Curtis in MOMA

ANABA reveals that MOMA has recently acquired a Tony Curtis painting for its permanent collection.

Read it here.

Top Ten Lists

The end of the year is time for everyone to come up with their "Top Ten Lists" for nearly everything.

Email me yours for the top 10 art exhibitions in our area in 2005 and I'll post them here.

One Word Project

J.T. Kirkland, over at Thinking About Art, has been conducting a fascinating art project that he titles the One Word Project.

The project started here a while back, and so far about 40 artists have participated.

Essentially, here's the deal in Kirkland's owns words: "first, if I am not familiar with the artist's work I will want to review it (jpegs, Web site, maybe even a studio visit, etc). Once I get somewhat familiar with the work, I will communicate a single word that comes to mind about the art. I will ask that the artist write 100-500 words about the chosen word and what it means in their art. Because the "question" is so open ended, I think it will allow the artist much freedom to discuss their work and their thought processes. I would then like to publish the writing and a couple of examples of the artist's work on this site."

The One Word Project has been a terrific success, and Kirkland is planning to publish a book! See details on the book's progress here.

He's looking for more participants for a second project: The Artists' Interview Artists Project, and interested artists (and it is now open to all artists - not just area artists) should contact Kirkland at Thinking About Art.

Second Annual Bethesda Painting Awards

Deadline: January 31, 2006

The Bethesda Arts & Entertainment District is currently accepting applications for the second annual Bethesda Painting Awards. This is one of the nation's largest cash award painting prizes funded through the generosity of Carol Trawick.

Eight finalists will be selected to display their work in an exhibition during the month of June 2006 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 January 31, 1976 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 or 84 inches in height. No reproductions.

Artwork must have been completed within the last two years and must be available for the duration of the exhibition. Each artist must submit five slides, application and a non-refundable entry fee of $25. 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 this website or call 301/215-6660

Wanna go to a DeXmas Party?

Note: Party actually starts at 10PM not 8! Details here.

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.