Academy 2007 at Conner Contemporary

Next Friday, July 6, Conner Contemporary Art in DC opens Academy 2007, the seventh year of their annual invitational survey dedicated to outstanding work by recent fine art graduates of the Washington - Baltimore area college art programs. The exhibition opens Friday, July 6th with a reception for the artists from 6:00 - 8:00 pm.

The following artists were invited to exhibit by curators Jamie Smith and former gallery director, Karyn Miller:

PAUL CHAPMAN (George Washington University)
GRAHAM CHILDS (American University)
RUSSELL KELBAUGH (Corcoran College of Art + Design)
MAGNOLIA LAURIE (Maryland Institute College of Art)
JODI LIEBURN (Maryland Institute College of Art)
ISAAC MAISELMAN (Corcoran College of Art + Design)
TIFFANY MIELCAREK (Maryland Institute College of Art)
CHRISTINA MOST (Maryland Institute College of Art)
NATALIA PANFILE (Maryland Institute College of Art)
SANDRA PARRA (Maryland Institute College of Art)
DEBORAH ROCK (Catholic University)
NATHANIEL ROGERS (Maryland Institute College of Art)
BRIAN SYKES (University of Maryland)
JESSICA VAN BRAKLE (Corcoran College of Art + Design)
OLIVIA WOLFE (Georgetown University)

Construct::Destruct

Opening reception March 9th 6-8.30pm


CountDown Temporary Artspace presents its ultimate exhibition.

Of its own volition, CountDown will implode in the very near future, go underground and may or may not reincarnate in another form, at another time, at other places.

To commemorate its short-lived life, CountDown has invited four DMV artists to participate in this event: Jessica van Brakle, Mei Mei Chang, Scottie Fleming and Thomas Drymon.

Each will construct site-specific works that relate to the theme of construction and destruction. Their works will not be cherished but rather demolished with the art space.

They are open until implosion! Opening reception March 9th 6-8.30pm. All other visits by appointment only - please contact Jackiehoysted@aol.com for details

Congratulations!

After another outstanding year of artist-centric programming, Hamiltonian Artists has selected five new, distinguished Hamiltonian Fellows for 2010 to join their five existing Fellows:

· Selin Balci (MFA Candidate, University of Maryland)
· Ryan Hoover (MFA, Maryland Institute College of Art, Mount Royal School of Art)
· Joyce Lee (MFA, Maryland Institute College of Art, Mount Royal School of Art)
· Jessica Van Brakle (BFA, Corcoran Collge of Art + Design)
· Elena Volkova (MFA, Maryland Institute College of Art)

On Saturday, July 24, 2010, from 7-9pm, Hamiltonian Gallery will open an introductory group exhibition of these five new Fellows. Each artist will be displaying the work with which they were accepted. The exhibition will run from July 24 - September 4, 2010.

Peace Now!

Peace Now! opens with a reception on Friday, Feb 22 from 6-9 pm at the Warehouse Gallery in DC. Through April 6, 2008.

In observance of the 5th anniversary of the Iraqi War and as part of the March 19, 2008 "March for Peace" in Washington and other cities around the country, the Warehouse hosts its last peace exhibition. To the left is the room-dissecting Checkpoint Installation by Sondra Arkin in collaboration with Beth Baldwin.

Includes work by 40 artists including Matt Achhammer, JS Adams, Sondra N. Arkin, Beth Baldwin, Joan Belmar, BLK w/ BEAR, M.P. Brown, Travis Childers, Michele Colburn, James L. Cypher aka Joey Daytona, Richard L. Dana, Anna U Davis, Tom Drymon, John De Fabbio, Dana Ellyn, Elissa Farrow-Savos, Elizabeth Featherstone Hoff, Dara Friel, John Carlton Hagerhorst, Matt Hollis, Jackie Hoysted, Joseph Jones, Joroko, Mariah Josephy, Jenufa H. Kent, Lauren Kotkin, Heather Levy, Elizabeth Lundberg Morisette, Isabel Manalo, Anne Marchand, Carolina Mayorga, Patricia E. Ortman, Igor Pasternak, Jane Pettit, Mark Planisek, Sajeela Ramsey, Marina Reiter, Ann Ruppert, Julie Seiwell, Matt Sesow, Alexandra Silverthorne, Ira Tattelman, Gabriel Thy, Karen Joan Topping, Ruth Trevarrow, Jessica van Brakle, Mary Walker, Ruth Ward, Ellyn Weiss, Angela White, Andrew Wodzianski, Peter Wood... and me.

My Artomatic picks

Now that I have visited Artomatic three times, I have finally managed to cover all nine floors of art of that mega art exhibition, easily the largest group art show on planet Earth.

Nine floors of artwork and 1,000 artists; not an easy task for anyone to review and interpret, much less critics used to gallery-sized art shows.

Last year's AOM set a new record with over 70,000 visitors, and I found out a few days ago that they are about 12,000 visitors ahead of last year's pace at this time. The show ends July 5.

This year I decided not only to pick my usual group of Top 10 artists there, but to isolate and keep that coveted list to ten "new" artists, or at least new to me, or newer. So I will skip all the blue chip artists in the show who obviously stand out. People like Laurel Lukaszewski, Kelly Towles, Tim Tate, Michael Janis and a Hamiltonian Fellow or two.

Instead, my focus will be ahhh... focused on a newer set of fresh artwork and names. But first, some special mentions to other people who caught my eye for other various and sundry reasons (including some who also made the Top 10 List).

Best Installation Award - Easily won by Deb Jansen's "Catharsis & Karma: An Open Thank You Letter to a Homewrecker" installation, dedication and not-a-revenge discussion of the world's most expensive blow job as Jansen thanks the "other" woman who freed her from an allegedly abusive and destructive marriage. This alone is worth a visit to AOM.

Best Female Nude Photography - There are dozens and dozens of female nude photographers at AOM, and curiously not so many male nude photogs. The vast majority of these female nudes pics are mildly interesting, some almost cross the soft porn border (unlike past AOM's where hardcore porn was almost always present), but most are in the OK category. The best in this vast offering of female flesh, and best by far, is the newer work of Fierce Sonia, an artist whose work I hadn't seen since I included her in "Seven" more than four years ago. Sonia's work has grown and matured into not only a seductive celebration of the female body, but also an intelligent marriage of digital manipulation of the figure that while still revealing that subtle erotic nature which is a key part of all of her work, it also begins to substantiate her work as photography that is pushing the boundaries of eroticism into a new digital valley of visual surprises.

Second Best Female Nude Photography - Abbie Miller; superbly sexy work.

Best Glass Artist - David D'Orio's latest from his "Feeder" project stands out in an Artomatic showcasing the work of some very good glass artists. It is no secret that the Greater DC area has become one of the great fine art glass magnets in the world, and in this abundant sea of glass talent, D'Orio's glasswork stands out in a singularly unique way. This is no small accomplishment when one also looks at the breath taking work of the British glass artists participating in this year's AOM as well as the many Washington Glass School artists and students in the show. Glass was possibly the strongest category in this year's AOM and D'Orio's work still managed to stand out.

Best Use of Aluminum - Clearly a homerun for Eve Hennessa's cool and clever sculptures. Also hottest-looking robot on "Meet the Artists" Night.

Weirdest Art - Steven Jones's oddly and slightly macabre human-chicken babies (is that what they are?). They've caught my eyes two years in a row and they fascinate me in a very odd way.

Best Monotypes - Jenny Walton's monotypes are elegant and deceptively minimalist.

Best Marriage of Genres - I don't know for sure. but I think that what Rania Hassan is doing in her marriage of knitting and painting is unique, maybe in the world. And it is not only clever, but also visually intriguing and breaks a very difficult three dimensionality aspect.

Most Blasphamous Art - Dana Ellyn's art takes no prisoners and her caustic observations though her skilled brush are always a sure pick. This year she takes on The Christ in many of her pieces. Now I want to see her bring Allah down a notch or two.

Second Most Blasphemous Art - "The Passion of Snoopy" by Will Mallon.

Best Portrait of Che Guevara - Yay for Matt Sesow, who brings the Argentinean psychopath to a very scary level as he tackles the 20th century's most famous face.

Best Portrait in General - Joe Granski.

Freshest New Portrait Artist - Greg Scott's portraits are very cool.

Worst Signature - Greg Scott; smaller Hancock's dude!

Best Large Work - The gorgeous wood work by Sergio Martinez.

Best Wall Sculpture - Leila Holtsman was my top AOM pick last year and since then her career has blossomed and her return to AOM this year didn't disappoint. Her large wall sculpture at AOM is the price steal of the show. One of you needs to go buy this piece right away.

Best New Painter - Although she doesn't have a very good spot at AOM, Jessica Van Brakle will be in 2-3 galleries around the Mid Atlantic by this time next year. Her refreshing work will also sell well at art fairs. Buy her paintings now.

Best Abstract Painting - I like the geometrical, textured work of Jorge Caligiuri.

Best Monochromatic Realist Painter - Superb works by James Halloran rank amongst the best paintings at AOM and showcase what a very good painter can do with a very restricted palette of colors.

Best Sculpture - Megan Van Wagoner's "Comforts of Home" are elegant and sophisticated works by an artist who is completely new to me. They showcase a level of skill in both delivering the art commodity itself as well as its presentation (a set of skills that many AOM artists need to learn desperately). This is an artist to keep an eye on.

Best Printmaker - Johanna Mueller's prints showcase an enviable set of printmaking skills married to a very active visual imagination. I am buying one of her pieces; her work is one of the best deals at AOM. She is a very talented artist and we will keep an eye on her work.

Artist Most Likely To Get Sued - Wait until the Dora, The Explorer people find out what Andrew Wodzianski's brilliant but disturbed mind has done to adorable Dora. Someone needs to buy that piece of art now, before it is confiscated by cartoon moguls.

Best Minimalist Sculpture - m. gert barkovic's refreshing employment of everyday objects, in this case sheets (I think), deliver a new twist on artists who re-use common objects to invent intelligent art forms. But in barkovic's case, they look like art, rather than cleverly titled junk in a gallery.

Best Barbie Art - This is a very tough category, as nearly all the Barbie artworks at AOM are clever and well-done. But Michele Banks' "Army of Terracotta Barbies" will one day, 100 years from now, befuddle and astound the art experts of the Antique Road Show. For now, I like it a lot! Hey Michelle: Wanna trade?

Best Repetitive Artwork - When I first saw Sean Welker's drawings, I thought that they were prints. When I returned and talked a little to Sean, I discovered that they were each an individual drawing expressing Welker's interest in sugar skulls, matryoshka dolls, maneki neko figures and other odd elements. Welker would have easily also won the "Best Skeleton Art" category, but it wouldn't be fair to give him two awards. This guy is one of the best artists at AOM.

Best Digital Manipulator - Suffice it to say that Mark Parascandola had me fooled. This guy belongs in the next 10 DC landscape photography shows; the photographs are clever and refreshing!

Best Neon Artist - Sarah Blood has some of the most memorable work in AOM this year. Her work is elegant and sophisticated, and easily amongst the best 3D work in the show, but she is in an universe by herself when it comes to the marriage of neon to glass and sculpture. Buy Sarah Blood.

Best Drawing - Tie between Rita Elsner and the amazing Ben Tolman.

Largest Penis Artwork - Easily won by many inches by the very skilled "Bip" Diggs.

Best Erotica - J.R. Harke.

Worst Erotica - Too many to mention!

Best Lovecraftian Artist - Jeannette Herrera has a wall full of gems and she's easily one of the key finds at AOM. Her Cthulhu reference gets her extra points.

Best Portrait - Margaret Dowell's portrait of Joseph Barbaccia runs away with this very competitive category.

Best Fruit Painting - "Fruit Bowl" by Nabila A. Isa-Odidi; the way the banana absorbs the space is terrific.

Best Pastel Artist - Ellen Cornett has superb mastery of this most difficult genre.

Best Small Oil - A series of georgeous small nudes by Christine Bailey.

Best Robot Art - This was not an easy category to win, as there are a lot of robots at AOM this year! But the best ones are the cute ones by Candace Keegan.

Best Skeleton - OK, so I lied and Jeannette Herrera wins this category too and wins two awards.

Best Combo Skeleton-Robot Art - Todd Gardner.

Best B&W Artist - Everytime that I see Ben Tolman's art I am more and more amazed.

Scariest Art in AOM - Mark Eason.

Most Minimalist Art in Show - A brilliant installation work by JT Kirkland. No one will ever do better.

Second Most Minimalist - Lisa K. Rosenstein.

Best New Realist - Susan La Mont did not disappoint when viewed up close.

Best Male Nude - Geoff Ault.

Scariest Painter of Babies - The most excellent work of Phyllis Mayes; she's a very good painter.

Best Statuary - Brian Lusher is a riot.

Artist Most Influenced by WGS - The glass work of Carlos Rodriguez.

Best Bugs - Erika Rubel.

Best Vegetable - "My Dancing Red Chili Peppers" by Soline Krug.

Harshest Model Pose - The naked women with massive breasts stretched out with their legs grappling the rough bark of trees in Bert HeNe's photo.

Best Video - Tim Tate.

Best Sculptural Drawings - Laurel Lukaszewski.

Scariest Monkey Painting - Jared Davis.

Potential Arsonist - Paula Katharina Rylands... I bet her favorite song is by the Ohio Players.

Second Best Arsonist - Andrea Noble.

Best Metal - Hamiltonian Fellow Michael Enn Sirvet.

Best Obama Likeness - Roy Utley.

Worst Obama - Joshua Tiktin from planet YoMomma.

Best Obama Deal - Kimberly Keyes Stark; great deal at $150 a piece.

Lustiest Obama Portrait - Roger James' piece which has Obama breathing into Michelle's ear.

Scariest Nudes - Elizabeth Crisman' they're good but scary... a little.

Most Illegal Art - "Merry Hollow Days" by Gary Irby.

Best Nipple-less Boobs - Torso by Howard Connelly.

Sexiest Photo in all of AOM - There's an image by Julia Mazur that depicts a gorgeous and voluptous woman sitting on a fire escape ladder and she seems to be peeping on a nude, skinny woman who is sitting on a window sill. The back lighting on the skinny woman is so strong that all the delicate hairs on her body are highlighted to such a harsh extreme that they make her look like a nude beast. It is an amazing photo!

Most Fragile Work - UK artist Steven Revely's spectacularly delicate work is a wonder of glass.

Best Female Ass - One of the pics by Rodney Mickle.

Best Vagina Art - Kerry Britton.

Best Artist Channeling Dali - Dejan Roncevic.

Best Animal Art - Caren Quinn

Best Artist Channeling Van Gogh - "Smoking Skull" by Eric Jaeckel.

Best Portrait Photographer - Matt Dunn.

Best Religious Art - WOW Jen Dixon!

Best New WGS Artist - Paula Hoffman

Best Landscape - Kathryn Trillas.

Second Best Landscape - Michael Pierce.

Best Pen & Ink and WC - Emily Sloat; superbly refreshing!

Best Teapots - Laura Peery.

Next: My AOM Top 10.

Transformer Auction Tonight

Perhaps the crown jewel of the Greater Washington DC visual arts scene, and easily one of the top museum art spaces in the nation, is the American University Museum at the Katzen Arts Center. 

Under the brilliant leadership of Jack Rasmussen, who will forget more about regional DC area artists than all other DC art museum curators put together will ever learn, the museum has forged a singularly unique presence in a capital city full of museums and art centers.

Rasmussen has crafted an intelligent array of national, international and regional art exhibits that manage to cover such a wide area that AU’s Museum is hard to paint into a corner. This is not easy to do, and thus why most museum curators avoid it like the plague, and instead flood the DC art scene with either “hand me downs” exhibitions curated by other museums (like the Morris Louis exhibition a few years ago, which should have been a DC-museum based initiative), or “safe” exhibitions of second tier blue chip artists.

Yesterday I headed to the Katzen to look at the exhibitions there and to meet Ms. Carolyn Alper, an AU alumna who has established the Alper Initiative for Washington Art. 

The Alper Initiative will support the creation of a space on the museum’s first floor for display of work by DC artists and for a digital archive of Washington art. The initiative will sponsor lectures, films, and other events as well. If you are a DC area artist, you have got to visit this page and become aware of the process and sign up now!

However, once I got to the museum, I got distracted.

Another precious jewel of the area’s visual arts tapestry is Transformer, a nonprofit art space located on P Street, NW, and truly a gift to the area's visual arts scene.

For the past 12 years Transformer has been conducting a fund raising art auction, and when I arrived, a small army of professional art hangers, decked out in black T-shirts and black jeans was in the process of installing the donated artwork on the hall walls of the center, as it was the day before the auction.

The temptation was too much! Here was a chance to view and write about a show without any labels, any artists’ names, any information; the reactions would be purely triggered by the artwork.

This is somewhat futile. Since I’ve been writing about area artists for over two decades now, by now I can easily recognize many of them via their artwork.

The gorgeous drawing by Ben Tolman is one of the first things that you see when you started looking at the walls on the left, and Tolman’s magic with the black line steals this show almost right away. His obsessive attention to the minutest of details fools the eye in the sense that Tolman actually tricks your perception of what is reality by atomizing the subject into his tiny handwork to deliver exceptionally and super busy realistic drawings. 

Ben Tolman's work at the Transformer auction

Five gets you ten that his work will be one of the ones at the top of the bid scale tonight.

Any donated, fund raising art auction is a bit like a mini Artomatic: You usually see work by the area’s blue chip artists, lots of work by emerging artists who are relatively unknown, and a lot of really bad, amateurish work (in this case maybe by “well known” artists? Oh Dear! What are you doing Lenster?).

The Transformer auction was no exception.

But it is all original artwork, and the worst original work of art is always better than any reproduction. And this is auction is for a great cause.

The artists whose work I thought that I recognized (unless someone is channeling them) were Margaret Boozer (update: seems someone is indeed channeling her) as there was one of those gorgeously black and organic wall tar pieces that Boozer debuted at the old Strand on Volta Gallery in Georgetown in 2004, a super busy elegant print by Linn Myers, the usual sexy boots by Carolina Mayorga, a haunting photo by Holly Bass (one of the few good photographs in a sea of mediocre photos), a superbly elegant piece by Rania Hassan continuing her reinvention of what painting + sculpture + knitting is… Hassan has invented a whole new art genre all by herself!

Mixed media piece by Rania Hassan

I recognized Matt Sesow’s frenetic work (easily the DMV's hardest working artist), a refreshing abstract piece by Anne Marchand, Jessica van Brakle, Bridget Sue Lambert (again, standing out as one of the few strong photographic images), a superbly minimalist and elegant piece by Irene Clouthier (whose work has matured into one of the region’s coolest work), Dana Ellyn's boxing painting, and someone possibly channeling Dean Kessman (I wasn’t sure if it was DK).

Also noticeable was work by Adrienne Gaither (whom I mentored a while back), Joan Belmar's elegant abstract, and a cute piece by Akemi Maegawa’s of her very famous pet Chikkun. I suspected possible work by Dan Steinhilber: there was a couch-like sculpture on the wall, but it looked kinda like an ice cream sandwich, so maybe that was Cory Oberndorfer... there was also a flashlight with a light bulb?

There was also a possible Yuriko Yamaguchi vinyl tubey organicky sculpture on the wall. Also I possibly sighted a Robin Rose, as there was an elegant abstract piece on those honey-combed aluminum panels that Rose likes to work on.

All these works and several others for which I didn't recognize the artist (such as a striking porcelain piece with gold spiky teeth) make this auction a winner for those who will get these pieces.

Because I am a Kahlophile, I also couldn't help but notice the below Kahlophilia drawing, where the artist (have no idea who it is) has married Kahlo with Velazquez's Las Meninas (possibly the greatest painting ever produced by Western Civilization). It is an interesting work, but just as the Washington Post once described my drawings as "heavy handed," what distracts me from this otherwise unusual drawing (other than some issues with proportions) is how "light handed" it is! It is so ephemeral, that I was afraid The Infanta would disappear in front of my eyes!

Khalo, Spain's Infanta, and the Kahlodeer

When I first got there none of the videos were running, but by the time I finished walking through the exhibit for the third time, a very circa 2002 wall of TVs was playing a series of multiple videos like you used to see at the entrance of the major art fairs a few years ago.

This was a really good exercise to prove that art is in the eyes of the beholder. At the risk of possibly insulting some well-known artists, the images below are of those pieces that would even be considered at the low end of the scale, even by Artomatic free-for-all wonderful policy. Whoever was the member of the Artist Nominating Committee who recommended these guys/gals… ahhh…

I have no idea who these artists are:

This is almost straight out of Collage 101 class: busy, message-less and
so full of (possibly) inside meanings that it lost me at the tiger leaping below the stripper,

This just looks... well... unfinished - Reminds me of Rachel Dolezal's "real" work.

????

A huge thank you to all the artists who donated work to this superb cause! Please go to the auction and buy art!

12th Annual Transformer Silent Auction and Benefit Party
Saturday, November 21, 2015
8 – 11 pm
American University’s Katzen Arts Center

 Visit transformerauction2015.eventbrite.com to purchase your tickets today! 
Update: Just told that tickets are sold out!!!