Art Underground is coming to Crystal City!

I can tell that this is gonna be big!

Art Underground will celebrate its launch on Saturday, March 16 with an open house and free mega paint-off hosted by ArtJamz from 6pm – 10pm at 2100 Crystal Drive. This event will be an energetic opportunity for the public to get a taste of the newest arts and cultural destination in the area with tours of brand new artist studios (Studios Underground) the Gallery Underground curated by the Arlington Artists Alliance, music, beverages, and snacks. Stop by and you can also catch Synetic’s latest installment of its famous silent Shakespeare series, The Tempest, at 8 PM (visit www.synetictheater.org for tickets).

The Crystal City Business Improvement District (BID), in partnership with Vornado/Charles E. Smith and the Arlington Artists Alliance (AAA), is transforming five blocks of Crystal City’s interior retail space into a vibrant arts and cultural destination with galleries, studios, interactive exhibits and activities, performance and classroom spaces, and a host of special events. This effort will create a powerful new incubator for the arts that will further activate and support Crystal City businesses and retail by attracting additional exposure, visitation, business and opportunities.

Art Underground is a collection of arts programming that will initially include:

• Studios Underground: an outlet for local artists to create, practice and showcase their talents while providing an engaging cultural experience for area residents, employees, visitors and guests.
• Gallery Underground (formerly the Northern Virginia Art Center): a showcase of original artwork by regional artists with monthly rotating exhibits to excite the imagination, stimulate creativity, and encourage repeat visitation.
• FotoWalk Underground: in partnership with FotoDC, FotoWalk is a yearlong, 1000-foot, 150-image gallery that changes every six months.
• Synetic Theater: the premier American physical theater, fusing dynamic art forms – such as text, drama, movement, acrobatics, dance and music.
• Special Events: Art Underground will host and present ongoing activities and events, including monthly ArtJamz sessions.

Details here.

Boots...

Seems like every other woman in New York is wearing those tall hooker boots - you know, the kind that Julia Roberts' character wears in Pretty Woman?

I'm pretty sure that I've never seen anyone in the DMV wear boots like these...

Just sayin'

Scope about to start...

It's all up and running and the fair opens in half an hour for the VIPs and press... just made a quick round of the fair and Contemporary Wing from DC and Grimaldis from Baltimore are looking good. Here are some shots of the booth and also the wall in front of me, where all through the fair I'm gonna be looking at a skinny nude Swiss woman smoking a cigarette - I understand from the staff at Lausanne's Dubner Moderne that she's a banker.

View of Alida Anderson Art Projects at SCOPE NY

View of Alida Anderson Art Projects at SCOPE NY

Ivan Simeon "Are you Beautiful"

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One of the great joint projects of painters and bankers—the modern art market—was also an invention of the Gilded Age. What made the art market as we know it possible, starting in the middle of the nineteenth century, was the availability of cash.

Banks and the art market.... naaah! Read it here.

Coolest "somewhat old" building on the planet

The Joker is in Gotham again...

"Self Portrait as The Joker"
Andrew Wodzianski
28 x 20
Oil on Canvas

Will be at Booth J09 at SCOPE NEW YORK starting tomorrow as part of the "Superheroes" curated exhibition...

Congrats!

To super hard working DMV area artist Judith Peck, who just won the Juror's choice award from the (Louisiana) Masur Museum's juried competition from George T.M. Shackelford.

Peck is an artists' artist - by that I mean that Judy (whose work I love and have taken to art fairs many times) is admired by nearly every artist who is familiar with it.... she has exhibited widely around the US and her work has been featured multiple times in art magazines and newspaper reviews.

Among these, most recently in 2012 alone her work has been featured in The Artists’ Magazine, Combustus 13, Poets and Artists, The Birmingham Arts Journal and the book “Bourgeon, Fifty Artists Write About Their Work”, published by Day 8 Publishers.

This hard working and widely exhibited artist participated in eight exhibitions in 2012 alone, including a solo show at the Hoyt Institute for the Arts in New Castle, PA and an invitational show at the Georgia Museum of Art. 

And she works in one of the most difficult art niches that exist - nearly always doing portraits. That is one hard science... the subtle ability to not only capture someone's likeness, but also deliver someone's psychological and non kinetic make-up -- that's what makes Peck tick and cross over from a super gifted technical artist into that super rare upper artmosphere of the great portraitists of our time.

She sells well too... and as any art dealer can tell you, selling someone else portrait's is one of the hardest things to do on planet Artdealer... but collectors just fall in love with Peck's ability to "deliver" someone; not just an image of that person.

Peck’s work has also been exhibited widely in multiple art fairs, including the Aqua Art Fair in Miami Beach, and the Affordable Art Fair in New York and Red Dot in Miami.

Go Judith!