Congrats!

To DC area artist and my good friend Tim Tate, who has just been announced as the winner of the Virginia Groot Foundation $35,000 award for sculpture.

Buy Tim Tate now.

Aqui Estamos opens today in Philly

Later today the Cuban contemporary art show that I curated last year and which has been exhibited in Norfolk, VA and DC opens in Philadelphia's Projects Gallery. It is titled "Aqui Estamos" (Here We Are) and in the show we find narratives and imagery that represent many of these artists’ historical dissidence to the stark issues of contemporary Cuban life. The works are images that offer a historical and visual sentence in the history of an island nation behind bars with a powerful world presence in the arts and events of world history.

"Consume Preferably Before 30 Years of Age" by Cirenaica Moreira
The opening, free and open to the public is on May 1st, 2009 from 6-9PM. Projects Gallery is located at 629 N 2nd Street, Philadelphia, PA 19123, tel: 267.303.9652 and on the web at projectsgallery.com. The exhibition is open through May 29, 2009.

Wanna go to an artist's talk tomorrow?

DC artist Robin Rose will be completing the 2nd half of his terrific exhibition at American University's Katzen Arts Museum on May 2 a 4:00PM with a talk at the Museum. Rose calls calls this section of the exhibition "The Stories". He will discuss the basis of each piece, much like a director speaks about particular scenes or concepts of a film.

Wanna go to an opening in DC tomorrow?

Loads of them at the many galleries around the Dupont Circle area... while there, do not miss Katya Kronick at Studio Gallery.

Cy Twombly Drawing lost in NYC cab

Cy Twombly, Untitled (2-sided drawing), 1957, graphite on paper, 13 3/4 x 19 in., signed and dated in pencil Cy Twombly, Roma, May 57
The above scribbly drawing by Cy Twombly was being taken by someone to the framing shop, when they either left it in the taxi or somehow lost it getting out of the cab somewhere in NYC.

The owner is offering $5,000 as a reward for anyone who finds it.

I am far from being a Twombly fan, but let's be honest... unless you are a big Twombly fan, the chances of anyone recognizing the pencil scribbles on the paper as an important work of art, even in a cultured city like NYC, are pretty slim to none. The fact that it is signed and dated in pencil may prove its saving grace, if someone did find it and took the time to actually examine it.

This is yet another reason why signatures are important when it comes to artwork, and begs the question as to why this is such a hard issue to grasp for so many artists who never sign their work.

If you had no idea as to the provenance or origin of this drawing and saw it, most of us would discard it as someone trying to sharpen up his pencil by running it back and forth across the paper a few times. Add a signature, location and date and immediately, with a little art history behind you, the finder may have a change to realize that he/she just found something very valuable as art.

But I still wonder if the cabbie just threw it out at the end of his shift when he was cleaning his cab. It wouldn't be the first time that someone thought that what some consider art, others see as trash.

Where are they now? Part II

You've heard this story before... I started to sell my artwork on a regular basis while I was at art school at the University of Washington in Seattle from 1977-1981. Back then I got myself a ten foot spot at the Pike Place Market, and once my school assignments were graded they were up for sale and through those years I sold hundreds, if not thousands, of art school assignments.

For almost four years, about three four times a week I would drive down to Pike Place, and later on when I was able to get some storage space for the art, take the bus... I loved those early morning bus rides, and the views of the mist rising from Montlake cut when the bus crossed the bridge from the University District where I lived, down to downtown Seattle are still some of the most wonderful memories of my life. Seattle is such a spectacularly gorgeous city.

And so I became a Pike Place Market "regular." One in the odd family of artists, craftspeople, hippies, farmers and oddfolk who made up the amazing tapestry of the market people. My prices for my student artwork were super good... most pieces went from around $20 and some were as cheap as $5. I think that the most expensive thing that I sold back in those years was probably around a couple of hundred bucks for a huge watercolor. I used to sell at the market two days during the week in order to qualify for a space on Saturdays, which was the best selling day for everyone.

The spaces were open, so in the winter it was cold and damp, and we used to get warmed by coffee from the original Starbucks, back when there was only one, or hot chocolate from the chocolate factory there.

But the bst thing that I received from my time as a Pike Place Market regular was the education in dealing with the public, presenting the work, and talking it up; that was priceless, and in a good way accounts for where I am today... I know this now.

Like I've said before, I often wonder where some of those pieces of artwork are... such as the very cool pen and ink wash piece below, which I actually did one day at the Pike Place Market itself... the subject was a Native American lady who was also a regular at the Pike Place Market, and she was nearly always knitting across from me (I think she sold knitted stuff and macramé - remember macramé?) ... and in some sort of surrealistic student path, I made her into a giant rock or massive statue... those are tiny Seattle sailboats under her. I also loved the spectacular shadow that she casts in the drawing, a shadows that demands a sun which never rises in gunmetal gray Seattle. It is a gray drawing, with a gray weather, in a gray land, with a non-existent black hole sun casting an amazing tropical shadow.


Someone in the Pacific Northwest bought it and who knows where it is now.

Best of 2005

Since I'm on the road with little time for blogging... below is a reprint (or is it repost?) from one of the most emailed-about posts in this blog... originally posted in 2005...

Waste of Time

Since we opened our first gallery in 1996, we have rarely worked with "art consultants" or "interior decorators."

Overall, the experience (in the very few times that we've worked with them) has been quite a waste of time (such as the time that we wasted months dealing with Sen. Hillary Clinton's Georgetown-based interior designers to select a work by New York painter David FeBland.

Because the focus of our galleries is contemporary representational work ("realism with a bite"), it seldom agrees with the bland, "cannot afford to insult anyone," art selection process of most major corporate and business buyers (and public art projects).

But yesterday I bit again, and delivered work by several of our artists that had been selected by a very major law firm's art consultant to possibly hang in their new meeting room in a beautiful building in downtown DC. Come in, get a badge, drive to the loading dock and start delivering work to the 9th floor. As soon as I got there I knew that our chances were slim to none, as I saw a lot of this stuff.

And the very nice and professional art consultant was horrified to see that I had brought this piece by artist Javier Gil.

"Get that out of here before anyone sees it," she advised. "Nothing like that can even be considered and it may poison their minds about the rest."

Her favorite from our four artist selection was the work of our best-selling artist David FeBland. I explained that David's works have been selling very well, especially since the Europeans have discovered his work. Since his prices have been skyrocketing (law of supply and demand), we both doubted that they'd be interested in his work, since he was by far the most expensive artist in what was being presented.

But I schlepped all the work over, including a massive, framed Maxwell MacKenzie photo.

After a few trips I return to the gallery van, which had been parked in the loading dock, as directed, to find it blocked by a truck delivering paper supplies. I ask the guy nicely if he can please move a foot so that I can leave. He cusses me out.

I then waste 10 minutes of cussing and yelling and threatening the very large truck driver, near to a fist fight with a guy who looks like George Foreman, before another huge guy comes in and breaks up the argument... all that before I can leave, now in a total black mood.

Return to DC around 3:30PM to pick up the work. Back up into the tiny loading dock, where I manage to put a huge gouge on the left side of the new gallery van (less than 800 miles on it). Then I get a large smear of grease from one of the dumpsters on the back of my new suit, which I had naturally just worn for the first time this morning. Things are going great uh?

Up to the 9th floor, which for some strange reason, in this building is actually a few steps below the 7th floor.

Not too surprisingly, none of our work had been picked. And what was picked can best be summarized as "big, bold, large abstract art," mostly by names I had never heard of.

I can't say that I blame corporate art buyers, especially in selecting work for their public meeting spaces. We're at a juncture in our history where anything that could remotely be offensive to anyone, is not part of the PC art process. When was it the last time that you saw a nude in an American airport?

On one of the trips I run into a very tall woman who had been (I think) the head of the "art pickers" from the law firm; she sees me packing the David FeBland. "That was our favorite among all the artists," she says.

"He's our best-selling painter," I replied, too tired to inquire as to why he wasn't selected (I already know: price). On the massive table I see the work selected; around 20-30 pieces of mostly abstract, large, work.

Waste of my time; scratch on my new van; possibly a ruined suit; and near fist fight with a huge burly truckdriver... another day in the life of an art dealer.