As we get ready to start our ninth year in Georgetown and our third year in Bethesda, we reach a major milestone with our 100th exhibition opening tonite Friday, December 12 in our Bethesda gallery as part of the Bethesda Art Walk.

When we opened our first gallery in Georgetown, a well-known local art critic visited us within the first week and we discussed our goals, experience and focus with him. “I give you six months,” he said as he left.

He said this because we had started a gallery financed by Visa and MasterCard, without a collector’s mailing list stolen from another gallery, without recognized, well-known artists (in fact without any artists other than us), without “silent partners,” and with a focus on contemporary realism, and thus a decision to largely ignore trendy “art” designed to cause temporary interest through shock or gimmick, but lacking the legs to stand the test of time. We also decided to exhibit art that we liked – that was and is the litmus test for Fraser Gallery artists – rather than exhibit second-rate art by well-known artists, vanity shows subsidized by Washington embassies, signed reproductions by major artists, or any artwork that we would not hang in our own home. We also made it an unbreakable rule to run the gallery with the highest of professional ethics designed to protect not only our artists but also our collectors.

Our success since then is due to staying the course of our focus and because of the brilliant talent of our represented artists.

Thus, our 100th show is a “thank you show” to the many artists that we now represent and to the success that they have given our galleries through their talent, trust and friendship. In the past 99 shows, between our solo, group shows and annual competitions, we have exhibited the work of nearly 1000 artists, many of whom had never exhibited before in the Washington area, and many, many young area artists who received their first gallery exposure though our annual student shows and other invitational shows.

The many artists in our 100th show reflect an incredible change from our artist-less beginnings in Georgetown. Our artists are now represented in the permanent collections of nearly 100 museums worldwide, from MoMA in New York to MALBA in Buenos Aires, have had nearly 1000 secondary art market auction lot records, have had nearly 30 books published about their artwork, and are in private and public collections all over the world.

Thank you.

Tomorrow, December 12, 2003 is the last day to get the exhibition raffle tickets for the District of Columbia Art Center 8th Annual Exhibition Raffle. An annual opportunity to win a six-week show in the DCAC gallery. Tickets are only $50 each for DCAC members and $100 for non-members. Note that a year's membership to DCAC costs as little as $30 making it possible to become a new member and enter the raffle for only $80. DCAC also encourages artists to join together with other artists and share the price of a ticket.

Tickets may be purchased at DCAC during gallery and theater hours tomorrow from 2-10 PM. For more information, please call (202)- 462-7833.

This is one of the most innovative ways to support one of our area's key non-profit art spaces. In the past artists have, as a small group, bought tickets and thus if you get 2-3 people together, the cost is even less. Past raffle winners include such artists as Jane Engle, Thomas Dryon, Manon Cleary, Lisa Brotman, Gay Glading, Margarida Kendall and Jo Rango.

For female photographers--- The National Women's Show: "The Female Perspective"

The Washington Gallery of Photography presents a National Women's Show: "The Female Perspective", a juried exhibition open to all female residents of any US state, its territories and the District of Columbia. All photographic work accepted, including digital and alternative processes. Seeking works that showcase female gender perspective. Show March 12 - April 9, 2004. All photographs juried from slides. Cash prizes and exhibition opportunities for first, second and third place winners, For entry form, visit www.wsp-photo.com, or send SASE to Washington Gallery of Photography, 4850 Ruby Avenue, Bethesda, MD 20814. Tel: 301.654. 1998, e-mail: wspinfo@aol.com.

Do we start them early or what?

For the second year in a row the MCPS Visual Art Center has produced six visual arts winners in the prestigious National Foundation for Advancement in the Arts 2003 art competition for talented high school seniors. Two MCPS Visual Art Center (VAC) seniors Max Chavez (AEHS) and Kevin Lee (J.F. Kennedy HS) were selected as finalists. Three VAC students, Elizabeth Black(Walter Johnson HS), Joanna Bresee(AEHS,) and Julie Chiplis(Blair HS,) received honorable mention awards. Soo Jin Kim(AEHS) received merit award recognition.

New York painter Norma Greenwood has a show of her work at the Arts Club. Greenwood was selected by Stacy Schmidt, the Corcoran's talented Assistant Curator for Contemporary Art.

The Washington Arts Club is another of our city's great cultural jewels which usually gets ignored by the press. The Club usually has an annual call for artists, as their exhibition season is juried, a year at a time, by an invited curator, in this case Stacey Schmidt.

Hey! A contemporary realist has won this year's Turner Prize!

Transvestite potter Grayson Perry, who creates vases depicting representational subjects like death and child abuse, has won this year's Turner Prize. He beat the favorites, the Chapman Brothers, who had entered a piece titled "Sex," - a sculpture depicting bodies being eaten by maggots. Another Chapman work, called "Death," was a Seward Johnson-like painted bronze sculpture of a pair of blow-up dolls having sex.

Shock, gimmick, kitsch, art or all of them?

Next Saturday the 13th, at the Millennium Arts Center (located at 65 I St., SW, Washington, DC), 20 or so artists will host open studios from 1-5 PM. From there you can go to Transformer Gallery from 7-9 PM. They have an opening reception for "The Out-of-Towners."

BlackRock Center for the Arts in Germantown, MD recently received an $80,000 gift from Mid-Atlantic Petroleum Properties, LLC, a company headquartered in Germantown that owns, operates and supplies over 50 gas stations, convenience stores and property investments in Maryland, Washington, D.C. and Northern Virginia.

More local area businesses ought to follow MAPP's example under the leadership of company President Carlos Horcasitas.

Next Saturday Saturday December 13, from 7-9pm Transformer Gallery has an opening reception for "The Out-of-Towners" with site-specific installations by Laura Amussen, Lily Cox-Richard, Harrison Hayes, George Jenne and Michele Kong.

Transformer Gallery has really been hosting some very exciting shows and has very quickly become one of the key non-profit visual art spaces in our area.

Jayme McLellan and Victoria Reis have really done a spectacular job with the gallery. Goes to show you what hard work and dedication can accomplish.

The A. Salon Artists’ Cooperative, located in Old Town Takoma Park, will host a Holiday Open Studios and Sale on Sunday, December 14, 2003 from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. The address is 6925 Willow Street, NW, Washington, D.C. (across from CVS).

The event will feature four floors of professional artists and artisans, including: Ed Brooks, Fashions by Clintonia, Anne Cook, Robert Debbane, Matt Fasone, Tim Flatt, Judybeth Greene, Kathy Karlson, David Kliger, Katherine Knight, Giliah Litwack, Fred Limbach, Janet Matthews, Richard Moy, Bev Ringel, Alice Robrish, Sercan Sahin, Ann Saunders, Carol Schumm, Milena Spasic, Hillary Steel, Ira Thompson, Krista Weiss Tretick, Liz Vail and Amy Watson.

A. Salon is a fifteen-year-old artists’ cooperative offering affordable studio space to artists in the D.C. metro area.

Photographer and video artist Darin Boville checks in with some ideas in response to my post commenting about how do we make the Protzman ARTnews "buzz" about DC artists into a roar:

Darin writes:

Here are a few of my thoughts on the DC scene:

1) I think there are a lot of people out there--artists, potential collectors, writers, etc.--who have long ago decided that the emperor has no clothes, as far as contemporary art goes.

2) I also believe that there is something hardwired through evolution within humans that creates a desire and a need for both seeing art and creating it.

Tell those two facts to any first year MBA student and their eyes would light up and their lips would silently mouth the words "market opportunity."

--We need to create an atmosphere in DC where it is seen as a place to buy art. Think of New York as Microsoft. Think of the DC scene as a start-up firm. We can't challenge them. They may have weaknesses, they may not put out a good product, but we are deluding ourselves if we think we can offer a broad alternative.

--Thus, we need to specialize. Fill a niche that is not fully served by the big gorilla.

--Think about the market for art. Right away we think of the big news auctions with those Van Goghs, those Warhols. Forget about it. Focus on contemporary art by living artists. Think about New York and the fact that it has become less of producer of art than as a marketplace for art--could you really have guessed a few years ago that many of todays hottest photographers would hail from...Dusseldorf? Dusseldorf, for Christ-sakes. Think London. Who knew?

--Bill the DC scene as a hotbed of artistic activity, a new Athens (don't laugh, please, I'm just getting rolling), a center for an American Renaissance. Lord knows we need one. Pick four areas of contemporary art. Start pointing out that we are great in areas w, x, and y and--don't you see--world-class in ____ (fill in the blanks). Identify artists that are hot now on the world scene who have some sort of DC connection. Start a whispering campaign--let others say it for us!--that the DC area is not only hot in its own right but a stepping stone to the international, top-tier art world. Those in the know get it here early and, wink, they get a deal.

--Take a breath. Then pick a dozen or so area artists. Pick ones whose work can be connected to DC in some way, however tenuous. Exciting stuff. These will be our YBA's. Our Spice Girls. Piss a lot of local people off who want to be Spice Girls. The art world is tough that way.

--Once we see what we have, invent a "new direction in art." People do this twice a week in the art world so it can't be too difficult. Something that will serve as an alternative to New York Art (you see, our plan is to attack Microsoft and become the new Dark Lord, after all). So we have our Spice Girls and our New Direction.

--We're generating excitement. We're getting the Washington Post and the follower-types in all the local art institutions (which are filled with follower-types) interested. We have journalistic "hooks" upon which to hang stories--not just dead-boring, preaching to the converted "reviews" of shows. Who gives a shit about those. (Name the last time a "review" had any effect in the non-art world).

--Stop. Think of all that money out there. Think of all that money out there controlled by lawyers. Think of all that money out there controlled by electrical engineers turned software programmers. Think of all the art classes they never had. Think Star Trek. Think of the environmental-lite lifestyle. Our engine needs fuel. We need money. We need to get that money, expand our market. Stop competing on Microsoft's turf. We need to go where no man has gone before.

to be continued...

--Darin

For women photographers of our area: there's a new BLOG in town just for you!

It's maintained by Secondsight. Secondsight is an organization dedicated to the advancement of women photographers through support, communication and sharing of ideas and opportunities. Secondsight is committed to supporting photographers at every stage of their careers, from students to professionals. Each bi-monthly meeting includes an introductory session, a guest speaker, portfolio sharing and discussion groups.

The new BLOG is full of great info, such as opportunities, meetings, discussions and info on their guest speakers.

This coming Friday is the first Friday of the month, which means that the galleries around the Dupont Circle area galleries will have their First Friday openings and extended hours. Most of them have extended hours from 6-8 PM. Special congratulations to Conner Contemporary which will be celebrating its five year anniversary with a special group show retrospective.

Also 43 artists in the NoMA neighborhood will be having open studios this weekeind, noon to 5 PM. A good starting point would be in M. Jordan Tierney's studio, located at 57 N Street, NW. Tierney is a superb artist, who I thought had one of the best installations at last year's Art-O-Matic.

The article that Protzman wrote for this month's ARTnews has me thinking a bit. I agree with Ferd that there's a buzz beginning to happen around DC art galleries and artists.

But how do we kindle this "buzz" so that it grows to a national roar? How do we, as an arts community, grab this opportunity and make it grow into something important?

I will give it some thought and for the next few days I will be posting my ten step program to making the buzz into a roar. Ten steps that can help nurture and grow our visual arts scene. Your thoughts and ideas are welcome.

In case you missed it on Sunday, Philip Kennicott, who is one of the music critics at the Post, has a very interesting essay on gay art and censorship.

Blake Gopnik also has a brilliant piece on Christoffer Wilhelm Eckersberg at the National Gallery of Art. In the article, Gopnik discusses Eckersberg's works and relative importance in the world of art from the perspective of two Gopniks: The Gopnik that we all know (who thinks painting is dead, that in order for contemporary art to be any good it has to add something "new", why be a realist when you can take a photo, etc.) - and the "other" Gopnik; that is the opposite of the published Gopnik. This "other" Gopnik is less apt to generalize and more open-minded when it comes to art.

This is novel and interesting art writing and it is almost as good as my idea of having Blake Gopnik and Paul Richard review the same show at the same time so that we can read two critics' perspectives on one artist.

Or you can read the Chief Art Critic of the Washington Times' view of this same show.

For Frida Kahlo fans:

Linda Pelati in Italy has a mail art call on the subject of Frida Kahlo. No restriction on size or technique. Deadline is January 31, 2004. All works will be exhibited, none will be returned. Documentation to all.

Send works to:

Frida Kahlo
Comune di Trezzano Rosa
Piazza XXV Aprile, 1
20060 Trezzano Rosa - MI
Italy

Just read the ARTnews "City Focus" article in the December issue of ARTnews. It's a very good piece by Ferdinand Protzman, who used to write the "Galleries" column for the Washington Post, and is now a cultural writer and a contributing editor of ARTnews. He also recently published Landscape : Photographs of Time and Place.

Protzman's talks about the buzz growing around Washington area artists, first making the case that area artists and galleries have long been overshadowed by the local museum's "blockbuster exhibitions of famous dead artists."

Ferd also reveals that three prominent galleries (Hemphill, G Fine Art and Conner Contemporary) will be moving soon to 1515 14th Street, NW - to a building renovated specifically for galleries by well-known local art developer and artist Giorgio Furioso.

A few days I ago, I posted about how to get some well-known name art for $50 while at the same time raising funds for a really good cause.

But this "unknown art sale" is apparently the ancestor of them all and should be a terrific idea for a local visual arts (or other) non-profit to raise funds through the visual arts. This British sale is expected to raise about $150,000.

In ARTnews, Linda Yablonsky looks at artists doing self portraits or incorporating their images into their artwork. I am particularly interested in this theme, and some area artists, such as John Winslow, or Joe Shannon or Manon Cleary, or Chawky Frenn have for decades used their images as part of the story they tell though their paintings.

Another fascinating issue that artists (especially in the US) explore is race. If you want to catch up on the latest scientific evidence of what "race" means, then I suggest this Scientific American article.

December issue of ARTnews also has a focus on Washington, DC.

In case you missed it, Jessica Dawson looks at a very good show at DCAC.

DCAC is one of the great cultural jewels in our city.