In town...


Previous Virginia Groot Foundation First Place Award Winners were all in town to to review the submissions for the 2010 sculpture award. From left to right, Martha Jackson Jarvis, Tim Tate, Candice Groot, Stanley Shetka, and Christina Bothwell.

Rosemary Feit Covey at the Art League

I've been following the career of master printmaker Rosemary Feit Covey for years now.

And for years I have been mesmerized by not only her technical skill but also by her powerful and often shocking imagery.

Over the years I've also seen Rosemary do something that my good bud Jeffry Cudlin likes: she keeps pushing and redefining the genre of printmaking to the point that she can no longer be categorized and labeled simply as a printmaker.

In fact, since I brought Cudlin into the discussion, I submit as evidence of my point the exhibition that she had at the Arlington Arts Center (where Cudlin is curator) a while back.

By the way, the gent in that cherry picker installing that massive work of art by Rosemary Feit Covey around the Arlington Arts Center is Cudlin, the Center's curator and the City Paper's chief art critic.

Enough of Cudlin.

But even knowing the enviable artistic reserves of this artist I was not prepared for what she has done with the work currently on display at the Art League Gallery, inside the Torpedo Factory in Old Town Alexandria.

Let me tell you early in this discussion: this is the best art show that I have ever seen at the Art League Gallery; ever.

At the Art League exhibition, Rosemary has two distinct sets of artworks that once again move printmaking to a new place: one is a set of "peep boxes" and the second is a set of lighted wall installations.


The peep show boxes line up in the center of the gallery, and at first seem a bit quizzical until one realizes what they are: Feit Covey tells us that "in the 18th and 19th Centuries peep show viewing was a popular and innocent form of street entertainment, developing into toy theaters. Using lenses and mirrors, an interior world could be created by peering into the mysterious box. She adds that the "term Peep Show ultimately came be to most closely associated with viewing pornographic films and live sex shows."

In her peep show box series, Feit Covey smartly marries the disquieting secrecy of the act of peeping into the box with the moist trapped sexuality brought about by the contemporary connotation of the term “Peep Show."

She does this by offering us innocent looking Victorian-era type peep show boxes in nice oak colors.

When we bend down and peep into them, we spy a set of suggestive, rather than overtly sexual, engravings. The objectification of the women in the imagery has not reached its climax yet, to be a bit coarse on the issue here.



And yet, by simply placing the print inside a box, she forces us into the tingly role of voyeur and peeper. The height of the stands where the boxes rest also force one to bend down in order to steal a surprisingly clear and well lit glimpse of a set of 10 suggestive etchings.



On the walls Feit Covey has a series of back lit boxes that are lined with dozens and dozens of strips of etchings. The appearance is that of a photographic process in the development stage.



It is a hypnotic installation. We are attracted at first, like moths to the light, to peer close at the imagery that dangles, like negatives in a pornographer's darkroom, inside each back lit box. The engravings are printed on Japanese papers and phone book pages, and then the vertical strips are encased in an encaustic medium.

The subjects on the strips, a young woman and a much older man, play a sexual drama that is riveting and disturbing. Some people, Feit Covey relates, have been offended by what is depicted on the strips, which all through the scenes barely restrain a growl of controlled sexual violence clearly hidden under the surface of the two subjects.

The old man is using the young woman as a captive sexual toy; there's a sharp hint of restrained danger in the images. "They are a real couple," she related to me a while back when I first saw this new series of work being produced. "She is much younger than him, and they have this sexual relationship based on routines and scenarios such as these."

Throw the element of reality into the disturbing imagery and it adds a whole new element of peeping into the dark sexual melodramas of the unusual couple. "They are quite in love with each other," she adds.

I force myself not to think ordinary thoughts. The wholesome and attractive woman and the decaying, wizened old man have discovered a sexual formula that bridges their huge age gap with a slippery and dangerous rope bridge.



In narrating their story, and in bringing the narration out of the mat and frame of the two dimensionality of intaglio etchings, Feit Covey has delivered a self contained installation that reinvents the world of the photographer in terms of the tools of the trade of the printmaker.

In continuing to bring the print out of the frame, and relocating it where it is not just a geographical move but a psychological transformation, she has achieved a singularly unique new direction for this most traditional of genres.

In this Art League show, Feit Covey has also set a new standard for that gallery and a opened up a whole new road for the Torpedo Factory.

In fact, after this show, the usual labels affixed to the kind of art that most people associate with the Torpedo Factory artists no longer sticks. Not that they ever applied to this talented artist.

The exhibition runs through April 15, 2010.

Opportunity for Artists: One Hour Photo

Deadline: March 31st, 2010.

The premise of the show is simple: photographic works, projected for one hour each, after which they will never be seen again, by anyone, in any form. They therefore exist only for one hour, they are "one hour photos," a limited edition of 60 minutes.

In this way, One Hour Photo complicates the myth of photography as preservation, manifests the tension between the permanence of the medium and the impermanence of time, and subverts the profit model of the edition and the print.

Although there are no strict subject matter or stylistic guidelines, One Hour Photo is particularly interested in work that engages in dialogue with the themes that the concept naturally raises: ephemerality, memory, anti-artifact, loss, nostalgia, magic, time, disappearance, dissolution, whispers, traces, ghosts, etc.

To ensure that the works will never be seen, and to document the show, each artist will sign a "morally binding" release form stating that he or she will never reproduce, sell, or show the work to the public after its one hour "exposure." The curators will also sign the release form, and all release forms will be displayed on the One Hour Photo site as documentation of the show. The show itself will contain approximately 120 works curated by Chandi Kelley, or one per hour for the duration of the exhibition's open hours. One Hour Photo will show from May 8 – June 6, 2010 at the American University Museum at the Katzen Arts Center, Washington, D.C, as part of the Spirat exhibition.

They seek previously unpublished / undisplayed photographs or photographic-based work. Work selected will be projected for exactly one hour during the exhibition, with the understanding that it will not be shown, reproduced or sold from that moment forward.

It can all be done online and there's no fee. Check out the Call to Artists here.

Wanna go to a cool DC opening tonight?

Maria Friberg: transmission and Dean Kessmann: Art as Paper as Potential opens tonight Saturday, March 20th from 6-8pm with the artists in attendance at Conner Contemporary.

Amy Lin on TV

Click here to see the TV segment.

Buy Amy Lin now.

An Olfactory Art Lab

Have you ever pondered how the olfactory sense affects visual perception, or how a scent can evoke a dormant childhood memory? In this unconventional exhibition international curator, art critic and clinical allergist, Dr. Kóan Jeff Baysa, asks artists and fragrance researchers to explore how the physical self experiences and knows the world through the sense of smell.

An Olfactory Art Lab: Trading in Paints for Perfumes opened last week at the Joan Hisaoka Healing Arts Gallery and I've been hearing good things about this rather unique show. Exhibiting Artists: Peter Hopkins, Mathias Kessler, Josee Lepage, Anne McClain,
Gayil Nalls, Carrie Paterson, Tobias Wong, Jiayi Young & Shih-Wen Young.

Details here.

TV does the arts

This is one of the rarest things that ever happens in the DMV: A local TV station, attracted by the "buzz" about an art show, actually does a feature about it!

WJLA, the local ABC station in DC (Channel 7) News will air a profile of artist Amy Lin and her show at Addison/Ripley Fine Art.

The segment will be shown later today Friday, March 19 on the 5pm News.

It will be interesting to see what a little rare TV attention will do regionally to an artist of the caliber of Lin. If you've been thinking about acquiring a Lin, I'd do it before the segment airs.

Amy tells me that she will be at Addison/Ripley Fine Art from 4-6pm on Saturday, March 20, in case anyone wants to see the show while she's there and talk to her about it.

Congrats Amy!

PS - Can anyone tell me who coined the phrase "the glass teat" to describe television? I know who did, but I want to know if you know who did. And Guy Mondo... I know that you know who did!