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Cuba as the focus of art
Re-discovering these watercolors from my 1981 art school project has re-triggered that art school interest of Cuba as the focus of work and I've returned to watercolors for a couple of new pieces which I intend to take down to the fairs in Miami in December.
Bird on Cuban Art
Michelle Bird, who is a Curatorial Assistant at the Department of European Paintings, National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC, pens a gorgeous article on collecting Cuban art for Caribbean Art World Magazine.
Many years ago at Rutgers University, through research for a paper on Wifredo Lam, I learned that Alfred H. Barr, Jr., visited the island in the early 1940s. In addition to purchasing works of art by Cuban artists, he also organized an exhibition called “Modern Painters of Cuba” in 1944, bringing the island and its arts to the attention of the international market. During this period, he acquired Lam's "The Jungle" for the Museum of Modern Art. It was hung near Picasso's Guernica, to which it was compared. The relationship barely had time to produce little more than name recognition for its author and his native country when the connection was severed by the 1959 Revolution and subsequent political changes. By the mid-eighties, the painting was hanging in a hallway leading to the museum's coatroom. This single action shows how easily Cuban art was marginalized and made inaccessible to the public.Read the article here and buy Cuban art here or here.
Braggin'
I know that this is just braggin' and name throwin', but I get to go to a black tie gala tonight (the Lab School's 25th Annual Gala honoring Outstanding Achievers with Learning Disabilities) and not only is George Stephanopoulos the MC, but Vice President Biden is the Keynote Speaker.
Now where is that tuxedo again?
Thank you!
To all US veterans, both those who have served and those who are serving in all corners of the planet while we're home with our families. A well-deserved thank you to all the soldiers, sailors, airmen/women, Marines and Coasties.
This Veteran's Day is especially somber in view of the terrible terrorist attack executed by Dr. Hasan in Ft. Hood last week and we should be even more thankful to those who wear and who have worn the uniform with honor.
Below is Petty Officer Third Class Lenny Campello back in 1975!
And then Lieutenant Commander Lenny Campello back in 1992!
Portraiture 2.0
Portraiture 2.0, curated by Michael Pollack, and part of FotoWeek DC opens this coming Thursday November 12th from 6:30-8:30PM at Pyramid Atlantic Art Center’s Main Gallery, 8230 Georgia Avenue, Silver Spring, MD 20910-4511, and runs until December 5th 2009.
Work by Victoria F. Gaitán (that's her work above), Chan Chao, Matt Dunn, Nicholas Pye & Sheila Pye, Paul Vinet and Josh Yospyn.
Novie Trump at MPA
Titled "Uncharted Sky: Recent Sculpture by Novie Trump", the exhibition that just closed at the McLean Project for the Arts certainly charts a new path for this talented DC area artist and in my opinion can be considered as the breakthrough exhibition by Trump.
At McLean Trump flexes her artistic muscles in 11 works in ceramic, porcelain, glass, found objects, metal, stoneware, cork and an elegant assortment of porcelain bees. She also joins an emerging new movement centered around the Greater DC area that is breathing artistic life into genres of art historically associated with craft rather than high art. It is clear to see that over the years, artists like Margaret Boozer and the various artists working out of her Red Dirt Studio, as well as the wondrous Laurel Lukaszewski have begun to do to clay and to porcelain what the artists of the Washington Glass School, DC Glassworks and others have been doing to glass over the recent last few years. They are all the Alfred Stieglitzes of their genres.
And you can add Novie Trump to that select list of new revolutionaries dragging clay and porcelain away from the "crafts only" realm and erasing the lines that segregate craft from high art.
The exhibition is not only a triumph of technical skill, an inherent part of the genre itself, but sheer minimalism begins to emerge from some of the work as well. In "Out of the Fire," a gorgeous porcelain set of wings installed in a row on the wall, Trump uses the repetitive motif of the wings to set a sense of order to the piece and extend that sense of order and alignment to the rest of the show. It is the key work in the exhibition, the simplest and inherently the most elegant. It was also red-dotted, and so it will soon adorn a collector's home somewhere in the area.
And the award goes to...
On Saturday I dropped by the Potomac Valley Watercolorists annual exhibition at St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church in Arlington, VA to select the awards for the show.
It was a lot more difficult than what I had anticipated, as the talent and skill was abundant in nearly every member of the PVA and I spent quite a lot of time walking around and debating with myself.
In the end the award winners that I selected were:
