Since 2003... the 11th highest ranked art blog on the planet! And with over SEVEN million visitors, F. Lennox Campello's art news, information, gallery openings, commentary, criticism, happenings, opportunities, and everything associated with the global visual arts scene with a special focus on the Greater Washington, DC area.
This coming Wednesday! You’re invited!
Busboys and Poets ARTOMATIC Happy Hour"Join us for an inspiring evening of art, conversation, and connection at Busboys and Poets! This special happy hour will feature Lenny Campello discussing “How to price and frame your work”. Referred to as “One of the most interesting people of Washington, DC” by The Washington City Paper, Lenny is one of the internet’s leading art bloggers and recently curated Women Artists of the DMV which spanned 19 venues and featured the work of over 700 female artists."
One of the best bucket filling experiences that an artist can gather, is when young people really get drawn in (see how I worked that pun in) by your artwork.
.jpg "Teenager admiring Lenny Campello's artwork")
Yesterday, this teen spent several minutes talking to me at the Tephra ICA Festival about how much she loved my work... and in doing so, she filled my bucket.
When I first arrived in Seattle around September of 1977, after driving cross-country from Newport, Rhode Island, I immediately fell in love with the city.
Seattle was sooo different from my childhood Brooklyn, and so artsy, and green, and wet, and everyone and everything was so beautiful.
My favorite movie of all time is Casablanca.
And in Seattle there was a bar at the time, that played Casablanca 24 hours a day!
I can't recall the name, but it was on Lake City Way, and the movie played 24 hours a day... I think! Or at least whenever the bar was open, on a screen behind the bar.
Casablanca geeks lived it, and there were always nerds mouthing out all the lines from the movie.
Somehow at some point I showed the barmeisters a drawing of Humphrey Bogart that I had done as an art assignment at the UW.
They loved it!
There was at the same time a poster and records shop in the U-District called Innervisions or something like that, and the Casablancans from the bar knew them.
Result? A poster from this drawing was made ... hundreds of them, and given out as prizes to the the Casablancanerds as they won the various contests centered around the film that the bar used to run all the time.
Here's the original drawing, which I re-found while looking for something else.
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| Bogey 1978 pen and ink drawing by Florencio Lennox Campello |
Once again revisiting this theme of mine, based on a poem that I wrote in the late 1970s on a barf bag while flying from Chicago to Seattle.
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| Sleep is the cousin of death Mixed media painting on unfired Bisque 12 inches in diameter |
Save the date! CAH requests applications for its FY 2027 Juried Exhibition Grant (JEG), which provides support for District-based artists to exhibit their work in a juried, themed visual art exhibition in CAH's Eye Street Gallery.
The exhibition, which is scheduled to take place June 10 - August 6, 2027, will explore water and waterways as sites of stewardship, spiritual reflection, environmental justice, recreation, adventure, and collective futures. Of special interest are works about the Anacostia watershed, the Potomac River Basin, the Chesapeake region, local Indigenous water knowledge, and the many human and ecological communities shaped by our waterways.
Artists may also wish to engage with national and/or global experiences of peoples who navigate both environmental risk and environmental beauty.
