Congrats!

To Cara Ober and the gang at Bmore Arts, which has been named "Best Use of Bandwith" in this year's Baltimore City Paper's "Best Of Baltimore."

Well deserved!

Beyond the Margins

Hillyer Art Space at 9 Hillyer Court, NW, in DC will have Beyond the Margins: Selections from Soweto, South Africa opening next week, October 5, 2007, with a reception from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m. and runs through December 14, 2007.

Developed and curated by Martin Britz, President and Founder of the South African Fine Arts Congress, Beyond the Margins represents a body of work from both established and emerging black, South African artists working in the Soweto region outside the city of Johannesburg from 1970 to the present.

Represented in Beyond the Margins are Peter Sibeko, Muzi Donga and Winston Saoli, three of the most eminent painters of the Soweto school. Additional artists featured in the exhibition include: Ben Macala, Eli Kobeli, Speelman Mahlangu, Hargreaves Ntukwana, Godfrey Ndaba, David Mbele, Martin Tose, Leonard Matotso, Sipho Msimango, Solomon Sekhaelelo, Mvemve Jiyane, and Grand Maghandlela.

Giants

A couple of new tiny drawings of two art giants. Each charcoal is about one and a half square inches.

"Man Ray"
Charcoal on Paper. 1.5 by 1.5 inches. 2007
By F. Lennox Campello
In a private collection in Richmond, VA


"Marcel Duchamp"
Charcoal on Paper. 1.5 by 1.5 inches. 2007
By F. Lennox Campello
In a private collection in Richmond, VA

Makes sense

Mike Licht solves the Jacob Lawrence issue. He writes: "You (and Regina Hackett) can assume your readers are familiar with Jacob Lawrence. Jacqueline Trescott can't."

Great point and case closed.

At the Corcoran

This month, the Corcoran opens the photography exhibition Annie Leibovitz: A Photographer’s Life, 1990–2005, as well as Wild Choir: Cinematic Portraits by Jeremy Blake, which features three digital media projects by the late artist.

More interesting to me is their "2007 Alumni Juried Exhibition, Recent Graduates: 2002–2006." That exhibit goes through September 30, 2007, so hurry and go see it. It was juried by Molly Donovan, curator of modern and contemporary art at the National Gallery of Art and it's at the Corcoran's "new" Gallery 31.

Gallery 31 is the Corcoran’s newly dedicated exhibition space for the Corcoran College of Art + Design. The space will host exhibitions by the Corcoran’s faculty, students, alumni, visiting artists, and annual senior thesis exhibitions. Located at the New York Avenue entrance of the Corcoran, Gallery 31 will be open during Gallery hours and will be free to the public.

Come again?

Recently, a respected art collector in Portland, Ore., walked into a local gallery. The owners greeted her warmly, and ushered her to the back room to show off their latest acquisitions. After politely declining several works, the collector chose a $5,500 porcelain sculpture shaped like a basket and covered in tiny, platinum elephants. "She has such a great eye for art," gushed the gallery's co-owner, MaryAnn Deffenbaugh.

The collector, Dakota King, is 9. In a collision of the art boom, the wealth boom and the Baby Einstein approach to parenting, galleries and auction houses around the country report that children who aren't old enough to drive are building collections that include works by Jasper Johns, Andy Warhol, Camille Pissarro and Rembrandt. At Sotheby's in New York, an 11-year-old boy with blond ringlets waved a paddle last fall and successfully bid $352,000 for a Jeff Koons sculpture of a silver gnome. Some teenagers are flipping art for quick profits. A few grade-schoolers are even loaning works to major museums, including Houston's Museum of Fine Arts, a coup for a collector of any age.

[stunned silence follows]...

Read the article by Kelly Crow in the Wall Street Journal here. It is a really, really a well-researched and interesting read by the way.

Day of the Dead

Pencil this date in and come party Day of the Dead style, with art, workshops, altars, music, spoken word, dancing, marigolds and the souls of the departed when Arlington's Art Outlet presents “Ofrenda: Art for the Dead” from 3 p.m. to midnight on Saturday, October 13.

Twenty artists will show their personal altars and offerings, or ofrendas. Workshops will teach kids and adults about the Dia de los Muertos tradition. Details here.

- Day of the Dead Workshop: Sugar Skulls 3 – 5 p.m.
- Mariachi Band 5 – 6 p.m.
- Film Screening by Zulma Aguiar 6:15 - 6:30 p.m.
- Mud Pie 6:30 – 7:30 p.m.
- Flo Anito 8 – 9 p.m.
- Special Guest Appearance by Sarah Lovering 10:30 pm
- Aphrodizia featuring Yoko K. 10 p.m. – Midnight

Artists in the show are: Zulma Aguiar, Michael Auger, Jennifer Beinhacker, Alison Christ, Andrea Collins, Rosemary Feit Covey, Roni Freeman, Jenny Freestone, Vickie Fruehauf, Susan Gardiner, Angela Kleis, Emily Liddle, Rob Lindsay, Bono Mitchell, Thomas Paradis, Marina Reiter, Marina Starkova, Henrik Sundqvist, and Jack Whitsitt.