Leslie Swching at CHAW

Bruce McKaig reviews the solo exhibition by Baltimore artist Leslie Swching opening this coming Saturday at the Capitol Hill Arts Workshop. The show is July 17 through August and the Opening Reception is Saturday July 17th 5 – 7 pm.

By Bruce McKaig

A sensation, a memory, a small…a feeling on the back of your neck, something tells you that you are in touch with the long thought.

There is no clash between the urban and the rural in Schwing’s work, both serve equally as backdrops for her observations and subsequent depictions of fractal patterns. With materials as diverse as watercolor, pastel, and scratch boards, Schwing meanders a path that starts near her home in Baltimore, twists through a system of patterns molded by the materials she uses, and ends at an internal place that was calling her from the start. Starting in an alleyway or a field, she begins en plein aire, but buildings or trees become spotted with, or overtaken by, glyph-like patterns emerging over an evolution from external observation to internal contemplation. In works where the patterns have overtaken their makers, the abstracted result is an encrypted narrative, a story that does not translate as much as resonate.

Lost in the woods, you’ve been there before, everything has overgrown and become unrecognizable, but you get active, you pick up a scent, you find yourself back on the path.

In working with diverse materials, Schwing has given her visual language various accents. Her own vision persists across the materials, perhaps because she does not seem to fight with them, instead letting each one take her exploration into its own material specificity.

It doesn’t matter if you are working blindly so long as you stick with it until you are back on the path.

Schwing’s work and life have evolved to include collaborations with other artists. Her past projects include Road Kill Resurrection, which began as a date with Greg Fletcher, also a Baltimore artist and her partner for 15 years. “We realized that we could work together because the work would not be competitive.” That project lasted three years and eventually involved other participants.

For all the diversity in content – rural vs urban vs abstract – and the diversity in materials – watercolor, pastel, scratchboard – what stands out most in surveying these collected works is Schwing’s persistent visual language, built around the word harmony. The images are charged and active, but the activity is sans stress. Buildings and trees establish a space that Swching populates with fractal patterns that add a temporal dynamic, a reference to cycles and change. “I’m not trying to replicate a scene, but to catch its scent.”

If I now where I am going, I get bored.

All quotes in italics by Leslie Schwing 2010

For more information on Leslie Schwing, click here.

For more information about CHAW and opening, click here.

For more information about the author, click here.

Anniversary of a Massacre

Lest we forget:

"In the early morning hours of July 13, 1994, three boats belonging to the Cuban State and equipped with water hoses attacked an old tugboat that was fleeing Cuba with 72 people on board. The incident occurred seven miles off the Cuban coast, outside the port of Havana. The Cuban State boats attacked the tugboat with their prows, while at the same time spraying everyone on the deck of the boat, including women and children, with pressurized water. The pleas to stop the attack were in vain, and the old boat-named the '13 of March' - sank, with a toll of 41 deaths, including ten children."

-- Ted Koppel, ABC's Nightline, July 1994.

These were the victims of that brutal massacre by the Castro regime:

Abreu Ruíz, Angel René. Age: 3.
Alcalde Puig, Rosa María. Age: 47.
Almanza Romero, Pilar. Age: 31.
Alvarez Guerra, Lissett María. Age: 24.
Anaya Carrasco, Yaltamira. Age: 22.
Balmaseda Castillo, Jorge Gregorio. Age: 24.
Borges Alvarez, Giselle. Age: 4.
Borges Briel, Lázaro Enrique. Age: 34.
Carrasco Sanabria, Martha Mirilla. Age: 45.
Cayol, Manuel. Age: 56.
Enríquez Carrazana, Luliana. Age: 22.
Fernández Rodríguez, María Miralis. Age: 27.
Feu González Rigoberto. Age: 31
García Suárez, Joel. Age: 20.
Góngora, Leonardo Notario. Age: 28.
González Raices, Amado. Age: 50.
Guerra Martínez, Augusto Guillermo. Age: 45.
Gutiérrez García, Juan Mario. Age: 10.
Levrígido Flores, Jorge Arquímedes. Age: 28.
Leyva Tacoronte, Caridad. Age: 5.
Loureiro, Ernesto Alfonso. Age: 25
Marrero Alamo, Reynaldo Joaquín. Age: 48.
Martínez Enriquez, Hellen. Age: 5 Months.
Méndez Tacoronte, Mayulis. Age: 17.
Muñoz García, Odalys. Age: 21.
Nicle Anaya, José Carlos. Age: 3.
Pérez Tacoronte, Yousell Eugenio. Age: 11.
Perodín Almanza, Yasser. Age: 11.
Prieto Hernández, Fidencio Ramel. Age: 51.
Rodríguez Fernández, Xicdy. Age: 2.
Rodríguez Suárez, Omar. Age: 33.
Ruíz Blanco, Julia Caridad. Age: 35.
Sanabria Leal, Miladys. Age: 19.
Suárez Esquivel, Eduardo. Age: 38.
Suárez Esquivel, Estrella. Age: 48.
Suárez Plasencia, Eliécer. Age: 12.
Tacoronte Vega, Martha Caridad. Age: 35

And 4 more that still remain unidentified. They will never be forgotten and one day soon justice will be served and those who ordered the massacre and those who executed it will be brought to justice.

Lists, lists, lists

Lists are always so much fun and so good for debate; and judging from the number of emails that I've already received, quite a few of you have your own opinions as to the 100 DC Artists list for the first volume of the art books about the DC visual art scene.

And now the Washington City Paper wants to hear your opinions. Read and then comment here.

MOCA DC closing party

MOCA DC is being kicked out of their spaces in Canal Square in Georgetown and they are having a Super Closing Party Artists & Models Ball. Make your plans now

July 30 - Friday Night - 6 pm to Midnight - $5 entry fee - includes raffle ticket for 3 major art pieces - do not have to be present to win

6 pm - doors open

7 pm - models for artists to draw - $20 all night

7 pm - photography models to shoot $25 all night

8 pm - Body Painting - Free all night

Models will be paid from fees charged

For more info check out www.MOCADC.org.

David Quammen's closing remarks:

Well, it has really been a fine experience to play host to the things that have gone on at MOCA DC over the 5 and a half years that I have managed it. It builds on the foundation laid by founder, Michael V. Clark, now Clark V. Fox,who created it about 20 years ago.

And who can forget Felicity Hogan, Clark's wife of about 8 years. She played a significant role in the gallery's evolution, which is now going into another phase.

All things considered, I believe that MOCA DC has chartered new grounds in DC's art scene through each of its iterations, always gutsy enough to take a cue from Gene Roddenberry and "boldly go where no man has gone before."

Our new web site will have an Archives section - I invite past and present members to contribute to a history of the gallery from start to finish. It will most certainly be one of the most interesting reads you can find.

Coverage at artDC Gallery

artdc Gallery presents a group exhibition of works that "explore coverage with relationship to the body, geography, and memory. Accumulating gestures and layers, while referencing the passage of time, these artists present works of sculpture, painting, printmaking and drawing. Sabeth Jackson’s work chronicles domestic themes and uses archetypal and culturally charged imagery to communicate emotions and stories. Megan Mueller finds inspiration in the architecture of tents and the lifestyles of the transient to investigate the idea of permission. Samuel Scharf explores the physicality of movement, collection and deconstruction."

July 17, 2010 - August 14, 2010
Opening Reception: July 17, 2010 - 6pm - 8pm
Artist Lecture: July 24, 2010 - 6pm - 8pm

Congratulations

To Ryan Hackett on being the first DC-area artist to win the Sondheim Prize!

MOCA DC in trouble

Georgetown has never been known for its eroticism. But in the brick courtyard of Canal Square—an upscale piece of real estate nestled between M Street NW and the C&O Canal—gallery owner David Quammen, 70, has carved out a space for the risqué. Since 2005, Quammen’s MOCA DC has exposed Georgetown passersby to paintings of childbirth, photographs of Playboy Bunnies, and sketches of Quammen’s own nude body, all via the gallery’s 12-foot-long front window.

But next month, the gallery may very well shutter its doors over a pair of nipple pasties. Why now? The modesty-preserving devices appeared on the breasts of a live woman, not in a work of art. “I think that having live nudity at an opening reception is akin to having it on the wall,” Quammen says. “But a lot of people don’t like what I do.”

On June 24, the landlord gave MOCA DC a notice to vacate the premises by July 31. Read the City Paper article by Amanda Hess here.