Ideas that make sense

Whatever is left out of ranking, jurying, selection, among the unnoticed strengths of Washington artists, is probably of greater interest to anyone attuned to risk-taking artists, the 'outliers' who actually define "what's going on," the "transgressors," who are pushing art. A bimodal curve, or 'distribution' lies within an assured 67% of a normal distribution. You are dealing with the norms expresssed in a highly politicized area. Rather than continuing to pursue a range that will not challenge the arts or challenge any other city, you might hesitate, for once, and think about a book that values the marginal, the peripheral, the seekers and transgressors to any book 'already written' and highly predictable.

That was an anonymous comment left in my earlier post about lists. And the Lenster thinks that this is a fucking brilliant idea and one that I should have thought of myself.

"Challenge the arts or challenge other cities" is the key and most brilliant part of this terrific suggestion. And while this suggestion makes things 1000% harder (and putting together this first volume was incredibly hard and took at least 10 times more time than I had originally planned for (thus my lack of really decent posting for the last few months), it also makes this future book a true one man's informed perspective on what he (he being me) thinks is the folks who are "pushing art."

Consider it done sir or madam!

And if I may, in reviewing the (much debated) list for the first volume, I see several artists, quite a few in fact, whose artwork is already doing what Anon. suggests: the 'outliers' who actually define "what's going on," the "transgressors," who are pushing art.

Suggestions welcomed. And O yeah... power just came back.

Powerless

No electricity since Sunday, cell phone almost dead, many trees down in the Soviet Socialist Republic of Montgomery, no Internet, cough, cough...

Another list

And now that I am essentially finished with 100 Washington Artists, one of the main lessons learned is that the futile job of putting together a "fair" list of 100 artists in such an area so full of talent and creativity is full of landmines.

Like I told you readers when I first announced the book: I was about to make 100 friends and piss off a few thousand artists.

Since announcing the list a while back, I've recognized that I probably fucked up the list by around 5-6 artists who should have been there, but are not. I take the blame for that, which is a nice way of saying that the folks who unofficially helped me to put the list together... ahhh... also never mentioned those artists.

But the flood of emails (and even some phone calls) telling me how I should have had this artist or that artist in the list has identified a significant number of blue chip artists that will ensure that volume two of the book series is not the "second 100 DC artists" - In an odd way, by the time I am done with volume two, I think that the danger of having a tiered set of artists (where the first volume is the "best" 100 and the second volume the "second best 100") will be minimized significantly.

Now I know about some really big name artists who live in the DMV but for whatever reason don't show here and are truly blue chip international artists. Now I know about at least another dozen brilliant artists who are second to none in the DC area.

So I've got a good start to the list for volume two; thanks to all of you.

Because I have been and am an art dealer, in compiling the first list I had to deal with the issue of including artists in the list with whom I've had/have a dealer relationship now, in the past and perhaps even in the future (if I ever get to open an art gallery again). In doing list one, I thought that it would be grossly unfair to exclude them from the list, because then the list would be truly flawed and it would be a huge hole in anyone's list and immensely unfair to the artists in question. But I was attentive and harder on some of the candidates that fit that bill, and I'd say that only a tiny percentage of the final list represents that category, and yet I can think about another half a dozen artists who could have been in the first list and will now be in the second volume.

Like I told John Anderson in the Pink Line interview, nepotism is part of making any list and I challenge anyone in the DMV who fantasizes about doing an objective list of any sort. I addressed that in the first volume by putting a disclaimer in the introduction which identifies the issue. Also, every single artist in the list has a website listed as a contact point. Where an artist is represented by a gallery, the contact info is for that gallery. For unrepresented artists, the contact info is the artist's own website. Not a single contact info for a single artist points back to me. I stress this here, because the usual cowardly anonymous flame throwing commenting about me "pumping my bank account" has already started in the comments section of the CP blog post about my list. Check that out here.

And in the end, it is my list, and everyone hates making lists, but I was the one who busted his ass with 100s of hours in the preparation of this volume, which I believe is great start to document 300 or so deserving artists in the cultural tapestry of the DMV.

The list for volume two has started; suggestions welcomed.

Airborne

Heading back to the DMV today via USAirways; while I was gone Stephen "Thor" Strasburg won another game for the Nats.

The book cover

Now that the 100 Washington Artists book is nearly done and almost shipped to the publisher, I am going to try to convince them to use just one image on the cover, instead of a set of handpicked thumbnails of images, as they'd prefer to do.

My idea is that a super strong, interesting representational image with an eye-catching subject would make the book stand out and attract a little more attention in passing. Layout designers tell me that color is always better than B&W, so sorry to all the grayscale artists. I am also told that titles with numbers in them attract more attention (who knew?) and that the title should be centered on the top of the book cover with the number "100" larger than the "Washington Artists" line underneath the "100."

So I've selected 3-4 images (from the 700+ images that are to be submitted to the layout gurus) which I will send to the publisher to see if I can convince them to pick one of the images for the cover of the book.

And if you think that the list of 100 artists was controversial, imagine now trying to whittle down the 732 images to one.

Selecting the 3-4 images was a difficult process. I started by eliminating all the artists with whom I've had/have a commercial art dealer relationship, now or in the past or future. It is unfair to them, but too bad. Then I eliminated all the abstract artists; this is also unfair, but layout gods tell me that a strong, interesting representational image is what is needed. And let's face it, we're trying to hawk some books here.

Then I nixed all the black and white artists, screwing Ben Tolman's powerful imagery ("sorry, no B&W," said the layout gurus) and several photographers in the process. Then I had to nix all the nudes.

That really pissed me off, but the layout gurus tell me that some bookstores and libraries would not carry the book if it has a nude on the cover; welcome to 21st century America.

That still left a significant number of images, and now I looked for the images that were interesting enough; that had something unusual and eye catching... something that would raise an eye-brow and make a person pick up the book.

That was still hard. In the end I had 3-4 images. Three are by three of the DMV's best-known artists; one is by an emerging artist who is making a lot of waves in the artsphere already. Let's see what the publisher let's me do.

DC area art dealer murdered

Details here.

Campello & KRUE

My daughter Elise just cut a song with rapper KRUE. Check it out below...