All you can eat BBQ!

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Susana Raab all over America

Susana Raab's exhibit, The Invisible Wall: Photographs from East of the River, is currently showing in the neighborhood at the Vivid Solutions Gallery in the Anacostia Arts Center in Washington, DC. 

This ongoing work focuses on Wards 7 & 8 in Washington, which is separated from the rest of the city by the Anacostia River due to President Thomas Jefferson’s love of symmetry; he absolutely needed to make the District of Columbia a square. Of course, Virginia messed everything up when it seceded.  

The Washington City Paper's top notch critic Lou Jacobson previews it here.

She's also part of Cotidiano USA, which continues to make the rounds as a traveling show, and is currently exhibiting in San Antonio at the Mexican Cultural Institute (I almost ended up moving to San Antonio in 2006... remind me to detail that story here...).  It will be heading to NYC later this year. 

The exhibit, curated by the wonderful Claudi Carreras, consists of works representing the US experience of Latinos and includes the work of dear friends and photographers: Carlos Alvárez Montero, Sol Aramendi, Katrina d'Autremont, Calé, Ricardo Cases, Livia Corona, Héctor Mata, Karen Miranda, Dulce Pinzón, Susana Raab, Stefan Ruiz, and Gihan Tubbeh.

And if that lists of surnames doesn't give a perfect example of the diversity of the people labeled as "Latinos," then nothing will!

Danny Conant “French Impressions” and E. E. McCollum “Shadow Series”

I know that the Fall is still a long time to go, but can't wait to see this show at Alexandria's Multiple Exposures Gallery inside the Torpedo Factory. It opens the day after my birthday!

EXHIBIT DATES                                 September 2 – October 12, 2014

OPENING RECEPTION                      Sunday, September 7, 2014  2 -4 pm

GALLERY HOURS                             Daily 11am – 5pm, Thursday 2 – 9 pm

E.E. McCollum will be showing images from his “Shadow Series.”  Strong graphically, his black and white images explore the sculptural qualities of the nude figure and the interplay of shadow and form. Set against a white background, the figure seems suspended, without context to guide our understanding, and we are left to encounter the body in its most elemental expressive elements of shadow, form and gesture. McCollum is a member of Multiple Exposures Gallery at the Torpedo Factory in Alexandria,VA. He has exhibited nationally and has been published in Lenswork, PH Magazine and Adore Noir. McCollum lives in Northern Virginia.

Danny Conant's “French Impressions” images are influenced by her recent trip to the French countryside of the Dordogne region and an exhibit at the Musee d' Orsay in Paris.  The photos are often manipulated in Photoshop and other programs and printed on watercolor paper. Some are additionally colored with pastels and then the watercolor paper is adhered to a wooden panel and covered with encaustic paint.  Conant’s work has been shown both nationally and internationally via galleries and Sotheby’s and Art Net auctions. Two books on Tibet have been published and her work has appeared in magazines and photography books.  She is a member of Multiple Exposures Gallery in Alexandria and lives in Maryland.

The DMV at AU this summer

Exhibits at the American University Museum at the Katzen Arts Center this summer focus on the art and artists and collectors in Washington, D.C. Exhibits open June 14 and run through Aug. 17.

Passion for Prints
Passionate Collectors: The Washington Print Club at 50 features almost 150 prints selected from Washington collections. The collection reveals a diversity of techniques from relief printing by celebrated masters Durer, van Dyck, Carracci, Pissarro, Picasso and Chuck Close to monoprints by contemporaries Richard Estes, Ventura Salimbeni, Thomas Frye, Adolphe Appian, Reinhard Hilker and Keiko Hara. Among the contemporary works is a print involving buckshot, and one created with 4,225 small black dots.

“Viewers will be surprised there are no dominating genres or periods or artists represented in this show, but rather a huge range of works that are national, international and local,” said AU Museum Director and Curator Jack Rasmussen. “We share our location in the nation’s capital with most international diplomatic missions to the United States. Washington is a community with diverse interests and affiliations and may well provide the most diverse group of collectors in the country.”

The show will also feature “Midwest Matrix,” a film study of post-World War II printmaking to present, produced and directed by Susan Goldman.
The Washington Print Club was established in 1964 as an independent, nonprofit volunteer organization consisting of both collectors and practicing artists. This biennial exhibition celebrates the club’s 50th anniversary.
 
Lives Devoted to Art 
The Franz and Virginia Bader Fund: Second Act features paintings, sculptures and works on paper by Richard Cleaver, Emilie Brzezinski, Fred Folsom and other artists who received grants totaling $670,000 over the last 13 years from the Bader Fund. Legendary Washington art dealer Franz Bader and his wife, Virginia, started the fund, which continues to support the arts long after the couple’s deaths in 1994 and 2001, respectively. The fund committee awards grants for artists 40 and older who live within 150 miles of the U.S. Capitol.

The first exhibition of Bader Fund artists took place a decade ago. “Second Act” provides another viewing of the range and quality of work supported by the grants.

Franz Bader was born in Vienna, Austria, in 1903. Bader and his first wife, Antonia, were fortunate to escape Vienna after the takeover of Austria by Nazi Germany in 1938, arriving in Washington in early 1939 with few possessions and little money. But, as is true of so many émigrés from Hitler’s Europe, their arrival was America’s good fortune—Washington's, in particular. Working at first with the Whyte Bookstore and Gallery and then, from 1953 to 1985, at his own art and book shop, Bader was a pioneer and creator of a vibrant art scene in his adopted city.
 
Personal Drifts of Culture
Continental Drift surveys the work of Washington artist Judy Byron, and invites the viewer to consider the visual and auditory environment that informs identity. The exhibition acknowledges the artist’s drifting of visual influences between three specific countries: Brazil, China, and Ghana. From 2010 through 2012, Byron traveled abroad and photographed details of sidewalks, toys, products, netting, foliage, clothing and detritus. Images from her travels formed the point of departure for 18 color pencil drawings.

Accompanying the drawings are the voices of three women from Brazil, China, and Ghana who now live in the Metro D.C. area and have established roots while maintaining strong identification with their places of birth. Three smaller drawings — Memories of Home — are based on photos Byron took of objects in their homes that remind the women of the homes they left behind. The sound of ocean waves lapping the shore can be heard throughout the exhibition space.

Rasmussen observed:  “I don’t think any artist has communicated so beautifully the interaction of community and environment in the construction of culture.”
 
Nature’s Fleeting Beauty
Syzygy, William Newman’s series of 19 oil paintings and digital images, and two metal sculptures, is a vibrant investigation of temporality, subjective freedom, and natural splendor. The photographs, photorealist paintings and stainless steel sculptures present striking natural forms and places holding personal resonance for Newman, including Yellowstone National Park, the Grand Canyon and the cosmos.

For his sculptures, Newman had natural artifacts from his farmhouse in Shenandoah County duplicated in welded, polished stainless steel by craftsmen in Beijing. The resulting forms gracefully blend elements of abstraction with Newman’s mastery of representational expression. 

This tactile sensibility is also evident in Newman’s conjunction of paintings and photographs. The central subjects of his paintings are round forms from nature, which Newman and his assistants meticulously recreated from photographs that he took himself or appropriated from NASA’s public archives. Newman then conjoined the objects with photographs using rare-earth magnets. Photographs that took just a click to create and paintings that took years to make join to represent nature’s fleeting beauty, its life through memory and desire, and its timeless eternal renewal.

Like the poet said...

"Cuando los habitantes de un pueblo emigran, no son ellos los que debian emigrar, sino sus gobernantes."

"When the people of a country emigrate and leave their country, it isn't them who should leave their country, but the people who govern their country"

Jose Marti

Community Gateway Arch

Mayor Vincent C. Gray will join representatives of the D.C. Commission on the Arts and Humanities (DCCAH) in the dedication of the Community Gateway Arch on Friday, July 18, at a twilight ceremony, from 7:00 to 9:00 p.m. The program will take place outside the Unity Health Care Parkside Health Center facility, located at the corner of Hayes Street and Kenilworth Terrace NE.

"This new work of public art celebrates the District's cultural heritage," said Mayor Gray. "Artists, community members and the District government collaborated on the new installation, which represents the creativity and aspirations of Ward 7 residents."

The Community Gatewaysculpture was designed by Washington Glass School uber artists Michael Janis, Tim Tate and Erwin Timmers, who worked in collaboration with Ward 7 artist apprentice Bill Howard and numerous Ward 7 community members and stakeholders during the early phases of fabrication. The design of the public artwork was intended to mark the entrance to the Kenilworth / Parkside section of the city.

Washington Glass School was selected through an open Call to Artists and panel process led by the DCCAH, through the D.C. Creates! Public Art Program selection committee, in partnership with the D.C. Primary Care Association (DCPCA), the Unity Health Care Foundation, the Ward 7 Community and ANC 7D07 Commissioner Willie H. Woods. Central to the selection of the public artwork and the community input process was the Ward 7 Arts Collaborative, led by artist and community arts advocate Wanda Aikens.

Scam Alert

Recently received a scam phone call from a heavily accented dude calling from the "Windows Security Center" -- this is a classic cold call scam -- the phone that showed up as coming from was (325) 477-7355.