Art Clinic Online: Ric Garcia

On Saturday, August 6, 10:30 - 11:30am, the ACO hosts DC Digital Printer, Ric Garcia

Art Clinic Online

ZOOM Link:

https://us02web.zoom.us/j/84149389951?pwd=QkNqUU1ZMFJ5SXpSU1dFOVFTeXZZZz09

I'm  happy to announce that the next Art Clinic Online meeting is August 6 with artist Ric Garcia. 

Ric is a painter and digital printmaker with work that builds on the tradition of pop art and is infused with references to various cultures in America. These references are "a meditation about identity rather than a cultural primer." Ric’s perennial favorite is Latino culture and its consumer branded products.  

On Saturday, August 6th, 2022, we will welcome Ric Garcia, a well known artist whose work you may have seen in the past, either at the Stone Tower Gallery, and Popcorn gallery, among other locations. Some of his work can also be seen on his website at http://ricgarciastudio.com/ He will tell us about his process of making art and about his career and what inspires him. And there will be time for Q & A so it should be fun! Join us!

A little more about Ric here.

Ric Garcia works and exhibits in the DC metro area. He is a painter and digital printmaker. His work builds on the traditions of pop art and is infused with references to various cultures in America. These references are a meditation about identity rather than a cultural primer. Garcia’s perennial favorite is Latino culture and its consumer branded products.

Garcia thinks of his depictions of these everyday products as still lives, commenting that “ultimately the work is less about representing the product and more about eliciting emotional reactions, introspective questions and celebrating Latino culture.” The cans and packages in his work are based on real products, but the slogans and illustrations on the labels are re-imagined in ways that express and comment on his bi-cultural experiences as a Cuban-American.

His art and work process has been featured in online articles at Artists & Makers Studios and East City Arts. Garcia’s art is in many private and public collections. Most recently his work has been added to the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities Art Bank collection and the Arts and Cultural Heritage Division of The Maryland-National Capital Park and Planning Commission, Prince George’s County, Maryland collection

We look forward to hosting everyone on August 6th and beyond! We have a nice line up of upcoming interviews and topic discussions in the next ACO meetings this month and next. After Ric, Jordan and I will conduct a discussion on papers and substrates for drawing with all kinds of tools. More information on this to come. 

And if you can, don’t forget that the ACO needs your help with donations (small or big ones are all welcome, any amount you can spare) so we can pay a small honorarium to professionals whom we invite for interviews and/or demonstrations. Many thanks in advance for your kindness and generosity!

On Saturday, August 6th, at 10:30am

Link: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/84149389951?pwd=QkNqUU1ZMFJ5SXpSU1dFOVFTeXZZZz09

Cuban Food?

 

Alberto Gaitán

I am sad to pass that my good friend Alberto Gaitán has moved on... here he is with Victoria F. Gaitán at the book party for my 2011 book hosted by Leigh Conner at her iconic gallery. 

Photo by the talented Rebecca D'Angelo.

 Alberto leaves a gigantic artistic footprint behind... more later.

When Che Guevara almost got me whooped!

Read this cool 2011 piece by Maura Judkis on how an irate Cuban once threatened to kick my butt in Miami during Art Basel week - by the way, that piece is now in the permanent collection of the University of Oregon!

Read it here.

Teresa Jade Jarzynski at Artists & Makers Studios

Artists & Makers Studios welcomes Teresa Jarzynski back for her solo “Strange & Beautiful” with Resident Artist exhibit “Real or Imaginary”, and the talented Member Artists of Gallery 209.

Artists & Makers Studios on Parklawn Drive in Rockville hosts the work of Teresa Jarzynski in her latest solo exhibit “Strange and Beautiful”, the Resident Artists’ “Real or Imaginary” exhibit - along with new work in Gallery 209 and building-wide Open Studios. The August 6th opening will run from 11am – 3pm. Fantasy, skewed perspective and other elements of imagination interweave with impressionistic applications of recognizable subjects. Some more strange, some more beautiful, but every piece contains a bit of both for the viewer to take in. By focusing on flowers, inanimate objects, and people from various encounters in life, Teresa challenged herself to transform the ordinary into something more extraordinary. Although each painting initially stems from direct observation, the act of painting turns each reality into an imagined place, no longer restricted by traditional ideas. The Resident Artists will fill the beautiful Gallery Hall with “Real or Imaginary”, and the Artists of Gallery 209 will feature new work in the large Gallery and adjoining halls for visitors to discover.

Opening Reception

11:00 AM – 3:00 PM, Saturday, August 6th, 2022

“Strange and Beautiful” Artist Talk, 1:00 PM, August 20th, 2022

Artists & Makers Studios

11810 Parklawn Drive, Suite 210

Rockville, MD 20852

Exhibits will run from August 3rd through August 24th. Viewing hours are 10:00 AM – 4:00 PM, Monday-Saturday, and Sundays by chance or appointment. Masks firmly covering nose and mouth are required in the building.

Printmakers

 Printmakers -- true hardcore printmakers, not the kind that takes their drawing or watercolor to a digital wizard and says "Hey buddy, give me a 1000 of these in a poster size." But the kind that likes the smell of acid as it burns and etches their metal sheets; the ones that roll thick black ink onto etched plates, and lose track of where the cheesecloth is, and the ones that really know what a "ghost print" is - that kind of printmaker represent some of the least appreciated artists in any genre of the visual arts today.

The word "print" has been kidnapped by marketers and watercolorists and photographers and every kind of visual artist on the planet wanting to sell more than one of their original. 

But remember this: anything that is in a media that is different from the original piece is a reproduction - not a print. A true print is something created by an artist from beginning to end: a woodcut, a linocut, a lithograph, an intaglio etching, etc.!

One of the best places in the nation to find great real artists' prints is here in the Washington area DMV at the aptly named Washington Printmakers Gallery. 

A 20 year old idea which is still hot!

Twenty years ago I proposed the below idea to kindle our Greater region's visual art scene -- the Universities have (so far) all ignored the idea (P.S. - note the quaint use of "slides" :-):

Merry Xmas!

As promised, the first one of ten steps (in no particular order or ranking) to kindle the District/Maryland/Virginia (DMV) art "buzz" into a roar:

Number 10

The Universities

There are several important, major universities in and around the DMV area. In most cases each is working, as most universities do, their own, individual visual arts exhibition program, which is normally mix of exhibitions by their students, faculty and invited artists.

Almost without exception there is very little coordination between the different venues, which in some cases boast some of the nicest exhibition spaces in town. This is not unusual, as I imagine that in most cities this is also the same case, as the focus of the university gallery is in fact the university.

And here is where we can make a major change, and use the extraordinary resources afforded to our area by these venues, and their academic standing, to help Washington expand its worldwide visual art standing.

What we need to happen is for one of the local university art school chairs, or college deans, or even university gallery directors, to take the initiative to start coordinating a joint effort to create one annual combined, joint exhibition that synchronizes a focused exhibition that is spread throughout the Greater Washington area.

Imagine a national survey of art, with a good title and perhaps even a good, donated chunk of money as a prize. Say we call it “The Capital Art Prize” (OK, OK we’ll have to work on the title) and because good ideas sometimes attract funding, maybe we can convince a major local company like Lockheed Martin or AOL or Booze Allen and Hamilton, or (be still my beating heart), The Washington Post, to help fund it on an annual basis.

This synchronized event can be modeled somewhat on what the Whitney does, but better. The Whitney Biennial’s Achilles heel is its over-reliance on hired curators. Unless an artist lives and works in NYC, LA or SF or is already in the local radar of one of the curators for that particular year, chances are slim to none that the artist will come to the attention of those Biennial curators. Hence great art and potentially great artists may be ignored.

In addition to the use of invited curators, also imagine that this event puts forth a national call for artists, independent and museum curators, schools, art organizations and galleries to submit works for consideration. Send us your slides, CD ROMS and photographs (and a self addressed, stamped envelope for their return).

Anyone can submit and in a fair selection process, since art is truly in the eyes (and agenda) of the beholder, anyone can be selected to exhibit. A truly American concept for a national American art survey that will leave the Whitney and other continental Biennials in the dust.

And because the exhibition venues are spread around the capital area region, in galleries at Georgetown, George Mason, George Washington, American, Catholic, Howard, University of Maryland, Montgomery Community College, Northern Virginia Community College, and the many others I am sure to be forgetting momentarily, we could put up one of the largest, most diverse, and influential American art surveys in the nation.

This will take a lot of work to set up initially, as one key university person needs to take the lead and emerge from the pack of largely unknown, anonymous group of academics currently running our area’s university art programs. On the other hand, this could be an exhibition that can and will put names and faces on the international art world map, much like the Whitney Biennial sometimes elevates its curators a notch above the rest

Some universities will resist, as the easiest thing to do is to do things as they have always been done, and not really create “new” work. But given that a strong leader among our academic community emerges and takes the lead for this idea, then even if we start with a set of four or five venues, in a joint, coordinated effort, others will follow.

This will not be an easy job to do, and as it grows, so will the burocracy around it. But starting it up will be the hardest part, and as momentum grows, things will become easier. Whoever, if anyone, takes this idea and runs with it, will face many huge obstacles and many negative people. He or she will need to convince other university/college gallery directors to participate. They in turn, will have to convince their superiors, who will, in turn have to approve (and perhaps help kick-start the funding) the joint project.

This leader will also have to coordinate the approach to get a local giant to fund this effort, but I suspect that once he has aligned a few colleges and universities, this may become easier (it’s never easy) as the “buzz” and need for the event develops.

This is all a lot of work, and initially, until a burocracy is established around the annual event, many, many volunteers will be needed. I hope that some of these can be drawn from the school’s student body, alumni who are artists, and other local artists, much like Art-O-Matic draws from the collective muscle of our area’s significant artist population.

Our area universities and colleges already have significant media resources at their disposal, to help spread the word. They run school newspapers, radio stations, etc. and also provide a constant flow of new blood to our major mainstream media.

The goal (or perhaps “the dream”) would be a national level survey of art, which may look, review and/or jury the work of maybe 50,000 artists around the nation, and select perhaps 100 each year, showcase their work around a dozen academic galleries, and award a $100,000 cash award as the Capital Art Prize, plus various other awards (Emerging Artist, Young Artist, etc.). Art of a nature and scale that will attract visitors to the university galleries, attention to our area, piss some people off, excite others, create interest, discussion and buzz around Washington and our art scene.

There’s nothing more empowering than an idea whose time has come.