Wanna go to a Maryland reception this Saturday?

Don’t miss this one: Erwin Timmers (DC's leading "green artist"), Jennifer Lindstrom and Alison Sigethy are featured in SiO2, a glass showcase at the Carroll Arts Center in Westminster, MD.

It’s a beautiful drive, so drive up there for the artists’ reception on Saturday, Feb. 9, 2008, 2pm – 4pm.

Disclaimer: I've driven through Maryland and used to live there.

Wanna go to a Philly opening tomorrow?

Tomorrow, Thursday, February 7 at the Print Center in Philly: Moon Studies and Star Scratches: Sharon Harper , Dakar Portraits: Vera Viditz-Ward and That’s Women’s Work: Laura Wagner with gallery talks by the artists at 5:00pm.

Oh yeah... the opening reception is from 5:30-7:30pm.

Trevarrow at the Arts Club

I've been hearing good things about the shows currently on exhibition at the beautiful Arts Club of Washington, specifically about the work of DC artist Ruth Trevarrow and Bethesda's Marilyn Banner.

Bison Plate by Ruth Trevarrow
The shows are on through 23 February 2008.

Digital Sequences

The WaPo's art critic Michael O'Sullivan had an interesting review here of an exhibiiton over at the Montpelier Arts Center in Laurel, Maryland that sounds really interesting as well, and perhaps a new page in the ever growing "green art" movement which seems to have found an epicenter around the Greater DC area region.

Read the review here.

Digital Sequences: Chris Jordan, Running the Numbers, and Gail Rebhan, Room and Jessica Braiterman: Veneer runs until February 29, 2008 and on Saturday, Feb 23 at 3:30 pm there will be a lecture by Shannon Perich, Associate Curator at the Smithsonian Museum of American History on the Emerging History of Digital Photography from the curator's point of view. Free.

Bell on Frida and Me - Common Threads, at Projects in Philly

Jessica Bell is a student in Colette Copeland's critical writing class at the University of Pennsylvania, and in artblog Bell reviews Common Threads at Projects Gallery in Philadelphia.

I'll be visiting this show soon; read her review here.

Cirenaica Moreira

Cuban photographer's Cirenaica Moreira's photographs have been described as "vagina dentata," and she's one of my favorite photographers in the world (Disclaimer: As a Moreira superfan, dealer and collector, if Moreira's photos climb in price I stand to make a huge fortune).

The below video by Nicaraguan poet Yolanda Blanco appropriates Moreira's photos to make Blanco's poetry sing.

If Cuba ever regains its freedom, and its talented artists are then able to travel the world, then expect talented artists like Moreira to be discovered by a whole new set of American curators and collectors, and to truly blosom out.

Cirenaica Moreira was born in Havana, Cuba in 1969 and graduated from the Instituto Superior de Arte (ISA) in Havana with a focus in the performing arts, which is strongly reflected in her tableau-like photographs, with the artist herself playing the lead role. She is considered by many to be one of the most influential Cuban photographers of her generation. Her work has been displayed in many galleries, museums, art fairs (ARCO, Art Basel, etc.) and biennials around the US, Latin America and Europe.

Art critic and writer Armando Suárez-Cobián has written that:

"Cirenaica is not only the physical protagonist of her work but also the metaphor for those she dreams. Cirenaica has constructed a being that transcends her, she has converted her body into a place where all the women she is, gather together to knit and conspire. That duality has become destiny. The created characters have profiled her femininity in a way that fluctuates between the quiet knitter spinning thread who dreams and waits, and, at the same time, is being dreamed of and is exposed. And dreamed of in her delirium, she is diluted in the grace of the water. She is revealed in the silent violence of the light that burns and darkens when it falls directly, and is converted into sharpened metal that united with the dreamed bodies, cuts when they are caressed."

Buy Cirenaica Moreira now.

Juno

For the man who thinks that Terry Gilliam's Brazil is one of the top ten films ever made, it is quite a surprise to reveal that I think that Juno is one of the best movies that I have seen in the last decade.

Starring Ellen Page, rapidly becoming one of the best young actresses on the planet, and who was the terrifying star of 2005's Hard Candy -- the movie most likely to make men cross their legs.

Seriously, Hard Candy was a brutal and intelligent movie, and there are scenes in the film where the character played by Page causes men to squirm and the audible rustle from legs being crossed throughout the theatre becomes a weird sensurround to the smartest revenge movie in ages.

But this is a review of Juno and not Hard Candy.

Get back on track Campello!

Juno is witty, funny, sarcastic, sometimes a little scary and definately has that magical cult ingredient like Napoleon Dynamite did.

Page plays the sarcastic, snappy and very pregnant Juno, a 16 year old kid with a razor-sharp mind and a huge belly. The movie is the story of how she deals with her pregnancy and it is full of surprises, turns and bends and very good acting on the part of Page and the supporting cast, especially by J.K. Simmons, who plays her dad.

The movie grows as it develops, and before Juno's snappy comebacks and one liners become tiresome, she suddenly becomes a scared little girl before our eyes and just as fast turns into a strong decision maker.

I liked this movie a lot and Page is a sure bet for the Oscar for best actress; go see Juno.