This is why galleries do art fairs

Nassikas on the way to a collector's wall

That DMV artist Georgia Nassikas taking one of her paintings to get wrapped at the VIP Preview of the Affordable Art Fair last night.

That painting is now hanging on a wall of a very happy art collector in NYC.

If you want some passes to the fair this weekend, send me an email.

Go to this opening tomorrow!

"Suddenly, She Wasn't Afraid Any Longer"
Charcoal and Conte on Provided Clay Vessel
2014 by F. Lennox Campello

Opening April 4, 2014, the Joan Hisaoka Healing Arts Gallery will host the return of Alchemical Vessels with an opening reception from 7-9 PM. Above is the image for the vessel that I've created and donated for this effort... Last year my piece went really early (first 10 or so)... just sayin'... cough, cough.

Alchemical Vessels brings together 125 local artists and 20 invited curators for a community dialogue on healing and transformation through the arts. Each artist will transform a simple ceramic bowl by means of his or her own personal aesthetic and medium, drawing inspiration from the bowl as a place of holding, open community, sacred space, and even the alchemical vessel. The show is an amazing grouping of Who's Who in the DMV art scene.

The ceramic bowl was selected as the fundamental element of the exhibition to symbolize creating a space where healing can take place—an idea at the heart of Smith Center's work and mission. Metaphorically speaking, Smith Center—the space and the work we do within our walls—resembles an alchemical vessel. People bring their everyday burdens, fears, and pains to us, and in this place of holding, we help transform those toxic elements into hope, light, wisdom and strength.

The Alchemical Vessels exhibition will open at the Joan Hisaoka Healing Arts Gallery on April 4th and run through May 16th, 2014, with the opening reception on Friday, April 4th, 7-9pm. The Alchemical Vessels Benefit will take place on Friday, May 2nd, with doors opening at 7pm. With a $125 Benefit-Vessel Contribution, guests will be admitted to the event and will select one of the 125 works on display to add to their own collections. 

For more information about the Alchemical Vessels 2014 Benefit, please visit www.smithcenter.org/benefit.

Artists: Eames Armstrong, Sardar Aziz, Karen Baer, Beth Baldwin, Michele Banks, Joseph Barbaccia, Carolyn Becker, Jessica Beels, Joan Belmar, Lori Anne Boocks, Anne Bouie, Amy Braden, Julia Brown, Karen O. Brown, Larry Brown, Amanda Burnham, Lenny Campello, Shanthi Chandrasekar, Mei Mei Chang, Peter Charles, Asma Chaudhary, Travis Childers, Eunmee Chung, Wesley Clark, Michael Corigliano, Sheila Crider, Candy Cummings, Anna U. Davis, Rosetta DeBerardinis, Tamara De Silva, Elsabe Dixon, Joel D'Orazio, David D'Orio, Chelsea S. Dobert-Kehn, Thomas Drymon, Nekisha Durrett, Victor Ekpuk, Laura Elkins, Dana Ellyn, Erica Benay Fallin, Felisa Federman, Jeremy Flick, Suzi Fox, Barbara Frank, Nancy Frankel, Shaunté Gates, Dawn Gavin, Bita Ghavami, Aziza Claudia Gibson-Hunter, Melissa Glasser, Janis Goodman, Pat Goslee, Sherill Anne Gross, John Grunwell, Nelson Gutierrez, Kristen Hayes, Eve Hennessa, Sean Hennessey, Linda Hesh, Matt Hollis, Leslie Holt, Jessica Hopkins, Karen Hubacher, Monica Jahan Bose, Barbara Johnson, Wayson R. Jones, J'Nell Jordan, Mila Kagan, Sumita Kim, Joan Konkel, Yar Koporulin, Walter Kravitz, Kate Kretz, Randall Lear, Heather Levy, Yue Li, Nathan Loda, Armando Lopez-Bircann, Laurel Lukaszewski, James Mahoney, J.J. McCracken, Donald McCray, Jayme Mclellen, Tendani Mpulubusi El, Komelia Okim, Amie Oliver, Luis Peralta, Michael Platt, Maryanne Pollock, Lynn Putney, Maria-Lana Queen, Beverly Ress, Kim Reyes, Glenn Richardson, Marie Ringwald, Amber Robles-Gordon, Pam Rogers, Lisa Rosenstein, Nicole Salimbene, Samantha Sethi, Matt Sesow, Amy Sherald, Shahin Shikhaliyev, Ellen Sinel, Casey Snyder, Susan Stacks, Dafna Steinberg, Jennifer Strunge, Lynn Sures, Lynn Sylvester, Ira Tattelman, Christine Buckton Tilman, Erwin Timmers, Ben Tolman, Novie Trump, Shinji Turner-Yamamoto, Laurie Tylec, Michael Verdon, Jodi Walsh, Jenny Walton, Ellyn Weiss, Stephanie Williams, Audrey Wilson, Sharon Wolpoff, and Carmen C. Wong.

Curators: Peggy Cooper Cafritz, Educator, Philanthropist and Founder of D.C.'s Duke Ellington School for the Arts | Jarvis DuBois, Independent Curator and Principal at J. DuBois Arts | Monica Jahan Bose, Artist and Activist | Anne L'Ecuyer, Arts Management Faculty at American University | Camille Mosley-Pasley, Photographer and Principal at Pasley Place Photography | B.G. Muhn, Professor of Art, Georgetown University | Michael O'Sullivan, Art Critic for The Washington Post | Dr. Frederick P. Ognibene, M.D., NIH Physician, Fine Art Collector and; Past Board Chair, Washington Project for the Arts | Michael Platt, Artist and Professor at Howard University | Jennifer Riddell, Writer and Interpretive Projects Manager at the National Gallery of Art | Adah Rose, Principal at Adah Rose Gallery | Laura Roulet, Independent Curator and Writer | Molly Ruppert, Artist and Gallery Director at the Warehouse Theater | Terry Scott, Cultural Organizer and Independent Curator | Judy J. Sherman, Art Consultant and Principal at j. fine art | Thomas Stanley, Professor at George Mason University | Nuzhat Sultan, Independent Curator | Tim Tate, Artist and Co-Director of Washington GlassSchool | R.L. Tillman, Artist, Teacher and Curator | Dolly Vehlow, Fine Art Collector and Principal at Gallery O on H 

Planning Committee: Helen Frederick, Deborah Lesser, Wendy Miller, PhD, Kim Schelling, Timothy Schelling, and Ellyn Weiss.

VIP Night at AAFNYC

Our booth at the Affordable Art Fair New York City ... See images below.

It's VIP opening night and DMV artist and art fair rookie Georgia Nassikas is the first to break the ice with a pretty nice sale and an hour to go! Great work by Jodi Walsh and Anne Marchand getting loads of attention... drop me an email if you want a free pass to the fair tomorrow and this weekend in NYC.

Vanderbilt NAACP pissed off...

Derek Mason has been the new head football coach at Vanderbilt University for just a few months. For over a generation one off-campus tradition has been to paint a mural of the head coach on the side of a local business. Generally this occurs without controversy. Until, that is, the local chapter of the Vanderbilt NAACP took issue with the painting and started a petition to have it changed. The issue?

Read about the issue here. Personally, I think that the Vanderbilt NAACP should take a chill pill - In my visual opinion, this is not the case of the artist (Michael Cooper) wanting to portray Mason as in the "era in which black people's skin was darkened and their lips were made whiter in order to exaggerate their race in order to put them in a sharp contrast with the white race."

This is just partially a case of Cooper working from a photo (and never meeting the subject), but mostly a really bad mural painting in this Vanderbilt example, as Cooper seems like an otherwise quite apt muralist.

That lady who "restored" that ancient Christ fresco in that church in Spain and made The Christ look like someone from the Planet of the Apes still has the prize for the worst portrait ever...

Who Had Richer Parents, Doctors Or Artists?

A few weeks ago, we were sitting around the office arguing over this simple question: Who had richer parents, journalists or people working in finance? Doctors or artists? More generally: What's the link between household income during childhood and job choice during adulthood?

After some poking around, we figured out how to settle the argument. A government survey has tracked more than 12,000 people for decades. It allowed us to look at the same group of people in 1979 and 2010 — from a time when most were teenagers to the time when they were middle-aged and, for the most part, gainfully employed.

We crunched the data a few ways. First, here's a table that answers our basic question. It links peoples' jobs as adults in 2010 to their parents' income when they were kids in 1979.

Read this fascinating piece by Quoctrung Bui here.

New York next week!

It's the Affordable Art Fair in NYC next week, which year after year (since I've been doing them since 2005) has proven to be one of the most solid art fairs around.

This year we will feature the work of DMV artists Anne Marchand, Jodi Walsh and Georgia Nassikas.

Come and see us at booth 1.28!

New York City April 3-6, 2014 with
Private View on April 2

A fun four-day event hosting 78 galleries and a huge array of contemporary art, the spring edition of the Affordable Art Fair New York City will take place from April 2-6 at The Metropolitan Pavilion in Chelsea.

Georgia Nassikas "Lift"