Airborne

Heading to San Francisco for the weekend as the Professor has two papers to present at a conference there and I am hand-delivering a major video piece to one of the top video collectors in the world.

Alchemical Vessels Opens Tonight!

Join me for this exclusive benefit event at the Joan Hisaoka Healing Arts Gallery and add one of the 125 Alchemical Vessels works to your own collection! Opening is tonight - Friday from 7-9 PM.

This unique exhibition will feature the work of 125 artists, hand-selected by 16 invited curators (including yours truly) , to engage in a community dialogue on healing and transformation through the arts. Each artist will transform the ceramic bowl by means of his or her own personal aesthetic and medium, drawing inspiration from the bowl as a place of holding, open community, a circle of care, sacred space, nourishment, and even the alchemical vessel.  

100% of the ticket sale proceeds will go to support Smith Center’s life-enhancing work and programs for people living with and recovering from cancer.

Ticket information:

- Benefit tickets $125: 125 Benefit tickets will be sold, and each ticket holder at this level will be given the opportunity to select a piece of art. Priority will be given by the order in which the tickets were purchased—so the first to buy a ticket will be awarded first pick of the 125 works, and so on. All 125 works will remain in the show until after the closing of the exhibition on June 7, at which time the new owners can pick them up.

- Supporter ticket: $50: This price level is good for entrance to the Benefit only. Ticket holders at this level do not get to keep a piece of art.

If you have trouble purchasing tickets, please call 202.483.8600 or email them at outreach@smithcenter.org. 

See the Facebook Event for more photos from the Artists!

Benefit attendees will also be invited to the Artists' Closing Reception for Alchemical Vessels on June 7, 2013!

My donation to this event is below. I debated what to create, and in the end, I gessoed the bowl and once again delivered the visage of the most transformative artist that I know: Frida Kahlo.

The Secret Substance of Frida Kahlo
Charcoal, conte and graphite on gessoed ceramic

Seldom has human history seen an artist so transformed by destiny, events and the agony of constant pain as Frida Kahlo. When Kahlo's young body was nearly destroyed and re-arranged by a horrible accident in her youth, where the young art student was impaled on a handrail that pierced her vagina and emerged through her chest, her agony transformed her into another being who then proceeded to gift onto the world some of the most spectacular portraits of pain that we've ever seen.

The intense brutality of pain transformed Kahlo with the same intensity that a thermonuclear reaction transforms its surroundings. She became a being submerged in constant pain for the rest of her life, both physical (she underwent dozens of surgeries) and mental (she experienced many miscarriages and was never able to have a child). And that transformation was the catalyst the propelled her to paint her own image as a mirror of the pain in her life, and in the process to become one of history’s great artists.

In the process, Kahlo transformed all of us, as a little bit of her artistic alchemic powers infect all of us who become hypnotized by her portraits; the power of her gaze, the eloquence of her eye brows and the intensity of her face, all leave a little bit of the secret substance that changes artistic matter from the mundane to an aspiration to the sublime.

Next month...

Bethesda Fine Arts Festival - May 11 & 12

Saturday, May 11, 10am - 6pm

Sunday, May 12,  10am - 5pm

130 artists from throughout the United States and Canada will converge in Bethesda's  Woodmont Triangle for the Bethesda Fine Arts Festival. Along with booths of fine art and fine craft, the festival will feature live musical, great eats from Bethesda restaurants and a children's activity area. 

Join them for a unique shopping experience in downtown Bethesda. Browse jewelry, furniture, painting, photography, sculpture and more. 

Admission to the festival is free and free parking is available in the public parking garage on Auburn Avenue. This event is held rain or shine.

More info.

Give a kid a camera and...

The below are Little June's first photographic experiments, which are generally focused (cough, cough) on his beloved Cars characters...

These are all available in a limited signed and numbered edition of five. All circa 2013... cough, cough.

One of sixteen vestal virgins who were leaving for the coast

We skipped the light fandango
Turned cartwheels 'cross the floor
I was feeling kinda seasick
But the crowd called out for more
The room was humming harder
As the ceiling flew away
When we called out for another drink
And the waiter brought a tray

And so it was that later
As the miller told his tale
That her face, at first just ghostly,
Turned a whiter shade of pale

She said, "There is no reason
And the truth is plain to see."
But I wandered through my playing cards
And they would not let her be
One of sixteen vestal virgins
Who were leaving for the coast
And although my eyes were open wide
They might have just as well been closed

And so it was that later
As the miller told his tale
That her face, at first just ghostly,
Turned a whiter shade of pale

She said, "I'm here on a shore leave,"
Though we were miles at sea.
I pointed out this detail
And forced her to agree,
Saying, "You must be the mermaid
Who took King Neptune for a ride."
And she smiled at me so sweetly
That my anger straightway died.

And so it was that later
As the miller told his tale
That her face, at first just ghostly,
Turned a whiter shade of pale

If music be the food of love
Then laughter is it's queen
And likewise if behind is in front
Then dirt in truth is clean
My mouth by then like cardboard
Seemed to slip straight through my head
So we crash-dived straightway quickly
And attacked the ocean bed

And so it was that later
As the miller told his tale
That her face, at first just ghostly,
Turned a whiter shade of pale

-- Keith Reid & Gary Brooker

Landlord orders gallery to partially cover nude photo

"A nude model who used a topless tour to convince cops not to shut down a racy photo exhibit at a Lower East Side gallery has been forced to cover up after the landlord threatened to terminate the gallery’s lease.

On the owner’s orders, the operators of the ROX Gallery have put a caution sign over a lurid picture hanging in their Delancey Street window that shows model Natalie White masturbating...

... None of the other two dozen works inside the gallery has been censored, and White has not been banned from performing the live masturbation shows that are an occasional part of her act."

Initial details here and a really good report by the HuffPost's very fair Priscilla Frank (who studied Rhetoric of Narrative and Image at UC Berkeley and has written for art galleries in California and New York, as well as being the editor of the Berkeley Poetry Review and a sex columnist for the Daily Californian) is here... (Prissie call me!).

Brilliant publicity stunt on the part of the gallery or by the even more publicity-brilliant Natalie White (channeling Vito Acconci or maybe Andrea Fraser)... whatever works!

I'd like to see her invited to perform at (e)merge and see how the DMV reacts to it! They might shut down the whole fair!

Natalie!!! You're performing in the wrong place! If you want to really get arrested for simply showing your body... DO (e)merge!!!!  ......  (and the pun is sooooooo intended!).

Like mother, like son

We did a 5K race this weekend... cough, cough... 

I actually did the "One Mile Fun Run" before the actual race... together with Anderson, who in spite of a 3-5 minute all stop protest in the middle of the race about being ordered to take his hands out of his pockets while he ran, managed to finish the one mile in less than 20 minutes.

It's all about genetics folks... not mine!

His mom, Doctor Alida The A, came in second overall, while still noting that she had a "slow race because it was so freaking cold!"