League of Reston Artists (LRA) Juried Show
I will be jurying the LRA Annual Juried Show this coming June. The deadline is May 31, 2005.
This annual Juried Exhibition will take place at the Reston Community Center at Lake Anne's Jo Ann Rose Gallery in Reston, Virginia from June 6 – July 4, 2005.
The competition is open to all Washington, D.C. Greater metropolitan area artists working in all media and there is a $500 Jo Ann Rose Award and $1,000 in Equal Merit Awards.
Details, entry forms, etc. here.
Thursday, May 05, 2005
More Opportunities for Artists at the Arlington Arts Center
In addition to the great opportunity first posted here, the newly renovated Arlington Arts Center has a couple more excellent opportunities for artists:
Art from Arlington: July 19 - August 27, 2005. Application Deadline May 25, 2005. All artists living or working in Arlington, Virginia are invited to apply for this group exhibition of artworks in all media. Prospectus may be downloaded at AAC's website.
2005 M.F.A Graduates Exhibition: July 19 - August 27, 2005. Application Deadline May 25, 2005. Open to 2005 M.F.A. Graduates studying in Virginia, Washington DC and Maryland. Artworks in all media will be considered. Floor plans and prospectus may be downloaded on AAC's website or call 703.248.6800, ext 12.
Wen Ma Video
Shigeko Bork mu project will next showcase Jennifer Wen Ma's video installation and performance, "Flight and Cleansing Walk."
Wen Ma's work is like a one-person funerary procession. It is a quiet demonstration of loss and grief, and (at the same time), a personal ritualistic cleansing and purging. The opening reception for the artist will be on May 11 from 6 - 8pm.
The video installation will be on view from May 11 till May 27, 2005. Ms.Ma will perform "Cleansing Walk" in Washington, DC from May 6 - 9.
For the time and location of her performance, please call the gallery. Shigeko Bork mu project is located on 1521 Wisconsin Ave., N. W. No. 2, Washington, DC 20007. The phone number is 202.333.4119
Wednesday, May 04, 2005
Gallery Openings This Friday
This is the First Friday of the month... and of course that means that the galleries around the Dupont Circle area will have their extended openings. By the way... whoever maintains this website needs to really update it! Some of these galleries have closed while others have opened!
Anyway...Specially interesting will be the opening at Conner Contemporary, where Leigh will have Kehinde Wiley and Sabeen Raja. If you have time for only one show, go see this one.
Tuesday, May 03, 2005
Silverthorne Opening
Alexandra Silverthorne's photography exhibition "No More Hiroshimas! No more Nagasakis!" (which is co-organized by the Hiroshima/Nagasaki Peace Committee of the National Capital Area) opens this Thursday at the Martin Luther King, Jr. Library located at 901 G Street, NW in Washington. The opening reception is on the 2nd Floor, goes from 6:30 to 8PM and refreshments will be served.
The exhibition runs through May 29, 2005. For more information visit her website.
Opportunity for Artists
Solo Exhibitions for 2006 in Arlington Arts Center
Deadline: Friday, July 01, 2005
Ten to fifteen artists will be selected for solo exhibitions to take place in 2006 in one of Arlington Arts Center's newly renovated galleries.
All artists living or working in Virginia, Washington DC, Maryland, West Virginia, Delaware, and Pennsylvania are invited to submit slides. Artworks in all media will be considered.
For more info visit this website or contact them at:
Arlington Arts Center
3550 Wilson Blvd
Arlington, VA 22201
Walsh at Nevin Kelly
I've been hearing some very good things about the current exhibition of paintings by Thomas Walsh at Nevin Kelly Gallery.
Walsh's show runs through May 8, and I certainly hope to be able to drop by and take a look before it closes.
Manassas Opening
One of the best watercolorists in our area is Chris Krupinski, and she'll be having a new exhibition at the Center for the Arts' Caton Merchant Gallery in Manassas.
The exhibition opens this Friday as part of the Manassas Gallery Walk from 6-9PM. The reception for the artist is next May 14 from 6-8PM. Free and open to the public, but RSVP requited to 703/330-2787.
Watkins Opening
Julia Rommel's thesis exhibition is opening at American University's Watkins Gallery this coming Thursday with an opening reception from 7-9PM.
Rommel's work has (so far) been my favorite from the MFA thesis shows exhibited at AU.
The exhibition closes on May 11, so hurry!
One Night Stand
Its called "One Night Stand", and it is a one night-only installation and Wolov says about her work that
"Essentially, I wanted to create sexually arousing imagery without using the techniques used in modern pornographic magazines -- i.e., no posing, no acknowledgment of the camera, etc. Looking back at art history, the techniques used in Playboy, for example, actually had the opposite, more "sobering" effect.Wolov plans to set up an intimate viewing area, and her photos will then be projected onto the gallery walls.
I am hoping to make a form of "anti-porn" that was still arousing; no posing, complete disregard for the camera, very spur of the moment."
The installation is free and open to the public and for more information, please email Wolov here.
Century Opening
There's only one gallery in our area that concentrates exclusively on classical realism, and that's Century Gallery in Alexandria.
And Century is hosting a reception this Saturday May 7, 2005 from 6-9PM for four area artists who have achieved a lot of recognition for their classical work; they are: John Murray, Dan Thompson, Randy Melick and Rick Weaver.
Monday, May 02, 2005
Porn as Art
The last great taboo barrier is apparently coming down as porn enters the rarified atmosphere of high art. The NYT has an interesting article on the latest and greatest here. You can get a password for the NYT site from Bugmenot here.
In 1997 I did an exhibition of my portraits of porn movie stars and starlets, and although it did really well (they all sold, and some are in the permanent collection of the Museum of Sex), it still received a rather prudish review in the Washington Post.
I wonder what the reaction would be now?
New Exhibit Up
A new solo Art exhibition featuring the works of Afrika Midnight Asha Abney is currently on exhibition at Norton Kirby Advertising, 2410 18th St NW in Washington, DC.
Hours are Monday - Friday, 10am - 8pm, and weekends by appointments only. The show has been curated by Collin Klamper, Afrika Midnight Asha Abney and David Dyer of Art N Deed. For more information send an email to Aashawarrior@aol.com or call 202/538-3403.
Jacobson on Pluta
While I was away, the City Paper's Lou Jacobson reviewed our current Andrzej Pluta photography show in our Bethesda gallery.
Read the review here.
Kirkland Opens Today
One of the bennies you get by being an arts blogger is that we all read each others' BLOGs and thus everyone who is anyone in the BLOGsphere knows that my good friend J.T. Kirkland is opening his first ever solo show today.
What: "Studies in Organic Minimalism" -– J.T. Kirkland solo art exhibition
Who: Presented by the League of Reston Artists and the University of Phoenix Northern Virginia Campus
When: May 2 – June 25, 2005
Special Reception for the artist: Friday, May 13, 2005 – 6:00 – 9:00pm
Where: University of Phoenix Northern Virginia Campus
11730 Plaza America Drive, Suite 200
Reston, Virginia
For directions, see the LRA's website.
Viewing: Exhibition is free and open to the public during regular business hours
Monday – Thursday 9:00am – 10:00pm
Friday 9:00am – 5:00pm
Saturday 9:00am – 1:00pm
Sunday, May 01, 2005
Bailey on Gopnik on Barclay
Just back from an exhausting (but successful weekend art fair), and just in time to catch another great episode of Deadwood. Have a few hundred emails and a ten days of the WaPo and others to catch up on.
And leave it to Bailey to help me out with my lack of recent posting and give us some good reading and excellent discussion points as he responds to Blake Gopnik's piece on Christian Marclay's video work (filed all the way from London).
"How About an Art Exhibit Inspired by an Art Critic Who’s Dragged Behind a Pickup Truck in Texas?"
By J.W. Bailey
One of the emblems of postmodern art is its insulated obsession with distilling unimaginable human tragedy down to a clever relativist art trick that is appropriate for display in the sanitized environment of the white cube space – and the larger the scale of the tragedy, the more the art trick seems to revolve around the distorted use of multi-media to convey the horrors of the deaths of the usually nameless and faceless victims that are symbolized through the art.
In his review of Christian Marclay’s seminal postmodern work, "Guitar Drag," Blake Gopnik takes the trouble to inform us that the video of the guitar being dragged behind a pickup truck for 14 minutes along a rural road echoes the death of James Byrd, Jr., at the hands of vicious racists in Texas (mind you that Gopnik doesn’t actually mention the vicious racists part, though).
Gopnik, a refined genteel member of the Washington, D.C., art elite, and a person we can safely assume has never spent more than three seconds riding in the back bed of a pickup truck in Texas with a perverted gang of drunken good ole’ boy racist rednecks looking for trouble, let alone ever being dragged behind that pickup as an African-American victim of their sick and monstrous joyride, tells us that watching Marclay’s stirring musical piece made him feel the pain of James Byrd, Jr.
Of course, the only important thing about Mr. Byrd’s actual life and death that Gopnik can muster to say in his review is that Mr. Byrd was "a black man dragged along a Texas road until his body fell apart."
Hopefully, postmodern art critics will never be licensed as forensic examiners – but I do have my doubts about that as they seem to be self-qualified to speak as experts on just about every other subject.
For the forensic art record, here’s just part of what happened to Mr. James Byrd, Jr.:
An African-American man, James Bryd, Jr., was brutally murdered by being kidnapped, beaten unconscious, spray-painted in the face with black paint, tied to the back of a pick-up truck, pants dropped down to his ankles, dragged 2.5 miles over pavement through a rural black community in Jasper County called Huff Creek, leaving his skin, blood, arms, head, genitalia, and other parts of his body strewn along the highway. His remains were dumped in front of a black cemetery.
Mr. Byrd was also member of a large family and had three sons. Following Mr. Byrd’s death, the Byrd family emerged as one of the nation's most powerful voices fighting for all people, including gay and lesbian Americans, against hate and intolerance. Mr.Byrd's sister, Louvon Harris, and his nephew, Darrell Verrett, who also serves as the executive director of the James Byrd Jr. Foundation, have been key advocates for both state and federal hate crime legislation. The family has spoken in support of the Hate Crimes Prevention Act at press conferences with HRC and appeared at Equality Rocks to promote their message of ending hate violence in America.
Marclay wants to present us with a trivial and stupid work of postmodern art that capitalizes on the death of another human being – that should come as no surprise as the world of high art loves touting this culture of death stuff. Gopnik wants to tell us about how painful that experience Byrd went through must have been after watching Marclay’s guitar fall apart – there’s no surprise there either as most art critics, no matter what their postmodern philosophical shortcomings, must at least appear to be somewhat human to their readers by giving lip service to a human disaster that is the supposed inspiration for a positively reviewed work of art.
Perhaps one day Christian Marclay will arrange for a private screening of "Guitar Drag" for all the friends and family members of Mr. James Byrd, Jr. – maybe Marclay will also invite Blake Gopnik to come back to the gallery and review that audience’s reactions to his masterpiece. And if Gopnik can sit still for long enough and actually listen to what they think and have to say about this piece of "art," there might not be enough column space in a lifetime’s supply of the Washington Post to review those reactions.
But that’s a big question – I think we would be lucky to have Gopnik sit for more than 14 minutes in the safety of the air-conditioned white cube space screening room surrounded by the traumatized emotions of people who knew and loved Mr. Byrd, Jr. (and who saw what his body really looked like after being dragged along that Texas back road) before he would get bored and have to move on to the next great piece of postmodern art to review.
A quick exit from the insensitive and manipulative "Guitar Drag" would certainly be understandable from those who personally knew Mr. Bryd, Jr. and could not stomach watching and listening to the excesses of its wretched and exploitative symbolism.
If only the world of high art could so easily exit itself from its self-created excesses by shallow artists that are propped up by an army of gullible critics that the rest of us can’t stomach from time to time, who refuse to break with the party line of postmodernism in their reviews no matter how outrageous the exploitation of the death of another human being through the art they are philosophically required to celebrate.
Sincerely,
James W. Bailey
Saturday, April 30, 2005
Away at the Fair
Still in Richmond for a weekend of trying to sell some art. In spite of the rain, it was a surprising good start today, with a few nice sales.
Also ran into an old friend, the fair Rebecca D'Angelo, who photographs for the Washington Post and others and was covering the fair.
Friday, April 29, 2005
New Art BLOG
Alexandra Silverthorne has a new art-focused BLOG. It is called Solarize This and you should all visit often
P.S. See... I didn't mispell your last name!
Thursday, April 28, 2005
NNE Gallery
A new (at least new to me) gallery is NNE Gallery, located at 1312 8th Street, NW, Washington DC 20001 and phone is 202-276-4540.
NNE Gallery had an opening reception tonite (I wish I'd had the press release earlier) for Washington DC artist, Nooni Reatig.
Per the release, Reatig first gained recognition in 1998 at the age of seventeen for a series of controversial paintings entitled, Red Alert. It was reviewed in The Washington Post, "A Young Artist's Naked Ambition," where Nooni claimed that she would "make a difference" (in the art world).
Upon graduation from The Maryland Institute College of Art in Baltimore in 2002, and then a brief stint at The Corcoran College of Art and Design, she has been working on series of sculptures showcased in this exhibition.
Welcome aboard!
Airborne today
Hellooooooooo Betty!
I'm heading home late tonight; on the redeye to Dulles.
On the flight home I will be finishing Brian Greene's The Elegant Universe.
Busy weekend, as I arrive early tomorrow morning and then immediately drive south for an art fair over the weekend.
Should be fairly exhausted by Monday...
Wednesday, April 27, 2005
2005 Lucelia Award Announced
A few days ago the Smithsonian sent a news release to everyone announcing the winner of the Lucelia Award:
The Smithsonian American Art Museum announced today that Andrea Zittel is the fifth annual winner of its Lucelia Artist Award, established by the museum in 2001 to encourage leading contemporary American artists. This award is part of the museum's commitment to contemporary art and artists through awards and acquisitions.Locally, the three jurors are now in the second phase of downselecting from the first set of semi-semifinalists for the $14,000 Trawick Prize.
An independent panel of jurors chose Zittel for the award in recognition of her ability to "create objects and total settings that reconsider the relationships between art and life. A utopian yet rigorously formal sensibility dominates."
"The timing of the Smithsonian American Art Museum couldn't have been better," said Zittel. "I have been working on a number of new ideas recently and the Lucelia Artist Award will really help me continue with the projects."
"Andrea Zittel has shown a sustained commitment to distinctive work that challenges conventional thinking and expectations about the nature of art, which is exactly what the Lucelia Artist Award is intended to celebrate and support," said Elizabeth Broun, the museum's Margaret and Terry Stent Director.
The jurors continue in their statement, "Zittel's art is shaped by a serial-based comprehensiveness in which discrete works are part of ongoing experiments and the continuous development of ideas. An investigatory attitude prevails. Her practice embraces the recycling of materials and large-scale, public-art projects as much as the creation of custom-made objects and an extreme attention to personal, particularizing details. She has become a leading figure in the international art world and a strong influence on generations of artists worldwide."
Ms. Trawick has also added another $10,000 for the Bethesda Painting Awards, also being selected now.
Today Bake Gopnik in the WaPo has a nice story about the award. It would be nice if Gopnik also did a piece on whoever gets selected as the Trawick Prize winner; this would give Gopnik a chance to actually focus some of his printspace on an area art event of some significance.
Congratulations
To our own Tim Tate (represented by us), who recently signed on with WeissPollack Galleries in New York, which will represent his work there.
Tate will also create an installation for WeissPollack Galleries for SOFA New York, this coming June.
Important Opening this Weekend
"I really want to see..." a group show of new work or work never shown in the area by Laura Amussen, Maria Anasazi, Noah Angell, Ken Ashton, Mark Behme, Natalia Blanch, Margaret Boozer, Hsin-Hsi Chen, Noche Christ, Lynden Cline, John Dumbacher, Joseph Dumbacher, Susan Fenton, Thom Flynn, Inga McCaslin Frick, Marc Ganzglass, Francie Hester, Jason Hughes, Berta Koltenuik, Maggie Michael, Galo Moncayo, Brandon
Morse, Lee Newman, Foon Sham, Claire Sherwood, Richard Vosseller and John Winslow.
Reception to meet the artists: Saturday, April 30, 2005 6 - 9pm. Free and open to the public. Gallery Four, 405 West Franklin St. 4th Floor, Baltimore, MD, or call 410/962.8941.
Tuesday, April 26, 2005
San Diego
Spent all day indoors lecturing... but last night I visited my usual secret dining spot, Ortega's again for my fix of poblano mole and of Carnitas.
Anderson on Flynn
Thom Flynn at Osuna Gallery
By John Anderson
For some the talk of collage in art receives a yawn and a "been there, done that." And though their applications have probably been beaten like a dead horse well throughout the last hundred years - since Picasso glued the caned backing of a chair to a canvas and framed it with rope - there is still something intriguing about a bunch of trash glued and stapled together into something. Or, at least, when it is done well it is intriguing, and sometimes seductive.
This seems to be the case for Thom Flynn, who currently has work on display at Osuna Gallery in Bethesda, MD through May 12, 2005.
Though ample work is not on display throughout the space, it does command the gallery well enough to attract attention at the very least from the simple curiosity of the people, if not some time for reflection.
While initial glances at Flynn’s work might evoke the work of artists like Mimmo Rotella and Jacques Villéglé, the relationship ends with poster material and some method of adhesive. Whereas Rotella and Villéglé were prone at times to treat their décollage as found objects, Flynn’s compositions involve both additive and subtractive elements of collage and décollage until so much of the image is lost in the development that what remains is a series of rips across the picture plane.
Flynn’s work reads as drawing. The rips are gestural across the surface with their varied thicks and thins. And, like the master draftsman he is with these rips, Flynn mixes it up just enough to keep the eye moving throughout the composition, yet controlling enough to maintain our attention in the gallery.
Sometimes the rips repeat, piling up one after the other. They intersect, lines lost in the overlap. Flynn lets us know just how much control he has over the compositions, and the compositions do not lose intensity and fall apart with a shift in scale.
The other point of major interest is the thickness of his pieces. They are constructed like topographical maps, with so many peaks and valleys the surface is begging to be touched. Guests of the gallery can often be seen looking from one side of the piece to the other to determine just how thick the pieces are, and how many layers back they can see.
Where things become problematic is twofold. First is the simple way the pieces are unified.
Constructed with staples adhering layer to layer, the final piece is shellacked with a gel medium that provides additional bonding strength to the staples, and arguably holds the whole piece together. While this act of preservation offers an interesting dialogue in contrast to the deteriorating condition in which these posters were found, as a solution it feels "too quickly arrived upon" and not as well planned in consideration to additional issues of texture, variety of surface throughout the composition.
Secondly is a more pressing issue, where does the work go from here? In the last few years Flynn has demonstrated his ability to work in this method throughout several exhibitions. While some might be frustrated trying to "read" the piece through the fragmentary images, it is obviously not necessary, as it is not the artist’s intention. Unfortunately, in the quest to see what information is peering around the tears becomes akin to a Where’s Waldo game, searching for what might be some random body part. In addition, without this style moving forward, it is likely to be relegated as furniture.
Monday, April 25, 2005
Sunday, April 24, 2005
Wanna Ask John Currin a Question?
Do you want to interview John Currin? Is there something you'd like to ask him?
With Flash Art, now you can.
This spring, Flash Art is giving you the opportunity to interview John Currin. Flash Art is now soliciting questions from anyone, the readers of Flash Art and the Flash Art newsletter.
They will present the best of these questions to John Currin, and he will respond to them in an exclusive interview published later this year.
Please e-mail all questions to Matt before the deadline - Wednesday, 4 May, 2005.
Gopnik on Steinhilber
Gopnik doesn't pay too much attention to DC galleries, so make sure that when he does, we do as well... read it here.
Saturday, April 23, 2005
Jenkins on Steinhilber
Guest Review by Mark Jenkins
I work beside Numark Gallery and have been passing by this exhibit daily and so thought to contribute a brief piece about my reaction to it in this blog -- just for fun.
The first work that grabbed me in this show is a large canvas on the ground tilted against the wall with a small orange ball centered on its edge that seems to light up the wall behind it. The friend I was there with wondered if it was a light as I’m sure many will.
I won’t ruin the secret of it, but if you can jump as high as me -- I barely dunked a basketball some years ago, but that was some years ago -- you’ll see it too. It was this act -- perhaps a reward for my effort and for not caring if I looked a little bit like a fool -- that enabled me to begin to understand the way Steinhilber’s mind enjoys reality. He does so by creating or uncovering simplistic enigmas of the everyday item.
I remember in one of the Dune books Frank Herbert said something about a character The Changer: "He illuminates the banal in a way that terrifies."
While Steinhilber hardly terrifies he certainly illuminates the ordinary in a way that gets you thinking. The caterpillar made from forks and plates, the cardboard boxes that seem like a family of acrobats, the sorrowful kite riled by a fan like a chained canary, and a small tape metropolis with one tower deconstructing itself, all share this Changed spirit.
One other thing to mention or rather advise -- go to the show on a full stomach or you’ll find yourself seriously considering taking a bite out of the giant cheeto.
Friday, April 22, 2005
For next week...
Creating from Within by Tricia Ratliff, Silvia Santiago and Shannon Chester is an exhibition of original paintings, collage and photography to create awareness about EP's innovative public art project- Synergy!
The opening is this coming Wed. April 27 , from 6-8 p.m. at Karma Lounge (19th and I Street in DC). Artwork will be on view through May 14th.
This showing is a fundraiser for Synergy. With each purchase, you'll receive free ($40) tickets to The Artists Reality Show, a very unique performance event to be held on May 14, at The Dennis and Phillip Ratner Museum, in Bethesda, Maryland.
Tickets and information about The Artists Reality Show will be available at the opening.
Thursday, April 21, 2005
Katzen Arts Center
American University's Katzen Arts Center is about to open, and it includes a new gallery with 30,000 square feet of exhibition space, which is certain to become one of the key exhibition venues in the whole Eastern seaboard.
This will be a great new addition to our area's art scene, and lucky for us, it will be guided by a steady and experienced hand in the person of Jack Rasmussen, who as most of us know, is a highly experienced arts professional with a very deep knowledge of the DC area and Blatimore area art scenes.
And Jack steps into the new job with a brand new BLOG! Is that cool or what?
Visit the new BLOG here.
The Thursday Reviews
In the City Paper, Louis Jacobson reviews Barbara Probst at G Fine Art and also Maria Friberg at Conner Contemporary.
In the WaPo, Jessica Dawson has her usual third Thursdays set of mini reviews. Also in the Post, Jacqueline Trescott has a story on The National Endowment for the Arts' "scaling back" their initiative to "send the best of American culture around the country and is starting with only a tour of visual arts." Trescott reveals that the "NEA announced yesterday that it is giving the Phillips a grant of $100,000 to support a traveling exhibition of 20th-century painter [and my former art professor] Jacob Lawrence."
In DCist, Kirkland reviewed Victor Schrager at Adamson and JT tells me that later today DCist will have his review of Dan Steinhilber at Numark.
In the Gazette, Karen Schaffer has an article on Sandra Pope's Colour Art Studio and Gallery, a new art space in Silver Spring.
Also in the Gazette, a byline-less article discusses that as part of the Montgomery College annual Holocaust Commemoration program, Montgomery College Professors Jon Goell and Brian Jones, former Montgomery College students John Hoover and Susan Maldon Stregack, and Holocaust survivor Nesse Godin will discuss their participation in the exhibit "Portraits of Life."
Goell and Jones acted as project leaders and chief photographers of the exhibit, photographing and interviewing local Holocaust survivors in their homes. The professors were assisted by Montgomery College adjunct faculty member Rollin Fraser, students and former students, who acted as photo assistants, interviewers and photographers. Jane Knaus, the college's creative services director, designed the exhibit and coordinated its production.The "Portraits of Life" photography exhibit will be on display at the college's Communication Arts Technologies (CAT) Gallery. It will officially open at the Holocaust Commemoration event and will remain on display through the end of April.
More than 30 Holocaust survivors have been photographed for "Portraits of Life," creating a lasting legacy of their lives and their stories of survival.
Arts Talk Today
Curator Susana Torruella Leval, Director Emerita, El Museo Del Barrio, New York, will lead a roundtable discussion on "Latin American" Art: Expectation and Reality, today at the Arlington Arts Center starting at 7PM. Free and open to the public.
The exhibition "Art with Accent: Latin Americans in the Mid-Atlantic States," which was curated by Torruella Leval, is currently on exhibition at the Center and showcases work by Aldo Badano, Juan Bernal, Gute Brandao, Mark Caicedo, Ana Cavalcanti, Irene Clouthier, Pepe Coronado, Gerard de la Cruz, Felisa Federman, Luis Flores, Eva Holz, Tamara Kostianovsky, Rosana Lopez, Carolina Mayorga, Lara Oliveira, Alessandra Ramirez, Victoria Restrepo, Helga Thomson and Maria Velez.
The festival will bring together novelists, poets, journalists, nonfiction writers and children's authors and illustrators who represent the rich diversity of modern literature. The Bethesda Literary Festival also features essay contests, poetry slams, kids' and youth book parties and the 2nd annual Play In A Day.
On Saturday, April 23rd from 1-2PM we will host Alexandra Robbins, author of Quarterlife Crisis and its sequel Conquering Your Quarterlife Crisis and Jen Chaney, the Washington Post's DVD and movie columnist. Robbins and Chaney will join together to share their insight on modern day living.
And then, on that same day from 2:30-4PM, we will host authors Jim Grimsley (Comfort & Joy); Susan Leonardi (And Then They Were Nuns); Michael Mancilla (Love In The Time of HIV: The Gay Man's Guide to Sex, Dating, and Relationships); and Kathi Wolfe, a local poet. The authors and poet will offer a look inside gay and lesbian literature.
See ya there!
Wednesday, April 20, 2005
Opportunity for Artists
Call for entries, Gateway Georgia Avenue, and Jesse Cohen's Artdc.org Art in Transition.
Info here, Although you have to log in to read it, but it only takes a second or two to create an account. Below is the gist of the call for artists.
An Artdc.org proposal has been accepted, and they have received permission from the owners of a Georgia Avenue property near Takoma Park to conduct an art show and exhibition.
This show will allow them to represent all or most of Artdc.org’s membership, that they can fit. It will present the opportunity for a semi-curated show. All those who apply will be allowed to hang at least one piece on a first come first serve basis limited by the space available on the install date.
The works will be hung in salon style to take advantage of nearly 1300 square feet of open office space. There is the opportunity for use of a balcony for 3D and other weather proof or performance art. If artists have ideas for an event, please contact Artdc.org. They are interested in developing master classes, studio days, and music events. The more the ideas, the better.
The call for entries will be 100% digital. Submit via CD, images must be at least 4" by 6" at 300 dpi. They are interested in all types of art. 2D, 3D, and more. Submit at the meeting this coming weekend; exact time, date and location TBA.
What: Gateway Georgia Avenue, and Artdc.org--Art in Transition
Where: Off of Georgia Avenue, MD in Raw Transitional but Empty Office Space.
When: Install May 14, 2005 Opening May 21, 2005 Closing June 17, 2005
Theme: What does it mean to EMERGE!
Requirements to show:
-Must be registered at Artdc.org with completed profile including username, interests, webpage if available.
-Must live with in 150 miles of Washington, DC.
-Must submit a CD of at least 1 to 5 images of available work. They will select at least one image. (4" by 6" at 300 dpi or larger).
-A $20 dollar Hanging Fee which will be applied to marketing costs, show maintenance, and possibly the development of the next show.
-Volunteer time to gallery sit or help install and de-install, Canvas neighborhoods, or develop programs. (They are flexible 3-6 hours total or more if you like).
-A resume and/or artist statement with completed application.
-Most important, include a paragraph or poem to be displayed with your work about the meaning of emerging within the art world, and the effect it has had on you. Be personal.
-You may consider yourself emerging or established to apply.
-Self promotion and flyer posting. Each artist should post at least 10 flyers for the event.
-Artists should attend the openings.
-Please limit the size of your work to allow room for other artists.
MOCA Opening this Saturday
"Forgotten Memories" opens with a reception this coming Saturday at MOCA in Georgetown's Canal Square from 6 to 9pm. The exhibition includes Michael Dax Iacovone's Experimental Photography and Ben Premeaux's Mixed Media Paintings. The Exhibition runs Saturday, April 30th.
Craghead on Bailey on Botero
Warren Craghead's excellent Drawer has a counterpoint to Bailey's Botero Letter, and also a couple of comments by Bailey. Read it all here.
Bailey on Botero
That word-processing living machine known as J.W. Bailey responds to my call for reviews and art commentary with the below open letter in response to AP reporter Dan Molinski’s article, "Botero’s Latest Muse: Abu Ghraib," as published in the Washington Post. Comments welcomed:
"The Deconstructed Portrait of a Postmodern Art History Teacher"Opposing views on this subject:
By James W. Bailey
The postmodern art theorists (translate: anti-American French and wannabe French "art philosophers") must be having a field day around the world preparing their glowing reviews of Colombian artist Fernando Botero’s new series of propagandistic Abu Ghraib paintings in which he predictably pours gasoline on the exaggerated horrors of the unfortunate documented abuses of some Iraqi prisoners by a handful of American soldiers.One can easily picture Botero’s sycophant leftist art fans standing at the ready outside museums in Paris anxiously awaiting the arrival of this vapid artistic pabulum while passing the time muttering their memorized anti-Bush screeds in clever but meaningless French art speak phrases, with lit Gitanes cigarettes hanging from their cynical lips prepared to flick them onto the inflammable canvas of art and politics that Botero has composed for his choir.
Botero is quoted by the AP as saying the following: "No one would have ever remembered the horrors of Guernica if not for painting." What self-serving deluded narcissistic tripe! Only the relativist philosophy of postmodernism would be so bold as to ludicrously encourage us to believe that wrapping a female panty around a male Iraqi prisoner’s head equates to Franco and Hitler conspiring to kill more than 1,700 innocent people in the Basque region of Spain by bombing and shooting them to death.
But then again, only such a shallow philosophy as postmodernism could inspire an aging super-famous mega-wealthy artist living in an ivory tower penthouse who longs to be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize before he dies to say something like that and expect it to be taken seriously by anyone but a burned-out religious convert to the fraudulent philosophy of postmodernism in the first place.
However, to play Botero’s art history game: If Botero is so concerned about horrors being preserved and presented in art so that it can serve as a leftist platform for politically correct history lessons, where are his paintings of the innocent Iraqis who dared to dissent with the ruling elite and were tortured to death by Saddam Hussein and his gang of thugs? Where are his paintings of the Kurds being gassed to death? Where are his one million paintings of the one million Rwandans being hacked to death while Bill Clinton and his gang of State Department cronies diddled around trying to parse the United Nations’ international definition of genocide?
Closer to his native land, where are his paintings of innocent Colombians being blown to bits in Medellin by wealthy drug lords? Are they still in the hands of wealthy private collectors locked away for private viewing? (Some of Colombia’s cocaine barons have no doubt long been enamored of Botero’s strained ruminations on the invented mythology of America’s endless abuse of power throughout the world because their own rabidly anti-American positions on international terrorism seem to dovetail so nicely with his – considering that Botero has already painted a sympathetic portrayal of Pablo Escobar being killed by Colombian police, they’re also probably on his collector’s list as every true mass-murdering gangster longs to be celebrated in art by a famous sympathetic artist at some point in his life, or death.)
I find it quite interesting that Botero, in a classic postmodern art theorist move, has numbered his Abu Ghraib series from 1 to 50, rather than taking the time to research the names and identities of those prisoners he painted that he claims were "tortured." Undoubtedly, Botero’s international art attorney advised him that to attribute names to the faces in his paintings would raise the troubling issue of exploitation of unlicensed imagery for financial gain – that is, royalties might have to be paid out of Botero’s back pocket to those "victims" he's so concerned about.
Of course, good postmodern art theory does not allow for the "innocent victim" of a right wing government to object to their image being used by a leftist artist without their permission if such use advances an exploitative anti-American opinion that intersects with an impending world museum tour – no, such theories better suggest that the leftist artist in question just keep the names, identities, facts and truth out of the whole picture... and keep all the profits once that fraudulent picture is sold to the world by a compliant media all to himself.
But God help you if you happen to be a real innocent victim of a left wing government – the true French postmodern art theorists will never remember your death because they are not about to condone, let alone critically review, any artist that would dare to stray from the party line and paint that aesthetically confusing picture. They would much prefer that history lesson never be remembered and taught through art.
Sincerely
James W. Bailey
Experimental Photographer
Force Majeure Studios
Mike Whitney at Counterpunch and also at Al Jazeerah.
Elizabeth Nash at The Independent.
Tuesday, April 19, 2005
Correcting Green
From Tyler Green's Modern Art Notes:Here in DC I've noticed that people are doing less talking and more writing. DCist, part of the often poorly-behaved -ist empire, has rounded up a few arts bloggers and encouraged them to review area shows for publication on DCist. Sure, DCist had a false start or two -- notably a gallery owner and dealer wrote reviews until blogger Kriston Capps called DCist on it --
Sigh...
I am the linkless "gallery owner and dealer" that Green mentions (he conveniently omitted blogger), but considering that Green once wrote that "I [Green] make sure that items... are accurate before they go up on MAN. It doesn't go on MAN if it is wrong, could be wrong or might be wrong. It only goes on MAN if it is solid and accurate. I check things."
Mr. Green: I've never written a review for DCist.
What I did do for DCist, for about four or five weeks, was to provide them with a listing of gallery openings and visual arts events cut and pasted from the many news releases that the galleries send me. It was an attempt on my part to help spread the word, through DCist's huge reading public, about the DC art scene.
What Green regurgitates today is that last March blogger Kriston Capps on G.P. wrote that:
"It's bitchy of me to say— and I don't know the extent to which Lenny Campello of DC Art News contributes or what Cyndi Spain [the DCist Arts Editor] has to say on the subject— but I twitch whenever I see a feature with Lenny's name attached on DCist about work on display at the gallery he operates. I don't doubt the conviction Lenny clearly feels about the art he represents or enjoys, and I don't think that it's unreasonable that he writes about artists he represents on his own blog. But you really can't don the critic's cap when you're a producer in the community."Rather than drag DCist through an unwarranted ethics debate, I immediately quit contributing directly to DCist, who published this statement.
After nearly sixty back and forth comments in response to that G.P posting, including several by Green (including a childish one on March 14 at 7:40PM), I believe that some issues had been ironed out, and I did and still disagree with the premise that a gallery owner cannot write art criticism (which I never did for DCIst) is flawed and ridiculous.
Unlike Green's own writing career, which started four or five years ago and was succinctly profiled by the Washington City Paper, I've been writing about art since 1977 (and about DC art since 1993) and have no intention of stopping on his or anyone else's account. At the time, I thought that my contributions to DCist, which were simply listings of other galleries shows, would be good for our art scene.
You see, what a self-proclaimed elitist, and an arts newbie and gallery-world outsider like Green does not know yet (he'll learn with experience), is that the best thing for art galleries, is more art galleries.
And in order to have more art galleries, then all galleries have to do well, and then a city's cultural tapestry grows and becomes stronger. In helping to promote other galleries via what I do here at DC Art News and what was being used by the DCist Arts Editor to publicize openings, etc., I had hoped to help expand our area's gallery scene and this helps all galleries, including mine.
But now Green, who although living here in DC, generally manages to avoid informing his 900 or so daily online visitors about anything dealing with the DC art scene, other than the DC museum show here or there, or bitching about pandas and Corcoran conspiracies, has wasted his precious informative online resources to add unwarranted negativity aimed at DCist and at me.
I've never met Tyler Green and have no idea what he looks like; I've corresponded with him via email and even once or twice invited him out for a beer.
Enough niceties; I hope that I never meet him and will avoid doing so, for at any given place the plebian Brooklyn in me may resurface and he may now be one beer away from a well-deserved ass kicking.
Monday, April 18, 2005
Kino Jewels
The New York Times' Carol Kino has a couple of really good pieces in the New York Times. User ID is logos and password times (thanks to Bugmenot.com).
In the first article: Trendy Artists Pick Up an Old-Fashioned Habit, Kino reveals the surprising list of contemporary artists returning to live model drawing.
In the second piece: When the Work Is a Workstation, she discusses that "if you buy a work from Lucas Samaras's current show at the PaceWildenstein and Pace/MacGill galleries, you'll need $15,000 - and a small moving truck. For your money, you'll get not just 4,432 photographs and 60 movies, but also the Mac Mini computer on which they're stored (as iPhoto and iMovie files), an Apple Cinema HD display, an Ikea Hannes desk and two Design Within Reach chairs."
New Kids on the Block
Most of the area's universities have their senior and MFA Thesis exhibitions hanging right now. This is a good opportunity for an early look at this year's crop of art students and graduates. There are shows at American University's Watkins Gallery, and at GWU's Dimock Gallery, and a new show opens at Catholic University's Salve Regina Gallery on Thursday.
Sunday, April 17, 2005
Wanna go to an Opening Today?
The League of Reston Artists Annual Judged Fine Art Exhibition has an opening reception today from 2-4 pm, with a musical performance by Just Friends.
The reception is at the JoAnn Rose Gallery, Reston Community Center at Lake Anne. The exhibition runs until May 3, 2005 and is free and open to the public. Info and direction here.
Another choice is at Photoworks at Glen Echo Park, where "Creative Digital Printmakers" feautures six artists showing scrolls, frescoes and prints on handmade paper and glass. The artists are Rona Eisner, Sandy Lebrun-Evans, Carol Leadbetter, Sheila Meyer, Dorie Silber and Grace Taylor. The exhibition runs until May 23, and the reception is today from 2-4PM. At Glen Echo Park, 7300 MacArthur Blvd.
Use me
Once again I'd like to renew my offer to have anyone email me area art reviews, comments on our area arts, interviews, etc. for publication here.
Sent a letter to the Arts Editor and it never got published? Send them here and provided that it contributes to our area's art dialogue, I'll publish them here.
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