Seminar

Today I'm doing the seminar for artists at the Warehouse.

Details here.

Bethesda Artists Markets

Today is the Bethesda Artist Market.

Bethesda Artist Markets are one-day events featuring 30 local and regional artists in the Bethesda Place Plaza.

It's on till 5PM. Directions here.

Bethesda Painting Prize Winners

$10,000 awarded to the Bethesda Painting Award winner! (See bottom of posting for award winners if you have no patience).

Nine painters had been selected as finalists for the Bethesda Painting Awards, a juried competition and exhibition produced by the Bethesda Arts & Entertainment District. More than 200 artists from Maryland, Virginia and Washington, D.C. submitted work to the second annual competition created to exclusively honor painters. The work of the nine finalists is now display at the Fraser Gallery through July 12, 2006.

The top prize winners were announced and honored on Wednesday, at a private press event held at the Fraser Gallery. The Best in Show winner was awarded $10,000, second place was honored with $2,000 and third place was awarded $1,000.

The nine artists selected as finalists are:

Paul Ellis, Washington, D.C.
Michael Farrell, Bethesda, MD
Haley Hasler, Charlottesville, VA
Scott Hutchison, Arlington, VA
Megan Marlatt, Orange, VA
Phyllis Plattner, Bethesda, MD
James Rieck, Baltimore, MD
Tony Shore, Joppa, MD
Andrew Wodzianski, Washington, D.C.

Entries were juried by:

- Janis Goodman, Associate Professor of Fine Arts at the Corcoran College of Art & Design and the visual arts reviewer for WETA's Around Town.

- Ron Johnson, Assistant Professor of Painting at Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU).

- Barry Nemett, Chair of the Painting Department at the Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA).

Catriona Fraser, director of the Fraser Gallery, is the non-voting Chair of the Bethesda Painting Awards.

The Bethesda Painting Awards were established by Carol Trawick in 2005 and she continues to be a beacon of light and a great example as a small business woman who puts her money where her mouth is.

Ms. Trawick has served as a community activist for more than 25 years in downtown Bethesda. She is Chair of the Bethesda Arts & Entertainment District, Past Chair of the Bethesda Urban Partnership, Inc. and founder of The Trawick Prize: Bethesda Contemporary Art Awards. Ms. Trawick is the owner of an Information Technology company in Bethesda, Trawick & Associates.

A public opening will be held tonight, Friday, June 9, 2006 from 6 – 9pm in conjunction with the Bethesda Art Walk.

As tonight is the second Friday of the month, it is thus the Bethesda Art Walk with 13 participating venues and with free guided tours.

Winners

Tony Shore (who teaches at MICA) of Baltimore, MD was awarded the Best in Show prize of $10,000.

James Rieck of Baltimore, MD (who I think teaches at the Corcoran) was named Second Place and received $2,000.

Scott Hutchison of Arlington, VA (who teaches at George Washington University) was honored with Third Place and was given $1,000.

See ya there!

Weekend Online

The staff of the WaPo's Weekend is again online at 11AM and discussing their coverage and answering your questions.

Details and a way to ask questions here.

No Tolls on the Internet

Congress is about to cast a very important and historic vote on the future of the Internet. The vote will decide whether the Internet remains a free and open or instead becomes the property of cable and phone companies.

Read the details here and then contact your elected representative.

Kirkland on Compelled II

Thinking About Art reviews our last show (Compelled by Content II). Read the review here.

If you don't get it...

I guess it takes a thousand... this is from the last Weekend live online chat last Friday:

Arlington, Va.: For several weeks now when questioned about the sparse arts coverage you guys have talked about giving equal coverage across the board and meeting demand. You say that you're listening to us asking for more reviews of our local galleries. You also say that everyone wants more coverage of movies, theatre, music, etc.

My question is this: where are all of those people in these chat sessions? You are asked repeatedly about providing more art coverage but I have yet to see one comment asking for more music reviews or theater reviews, etc.

Something doesn't jive about this. Could you please really address the issue instead of talking more about this so-called demand for more coverage across the board and lack of print space? O'Sullivan is an asset to our area but he can't do it all himself.

Joyce Jones: Thanks for joining our chat. Our first chat had lots of questions about our "sparse" dance coverage. We have many chatters who come to our chats, fortunately, and considering that this is only our fifth week, I hope the numbers will grow exponentially. Maybe when we get 1,000 questions a week, I'll consider the makeup of the questioners to be statistically significant (sorry, i majored in economics, minored in art).

Our mission is to cover entertainment. That's a lot. We take our mission very seriously and we try to give a representative sample of the best the area has to offer, while being geographically representative and keeping in mind that we have a broad readership. We are not a guide to the galleries. But we do take the galleries seriously and Michael does a great job of covering all of the arts. But, yes, he is one person. (Though I'm working on cloning him.)

You may want to focus on other venues within the paper when pressing for more gallery coverage, perhaps the Arts section or even the Extras, which often can give good space to venues within their area.

What Arts Section? Did she mean the one that was renamed Style section about 15 years ago? (It used to be called the Arts Section) or did she mean the Sunday Arts (which has done about four gallery reviews in the last couple of years - and then most of those were done on one gallery which could not be reviewed by Style due to conflict of interests on the part of the reviewer - and thus the Sunday Arts review "make-up" review.

The next Weekend online session is this coming Friday. You can submit your questions here.