Morris Louis (cough, cough) finds a home

In 1980 I did this piece as part of an assignment at the University of Washington School of Art. The assignment (and the class) was to create work in the style of the "masters" which at the U-Dub included modern masters... I did some "easy" ones such as Pollock, most of the Washington Color School stripe painters, Willem de K, etc. plus some really tough ones, such as El Greco.

Anyway... “Preparatory Watercolor for the Frida Kahlo Inside a Morris Louis Assignment” is an original watercolor painting on 300 weight paper. The painting measures 9.5 x 13.5 inches and it is signed and dated on the verso, and it is now heading to a collector in Crystal Bay, Nevada - 33 years after it was painted!

There is a companion piece to this work somewhere in New York.

An Abbreviated History of Moca DC

MOCA DC as we have known it for 21 years will end this week... There is a farewell party at Art Overnight - at 2328 Ontario Rd in Adams Morgan on Saturday, Dec 21st starting at 6 pm. Be on the lookout for the Grand Opening of Big Moca in the Sky.

Here is a guest post by MOCA's director David R. Quammen:

December 1, 2013

An Abbreviated History of Moca DC

Part One: 1992 to 2004 – The Formative Years

I’ve been sifting through records and media accounts of Moca DC from the time that Michael V. Clark started it in 1992, except he called it Clark & Company. That changed in 1995 after he married Felicity Hogan and they incorporated it as a 501 (c) (3) nonprofit corporation, naming it the Museum of Contemporary Art.

It has always been a gallery, never a museum so over time the name was shortened to MOCA DC, since it’s a bit of a stretch answering the phone or discussing it in any other context. Michael changed his given name to Clark Hogan, later shortening it to Clark when he and Felicity split in 2003. He was going to close the gallery December 31^st, 2004, having a tough time keeping it going, what with health issues and the divorce. He now calls himself Clark V. Fox, a name chosen when he was a co-exhibitor at a gallery in Houston.

I started modeling Halloween day 2000, shortly after turning 60; I enjoyed being part of a creative process but there were no directions for a novice and no list of places to model so I accumulated as much information as I could and started publishing a newsletter, Artists & Models, in February, 2002. It was well received but I published only 6 issues, terminating it after finding that it was going to take $300 a month to publish and deliver; I closed it the same month that the Figure Models Guild was formed.

In 2002, Clark let me use the gallery to form the Guild; the first formal meeting was in July of that year, a resounding success with about 50 models and artists in attendance. It continued to grow to the point that most of the colleges, universities, schools and groups from Baltimore to Annapolis and Winchester to Richmond were using it as a guide for their models. I told Clark that I would guarantee the rent and operate the gallery. He owned a condo in New York, so he agreed, moved to New York and on January 1, 2005 my status changed from model to model-gallery operator.

Part Two – 2005 to 2010 – A New Horizon

David R. Quammen

The end of MOCA DC

MOCA DC as we have known it for 21 years will end later this week... There is a farewell party at Art Overnight - at 2328 Ontario Rd in Adams Morgan on Saturday, Dec 21st starting at 6 pm. Be on the lookout for the Grand Opening of Big Moca in the Sky.

Rosemary Feit Covey's retrospective coming in 2014

In March 2014, a retrospective of the last fifteen years of Rosemary Feit Covey's work will be on display at Johns Hopkins University's Evergreen Museum in Baltimore. Covey is one of the great, master artists of the DMV.

Featured artwork will include engravings, paintings, mixed media and installations. A catalog with commentary by curator James Abbott will accompany this exhibition.

Rosemary Feit Covey will also be a featured artist in MFA's group exhibition Focus Africa which will open at the gallery April 25th, 2014. Included are artworks inspired by the artist's South African heritage.

$37M a day!

This dude made $37M a day...

Five Curators. One Exhibition. No Art. Zero Dollars.

Five Curators. One Exhibition. No Art. Zero Dollars.

Can they Crowdfund a Crowdsourced Exhibition of Crowdfunding Rewards?

Artists, technologists, and business people, tired of stagnation from the
traditional funding models of investment, grants, and representation, have
turned to crowdfunding as a means to supplement or fully support their
ventures.  Today's world of connectivity creates a fluid landscape of
ideas, incentives and, even money. Small ideas and small amounts of money
can amass to a grandiose scale as individuals are united even fleetingly
for common cause. This is unique to our time, and our era.  “Mining the
Crowd” seeks to bring together the audience and the funder for a
discussion of the sustainability of crowdfunding, especially, but not
limited to, how it pertains to the arts.

Currently, “Mining the Crowd” is in the middle of its 30-day make-or-break
fundraising Kickstarter campaign, the sole financial source for a future
Kickstarter and Indiegogo based art exhibition, which will present
materials from artists actively engaged in their own crowdfunding
campaigns. Fiscal sponsorship for this project will be provided by
Maryland Art Place (MAP), allowing donations to Mining the Crowd’s
crowdfunding campaign to be partially tax deductible.

While the culminating exhibition is scheduled for February 2015 in the
Sheila & Richard Riggs and Leidy Galleries in the Graduate Studio center
at MICA (Maryland Institute College of Art), funding must be completed as
soon as possible.  The second phase of this project involved investing in
the artists who will ultimately exhibit.  Not only will the artist need to
be sought out in crowdfunding circles, but they will need to be given time
to create their art.

Through this meta-Kickstarter social experiment, social media, and the
exhibition, the curatorial team aims to educate artists and facilitate
critical discourse about the challenges to financially supporting one’s
artistic practice. Additionally, like most campaigns, the team desires to
build a community of supporters for this project and this conversation.

More information about the project and links the Facebook, Twitter, and Tumbler pages can be found at http://miningthecrowd.org.

The ongoing Kickstarter campaign can be found at
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/miningthecrowd/mining-the-crowd-artifacts-of-crowdfunding-exhibit

Contrails...

There were like a dozen contrails in the sky at once this evening on the drive on I-95S -- probably all heading to Dulles...