Airborne
Heading back home from the Left Coast and flying on Friday the 13th... feh!

Washington Glass School: The First 10 Years

About the event: The Washington DC area has become internationally renowned as an emerging center of glass art. At the forefront of this charge is the Washington Glass School, where the instructors, artists and students have brought narrative and content into glass, dragging it away from decorative craft and into the rarefied atmosphere of the contemporary fine art scene. The Washington Glass School has produced artists whose art can be found in museums and collections world-wide and is advancing the Studio Glass Movement with its explorations of narrative, technology and skills. This represents the largest and most important movement in the Washington art scene since the Color School of the 70's/80's.

This May, the Washington Glass School celebrates a momentous milestone - its 10th year. DC’s Long View Gallery presents “Artists of the Washington Glass School – The First Ten Years” showcasing over 20 artists and 10 years of integrating glass into the contemporary art dialogue. While it recognizes the past and present, The First 10 Years is intended to instigate – and celebrate – the new directions contemporary glass is exploring through various artistic metaphors.

Featured artists include: Tim Tate, Michael Janis, Erwin Timmers, Elizabeth Mears, Syl Mathis, Lea Topping, Robert Kincheloe, Alison Sigethy, Dave D'Orio, Anne Plant, Jeffery Zimmer, Teddie Hathaway, Jackie Greeves, Kirk Waldroff, Debra Ruzinsky, Tex Forrest, Diane Cabe, Robert Wiener, Nancy Donnelly, Sean Hennessey, Cheryl Derricotte, Jennifer Lindstrom, Michael Mangiafico, Allegra Marquart and m.l.duffy.

In bringing The First 10 Years to Washington, DC, Long View asks artists and audience alike to cast aside traditional notions of glass art and participate in a new form of dialogue; one that looks to the future and not the past.

The Washington Glass School Movement has focused almost entirely on the narrative content aspects of glass, breaking away from the technique-driven vessel movement of the last millennium. By focusing on cross-over sculptural work, mixed media and new media (such as interactive electronics and video), the impact this movement has had on the work of contemporary art has been felt internationally. This is the perfect chance to see a cross section of artists who have led this evolution.

Washington Glass School: The First 10 Years
LongView Gallery
1234 9th Street, NW, Washington, DC
May 19 - June 19, Opening Reception, May 19th, 6:30-8:30 PM
Closing Reception Sunday June 19, 2-5 PM
phone: 202.232.4788
email :info@longviewgallery.com

Uh?

I don't know what's going on with Blogger, but it has been down for quite a while and now it seems like a bunch of posts have been deleted.

Critique the Critics

On the evening of Saturday, May 14, Arlington Arts Center (AAC) -- in partnership with DC Magazine -- hosts its annual Critique the Critics fundraiser.

Eight DC notables, opinion makers, and trendsetters go head-to-head in timed, amateur art competitions using childhood art supplies. In a mix of NCAA March Madness and American Idol, "critics" battle it out using play-doh, finger paints, legos, etc. Winners of each round are selected by the audience. The night will feature amazing contemporary art, an exciting silent auction, designer cocktails and open bar, delicious catering, and sexy tunes. Tickets are limited and can be purchased here.

This year's "Critics": ABC7/WJLA-TV's Maureen Bunyan, DC Magazine Publisher Peter Abrahams, the Newseum's Sonya Gavankar McKay, Delegate Patrick Hope from the VA House of Delegates, Svetlana Legetic from Brightest Young Things and Justin Young from Ready Set DC, Mary Beth Albright, contestant in the new season on Food Network Star, Kelly Rand and Ian Buckwalter, writers for DCist. Warming the "bench" will be David Foster from the VA Board of Education, and Peter Winant from WETA's Around Town. Philippa Hughes, the Pink Line Project's Chief Creative Contrarian will emcee the competition.

Firings at the WaPo

Just heard from a source who heard it from a friend who heard it from a cousin who is dating someone who works at the Washington Post that one of the freelancers who has been covering the DMV art scene has been fired.

Hard to tell who it is, since the WaPo employs so many different freelancers to cover various parts of the DMV art scene.

I've asked the WaPo for the name; let's see if they respond.

Enough is Enough!

It has been over a month since the Communist thugs who run China arrested artist Ai Weiwei and he hasn't been heard since.

It is time for all the museums and artists and art organizations which do business with China to boycott the ruthless bastards who run that beautiful nation. The fact that the ChiComs have brutalized their own people for generations, and that the world looks the other way in our thirst for cheap labor and commodities is the harsh reality.

But the art world should be better. We should all stop doing art business with China: no more art fair participation by non Chinese galleries, no more cultural exchanges, no more museum dealings, no more anything in the art world.

Boycott the whole damned gigantic country and send a small but powerful message to the criminals who run that Communist hell.

Hijos de puta!

Latino Art Museum: Still a Bad Idea!

Eight years ago, when the story first surfaced in the Washington Post about a Latino Museum on the National Mall, I opposed it.

Back then, Rep. Xavier Becerra (D-Calif.) introduced the bill to set up a commission to study the idea’s feasibility. The museum would be based in Washington, around the National Mall and “might be under the umbrella of the Smithsonian Institution.”

According to the 2003 article by Jacqueline Trescott, “This is one issue that unites our community,” said Raul Yzaguirre, the president of the National Council of La Raza.

In 2008, the Washington Post updated the issue and reported that “President Bush

... signed legislation yesterday establishing a commission to study the feasibility of a National Museum of the American Latino.

The measure, part of a larger legislative package, creates a 23-member bipartisan panel that will give the president and Congress recommendations about the scope of the project.

Over a two-year period, it will consider the location, the cost of construction and maintenance, and the presentation of art, history, politics, business and entertainment in American Latino life.

Since we're still arguing about it, let me once again disagree and state for the record that this is one of the worst, most divisive artsy ideas to have come out of creative Congressional & Hollywood minds in years.

Why have a separate, segregated museum for Latinos? Why not get more Latinos into the national museums, period.

I note once again, the use of the word “Latino” as opposed to the now almost not PC term- “Hispanic.” Otherwise we may have to take all the Picassos, and Dalis, and Miros, and Goyas and Velazquezs out of the mainstream museums and put them in a “Hispanic” museum…. gracias a Dios for that.

As it is now, we may have to take all the Wifredo Lams, Roberto Mattas, Frida Kahlos, etc. out of the “other museums” and put them in the “Latino Museum.”

But ooops! the Frida Kahlo in the nation’s capital is already in a segregated museum - in this case segregated by sex.

The misguided semantic/ethnic/racial debate about Latino or Hispanic is a good, if somewhat silly bucket of ignorant fun.

Anyway… Latino is (I think) now associated with people of Latin American ancestry… it apparently includes the millions of Central and South Americans of pure Native American blood (many of who do not even speak Spanish), and the millions of South Americans of Italian, German, Jewish, Middle Eastern and Japanese ancestry. It also includes the millions of Latin Americans of African ancestry.

It doesn’t include Spaniards, Portuguese, French or Italians…. you Europeans Latins are out!

According to the Post, “Felix Sanchez, the chairman of the National Hispanic Foundation for the Arts, said, “The museum is really a long-overdue concept. There is a void of presenting in one location a more in-depth representation of the culture and its presence in the mainstream of American consciousness.”

Mr. Sanchez: There is no such thing as a single “Latino culture.” In fact, I submit that there are twenty-something different “Latino” cultures in Latin America - none of which is the same as the various Latino mini-cultures in the US.

We "Latinos", no matter how hard you politicians and label-makers try to assemble and push us and label us into one monolithic group, are not such a group; we are as different from each other as the English-speaking peoples of the world are different from each other.

Call a Scotsman "English" and see what will happen to your face.

As an example, anyone who thinks that Mexico’s gorgeously rich and sometimes proud native heritage is similar to Argentina’s cultural heritage is simply ignorant at best. In fact Argentina purposefully nearly wiped out its own indigenous population in an effort (according to the war rallies of the times) “not to become another Mexico.”

And the cultural heritage of the Dominican Republic is as different from that of Bolivia and Peru as two/three countries that technically share a same language can be.

And for example, Mexican-Americans’ tastes in food, music, and politics, etc. are wildly different from Cuban-Americans and Dominican-Americans, etc.

Would anyone ever group Swedes, Danes, Germans and Norwegians and create a “Nordic-American Museum”? Ahhh… they have; silly ideas are not restricted to Congress, are they?

Or how about French, Spaniards, Rumanians and Italians for a “Latin-European-American Museum” - hang on - that doesn’t fit or does it? Makes my head hurt.

For the record, as I did in 2003 when I first learned about this issue, I still don’t believe in segregating artists according to ethnicity, race or religion. How about letting the art itself decide inclusion in a museum. And if not enough African American, or Native American, or Latino/Hispanic or “fill-in-the-blank”-American artists are in the mainstream American museums, then let’s fight that good fight and not just take the easy/hard route of having “our own” museum.

Comemierdas... What does Little Junes think about this issue?