When you have loads of money...

"A few months ago, a mystery began blossoming on the streets of New York. All around town, on hundreds of hoardings, bus shelters, phone kiosks and half a dozen billboards in high-traffic areas, a simple white-on-black phrase teased passersby: "See The World Through Ana's Eyes." What did it mean? The sheer omnipresence of the ads suggested it was the work of a movie studio, but no forthcoming releases seemed related. Workers in offices near the billboards quizzed each other and came up blank. Amateur sleuths went online to share theories, to no avail.

Then, late last month, the stark ads were replaced with reproductions of paintings composed of bursting, wild colours, and a new tag line: "See the world through Ana Tzarev's eyes." Oh, well then: Mystery solved.

Wait - Ana who?

Ana Tzarev is a 72-year-old painter, and though almost nobody has heard of her, she is about to become the first person in New York - indeed, perhaps in the history of the art world - to have her work carry a price tag of a million dollars without first ever having sold a single piece of art."

Read the G&M story here.

Gateway Arts District Open Studios coming up!

The Gateway Arts District Open Studio Event will take place on Saturday, December 13, from 1:00-5:00 p and it is a public self-guided tour of professional studios showcasing a variety of mediums - clay/ceramics, painting, sculpture, glass, photography, mixed media, and printmaking

Participating venues include Flux, Red Dirt, Washington Glass School along with several other artists whose studios are located throughout the municipalities of Mount Rainier, Brentwood, North Brentwood and Hyattsville.

The Arts District, just over the border from DC, is a veritable new and growing hot spot of highly acclaimed artists (and a lot of cool new restaurants) that produce works that are exhibited and collected nationally and internationally. For further information, contact Tonya Jordan at 301-864-3860, ext. 1 or email: tonya@gateway-cdc.org.

Wanna go to an Alexandria opening tomorrow?

The Art League Gallery inside the Torpedo Factory in Alexandria, Virginia will be hosting an opening reception on Thursday, December 11 from 6:30 to 8:00pm for "Virtue, Sin & the Balance Within."

On exhibition are Carlos Beltran Baldiviezo's contemporary fine art sculptures, featuring 14 fascinating sculptures representing his "sometimes controversial interpretation of the Seven Virtues and the Seven Deadly Sins." Through January 5, 2008.

Opportunity for Artists

Deadline: 5:00pm on Friday, January 23, 2009

The Cultural Development Corporation (CuDC) is requesting proposals for the Gallery at Flashpoint's September 2009/August 2010 season. Open to all artists, independent curators and arts organizations presenting contemporary work in any medium. The Request for Proposals can be found at flashpointdc.org. The Gallery at Flashpoint presents cutting-edge contemporary art and provides a springboard for talented artists and curators to enhance their careers. The Gallery seeks to inspire creativity and encourage the creation of new work by emerging and under-represented artists and curators. In addition, the Gallery provides a place for artists and curators to experiment with progressive concepts and participate in an active, multi-disciplinary arts community. The Gallery is a venue for exhibitions that explore new and challenging ideas, free from the traditional constraints of a commercial gallery. CuDC is seeking inventive, original proposals in any media.

Gallery at Flashpoint
916 G Street, NW
Washington, DC 20001.

When Gallery Owners Bite

Four years ago I wrote this piece for Blogcritics on the subject of "Vanity Galleries."

And today, some disgruntled gallery owner somewhere, perhaps burned out after the waste of time and money that has been the 2008 art fair season, and maybe in a hotel room somewhere in the South as he/she drives the gallery van full of unsold work back to his gallery in Illinois or some other such state, writes the following in a comment about my post:

What you don't realize is that running a gallery is a BUSINESS, and there are expenses. If you had a full list of patrons and a CONFIRMED sales track, you'd be able to show anywhere in the world free of charge. If you're NOT going to sell paintings, a gallery still needs to pay its operating expenses. Upcoming artist need to gain EXPOSURE before anyone will buy their paintings.

If you are a NOBODY, no gallery will show your work. Show me a list of patrons who regularly BUY your work, and I'd invest into your career. It costs upwards of $40,000 a month to run a commercial gallery. If a gallery only showed UPCOMING artists with no fees, they would go out of business. My gallery shows one established artist a month, and has a few unknown artists.

If I ONLY made $20,000 from the established artist, I'd be $20,000 in the hole EVERY MONTH. Why should I take that burden to promote your art. PLEASE EXPLAIN THE LOGIC BEHIND THAT!

You are DELUSIONAL if you think that I'm going to go broke promoting you for no financial reward!

You folks need to reevaluate the BUSINESS that you have chosen. When I go to Red Dot or Art Miami, I have to pay upwards of $20,000. EVERYONE has to pay to show work! You need to join the real world. A gallery falling in love with your art and selling out of an UNKNOWN's paintings is a fantasy. It doesn't happen. You need to be FAMOUS before you make money as an artist, or you can paint "hotel paintings" and sell them for $1,000 a piece. The choice is yours...

I'll let you folks answer this person; please feel free to comment here or at the Blogcritics post. I'm too tired to deal with this asshole.

Margaret Boozer at Project 4

I visited Margaret Boozer's studio a while back and cheated a little, and have already seen most of her next show (titled "Acumulation"), which opens at the District's Project 4 gallery on Thursday, December 11, with a reception from 6:00-8:30 pm.

Boozer is truly one of the District's blue chip artists, and as Project 4 sharply describes her, she "approaches ceramics with an eye for painting and a mind for experimentation. She encourages clay’s physical properties to express themselves in unpredictable manifestations of cause and effect. Drying, warping, cracking- small studio processes echo large geologic events as clay reclaims its origin as earth. Boozer disguises her hand underneath clay’s distortions, then claims authorship with carefully orchestrated compositions driven by the randomness of the result. The work is unexpectedly recognizable as a variety of subject matter that crosses genres between representation and abstraction, painting and sculpture."

There's an Artist's talk on Saturday, January 10, 2:00 pm and the exhibition goes through January 17, 2009.

Time for Glass

It is time for the semi-annual Washington Glass School Holiday Open House & Sale this coming Saturday, December 13, 2008 from 2-6 pm

There will be art, glass, music, food, jewelry, craft, class discounts & more!

Artwork by noted DC area glass artists Tim Tate, Erwin Timmers, Michael Janis, Liz Mears and all the Glass Studio artists and the Washington Glass School instructors will be on exhibit and for sale. The many adjoining artist studios will all be joining them to make for a huge event!

Cool ceramics works from the artists of Flux Studios and Red Dirt Studios, painting and encaustic works by Sinel/Stewart/Weiss Studios, Janis Goodman, Blue Fire Studio and the other artists along the Railroad Tracks.

PG County's Gateway Arts District has their arts & craft sales at their nearby arts centers scheduled to coincide.

What : Annual Holiday Party and Sale!
Where : The Washington Glass School, 3400 Otis Street, Mount Rainier, MD
When : Saturday Afternoon, December 13th from 2pm to 6pm

This is a really great event to pick up Christmas presents by the way. Last year I ended up with a box full of small, gorgeous and affordable glass works from many of the school's studio artists which saved my butt for Xmas and the Holidays.