At the Writer's Center

Bethesda's Writer's Center is inaugurating a new program of exhibitions from time to time to display visual arts connected to literature or books.

Since this sort of genre is one of the driving forces in my own work, I am immediately interested and hope that some of you are interested as well!

This Friday, 21 September, at their venue in Bethesda (4508 Walsh Street), which is about four blocks south of the Bethesda Metro stop, just off Wisconsin Avenue, they're hosting longtime instructor Kate Blackwell and her sister Mary Beth Blackwell-Chapman.

The sisters will come together for a mixed media event on Friday, September 21, at 7:30 p.m. Kate will be sharing her newest work, a book of stories entitled "you won't remember this." Though Kate has been publishing her stories for years, this is her first book, published by Southern Methodist University Press.

Mary Beth Blackwell-Chapman is an accomplished painter and sculptor. Last winter, she created works that examine books in a whole new light. Just recently she's used her talents to bring literary classics, such as Gilgamesh, to life.

The event starts at 7.30 pm and is free and open to the public.

New at the Print Center

Philly's Print Center has announced the appointment of John Caperton as the new Curator of Prints and Photographs, Hester Stinnett as the new President of the Board of Governors and Jennifer Dempsey Fox as a new Board member of The Print Center.

Colors

The Luther W. Brady Art Gallery at George Washington University in DC is extending the exhibition dates of Generations of the Washington Color School Revisited. The extension is intended to overlap with the exhibition Morris Louis Now: An American Master Revisited, being held at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, September 20, 2007 - January 6, 2008. The Luther W. Brady Art Gallery features in its exhibition Morris Louis' Blue Column II, an acrylic on canvas from 1960.

"Drawing from its history of both exhibiting and collecting the works of artists such as Gene Davis, Thomas Downing, Howard Mehring, Alma Thomas, and Willem de Looper, the Luther W. Brady Art Gallery will build on the 1984 exhibition Generations of the Washington Color School, held at the Dimock Gallery." New additions to the GW permanent Collection by de Looper and DC area artist Amy Lin will be shown along with a never before seen work by New York artist Rosette Bakish.

Through October 5, 2007.

SF Job in the Arts

They're looking for a new Director of Cultural Affairs in San Francisco, California at the San Francisco Arts Commission.

The Director of Cultural Affairs oversees and promotes cultural affairs on a citywide basis for art, music and related programs with support from a staff of 28. Responsibilities include oversight of a diverse portfolio of programs in eight key areas: Civic Art Collection, Community Arts and Education, Public Art Program, Civic Design Review, Cultural Equity Grants, Arts Commission Gallery, Street Artist Program and Summer in the City Concert Series.

Requirements: A Bachelor's degree from an accredited college or university with major coursework in arts or closely related field and five (5) years of progressively responsible experience in the field of art administration; or an equivalent combination of training and experience. Preferred Education: 4 Year Degree

Competitive salary plus outstanding benefit package including retirement. Based on qualifying experience and salary history, there is the potential
for additional compensation. More details from Recruiting Firm - Ralph
Andersen & Associates. Contact Heather Renschler at (916) 630-4900 or apply via e-mail to apply@ralphandersen.com

All-Media Members Show at the Art League

Juried by Berthold Schmutzhart, Prof. Emeritus from the Corcoran, and someone who has juried Art League shows many times in the past, the current exhibition at the Art League delivers the usual strong group show almost guaranteed by the Art League’s two-thousand plus artists’ pool. These are his award winners.

“All of the works that I selected as award winners are very strong technically,” said the juror.

From his award winners I gravitated towards Christine Cardellino’s acrylic titled “Tower of Babel #9,” a very strong piece, and I also liked Isil Ozisik (who seems to win an award every month and deserves it) “The Harbor.” Over the years I’ve watched Ozisik win award after award at the Art League, but I have never actually seen the Art League feature this talented Turkish-born painter in a solo show.

A suggestion to the Art League: Give Isil Ozisik a solo show soon!

Photographer Fierce Sonia has been consistently pushing new buttons as she discovers new approaches and techniques to photographing her own image, in “Dis-Chord,” a photographic collage made from torn strips of her own work, she steps gingerly into new waters and delivers a really good photograph in the process.

I also like C. Wang’s “Nude Study,” an elegant charcoal drawing, that although executed flawlessly was vastly overpriced by a factor of 10, especially when compared to better, more established figurative artists who consistently deliver strong work, such as Jackie Saunders, whose ink drawing of Stephanie Regal delivers her usually austere but effective minimalist figure.

The exhibition goes through October 1, 2007.

Jobs in the Arts

Faculty Studio Position in Sculpture and/or Installation at American University in DC.

The Department of Art in the College of Arts and Sciences at American University seeks a full-time tenure track faculty member at the rank of Assistant Professor for the academic year beginning fall 2008. A master's degree, MFA preferred, in Studio Art with a specialization in Sculpture and/or Installation, a substantial record of exhibition and substantial teaching beyond the teaching assistant level.

Demonstrated ability to work effectively with both undergraduates and graduates and within a general education curriculum. Teaching responsibilities will include sections of undergraduate sculpture, advanced undergraduate and graduate sculpture, drawing, and general education courses in studio art.

To apply, submit a letter of application and curriculum vitae along with 20 slides or jpegs on cd of own work and 20 slides or jpegs on cd of student work. SASE for return of materials, and arrange to have three letters of recommendation sent directly from individuals who are able to comment on the applicant's qualfications to:

Studio Search Committee
Department of Art
American University
4400 Massachusetts Avenue NW
Washington DC 20016-8004

Review of applications begins January 15, 2008 and will continue until the position is filled.

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Exhibition Coordinator: Moore College of Art and Design - Philadelphia

The exhibition coordinator facilitates the coordination of all activities related to exhibition organization and presentation. The exhibition coordinator works in close collaboration with the Director/Chief Curator, college faculty and staff as well as with outside groups in coordinating scheduling, logistics and to ensure that each exhibition presented in the Gallery at Moore venues is developed in a timely, effective, and fiscally responsible manner.

S/he is responsible for developing and writing press and promotional information related to exhibitions organized by The Galleries at Moore as well as providing curatorial assistance to the Director/Chief Curator on research, organization, loan and installation coordination and publication production for up to four Moore organized exhibitions per year.

Requirements: Bachelors degree in art history or related field with a minimum of two years experience in an alternative space, gallery, or museum working in registration, curatorial, or exhibitions. The exhibition coordinator must have the ability to work collaboratively with others as well as possess strong organizational and communication skills. S/he should have general knowledge of project planning and working with budgets. Salary commensurate with experience. Interested candidates forward your resume and cover letter with salary requirements to:

Moore College of Art and Design
Attn: Human Resources Manager
20th Street and The Parkway
Philadelphia, PA 19103

Email: HR@Moore.edu; Fax: 215-568-1773

In the Flesh

In Old Town Alexandria, the Target Gallery inside the Torpedo Factory hired American University professor Tim Doud to jury “In the Flesh,” an exhibition to focus on the current trends in contemporary figurative art. As this focus is also one of my long-time interests, and as I have in the past curated many exhibitions along the same theme, I was particularly interested in seeing what Doud would select.

And the professor didn’t disappoint! Target received almost 600 entries from all over the country, from which Doud culled 25 pieces delivering an immensely diverse show, that according to Doud himself, aimed at trying to include works from different mediums and approaches.

There is also a strong current of narrative and social commentary issues going on with many of the pieces in the show.


Predictably, my favorite piece in the show was Forrest Solis (from Phoenix, AZ) “Le Corps Prope Part I,” a technically flawless composition which delivered a visual paradox of a female nude metamorphosing into a crocheted teddy bear... I think.

The painting showed remarkable technical facility coupled with a strong sense of perspective and an intelligent issue-raising image, which is still a little befuddling to me.

On my second visit later that day, I gravitated towards Michael Reedy’s “Elephant Man.” This is a very large mixed media piece, where this Ann Arbor, Michigan artist has also used enviable technical skills to mix charcoal, very subtle watercolor tones, colored pencils and some paper staining to deliver a male nude piece that seems to consist of very delicate layers of charcoal, almost being lifted from the surface of the paper.

The subject is a male nude in a fetal position, his head wrapped in a plastic bag. Barely visible in the background are scribbles, drawings, texts and cartoonish representations of an elephant. We see an image of Benjamin Franklin in the act of slicing his nose off, and this together with the text and other imagery reveals rather bluntly, that the artist is possibly delivering an indictment of his own nose?


The Franklin imagery is particularly quizzical, unless Reedy is somehow marrying his dislike for a nose too broad with racist connotations and Franklin’s infamous writings that early non-English immigrants to the new United States were not "purely white." Franklin, afraid of the large numbers of non English Europeans settling in the new nation, used the racial scare tactics that survive to this day in political speech to assert that that “Germans, Russians, and Swedes were of a swarthy complexion. Furthermore, only the Saxons and the English constituted the principal body of white people on the face of the earth.”


I was also attracted (or perhaps repulsed) to the two sculptural pieces by Atlanta’s Susan Krause. One was a set of huge breasts which could be worn as latex clothing of a sort, and which popped into my head the infamous tale of the 1940’s serial killer Ed Gein, who made and wore a human skin “suit” made from his victims’ skin. Only the title, "The Kena 123143A Hippie / Mother of 6," disarms the piece and takes Gein away from the brain and replaces it with an image of fertility triggered by flowers in her hair at some early point in the model's life.

Like any group show, there are some weak pieces in the show, and both of Quanhai Pan’s (from Houston, Texas) entries, “Window to the Soul 1” and “Window to the Soul 3” were badly painted works bordering on an average student work done at the last minute.

Chris Untalan (from Jamaica Plain, MA) has a beautiful classical graphite drawing of a fabulously rotund Mother Earth-type model, and our own area’s Danny Conant and former DC area photographer (now living and working in San Francisco) Samantha Wolov carry the torch for photographers with two strong portraits that cross the wide divide between photography and all other genres of fine art.

Lastly, Target’s new gallery director, the tiny but steel-strong Mary Cook has done wonders with the gallery space and direction since she took over a little over a year ago. Target is almost like a new space, with overhead lights that actually work to illuminate the subject and new walls to replace the ugly carpet that used to pass for gallery walls. More importantly, she has also delivered on new ideas for interesting exhibitions. She deserves a well-earned pat on the back and a bonus for delivering such an amazing turn around into this space in such a quick time.

The exhibition ends on October 13, 2007. See the show online here.