Meet Joel D’Orazio tomorrow

Art chairs, sculpture and abstract painting by architect turned painter/sculptor Joel D’Orazio. New as a Zenith Gallery artist, D’Orazio will be featured in a solo show, Listen to Me, at the Gallery at 1111 Pennsylvania Avenue NW, curated by Zenith Gallery.

The show opened on February 7 and will remain on display through May 13, with a “Meet the Artist” Reception on Wednesday, March 2, 5:30pm to 8:00pm.

Blake Gopnik busts the NYT!

Ahhh... did the grey old lady get caught ripping off an artist? .... and who may have caught the NYT?

Applause for the Gopnikmeister!

Read about it here.

But as Blake points out towards the end of the piece... there is no real copyright issue here... if you copy Dali's La persistència de la memòria then you have broken the law.

But if you paint your own melting watch, then you've just stood on the shoulders of a giant.

Still.... bravo Gopnik!

Sunday Funnies (ahem) Stamps


I know I'm gonna get killed for this, but here I discussed when I detected possible pornography in the American stamp issue of Sunday Funnies, and here I broke out one of the first two possibly sexualized panels (yay!) in our sexy nation's stamps history.

But as Tery Gilliam predicted in his groundbreaking film Brazil, all of you are too chicken to come forward (other than the dozen plus emails I've received... offline) to "see" the Onanist issue here.

Wait till tomorrow for me to tell you what Odie The Onanist is doing.

Antonia Ramis Miguel at Watergate

Spanish-born artist Antonia Ramis Miguel has a show coming (March 5th - April 2nd, 2011) at The Watergate Gallery in DC.

The Reception is this Saturday, March 5th 6-8pm and there's an Artist talk on Tuesday, March 15th at 6pm.

Antonia Ramis Miguel was born in Spain in 1963 and has been painting since childhood. She studied with Edgardo and Alceu Ribeiro, students of the renowned constructivist Joaquin Torres-Garcia. In this exhibition Antonia Ramis Miguel continues with her approach to Constructivist art. Her oil paintings combine the strength of structured line, color and abstraction creating a dramatic visual effect that arranges the parts of a subject into a whole. She spent several years studying the techniques of, among others, Rubens, Sargent, Velazquez and Vermeer. Miguel spent four years painting and teaching in Washington D.C. before moving to London where her palette was influenced by the greys of the sky and bricks of the buildings. The influence of her native Spain, particularly the use of saturated color, is however still visible in her work. She has shown her work in individual and collective exhibitions in her native Spain, the United Kingdom, Austria and the United States.

500 children, 500 cameras, 500 moments

Photojournalist Ramzi Haidar launched the project Glimpse (Lahza in Arabic) to bring together photographers, journalists and artists with children ages 5-12 in Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon. The children worked with these volunteers for one year to learn the basics of photography. The images they produced with their cameras are entirely their own, giving them a power to reveal a reality rarely seen. Large scale photos and books about the project are on display at the Jerusalem Fund Gallery.

At the The Jerusalem Fund Gallery (2425 Virginia Ave. NW, Washington DC 20037). From March 11– April 8, 2011 with an Opening reception on Friday March 11, 6-8 PM.

A Bissel Smaller

I was raised in Brooklyn, and all my early jobs were working in the stores and delis around Pitkin and Belmont Avenues in Brooklyn. I've also spent several months living and exploring Israel.

Why am I talking about this? Because I think those life experiences give me a solid background in opining about Jewish delis, and in my opinion, the DMV's Parkway Deli is amongst the best on this planet.

Not only do they make excellent Jewish fare, but I also like that no matter when you get there on a weekend there's always a huge line (I'm not sure why I like this, but it is reassuring), and that the crowd is so diverse, covering all four races and countless ethnicities; clearly the quality of the food draws all hungry facets of mankind.

Yesterday I ordered my usual: matzoh ball soup and the deli twins (a mound of corned beef and a mound of pastrami on two onion rolls with a side). My wife ordered a large salad and a side of spinach (that's why she's a fideo).

When the delicious soup arrived, I noticed that they had a new set of serving dishes; more modern and square; I even complimented the waiter on how cool they looked.

As I began to eat my soup and my wife her salad, we both noticed something: the new dishes were quite a bit smaller than the old dinnerware! I'm not talking 10% smaller, but maybe 25 - 35% smaller.

Feh! And I will admit that the old soup sizes were quite generous, and the deli twins were the same size, but it kinda bummed me out a little that my favorite dish in the whole joint is now a lot less soup for the same amount of sheckels.

PS - If you are a carrot cake buff (like I am), The Parkway Deli has one of the best carrot cakes in this Universe.

Cudlin in the WaPo

Just read Jeffry's most excellent (although I disagree with his closing paragraph) review of the Picasso show at VMFA.

For some reason, there's no link online yet, but it is a huge review about the 20th century's most important artist.

One Picasso relationship that is seldom explored when the illuminati discuss Picasso's African influences is the very direct influence that one of Picasso's young friends' artwork had upon the Malaga-born master (and viceversa)

I'm referring to Wifredo Lam, the Afro-Chinese Cuban-born painter who became one of Picasso's best friends when Lam arrived in Paris in the late 30s and whose focus on African imagery (according to Lam anyway) received a lot of admiration and attention from Pablo The P.

Cudlin goes yard with this review; and kudos to VMFA for bringing this spectacular show to the Mid Atlantic.

See Alex Nyerges, Director of the VMFA, talk about this show: