Opportunities for Artists

Deadline: April 30, 2011.

Call for Entries: The Graceful Envelope Contest - Artists everywhere are invited to participate in the 2011 Graceful Envelope Contest, conducted by the Washington (DC) Calligraphers Guild under the sponsorship of the National Association of Letter Carriers.

There is no entry fee.

This year's theme is "Time Flies," so design an envelope that explores good times, quality time, the times of our lives, time travel, or any other idea you have time to develop.

Address the envelope artistically to:
The Graceful Envelope Contest
Washington Calligraphers Guild
P.O. Box 3688
Merrifield, VA 22116.

This is the contest's 17th year. The Smithsonian Institution's National Postal Museum created and administered it until delegating responsibility to the Washington Calligraphers Guild in 2001. The National Association of Letter Carriers exhibits the winners, which are also exhibited online at www.calligraphersguild.org. The complete Call for Entries (including categories for children) is posted on the Washington Calligraphers Guild website or you may contact contest coordinator Lorraine Swerdloff at swerdloff@gmail.com.

Opportunity for Artists

Deadline: March 31, 2011

Call for Entries: Open to all artists 18 years or older working or living in Virginia, Maryland, DC, Delaware, Pennsylvania, or West Virginia.

To Enter: Each entry requires an on-line application through Juried Art Services.

Exhibition Theme: “BITE: identity and humor” asks artists to use irony, sarcasm, and wit to shed light on issues of personal struggle in mainstream society. Artists are asked to create and share work that challenges historical, societal, and cultural norms that dictate expectations of who we are supposed to be. The selected work does not have to be “funny” as much as insightful. The work will be juried by DMV artist Jefferson Pinder.

Full Prospectus: detailing Acceptable Works, Entry fees, and Special Instructions located here

GreaterRestonArtsCenter
Reston Town Center
12001 Market Street
Suite #103
Reston, VA 20190
703.471.9242
fax 703.471.0952

New gallery to open in DC

Lamont Bishop Gallery, a new art space opening up later this week, appears to be off to a good start -- its beautiful centrally located storefront space in Shaw (1314 9th St NW, a few doors down from Longview Gallery and only two blocks from the green line metro) is enviable. We spoke with gallery director Alexandra Giniger about the gallery, their upcoming inaugural show, and what is in their future.

Read the Pinkline interview here.

The WPA Auction

Last Saturday's WPA auction was packed to the gills with seemingly everyone who's anyone in the DMV art scene attending, including most of the area's top art collectors as well as some out of town familiar collectors' faces, including one good friend who also happens to be a prominent Cuban-American collector who calls Boston his home.

"What are you doing here?" I asked surprised at seeing him at the auction.

"I always fly in for this event," he replied.

Muy bien!

Anne Collins Goodyear, Assistant Curator of Prints and Drawings, National Portrait Gallery and Philippa Hughes, Chief Contrarian, Pink Line Project
It appears to me that the auction itself was quite a success. I saw a lot of bids, which drawing from my memory banks, seemed to be more than usual. I am happy to report that my piece in the show, "Eve, Running Away from Eden," received so many bids that in fact it maxed out the bidding sheet and sold for 350% above the initial bidding estimate.

Eve, Running Away from Eden. 15 x 39 inches. Charcoal on paper.
Circa 2010 by F. Lennox Campello
The auction's artistic highlight was definitely when Dan Steinhilber and a small groups of helpers began assembling Steinhilber's piece for the auction, which he was going to construct right on site. The work, made up of a wood pallet and shrink wrap, began appearing before our eyes as the crew wrapped the pallet in shrink wrap of various colors.

At one point I was sure that it was finished, as Steinhilber was initially using shrink wrap of various colors, and for a brief instant the pallet almost looked like a "back to the future" version of a Morris Louis painting!

But the Steinhilber crew continued to add more shrink wrap and slowly the piece began to turn white, ending up as a handsome three dimensional white sculpture.


Read the report from Daily Art Muse here.

Wilmer Wilson IV

Last Friday, along with artists Tim Tate ( whose work just opened in the Milwaukee Art Museum's The New Materiality: Digital Dialogues at the Boundaries of Contemporary Craft two days go) and Susana Raab (whose work from her "Cholita" series will be in the Corridor exhibition at the Art Museum of the Americas opening March 24), we got together with four young artists whom we're mentoring as part of Strathmore's new visual arts mentorship program.

I'll be discussing all four throughout the next few months, but let me start with the work of the very young Wilmer Wilson IV, from Chesterfield, Virginia, and currently a student at Howard University in Washington, DC. Before I start discussing his work, you start by viewing the below video of his installation titled Machine: Bad End.

Wilson is very young, but already appears to possess an artistic vision well beyond his years, and at the present his work seems to fit into that genre of contemporary art which would label him as a WalMartist; that is, artists which use common, everyday materials (such as one would find in WalMart) to create elegant and intelligent artwork.

In his installation titled "Bundles" (detail to the left, see the whole installation here), WIlson uses plastic forks and spoons to create an elegant and minimalist installation which uses the repetitive power of these two objects, together with black tape, which when attached to the wall transforms the objects into a energetic and planned modern bas relief of disposable design.

See more of these utensil installations here and check out his website here.

Keep your eye on this artist.

Trawick Prize Call for Artists

The Bethesda Arts & Entertainment District is accepting submissions for The Trawick Prize: Bethesda Contemporary Art Awards. The 9th annual juried art competition awards $14,000 in prize monies to four selected artists. Deadline for submissions is Friday, April 8, 2011 and up to fifteen artists will be invited to display their work during the month of September in downtown Bethesda.

The competition will be juried by Amy Hauft, Chair of the Sculpture Department at Virginia Commonwealth University; Dr. Sarah Newman, Curator of Contemporary Art at the Corcoran in Washington, D.C.; and Sue Spaid, Executive Director of the Contemporary Museum in Baltimore, MD.

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 April 8, 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. Original painting, drawing, photography, sculpture, fiber art, digital, mixed media and video are accepted. The maximum dimension should not exceed 96 inches in any direction. No reproductions. Selected artists must deliver artwork to exhibit site in Bethesda, MD. All works on paper must be framed to full conservation standards. Each artist must submit five slides or five images on CD, application and a non-refundable entry fee of $25.

The Trawick Prize was established by Carol Trawick, a community activist for more than 25 years in downtown Bethesda. She is the past Chair of the Bethesda Arts & Entertainment District and past Chair of the Bethesda Urban Partnership. Additionally, the Jim and Carol Trawick Foundation was established in 2007 and has endowed the Trawick Prize indefinitely.

For questions regarding the Trawick Prize, please visit www.bethesda.org or call
301-215-6660.

Conan The Barbarian

When I was about ten, I discovered Robert Ervin Howard's saga of Conan The Barbarian books, written in the 1930s, first published in the 1950s, and really selling well in the late 1960s after they were reprinted with spectacular new cover art by artist Frank Frazetta, perhaps the most sought-after cover artist in history and a cult art figure amongst his millions of followers.

Frazetta's covers set Howard's grim sword & sorcery (a sub-genre that Howard invented) novels on fire. One of those paintings by Frazetta recently sold for one million dollars.


Above is "Conan The Destroyer" which is perhaps Frazetta's iconic image of Howard's brooding hero. A really good analysis of this painting in The Cimmerian can be read here.

Why am I writing about this? Because I've just found out that a new Conan The Barbarian movie (in 3D) is set to be released later this summer. See the trailer below.

As a Conan fan, I'm really looking forward to this film, but I already have a complaint. In the Conan saga, Howard goes to extreme details in describing the savage hero of the series, but it was the Frazetta book covers which burned the Conan image into the minds of its readers, and in this new film, this Conan (portrayed by actor Jason Momoa) is missing the barbarian's most prominent feature: bangs.

This film's directors should have done their homework, as Conan fans, who otherwise loved the 1980s Conan movies starring Arnold Schwarzenegger, howled back then because their hero also lacked the iconic bangs of Cimmerian men's hair styles as invented by Frazetta, not Howard (who actually described Conan's hair as “tousled,” “matted” and “lion-like").

So who's right?

"…a man whose broad shoulders and sun-browned skin seemed out of place among those luxuriant surroundings. He seemed more a part of the sun and winds and high places of the outlands. His slightest movement spoke of steel-spring muscles knit to a keen brain with the co-ordination of a born fighting-man. There was nothing deliberate or measured about his actions. Either he was perfectly at rest–still as a bronze statue–or else he was in motion, not with the jerky quickness of over-tense nerves, but with a cat-like speed that blurred the sight which tried to follow him."
– Robert E. Howard, “The Phoenix on the Sword”