Memorial Day

Have a grand Memorial Day!

The DC Art card deck

Art in Hand™ is an arts publisher who was looking to bring their City Project Decks of cards to the city of Washington, DC.

They selected 54 artists who are currently living and working in the Washington, DC area to participate in their DC City Project Deck, which has just been published.

The Washington, DC Project is a deck of fully functional playing cards where each individual card in the deck (plus 2 jokers) is rendered in the typical style of the contributing artist. The project creates widespread exposure for participating artists while producing a unique, entertaining, functional and green product for the city of Washington, DC.

Check out the project and all the cards and associated artwork here.

The cards are available at many stores locally and also at most local museum stores, or you can order them online here.

My favorite card?

Judith Peck gets a winning hand with her gorgeous Queen of Spades.

You can buy Judith's painting here.

Just keeps on getting worse and worse...

On Thursday, Cuban pro-democracy activist Caridad Caballero was arrested by the Castro regime's Workers Paradise's police.

She has not been heard from since then and her whereabouts remain unknown.

Caballero, a member of the Ladies in White support group ("Damas de Apoyo"), was arrested for participating in a peaceful protest against the Castro regime.

Her family has been frantically searching for her in all known police and state security operation centers, but they refuse to reveal any information about her well-being or whereabouts.

As you can see from the video clip below of a previous arrest (in March 2011) of Caballero, the Castro regime is not shy about using repressive force against her and her family.

Campello at auction

A British antique art dealer has one of my drawings from eleven years ago up for auction. It starts at 195 pounds, so it's a great deal!


Check it out and bid on it here. Hurry! Only 14 hours left!

Planning Process

Just got the news that I've been selected by Helen Allen (former creator and Executive Director of PULSE Art Fairs; former Executive Director of Ramsay Art Fairs; and current partner for the upcoming (e)merge art fair in Washington, DC) to exhibit at the Arlington Art Center's "Planning Process" exhibition.

More later on what I'll be doing, but from the prospectus:

PLANNING PROCESS is a juried drawing show with a difference: All of the drawings selected for inclusion must be studies created in preparation for finished artworks. Winning studies will be shown alongside finished pieces in a variety of media: A sculptor or a painter could show sketches alongside finished objects . . . a video artist could show storyboards alongside video . . . an installation artists could show plans alongside photos documenting a finished project—or a recreation of that project onsite.

O'Sullivan on the Washington Glass School

No secret here that I am a HUGE fanboy of what the WGS and what many other DMV area glass artist have done to make the DMV one of the leading contemporary art glass centers on this planet (when are our "local" art museums going to "discover" this?)

And in reviewing "The Washington Glass School: The First 10 Years" , now on display at Long View Gallery in the District, the senior Washington Post visual arts critic, Michael O'Sullivan, eloquently interprets just what makes this substrate (glass) so special and yet so different.

On the one hand, glass is pretty. It's hard not to like the way it looks: the luminous color, the way it plays with light. On the other hand, maybe glass is only pretty. How do we know that the beauty is also capable of brains?

The rest of the show is proof that it is.

Read the O'Sullivan review here.

Diana Nyad, my Goddess of the day!

Diana Nyad, at age 61, prepares for second attempt to swim from Cuba to Key West

If the brutal and bloody and racist Cuban dictatorship would allow it, Nyad would be swimming in the wake of a few thousand Cubans attempting the same feat!

But seriously folks: WOW!

Read the WaPo article here.