Art auctions

From Art Law Journal:

Paddle8 is a virtual auction house, backed by the owners and technology investors behind Uber, Pinterest and Vimeo. The company is focused on fine art, holding two types of auctions: benefit auctions, which are held through collaborations with non-profits and major museums, and biweekly themed auctions. 

In the first half of 2014, total sales reached $17.8 million, a 400 percent increase over the same period in 2013. The company has received $17 million from Investors. Not nearly as large as the major auction houses, founder Alexander Gilkes isn’t worried, claiming that his company’s “focus is on the whole middle market, . . . the $100,000 range.” although he did qualify the statement saying, “we had a Jeff Koons egg that started at $500 and went to $900,000.” 

With Paddle8’s success, the major auction houses are ramping up their online business. In 2014, Sotheby’s inked a deal with eBay to stream its auctions online and Christie’s, the world’s largest auction house, putting additional marketing efforts into its $50 million media platform. In the first six months of 2014, 27 percent of Christie’s online buyers were new to the auction house.

Opportunities for Artists

Nominate now for the 2015 Baker Artist Awards. In its seventh year, the Baker Artist Awards were established in 2008 to support Baltimore area artists and to promote their work to regional, national and international audiences. Up to three Mary Sawyers Baker prizes of up to $25,000 each are awarded annually to celebrate a dedication to art, mastery of craft, and a commitment to excellence. Nominations close January 15, 2105.

Mid Atlantic Arts Foundation  through its Creative Fellowships program annually supports residencies for writers, composers, and visual artists at the Millay Colony for the Arts and the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts  (VCCA). Starting in 2015, the Foundation will support residencies at VCCA for artists currently residing in New York in addition to Delaware, Maryland, and West Virginia. The application deadlines for VCCA are January 15, May 15, and September 15, 2015. 

The Grit Fund, administered by The Contemporary, supports unincorporated and collaborative artist-organized activity that contributes to Baltimore's arts landscape but seldom qualifies for traditional funding. The Contemporary will lead four free information sessions providing details on the application process, guidelines, eligibility, funding priorities, and more. More information is here.

SELECT 2015 opens at the end of the month

SELECT 2015 consists of a 5-week public exhibition and a ticketed auction party to support contemporary art and the local artist community. The artists invited to participate in this exhibition were selected by a group of notable curators from some of the most important institutions in our region, emerging curators, and WPA’s Board of Directors.

Location

Artisphere
1101 Wilson Blvd
Arlington, VA 22201

DIRECTIONS

EXHIBITION HOURS (FREE)

Thursday, January 29 through Friday, March 6, 2015

Wednesdays through Fridays: 4–11pm

Saturdays: 12 – 11pm

Sundays: 12 – 5pm

Mondays and Tuesdays: CLOSED

The exhibition is open to the public free of charge.

EXHIBITION OPENING RECEPTION (FREE)

Thursday, January 29, 2015, 7–9pm

VIEW ARTWORKS

New DMV art space

Olly Olly Presents

Bodylore

January 24, 2015 – February 6, 2015

Opening Reception

Saturday, January 24, 2015, 7pm – 10pm

Olly Olly, a new alternative art space in Fairfax, VA, is pleased to present its inaugural pop-up art exhibition, Bodylore, an exploration of the human figure and an investigation into the body as social construct, tradition, myth, and fairytale.  On Saturday, January 24, 2015, from 7pm to 10pm, spend an evening with the artists:

Eames Armstrong
Jackie Hoysted
Carolina Seth
Robert C. Yi

Bodylore features a variety of work dealing with the body, the interaction of bodies, embodiment, the folklore of bodies, play, and the role of the body in our everyday experience, dream-life, and cultural imagination.

Olly Olly wants to nourish the body and the community as well. We will be collecting healthy non-perishable food items for the Food Bridge Program at Our Daily Bread, which provides short-term emergency food assistance to Fairfax County area residents who are in crisis. We encourage you to bring a healthy non-perishable food item to donate. The Food Bridge Program is most in need of cooking oil, brown rice, dried beans, canned fruit in its own juices, and pasta sauce.

Olly Olly, located at 10417 Main Street, 2^nd Floor in Fairfax, VA, is open Tuesdays from 6pm-9pm, Saturdays 11am-4pm, and by appointment. Bodylore will be on view at Olly Olly from January 24, 2015 through February 6, 2015.

http://www.ollyollyart.com/

https://www.facebook.com/events/1520963774853508/

Jodi Walsh at Longview

Thursday, January 15th, 6:30 - 8:00pm

RSVP at the facebook event page

 

Show Dates: January 15 - February 11

DC metro based artist Jodi Walsh uses environmentally safe and natural materials to create unique mixed media works utilizing both paint and ceramic. Many of her works feature textured backgrounds layered with hand thrown ceramics suspended by stainless steel thread on heavy metal hardware. Past, Preset & Future will seamlessly combine her wall hanging pieces with her new ceiling mounted sculptural works.
 

Moods—In the end, the work is about providing a moment of visual and mental repose in the hold of abstraction and beauty -- a reflection of the settings of life.

 

Long View Gallery

1234 Ninth St NW, Washington, DC 20001 longviewgallerydc.com info@longviewgallery.com | 202.232.4788 facebook page

Opportunities for Artists at Montgomery College

EXHIBITION OPPORTUNITY: Themed exhibition series

Interactivity: Sight and Sound

Colored hearing: sounds, music or voices seen as colors is referred to as synesthesia. Synesthetic art refers to multi-sensory experiments in the genres of visual art, music visualization, audiovisual art, abstract film and other multi-and intermedia. The concept of synesthesia has long been a source of inspiration for artists, composers and writers. The work produced by artists attempting to provoke simultaneous perception by different senses has suggested the idea of "interactivity": between sight and hearing in particular, but not necessarily excluding interactivity among the other senses. Artists are invited to consider this concept and propose an exhibit of works that might connote or express it.

The Department of Visual and Performing Arts is calling for exhibition proposals for the Open Gallery in The Morris and Gwendolyn Cafritz Foundation Arts Center that address the theme, "Interactivity: Sight and Sound." Four exhibitions will be scheduled for the 2015–2016 academic year.

Proposals must be received by April 17, 2015.  Applicants will be notified by June 1.

For detailed information about the exhibition space and the application process please visit:

http://cms.montgomerycollege.edu/arts-tpss/exhibitions/opportunities.html

ARTIST RESIDENCY OPPORTUNITY

Deadline: Postmarked by March 31, 2015

Montgomery College Artist in Residence Program

The Takoma Park/Silver Spring Campus of Montgomery College offers semester-long residencies for visual artists.  Fall residencies run from mid-August through mid-December.  Spring residencies run mid-January through mid-May.  This program provides artists with a dedicated space to pursue their professional art practice within an academic environment populated by art students and faculty.  Resident artists may also be granted access to the many other studio facilities available in the Cafritz Foundation Arts Center on a case-by-case basis.  No living accommodations are provided.

Applications are being accepted for the 2015-2016 academic year.

Deadline for applications is March 31, 2015.  There are no fees for participation in this residency.

For further information and the application forms, please visit:

http://cms.montgomerycollege.edu/arts-tpss/residencies/

Another oak falls

"Hoy se ha caido otro roble en la selva del amargo exilio" is how I always thought that my father's eulogy would begin once he died.

"Today another oak falls in the jungle of bitter exile," began the eulogy for the man whose bloodlines my children and I carry on.

Florencio Campello Alonso died today at age 90 in Miami, the heart of the bitter Cuban Diaspora. Like many Cubans of his generation, he was the son of European immigrants to Cuba. His Galician parents left the scraggy mountains of northern Spain's ancient Celtic kingdom and in the first decade of the 1900s migrated to the new nation of Cuba upon its liberation from Spain.

Galicians have always been uneasy subjects of the Spanish crown, stubbornly hanging on to their ancient Celtic traditions, to their own language and to their bagpipes, so it is no historical surprise that they left their mountain homelands en-masse and headed to the new tropical paradise of Cuba, free from the heavy hand of the Spanish monarchy.

And thus it was never a surprise to me that my father was both a fighter against heavy-handed rulers, a lover of freedom, and one who was never afraid to re-start a life for the better, even if it involved discarding the old.

My father could have been one of the privileged few who currently rule atop the food chain of Cuba's Workers' Paradise. But instead of accepting the benefits of oppression, this most valiant of men chose the harsh path of right over wrong.

And he paid for it dearly (he spent years in Concentration Camps), but when he died, his soul was clean.

In his youth, my dad worked the brutal hours of the son of an immigrant who was slowly building a small financial empire in eastern Cuba. My father was pulled from school as soon as he learned to read and write, and like his two other brothers and eight sisters, he was expected to work and contribute to building a familial empire.

And he did, as my mother relates the stories of my father's childhood in the fields of eastern Cuba, a blond creole in a land of jingoist natives... he trying to out-Cuban the "real Cubans"... how he organized a labor union of the exploited Haitians who worked almost as slaves at the Los Canos Sugar Mill, how he joined a group of bearded rebels in the mountains of the Sierra Maestra in the fight against a tyrant, how he ran for the leadership of the Sugar Workers' Union and beat the Communists to the post, and how he spent years in a Castro Concentration Camp, jailed for the crime of refusing to join the Party, because he believed in Democracy and not Communism.

And because of that stubbornness, in the 1960s he was offered the bitter pill of exile, and this brave man decided to choose family... and left his birth place, and thus became another immigrant within two familial generations and brought his wife and child to another new land.

And it is to him that I owe the greatest gift that a father can give a son: the opportunity to grow in freedom in the greatest nation in the history of this planet.

It is because of my father's courage that I was raised in this country and not in a land bloodied by brutality and oppression.

It is because of my father's teachings that I was raised with the conviction that freedom is not free and never to be taken for granted; after all, he fought for freedom and then Castro, the man who inspired the fight, ended up being a worse dictator, eventually destroying all notions of freedom for all of his people.

It is because of my father that I was taught that every citizen owes his nation some form of service, and that's the main reason that I signed (at age 17) to serve in the US Navy.

It is because of my father that I despise anyone who hides behind the mask of victimism to excuse failures and shortcomings.

When our family arrived in New York in the 1960s, my father began to work in a factory three days after he landed at the airport; my mother (who came from a privileged Cuban family and had never worked a day in her life) found a job as a seamstress five days later. That pattern was repeated for decades as they worked their way in a new nation.

"We thought we'd be back within a few years," was the answer given to me when I once asked the question about leaving their birthplace. When that didn't materialize, they became fierce Americans in the "United States of Americans" sense... these were the "America None Better!" set of immigrants, and in my Dad's case, you better be ready to fight if you dissed the USA.

"Americans"!

Always a fighter he was... and always for the right reasons.

Cubans are archaic immigrants... we love this great nation because we recognize its singular and unique greatness; perhaps it is because our forebears had the same chance at greatness and blew it.

And my Dad loved this nation even more than he once loved Cuba... perhaps it is the genetic disposition of the serial immigrant. After all, his father had left his own ancient Celtic lands and kin for a new land... which he learned to love dearly.

My father always wanted to make sure that I knew that I was an "Americano" and not another forced-on label.

"Labels," he'd say, "are just a way to separate people."

By labels he meant "Hispanic" or "Latino" or anything with a "-" between two ethnic words.

I also remember as a kid in New York, when he bought a huge Hi-Fi record player-color-TV console... that thing was huge. He bought it "lay-away" and he'd pay $10 a week to the store and him and I would walk all the way from our house on Sackman Street to the store on Pitkin Avenue to make the payments every Saturday - he never missed a single payment, and that taught me a lesson.

It was soon playing my Dad's favorite music, which oddly enough was Mexican music (Cuban music was a close second)... and he knew all the words to every charro song.

Guadalajara en un llano, Mejico en una laguna...
Guadalajara en un llano, Mejico en una laguna...Me he de comer esa tunaMe he de comer esa tuna.... aunque me espine la mano.

That Jorge Negrete song... being shouted often on weekends at the top of his lungs from our apartment in a mostly Italian neighborhood in East New York in Brooklyn must have raised some eyebrows.

My dad and I watched Neil Armstrong land on the moon on that TV set... we also watched loads of Mets games... and in 1969 and 1972 went to Shea Stadium to see the Mets win in '69 and lose in '72. He really loved baseball and he really loved those Mets!

When I joined the Navy at age 17, my first duty station was USS SARATOGA, which at the time was stationed in Mayport in Florida, so my Dad decided to migrate south to Florida and moved to Miami... just to be close to me.

He and my mother spent the next 40 years in the same apartment while I was stationed all over the world.

When I visited him today in Miami, he looked good and freshly shaven... this is a good thing, as my father was a freak about hygiene... and that's a common "creole" trait.

The Hospice nurse almost teared up when I told her that my parents have been married for 60 years.

I looked at this old "gallego"... his skin as white as paper, his eyes as blue as the sky, and his head (once full of blond hair) as bald and shiny as the old Cuban sing song ("Mira la Luna, mira al Sol... mira la calva de ese.....") and I saw the generations of Neanderthals, Denisovans and Gallego Homo Sapiens that led to my bloodlines... the generations of fighters, of strugglers, and of tough guys who didn't take no for an answer and who made a better place for others. 

And I felt at peace and grateful.

And as my father died tonight, after an extubation,  all that I can think to say to him is "Thank you for your courage... from me, and from my children... and soon from their children. You opened a whole new world for them."

I love you Dad... Un Abrazo Fuerte! Thank you for your gifts to me and my children and it is no coincidence that you died on El Dia de Los Reyes.