Curioser and curioser...

Someone just pointed out to me that this earlier blog post in the City Paper about the 100 Washington Artists book has so far drawn 49 comments. But what is very curious is that it seems that someone has caught the key "negative" poster(s) as being a sockpuppet!

It is also very curious to read the chain of comments as the various flamers are made up and subsequently destroyed by the other commenters. But someone is really trying hard to make a good story smell fishy here, and the comments have been strangely quiet since the sockpuppet got called out.

Check this online drama here.

Who would have thought that a book still to be published could have stirred so much interest, debate and chicanery.

At 87FLORIDA

Ceci Cole McInturff, hard-working and talented owner of 87FLORIDA has put together a sculpture show to coincide with the Bloomingdale Artwalk on August 7th. The venue is located at the intersection of Florida Avenue and First Street NW, caddy corner to the Big Bear Cafe in DC.

Saturday, August 7th, 12-4 during the Bloomingdale Artwalk (sponsored by the Pinkline Project and North Capitol Main Street). The show is titled "Mafia Swimwear and Other Narrative Objects" and the participating artists are:

Cindy Milans-Brown
Andrew Christenberry
Lisa Dillin
Dianne Stermann
John Simpkins-Camp
Ceci Cole McInturff

There's also a wall exhibit titled "White Works" by Lisa K. Rosenstein. There will be a sneak preview of new work by Afaf Zurayk's "Drawn Poems." Live Music by Thad Wilson from 1-4 and a special outdoor showing of a kinetic sculpture, "Eureka" by the late Phyliss Mark whose work is in the Hirshhorn and several outdoor venues in New York City.

Opportunity for DMV Artists

Deadline: October 30, 2010

The BlackRock Center for the Arts has a huge gorgeous gallery space and their call for artists for the 2011 art season is now up.

The 2011 Call to Artists is open to all artists residing in Maryland, Virginia, and Washington, DC over the age of 18 for original artwork only. This call will cover exhibits in the gallery from October 2011 through August 2012. An exhibit may include on applicant or a combination of applicants, based on the judgement of jurors. The jury panel is comprised of Kathleen Moran, Jack Rasmussen and yours truly.

Details here.

When facts get in the way

There are so many disturbing issues with Kriston Capps snarky report on my 100 Washington Artists book that I don't know where to start other than by thanking the CP for giving this book, which is yet to be published, some advance publicity. As Warhol once said, "publicity, even bad publicity is better than no publicity." You can read that article here.

If you follow the DMV art scene, then you know that Capps' past includes some journalistic issues, and so when he expressed interest in doing a piece for the CP, I was fully prepared for the worst. I knew in advance that the piece would try to find the negative angle to the story, the "what's my angle?" the "what's in it for Campello?." This is because unfortunately the formation of some people is so ethically flawed, that they suspect all those around them as being like them.

That I'm doing these series of books because I think it would be good for the DC art scene must be a lie. There's got to be something wrong here; if not they can try to make something up or selectively highlight some issues while ignoring the ones which damage the focus that they're trying to achieve: a negative portrayal.

The first hint is the title: The C List: Will Lenny Campello’s 100 Washington Artists Serve Its Subjects or Its Author? The seed has been planted for "there's something smelly here."

By paragraph four he's already referring to my "ethical tics." The second negative seed has been planted.

Later he lists artists with whom I've had/have a commercial relationship and used to show at the Fraser Gallery, in the process he gets one name wrong but drops an end of sentence that implies that many others in the 100 list are artists that we represented at Fraser. This is a spectacular stretch of his imagination, but designed to leave the impression that I've stacked the list with Fraser Gallery artists. Technically, as of today, there are three artists out of the 100 that are represented by the Fraser Gallery today.

But what is even more shoddy journalism is that Capps knew well that I had put some ethical safety valves in the book to cover the ethical angle of artists with whom I've had or have a commercial relationship. The key one is that every artist in the book who is represented by a gallery or dealer is referred back to that gallery or dealer. In the case of artists associated with me, every single contact points back to another dealer who represents that artist. Not a single artist in this book is associated in the book with me. In fact, if any "business" is to be derived from this book, I am sending the business to everyone but me. Capps knows this, but conveniently avoids discussing that. The reason is simple: it demolishes his implied undercurrent about my ethical transgressions in having artists in the book that I'm associated with.

Then he errs and makes up a quote that I never said in the context that he puts it in the article. The "I have zero commercial relationship with them" quote was in the context of zero commercial relationship with the Fraser Gallery and the artists that they represent or represented when I was a co-owner. I then qualified that by listing for Kriston the artists that I do currently have a commercial relationship with, but instead of Capps writing: "I have zero commercial relationship with them, except for..." he starts a new paragraph with: "That’s not wholly true" and details facts that I told him about my current dealer relationships and my online art dealer enterprise (Alida Anderson Art Projects, which I've discussed here many times), but he writes it as if he "discovered" this and has caught me in a lie.

He then writes that "Through Alida Anderson Art Projects, he has taken work by Janis and Tate to a number of art fairs." It was me who told him about the art fairs, but I also told him that the last time that I took those guys to an art fair under Alida Anderson Art Projects was in 2008 and explained my current business relationships with them and others. This of course, is never mentioned. It would destroy his argument.

He does shoot himself in the foot by later acknowledging that I did tell him that I have current commercial interests in some artists. So the issue here is a quote which put out of place, as he does, serves a purpose best suited to sickening Republican political blogs that publish out-of-context video scenes or some of the garbage-spewing misinformation talking heads of MSNBC. Whereas those extreme right and extreme left wingers are rabid junkyard dogs for their extreme political dogmas, and their goal is to divide us, I am not sure what the goal of this Capps article is, other than to try to make something that I hope will be good for the DC art scene into a smelly conspiracy for me to gain... what?

He strangles the truth once more when he refers to the artists that I write about and "admire" in this blog. He writes: "As much can be ascertained from his blog, D.C. Art News, where he has written for years about artists he admires (and represents)."

What's the condemnation you ask?

That all artists that I write about and admire are only those that I represent. That is of course, completely wrong, and in fact probably numerically the opposite of the truth. But don't let facts get in the way... even though people like Amy Lin and many others, of whom I have gushed about in the past in my blog (get it, my blog) are represented by other galleries and have never been represented by me. But that little poison pill is now also a seed dropped in the article: "In Campello's blog he only gushes about artists that he represents." A damned lie.

See what the undercurrent here is?

Words count and are chosen for a purpose. Capps writes that "Not every Washington-based artist jumped at the opportunity. Artists Jim Sanborn and Sam Gilliam refused to participate." When we discussed this, I told him that Gilliam and Sanborn had "declined" to be in the book, and explained the reasons given to me as to why they didn't want to be in the book - both have private commercial flavors of other issues - but Capps instead uses the word "refused" with the implication offering a harsher reason for them not being in the book.

He then takes a swipe at the publisher, picking some weird titles from a selection of 100s of art books that this respected publisher has offered in the 50-plus years that they've been publishing art books. You see? everyone gets a little dose of negativity here.

At the end he almost closes with: "For this unflagging fanboy of Capital City artists, the fight for visibility trumps profit, or interests, or ethics." Even the snarky choice of words (I'm now a "fanboy") are picked to diminish and reduce and put me into "my place" - how dare this crab try to take 100 crabs out of the basket?

As a man I am nobody's "boy" of anything, and in fact I find this adjective not only offensive and insulting, but also insensitive in this era when we're so well aware of the sins of the past. Because he has failed to find the facts to back up a flawed and dishonest argument questioning my ethics, he attempts to reduce me at the end to a "boy."

And in the end what comes out is a snarky, dishonest, pick-out-of-context art scribe best suited for political blog poison-writing than someone with a pulpit to write about the Washington, DC art scene for anyone, much less the same paper which let him go earlier for whatever reasons.

And I'm much more of an ethical man, not boy, than he'll ever be.

And now that I'm finished with volume one, time to start volume two.

Ideas that make sense

Whatever is left out of ranking, jurying, selection, among the unnoticed strengths of Washington artists, is probably of greater interest to anyone attuned to risk-taking artists, the 'outliers' who actually define "what's going on," the "transgressors," who are pushing art. A bimodal curve, or 'distribution' lies within an assured 67% of a normal distribution. You are dealing with the norms expresssed in a highly politicized area. Rather than continuing to pursue a range that will not challenge the arts or challenge any other city, you might hesitate, for once, and think about a book that values the marginal, the peripheral, the seekers and transgressors to any book 'already written' and highly predictable.

That was an anonymous comment left in my earlier post about lists. And the Lenster thinks that this is a fucking brilliant idea and one that I should have thought of myself.

"Challenge the arts or challenge other cities" is the key and most brilliant part of this terrific suggestion. And while this suggestion makes things 1000% harder (and putting together this first volume was incredibly hard and took at least 10 times more time than I had originally planned for (thus my lack of really decent posting for the last few months), it also makes this future book a true one man's informed perspective on what he (he being me) thinks is the folks who are "pushing art."

Consider it done sir or madam!

And if I may, in reviewing the (much debated) list for the first volume, I see several artists, quite a few in fact, whose artwork is already doing what Anon. suggests: the 'outliers' who actually define "what's going on," the "transgressors," who are pushing art.

Suggestions welcomed. And O yeah... power just came back.

Powerless

No electricity since Sunday, cell phone almost dead, many trees down in the Soviet Socialist Republic of Montgomery, no Internet, cough, cough...

Another list

And now that I am essentially finished with 100 Washington Artists, one of the main lessons learned is that the futile job of putting together a "fair" list of 100 artists in such an area so full of talent and creativity is full of landmines.

Like I told you readers when I first announced the book: I was about to make 100 friends and piss off a few thousand artists.

Since announcing the list a while back, I've recognized that I probably fucked up the list by around 5-6 artists who should have been there, but are not. I take the blame for that, which is a nice way of saying that the folks who unofficially helped me to put the list together... ahhh... also never mentioned those artists.

But the flood of emails (and even some phone calls) telling me how I should have had this artist or that artist in the list has identified a significant number of blue chip artists that will ensure that volume two of the book series is not the "second 100 DC artists" - In an odd way, by the time I am done with volume two, I think that the danger of having a tiered set of artists (where the first volume is the "best" 100 and the second volume the "second best 100") will be minimized significantly.

Now I know about some really big name artists who live in the DMV but for whatever reason don't show here and are truly blue chip international artists. Now I know about at least another dozen brilliant artists who are second to none in the DC area.

So I've got a good start to the list for volume two; thanks to all of you.

Because I have been and am an art dealer, in compiling the first list I had to deal with the issue of including artists in the list with whom I've had/have a dealer relationship now, in the past and perhaps even in the future (if I ever get to open an art gallery again). In doing list one, I thought that it would be grossly unfair to exclude them from the list, because then the list would be truly flawed and it would be a huge hole in anyone's list and immensely unfair to the artists in question. But I was attentive and harder on some of the candidates that fit that bill, and I'd say that only a tiny percentage of the final list represents that category, and yet I can think about another half a dozen artists who could have been in the first list and will now be in the second volume.

Like I told John Anderson in the Pink Line interview, nepotism is part of making any list and I challenge anyone in the DMV who fantasizes about doing an objective list of any sort. I addressed that in the first volume by putting a disclaimer in the introduction which identifies the issue. Also, every single artist in the list has a website listed as a contact point. Where an artist is represented by a gallery, the contact info is for that gallery. For unrepresented artists, the contact info is the artist's own website. Not a single contact info for a single artist points back to me. I stress this here, because the usual cowardly anonymous flame throwing commenting about me "pumping my bank account" has already started in the comments section of the CP blog post about my list. Check that out here.

And in the end, it is my list, and everyone hates making lists, but I was the one who busted his ass with 100s of hours in the preparation of this volume, which I believe is great start to document 300 or so deserving artists in the cultural tapestry of the DMV.

The list for volume two has started; suggestions welcomed.