansion at Strathmore Hall.

Folsom's show was a Hot Pick of the Week by the Washington Times.

Rose Folsom is an amazing calligrapher who has migrated the art of writing towards the fine arts, period. She writes:

At age five I wanted so much to write that I pestered an older playmate into teaching me. When I was seven, I took apart a little paper umbrella to find a tiny roll of Japanese newspaper inside. As I unrolled it, the magical characters were clearly trying to tell me something, but what? I ran to my parents and was told that only a Japanese person could read what it said. I daydreamed about a little girl my age on the other side of the world who could read and understand the tantalizing text. How I longed to know what it said! Meanwhile, the angular characters, lined up like little soldiers, spoke to me of an exotic world that sparked my imagination. This began a life-long fascination with the written word.

And I am told that the show at Strathmore (which I plan to see next week) offers a show that provides evidence that her fascination has delivered a superb show. C.D. Tansey writes about it:

One thing that impresses itself on the viewer is that the writing is not immediately decipherable... It demands a closer look. There is an attempt to communicate something, but the "written paintings" ask the viewer to actively set out to decipher what is there. We are not the merely passive receivers of the words, but we are asked to participate in a conversation.

Already we are in a different realm than the everyday world of words, which, more and more, are crafted so as to be quickly read and understood. Words have in many cases been reduced in our age to a means to and end. Words are how we understand how to get something done - buying, selling, informing, or getting from one place to another. The more transparent words are, the more useful, seems to be the conventional wisdom.

Words here in this show become not a means to an end, but actually a nexus of mystery and relationship. Relationship is the key word here, because often there is a dialogue going on the painting - a dialogue between two voices. Sometimes the dialogue is humorous, as in "He Said, She Said"; but more often the dialogue points at something more poignant.

In the paintings entitled "Letter to," one can't help but think of Emily Dickinson's "Letters to the World," and implicit is the idea of a soul in an almost heroic attempt at bridging a divide - sending a letter to reach the shores of another soul, almost like a message in a bottle cast into the sea.

This is interesting because in the era of e-mails and instant messaging, it has become true that a hand-written letter has suddenly become a rarity. The hand-written letter in this day and age signals a special care and attention, and a reaching out of a special kind.

Another thought: Just as Emily Dickinson took the metric of the traditional Protestant hymn, and used it as a foundation for a completely original and personal artistic expression - these paintings use the traditional form of calligraphy, and, while staying true to that tradition, charge the writing, the words, with an utterly personal and original meaning.

Another thought: the Protestant "motto," "Sola Scriptura," is here being given a second look. Yes, these are words, but they are also images! From the Cattholic point of view, this makes complete sense, because after all the "Word became FLESH, and dwelt among us." In their being willed into a picture, into a substantiality (of sorts), these word-pictures are a symbol of God's own creative activity. The word is not an abstract thing, but is tied to personal meanings, and personal history, tied to the world, and, even more importantly, tied to God's own ongoing conversation with the world!

And that, finally is what is most powerful about the paintings. Without being too heavy-handed about it, they allude constantly to God's own wish to converse with us - a conversation in which we are not just passive recipients, but in which we must RESPOND. In that conversation, we are caught up in a love, which while essential to our fulfillment, is at the same time an ever-present mystery.

The exhibition goes through December 30, 2005.

Secondsight Meeting

The next Secondsight meeting will be held on Friday, January 27th at 6.30pm.

Secondsight is an organization dedicated to the advancement of women photographers through support, communication and sharing of ideas and opportunities.

The guest speaker for the January 27th Secondsight meeting is Paul Roth, Associate Curator of Photography and Media Arts, Corcoran Gallery of Art.

Paul Roth is responsible for the museum’s extensive collection of photographs and manages its active exhibition schedule. His areas of expertise are postwar American photography and the history of film.

Mr. Roth will be discussing a variety of issues, including "What makes a photograph 'fine art'"?

Please visit www.secondsightdc.com for more information.

Secondsight
PO Box 34405
Bethesda, MD 20827
www.secondsightdc.com
301/718-9651

Secrets

I missed the opening for PostSecret because of the bad weather and the fact that I was working till the last minute for my exhibit, but Alexandra Silverthorne didn't and she has great photos from the PostSecret opening here.

I'll be at the Georgetown gallery from noon until six PM today; come and say hi.

Articulation at Pyramid Atlantic

Recently I walked the frozen tundra of Georgia Avenue in order to visit some of the venues in Silver Spring’s December Art Walk. And the highlight of the walk was an amazing installation at Pyramid Atlantic.

Created by Francie Hester and a multitude of other persons, this collaborative installation (titled "Articulation") is a touching in memoriam for Diane Granat Yalowitz.

Diane Granat Yalowitz was a journalist and writer for Washingtonian Magazine, where she was a senior editor and writer covering immigration, medicine and counseling. She died last year at the age of 49.

I am not a big fan of installations; most of them are a waste of time and space. However, the installation at Pyramid Atlantic is simply amazing.

Under Hester’s direction, people and friends who knew Granat worked on a project to wrap about 20,000 paper clips with bits of paper from her publications. The paper clips were then linked and joined together to make strings that dangle from the ceiling of the vault inside Pyramid Atlantic.

The instant allegory, especially when touched, is that of rain or a tropical scene, especially since the installation also includes the accompanying music of percussionist Luis Garay, sung without words by Joan Phalen (I am told as dictated by the mystical Chassidic tradition of "nigun").

There’s also a hypnotizing element by Lisa Hill: a digital screen that dynamically shows the process of wrapping the paper clips. It reminded me of a code breaking computer attempting to decipher an encoded message. Hill noted that "words surfaced, then disappeared, then resurfaced," and on the computer screen, the words float in an out of the mystical digital surface of the screen.

This installation was one of the most moving examples of the genre that I have ever seen, and it made me reflect on the power of words and art, when married together by skilled artists delivering something new and memorable to the dialogue of that often maligned genre.

The exhibit at Pyramid Atlantic goes through December 23rd.

Tonight's the night

Working till the last minute for my yearly opening in Georgetown tonight from 6-9PM.

Just finished "American Justice," charcoal on Paper, 7 x 29 inches, and the original drawing is matted and framed under glass to 10x32 inches.


See the other drawings here.

Cajun Christmas

Cajun Christmas is private home as a public art project by Laura Elkins running through January 28, 2006.

Cajun Christmas is a seasonal work painted by Elkins as

"if the devastation of the floodwaters in New Orleans has extended to my house on Capitol Hill. This work uses the house as painting support and is the latest piece in HOME wRAP, a group of monumental paintings that addresses the politicization of private life and the demise of domesticity."