Congrats to Matt and Dana

They are Washington painters through and through. He watches al-Jazeera and "Democracy Now." She exults in living next to the Portrait Gallery. They rendezvous and shop at Whole Foods because it's halfway between their places. Every July they make a painting a day based on the news. She studied art. He's self-taught. They get drunk in Adams Morgan, or in their studios as they paint. They're vegetarians.

Everyone says they're perfect for each other, but no one thought they'd get married. They decided to do it when they realized they could craft a show called "Till Death Do Us Part." They'd paint about their impending nuptials, hang the art in a gallery, have a ceremony at the opening, invite the public, maybe cast themselves as a power couple in the D.C. art world -- hopefully modeled on the harmonious De Koonings rather than tempestuous Frida and Diego.

Read a terrific article by the WaPo's Dan Zak on the marriage of Matt Sesow and Dana Ellyn here.

Update: If you missed the event, Matt and Dana will be back at Long View Gallery this coming Friday Feb. 12 for a happy hour from 5-6pm. Come by to check out the show and ask them questions about the paintings, marriage, etc.

Snowcalypse Stories (Part III)

Earlier I described the series of events associated with the DC Snowcalypse of 2010 and left you at the point where we had spent a chilly night without electricity.

Soon after waking up on Sunday morning I lit another fire, and a few minutes later I heard the hum of electricity return to the house. It lasted for 30 seconds or so before it died again.

Thinking that maybe the fuses had blown, I checked them and they were good. Soon my Blackberry was buzzing with neighbors sending notes about the short burst of electricity. It seems like it happened to all of us.

By now it had stopped snowing, and WTOP was saying that the snow was over and done with (and another one coming), so I went outside to face the white world of my neighborhood. In the back of my mind I kept trying to ignore the fact that it was Super Bowl Sunday and that it was beginning to look like I was going to miss it.

Several neighbors more arduous than me had already begun shoveling their driveways, but the most immediate issue was the fact that when the snow plows went through the neighborhood, they left in their snow wake a six foot tall wall of snow in front of everyone's driveway. That alone looked like several hours worth of shoveling by itself, never mind the driveway.

But, as my neighbor across the street warned me, by tomorrow the snow would be rock hard, so today was the only window of opportunity to remove it. He also proved that you reap what you sow.

You see, the day before I had come over to his house and offered him firewood. He had thanked me but declined, since he had his own stash.

And today, he came over and offered me his snow blower. "I've had it for 30 years," he claimed. He then explained that a few decades ago, he and another neighbor had proposed to all the neighbors in the cul de sac to chip in $100 each and they'd all contribute to buying a professional snow remover for all to share. Only one neighbor agreed to do so, and thus he and the other guy ended up buying a small snow Toro snow blower which they used for years between them. And today he was offering it to me, provided that I somehow cleared the snow mountain in front of my driveway.

Help came via a truckload of Central Americans who showed up at another neighbor's house to clear their driveway. I asked their jefe how much they would charge me to clear my driveway. He told me that they were already booked all day through the neighborhood. I switched to Spanish and he told me that maybe he could squeeze me in after 4PM and that it would be $160.

Being the lazy snow remover that I am, I was willing to shell out the exorbitant sum - after all, there was a lot a snow in that driveway - but the more stingy half of the family shot it down as she strapped Little Junes on her baby carrier and began attacking the wall. A six foot wall of snow just doesn't scare those hardworking Swedes.

"See how much they charge you just to remove the wall," suggested the kind neighbor whose offer of his snow blowing machine dangled before my eyes like a carrot on a stick. He must have seen the horror in my eyes as I contemplated spending the entire day shoveling snow.

Sixty bucks later the wall was gone and now the entire neighborhood was after the work crew to have them clear their walls. Somehow the crew managed to escape with a bunch of snow shovel wielding neighbors chasing them down.

Using the ancient Toro snow blower, I attacked the driveway, and even with mechanical help it took me about four hours to cut a path wide enough for one car to get through.

And I forgot to mention that electricity had come back in the interim and the real problem of Snowcalypse 2010 had been solved: the Super Bowl was back on!

Wanna go to an opening and talk in Alexandria tomorrow?

The Torpedo Factory’s Target Gallery opens Imprint, an exhibition that examines contemporary printmaking.

Thirty-seven artists from across the country are a part of this exhibition united by one common theme and that is the printmaking process. Eight of the artists in the exhibition are from the DC Metro area. Juror for this exhibition, Jane Haslem, owner of Jane Haslem Gallery, will also be on hand at the reception on February 11 at 7pm providing a brief gallery talk about her selections. Immediately following the gallery talk, the public is invited to visit Printmakers’ Inc. located on the third floor of the Torpedo Factory in studio 325 for a printmaking demonstration.

In this exhibition, the artists employed a variety of techniques. Some of the artists in the show are traditionalists, such as Lari Gibbons from Texas, who created an intimate print of a tiny bird ready for flight, “Flight II” using mezzotint, an intaglio process. Many are not traditionalists but employ traditional techniques to make a very contemporary statement, as can be seen in Indiana artist, Dora Rosenbaum’s installation of 15 soft ground etchings (intaglio process) of women’s lingerie, titled “Prospect (fuschia)”.

Jane Haslem, juror and print expert, chose a variety of work that serves as a testament to the vast array of techniques that printmakers across the country are using in their work today. The printmaking processes in Imprint include mezzotints, etchings, lithographs, woodblock and linocuts, silkscreen, monotypes, collagraphs, cyanotypes, and digital prints.

The entire exhibition is online here. The gallery is open daily from 10-6 and until 9pm on Thursdays.

Exhibition – January 21- February 21, 2010
Opening Reception - Second Thursday Art Night, February 11, 6-9pm
Jane Haslem speaker at 7pm followed by printmaking demonstration by the Printmakers’ Inc. located in the Torpedo Factory, Studio 325.

Congrats!

To two very hardworking DC area artists:

Aylene Fallah's eviscerating and gutsy political artwork is included in the show "Tehran - New York" opening on Friday March 5th, 5-7pm at the Leila Taghinia-Milani Heller Gallery in New York.

And the brilliant Amy Lin will be included in “On/Off the Grid” at Irvine Contemporary in DC with an opening reception on Saturday, February 13, 6-8pm.

Snowcalypse Stories (Part II)

Yesterday I described for you my rush home from sunny California in order to be home with my family when the snowstorm arrived to the DC area.

Because I'd been up almost 30 hours, I decided to crash and get some sleep before I went out to the back yard and bring some wood closer to the house.

By the time I woke up, the snow had begun to fall, and it all looked so blissful and beautiful, that I didn't recognize the inherent dangerous beauty of a major snowfall.

The lights flickered several times that night as we went sleep. Outside, it snowed continuously.

Throughout the night we're awakened by falling branches on our roof from the huge pine tree next to the house.

One huge branch barely misses the house - that one would have done a lot of damage - but 2-3 other large ones land on the roof with a lot of crashing noises.

Little Junes wakes up around 5:30AM on Saturday morning because he is cold. He is cold (as are we) because the power has been out and the house is already in the 60s. Outside it is all covered in several inches of snow and it's falling heavily.

By 9AM the temperature inside the house has dropped a few more degrees and I decide to get dressed and trek to the backyard and bring some wood into the house, as we have no idea when the power will return. It is also impossible to escape somewhere else, as there's waist-deep snow outside and a little neighborhood recon reveals that our cul-de-sac is blocked in by a tree that has fallen at the entrance to the cul-de-sac and effectively sealed about nine houses from the rest of the neighborhood. No one can get in or out until the tree is removed and the streets are plowed. And it is still snowing.

There are footprints in the snow from the street to our front door, and I wonder who made them.

The adventure of digging wood out of a snow-covered wood pile, and dragging it uphill through waist-deep snow is not an easy one, and it takes me about five hours of this brutal exercise to drag what I estimate is enough wood for a day and a half to my back porch.

Most of the wood needs to be split, and all I have is a iron wedge and a hammer, but I begin to split the wood by hand. After all, this is how people have been doing it for centuries before the modern age, right?

Add another two hours of this really hard work to the task.


By the time I get back inside the house, I am soaked in sweat inside my three-layer outfit. I then haul a third of the wood from the back porch downstairs to the fireplace upstairs - no rest for the weary. A lot of newspaper and a lot of kindling later, the wood - most of which is young and not really dry - is burning.

An hour or so later, I hear voices in my backyard and I note tracks in the snow. Curious as to who is in my backyard, I go downstairs and through the sliding glass door of the back porch i discover two neighbors hauling away the wood that I had just dragged uphill and split.

They are embarrassed; they apologize profusely. "We're sorry," says the older man (the other man is a gigantic teenager). "We knocked on the front door, and no one answered."

"We're freezing and we were wondering if we can have some wood."

I understand their desperation. "You can have as much wood as you need," I offer, "Just take it from the wood pile down there." I point to the large wood pile down hill. "I just finished spending most of the morning dragging and splitting this wood for tonight." They drop my newly-split wood and head down the hill. "Take as much as you need," I repeat.

They take some big logs. I advise them that they're going to have to get a lot of kindling and will need to split the wood. I offer them the splitting wedge, but they just thank me for the wood and leave.

I decide to walk around the neighborhood and offer my neighbors wood for their fireplaces as long as they come and carry it back to their houses. To one elderly neighbor I offer to carry it back for him and split it for him. He thanks me but says that he's got a pretty good stash in his back porch. Another neighbor (the one to my left) has already grabbed some of my wood and offers to pay me - I smile and convince him that it is OK. I also advise him that he'll need to split it first.

Since he doesn't know how, I lend him my splitting wedge and hammer and describe how to split the wood.

I go and check on my next door neighbors, who are three women and a couple of kids, and to offer them some wood. They have plenty of wood of their own, but have no idea how to use a fire place. I go inside their minimalist decorated beautiful home and show their kids about the flute and describe how to get a fire going.

By now I am a little puzzled as to how a kid from Brooklyn is the only one in this neighborhood who knows the ages old process to get a fire going. Later, when I run into the female member of the neighbors who came into my back yard looking for wood, she tells me that they had failed to get the fire going and because the flute was closed, had gotten the house full of smoke. I offer to go and start it for them, but obviously she's pissed at her men and declines.

By now my other neighbor (the one to my left) is back and tells me that he can't figure out how to split the wood. I go to his house and see that he's been trying to split green wood. I select some cured wood from his stash and split that for him and tell him that the green ones can't be split.

By six PM it is dark and the house is in the low 50s.

But our fire is going good and in front of the fire it feels a little warmer - not much, but a little.

An open fireplace such as ours actually doesn't really heat up a house - in fact it does the opposite - but the psychological value of a roaring flame is quite good.

We set up camp in front of the fireplace with the sleeper sofa, Little Junes and a gazillion blankets.

Anderson Campello at the Snowcalypse 2010
It's 51 degrees in front of the fire when we doze off, and in the 40s in our bedrooms.

The fire is roaring, but there's a lot of green wood in there, and a lot of popping of knots and sparks and I become a little worried about going to sleep with a fire on, so I stay awake watching the fire while the family sleeps. When the fire begins to die, I doze off.

We awake around 5AM and it's in the mid 40s in the fireplace room and 38 in our bedrooms. We bring Little Junes into bed with us to keep him warm. The little dude has some many layers that he's actually quite comfortable, but soon I realize that the little guy is quite a bed hogger.


Litte Junes, Master Bedhogger, Snowcalypse 2010
Next: What happened when the snowfall ended

Snowcalypse Stories (Part I)

It's about noon last Thursday last week, Left Coast time (I was working in San Diego) when I began to receive texts from family and friends in the DC area. "Dude!" said one of them, "you better hurry back home: major snow storm is supposed to start on Friday afternoon!"

"Feh!" I thought to myself (I was in a meeting when the texts began to arrive. "My flight is supposed to arrive at BWI at 8 PM tomorrow."

Some nimble Blackberrying later, I have assessed the fact that everyone West of West Virginia is expecting "anywhere from 3-5 feet of snow." Blackberry Ops also tells me that airlines have begun to cancel flights on Friday evening.

Multiple calls to multiple airlines revels that the airline industry is still unable to cope with bad weather and that if I want to return home on Thursday night, instead of leaving as scheduled on Friday morning, I'm gonna shell about about $600 to Continental for a one way ticket back to DC area.

And the price gouging continues. As I search Expedia, prices change before my eyes as they rocked upwards. Someone suggests the red eye flight from LAX to Dulles on Virgin America. "It's only $99," says the suggester.

I check Virgin America online. He is right, that flight is $99 every night - but tonight, for some reason, it has jumped into price hyperspace and it's $552 one way. The next night is back to $99.

In the end, I book a flight on US Airways (rotten airline) out of San Diego to Phoenix and a flight on Delta (perhaps rottener) from Phoenix to Detroit and then from Detroit to Baltimore. I'm out about $450 for a one way ticket.

In San Diego I check in but US Airways can't issue me the Delta tickets. They suggest that I drop by the Delta counter to see why. I do, and they can't issue me the tickets either - and they have no idea why not, bust ask that I go to the departure gate to get my delta tickets once I land in Phoenix. I remind them that it is odd that in 2010 a major airline, running on a 2010 computer system, can't know why tickets for a flight can't be issued to the passenger checking in another airport.

There's an air of desperation as the US Airways flight boards with East bound passengers trying to beat the storm as they head back home. At around 6:45PM on Thursday night, we depart.

A few hours later we land in Phoenix, only to find out that the only way to get to the Delta flights is to take a bus to another terminal and then to check in (again) and go through security (again). Is Phoenix Airport the only American airport that hasn't figured out how to transport passengers between terminals without re-adding them to the TSA line for a second time?

Three hours later, at midnight we take off and head for Detroit. I am exhausted but I can't sleep on airplanes except for the 39 seconds when the drink cart is next to me and so they pass me by.

We land in Detroit and I have recall that I've never been a fan of this very long airport, in which some Pointdexter architect designed so that all gates are in one long, very long row. We manage to land in one end somewhere in Michigan, and have to walk all the way to the other end of the terminal, which must be somewhere near the Canadian border.

When all of us (by now a herd of BWI-bound passengers have banded together) arrive there, we find out that the gate has been changed to the other side of the terminal. This time I note the monorail inside the terminal - running above us like a toy train - and take it back to where we had landed originally. "It was good exercise," I said to myself of the long march from gate A78 to A21 and now back to A75.

We depart on time, and land at BWI at 8:30AM. The gunmetal skies tell a story as I arrive home around 10AM.

I'm running on fumes and debate going to the backyard and gathering some wood in case the power goes out and we need to use the fireplace for heat. But I am running on fumes and decide to sleep a little first, and then re-consider going out to the back and gathering some firewood.

It's a bad decision.

More tomorrow as we find out what happened when the snow came and the electricity went.

Opportunity for Artists

Deadline: March 5, 2010.

The Visual Arts Committee of the University of Minnesota organizes nine solo, group, or theme-based exhibitions per year at the St. Paul Student Center's 520 sq. foot Larson Art Gallery. It also organizes four solo exhibitions at Coffman Memorial Union's Coffman Art Gallery.

To apply, please make sure to include all of the following:
- Note which Gallery you are applying for (Coffman or Larson).
- 3-5 slides of your artwork or digital images in jpeg format.
- Artists' statement and contact information.
- Self-addressed stamped envelope for return of images.

Send proposals to:
Visual Arts Committee
University of Minnesota
Coffman Memorial Union RM 126
300 Washington Ave SE
Minneapolis, MN 55455