Seventh Annual Bethesda Painting Awards
Deadline: Friday, February 25, 2011
The Bethesda Arts & Entertainment District is currently accepting applications for the seventh annual Bethesda Painting Awards, a juried competition honoring four selected painters with $14,000 in prize monies. Deadline for submission is February 25, 2011. Up to nine finalists will be invited to display their work at a Bethesda gallery.
The competition will be juried this year by Philip Geiger, an art instructor at the University of Virginia; Evelyn Hankins, associate curator at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington, D.C. and Jinchul Kim, a painting professor at Salisbury University.
The first place winner will be awarded $10,000; second place will be honored with $2,000 and third place will be awarded $1,000. A “young” artist whose birth date is after February 25, 1981 may also be awarded $1,000.
Artists must be 18 years of age or older and residents of Maryland, Virginia or Washington, D.C. All original 2-D painting including oil, acrylic, watercolor, gouache, encaustic and mixed media will be accepted. No reproductions.
Each artist must submit five digital files or slides, application and a non-refundable entry fee of $25.
Applications are available online at www.bethesda.org.
The Bethesda Painting Awards were established by my good friend and Bethesda philanthropist, art collector and community activist Carol Trawick in 2005.
Sunday, December 19, 2010
Artists' Websites: Dalya Luttwak
Dalya Luttwak has "been working since early 2007 on a series of sculptures depicting the root systems of various plants. The sources of these works are actual roots, which I literally dig up out of the earth. Sometimes I work from the roots themselves, other times I photograph, Xerox or make drawings of them in order to figure out how to physically and aesthetically make them into steel sculptures, how to connect the separate parts, and how to hang the final constructions from ceilings, on walls or place them on floors. The dramatic transformation of size, scale, and material lends the works metaphoric significance..."
Check out her website here.
Saturday, December 18, 2010
Blake Gopnik's best art of 2010
"The old masters are getting younger by the day. 2010 was a year -- maybe the first -- in which all of modern art has started feeling safely in the past, fully museum-able. There were fine shows of older work, but they rarely had the force of exhibitions exploring the last century. Here, in chronological order, are 10 shows that have stuck in my mind."
Rousseau on BlackRock
Walking into the art gallery at BlackRock Center for the Arts in Germantown feels almost like a breath of fresh air. The current exhibit features the large canvases of Carol Brown Goldberg, Sondra Arkin and Greg Minah.Read the review online here.
Friday, December 17, 2010
Seen on Univision
Modern Family's Colombian-born actress/model Sofia Vergara is currently doing an ad for Comcast on Spanish-language TV.
Something seemed a little off from the Vergara on the ad and the Vergara Gloria character on Modern Family.
I could be wrong, but it looks to me that Vergara's Colombian character requires that the actress dye her hair black and darken her skin; I guess to make her fit the stereotype that Hollywood has for "Hispanics/Latinos."
Apparently Vergara is a natural blonde and has hazel eyes. According to several internet websites, although she was well-known in Spanish-language TV, she could not get any Hollywood gigs unless she dyed her hair dark to force her into a more "Latina" look. In fact Vergara has stated that:“I’m a natural blonde. But when I started acting, I would go to auditions and they didn’t know where to put me because I was voluptuous and had the accent - but I had blonde hair. It was ignorance: They thought every Latin person looks like Salma Hayek. The moment I dyed my hair dark, it was, ‘Oh, she’s the hot Latin girl.’ I loved it. I’d always felt a little ‘too much’ as a blonde, like a big-mouth version of Pamela Anderson. Being brunette toned me down a bit.”
I'm just curious if now she also has to tan her skin a few shades in order to fit the way Hollywood wants her character to look like.
Makes my head hurt.