Billy Bass in the WaPo today

The Washington Post's Reliable Source picks up the story of the new McDonald's commercial and former DC area artist Thomas Edwards.

Read the WaPo story here.

Here's an idea for public art

Musician and composer Frank Zappa (1940-1993) was born in Baltimore, and spent boyhood years in a Park Heights Avenue row house and at nearby Edgewood Arsenal. His family moved to California in 1952, but Charm City plans to honor its native son with a statute from Lithuania, which will be placed somewhere in Fell’s Point.

Licht on "Zappa Returns to Baltimore, Via Vilnius." Read it here.

Mayor's Arts Awards

I'm all hitzed that I couldn't go to the Mayor's Arts Awards last night, but I got a report from someone who did go:

The opening performance was OTT!

Titled "The Drum Unites Us," a West African Dance Company started it going - then the percussion sounds were joined by the steel drum band, the African dancers moved aside as Korean Dance Company danced to the continuing beat, who then stepped aside as Irish Steppers took center stage, who then moved aside for the Balinese Universe dance studio, who moved aside for the Turkish Silk Road Dance Company, who stepped aside for the BeatYa Feet dances, then the City at Peace dancers (both onstage and in the audience aisles) and then the breakdancers and rappers also took stage. A constant building of more and more - all to the drum beat.

Nice jazz performances; The rest was all good - the reception was the Watergate, where one of the Commissioners decried "the lack of pull for the visual artists in DC."

Sounds like a great time and maybe it will motivate all you unmotivated nebish folks to attend next year!

DCist superwoman Heather Goss has a great report and pics here. She also has the damn best review line of the year so far (describing the multi-ethnic dancing: "It was It's A Small World on the best kind of crack, providing an energetic start to the evening."

New Drawings

I've always been fascinated by the New Testament story of The Christ in Gethsemane, and His passion amongst the olives, and His doubt and fear.

That theme has been explored by me through many drawings over the years. Below are three very minimalist intepretations from 2009. There are all very small... about 3 inches wide by six or seven inches tall.

The Christ in Gethsemane, charcoal on paper. Circa 2009
By F. Lennox Campello


The Christ in Gethsemane II, charcoal on paper. Circa 2009
By F. Lennox Campello


The Christ in Gethsemane III, charcoal on paper. Circa 2009
By F. Lennox Campello

At the next art fair cycles in New York, I plan to have a wall full of these tiny drawings... most of them are under a few inches in size (framed). I think that it would be interesting to see 30-40 tiny drawings all crammed in one wall.

I also need to find a gallery interested in showing this small (and more affordable) work, rather than my usual, larger sized, "normal" work.

Wanna go to a DC opening this Friday?

Christian Platt, Paintings, has an Opening Reception Friday, March 27, 6-8:30 pm at Susan Calloway Fine Arts

"Young and new to the art world, Christian Platt focuses on large-scale oil landscapes, often inspired by his time as a wrangler in the Montana and Wyoming wilderness and the countryside surrounding his Virginia home, as well as large-scale still lifes."

Images here.

VFMA acquires new Cecilia Beaux

The Virginia Museum of Fine Arts board of trustees have approved the acquisition of an 1888 oil on canvas portrait by American artist Cecilia Beaux, who was hailed at the turn of the 20th century as the “best woman painter in history.”

She is certainly one of my favorite painters, period.

The painting by Beaux (1855-1942) is a portrait of her fellow Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts alumni Alexander Harrison and measures 26 by 19-3/4 inches. An important transitional work, the portrait dates from Beaux’s formative period of study in Concarneau, an artist’s colony in Brittany, where she first began to lighten her palette and to paint outdoors.

According to Dr. Sylvia Yount, VMFA’s Louise B. and J. Harwood Cochrane Curator of American Art and an expert on Beaux’s work, the Philadelphia native was an internationally acclaimed figure painter and portraitist “who also happened to be the most successful woman artist working in turn-of-the-century America.”

Curators and dealers

As used as we all are to hear the whine from the negative perspective of the art dealer and museum curator symbiotic relationship, it is very refreshing to hear an excellent opinion married to a couple of good examples, but discussing when curators rely on art dealers and then give them zip credit.

Read Regina Hackett here.