Wanna go to an opening tonight?

Elizabeth Parkman's Artomatic Top 10

Elizabeth Parkman is the Associate Director of Heiner Contemporary and she just recently visited Artomatic and files her Top 10 Artists:

Rachel Farbiarz, The Genizah Project

1.     Rachael Farbiarz, The Genizah Project.  My favorite piece at Artomatic!

Steve Wanna

2.     Steve Wanna

3.     Jeff Skeer

4.     Larissa Raddell

Christian Tribastone

5.     Christian Tribastone

6.     Paul Sharratt

7.     Jenny Walton

8.     Michelle Chin

9.     Melissa Badenhop

10. Veronica Szalus

Free Art!

They're celebrating the anniversary of the Bethesda location of L'Eclat de Verre which is managed by artdc.org founder Jesse Cohen. They will be giving away 25 small framed works completed in the French style. 

Find the event details here: https://www.facebook.com/events/114565732015599/

Average Female Artist

Interesting email from artist Linda Stein: 

Do you know that the average female artist earns 10%-30% of what a male artist of comparable standing earns for selling comparable art? The Economist Magazine says it all in its recent article The price of being female. In an artnet list of the top ten most expensive post-war artists at auction we find the sculpture Spider by Louise Bourgeois selling for over $10 million. Sounds great, right? Sure, until we compare it to the Orange, Red, Yellow painting by Mark Rothko which sells for over $86 million! And so it goes.

And get this: it's widely known that when artists submit work for jurying in a "blind entry" without revealing their identity, the results are usually 50% or more female. But just add a name or sex to that entry and then we are back down to below 30%. See Eleanor Bader's recent article in Truth-Out Magazine.

Need more convincing? Take a look at the web site listing artists currently being shown at Gagosian Gallery. You'll find 25 artists, 22 male, 3 female. How about sister gallery owners like Mary Boone Gallery? Out of Boone's stable of 30 artists, 25 are male, 5 female.

Any comments?

Heard on Univision

Behold the first Hispanic to be a Republican candidate for President!

Here's what the "official" designation of a "Hispanic/Latino is... I think... (my bold/font size increase):

The U.S. Office of Management and Budget currently defines "Hispanic or Latino" as "a person of Mexican, Puerto Rican, Cuban, South or Central American, or other Spanish culture or origin, regardless of race".^[35]

"The terms "Hispanic" or "Latino" refer to persons who trace their origin or descent to Mexico, Puerto Rico, Cuba, Spanish speaking Central and South America countries, and other Spanish cultures. Origin can be considered as the heritage, nationality group, lineage, or country of the person or the person's parents or ancestors before their arrival in the United States. People who identify their origin as Hispanic or Latino may be of any race." 

The Constant Artist at AU

Paul Feinberg’s photographs and interviews, or “word portraits,” have enlivened magazine articles, books, and exhibitions both locally and nationally for decades. He has been particularly obsessed with interviewing and photographing artists in our own community. This AU Katzen Arts Center exhibition features early and late works of art by nine Washington artists, together with Feinberg's photographs of the artists early and late in their careers.

Artists in the exhibition include Lisa Montag Brotman, Manon Cleary, Rebecca Davenport, Clark V. Fox, Sam Gilliam, Tom Green, Fred Folsom, Margarida Kendall, and Joe White. Five of those artists are in the 100 Artists of Washington, DC book.

Opening reception:  6:00 pm – 9:00 pm, Saturday, June 9 - Show is June 9–August 12, 2012.

Gallery talk:  4:00 PM– 5:00 PM, Saturday, July 7

Artomatic: Visit Two

On my return visit I did notice that many artists took my advise and did put signs with their prices up, and/or added easy to find contact information.

I have never been a fan of anything that is for sale and which yet makes you ask what the price is. In this context, just like in a commercial gallery context, art is a commodity and if you want to sell your artwork, you better make it very clear how much the artwork is.

Still working on my review... 

Per the comments here, seems like some asshole has an issue with artist Gloria Chapa's installation and vandalized it on the 23rd. Chapa repaired the vandalism, only to have the installation vandalized again (apparently according to her, by the same asshole) on Friday evening.

Chapa fixed it again, and when I saw it on Saturday it looked terrific, but one has to wonder what's going on through the head of the mutant doing this.