Matt Nagle on Campello

Another Campello gets reviewed... this time my daughter Elise gets reviewed by Matt Nagle of the Tacoma Weekly.

Read the review here. That's her to the left.

Hands

artPark has some really nice things to say about one of my drawings that they purchased for their collection.

Read it here.

Market Five Gallery in trouble

For over 30 years Market 5 Gallery has operated in the north hall of Washington, DC's historic Eastern Market as an alternative art space.

Despite the fact that the space has no indoor plumbing or climate control, this non profit arts organization has thrived and launched many DC area artists. A few years ago, Market 5 went to court to fight what the gallery terms "an illegal eviction" by the city.

The case was then settled out of court but according to sources, the rent was raised almost 10 fold with the promise of indoor plumbing, heat, an upgraded electrical system and other improvements to bring the entire market up to code.

Now that improvements are underway on the south hall of the market, the city apparently trying to evict Market 5 Gallery again.

Please help the gallery by signing a petition to stop this eviction. Go to market5gallery.org for information about the gallery and then go to this website sign the petition.

Wanna go to an Arlington, VA opening tonite?

At the Arlington Art Center: Hope and Fear, Curated by Carol Lukitsch and part of the Winter solos 2007, and in the Jenkins Community Gallery: Art Enables: Outsider Art Inside the Beltway.

Show Dates: December 4 – January 19

Reception: Tonite! December 7, 6 – 9 pm

Location: Arlington Arts Center, 3550 Wilson Blvd, Arlington VA.

You’ll see works in their main floor galleries by Michael Platt, Sandra Parra, Janis Goodman, M.V. Langston, Rachel Waldron, Steven Williams, Laurel Hausler, and Shahla Arbabi -- all selected by former AAC Curator, Carol Lukitsch, in her show exploring both beauty and unnerving tension in contemporary art: "Hope and Fear."

In their Chairman’s Gallery on that same floor, and in their Truland experimental galleries downstairs, you’ll also find three disparate WINTER SOLOS shows that highlight both established and emerging contemporary artists from around the Mid-Atlantic region: Jennifer Levonian, Young Kim, and Joe Mannino.

Downstairs, a selection of works from ART ENABLES — a D.C. arts organization working with adults who have developmental and/or mental disabilities -- will be on view in the Jenkins Gallery. And upstairs, you’ll find the colorful representational paintings and prints of resident studio artist Edith Heins in her show, Up Close and Personal.

The reception will include the premiere of a new dance choreographed by Lucy Bowen McCauley, with performances at both 6:30 and 7:30 in the Meyer Gallery by Bowen McCauley Dance.

Hope and Fear curator Carol Lukitsch will give her remarks in the Tiffany Gallery at 7:00.

Read the WaPo review here.

Wanna go to a DC opening tomorrow?

Tomorrow, December 7 is not only the anniversary of the day when, according to John Belushi in Animal House, the Germans bombed Pearl Harbor, but also it is the last in the inaugural round of 9x10 exhibitions featuring the work of WPA member artists!

In tribute to the late William Warren Parker’s support for emerging DC artists, his family has generously donated space at the William W. Parker (WWP) Gallery – housed in Mickelson’s Fine Art Framing at 629 New York Ave NW - to the WPA for a new “nine-by-ten” exhibition series: 9 shows of 10 member artists each.

These shows provided a new outlet for WPA member artists, and each exhibition presented a diverse cross-section of the WPA membership to the public, showcasing works in all media.

Show #9: December 7, 2007 – January 4, 2008, featuring works by Michele Banks, Michael Kent, Preeti Gujral Kochar, Pepa Leon, Laurie Messite, Mary D. Ott, Bailey Rosen, Andrei Trach, Jennifer Trice and Irene Zweig.

OPENING RECEPTION: FRIDAY, DECEMBER 7, 6:30 – 8 pm
WWP Gallery (Mickelson’s Fine Art Framing)
629 New York Ave NW, 3rd Floor
Washington, DC 20001
Info: 202.639.1828 or here.

In addition, Michele Banks has a solo show of her abstract watercolors running at Gallery Frame Avenue in Bethesda through December 31.

McQuaid on Campello

The Boston Globe's Cate McQuaid reviews "Ozspirations" at The New England School of Art and Design Gallery at Suffolk University in Boston and has something nice to say about my drawings, although she pretty much dismisses the rest of the exhibition.

Read her review here.

New Acquisitions

A sculpture by Sol LeWitt and an oil painting by William D. Washington, a 19th century Washington, DC raised artist famed throughout the South for his "Burial of Latane" Civil War painting, have been acquired by the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts.

VMFA is a state museum with private endowments for art purchase. I think that this is perhaps the ideal public/private partnership, because art is purchased with private funds and then becomes the responsibly of the state for its ongoing care.

Throughout their history, they have benefited from many generous donors, including Mr. and Mrs. Paul Mellon, Rita Gans, Lillian Thomas Pratt, and Sydney and Frances Lewis, among many others.

The LeWitt was a partial gift of the Sol LeWitt estate and Pace Wildenstein in honor of Frances Lewis and in memory of Sydney Lewis, in addition to some funds from the Sydney and Frances Lewis endowment.

VMFA's new Sol LeWitt sculpture is titled "Splotch #22" and was created in acrylic on fiberglass this year. It stands just more than 12 feet tall.

"Much of today's art practice would be unthinkable without LeWitt's pioneering work in Conceptual Art in the 1960s and 1970s," says John Ravenal, VMFA's Sydney and Frances Lewis Family Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art.

"Our new sculpture is the largest and most complex of LeWitt's series of non-geometric sculptures. It is also LeWitt's last work."

Ravenal says that the artist made two drawings for "Splotch #22" on which he indicated colors and height. A fabricator then translated the drawings into 3-D using a computer. The result is a sculpture made of layers of industrial-grade foam that were laminated, carved and sanded before being coated with epoxy resin, fiberglass, and multiple layers of paint and varnish.

I am curious as to the technical aspect of this... once the "fabricator" has created a 3-D digital file, is it then fed to a machine which then "builds" the sculpture, or creates a mold for it? And who carves and sands the industrial-grade foam? Who coats it with resin and fiberglass and then applies the paint and varnish?

Possibly not LeWitt, and that's OK...

But is this the same general idea as a watercolorist creating a watercolor and then handing it over to a lab which then scans it into a hi resolution image and prints it into a canvas, and then another machine replicates the artist's original brush strokes in a finishing clear medium and recreates another work which is not the original piece.

We call those reproductions.

But then say that the artist's watercolor is scanned into a 3-D translation and made into a sculpture?

Makes my head hurt.