Wanna go to an opening tomorrow?

"Strong Work Hot Topics" is a show now on exhibit through April 5, 2006 at the Marlboro Gallery of Prince George's Community College.

The exhibition features the work of Marilyn Banner (Bethesda, MD), Tom Block (Silver Spring, MD), Donte’ Hayes (Atlanta, GA), Dylan Scholinski (Wash. DC), and Clarissa Sligh (NYC).

According to the news release, "this exhibit brings together five artists whose work addresses, in powerful and direct ways, peoples’ struggles for survival in the face of violations of human rights and dignity. Evoking issues of anti-Semitism, racism, political imprisonment, and gender identity intolerance, the work asks us to re-consider our own beliefs and assumptions about 'those others,' and to take responsibility for ending scapegoating of all kinds."

The opening is Friday, March 24 from 6-8 pm, with music by Washington Musica Viva.

Another March 30th art event...

Looks like the DC Art Gods have aligned to focus a ton of good stuff to happen on March 30, 2006. In addition to all the great stuff happening on that day that I've already discussed here previously (I'll re-cap later), there's also a good opening at the University of Maryland for those of you who are on the Maryland side and don't feel like trekking to the District.

The University of Maryland's Union Gallery presents "Midpoint: 2nd Year MFA Candidates at the University of Maryland" on display March 30 - April 20, 2006.

The exhibition displays the work of four artists: Peter Gordon, Ben Lock, Brian Sykes, and Adam White. They are all halfway through the University's three-year Masters of Fine Arts program. An opening reception for the exhibition will be held Thursday, March 30th, 6-8 PM.

Also on that day:

Details here for a tour of the new Grant Wood show given by Jane Milosch, the new curator-in-charge.

Details here for After Effects of the Experimental Media Series - Curated by Kathryn Cornelius at the Corcoran.

Details here for Hirshhorn After Hours.

Tapedude on TV

I am told that this morning Channel 7 News had a clip on Mark Jenkins and his outdoor tape sculptures. See them here.

The gallerist as juror

One curious (and welcomed) fact that I've noted about our current exhibition is the relationship to the overall success of a juried exhibition to the background of the juror.

Let me explain.

Since we opened the Fraser Gallery in 1996, as part of our gallery's program, we've had dozens of invited guest curators and jurors over the years tasked with curating and jurying one or two shows a year for us. The idea was and is, to bring some fresh eyes, thoughts and ideas, besides that of the gallery-owners.

These jurors have included multiple curators from the Hirshhorn, from the Corcoran, and other museums, as well as established artists and photographers, and art critics.

They have without a doubt delivered strong, sometimes surprising, shows, and nearly always accomplished the task of offering our public something new and different from what the focus of our gallery has been.

And yet, when one brings the seasoned eye of an experienced gallerist to the juror's task, as it was the case in this exhibition and the many others that my partner has curated for other organizations and art venues, something slightly different happens.

The exhibition has all the strong, aesthetic points that most well-curated shows exhibit in general, but in addition to that, it also sells well!

Fact: the current show has been well received by the critics, but it has also already sold more photographs than all of the previous three photography competitions combined!

This, of course, is a gallerist's dream: to have a show that is well received by the critics and the public, and that also actually sells some work.

Silverthorne on Photography

Alexandra Silverthorne visits our current exhibition.

Read her review here.

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.

Another thing to do on the 30th

This day is really getting packed for art lovers!

On Thursday, March 30th at 3pm, join the Washington Glass School staff at the Smithsonian's Renwick Gallery for a personal tour of the new Grant Wood show given by Jane Milosch, the new curator-in-charge.

This tour is sponsored by the Renwick Alliance and is a good chance for some of you emerging glass artists out there to meet the new curator and find out more about the Renwick Alliance at the same time. This is totally free of cost and is open to the public.

Meet them inside the main doors at 2:45PM.

Water everywhere... NOT!

Kirkland has a spirited discussion going over British artist Mark McGowan's plans to leave six water faucets running for a year at secret London locations as a protest against the private control of water in the UK.

Bailey corresponded with McGowan and has an interesting viewpoint on the subject.

Kirkland here.
Bailey here.

Edwards on Boing Boing

Thomas Edwards's accusing sculpture "Blame," last exhibited at our Interface: Art & Technology exhibition (and now part of the Krensky Collection) was featured in Boing Boing.

Kinkaid's Performance Piece

The Painter of Light has apparently decided to branch out to performance art, and according to ArtNet Magazine recently took a leak on a statue of Winnie the Pooh outside of the Disneyland Hotel in Anaheim, saying "This one’s for you, Walt."

By the way, there's apparently more and more evidence piling up (ranging from urban legend to books on the subject) to support the decades-long rumor that both Walt and his brother Roy were born in Spain and were adopted as babies by their American dad.

Soldier’s imagery

A while back I was honored to be asked to jury the All-Army Photography Contest, and with two other jurors we looked at over 1,000 photos sent in from all over the world.

This article discusses the winners from the competition.

Also on the 30th

I am told that an equally terrific date idea for March 30th (besides the Hirshhorn After Hours) is the WPA\C's After Effects at the Corcoran.

After Effects
Night #1 of the Experimental Media Series - Curated by Kathryn Cornelius

Date: Thursday, March 30, 2006
Time (all 3 nights): 7:00 - 9:00 pm
Location (all 3 nights): Corcoran Gallery of Art Armand Hammer Auditorium
(New York Avenue entrance.)

Night #2 – April 26th – Curated by Djakarta
Night #3 – May 24th – Juried submissions from open call by Kathryn Cornelius & Djakarta

Details here.

Vettriano gives critics the finger

The world's best-selling popular artist, Jack Vettriano, flips the bird to art critics and museums in an interview in The Scottsman (thanks AJ):

"I just consider myself a trader," Vettriano said. "I take my goods to the marketplace and try to get the best price I can."

The greater glory of art doesn't come into it, he confirms. "That's not why I paint," he said. "It's wall decoration for me, I don't regard it as this big meaningful thing. My subjects are men and women getting off, that's all. Mind you, some people don't think sex is serious, but I happen to think it's terribly serious."

Read the interview here.

Hirshhorn After Hours

This coming March 30, 2006 starting at 5:30 pm you can enjoy an evening of art and cocktails celebrating Hiroshi Sugimoto and his work. Join the artist for an exclusive film screening and discussion; experience the work of internationally renowned sound artists Richard Chartier (who is somewhat of a local as he's from Baltimore) and Taylor Deupree, and explore the photography of Sugimoto with co-curator of the exhibition Kerry Brougher, whom we're all hoping will one day look through the work of some Washington artists and DC area art galleries.

This event is free and open to the public and has a cash bar.

Schedule: 5:30 to 8:30 pm: Galleries open and then from 6 and 7 pm: Specification Fifteen: a live world premiere of a new musical work created especially for the Hiroshi Sugimoto exhibition, at the Lerner Room.

6:30 pm: Curator's tour with Kerry Brougher.

8 pm: Hiroshi Sugimoto will perform as benshi, narrating the beginning and epilogue of Kenji Mizoguchi's silent masterwork of early Japanese cinema, The Water Magician, 1933, at the Ring Auditorium. Please be advised that seating in the Ring Auditorium is limited, and the museum anticipates a high turn-out for this event.

Tickets will be distributed on a first-come, first-serve basis from the far end of the information desk in the Museum lobby beginning at 7:15pm. Guests may enter the auditorium beginning at 7:45pm. Entry to the auditorium will not be permitted after 8pm. Please plan your visit accordingly.

Is this a great date night for artsy types or what?

Opportunity for Artists

Deadline: March 30, 2006

Keeping the Flame Burning to be staged at the JoAnn Rose Gallery, Reston Community Center at Lake Anne, 1609-A Washington Plaza, Reston, VA 20190. The exhibition runs from April 3 - 30, 2006.

Awards – Generously funded by Pat Macintyre: $300 1st Place, $200 2nd Place, $100 3rd Place and Honorable Mention awards to be chosen by the juror: Nancy Sausser, Exhibitions Director, McLean Project for the Arts.

An additional $500 will be awarded at the discretion of Pat Macintyre and announced at the Awards Reception. Entry fee is $15.

Mail entry form with check payable to LRA to:

League of Reston Artists
PO Box 2513
Reston, VA 20195

Entries must be received by March 30.

Art Deal of the Week

My second pick is this gorgeous seascape photograph by Colombian photographer Adriana Echavarria.


It is titled "In Dreams" and the photograph measures 17x23.5 inches and then it is matted in a white pH-balanced acid free 8-ply white museum mat and framed in a black metal moulding under plexiglass to a framed size of 27.5 x 32 inches. Photo is signed by the photographer. The price (including frame): $400.

To buy it call 301/718-9651 or email the gallery.

DC Blogsphering

Bailey has a new project going. He has created a Lenten Season inspired memorial photography art project and is posting one photograph per day during Lent of a flood-damaged home in New Orleans on a blog titled Perelli Drive - An East New Orleans Lenten Season Memorial Art Project. This memorial art project blog can read be read here.

Adrian Parsons is exploring the severe disconnect between local art museum curators and regional art galleries and artists' studios. If you are an artist who has been visited by any of our museum curators, Adrian wants to hear from you.

Alexandra Silverthorne has a really cool photograph accepted into the 14th Annual Phillips' Mill Photographic Exhibition. See it here.

Tracy Lee is pissed off that the man who sang about his Chocolate Salty Balls, and pokes fun at all religions, suddenly got offended when South Park poked fun at his religion. Read that here

Amy Watson hasn't posted in over two weeks (again!) and we're all wondering if she's still alive.

Huckenpahler has a really nice posting about the Anne Rowland exhibition at Hemphill. Read that here.

Teague Clare is still probably recuperating from his mugging in New Orleans and hasn't posted in over a month. I hope that Teague is OK and recuperates quickly!

Kirkland shows the power of the web and how it got one of his drawings in a Brooklyn group show. Read that here.

V for VeryBadetta

For some reason I'm in some studio's press invite list and I get free press passes to movies all the time, although most of the times I don't have the time to actually get down to the theatre.

But I had some time recently and went to see V for Vendetta as I am sort of a "comic books in the movies" kind of fan.

V for Vendetta was mostly a sleeper for me, as it borrows heavily from too many sources as diverse as Orwell, Batman and even Scary Movie.

For starters, at 132 minutes, the movie is too long.

For midlins, the whole masked hero versus the big bad neo-Nazi government goons is such a tired theme.

For endings, the whole Guy Fawkes tie-in was interesting, but the unfortunate resemblance of Guy Fawkes' masks to Jack Nicholson's Joker in Tim Burton's 1989 Batman sort of screwed it up for me (and it also sort of brought back into my mind the silly mask from Scary Movie).

In this film, they even use the "Why won't you die?" exasperated question that the Joker yells at Batman in the 1989 Batman movie in a very similar context, when the government's police has fired like a million shots at the hero and he's still kicking their ass using nothing but knives and karate kicks.

So essentially in a virusy, terroristic future world (25 years or so into the future) where America is in a Civil War (Red vs Blue I guess), England has been taken over by a neo-Nazi Tory dictatorship with a Chancellor who now rules through fear, a police state and large screen TVs; beer and booze seem to be plentiful, although apparently real butter is very hard to get.

That was hard to swallow for me. I lived in the UK for three years, and the Brits use a ton of butter on everything - imagine a sandwich with a quarter inch of butter on each piece of white bread, and a few slices of cucumbers in between, and you've got one of the prime British dishes on the planet.

A butterless England is impossible to imagine, no matter how sciencefictionish my mind gets.

In any event, our hero (known as V) rescues Queen Amidala from government goons who are about to molest her. V is (I think) some sort of genetic superman created in a government lab, and he is seeking revenge against his creators and also to bring down the English dictatorship by arousing the anger and fire of the English people.

Yeah...

Anyway, after he rescues her, he blows up a major London landmark to Russian music, takes over a TV station and runs his DVD infommercial on the air (I guess they still have DVDs 25 years into the future) telling Londoners that he'll blow up the Parliament building in a year, rescues Amidala from the goons a second time, then tortures her to teach her some sort of lesson about losing fear, and in the process incites an almost bloodless rebellion by thousands of Londoners dressed in the Guy Fawkes outfit that he has FEDEX'd to all of them a few days ahead of the one-year deadline for the rebellion.

The best visual part in the movie is when Padmé is in V's secret hideout, which is full of art treasures which he has "rescued" from the government's banned artwork list. I picked up a Turner landscape, a Vermeer painting, some Greek antiquities and generally pictorial, ah... traditional masters' work. Seems like V passed on attempting to rescue any of the YBA's work, as I didn't see any Emins or Hirsts in his hoard (unless the bed where Natalie Portman sleeps in while she's at V's pad was Emin's "art" bed).

Wait for the video.

Parsons on Wolov

DCist Adrian Parsons makes a studio visit to Nekkid with a Camera's Samantha Wolov.

Read the studio visit here.

See Samantha Wolov's erotica here.

The secret

It's clear from the tons of emails that I've received since the last posting that:

(a) Many of you have no patience
(b) Some of you already know the secret

And some of you, in writing "is the secret the fact that blah, blah, blah..." have also revealed some interesting stuff!

Anyway.

As all of us know, museum curators and good galleries are flooded (and I mean literally overwhelmed) by submissions from artists. I know that by the time that you add up email submissions, snail mail submissions through slides, CD ROMs and photos, and visits, we get probably anywhere between 1,000 to 1,500 artists a year approaching the gallery seeking some sort of exhibition opportunity.

So as you may imagine, museum curators probably get their fair share of submissions from artists seeking to catch that curator's eye.

And it is not that much of a stretch to imagine that because of time and interest, most curators quickly glance at the submission (if even that) and immediately put it in the return file (in the event that the artist enclosed a SASE) or the round file if no SASE was included.

It's hard to blame them - if they looked with depth and interest at every submission sent in, they'd never get anything done!

And I suspect that by the nature of the curatorial world today, rare is the museum curator interested in "discovering" an unknown or emerging artist. Although I suspect that if the curator is working on some thematic group shows, there's a chance that some work may catch the curator's eye.

A good example of that was the fact that the two curators from this year's much maligned Whitney Biennial were technically open to receiving unsolicited proposals from artists. And I am curious to learn (and I have asked the Whitney):

(a) How many unsolicited proposals did they receive?
(b) Did they actually go through all the unsolicited proposals received?
(c) How many of the finalists (if any) were selected from this set of unsolicited proposals?

But back to "our" secret.

To review the issue: Museum curators get a lot of stuff from artists in the mail (snail and email) and they probably seldom look at it in depth, if ever.

And yet our own Hishhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, has an incredibly artist friendly policy (either voluntarily self-imposed or because they are a federally funded museum) that requires that submissions from artists are all reviewed at joint curatorial meetings that are regularly scheduled throughout the year!

So when you send the Hishhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden your slide packet, or CD ROM, and resume, at some point it (one or two images I suppose) is presented and reviewed by the museum's curators!

And as we all know, just in having the work seen by a curator, a huge task has been accomplished!

Even being seen and rejected is better than not being seen at all! Especially by a group of curators.

Witness what happened to John Lehr.

John Lehr is a Baltimore-based photographer (represented locally by the new Heineman Myers Contemporary Art gallery soon opening in Bethesda).

A couple of Trawick Prizes ago, John applied to the prize and his work was reviewed by the three curators and rejected.

But he caught the eye of Jonathan Binstock, one of the curators for that year's Trawick Prize, who is also the Curator of Contemporary Art at the Corcoran Gallery and subsequently one of the two curators for the 48th Corcoran Biennial.

And guess what?

Binstock not only picked the work of Lehr for the Biennial, but if my memory serves me right, there were at least three regional artists in the Biennial whose work had also been exposed to the Trawick Prize curators earlier on; none of them won the prize that year, but nonetheless made it to the Biennial!

Even in rejection there's sometimes accomplishment.

It is better to submit and be rejected than not to submit at all.

Enough with the trite sayings; at the very least all of you should enter the Trawick Prize.

And handle the Hishhorn secret carefully, you don't want to waste this golden opportunity if your work is not ready.