Next Week in New York

Next week is the Affordable Art Fair in New York City, right across the street from the Empire State Building.

The Affordable Art Fair is always a very interesting art fair to me, from the psychological point and from the commercial point of view.

AAFNYC (as it is known, since there are versions of this fair in Europe and Australia as well) is put together by the same people who bring you the Pulse Art Fair, arguably the second best Miami art fair after ABMB.

And I say Miami on purpose to put it geographically in Miami, since there are some top notch European-based art fairs which are clearly higher than Pulse in the art fair food chain. But, when it comes to the first week of December in Miami, after ABMB, Pulse is clearly the number two darling of the art cognoscenti.

AAFNYC has an "affordable" ceiling price for art of $10,000 (used to be $5,000); this tells you a lot about the art world.

This NYC and London versions of this fair have a reputation as really good selling fairs, where galleries do fairly well, in spite of the current economic blues enveloping the world. From my own experience with this NYC-based fair (which goes back to 2005), it has always been a very successful art fair for the galleries that I have been associated with (sorry about the dangling preposition).

And if you review the list of galleries who have exhibited at AAFNYC over the years, you'll discover a lot of blue chip galleries, in fact, some of the same galleries which show at Pulse!

Yet some snooty galleries stay away from it. "I wish they'd change the name of the fair," told me a gallery owner once when I asked her why she didn't do the fair.

Enough said.

And yet, galleries from all over the planet (including a lot of British galleries) will come to New York next week, and a lot of savvy New York art collectors will come to the fair and a lot of artists and art galleries will do very well, since this is the only NYC art fair at this time of the year (among other things).

My work will be there, represented by Norfolk's top independently owned commercial fine arts gallery: Mayer Fine Arts, who will be showcasing work by Sheila Giolitti, John Roth, Alexey Terenin, Judith Peck, Rosemary Feit Covey, Sharon Moody, Rosalie Shane, Joey Manlapaz and Andrew Wodzianski... note that there are several DMV artists in that mix (Peck, Feit Covey, Moody, Manlapax, Wodzianski and I).

If you want some free tickets to the fair, send me an email and I'll make sure that the gallery leaves some free passes at "will call".

Open House

Walking Off the Artistic Cliff

Wednesday, June 1, 7:00 - 9:00pm

Panel Discussion - Walking Off the Artistic Cliff
Making good art requires taking risks. Join Jack Rasmussen, Director of the American University Museum at the Katzen Center, Claudia Rousseau, Ph.D., Professohttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gifr of Art History at Montgomery College and art critic for the Gazette Newspapers and Welmoed Laanstra, Curator of Public Art for Arlington County, and moderator Ellyn Weiss, as they discuss what it means to commit to the new and unknown.

Free. Open to the Public.

Brentwood Arts Exchange @ Gateway Arts Center
3901 Rhode Island Avenue
Brentwood, MD 20722
301-277-2863/ tty. 301-446-6802

Top Ten Artists to Watch

Bruce Helander, Editor-in-Chief of The Art Economist and a White House Fellow of the National Endowment for the Arts picks ten artists to watch for The Huffington Post and picks DMV area artist Hadieh Shafie!

Shafie is represented locally by Morton Fine Art (MFA). Read the article here.

TV Drawings


Above is "Devil Posing with a Mariachi Hat." This is a TV drawing (ink and finger smears) and done while watching a TV show at a tire shop while my van's rear tires were being replaced.

Big Ideas

Opening Reception: Saturday, May 7 - 5:00 - 8:00pm

Public Programs

Saturday, May 14, 12:00 - 5:00pm
Gateway Arts District Open Studios Day

2:00pm - Artist Talk: Sondra N. Arkin, Susan Finsen, & Ellyn Weiss will talk about their art work and walk guests through their exhibition.

4:00pm - Join the Community Spirit: A dialogue with the three artists about their installation, Community Spirit, where you are invited to leave your mark.

Go see this Saturday

Three major DMV artists showing at Reston's gorgeous GRACE.


Place: Greater Reston Arts Center (GRACE)
Date and Time: Saturday April 30, 5-7pm
Address: Greater Reston Arts Center, at the Reston Town Center,12001 Market Street, Suite #103 in the DMV's burb known as Reston.

Challenge for the WaPo's freelancers: make your way out to this exhibit and impress us all.