Patricia Tobacco Forrester (1940 - 2011)

Patricia Tobacco Forrester, one of the DMV's best-known artists, and one with a huge artistic footprint outside the DMV as well (represented by some of the top art galleries in Los Angeles, San Francisco, New York, London, New Mexico, and locally by Addison/Ripley) died yesterday.

Born in 1940 in Massachusetts, Patricia Tobacco Forrester received her B.A. from Smith College (Phi Beta Kappa), where she had gone via a scholarship, in 1962 and her B.F.A. in 1963 and M.F.A. in 1965, both from Yale University. A 1967 Guggenheim Foundation Fellow, she focused her artistic eye with a love for nature that translated into gorgeous and daring watercolors of fauna from a viewpoint that transformed what she saw into grand fields of color.

She painted directly from nature, usually on very large scale sheets of up to 40 x 60inches paper. And she painted all the way until the end of her life, as she became as almost daily visitor to the The U.S. Botanic Garden, on the National Mall across from the U.S. Capitol. Even though Tobacco Forrester's last years were difficult as a result of a seizure that she suffered while visiting Costa Rica (to paint that antion's lush flowers and fauna), she nonetheless and almost daily carried her paints and paper to the Botanic Garden, set up and continued to create art all the way to the end of her immensely creative life.

Her travels, such as the trip to Costa Rica, was part of her routine to travel to exotic locales seeking the beuty of nature, though her home base has been Washington, DC, since 1982.

Prior to that (from the mid-sixties to 1981) she lived in San Francisco and she often returned to the Northern California region to paint the rocky coast of Santa Barbara or the rolling hills of Napa and Sonoma valleys.

Forrester became a member of the National Academy of Design in New York in 1992. Her work has been shown widely in hundreds of museum and gallery exhibitions across the United States and abroad for over thirty-five years.

Her work is in the collection of many major museums, including the Art Institute of Chicago, British Museum, London, Brooklyn Museum, Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, Indianapolis Museum of Art, Library of Congress, National Academy of Design, Oakland Museum, Yale University Art Gallery, the National Museum of Women in the Arts, the Smithsonian American Art Museum, the Corcoran Gallery of Art, and The White House, Executive Office Building in Washington, DC.

Forrester was also the recipient of a 2005 and 2009 Artist Grant from the DC Commission on Arts and Humanities and she is represented locally by Addison/Riple Fine Art in Georgetown, where she had a solo show earlier this year in January.

I've curated her work into a few exhibitions in the last decade or so, most notably at my "Survey of Washington Realists" which I organized about a decade ago and which hung, in a gorgeous salon style manner, work by over a hundred noted Washington realist artists. For that show Patricia submitted one of her gigantic watercolors, which due to its brilliant colors and size, managed to catch a lot of attention in a show full of gems from floor to ceiling.

About her life and her work, she said it best when she observed that "You cannot get closer to a landscape than sitting within it while you are painting it."

Corridor

Corridor, an unusual exhibition showcasing the work of twelve established artists, six from Baltimore and six from Washington, D.C., a show that flips the conventional artist‐curator relationship on its side with enticing results.

The exhibit was conceived by Baltimore‐based artists Bernhard Hildebrandt, Soledad Salamé and Joyce J. Scott working jointly with AMA; the premise being to challenge the artist and curator relationship, allowing for participating artists from each city to select another artist to exhibit in an “artist choose artist” format.

Once all twelve artists were in place, one curator from each city, Irene Hofmann, Director and Chief Curator at SITE, Santa Fe, and former Executive Director of the Contemporary Museum in Baltimore; and Laura Roulet, independent DC curator and art historian, was selected to work with the artists of the opposite city.

Corridor features the work of D.C. artists Martha Jackson Jarvis, Brandon Morse, Phil Nesmith, Michael Platt, Susana Raab, and Jeff Spaulding; and Baltimore artists Oletha DeVane, Bernhard Hildebrandt, John Ruppert, Soledad Salamé, Joyce J. Scott, and Sofia Silva. The selected artists’ work represents a wide range of media and approaches, from sculpture, installation, printmaking and photography to video. The resulting exhibition showcases exceptional examples of some recent trends in art from the region.

Thursday, March 24 at 5:30pm: Gallery talk and exhibition preview
Thursday, March 24 at 6:30pm: Opening reception

On view March 24 ‐ June 26, 2011
Art Museum of the Americas
201 18th Street, NW Washington, DC 20006
Hours: Tuesday‐Sunday 10 AM‐5 PM

Artists' Talk

Last Saturday "Material World" opened at artdc Gallery in Hyattsville. Two artists talks will be held in conjunction with the show: Michael Janis, Sherill Anne Gross and Marie Ringwald on Saturday, March 19, and Matt Langley on Saturday, April 2.

So, this Saturday from 2-3 pm there will be a gallery talk featuring three artists: Sherill Anne Gross, Marie Ringwald and Michael Janis.

The group show, curated by Stephen Boocks, deals with artistic media & how it relates to the artist's work - why does the artist choose that medium to make their artwork? Does the material support the work or does it get in the way? Do all elements work in concert with each other? And how do they achieve their own balance?

A number of familiar DMV artists are featured - from the 100 Washington, DC Artists book: Marie Ringwald & Michael Janis and from the Sondheim Prize shortlist - JT Kirkland and Hamiltonian Projects Fellow Katherine Mann.

Also featured are the very talented paper artist Sherrill Gross and painter Matthew Langley.

Material World
artdc Gallery at The Lustine Center
5710 Baltimore Avenue
Hyattsville, Maryland 20781

Click here to jump to the gallery website.

Congrats!

DMV area artist Hadieh Shafie has been shortlisted for the Victoria & Albert Museum’s prestigious Jameel Prize 2011.

The exhibition of artworks will be on view at the V&A from 21 July to 25 September, 2011 and will then travel to Paris, Riyadh, Damascus, Beiteddine, Sharjah, Istanbul and Casablanca. The winner of The Jameel Prize 2011 will be announced at the V&A on 12 September 2011.

The Jameel Prize is a £25,000 international art prize for contemporary artists and designers inspired by Islamic traditions of craft and design.

Shafie is represented locally by and her art is currently available at MFA: Morton Fine Art in DC.

Congrats!

Wanna go to a DC opening tomorrow?

Here we go again

This time in Vashon Island, Washington (the other Washington):

The owner of the building that houses Two Wall Gallery abruptly removed several works in the gallery's latest show last week, prompting an outcry from the artists, the curator and other members of the Island's arts community.

Louise Rice, who owns the property along with her husband Ray Rice and daughter Wendy Rice, paid a visit to the building with her daughter last Tuesday morning and became upset after viewing "Go Figure: Body of Work," a group show by eight artists that contains numerous nude portraits.

"It was pornography, and I won’t put up with it,” Rice said later from her Burien home. “It’s our hallway, and my husband and daughter and I don’t like it.”

But Jack Strubbe, the show's curator who has mounted exhibits off and on for the past three years in the space, said he was baffled by Rice's actions, especially since the gallery has been the site of many other exhibits with political and other controversial content.

“She has never expressed anything like this in the past, and I’ve had work that I’ve considered much riskier than this,” he said.

Read the whole story here and an excellent report by a local blog with lots of images here.

I hope that I don't have to defend my position when it comes to censorship and art, especially in this great nation, which in the last 20-30 years seems to me, has regressed enormously in that area, and, as an example, public artwork that was once considered acceptable for public display (by that I mean public art such as statues, murals, etc.), specifically nudes, are seldom if ever to be seen in a contemporary public art commission, airport, etc.

The only public art nudes around this town are all the artwork done in the 1800s and as late as the WPA. I suspect that this is pretty much the same for the rest of the nation; certainly for airportism.

But privately owned spaces are a different animals, and as much as I hate what the owners of this space have done to the curator and to the community, they do own the walls and he who owns the walls makes the rules. It is somewhat alike a restaurant owner who puts up a sign that says "no shoes, no service."

OK, OK, that may be an over simplification, but you get my drift. Bottom line: shame on the owners of this building, but as much as I hate it, they do own the building, and they do offer the two walls (for free) to local artists and curators and thus they do have a right to be troglodytes.

The response should be a boycott of the two walls: no more art.

Survival Guide for Artists and Arts Organizations

On Tuesday, March 29th @ 7pm, Adam Natale, Director of Partnerships & Business Development at Fractured Atlas, will speak about key services, programs, and resources that can help artists with the business side of their art -- the "unsexy" side that artists generally do not like thinking about, but allow them to focus more easily on the creation of their art, while also maintaining the infrastructure of their "arts business."

To start, Adam will introduce the services offered through Fractured Atlas, a national, nonprofit arts organization that provides fund raising, education/professional development, insurance, and other services to both performing and visual artists. Adam will then talk about other local, state and national organizations that offer similar resources on arts advocacy/civic engagement, fundraising, jobs in the arts and arts administration, tips on grant writing, social media/new technology, networking, emerging arts leaders, and general career and resume guidance. They are looking forward to a lively Q & A!

RSVP to jackie@hamiltoniangallery.com

Hamiltonian Gallery
1353 U Street, NW
Washington, DC 20010
202.332.1116