Bethesda gallery renamed

Today I received a press release announcing "Waverly Street Gallery formerly Creative Partners Gallery's" Holiday Show (a multi media show featuring the work of Gallery Artists) from December 4, 2007 through January 5, 2008, with an opening reception on Friday December 7, 6-9 pm.

What took me a little bit by surprise was the fact that Creative Partners had renamed itself. Their new website (which as of this AM does not work for some reason is www.waverlystreetgallery.org).

Since I am in a "do as I say, not as I do," mood - and actually thinking about re-naming Mid Atlantic Art News to something more generic in case I spread my wings to New Mexico in the future - this question will sound a little hypocritical.

Why do galleries with a long established presence rename themselves?

Creative Partners is one of the Greater DC area's top cooperative galleries, which means that it is an artist-run, artist-owned gallery, where all members share all of the gallery's expense, and like many of the co-ops around the DC area, and other metropolitan areas, they have been around for a ton of years.

So they have name recognition, which in the gallery world is a good thing.

And thus the question: why change the name?

Creative Partners is the second area gallery to do this recently. Factory Photoworks renamed itself Multiple Exposures Gallery a couple of years ago. Like Creative Partners, Multiple Exposures, nee Factory Photoworks, has been around for decades, and showcases some of the best photography in the region at very affordable prices.

I could call Creative Partners and ask them the question. But it is more interesting to elaborate and guess on a generic reason why an established gallery would change their name.

In the case of a cooperative, I think that the reason may be simply to begin the process to re-invent itself; to attempt to establish a new presence, by disassociating somewhat with the past.

I don't think that changing names is necessary for this; in fact, I think it may hurt the cause (if that's the cause). It is spectacularly hard to do a global change for any and all presences where the "old name" exists: directories, press lists, websites, online resumes, roledexes, etc. Unless you are careful and do it right, you can wipe out an entire digital footprint with a name (and website) change.

I am a big fan and supporter of cooperative galleries. Together with independently owned commercial fine arts galleries, non-profit galleries, university galleries, museum galleries, and alternative art spaces, they make up the visual arts tapestry of a city or region.

All galleries everywhere, including fabled places like New York and LA, struggle to survive and sell work in order to pay the artists, pay rent, pay for publicity, pay for openings, pay for electricity, pay for the plumber the 2-3 times a year that somebody flushes a sanitary napkin (or one of those indestructible hand towels) down the toilet at an opening and clogs the pipes, pay for websites, etc.

Selling art is not an easy task for the most adept of galleries and gallerists. The tales of sold out shows and shows that sell out before the openings are sometimes true, but also sometimes exaggerated as a publicity stunt. I know for a fact of a former DC area gallery (no longer around) that used that storytelling line to create this "sold out" aura around the gallery that was fabricated most of the times.

Selling art in the Greater DC region is a especially difficult task, and a hard one to understand. Selling art in the Philadelphia area appears to be just as difficult, if not more, than the DC region. Both areas have more than their share of very, very wealthy people.

A lots of upper income bracket people as well. The estimated median household income for Bethesda, Maryland (where Creative Partners is located) was around $114,000 two years ago, and the median house or condo in Bethesda is around $850,000. By the way, it's $150K and $950K in nearby Potomac.

And you can research your head off and find out that generally speaking, the Greater DC area is making more money than most of the rest of the country.

But cracking the code and getting people to actually buy a piece of original artwork is a very difficult process, and unfortunately for the galleries and for artists, they only control a small part of it.

The most difficult part is getting people to actually know that there are galleries, and openings, etc. Getting the potential buyer to the gallery, or aware of the gallery or artist, is the key, and of course the most difficult part.

And because most galleries can't afford the rents right on the main commercial streets (say M Street in Georgetown, or Bethesda Avenue in Bethesda), they're usually found in clusters just off the main drags (like Canal Square in Georgetown, R Street in Dupont Circle, or to the side of East-West Highway in Bethesda, like Creative Partners - on Waverly Street I assume). And galleries, hungry for low rents and bigger spaces, are usually the first ones that begin to revitalize a sketchy neighborhood, such as the former Fusebox Gallery did for 14th Street (for galleries anyway) and Conner Contemporary is doing for the entire business community in their new location. And let's not forget that a few decades ago, a handful of artists took an abandoned building in boarded-up Old Town Alexandria, removed forty truckloads of garbage from the building, refurbished it and created the Torpedo Factory and kindled the birth of a new tony neighborhood and destination.

That means that you usually do not have the luxury of "walk-in" traffic of people walking around the nice shops, boutiques, restaurants that line up high end commercial streets like Bethesda Avenue or M Street, etc.

And the stores that sell pretty wall decor pieces on those high rent streets do gang buster business. In them you find every variation of the "painter of light" theme, or the art of rock stars (dead or alive), or TV celebrities artwork, or perhaps Russian kids who paint like Picasso (and have since grown up).

And they sell all of the above for serious money.

The kind of money that could buy serious art, not wall decor.

And the buyers think that they are buying serious artwork.

And then they drop another grand for a rococo frame to go with the wall decor.

And from my own personal experience, every once in a while, a handful of times in a gallery's lifetime, one of those buyers "discovers" a real gallery and then a collector is born, if the gallery is good enough to educate and open the person's eyes.

Why are these would-be collectors so hard to bring in from the dark side? A while back I submitted this thesis:

Because they were not exposed to art in their upbringing. Not because their parents were bad, uncultured people, but because their parents were hard-working stiffs who worried about the rent, the electric bill, the food bill and paying for junior's college so that junior could get a Computer Science degree and go on and invent AOL.

And in college, junior probably was not exposed to art other than the two or three peripheral courses that he needed to get his electives; certainly not to buying art, or even aware that art was for sale.

And then junior works hard and becomes a millionaire, and now has disposable income out the yingyang, and looks around for expensive toys, because as George Carlin is fond of saying, we all love to collect "stuff."

And he sees ads for expensive cars, expensive furniture, expensive cigars, and he reads tons of reviews for the latest trendy restaurants, etc. But he's never really made aware that there's also art out there, for our local media has a spectacular sense of apathy towards the visual arts in our area. The Washington Post is the only major American newspaper that has a freelancer deliver around 25 reviews a year to cover an entire year of DC area gallery shows, and they allow their chief art critic to review only museum shows. Very little attention is placed upon our art galleries by the newspapers, certainly not commensurate with the amount of print space that they give theatre, music, dance, fashion, etc.

So junior doesn't know that the DC area has a really good and creative visual arts scene.

Thus when junior takes a stroll through the city's main shopping streets, he doesn't know about the side streets where the galleries are, but sees the stores passing for art galleries that sell the pretty, expensive "pictures," and then junior assumes that this "stuff" is art.

And he drops a ton of money for a pretty "picture." It happens all the time, otherwise these stores would go out of business.

But instead it is the art galleries that go out of business: Veerhoff (after 125 years), Numark, eklektikos, Fusebox.

Every once in a while, junior - usually by accident - discovers a reputable art gallery, and sometimes a real collector is then born. It has happened to me, as a dealer, many, many times. But for every one of those, thousands of others remain on the dark side, or worse still, think that they have to go to New York to find contemporary art.

The apathy shown by the media towards art galleries and visual artists is multiplied by a thousand if you happen to be a cooperative gallery.

Art critics, writers who write about art, art bloggers, and other assorted scribes in the art scene tend to ignore cooperative galleries and their artist members. It is immensely unfair and short-sighted, and reflects an interesting sort of neo-connish tendency in an otherwise very liberal crowd. Like the same group's general dislike and distrust of any artist who is liked by the public in general; or public art that the public likes. It's an interesting paradox that has always intrigued me.

I've never been a member of a coop gallery, but have juried shows for coop galleries many, many times, and intimately know artists who have and are members of cooperatives. And thus I have some insight into the inner workings of galleries such as Creative Partners is.

Like I said, running an art gallery is not an easy task - as Washington Post Arts editor John Pancake once told me, it is a "heroic act."

Running a gallery by committee, as coops by default are run (and non-profits are supposed to be run), must be the task from art hell. And like any committee running anything, 10% of the people usually end up doing 90% of the work.

It's a paradox of its own. The same strength (equitable distribution of expenses among artist members) that makes a coop nearly invincible to the economic forces that makes opening an art gallery the second riskiest business proposition in the nation (restaurants are first), is its most visible weakness (direction by committee).

Trying to convince 20 or 30 voting members to agree on what colors to paint the gallery walls must rank up there with trying to get any Presidential candidate to answer a "yes or no" question with a "yes" or "no."

Getting the talented bunch over at Creative Partners to change names to Waverly Street Gallery, or the amazing photographers at Multiple Exposures, nee Factory Photoworks, must have been a herculean task.

And if the name change main reason is to set a new presence and a new footprint and a new direction for the gallery, and hopefully generate more noise (reviews in newspapers, blogs, etc.) and more sales, then there's a whole complex set of other issues that would need to be addressed. Issues too long and exhausting to list here, but important for a gallery re-inventing itself. Issues such as preserving online presence, learning how to improve art sales, visualizing and implementing a "new" physical presence, distributing the workload with specific goals, website presence and organization, selling avenues to explore, aggressive press presence, display, etc.

Otherwise, it would be the same as when Esso renamed itself Exxon: new name but same old gas.

GASP at Artists in Middleburg

 

Earlier today I stopped at the Artists in Middleburg art gallery in Middleburg, Virginia (which is one of the nicest and cutest little towns less than an hour's drive from the DMV.

The Artists in Middleburg (AiM) is "a 501c3 nonprofit organization. Based out of a small art gallery in Middleburg, AiM hosts themed exhibitions each month for local artists as well as offers art classes, from Plein Air experiences to sculpting instruction."

On exhibition was GASP (GREAT ART SMALL PRICES), which features artwork under $500 and which runs through January 10, 2021.  This is a terrific show, loaded with exceptional art and clearly worth the short drive to Middleburg between now and Christmas if you're looking for that most super special of gifts: original art!

The show was juried - not sure who the juror was, but as readers of my writing know by now, I love to not only tell you who the prizewinners were, but also who I'd would have given the prizes to... this is always a healthy exercise (in my opinion anyway), as it is a great example of a Campellification of that well-established art saying: "art is eyes of the beholder... in this case "it depends who the juror is."

By now I have juried hundreds of art shows at all levels of the art cabal food scale, and I am always honored to be a juror, no matter for what of for whom.  I am also an opinionated juror, but that opinion always comes from a good place.

Best of Show was awarded by the juror of GASP to Greek Man, a stone, Smalti, 14k gold, and Swarovksi crystals mixed media piece (14.25 x 13 x .5 and selling for $475) by artist Charlene Sloan.

First place went to Winter's Day End, a lovely oil landscape painting by Laura Hopkins.

The second place award went to Hanging on the Vine, Mixed Media (20 x 25, $500) by Maribe Chandler-Gardiner, and third place to a spectacular sunset oil painting by Sharon Clinton titled (of course) Sunset (oil, 12x19 and $375).

Congratulations to all the prizewinners - well deserved!

Now... for my personal choices.  

First and foremost, I really, really liked all the paintings in the show by that same Sharon Clinton, including that prizewinning Sunset, and also After the Storm, a highly demanding and superbly executed small (8x10 inches) oil - I would have chosen either of those two as Best in Show.

That's Sunset to the right - showcasing the power of color when executed by a talented painter.

The paint application shows an exuberance of that certainty in applying and mixing paint that only comes after a thousand mistakes - each one a learning episode in the glorious path to dominance over the medium.

Another prizewinner for me would have been Jill Garity - her End of Summer (Oil, 16 x 12 for $485) was exceptionally well painted and clearly she has mastered also the palette knife . Garity writes that most of her paintings are "a combination of places that are both real and imagined.They are begun with rough shapes and a pattern of light and dark and are then developed with layers of opaque paint and glazes. Underlayers peeking through providing interest and visual texture. Use of the palette knife in places also provides a randomness that provokes creativity and often takes me on a path I had not planned."  Another winner would have been Contemplating Jackson Falls (Oil, 8 x 6 for $285).

Besides Clinton and Garity, an artist named Anne Reid also caught my eye.  Reid is what my art school professors would have described as a "painter's painter." Her brushwork is forceful and skilled, and it is the application of paint that makes her work stand out.  I quite liked Afternoon Drive (Mixed Media, 5 x 7 for $175) and The Farmer (Mixed Media, 9 x 12 for $450).

That's The Farmer to the right - note the way that Reid has decided to define the road just trod by the tractor.  Notice that colors, and shapes, and texture define the road, in an abstract way that once inside the entire composition becomes a highly realistic road! And yet, if you put a roughly square frame around that foreground road, you have quite an intelligent abstract work!

What else did I like?

I liked Margaret Cassidy's photos, Peggy Weed's Chicks (which was the rest of the Campello family's top pick!), Karen Merkin's Purple Onion, and a few others.

Some constructive criticism: I want several of the artists in this show - including some of my prizewinners - to read this article from over a decade ago: How to Sign Your Artwork.

This is a jewel of a small, intimate show in a memorable small town full of cool little shops and top of the line restaurants - the fried oysters at King Street Oyster Bar are really good, and the Thai food at Thaiverse Restaurant was among the best Thai food that our family has ever had.

Trials, Tribulations and Successes of a Gallerist

John Pancake, who is the Arts Editor at the Washington Post, once told me that he felt that running an art gallery was a heroic act.

I don't know about that, but running an independent, commercial fine arts gallery certainly takes a lot of commitment, truckloads of patience, an understanding of what running a business really means (while hopefully contributing to many different understandings of what a cultural discourse truly represents), an ability to share both in the triumph and failure of artists, an immense poker face when telling an artist who has just been destroyed in a review: "Don't worry, a bad review is better than no review at all," endless gritting of teeth from refraining in choking to death the next person (who's never run a gallery) who insists on giving you nonsensical advice on how to run a gallery, and the great sense of relief that floods in when one of your artists does well and succeeds.

A few days ago, as I was driving home after meeting with our accountant and reviewing the year and preparing for 2006, a few things popped into my head about some of the trials and tribulations and successes since we opened the first Fraser Gallery in 1996 in Georgetown.

First, this popped into my head:

Now is the winter of our discontent
Made glorious summer by this sun of York;
And all the clouds that lour'd upon our house
In the deep bosom of the ocean buried.
Now are our brows bound with victorious wreaths;
Our bruised arms hung up for monuments;
Our stern alarums chang'd to merry meetings,
Our dreadful marches to delightful measures.
Grim-visag'd war hath smooth'd his wrinkled front;
And now,--instead of mounting barbed steeds
To fright the souls of fearful adversaries,--
He capers nimbly in a lady's chamber
To the lascivious pleasing of a lute.

So I shook my head to clear Will out of it and then recalled...

- The know-it-all art hanger-on who walked into our first gallery in 1996, looked around and said: "I give you six months."

- Our second show ever, by a brilliantly talented printmaker named Grant Silverstein. We sold dozens and dozens of etchings and thought to ourselves: "WOW, this gallery business is going to be a piece of cake!"

- A huge article in the Washington Post announcing the opening of our Georgetown gallery. We then thought to ourselves: "WOW, it's great getting all this newspaper coverage!"

- How we managed to survive one long summer in 1997 without a single sale! Thank God for our financial backers: Mrs. Visa and Mr. Mastercard!

- How, every year since we opened in 1996, has seen a rise in sales and 2005 was our best year ever.

- The time that a couple came into the Bethesda gallery, he complaining of the price of an omelette at the Original Pancake House, and then he buying out the entire exhibition!

- The artist who complained because we were selling too much of the artist's work.

- The photographer who didn't want to exhibit his work because his photograph didn't sell immediately in a previous group show.

- The young man, who while looking at black and white infrared photographs of Scotland actually asked if everything in Scotland was really black and white.

- The hundreds of people through the years who stand at the front of the door and ask how much does it cost to come in.

- The photographer who shipped a massive photograph, framed under glass in a flimsy cardboard box without any protection and then almost had convulsions when informed that his work had arrived nearly demolished.

- The painter who shipped his small painting is a massive wooden crate meriting inclusion in the Fort Knox Hall of Fame, and paid more for shipping than the painting's price.

- The joy and pride caused by the first time that a museum acquired one of our artists' works.

- The guy who knocked a framed piece down, broke the glass in the fall, and then said: "It was broken before it fell."

- The afternoon before that night's opening when the entire ceiling in the gallery space collapsed because the air conditioning unit's drain pan had been installed backwards. Somehow the entire ceiling was rebuilt in a couple of hours and the opening took place without any problems.

- The time that it rained so hard in Georgetown that the Canal Square flooded and there was a foot of water in each gallery and we ran in and out to rescue the artwork; all the while electric wiring was underwater and hot.

- The time that we arrived at the new gallery in Bethesda to find the new $15,000 wooden floor completely flooded by rainwater.

- The time, after the foundation leaks had been fixed, and a new wooden floor installed to replace the damaged one, when we arrived at the same gallery to find the new floor flooded again from a new hole in the foundation.

- The time that the gallery flooded a third and fourth time from (a) the wrong filter for the A/C unit or (b) leak in the roof.

- The many times that we thanked God because in all these floods not a single piece of artwork was damaged.

- The famous multimillionare who (after attempting to haggle for a photograph selling for $300), said: "If I have this delivered to Great Falls, can I save on the sales tax?"

- The California collector who bought an $11,000 painting on the Internet, sight unseen.

- The three different curators from a museum out West, who flew on three different occasions to see an artist's show, and were gagga over a particular sculpture (priced at $2500) and then, after spending God knows how much money on flights and per diem, asked that it be donated to the museum, as they were short on acquisition funds.

- The art critic who made 61 cell phone calls over a 24 hour period to ask (and re-ask) some very basic questions which could have been answered by reading the press release, and killed my cell phone minutes allowance for that month in one day.

- The many people and writers and critics who made appointments on Sundays and Mondays or during odd hours and then never show up.

- The lawyer from New York who keeps calling trying to find certain gallerists no longer in business who have ripped off his clients years and years ago.

- The poor artist(s) who always show up at a crowded opening and want you to look at his or her portfolio.

- The super rich artist-wanna-be who always shows up at a crowded opening, wants you to look at his or her photographs of an African safari and asks: "What does one have to do to sell stuff in this store?"

- The delight in the face and eyes of an art student making his or her first gallery sale ever.

- The first time that we got a review in a national art magazine.

- The artist who planned her American debut for an entire year and then wasn't allowed to travel to the US for her opening, which sold out before the show opened.

- The time that the man hole cover blew up in Georgetown in front of the gallery, starting an underground fire, closing the neighborhood down and ruining the opening.

- The second time that another man hole cover blew up in Georgetown in front of the gallery, starting an underground fire, closing the neighborhood down and ruining another opening.

- The time that an electrical power outage shot down all of Georgetown and ruined our Frida Kahlo exhibition's opening.

- The first time that a show sold out before it actually opened up to the public.

- The people who ask every once in a while: "Does anyone actually, ever buy art?" And the many times that we actually ponder the same question.

- The time that the really expensive magazine ad had the wrong opening date.

- The local museum curator who never comes down to DC galleries, but who acquired one of our artist's works while it was on loan to another gallery in another city.

- The first time that a museum asked to borrow work for an exhibition.

- The collector who said on the phone: "Just pick one of her paintings that you'd think I would like and put a dot on it."

- The first time that one of our artists received a review in the New York Times.

- The time that the city fathers of Washington, DC wanted to prohibit galleries from serving wine at the openings.

- The many times that someone offers us money to host their exhibition. And the many times that we then see that "artist" exhibiting that vanity exhibition in another gallery in town.

- The first time that a museum in another country acquired work by one of our artists.

- The first time that a museum asked for one of our exhibitions to travel to the museum.

- The rich "artist" who wanted us to exhibit her really ugly paintings; each one boasted to have over $60,000 of precious stones embedded into the thick, impasto paint.

- The grubs who come to the opening, look around the space (not at the art) and then ask: "Where's the food?"

- The time that Sotheby's asked us to become an Associate Dealer, and how we managed to create over 800 secondary art market sales for emerging DC area artists.

- The time that a collector wanted to buy a nude painting of a man, but wanted the artist to paint over the genitalia.

- The amazing number of times that it either snows or rains on opening night.

- The time that a furor was created in Bethesda over our exhibition of huge paintings of very large, nude women.

- The first time that one of our exhibitions was featured on television.

- The first time that we got a review in an international art magazine.

- The time that I handed back a photograph to the photographer who wanted me to look at it. He/she dropped it a few minutes later, broke the glass and scratched the photo and then wanted to have our insurance pay for it.

- The dozens and dozens of "collectors" from Nigeria who email us everyday and who want to buy everything in our "art store" if only we send them our banking details so that they can wire the payments to it.

- How, after nearly ten years as a gallerist, there are still art critics or writers, who apparently write about DC art, DC artists and DC galleries, and yet I've never met and as far as I know have never set foot in our galleries.

- The many times that someone walks either into our Bethesda gallery or our Georgetown gallery and says: "I didn't know there were any galleries around here."

- The invited curator who "curated" a show of mostly his friends and colleagues.

- The other invited curator who put together one of the most amazing juried shows ever staged in our gallery.

- The still incredible fact that our website gets over a million hits a month, and every month it kills my bandwidth allotment.

Review <-> Renew

REVIEW < - > RENEW: AN EXHIBITION IN CELEBRATION OF THE 25th ANNIVERSARY OF VISARTS

 

On View OCTOBER 28 – DECEMBER 29, 2012

 

25th Anniversary Celebration (tickets required)

Saturday, October 27 from 7:30 – 10:30 p.m.

(VIP Reception at 5:30 with Curators' Tour)

 

Public Opening Reception (free)

Friday, November 9 from 7:00 – 9:00 p.m.

 

Manon Cleary, Big J, 1977. Oil on canvas.

 Twenty five years ago Judy Greenberg and Jack Rasmussen teamed up to bring the highest quality contemporary art found in the Washington Metro region to galleries and resident artist studios located behind a strip mall in Rockville, Maryland.  Rockville Arts Place (RAP) was born. Visitors encountered compelling exhibitions that reflected the vibrant community of artists living and working in the area. Offering arts education, studio and exhibition spaces, RAP became an important addition to the cultural climate of the Rockville community.

Now renamed VisArts and housed in a glass walled building on three floors in Rockville Town Square, the tradition of excellence in the arts continues. VisArts presents Review <-> Renew co-curated by Judy A. Greenberg (Director of the Kreeger Museum) and Jack Rasmussen (Director and Curator of the American University Museum at the Katzen Arts Center) in celebration of the 25th Anniversary of VisArts. This group exhibition brings together the renowned artists who brought critical regional success to the fledgling organization, Rockville Arts Place (RAP). The artists selected for the exhibition all exhibited at RAP while Greenberg was President of the Board and Rasmussen was Executive Director.

In the Kaplan Gallery, paintings by Lisa Brotman, Manon Cleary, Sam Gilliam, Tom Green, Margarida Kendall Hull, and Joe Shannon are on display. Early and more recent works by the artists are exhibited alongside Paul Feinberg’s photographs of the artists early and late in their careers. The paintings and photographs are accompanied by interviews with the artists conducted by Feinberg.  

In the Common Ground Gallery, Review <-> Renew features more outstanding artists important to the history of VisArts. Margaret Boozer, Robert Devers, Tim Tate, and Mindy Weisel, working in glass and clay, have received wide acclaim for their exquisite sense of material and rich, potent forms. They continue to push the boundaries of ceramic and glass traditions with astonishing intelligence.

Review <-> Renew offers a brilliant sample of the artists who helped shape the history of VisArts and the region’s artistic excellence. Their work has found its way into important collections, museums and exhibitions around the world. Rasmussen’s and Greenberg’s choice of artists and art, past and present, embodies the idea that the practice of making art, particularly art of the highest quality, is a process of patient accumulations and provocations over time. The resilience of VisArts as a non-profit art center is due in large part to its long list of exhibiting and resident artists. This celebratory exhibition acknowledges the past and looks forward with renewed vigor and relevance.

 

Review <-> Renew  will be on view in the Kaplan Gallery and Common Ground Gallery at VisArts from Sunday, October 28 – Saturday, December 29. The public is invited to attend a free Opening Reception on Friday, November 9 from 7:00 to 9:00 p.m. VisArts is located three blocks from the Rockville Metro station at 155 Gibbs Street, Rockville, MD. Gallery Hours are Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday from 12 p.m. to 9 p.m., and on Saturday and Sunday from 12 p.m. to 5 p.m. For more information, please visit www.visartscenter.org,or call 301-315-8200. Admission is always free.

 

 ABOUT THE ARTISTS:

Manon Cleary (b. 1942 – d. 2012) Born in St. Louis, Missouri, Manon Cleary earned her MFA from Temple University, spending her first year in Rome, Italy. There, she studied the work of old masters, an experience to which she credited her becoming a figurative artist. In 1970, she moved to Washington, D.C., and began a teaching career at the University of the District of Columbia. Her work has been displayed internationally and is in permanent collections at the Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois, Brooklyn Museum, Brooklyn, New York, Phoenix Art Museum, Phoenix, Arizona, and National Museum of Women in the Arts, Washington, D.C. Manon’s work has been exhibited at the Osuna Gallery, Washington, D.C., Addison/Ripley Fine Art, Washington, D.C., Maryland Art Place, Baltimore, Maryland, Jackson-Iolas Gallery, New York, New York, J. Rosenthal Gallery, Chicago, Illinois, and Grand Palais in Paris, France.

Sam Gilliam (b. 1933) Born in Tupelo, Mississippi, Gilliam earned his MA in painting at the University of Louisville before moving north to Washington, D.C. Absorbing the innovations of the Washington Color School, Gilliam quickly moved beyond it, following his own original and radical impulse to take over the exhibition space and not confine his painting to the picture plane. His work is in important collections across the United States, and he has had major retrospectives at Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., the Speed Art Museum, Louisville, Kentucky, and the Contemporary Art Museum, Houston, Texas.  Gilliam’s work is included in public collections at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum of Modern Art, and Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, New York, Szépmüvészeti Múzeum, Budapest, Hungary, and Tate, London, England.

Tom Green (b. 1942 – d. 2012) After receiving a BA and MFA from the University of Maryland, Green moved to Washington and became a hugely influential artist and teacher. He has exhibited in numerous solo and group shows, including Whitney Biennial, New York, New York, and 19 Americans at the Guggenheim Museum, New York, New York, Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow, Russia, and in the Washington, D.C. region, at the Kreeger Museum, the American University Museum at the Katzen Arts Center, Smithsonian Museum of American Art, and The Corcoran Gallery of Art. He received two National Endowment for the Arts Fellowships, a Maryland State Arts Council Individual Artist Award, and residencies at the Vermont Studio Center and the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. Green’s work is in public collections, including the Guggenheim Museum, the Baltimore Museum of Art, Corcoran Gallery of Art, and Smithsonian American Art Museum.

Lisa Montag Brotman (b. 1947) After graduating with a BFA from the State University of New York at Buffalo, Brotman moved to Washington, D. C. where she attended the Corcoran College of Art + Design and earned an MFA from the George Washington University. Brotman has received two Individual Artist Awards in the Visual Arts from the Maryland State Arts Council. Her work has been exhibited in Europe and the United States, including the Washington, D.C. area, at the Corcoran Gallery of Art, the American University Museum at the Katzen Arts Center, Saint Mary’s College of Maryland, The George Washington University, Longwood University, Washington Project for the Arts, Rockville Arts Place, School 33 Art Center, Arlington Arts Center, and Gallery Neptune. Brotman’s work has been exhibited in five solo shows at Gallery K, London, England and in a mid-career retrospective at the Maryland Art Place, Baltimore, Maryland.

Margarida Kendall Hull (b. 1935) Born in Lisbon, Portugal, Kendall Hull attended the University of Lisbon/College of History and Philosophy. After moving to Washington, D.C., she graduated from the Corcoran School of Art + Design in 1973 and earned her MFA in 1982 from the Catholic University of America, Washington, D.C. Her paintings of alternative realities were shown regularly in Washington, D.C., by the Osuna Gallery and Gallery K. For the past ten years she has been represented by Galereia de Sao Mamede in Lisbon, Portugal. Kendall Hull’s work has been in museum exhibitions at Gulbenkian Museum, Lisbon, Portugal, Museum of Contemporary Art, Lisbon, Portugal, and the Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois. Her works are in numerous public and private collections in the United States and Portugal.

Joe Shannon (b. 1933) Born in Puerto Rico, raised in Washington, D.C., Joe Shannon studied art at the Corcoran School of Art, but he was largely self taught. Looking at masterworks, lots of practice and self-criticism revealed his direction. Shannon worked for the Smithsonian for 26 years as an exhibition designer and curator. He has organized world class exhibitions, and written articles in major art magazines and newspapers, and juried many shows. Shannon teaches currently at the Maryland Institute College of Art in Baltimore; he lectures, and has taught at other universities. His work has been shown in galleries and museums around the world and is in many important collections, private and public, including Corcoran Gallery of Art, Hirshhorn, and Brooklyn Museums.

Paul Feinberg (b. 1942) Paul Feinberg’s stories and photo essays of Washington life have been appearing in the Washingtonian Magazine, the Washington Post Magazine, and numerous national publications for over 30 years. Focusing on portraits of city life and personal relationships, his stories have included everything from “Days and Nights by the Bus Station” to “Mothers and Daughters.” “Best Friends,” his Washingtonian piece on long term friendships, was expanded nationally into his book Friends. Feinberg has had solo shows at the American University Museum at the Katzen Arts Center, the Washington Arts Museum, Washington Project for the Arts, the Picker Gallery at Colgate University, and University of the District of Columbia. He has been a part of group shows at Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington Project for the Arts, Studio Gallery, Tartt Gallery, Kathleen Ewing Gallery, Jack Rasmussen Gallery, Osuna Gallery, and Arlington Arts Center.

Margaret Boozer (b. 1966) Born in Anniston, Alabama, Margaret Boozer lives and works in the Washington, DC metro area. She received a BFA in sculpture from Auburn University and an MFA in ceramics from New York State College of Ceramics at Alfred University. Her work is included in the collection of the Smithsonian American Art Museum, The Museum of the City of New York, The US Department of State, The Wilson Building Public Art collection and in many private collections. Boozer taught for ten years at the Corcoran College of Art and Design before founding Red Dirt Studio in Mt. Rainier, Maryland where she directs a ceramics and sculpture seminar. Recent projects include a commissioned installation at the US Embassy in Djibouti and writing a chapter for  U. S. Geologic Survey’s Soil and Culture. Recent exhibitions include Swept Away: Dust, Ashes and Dirt at the Museum of Arts and Design in New York.

Robert Devers (b. 1960) Born in Shamokin, Pennsylvania, Devers received a BFA in Ceramics from the Kansas City Art Institute and an MFA from the Cranbrook Academy of Art in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan. He maintains a studio in Mt. Rainier, Maryland and has taught at the Corcoran College of Art + Design in Washington, D.C. since 1988. Devers is also the Visual Arts Coordinator of the Amalfi Coast Music & Arts Festival. His work has been exhibited in the Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., Ruth Chandler Williamson Gallery at Scripps College, Claremont, California, and the Smithsonian American Art Museum’s Renwick Gallery in Washington, D.C. Devers work is in the permanent collections of the Smithsonian American Art Museum, Renwick Gallery, the International Monetary Fund, the Museo Artistico Industriale “Manuel Cargaliero” in Vietri sul Mare, Italy and Museo Manuel Cargaliero, Castelo Branco, Portugal, as well as numerous private collections.

Tim Tate (b. 1960) A Washington, D.C. native, who has been working with glass as a sculptural medium for the past 25 years, Tim Tate is Co-Founder of the Washington Glass School in Mt. Rainier, Maryland. Tate’s work is in the permanent collections of a number of museums, including the Smithsonian's American Art Museum, Renwick Gallery and the Mint Museum. He was awarded the title of “Rising Star of the 21st Century” from the Museum of American Glass and was also the recipient of the 2009 Virginia Groot Foundation award for sculpture. His work has been shown at the Milwaukee Art Museum, the Fuller Museum, the Asheville Art Museum and the Museum of Arts and Design in New York. He is a 2012 Fulbright Scholar recipient and was Artist-In-Residence at the Institute for International Glass Research (IIRG) in the UK.

Mindy Weisel (b. 1947) Born in Bergen-Belsen, the only daughter of Auschwitz survivors, Weisel grew up in New York and Los Angeles. She began painting at age 14, studied at California State University and received a BFA from George Washington University in 1977. An acclaimed abstract artist, working in paint and glass, Weisel has had numerous international commissions and exhibitions. Her pieces are in the permanent collections of the Smithsonian Institution, Hirshhorn Museum, National Museum of American Art, Baltimore Museum of Art, The Israel Museum, and the United States House of Representatives.

You don't see this very often...

My good friend Kriston Capps not only delivers a review of Lucy Hogg's current exhibition at Meat Market Gallery in DC, but also adds something that is seldom seen in art criticism these days: humor! Read Capps here.

Three years ago I reviewed an exhibition by Hogg in Georgetown's Strand on Volta Gallery. Other than the declaration of "painting being dead," (feh!) and since the attempt at photography is dismissed by Capps, it sounds like the below review somewhat still applies to the painting part.

And I find it ironic that my review has a causal effect from her work of being a revival of painting, when Hogg now apparently has joined the ancient crowd demanding painting's death.

Substitute the names of the masters below with George Stubbs and Diego Velázquez... and by the way, I think that Hogg will continue to paint.

There’s such a dichotomy in this name; such a contradiction of stereotypes: Lucy, soft, feminine and flowing.

Hogg: heavy, masculine and powerful. And once you discover her artwork, you'll realize that seldom has a person been so aptly named.

Hogg is a tiny person, almost elfin-like; a complete reverse of what pops into the mind when it tries to visualize someone named Lucy Hogg. My mind came up with two characters: The first was as a sister or close kin of that big, fat, greasy character (Boss J.D. Hogg) in the Dukes of Hazzard TV series.

Because Hogg is Canadian, the other image was that of a secondary character in Robertson Davies’ fictitious small Canadian village of Deptford. A village that he creates superbly in The Fifth Business (part one of the Deptford Trilogy).

And this dichotomy, this Ying Yang of words and mental images, translates well to Hogg’s American solo debut currently on exhibition until October 30 at Georgetown’s Strand on Volta Gallery.

Hogg recently moved to Washington from her native Canada. She has exhibited widely in Canada, Asia and Europe, and in a town [DC] where most critics and curators continue to preach the death of painting as a viable contemporary art form, she brings something new and refreshing, pumping some new energy to the ancient medium.

Let me explain.

Salvador Dali once said that "those that do not want to imitate anything produce nothing." This is the Ying of Hogg’s exhibition.

And George Carlin added that "the future will soon be a thing of the past." This is the Yang of her show.

Titled "Sliding Landscapes," the exhibition consists of nearly twenty paintings segregated into two different canvas shapes: oval shapes on the gallery’s left main wall and rectangular shapes on the right wall. Each set of paintings deliver individual ideas, and although tied together by the subject matter, they nonetheless express superbly two sets of thoughts and impressions that I think Hogg wants us to see.

Hogg’s imagery are copies of Old Master paintings, "sampled" (a new word introduced into art jargon from rap music’s habit of using other people’s music or someone else’s lyrics in your music) from a series of capriccios, or fantasy landscapes by 18th century Venetian painters Canaletto, Francesco Guardi and Marco Ricci.

"Fantasy" in the sense that the landscapes only existed in the artists’ minds until created by them and re-invented two centuries later by Hogg.

I must clarify from the very beginning that these paintings are not "copies" in the same sense that you see people sitting in front of paintings in museums all over the world, meticulously copying an Old Master’s work, stroke by stroke.

Therein lies another dichotomy in this exhibition: Reading a description of Hogg’s subject matter brings that image to mind; seeing them destroys it. This is one show where the most erudite of news release spinmeisters will be challenged to separate the two visions.

So what are they?

Hogg starts with a capriccio painting that she likes. I suspect that she works from a reproduction, even a small one, or from an art history book or catalog, and thus cleverly avoids the pitfall of becoming a true copier rather than a sampler.

She then re-creates the capriccios in their original format (rectangular), but completely replaces the color of the original with a simple tint or combination of tints.

Simple enough... Riiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiight.

It isn’t simple at all.

What Hogg has cleverly done again is to offer us two visual main courses. Sure, she's recreating the original painting, overly-simplified and yet still complex with the seed of great painting and composition planted by the original Masters. But she has also provided herself with a radical new vehicle to flex some very powerful painting and creative skills of her own.

The overly simplified paintings offer her ample room and opportunities to bring a 21st century perspective to these works. Not just her very modern colors (cleverly incorporated into the titles such as "Fantasy Landscape (pthalo green/chrome oxide green) 2004"). Her scrubby, energetic brushwork is everywhere, especially the open skies of some of the works, and where 18th century masters would have reacted in horror, a modern audience takes their middle age glasses off so that we can better try to absorb the quality of the brushwork and peer at the under layers, often left exposed, that reveal the virtuosity of being able to deliver an exciting painting with a very limited palette.

Even within these rectangular recreations, Hogg has a Ying Yang thing going. A group of the pieces are truly monochromatic, using only ultramarine blue or yellow ochre.

In these, the simple associations of cool and warm colors mapping to respective emotions is what anchors our responses to them. But there are some pieces where she has ventured into two distinct colors (such as violet and burnt sienna orange). In these, the opposite position of these hues on the color wheel, and their well-known association with eye-brain responses in creating tension and movement, position these works as a very successful venture into the exploration of color, never mind the landscape that is the vehicle.

Vision two of the exhibition are the oval paintings. Here we again see the same explorations in color and painting that Hogg offered us in the rectangular pieces. But then she opens a new door for us; perhaps even a new door for contemporary painting.

I would have dared to write that she has opened the lid in the coffin of painting, but that would lend tacit approval to the claim that painting is like a "vampire that refuses to die." So I won’t.

In the oval paintings Hogg introduces us to a combination of two (again with the two) elements: the re-visualization within a limited, psychological palette plus a new methodological visual cropping and angling of compositional elements within the original paintings, placed in a new format (oval) and haphazardly hung at crazy angles on the gallery’s left wall. By the way, at the risk of becoming too pedantic, I didn’t like the tilted, askew, haphazard hanging of these pieces. It was a bit heavy handed and went too far to push the fact that they are indeed "sliding" landscapes.

Suddenly we discover two effects (i.e. she has another duality thing going here for the dimwits in the audience): Combine the psychological effect of color with a reorganization of the actual image's presentation and you have suddenly changed the entire character and effect of the painting!

This is the punch to the solar plexus that every artist hopes to accomplish in any exhibition. It is the moment when you stand in front of a piece of artwork, riveted to a sudden discovery that this, whatever "this" may be, has never been done, at least not this well, before.

Here is what I mean.

In the oval pieces, Hogg repeats the paintings from different perspectives or angles; suddenly her choice of colors is not the main driving force; but the relationship between the choice and the subject and the perspective and angle is the new driving force(s).

For example, in one oval piece she offers a calm, cool agrarian view, somewhat disorienting us by the angle and crop, especially when we try to find her source on the left wall's rectangular paintings. Within this painting, a horseman rides up an incline. He is deftly rendered in cool, quick brushstrokes to deliver a placid Sancho Panza character before he had the misfortune of meeting Don Quixote.

Slightly above and to the right of that painting there's another painting, which although it is exactly the same scene, and because it is offered from a slightly different perspective and in a completely different palette, it takes us a minute or two to realize that it is the same scene.

But what a different scene it is! The sky is now a turbulent hellish nightmare of cadmium red and quinachrodne red exaggerated so that the clouds have almost become flames, and the happy farmers of the companion piece are now haggard, beaten figures toiling in a new Dantesque level of hell, where the Sancho Panza horseman is now tired, beaten and barely staying atop his poor horse.

And this is all happening in our mind. Because all that this gifted painter has done is change the perspective and offer us colors that complete different neural paths that create different reactions in our brain.

And the best thing of all is that she didn’t need a video, or an installation, or dioramas of two-dimensional works, or ten pages of wall text to explain the concept. And in these pieces, the finished works are as interesting and successful as the concept itself; not a trivial accomplishment by the way.

All she needed were superbly honed painting skills, a deep understanding of the relationship between color and emotions, an intelligent perspective on composition, and a grab at art history to offer us (yet again) something new and refreshing from that never ending source of surprises: the dusty coffin of painting.

Bravo Lucy! ... Well Done Hogg!

Bailey on BORF

Bailey, Bailey, Bailey...

The following article was intended for publication in the Washington Post upon the arrest of its anonymous writer, James W. Bailey, on charges of aiding and abetting the graffiti artist known as Borf. The article was leaked by a confidential source within the White House (Karl Rove) to DC Art News and is being published in advance of the arrest of Mr. Bailey. DC Art News does not have a confidentiality agreement with Mr. Bailey to preserve his anonymity as the writer of this special contribution to the Washington Post and is therefore publishing it in its entirety.

"For Those Too Young to Die (Yet Too Old to Tag), We Salute You!"
by James W. Bailey

(Washington, D.C.) Minutes after the once-elusive graffiti artist known as Borf was transferred from Metropolitan D.C. police to the U. S. Marshall’s Service for extradition to Camp X-Ray in Guantanamo, Cuba, several hundred of his young angry disgruntled disciples had a message for those outraged by Borf’s graffiti.

"This is just the beginning!" chanted the mob as it hurled empty spray paint cans toward a frightened Mayor Anthony Williams who was standing linked arm-in-arm with shell-shocked federal officials outside the Municipal Courts Building. "Now even more rich suburban kids from Northern Virginia are going to invade your city and come out in protest, so this isn't the end!”

If the mob’s intent was to intimidate the nattily dressed mayor by raising the specter of in his words "spoiled prep school elitist Starbucks latte-sipping adolescent anarchist jackasses from across the Potomac" descending on every blank wall in the city until Borf, aka Michael Tsmobikos, is freed, it didn't work.

"You wanna-be punk artists are going down the wrong path," Williams frantically screamed while dogging cardboard stencils tossed like Frisbees his way. "Don’t you disrespectful jerks realize you're destroying private property?! Don’t any of you aesthetically lacking idiots understand the value of the free enterprise capitalist system and its importance to furthering a graffiti-free environment that is safe for tourists?! Is there even one suburban brat among you who has ever read any Ayn Rand?! Don’t any of you untalented fools realize that your so-called ‘tags’ aren’t really art in the first place?!"

As laughter erupted from the swarming gang of aggressive graffiti artists, a rancorous collective response of “Free Borf! Free Borf! Free Borf!” was also rudely hurled along with other accoutrements of the street graffiti trade at Williams and Vice-President Dick Cheney, who had agreed at the last minute to appear at the press conference announcing the federalization of Borf’s criminal case.

The gang of boys assembled from Great Falls, McLean, Reston and other high income zip codes in Virginia, met Williams's and Cheney’s paternal gaze with hard, unblinking stares of their own. Either it was the boldest of bluffs or the boys who confronted the representative powers of Washington, D.C. truly believed they could summon an army of graffiti artists/taggers who would swarm over the city's unprotected walls like rats in "Willard."

Recounting the confrontation 30 minutes later in the anteroom of his office at City Hall, Williams was still angrily shaking his head about the boys' "misplaced hero worship of this punk crap artist Borf."

"Borf and those rich white boys from Virginia who helped him and who support him declared war on the city," said Williams nervously shaking his fist. Asked what he was going to do about a possible resurgence of wide-spread anti-capitalist graffiti in the city, Williams angrily waved a copy of an ordinance he first proposed to Washington, D.C. City Council two years ago, only to see it narrowly defeated.

"We're reintroducing this emergency legislation next week that will make it a felony crime for white minors who are non-residents of the City of Washington, D.C. to buy or possess spray paint, indelible markers or etching acids, as well as all the other tools these graffiti terrorists use, including cardboard for their stencils," he said. "This thing, whether it's a fad or an art form, which every sane person knows it’s not art by the way, or just plain vandalism created to incite terrorist insurrection, as I believe it is, has got to stop. And this Mayor is damned determined to stop people like Bork dead in their tracks."

Vice-President Cheney, who joined Williams in his hurriedly relocated press conference, echoed Williams sentiments and explained the federal government’s role in the Borf case: "The outstanding investigative work of the joint city and federal task force that tracked down and arrested this so-called graffiti artist has at last put an end to the terroristic actions of Borf and has effectively ended the deluded notion that Borf’s tags were a respectable form of art. Borf’s tags were clearly not art. They were coded terrorist messages that were designed to encourage intellectually gullible and emotionally susceptible children to murder their parents while asleep in their beds. Tags like “Grown Ups Are Obsolete”. Any rational American knows what that message is attempting to communicate to the youth of America. It’s also quite clear to the government that Borf’s campaign of terror against the people of Washington, D.C. was being financed by Al Qaeda. Borf himself has confessed to traveling to Europe to protest the G-8 conference. As is quite clear from recent CIA reports, Al Qaeda financed most of those protestors. Borf has therefore been declared an enemy combatant and has been transferred to Camp X-Ray in Guantanamo, Cuba, for further torture, uh, a torturous, that is a very thorough interrogation."

When asked if he had agreed to the federalization of Borf’s crimes in order to placate White House demands that were tied to an impending announcement of Presidential support of the Mayor’s efforts to secure statehood for the district, Williams bristled: "That is pure B.S.! The Mayor of Washington, D.C. does not do the quid pro quo biding of the White House when it comes to protecting the citizens of this city from terrorists like Borf. This Mayor does the right thing. And the right thing was to allow the federal government to handle Borf."

Cheney offered a similarly stern response: "Look, Mayor Williams is a hero in the effort to defeat terrorism and to secure the apprehension of this terrorist thug Borf. As we all know, federal legislation has long allowed the RICO statue to be used to federalize the cases of young African-American gang members who engage in acts of graffiti terrorism. There was a loophole in the law. No one ever really saw the day when rich white kids would be bold enough to leave their comfortable suburban stomping ground to wage a terrorizing campaign against the City of Washington, D.C. with their Al Qaeda funded messages of anarchy and anti-consumerism. Obviously, we need to have Congress immediately beef-up the current anti-gang laws that are on the books. But the allegation that President Bush somehow suggested to the Mayor that if he didn’t support the government’s position on Borf that that action would threaten future support of DC statehood is ridiculous and is blog generated propaganda being spread by Borf’s anti-American supporters to increase the mythology of Borf among extremists."

Though Williams remains an implacable foe of anti-capitalistic graffiti, he isn't without a small degree of sympathy for young men like Borf. He insists that he understands their alienation, but he's more offended that people feel they have the right to assert their identity at the expense of property owners and taxpayers who'd rather not provide their walls for someone's therapy.

"Look, I’m a human being and understand the pain of other people. Borf’s mother came to me after his arrest to say her son was innocent," Williams said. "I told her that I felt sorry for her, but that she shouldn't hold her son in awe because there's nothing exciting about that punk. Let’s get real. Borf’s not even that charismatic. And worse, he doesn't even have a single original idea he can call his own. ‘For God sakes’, I told her, ‘he reads stupid French books on B.S. philosophy by some dead guy who committed suicide named Guy Debord!’"

In a highly emotional state, with his lips quivering as he spoke, Williams continued: "Look, it’s not like Borf's protesting the War in Iraq with his graffiti. He's not doing anything to advance society or politics. And he’s especially not doing anything to advance the concept of art! Sure, some graffiti is at least interesting to look at, but not Borf’s. His stuff is all crap! And it’s certainly not real art. To Borf’s supporting art critics, I ask this: what’s Borf’s original aesthetic message? What the lasting impact of his art? Where do you really feel Borf’s place will be in the future pantheon of great artists? Borf is a gutter punk wannabe artist and that’s where he’ll always be."

When questioned about the critical legitimacy of street graffiti as a respected art form, Williams nervously continued his defensive tirade: "Look, we have all kinds of real galleries and museums in the city where you can go and see some real art. Real art has no place out on the streets anyway. Real art ought not to be out in the real world where it’s exposed to the elements and can be rained on. Any person with half a brain that knows anything about real art knows that. The Washington Post’s chief art critic Blake Gopnik doesn’t like street art. He didn’t think those Party Animals were real art, did he? So I’m in respectable company with this opinion because I don’t either. Street art is for untalented artists who don’t merit gallery representation. My advice to people like Borf is to keep your so-called art off outdoor public property and spend more time in your studio learning how to paint pictures of the Washington Monument that you can sell to tourists at the Torpedo Factory."

In an extraordinary related development, President Bush deviated from the script of his weekly press conference on Iraq, also held on the same day, to comment on the Borf situation. The following is a transcript of Bush’s remarks:

"I’m reminded that today that this young fella Borf who’s been painting these evil statements about kids killing their parents, has finally been arrested.

Terrible kid. And make no mistake here, he's a terrorist. This kid Borf.

It’s a sad day in some ways this day that’s today, with Borf being arrested. This Culture of Death thing that I’m always talking about has infected Borf and his supporters.

And some of these elitist academic art idiots... uh intellectuals call Borf’s bagging [sic tagging] art! Well, that’s just plain dumb. Bagging [sic tagging] death slogans around town is not art! Every real American knows that! You can’t spray paint a sign that says 'Kill Me Mommy' and call that art!

What’s wrong with the youth of today?

And what about that big Borf head painted over there on the bridge by the river? That was an act of terrorism. Somebody could have been killed looking at that awful thing. Could have gotten distracted and driven their car into the Potomac. We can’t have stuff like that going on in the nation’s capital.

The federal government, this President of the United States of America, has a solemn obligation to protect the people of this country from evil merchants of death like Borf.

Your President knows what good art is. I think good thoughts about good art all the time.

And good American people of good conscience know what really good art is all about too.

Borf, well, that’s not really good real art. We all know that.

It really hurts me at a very personal level that some have suggested that this President doesn’t like art. George W. Bush loves art. Laura and I have more Thomas Kindkade paintings at home in Crawford than we’ve got heads of cattle.

Your President loves art. Let me repeat it: George W. Bush Loves art. Real art that is. But Borf’s not a real artist.

Look, this President ordered his State Department to approve the selection of that great American artist Eduardo Rusario [sic Ed Ruscha] to appear at the Venice Benfoldsfive Finale [sic Venice Biennale] over there in Italy. This exhibition features some really good rock solid thought provoking contemporaneous art [sic contemporary art].

Eduardo now is a real American artist. Works with a style called Mini-anti-female-materialism [sic minimalism]. Real cutting edge stuff, man! I don’t pretend to understand it, but I just know this: Eduardo’s art ain’t telling people to go out and burn an American flag like Borf’s so-called art is doing. Eduardo’s art is not encouraging children to kill their parents.

And Eduardo’s art, well, I just think that his art is the kind of condom-draineous art [sic contemporary art] this country needs more of. We need more artists like Eduardo making more of that mini-van-ballistic [sic minimalist] stuff. That stuff makes you think, man! But it don’t make you think about things Americans ought not to be thinking too much about. You understand what I’m saying?

The American people need to know that their President loves really good contempt-for-paineous art [sic contemporary art] like the minimum-wage-unrealism [sic minimalism] stuff that Eduardo makes.

But let me also emphasize that really good American art, know matter what style it is, even good graffiti art if there is such a thing, also needs to be confined to what I call the 'WWW – white-walled world.'

A legacy of presumed guilt levied by the President of the United States of America is certainly too heavy a public burden for anyone with common sense to bear willingly. Since his arrest in Washington, D.C., many of Borf’s friends, and even some of his most outspoken critics, have raised the possibility that Borf may be the unluckiest of patsies – a Lee Harvey Oswald, if you will, of the contemporary art world. Some wonder whether the true culprits are, indeed, the growing legion of disaffected educated suburban white kids now threatening to scrawl their defiance of the law on walls in the hearts of metropolitan cities all over America in Borf's name.

James W. Bailey

Ooooh... there may be an art fair coming to Washington, DC

Not yet... but the DC Commission on the Arts & Humanities is thinking about one -- I've volunteered to assist them... so far been ghosted! This is the notice that I received today:.

As you may know, we've been hosting a series of community stakeholder meetings discussing the potential of bringing an international art fair/festival to Washington DC in 2025. We want to meet with individual artists from the community to discuss this opportunity and how it might impact their livelihood and their art.

Our next Art Week 2025 Community Stakeholder Meeting will be held at the Thurgood Marshall Center (1816 12th St NW) on February 1st from 6 to 8 pm.

There is very limited space for this meeting. Please RSVP to secure a spot. There will be a few spots left for walk-ups but we cannot exceed our event capacity. If you have attended a stakeholder meeting in the past please let someone else get a chance to RSVP.

Join us from 6 to 8 pm on Tuesday, February 1 at the Thurgood Marshall Center.

I first proposed a slightly different version of the following art fair model to all the organizations mentioned in this article about a decade ago, when there was (even then) a sense of art fatigue brewing in the art world. Result: zip, nada, nothing! No one even answered my letters (remember letters?).

In a post Covidian world, I suspect that a lot of people will still be a little leery of large group gatherings, and art fairs based on pre-Covidian standards may be a bit antiquated in the Brave Chickenized New World.

Herewith a revised Campello Art Fair Model.

The important thing to remember, as I mull, chew, and refine a "new" art post-Covidian fair model to replace the existing pre-Covidian art fair model, which in its American incarnations seemed to work well only in Miami and New York, but not so well in the West coast (and as we DMV-based folks have seen with (e)merge and artDC, not at all in the capital region), is the marriage of a legitimate art entity (a museum) with an art-for-sale process as a means to raise funds.

The seeds for this model already exist in the DC region with the Smithsonian Craft Show, now in its third decade.

Considered by many to be the finest craft fair in the world -- and from the many artists that I have spoken to over the years -- one of the best places to sell fine crafts as well, this prestigious and highly competitive juried exhibition and sale of contemporary American craft usually takes place each April for four days. It takes place at the National Building Museum in Washington, DC and it includes one-of-a-kind and limited-edition craft objects in 12 different media: basketry, ceramics, decorative fiber, furniture, glass, jewelry, leather, metal, mixed media, paper, wearable art and wood.

There were 120 exhibitors in their last show, including emerging artists and master craftsmen, over 30 of whom were first-time participants. Twelve of those selected were also first-time applicants to the show. All were chosen by a panel of expert jurors from a highly competitive field of close to 1,400 applicants.

So, we have a model for crafts in DC which has been working for over 30 years.

See where I'm going?

Can we envision the Smithsonian American Art Fair?

Or... The Smithsonian American International Art Fair?

The SAIAF would dramatically expand the business model of the Smithsonian Craft Fair to a National Mall-wide - outdoors - or even a citywide art fair anchored and guided by the Smithsonian Institution, and possibly either:

(a) spread throughout the various accommodating outdoor spaces at the various SI locales around the National Mall or even…

(b) in temporary art spaces, booth, or containers on the open spaces of the National Mall itself!

The latter is not as big of a deal as it sounds.

The National Mall already hosts a spectacular variety of outdoor events on the Mall spaces where complex display spaces are temporarily built, secured and just as quickly dismantled, grass re-seeded, and by Monday the Mall is back to normal.

Boom!

For art, all we need is protection from the weather and security. Perhaps even a combination of "free" (to the public) set of exhibitors (maybe out on the Mall) coupled with a paid admission set of exhibitors inside SI spaces -- or just make them all free to the public?

Details... details...

This new fair model would be open to both commercial art galleries and art dealers, as well as to art schools, and (and here's the key "and") to individual artists and cooperative artist-owned galleries.

Size matters… just ask Salvador Dali, who once said: “If you can’t paint well, then paint big!”

Would 1200 galleries, dealers, schools and artists in a mega, new-model art fair raise some interests from art collectors to come to DC for a long weekend in May?

It would if it attracted 100,000 visitors to the fair instead of 10,000 (like the looooong gone art fair artDC once attracted).

Are you aware that in May the Bethesda Fine Arts Festival in nearby Bethesda attracts 30-40,000 people to the streets of Bethesda for this artist-only street fine arts fair? or that also in May the Northern Virginia Fine Arts Festival attracts the same number of people to the streets of the Reston Town Center to buy art from individual artists?

Both Bethesda and Reston have two of the highest median household incomes in the US. And I am told that the Greater Washington, DC region has the second highest concentration of multi-millionaires in the world.

The money is here - the key is to get the disposable income crowd in touch with the art.

Both Bethesda and Reston manage to accomplish this one weekend each year. Do not, under any circumstances assume that these are "street fairs" where teddy bears, country crafts, and dried flowers are sold. These are both highly competitive fine arts outdoor fairs where artists from all over the nation come to and compete for spots because artwork sells well.

I have seen $80,000 worth of sculptures sell to one collector in Bethesda and a painter with a price point of $17,000 sell out in Reston.

Do not let the snobby attitude of the high art world affect your preconception of what these two street art fairs are like; go visit one this coming (and hopefully post Covidian) and open your eyes. In 2021 the fairs slipped from May to later months… but I am sure that they’ll be back to May in 2022.

And because of them, and because of the success of Art Basel Miami Beach, we know that given a certain critical mass, people will come out to an art fair. The primary key for art dealers to have interest in an art fair is sales (and also exposure to new collectors, museum curators, etc.), but mainly sales.

If you are a British gallery, by the time you get yourself and your artwork to Miami Beach, you're in the hole a whole bunch of Euros and British pounds; if you don't sell anything (like it happened to a British gallery in artDC and an Israeli gallery at another fair), chances are that you won't return to that fair.

But increase the public attendance numbers exponentially, and Economics 101 tells you that sales will also increase exponentially. And unlike the hotel-deprived artDC location at the Convention Center, I am told by DC's tourist gurus that the National Mall is already a magnet location where visitors, regardless of where they are staying around the Greater DC region, flock to during their visits to the capital.

Since two major Greater DC area street art fairs already exist in May in the Greater DC area, we can even consider aligning the weekends so that both Reston, Bethesda, and the Smithsonian American International Art Fair all take place on the same weekend!

Offer free bus service between Reston and Bethesda and the National Mall for collectors to hop around during the fair weekend, and a public buzz alignment will begin to happen. The Smithsonian American International Art Fair starts on a Thursday through Sunday and both Reston and Bethesda continue to run on Saturday and Sunday. And the Smithsonian American International Art Fair is focused as a major fundraiser for the cash-hungry SI.

A formula of booth prices + perhaps a 5% commission on all sales (both tax deductible for American galleries) would take care of temporary Mall booth construction, re-seeding of grass, and booth construction inside SI venues and still yield a nice chunk of cash for the SI.

If there's commercial success and high public attendance, soon we'd see some satellite hotel fairs popping up all over DC and its easy-to-get-to suburbs; the Phillips will jump on the bandwagon right away.

ABMB had 26 fairs all over Greater Miami last December. Another DC-unique element to the above model, and an important element that only a Washington art fair weekend can add: include the Embassies!

In addition to all the above events taking place, the fair could also align with shows at 15-20 embassy galleries around DC. The embassies would showcase one (or a group) of their national artists, and then the fair would really have an international flavor, and the beginning seeds of an American Venice in the DMV.

DC is a small city; it's fairly easy to set up transportation between the embassies and the Mall. In fact, some embassies could probably set that up themselves.

I think that this "new" super model could (and eventually when someone delivers and implements it -- it will) challenge Miami Beach -- and yes, I am aware that DC in May is not Miami in December -- but I also think that the District's own museums and public attractions trump Miami's anytime, so the DMV has something different to offer the potential collector who may be considering attending a new art fair in a city (like DC) that also offers him/her some other cultural and visual attractions besides good weather, and nice beaches… and Calle Ocho.

DC art commissioners... Smithsonianos... DC city fathers and mothers.... call me!