First Friday Walk Through

Last Friday, DCist Arts Editor Cyndi Spain and I visited a few of the Dupont Circle area galleries, which were having their usual First Friday extended hours.

We started our visits at Washington Printmakers Gallery where Rosemary Cooley's hangs until March 27, 2005. As with the vast majority of the gallery's cooperative members, Cooley is a master printmaker, with elegant dual-themed prints, usually associated in some form with fish or marine imagery.

Next we walked a few steps on Connecticut Avenue to Conner Contemporary, where Leigh Conner, as usual, greeted us with a bright smile in her even brighter gallery (Leigh paints the gallery with a fresh coat of white before every opening).

Conner is showcasing Joe Ovelman's "Snow Queen" series, which are also framed in white and brightly lit, lending them a sequential, out-of-sequence film look as the images of a drag queen's antics (Ovelman) in the snow in a New York park, develop before our eyes.

In the back room, Conner has also arranged Ovelman's earlier "17 Strangers," where the photographer has caused himself to be photographed from the back of his head view, as he gives oral pleasure to 17 strangers that he met in a park.

LC: "So Joe, we noticed that all the men that you are giving a blow job to are wearing the same coat."

JO: [Somewhat agitated, but barely whispering] "Yes?"

LC: "Is that important? I mean, what is the relationship or story behind that jacket?"

JO: [Very quietly] "It's very important."

Ovelman is a very young, very shy, and very brave photographer, with a clear vision of where he wants to take his work, and as usual Conner Contemporary proves why they're not only one of the best galleries in the area, but certainly one of the most courageous as well.

We followed the crowds that were now beginning to form and gathered at Irvine Contemporary Art where Prof. Irvine has assembled one of the first great surprises of the night: A really memorable exhibition showcasing the marriage of technology and intelligent thought to create really interesting work (by the way, check out this really good photo of the gallery by Fur Cafe).

On exhibit at Irvine Contemporary Art are the interactive sculptures of Peter Charles, who is a is Professor of Art at Georgetown University.

When I was a kid, my family was one of the first families in my neighborhood with a TV, and every night, around 8PM people from around the neighborhood, would gather in our living room to watch TV. Additionally, there were always a few neighborhood street ruffians who would watch the TV from the outside, through our windows.

Charles has constructed these clever small, house-like sculptures, and inside each one is a real mini-TV screen, actually working and with an antenna, so that the finished sculpture smartly marries the technology of the mini TVs with the creativity of the sculpture, and the interactivity of the user (each sculpture comes with a remote). It is a very good exhibition and an intelligent show. Also, Prof. Irvine told me that he intends to switch from a four week show format to a six week show format in the near future.

While at Irvine we ran into Kristen Hileman, the talented Assistant Curator for Contemporary Art at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, who introduced us to the fair Rachel Coker, who is the assistant to Hirshhorn Chief Curator Kerry Brougher, who wasn't there. It is great to see our local museum curators visiting our galleries.

Bravo Hileman and Coker!

Walked to R Street, and by now the crowds are definitely larger as we make our way into Marsha Mateyka's narrow doorway to see the new works by District powerhouse artist Andrea Way.

In her fourth solo exhibition at the Marsha Mateyka Gallery, Andrea Way returns to working on paper in the intricate detailed beautiful abstractions for which she has made herself a name as one of our area's best abstract painters.

But unlike her past work, Way is now creating, deliberate, controlled work, as opposed to the beautiful and luminous paintings that became her trademark in the 90s. In these new works, a controlled artist emerges, and the results are almost Moorish, Arabesque mosaics of colors and lines and works that easily fit into the most modern of postmodern collections as well as on the wall of the Alhambra at its height. I was totally enamored and seduced by her new works, and this show ranks as one of the best I've seen so far this year.

From the sublime to the BLOGsphere, and we ran into J.T. Kirkland and Bren; Kirkland told me not to miss Molly Springfied's debut at JET Artworks (Duh!). Props to Kirkland for visiting the shows, as he routinely does; if you're going to write about Washington art, you got to go see Washington art!

The next surprise of the night came at Alex Gallery.

On exhibition at the main gallery is a set (from a private collection) of small (around 8x10 or 11x14 inches) paintings by Jackson Pollock from 1950 and 1951. These paintings are a Pollock I never knew; an unlikely and unusual "small" Pollock, working in canvasses so small and intimate that his large signature (oddly enough signed in gaudy silver or gold pen) often takes half or a third of the bottom of the paintings, causing a bit of distractive damage to the actual paintings.

And these small Pollocks are like miniatures of the massive Pollocks that we all love or hate. But they are all painted with the paint so diluted and thin, almost like 90% turpentine and 10% paint... so "thin" in fact, that if Saint Clement ever saw them, it could have been the springboard for his famous "painting should be thin" nonsense that gave birth to the Washington Color School.

And guess what else is hidden amongst these tiny Pollocks? A drip painting that offers us a representational Pollock, using his formulaic drip paint method, to deliver a small painting of a tree.

But the surprises don't end there! Go to the back of the gallery, and we discover a Keith Haring from the period when Haring was an art school student. It is a painting of a bird, as one sees in most Florida and Annapolis galleries; and yet, there's a certain visual smell of Haring already there.

And for probably the first and only time in the Universe, Haring shares the back gallery with several small Norman Rockwell watercolors and sketches. It is yet another proof of the veracity and tenacity of Chaos theory.

And old Norman manages to deliver a few surprises of his own.

Only Nixon could go to China and only Rockwell could document in his artwork the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s, as we all discovered in the huge mega hit Rockwell retrospective that swept the nation a few years ago. But I have never seen a nude by Rockwell.

And in the Rockwell exhibit back there, we discovered a small watercolor sketch, where several women (all nude) do the Can Can a-la-Rockettes, and as the Brits say, are showing their "bits." Bawdy Old Norm!

We then headed to see Molly Springfield's long awaited debut at JET Artworks, where we met Erin (who is the "E" in "JET" - her husband and her business partner are the "J" and the "T").

And Molly Springfield did not disappoint! In fact, this is painting like no few painters can deliver or have painted before; the closest that I can up with is Richter, but there's no Richter that looks like a Springfield; she's creating new illusionism by taking trompe l'oeil to a new road.

How to explain?

Let's start by saying that a couple of years ago I reviewed Springfield when she exhibited at the Arts Club. This is a different, more profound Springfield.

Springfield new work is supposed to be all about "notes."

Words passed on paper between furtive hands in High School; perhaps a love note, or a cheat crib for Algebra. We never know, because Springfield has cleverly hitched her formidable painting skills to the latest war wagon in the painting dialogue: the marriage of abstraction with realism.

But Springfield brings this dialogue to a sensual whisper. These are hyperealistic paintings that deny us the ultimate voyeurism: to be able to read the notes. In fact, the folded papers can, at the right aspect, become muted abstractions, suddenly popping into maddening realism, but never yielding their ultimate secrets.

Much like their creator, they are delicate, waif-like works, softly speaking visual words into our senses, denying categorization, and also offering an intelligent beauty that restores that maligned adjective to its proper context when describing art. This is without a doubt one of the best painting shows of the year.

Bravo Springfield!

Warning Cyndi that we were about to enter a time warp, in the sense that once Marc Zuver got a hold of us, it may be hours before we escaped his loquacious and warm personality, we entered Fondo del Sol, but the hard-working Zuver wasn't there (he's in New York).

So we walked downstairs to the Studio Gallery, and found that the talented Michael Janis has joined that artists' cooperative and has a few pieces on display. They are very good work, already showing the imprimatura of the Washington Glass School. Janis is definitely a sculptor to keep your eyes on.

Cyndi had to leave, and as 8PM was approaching, I headed for a quick visit to Kathleen Ewing and then to Gallery 10 for a quick peek at the latest work of Mary Virginia Langston.

Overall, the crowds were quite large, and I came away quite impressed by new discoveries offered to me by two masters and two new emerging would-be masters.

The best thing for art is more art.

Molly Springfield has a world-class and unique talent

I've been in awe and writing about Molly Springfield since 2005, which (considering that I have a degree in Math) is about 20 years - see those mentions here.

Springfield is one of those artists whose talent, vision and technical ability are so distinct and unique, that if we were to plot artists on a bell curve of talent, she'd be one of those waaaay at the right end of the bell curve and the subject of a chapter in Malcolm Gladwell's next book.

Her breath-taking work titled is spun between the sun and  will be one of the highlights of the 2025 Women ARtists of the DMV show.

Behold is spun between the sun and, Graphite on paper by Molly Springfield, c. 2016.

is spun between the sun and
Graphite on paper
by Molly Springfield
34 x 25.5 inches (2 panels, 16.5 x 25.5 inches each) 2016

Shame on Springfield, MA

Art censorship covers all sides of the social spectrum in this great nation. Throw in a nude (or in this case, not even a nude) in most public settings around the US and something is bound to go wrong. Even in the Soviet Socialist State of Massachusetts. From the Legal Satyricon:

Censorship — its not just for rednecks

I often rant about the censorship minded former confederacy — but I must admit that my home state of Massachusetts has its share of censorship monkeys. The censorship monkey of the day — the city of Springfield, MA and Gina E. Beavers, director of the Springfield Arts Initiative for the Springfield Business Improvement District (SBID).

Read the entire post with all the details here.

The Trawick Prize at Heineman-Myers

I had a chance a couple of nights ago to drop in to Heineman-Myers Contemporary Art in Bethesda to get a preview and an early first look at the fifteen artists who have been selected as finalists for The Trawick Prize: Bethesda Contemporary Art Awards.

The work of these 15 finalists will be on display from September 3 – September 27 and the prize winners will be announced and honored on Wednesday, September 3rd at a special press event held at the gallery. The Best in Show winner will be awarded $10,000; second place will be honored with $2,000 and third place will be awarded $1,000. A “Young Artist” whose birth date is after April 11, 1978 will also be awarded $1,000.

First of all let me comment that the work looks great in its new venue and it is a vast improvement from its previous venue.

In Zoe Myer's beautiful and airy gallery, the Trawick Prize finalists get a terrific spot in the thick of Bethesda's traffic and center of fun.

The artists selected as finalists are:

Joseph Barbaccia, Potomac Falls, VA
Ryan Browning, Mount Airy, MD
Lynn Cazabon, Baltimore, MD
Warren Craghead III, Charlottesville, VA
Dawn Gavin, Baltimore, MD
Bernhard Hildebrandt, Baltimore, MD
Kristin Holder, Washington, D.C.
Kay Hwang, Baltimore, MD
Baby Martinez, Washington, D.C.
Maggie Michael, Washington, D.C.
Youngmi S. Organ, Nokesville, VA
Tony Shore, Baltimore, MD
Molly Springfield, Washington. D.C.
Dan Steinhilber, Washington, D.C.
Heide Trepanier, Richmond, VA

As I've noted before, several names return to the list, and for the first time we see a husband and wife on the list as DC's art couple of Maggie Michael and Dan Steinhilber both made the finalist's list and now will compete head to head.

Several names from the Bethesda Painting Awards list also make an appearance on this list, most notably Baltimore's Tony Shore, who is a past winner.

The entries were juried by Molly Donovan, Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art at the National Gallery of Art; Irene Hofmann, Executive Director of the Contemporary Museum in Baltimore, MD and Leah Stoddard, former Director of Second Street Gallery in Charlottesville, VA.

Depending on who amongst those three is the "leader of the pack" will determine who will win the prize. Five will get you ten that the DC area artists were muscled in by Donovan, Baltimore's by Hoffman and so on. I've been on many "art-by-committee" panels and know how they work. As Jose Marti wrote: "I know the monster well, for I have lived in its entrails."

This particular jury committee did an outstanding job! The exhibition is among the best Trawick Prize finalists that I have ever seen, and it is an exciting mix of art and conceptual ideas, a little play on kitsch by a couple of intelligent artists and even a touch of what's trendy in the art world today.

The Trawick Prize is ageing like a great port wine and getting better and better each year. The entire Greater DC area owes a huge debt to the very generous Carol Trawick for sponsoring this and other art prizes.

So, if you'll indulge my guessing games, which are sure to piss off a juror or two (no intention to do so is on purpose, but when writers take guesses at what jurors think about, sometimes we step on fragile skins), let me see if I can predict the winner.

If Donovan is the leading voice in the jury panel, then I believe that Maggie Michael will be the winner. Her entry into this exhibition is by far the most complex and interesting work of hers that I have seen to date. In the gallery piece by Michael, she has combined all of her previous elements of poured paint, then peel the layers back and nail some of them, with an interesting distressing of the substrate by drilling a big hole in the center and also by adding a graffiti like spraying on the background. I could be off slightly and Donovan may lead the prize to Maggie's talented husband, Dan Steinhilber.

If Hoffman is the HMFIC in the panel, then all roads lead to Baltimore's Tony Shore, whose brooding works on black velvet play off a working man's view of art as an intelligent and creative play on elevating a kitsch substrate to a high art level.

If Stoddard has the leading voice in the panel, then the prize goes to my good friend and talented artist and blogger from C'ville Warren Craghead III.

In the unlikely event that none of the three jurors has taken the reigns of the jurying task, and they're equally strong in guiding the votes, then all bets are off and we're off to guesslands unknowns.

Fully knowing that I will never, ever be asked to be a juror for the Trawick Prize, here's what I would do if I was the prizegiver in this very good show.

A very good look at the shiny, elegant and very sexy forms by Joseph Barbaccia, slowly but surely becoming one of the District's iconic sculptors. What Barbaccia does to contemporary sculpture is a three dimensional version of what Shore does to painting. They are both using kitsch elements and substrates of the contemporary world to create smart and intelligent works of art. Barbaccia's spectacularly gaudy "Every Man's Dream" is a glorious achievement of color and sequins and shininess and it is certainly worth of a very close look for the top prize and perhaps setting this artist's career on an upswing.

DC's Molly Springfield is not only one of the nicest persons that you'll ever meet, but also one of the most amazing talents in the DC area's art scene, and her work is so superbly perfect that we fixate on its tiny imperfections to reassure ourselves of its creation by hand rather than machine.

Molly has been on almost every finalist's list for almost every prize in the area for the last few years, and it's probably due to strike soon.

Although I am not familiar with Heide Trepanier's work, there's something powerful and exciting about the piece illustrated here, which although tends to remind me a little of some earlier Maggie Michael, nonetheless leaps from it in the way that Trepanier has isolated the paint with lines to almost reveal to us Boschian figures and animals and aliens in her work.

Time is due for a District artist to win. In 2004 David Page of Baltimore, MD was the Best in Show winner of $10,000. The next year, Jiha Moon, then of Annandale, Virginia and now residing in Atlanta, Georgia won the top prize. In 2006 James Rieck of Baltimore, Maryland won top honors and last year Jo Smail from Baltimore, won top honors.

What's up Baltimore?

My top prize would go to Springfield; See my other prizewinners here (scroll down to the bottom).

A public reception will be held on Friday, September 12, 2008 from 6-9pm in conjunction with the Bethesda Art Walk. This is easily the best art show in DC this month - don't miss it!

Hsu on Springfield

The CP's Huan Hsu has a really good profile of DC area artist Molly Springfield. Read that here.

You can also see some of Springfield's works as part of the "Text" exhibition opening at the Greater Reston Arts Center on April 1, 2006.

DCist First Friday Walkthrough

By Cyndi Spain
DCist Arts Editor

DCist headed out on Friday with F. Lennox Campello of DC Art News to check out the new exhibits in the Dupont Circle area galleries. We were particularly impressed by Peter Charles' new work at Irvine Contemporary Art.

A professor at Georgetown University, Charles is from the D.C. area and received his arts training at Yale and Rhode Island School of Design. His new show includes miniature houses outfitted with their own LCD televisions.

We were surprised to find out that each screen shows live television, chosen and controlled by the owner of the artwork via remote. Like those on the larger scale, the televisions dominate the houses they inhabit and can be seen from outside the home by the all-too familiar and enticing blue glow.

The exhibit of abstractions by Andrea Way at the Marsha Mateyka Gallery was also well worth the visit. This show is Way's fourth solo exhibition at the gallery. Her meticulous work - created through an intense process of dropping colored inks into blobs of water on a level surface or by dripping colored water onto the paper - is evidence of
her patience and attention to Zen practice.

We were also pleased to see the exhibit of Molly Springfield's art at JET Artworks, located at Elizabeth Roberts' old space at 2108 R Street. Springfield, a superbly talented painter, last wowed area visual art lovers a couple of years ago with a spectacular show at the Arts Club.

Her work combines the technical wizardry of trompe l'oeil ("fool the eye") painting and drawing with intelligent compositions based on collected objects, notes, and word imagery. We really enjoyed the way the exhibit continued from one floor to the next through the text written directly onto the wall.

Kirkland Looks at Springfield

Thinking About Art has a review of Molly Springfield's debut at JET Artworks.

I'm working on a multi-review of several Dupont Circle galleries at once; it will be published soon. Meanwhile read JT's thoughts on Springfield here.

Trawick Prizewinners announced!

The Trawick Prize: Bethesda Contemporary Art Awards, a juried art competition produced by the Bethesda Arts & Entertainment District, announced the top three prize winners last night during the exhibition’s opening. Lauren Adams from Baltimore, MD was awarded “Best in Show” with $10,000; Sarah Irvin from Springfield, VA was named second place and given $2,000; and Ben Marcin from Baltimore, MD was bestowed third place and received $1,000.

Lauren Adams, who earned her Bachelor of Fine Arts from the University of North Carolina and her Master of Fine Arts from Carnegie Mellon University, mines the histories of power, labor and material culture to make surprising connections that resonate with current sociopolitical issues. Her work has been featured at ConnerSmith in Washington, D.C., The Walters Art Museum in Baltimore, MD, Contemporary Applied Arts in London, UK, Contemporary Art Museum in St. Louis, MO and the Mattress Factory in Pittsburgh, PA, among others. She attended the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture and held residencies at the Cite in Paris, France and the Jentel Foundation in Wyoming. She received the Joan Mitchell Foundation MFA Award in 2007, was a finalist for the Janet and Walter Sondheim Prize in 2014, and was recently named a 2016 Pollock Krasner Foundation grant recipient.

2016 Trawick Prize Finalists

Lauren Adams, Baltimore, MD

Cindy Cheng, Baltimore, MD

Leah Cooper, Baltimore, MD

Sarah Irvin, Springfield, VA

Dean Kessmann, Washington, D.C.

Ben Marcin, Baltimore, MD

Tony Shore, Baltimore, MD

William Wylie, Charlottesville, VA

The work of the finalists will be on exhibit at Gallery B, 7700 Wisconsin Avenue, Suite E, until September 24. The public opening reception will be held Friday, September 9 from 6-8pm. Gallery hours for the duration of the exhibit are Wednesday through Saturday, 12 – 6pm.

Entries were juried by Stéphane Aquin, Chief Curator, Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden; Hasan Elahi, Associate Professor, Department of Art at University of Maryland and Rebecca Schoenthal, Curator of Exhibitions and Co-Interim Director at The Fralin Museum of Art at the University of Virginia.

The Trawick Prize was established in 2003 by Carol Trawick, a longtime community activist in downtown Bethesda. She is the past Chair of both the Bethesda Arts & Entertainment District and Bethesda Urban Partnership, and also the Founder of the Bethesda Painting Awards. In 2007, Ms. Trawick founded the Jim and Carol Trawick Foundation to assist health and human services and arts non-profits in Montgomery County.

The Trawick Prize is one of the first regional competitions and largest prizes to annually honor visual artists. To date, The Trawick Prize has awarded $205,000 in prize monies and has exhibited the work of more than 130 regional artists. Previous Best in Show recipients include Richard Cleaver, 2003; David Page, 2004; Jiha Moon, 2005; James Rieck, 2006; Jo Smail, 2007; Maggie Michael, 2008; Rene Trevino, 2009; Sara Pomerance, 2010; Mia Feuer, 2011; Lillian Bayley Hoover, 2012; Gary Kachadourian, 2013; Neil Feather, 2014 and Jonathan Monaghan, 2015.

Luce Artist Talk with Molly Springfield

Saturday, May 9, 1:30 - 3:30pm

DMV artist Molly Springfield talks about her work with large scale prints and book marginalia. She will connect her work to objects on view in the Luce Foundation Center.

Location: Smithsonian American Art Museum, Luce Foundation Center

Tickets: Free

Event Link:  http://americanart.si.edu/calendar/event.cfm?trumbaEmbed=view%3Devent%26eventid%3D113666413

Sondheim Semifinalists Announced

Twenty-six visual artists or groups from Maryland, Pennsylvania, Virginia and the District of Columbia were named semifinalists a few days ago for Baltimore's fourth annual Janet & Walter Sondheim Artscape Prize.

The 26 (dominated by Baltimore area artists) are:

• Seth Adelsberger, Baltimore

• "Alzaruba," also known as Al Zaruba, Baltimore

•The Baltimore Development Cooperative, Baltimore. The cooperative includes Scott Berzofsky, Dane Nester and Nicholas Wisniewski, who are working on a community farm/art project in East Baltimore. Berzofsky and Wisniewski are former founding members of the artist collective known as Camp Baltimore.

•Lisa Blas, Washington, D.C.

• Rachel Bone, Baltimore

• Jessica Braiterman, Beltsville

• Travis Childers, Fairfax, Va.

• Mary Coble, Washington, D.C.

• R.L. Croft, Manassas, Va.

• Alyssa Dennis, Baltimore

• Liz Ensz, Baltimore

• Leslie Furlong, Baltimore

• Ryan Hackett, Kensington, Md.

• Christian Herr, Lancaster, Pa.

• Jason Horowitz, Arlington, Va.

• Jessie Lehson, Baltimore

• Kim Manfredi, Baltimore

• Katherine Mann, Baltimore

• Baby Martinez, Washington, D.C.

• Sebastian Martorana, Baltimore

• Lisa Moren, Baltimore

• Ellen Nielsen, Baltimore

• Louie Palu, Washington, D.C.

• Molly Springfield, Washington, D.C.

• "TwoCan Collective," Baltimore. TwoCan Collective consists of two women, "Emily C-D" and Jessica Unterhalter, who often make work using recycled materials.

• Karen Yasinsky, Baltimore

My money is on either Mary Coble or Molly Springfield. Both of them are superbly loaded with talent, and both of them are perennial finalists in all of our area's top art prizes. The judges for this year's prize are Ellen Harvey, a New York-based artist; Valerie Cassel Oliver, curator of the Contemporary Arts Museum Houston; and Elisabeth Sussman, a curator at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York.

The winner of the $25K prize will be announced July 11 at the Baltimore Museum of Art. This year's competition drew 334 entries.

Congrats to all 26!

Trawick Prizewinners

The winners of this year's Trawick Prize were announced yesterday and they are James Rieck of Baltimore, MD, who was named as the Best in Show winner of $10,000; Kristin Holder of Washington, D.C. was awarded the Second Place prize of $2,000; Molly Springfield of Washington, D.C. was honored with the Third Place prize of $1,000 and Jason Zimmerman of Washington, D.C. was given the Young Artist Award of $1,000.

The work of fourteen finalists will be on display at Creative Partners Gallery from September 5-29, 2006.

The 2006 Trawick Prize was juried by Ashley Kistler, Director of the exhibition program at the Visual Arts Center of Richmond; Dr. John Rasmussen, Director and Curator of the American University Museum, Katzen Arts Center and Gerald Ross, Director of Exhibitions at Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA).

Rieck has won a ton of money from Ms. Trawick this year, as he was also the Second Prize winner in the Bethesda Painting Awards, which this amazing lady also sponsors.

As a quick search shows, this is a widely exhibited artist, with a solid gallery record in New York and other major markets (and apparently seldom exhibiting in the Greater DC area). I'm not too familiar with his work, other than what I saw at the Bethesda Painting Awards exhibition, but it was clear to me that this was the work of a very gifted artist, both technically (which is so easily dismissed by those that can't accomplish or understand how difficult it is to do) and in its intrinsic sense of delivering mental ideas and messages through intelligent composition and dramatic cropping of imagery.

What impressed me the most about the work, once we get past and recognize the enviable technical expertise (which was also shared in this year's prizewinning crop by the amazing and also technically-gifted Molly Springfield), was the sense of questioning (and foreboding) that his paintings planted in my mind. This is an artist whose work is intended not only to impress with technical finesse, but also reach deep into accepting minds and plant the seeds of understanding how the power of visual art can make the chemical connectors in our brains cause us to gasp at the realization that we are truly being awed by a master artist.

A good choice and well-deserved, and had I been the juror, I'm pretty sure that he would have won a prize, although I would have given the Trawick to Molly, who shares nearly all of the same attributes, skills and subtle bravado as Rieck, but whose work I know better and understand on a deeper level.

And that's how prizes are won or lost.

PS - Capps on the Trawick.

Text at GRACE

Yesterday some of the artists participating in the second iteration of TEXT, which opens on Saturday from 6-8PM in the beautiful new spaces of the Greater Reston Arts Center, installed their work.

The exhibition brings back all but one of the original Text artists from Seven.

The fair Denise Wolff installing her photos for Text
The artists in this iteration of Text are Molly Springfield, Mark Cameron Boyd, Michael Janis, Victor Ekpuk, Denise Wolff and Tim Tate.

Originally, J.T. Kirkland was part of the first group of Text artists, and part of the original proposal to GRACE; however, JT got selected for a well-deserved solo show that immediately follows Text at GRACE and we all thought that it would be better for Kirkland to go solo and thus I replaced him with Tate. Kirkland's opening at GRACE is Saturday, May 13 from 6-8pm.


Michael Janis installing at Text
For this version of Text, all artists have created mostly new work, and the very busy Molly Springfield, who has been having a spectacular 2006 so far, has a digital slide show of her "Notes" for this version of Text.

The exhibition opens this coming Saturday, April 1st with an opening catered reception from 6-8PM. Then we will have an artists' talk the next Saturday, April 8 starting at 7PM. Direction to GRACE are here.

See ya there!

This week's update for the Women Artists of the DMV show

Here's another updated list of the DMV area female artists who have agreed to participate so far in the 2025 "Women Artists of the DMV" survey show! 

Loads more to come as I await confirmations! I am also still having trouble reaching some artists that I'd like to invite to the show... so far my emails have either been suffering from spam folderitis or just being ghosted... 

I am also somewhat surprised how difficult it is to find some artists' contact information... and soooooo.... if anyone knows the following artists, please tell them to email me: 

Marian Van Landingham, Iona Rozeal Brown (now known as Rozeal), Lillian Burwell, Danni Dawson, Zoë Charlton, Sylvia Snowden, Margo Humphrey, Hadieh Shafie, etc.

Before I forget: If I've invited you to the show and you've agreed to participate, but you're not listed below, please email me (lennycampello@hotmail.com) and let me know... or if I've misspelled your name :-) 

And the "in the show" list so far...

Shiri Achu 

Maremi Andreozzi 

Erin Antognoli

Sondra N. Arkin

Michele Banks 

Marilyn Banner 

Suzi Balamaci 

Kate Barfield 

Jennifer Barlow 

Denée Barr 

Holly Bass

Jennifer Lynn Beaudet 

Julia Bloom 

Lori Boocks 

Margaret Boozer 

Laurie Breen

Lisa Brotman 

Dianne Bugash 

Shante Bullock

Melissa Burley 

Judy Byron 

Rachel Carren 

Elizabeth Casqueiro 

Mei Mei Chang

Anne Cherubim

Shanthi Chandrasekar 

Hsin-Hsi Chen 

Irene Clouthier 

Amanda Coelho

Ellen Cornett 

Kathy Cornwell

Rosemary Feit Covey 

Sheila Crider 

Andrea Cybyk 

Jenny Freestone 

Andrea Cullins 

Joan Danziger 

Anna U. Davis 

Jenny Davis 

Tanya Davis 

Patricia de Poel Wilberg

Wendy Donahoe

Margaret Dowell

Mary Early 

Bria Edwards

Cheryl Edwards

Dana Ellyn 

Hyunsuk Erickson 

Cynthia Farrell Johnson 

Felisa Federman Cogut 

Cianne Fragione

Helen Frederick 

Genie Ghim 

Susan Goldman

Carol Brown Goldberg 

Margery Goldberg

Janis Goodman 

Freya Grand 

Graciela Granek 

Josephine Haden 

Debra Halprin 

Elyse Harrison

Muriel Hasbun 

Rania Hassan 

Mira Hecht 

Francie Hester 

Ellen Hill 

Leslie Holt

Michal Hunter 

Melissa Ichiuji 

Selena Jackson 

Martha Jackson Jarvis  

Barbara Januszkiewicz 

M. Jane Johnson 

Jessica Kallista 

Jenny Kanzler

Maria Karametou

Lori Katz 

Sally Kauffman

Zofie King 

Kate Kretz 

Bridget Sue Lambert

Susan LaMont 

Linda Lawler 

Ngoc Le

Kyujin Lee 

Harriet Lesser 

Shelley Lowenstein 

Carol Levin 

Taina Litwak 

Dalya Luttwak 

Kara Lin 

June Linowitz 

Shelley Lowenstein

Laurel Lukaszewski 

Caroline MacKinnon

Akemi Maegawa 

Susan Makara

Joey Mánlapaz 

Katherine Mann

Isabel Manalo

Anne Marchand 

Isabella Martire 

Lucinda Marshall 

Amy Marx 

J.J. McCracken

Donna McCullough 

Anne Meagher-Cook  

Maggie Michael 

Marily Mojica 

Michele Montalbano 

E.J. Montgomery

Sharon Moody 

Ally Morgan 

Camille Mosley-Pasley 

Jody Mussoff

Georgia Nassikas 

Leslie Nolan

Teresa Oaxaca 

Claudia Olivos 

Helena O'Neill Gallego 

Erica Orgen 

Marian Osher 

Betsy Packard 

Dora Patin

Judith Peck 

Monica Perdomo

Sandra Pérez-Ramos 

Patricia Edwine Poku-Speight

Susana Raab 

Marie Ringwald 

Amber Robles-Gordon 

Alla Rogers 

Roxana Rojas 

Christine Ryan 

Nancy Sausser 

Karen Schmitz 

Lian Sever 

Susan Shalowitz 

Janathel Shaw 

Gail Shaw-Clemons 

Elzbieta Sikorska 

Alexandra Silverthorne 

Judy Southerland 

Molly Springfield 

Pritha Srinivasan

Renee Stout 

Zsudayka Nzinga Terrel 

Patricia Underwood

Andrea Way 

Ellyn Weiss 

Joyce Wellman 

Marcie Wolf-Hubbard

Sharon Wolpoff 

Shawn Yancy

Suzanne Yurdin

Helen Zughaib

Janet & Walter Sondheim Prize Semi-Finalists

The semi-finalists for the $25,000 Sondheim Prize in Baltimore have been announced and they are:

Seth Adelsberger, Baltimore MD

Chul-Hyun Ahn, Baltimore MD

Lillian Bayley, Baltimore MD

Heather Boaz, Towson MD

Mark Cameron Boyd, Beltsville MD

Edward Brown, Salisbury MD

Lynn Cazabon, Baltimore MD

Richard Cleaver, Baltimore MD

Mary Coble, Washington DC

Kathryn Cornelius, Washington DC

Frank Hallam Day, Washington DC

Eric Dyer, Baltimore MD

Neil Feather, Baltimore MD

Shaun Flynn, Baltimore MD

Steven Frost, Washington DC

Dawn Gavin, Baltimore MD

Geoff Grace, Baltimore MD

Susannah Gust, Baltimore MD

Maren Hassinger, Baltimore MD

Sam Christian Holmes, Baltimore MD

Jason Horowitz, Arlington VA

Courtney Jordan, Baltimore MD

Brian Kain, Emmitsburg MD

Avish Khebrehzadeh, Washington DC

Magnolia Laurie, Baltimore MD

Joey P. Mánlapaz, Washington DC

Gabriel Martinez, Washington DC

Jeanette May, Alexandria VA

Lisa Moren, Baltimore MD

Brandon Morse, Takoma Park MD

Jeremy Rountree, Baltimore MD

Erik Sandberg, Washington DC

Tony Shore, Baltimore MD

Molly Springfield, Washington DC

Deirtra Thompson, Baltimore MD

René Treviño, Baltimore MD

Karen Yasinsky, Baltimore MD

Jason Zimmerman, Washington DC
The winner selected from the six finalists will be announced at a special ceremony and reception held at the BMA on Friday, July 13. Another exhibition of semifinalists will take place at the Maryland Institute College of Art’s Decker and Meyerhoff Galleries during Artscape on July 20 and continuing through August 2, 2007.

In 2006, MICA’s Rinehart School of Sculpture alumnae Laure Drogoul received the first-ever $25,000 honor and the above list is stacked with MICAists: MICA alumni Chul-Hyun Ahn ‘02, Lillian Bayley ‘05, Heather Boaz ‘03, Richard Cleaver ‘78, Eric Dyer ‘04, Geoff Grace ‘04, Susannah Gust ‘06 (Mount Royal School of Art), Sam Christian Holmes ‘95 (Mount Royal School of Sculpture), Courtney Jordan ‘06, Brian Kain ‘85, Magnolia Laurie ‘07 (Mount Royal School of Art), Jeremy Rountree ‘06, and Deirtra Thompson ‘05; as well as Maren Hassinger, director of the College’s Rinehart School of Sculpture; foundation faculty member Tony Shore ’93; and graduate studies office manager René Treviño ’05 (Mount Royal School of Art).

Trawick Prize Semi-Finalists Announced

Thirty-two artists have been selected as semi-finalists for the fifth annual Trawick Prize: Bethesda Contemporary Art Awards. The first place winner will be awarded $10,000, second place will be honored with $2,000 and third place will be awarded $1,000. A “young artist” whose birth date is after April 10, 1977 may also be awarded a $1,000 prize sponsored by the Fraser Gallery.

Travis Childers, Fairfax, VA
Mary Coble, Washington, D.C.
Eric Dyer, Baltimore, MD
Mary Early, Washington D.C.
Susan Eder & Craig Dennis, Falls Church, VA
Suzanna Fields, Richmond, VA
Inga Frick, Washington, D.C.
Eric Garner, Bethesda, MD
Jason M. Gottlieb, Potomac, MD
Jeannine Harkleroad, Chesapeake, Va
Maren Hassinger, Baltimore, MD
Linda Hesh, Alexandria, VA
Jason Horowitz, Arlington, VA
Ian Jehle, Washington D.C.
Lisa Kellner, Hanover, VA
Nathan A. Manuel, Washington, D.C.
Baby Martinez, Washington, D.C
Robert Mellor, Chatham, VA
Steve A, Prince, Hampton, VA
Beverly Ress, Silver Spring, MD
Christopher Saah, Washington, D.C.
Michael Sandstrom, Baltimore, MD
Kathleen Shafer, Washington, D.C.
Foon Sham, Springfield, VA
Jo Smail, Baltimore, MD
Judy Stone, Riverdale Park, MD
Matthew Sutton, Washington, D.C.
Rob Tarbell, Richmond, VA
Tim Tate, Washington, D.C.
JL Stewart Watson, Baltimore, MD
Bruce Wilhelm, Richmond, VA
Nicholas F. Wisniewski, Baltimore, MD
With some "new" names excepted, that list is essentially almost a "Who's Who" in the art scene of the Greater DC area - perhaps the toughest field in the Trawick's short history.

The jurors for the Trawick Prize are Rex R. Stevens, who is the Chair of the General Fine Arts & Drawing Departments at Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA) in Baltimore, Maryland; Amy G. Moorefield, who is the Assistant Director and Curator of Collections for Virginia Commonwealth University’s Anderson Gallery as well as an Assistant Professor there; and the fair Anne Ellegood, who is the Associate Curator at the Hirshhorn Museum & Sculpture Garden where her focus is contemporary art.

Wanna go to an artist's talk tomorrow?

Saturday, May 9, 1:30 - 3:30pm

DMV artist Molly Springfield talks about her work with large scale prints and book marginalia. She will connect her work to objects on view in the Luce Foundation Center.

Location: Smithsonian American Art Museum, Luce Foundation Center

Tickets: Free

Event Link:  http://americanart.si.edu/calendar/event.cfm?trumbaEmbed=view%3Devent%26eventid%3D113666413

Art that sells itself

On Jan. 28, while on a business trip to Chicago, Terence Spies used his iPhone to monitor an eBay auction. He was trying to outbid a couple of rivals to win a black plastic box that was at the time on display at an art gallery in Seattle. Spies had read about “A Tool to Deceive and Slaughter,” as the piece is called, on a Reuters financial blog. That’s a strange-enough place for a collector to learn about art, but Spies’s interest seems even more curious given that the blogger Felix Salmon’s write-up of the piece’s sale was titled “The Uncollectible Artwork.” Even if Spies won the object, created by a young artist named Caleb Larsen, his ownership would be tentative: the technical innards of “A Tool to Deceive and Slaughter” carried a program that would relist the thing on eBay every week, forever. Indeed, the terms and conditions for submitting a bid clearly stipulated that the device must be connected to the Internet, constantly trying to resell itself at a higher price to someone else.

The minimum bid was $2,500. Spies won with a bid of $6,350. “A Tool to Deceive and Slaughter” had generated a fair amount of buzz online when it first went up for sale as part of a show of Larsen’s work at Seattle’s Lawrimore Project gallery. And I understood why people found the concept compelling (or annoying) enough to write about it. But I wanted to know why somebody would find it compelling enough to spend thousands of real dollars to sort of own that concept.

Spies, who is the chief technology officer at Voltage Security in Palo Alto, Calif., describes himself as a collector of “baffling contemporary art.” (He mentions the almost monochrome panels of Anne Appleby and Molly Springfield’s meticulous drawings of photocopies.) He says another collector once advised him to buy art that “people have a reaction to — good or bad.” And “A Tool to Deceive and Slaughter” has elicited reactions ranging from “You’re really crazy” to “You’re slightly crazy.” He’s O.K. with that. It “sets people off,” he continues, “because it’s not even clear what you own.”

Read the NYT story here.

Annual Transformer Silent Auction & Benefit Party

Individual tickets for the8 th Annual Transformer Silent Auction & Benefit Party are now on sale at our new website, www.transformerdc.org. $150 per ticket; $175 after November 8. Advanced purchase is required.

The 8th Annual Transformer Silent Auction & Benefit Party – a one-night-only event designed to celebrate and support Transformer and the artists they serve, while raising the visibility of DC’s contemporary arts community—will take place November 18, 2011 at the Corcoran Gallery of Art.

Highlighting Transformer’s mission to connect and promote DC based emerging artists with their nationally and internationally based peers, this year’s Auction will feature over 100 artworks by artists across the globe, including artists from Mexico, Japan, Australia and points in between, along with one of the best selections of artworks by DC based emerging & more established artists, including: Billy Colbert, Cynthia Connolly, Natalie Cheung, Frank Day, Mia Feuer, Pepa Leon, Maggie Michael, Robin Rose, Molly Springfield, and Trevor Young, among many others.

Congratulations

To the amazing Molly Springfield, one of the most talented and nicest persons that I know.

Molly is currently having a very successful show in Chicago's Thomas Robertello Gallery, and now has a good review from the Chicago Tribune's chief art critic Alan Artner.

Yay Molly!

P.S. I also have my money on Molly to win the Sondheim Prize.

SELECT 2015 Opening

 

DATE: January 29, 2015

TIME: 7-9pm
LOCATION: Artisphere, 1101 Wilson Blvd, Arlington, VA

FREE AND OPEN TO THE PUBLIC

FREE PARKING with validation after 5pm at the Artisphere garage

Participating Artists:

Lauren Frances Adams | Kalee Appleton | Glen Baldridge | Alan Steven Binstock | A. J.

Bocchino | Margaret Boozer | Catherine Borg | Alex Braden | Amy Hughes Braden | Otho DeWitt Branson | Milana Braslavsky | Noah Breuer | Julia Brown | Dwayne Butcher | F. Lennox Campello | Laura Carton | Mei Mei Chang | Hsin-Hsi Chen | Ben Chetta | Maya Ciarrocchi | Hannah Cohen | Billy Colbert | Cynthia Connolly | Joseph Corcoran | Adam Davies | Frank Hallam Day | Jenn DePalma | Lisa Dillin | Daniel Todd Doughty | Mary Early | John Edmonds | Hector Emanuel | Suzanna Fields | Emily Francisco | Mary Freedman | Lee Gainer | Zaki Ghul | Hope Ginsburg | Edel Gregan | Jason Gubbiotti | Stephen Hendee | Jay Hendrick | Daniel Heyman | Cooper Alan Holoweski | Erik Hougen | Karen Hubacher | James Huckenpahler | Janna Ireland | Ashley Kauschinger | Jeffrey Kent | Hannele Lahti | Khánh H. Lê | Kakyoung Lee | Cary Leibowitz | Liz Lescault | Nate M. Lewis | Dalya Luttwak | Tamara Natalie Madden | Katherine Tzu-lan Mann | Caitlin Alexandra Masley | Christina McCleary | Patrick McDonough | Matthew Moore | Evan Nesbit | Tomomi Nitta | Chris Oh | Kwame Shaka Opare | Mike Osborne | Nikki Painter | Lydia Panas | Nara Park | Sui Park | Pamela Pecchio | Emilio Perez | Serena Perrone | Cameron Petke | Michael B. Platt | Caitlin Teal Price | Susana A. Raab | Ding Ren | Siobhan Rigg | Pam Rogers | Sandra Rottmann | Phil Sanders | Dana Schutz | Joyce J. Scott | Molly Springfield | Eve Stockton | Martin Swift | Monika Sziladi | Rob Tarbell | R. L. Tillman | Stephen Marcus Towns | Fahimeh Vahdat | Michael Vasquez | Terri Weifenbach | Levester Williams | Audrey Wilson | Julie Wolfe | Meseretu Wondie | Eva Wylie | William Wylie | Helen Zughaib | Malandela Zulu

Curators:

Asantewa Boakyewa | Kristi-Anne Caisse | Jennifer Farrell | Sarah Hanley | Ryan Holladay | Sarah Kennel | Phyllis Rosenzweig | Brian Young | WPA Board of Directors

OTHER SELECT 2015 EVENTS ______________________________________________________________

EXHIBITION

Thursday, January 29 through Friday, March 6, 2015

Wednesday through Friday: 4-11 PM

Saturday: Noon - 11 PM

Sunday: Noon - 5 PM

Monday - Tuesday: Closed

SELECT CURATOR TALKS

Free and open to the public, two curator talks provide an excellent opportunity to

learn more about the artists and artworks featured in the exhibition. Each night,

participating curators share their thoughts on the works they've selected for the

exhibition and answer questions from the audience.

Thursday, February 12, 2015
6:30-8pm

Jennifer Farrell, Ryan Holladay, Sarah Kennel, and Brian Young

Thursday, February 19, 2015
6:30-8pm

Asantewa Boakyewa, Kristi-Anne Caisse, Sarah Hanley, and Phyllis Rosenzweig

ART AUCTION GALA

TICKETS STILL AVAILABLE for the Art Auction Gala 

SELECT 2015 consists of a 5-week public exhibition and ticketed auction party to support contemporary art and the local artist community. The artists invited to participate in this exhibition were selected by a group of notable curators from some of the most important institutions in our region, emerging curators, and WPA's Board of Directors. The works represent a cross section of media disciplines, providing a remarkable survey of contemporary artistic practice. The SELECT 2015 gala is the regions longest running contemporary art auction gala and offers a truly unique opportunity to acquire works by emerging and established artists from the DC region and beyond.