Oportunidad para artistas

Deadline: July 13, 2009

NALAC Fund For the Arts offers funding to Latino arts organizations and to Latino artists for the creation and presentation of work, as well as career development. Funding available for the following disciplines: Visual Arts, Dance, Interdisciplinary Arts, Literary Arts, Media Arts, Music, Performance Art, and Theater Arts.

Funding for the one-year grant period (runs from Nov. 1, 2009-Sept. 30, 2010) is up to $10,000. Application deadline: July 13, 2009. For more information, contact:

NALAC Fund for the Arts
Grant Program Manager
1208 Buena Vista St.
San Antonio, TX 78207

Phone: (210) 432-3982; email: grantmanager@nalac.org; or check website: www.nalac.org.

Art advice for the Obamas

Waaaaay back I gave the Obamas art advice for the White House walls. They essentially ignored me.

Maybe it is because Cuban-Americans are the only Latino/Hispanics who overwhelmingly vote Republican (in the 90s percentwise).

Kiddin'

Here's what some other folks think the Obamas should acquire for the White House walls.

I still think that my recommendation is the best; the most plebeian and the clearest and closest to the ground and what I think the new White House tenants need to bring to the White House walls.

What art or artist do you think that the Obamas should acquire? Tell me in the comments.

DC Gallery moves

DC's Long View Gallery will relocate to a currently vacant building directly across from the Walter E. Washington Convention Center at 1234 Ninth Street, NW. The gallery’s new space will undergo major renovation, more than quadrupling the gallery’s exhibition capacity, enhancing its custom framing and special event offerings, and making it one of the area’s largest art spaces.

“With many other businesses closing, we have been able to swim against the economic tide, demonstrating that art is indeed a great investment. After three successful years in Shaw, Long View Gallery simply outgrew its current location,” said gallery director Drew Porterfield. “Thanks to Douglas Development, we were able to secure a building with great potential in a location that is impossible to beat—half a block south on Ninth Street from our current location, directly across from the Walter E. Washington Convention Center and closer to existing and planned fine restaurants,” Porterfield said. “Shaw has been a wonderful home, and we are thrilled to contribute to its renaissance.”

The gallery’s renovation, designed by local architect Will Couch, will maintain the raw feel of the new location's building while transforming it into a premier gallery space. The new gallery will occupy the southern portion of the building, comprised of nearly 5,000 square feet, more than quadrupling the square footage of the Long View Gallery’s current location.

Call to Artists: In the Spirit of Frida Kahlo

Deadline: June 6, 2009

Frida Kahlo remains one of the most influential artists of the 20th century, but her spectacular life experiences, her writing and her views on life and art have also influenced many artists throughout the years.

From July 1 - August 29, 2009 The Joan Hisaoka Healing Arts Gallery at Smith Farm Center in Washington, DC will be hosting Finding Beauty In A Broken World: In the Spirit of Frida Kahlo.

This exhibition hopes to showcase the work in all mediums of artists influenced not only by Kahlo’s art, but also by her biography, her thoughts, and her writing or any other aspect in the life and presence of this remarkable artist who can be interpreted through artwork.

This will be the third Kahlo show that I have juried in the last decade and we are seeking works of art that evoke the prolific range of expression, style and media like that which Frida Kahlo used as an outlet for her life’s experiences.

Get a copy of the prospectus by calling (202) 483-8600 or email gallery@smithfarm.com or download it at www.smithfarm.com/gallery/FINALProspectus.pdf.

Read this

Tom Wolfe, author, man-in-white, and social observer, has always had a keen and clear insight into the social undertows of contemporary society.

Wolfe's 1975 book The Painted Word, is the one that I consider the one of the most influential book on art, nepotism, networking, manipulation and 20th century art history (OK, OK art observations), that I have ever read.

If you want to understand the true historical beginnings (from someone on the scene at the time) of what we now call "contemporary art" and the seminal birth of the elitist attitudes of many intelligent members of the high art apparatnik, then read this book.

"The painter," Wolfe writes, "had to dedicate himself to the quirky god Avant-Garde. He had to keep one devout eye peeled for the new edge on the blade of the wedge of the head on the latest pick thrust of the newest exploratory probe of this fall's avant-garde Breakthrough of the Century.... At the same time he had to keep his other eye cocked to see if anyone in le monde was watching."

I read it when I first started Art School and it saved my Art Life and it cemented the foundations of what has become my opinions, judgements and attitudes towards art.

After you read the book, then and only then, you will understand why "traditional" art critics, desperately seeking approval from their colleagues, hate such an egalitarian art show such as Artomatic, when and if it takes place in our own backyard, but would love it in another location outside the US.

New art space in Georgetown

It is at 3146 Dumbarton Place, NW (2nd Floor), Washington, District of Columbia 20007 and they're having a champagne toast to the new space tomorrow (6-8PM) to celebrate the new space and new paintings by Michael Weiss.

PostSecret at Hillyer Art Space

Artomatic's greatest launching success story: Tim Tate or Frank Warren?


Warren's spectacular worldwide success and multiple best-sellers with PostSecret comes to DC at Hillyer Art Space. PostSecret: Confessions on Life, Death and God has a First Friday Reception on June 5, 2009, 6-9PM. Soundscapes by DJ Underdog. Food and refreshments will be served.

Postcards and materials will be available for all to confess their own secrets (Postcards will be displayed at Hillyer throughout the show and then given to Frank Warren to add to his collection. Details here.