Opportunity for Artists from the African Diaspora

Deadline: October 31, 2006.

The Schmucker Art Gallery at Gettysburg College seeks works for an exhibition, tentatively titled "Negotiating Identities in the African World," and scheduled in conjunction with the 13th Central Pennsylvania Consortium Africana Studies Conference, Interrogating issues of Citizenship, Identity, Ethnicity and Race in the African World, 150 years after the Dred Scott Decision.

Exhibition dates are March 30-April 22, 2007. The conference and exhibition will both be part of Gettysburg College's 175th Anniversary celebration and Africana Studies' 20-year celebration. Artists from the African Diaspora are invited to submit artworks engaging either the conference or exhibition themes. Works will be selected by an academic and curatorial committee. Please forward slides or jpegs, artist statement and vita to:

Molly Hutton
Director
Schmucker Art Gallery
Gettysburg College
300 N. Washington St.
Gettysburg, PA 17325.

Electronic submissions may be sent to mhutton@gettysburg.edu.

Opportunity for Artists

Deadline: November 13, 2006

Rebooted: Life Ater E-Junk. The John Michael Kohler Arts Center in Sheboygan, Wis., invites artists to create a work of art for the upcoming exhibition, "Rebooted: Life After E-Junk."

They want you to create a two or three-dimensional work of art which incorporates at least one component of a computer, cell phone, handheld or other technological tool into something wholly new and unexpected. Create an assemblage about how your life has been changed by computers. There is no entry fee to participate in this exhibition. The exhibition runs Dec. 3, 2006 to Feb. 11, 2007.

Contact information: please call the John Michael Kohler Arts Center at 920/458-6144 for more information and to receive a registration form.

Opportunity for Artists

Deadline: October 6, 2006

The DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities' Art Bank Program has a call for entries as they are purchasing artwork to be part of the District of Columbia's 2007 Art Bank Program.

Works in the collection are owned by the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities and loaned to other District Government agencies for display in public areas. Deadline: October 6, 2006.

For more information and an application, please visit their website to download the Call for Entries application, or call 202-724-5613 to have one sent to you.

The City's Art Bank is a growing collection of moveable works funded through DC Creates Public Art, the District’s Art in Public Places Program.

Works in the collection are owned by the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities and are loaned to other District government agencies for display in public areas of government buildings. This collection helps preserve the city’s past and is an important legacy for future generations. Currently, approximately 1,600 artworks are on display in more than 100 agencies.

This year the work will be chosen by Carl Cole, who is one of the DCCAH Commissioners; Judy A. Greenberg, Director of the Kreeger Museum; Karen Holtzman, who is a fine arts Appraiser; my good friend Alejandro Negrín, who is the Director of the Cultural Institute of Mexico and Paul Roth, Curator for Photography at the Corcoran.

Congratulations

To DC sculptor Dan Steinhilber, who gets a hip interview with Baltimore Sun art critic Glenn McNatt (of the kind the WaPo has never done for a DC artist), about Steinhilber's mini show at the Baltimore Museum of Art.

Congratulations also to Steinhilber's next door neighbor on G street, NW, Tim Tate, and to Tate's partner at the Washington Glass School, Michael Janis, both of which will be included in the London-published 50 Distinguished Contemporary Artists in Glass edited by Lisa Hoftijzer and which will be out next month!

Congratulations to hard-working DC artist Sondra Arkin, whose solo show "Indian Summer" opens at the Blue Moon, 35 Baltimore Avenue, Rehoboth Beach, Delaware on October 6 and runs through November 2, 2006.

More on remarkable confluence

"Remarkable confluence" is what I have decided to call the curious phenomenom of what happens when two artists, working in different cities and either at different times or same time frames, and completely unaware of each other's existance, seem to arrive at remarkably similar visual works.

A while back I noted how the Louis Cameron paintings currently at G Fine Art in Washington, DC were remarkably similar (in both idea, subject matter, and size) to the work that I did six years ago.

Over the weekend Virginia artist Andrew Devlin, winner of the 2004 Georgetown International Art Competition read this mini-mention of artist John Beech's exhibition (also at G Fine Art) and was also intrigued as to how Beech's current drawings are so similar, both in subject matter and presentation and delivery (with the whole "drawing under a swath of shiny acrylic paint" element) as Devlin's own work from a couple of years ago. See examples of both below.

I imagine that somewhere on the planet, at the same time that Pollock was dripping paint onto canvas, some other artist, blissfully unaware of Pollock's work, was possibly doing exactly the same thing is some smaller, less aware place.

"Remarkable confluence" also happens a lot in science, where inventors toil away at their inventions, and as soon as they are published they discover that someone else, a half world away, has been working and invented the same thing.

Sydney McGee Part II

A few days ago I discussed the issue of teacher Sydney McGee in Frisco, Texas getting fired from her teaching post after 28 years allegedly due to complaints that one of her students saw a nude sculpture during a museum trip. Read that here.

A reader from Frisco, Texas has responded to the report by offering the other side of the story. Angel writes:

I am very disappointed in the one-sided slant to the news stories regarding this Fisher Elementary Art Teacher who is being put on leave WITH pay with a recommended non-renewal of her contract next spring. Frisco, Texas citizens and one of its' largest employers - FISD - support the arts!

I do not want to have a debate on the subject of nude art at the DMA as I know very well that the district would never put a teacher on a growth plan solely for this reason. I know that the administrators, school board members, principals, and teachers support the visual arts in a very positive way.

Many districts have cut their art programs, but not FISD.

FISD’s art programs have received several award winning recognitions in the visual arts. Our district was honored for the Outstanding Youth Art Month Observance Award from the Texas Art Education Association for involvement on a state level. One can go to the district’s website at www. friscoisd.org and find several news articles on art endeavors and art student recognitions.

Each year the district puts on a district wide art show in honor of Youth Art Month which is celebrated in the spring. The district allows budget monies for the art program including not only supplies but fine art prints to share with students in the classroom. They support and allow field trips to such places as the Dallas Museum of Art, Hall Office Park’s outdoor sculptures, and the like.

Student artworks are continually displayed in our community. The City of Frisco voted to pass a proposition regarding public art being an integral part of our city. Our city has the highly regarded Hall Office Park collection of outdoor sculptures open to the public for ground tours. One can drive around various locations in Frisco and discover public works of art everywhere.

You cannot tell me that we are some culturally-insensitive group of citizens and that our school administrators are as well. It is simply not true!

I feel bad that the media attention (including forums like this, talk radio, newspapers, and television broadcasts) brought on our town has put us in such a negative light.

This is pure smoke and mirrors brought on by this teacher in an attempt to take the heat off of the real issues at hand. She was never fired, only asked to improve. Instead of trying to improve, she went straight to the media bad-mouthing her principal and her employer which is FISD. I think they have every right not to renew her contract at this point.

Thank you for hearing my opinion which is factually driven and personally driven for me to want to communicate.

By the way, her 28 year tenure was NOT all served in the FISD and not all of those years were as an ART teacher.

Some observations:

I'll agree that generally there are always two sides to most stories, but I still have some reservations with this story, the flavor of which comes to us strictly through what is published in the press. Either everyone in the printmedia is doing, as Angel alleges, "smoke and mirrors," or FISD is doing one of the worst information (lack thereof) campaigns of all times to address an obviously sensitive subject.

As a reader in Wordpress.com commented, "if Frisco ISD has been having a problem with this teacher it should have been put down in-writing on previous performance reviews. Where are they?" By the way, there are loads of good comments, both pro and con the issue at Wordpress.com.

I'd like to add that if the issue for not renewing the contract was NOT as a result of the parent complaint over the nude sculpture at the museum, then the board, or the school or FISD should have explained it immediately and come out and said "this award winning, experienced teacher's contract is not being renewed because "fill-in-the-blank" and not because of the complaints raised by a parent as a result of the museum trip."

Then we'd all know why she's being let go, and also know (at least officially) that it was not as a result of the parent's complaint over the museum trip.

Until that happens, the museum trip and the subsequent complaint, immediately followed by the events reported in the press, continue to shed a bad light on FISD.

Opportunity for Mid Atlantic Photographers

Deadline: Friday, October 6, 2006

PhotoGenesis: McLean Project for the Arts - All Mid-Atlantic artists (DC, VA, MD, PA, NJ, DE, WV) are invited to submit up to 20 slides or digital images of 2 or 3 dimensional, installation or video works completed within the last two years and not previously exhibited at MPA.

Works that spring from photographic images, ideas or techniques will be considered. Work may, but need not necessarily remain within the realm of photography to be included in the exhibit. Works that move beyond the traditional forms of the medium are encouraged.

The jurors will consider the first four images for exhibit. These four must be available. Works must fit through a 81” x 65” doorway.

Awards: Cash prizes totaling $1,500 will be awarded by the jurors.

Jurors: Stephen Bennett Phillips is currently curator at the Phillips Collection, Washington, D.C.; Claudia Bohn-Spector is a freelance writer and curator specializing in American and European art and photography. Charles Brock is associate curator of American and British Paintings at the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.

Entry Fee: $25. Fee waived for current MPA members. Fee includes one-year artist membership to MPA. Make checks payable to: McLean Project for the Arts.

Images: Artists may submit up to twenty 35 mm slides in a slide sheet or twenty digital images on a CD or up to 10 minutes of recorded material.

For further information, visit: www.mpaart.org, email Nancy Sausser: nsausser@mpaart.org, Phone: 703.790.1953, TDD 703.827.8255.

McLean Project for the Arts
1234 Ingleside Avenue
McLean, VA 22101