Elvisversary
Today is the 30th anniversary of Elvis Presley's death, and below is a drawing that I did while I was in art school 30 years ago, upon hearing that the King had died. It is titled "Marilyn Monroe and Frida Kahlo waiting in icon heaven for Elvis Presley."
Capturing the New Berlin
Official, private, and intimate – Berlin is seen and captured in the Goethe-Institut’s exhibition Portrait: Berlin – Contemporary Photography and Video Art. From August 22 - September 27, 2007.
Stefanie Bürkle – Daniela Comani – Oliver Godow– Armin Häberle – Frank Hülsbömer – Jens Liebchen – Wiebke Loeper – Gerhard Kassner – Christian Rothmann – Mariana Vassileva – Brigitte Waldach.
Curated by Matthias Harder, Helmut Newton Foundation, Berlin. Opening reception on Wednesday, August 22, 6 – 8 pm with photographer Christian Rothmann.
RSVP to 202-289-1200 ext. 165
Wanna go to a closing reception in Baltimore?
The very talented Baltimore-based photographer Sofia Silva is closing her exhibition "Suburban Spaces, SOFIA SILVA," this coming Thursday August 16th, from 5 to 7pm. At RTKL Associates Inc. 901 S. Bond Street, Baltimore, MD 21231. RSVP to sofia@sofiasilvafoto.com.
Art Job
Curator of Exhibitions: Arts Council of Princeton
Deadline: August 31, 2007
The Arts Council of Princeton, a 501(c) 3 non-profit organization celebrating its 40th anniversary, is seeking a Curator of Exhibitions to oversee the contemporary exhibition program in its new Paul Robeson Center for the Arts, scheduled to open this fall in downtown Princeton. The new arts center, designed by internationally renowned architect Michael Graves, is anticipated to be the most prominent and important contemporary art space in the greater Princeton region. This is a part-time position that will work with the Executive Director and an Exhibition Advisory Committee to develop plans for an exhibition program focused on the works of established to emerging living artists. Interested candidates should send resume, letter of inquiry, three references and salary requirements to jksapoch@comcast.net by August 31, 2007. For more information about the Arts Council of Princeton visit.
DC Gallery Job
NW DC successful cooperative gallery seeks sales oriented, organized and energetic individual with experience in the visual arts to manage all aspects of gallery operations and sales.
Ideal candidate will have good communication skills to work successfully with customers, the Gallery's Board of Directors, and member artists; be highly organized to maintain show schedules and gallery records; be comfortable with basic office computer skills including Internet, customer database management and standard office software. Must be available for gallery hours: W-Th 1-7, Fri 1-8, Sat.1-6., and attend some member meetings and receptions.
The Director is responsible for promoting and conducting sales during gallery hours and at gallery receptions. The Director also works with all member artists to produce successful shows. Director engages in patron contact, customer list development, website oversight, media release drafting and submission, and advertising copy development. Motivation to work for sales commissions a must. Salary plus commission. Contact: Raymonde van Santen Ph: 301-365-6826; rvansanten2@verizon.net or Carol Rubin: Ph: 301-986-4549.
Art for new Nats ballpark
Michael Neibauer, in The Examiner reveals that "Mayor Adrian Fenty has moved to shift $770,000 from the city's equipment leasing fund and into the budget of the D.C. Commission on the Arts and Humanities, which will use it to purchase artwork, including sculptures, for the 41,000-seat stadium."
Read the article here.
I betcha that Joe Barbaccia and Adam Bradley and Mark Jenkins could come up with a couple of new cool baseballism sculptures.
Death of an artist
The Gazette newspapers' Karen Schafer has a really touching article on the death at 46 of Maryland photographer Michael Evan Thomas.
Read it here.
New arts blog
New to me anyway. Not only is Virginia/DC area painter Wynn Creasey doing a painting a day in her blog, but also adding interesting commentary and thoughts.
Visit her blog here.
PostSecret Video
Like everything that Frank Warren does, his first PostSecret Video is both classy and superbly done!
Wanna own a Campello?
The Hopkinton Senior Center in Hopkinton, Massachusetts has inherited (from a very well-known collector) two of my drawings from the early 1990s. They are both original charcoal and conte drawings.
One is a portrait of Picasso and the other of my daughter Elise. If you are interested make them an offer on both or either one by calling Judi Allessio at (508) 497-9730 or email her at jallessio@hopkinton.org. Images below.
City Papers
In Baltimore, Deborah McLeod reviews Adrienne Figus, Elizabeth Graeber, and Lexy Singer at the Sheppard Art Gallery.
In Philly, Robin Rice reviews Philadelphia Stories: The Building of a Great American City at the Art Institute of Philadelphia, and Mary Wilson picks YouthArtWorks at Asian Arts Initiative.
In DC, Kriston Capps picks Useless at Project 4 and Maura Judkis picks Earth on Stone on Earth Is Naturally So at Flashpoint.
Today in Bethesda
Today, Friday, August 10th, is the second Friday of the month and thus it's the Bethesda Art Walk with 13 participating art venues and with free guided tours.
From 6-9PM - go see some artwork!
Today in Baltimore
Antagonism, Hacks, and Hoaxes (curated by Michael Benevento) opens tonight, Friday, August 10 at Maryland Art Place, with a Gallery Talk at 6pm, followed by an Opening Reception at 7pm. And you won't want to miss a performance of The Ed Schrader Show at 8pm! The exhibition will remain on view through September 1, 2007.
Featuring the works of: Aghost, Lara Emerling, Evie Falci, Michael Farley, Erin Gleeson, Natalie Jenison, Brian Kaspr, Dina Kelberman, Andrew Laumann, Rob Loucks, New Jedi Order, Robby Rackleff & Blue Leader, Jimmy Joe Roche, Jeremy Rountree, Ray Roy, Richard Sawka, Alexandr Skarlinski, Spectacular Society Corporation, Christopher Tate, Vishwam Velandy, Wham City, and Damon Zucconi.
This exhibition is a collaborative effort of Current Gallery and Maryland Art Place.
Today in DC
PhotoFocus, a regional show of photography juried by former Clinton White House photographer, Sharon Farmer is opening today, Friday Aug. 10th, at the Touchstone Gallery on 406 7th St, NW, DC, second floor from 6-8:30 PM.
McNatt on WGS
The Baltimore Sun's art critic is Glenn McNatt, and today he makes some excellent points in a review of the Washington Glass School's artists at the Patricia Touchet Gallery in Baltimore.
Read the review here.
By the way, note something very different in the way that the Baltimore Sun's art critic and the Washington Post's art critic operate.
In the Sun, McNatt's byline is "Sun Art Critic," and he writes a review nearly every day, discussing both art galleries and art museums.
In the WaPo, Blake Gopnik's byline is "Washington Post Staff Writer" and Gopnik writes an art review once a week or so, but is allowed by his editor to ignore art galleries and only focus his talent on art museums all over the planet.
Little nuances that indicate how local newspapers view, treat and react to their native art scene.
More enlightment for Sozanski
More responses to the Philly Inky's art critic Edward J. Sozanski's curious statement in a recent review (see this).
Artist Josephine Haden (who has an upcoming solo at the McLean Project for the Arts, in McLean, VA opening September 20 7-9 PM.) writes:
Hi Lenny,
More, for the uninformed: Kiefer's new work was just shown in Paris, France, at the newly renovated Grand Palais. The show was the first in a series called Monumenta, and it was spectacular. He may well be the greatest living artist today!
See this Herald Tribune article.
Best, Josephine
Congrats!
To New Yorker Matt Murphy, who dived into the scrum and came up with the ball from Barry Bonds' historic and record-breaking 756th homerun.
With 250 San Franciscans and one New York Mets fan fighting for the ball, it was a no contest for the Mets' fan to come up bloodied but hanging on to a ball that will bring him around $300,000 to $400,000 bucks; the Bay Area fans had no chance.
I know this because even though as a child my family lived in Brooklyn, once I graduated from Our Lady of Loretto School, I went to Aviation High School in Queens, and my High School was only a few subway stops away from Shea Stadium, so every year I'd watch 30-40 Mets games. Half the fun was watching the fights in the stands, so Matt, as a Mets fan, was well-trained.
Back then people would order a beer, which came in a plastic cup, and then they'd start stacking the plastic cups atop each other as they drank more and more. At some point in the game, usually towards the later innings, the cup stack could be dangerously high and wobbly, which could cause it to tip over and spill on the guy sitting in front of you, which more often than not meant that he'd come up swinging and then the melee would start.
If the game went into extra innings, then fuggedaboutit; it was guaranteed automatic brawling in the stands as drunks got drunker and plastic cup stacks higher. I have even seen an outfielder get distracted watching a really good fight and miss a fly ball. Or even some players come out of the dugout to watch a really good brawl in the expensive seats.
The funny thing was that when the cops would show up, the fighting would magically stop a few seconds before the cops actually arrived and then nobody seen nuthin' and the fight would be over.
So Matt was well trained, as I imagine that the brawling tradition in Shea Stadium continues to this day.
If I was Matt I'd sell that ball pronto, as in about five or six years, when A-Rod overtakes Bonds' record, it will surely drop in value as the new record baseball is caught by some other fightin' New Yorker somewhere.
Congrats!
This coming Saturday
We're big fans of student work, and in DC Irvine Contemporary has Introductions3 opening this coming Saturday. This exhibition is a selection of recent graduates from leading national and international art schools.
This third year of Introductions at Irvine Contemporary is the first gallery exhibition of its kind. Over 250 artists from 60 different art colleges were reviewed for Introductions3, and final selections were made with the advice of a panel of art collectors, rather than curators or gallerists. Introductions3 has grown to an inclusive “MFA annual” that brings the best rising artists to Washington, D.C. Participating artists are listed below with their most recent college or institute affiliation. Opening reception with artists, Saturday, August 11, 6-8 PM.
Curiouser
A couple of days ago I told you about the curious statement by The Philly Inquirer's art critic Edward J. Sozanski, who in his recent review of "Kiefer, Polke, Richter" at the Philadelphia Museum of Art writes:
"One doesn't hear much about Kiefer these days, or Sigmar Polke, Gerhard Richter, A.R. Penck, Georg Baselitz, Jorge Immendorf, or any of the other so-called neo-expressionists. While their moment dominated a good portion of the 1980s, an especially vigorous decade for new art, it's long past."A good DC friend writes: "I don’t know what planet the Philly critic is on, but I was at the Venice Biennale and visited the Berlin Hamburger Bahnhof museum on the same trip in June, and Kiefer and Polke are still very much forces to be dealt with and creating powerful new works. A series of large indigo ground and silkscreen paintings by Polke at Venice, and a huge installation of Kiefer’s paintings and sculptures in Berlin (taking over the equivalent of the real estate in the main entry hall in our Union Station)."
Easy to do if you're already famous
Several of London's leading artists are setting up their own galleries. Damien Hirst has reportedly bought a series of railway arches in Vauxhall in which he wishes to open a gallery and restaurant, rumoured to be opening next year. Jake Chapman is also said to be negotiating a lease for his own permanent gallery site. Already up and running is Wolfgang Tillmans, who opened the exhibition space Between Bridges in east London last year. Tillmans says that the gallery, which focuses mostly on political art, "is for art that doesn't necessarily have a voice because the artists are either dead or of no commercial interest. I want to do things other galleries wouldn't be interested in doing."Read the Guardian article here.
What Degas Saw
(Tks Rev!) The WaPo has apparently moved its Arts coverage to the Health section, but it is nonetheless a fascinating article on what Degas actually saw and how his vision may have affected his painting style.
Read it here.
And then there were two?
It has nothing to do with the visual arts, but much ado has been made of the fact that Bill Richardson is a "Hispanic" candidate for the Presidency. I'm still mulling his "Hispanicity," a label that most of you know I have some issues with...
I recently heard on some radio show that Mitt Romney's parents were born in Mexico, not from Mormon missionaries who were visiting Mexico as part of their Mormon mission, but born from Mexican-born Mormons who had been living in a Mormon colony called Colonia Juarez, which his great-grandfather had helped to create 122 years ago.
South Americans by the millions who are of Italian, Japanese, or German ancestry are still labeled "Hispanics" because they're born in a Spanish-speaking country. Thus we have Alberto Fujimori (former Peruvian President and son of Japanese immigrants) and Alfredo Stroessner (former Paraguayan strongman and son of German immigrants) as "Hispanics."
I know it's silly, but I didn't make the rules - I think the Nixon administration was the one which invented the term back in the 1970s. Before that we were Mexican-Americans, Cuban-Americans, etc.
But, since Mitt's grandparents were Mexican, does that make him a Hispanic? If you say no, because theirs and Mitt's ancestry is "American," then that immediately disqualifies loads of people from this curious cultural misnomer?
Like Fidel Castro, whose parents were Galicians, and although Galicia is geographically located in Northern Spain, their people are not ethnic Spanish, but Galeg, with a different language, culture, etc. Galicia is one of the remaining Seven Celtic Nations.
Or maybe Shakira (Shakira Isabel Mebarak Ripoll - born in Barranquilla, Colombia. She is the only child of Nidia del Carmen Ripoll Torrado, a Colombian of Catalan-Italian descent, and William Mebarak Chadid, an Arab-American of Lebanese-Catholic extraction).
Otherwise Mitt is a "Hispanic" and so is Senator John E. Sununu of New Hampshire. After all, his father, John H. Sununu (White House Chief of Staff for Bush The First and three-times NH Governor) was born in Havana, Cuba to Victoria Dada (a lady born in Central America) and John Saleh Sununu, a Boston-born businessman then living in Cuba.
I hate the labelling of people, and thus why I am wasting your time this Tuesday with this silly issue.
Only in America can a made-up cultural misnomer grow into a label which sometimes passes for cultural, and sometimes for ethnic, and sometimes for racial, depending on the ignorance or agenda of the user.
We wouldn't call a full-blooded Apache person an "Anglo-American," but we call the full-blooded Mayan person doing your landscaping or cleaning your house, a "Hispanic."
Fun with Lenny and silly labels.
Opportunity for Artists
Deadline: September 5, 2007
Albertus Magnus College invites artists to submit postcard size artworks that explore the impact of the US Constitution and the Bill of Rights on the lives of people living in the United States today. Postcards can engage topics such as: freedom of speech, freedom of religion, separation of church and state, and the right to bear arms.
The exhibition will be in Rosary Hall, on the campus of Albertus Magnus College, with an opening reception on September 10, 2007 at 4:00 pm. Format: postcard, 4 x 6" maximum, mailed with sufficient postage (works w/ insufficient postage not accepted). Return address required. All works thematically linked to topic will be displayed. (The College reserves the right not to display works which are patently obscene or degrading.) No entry fee, no jury, no insurance or returns. Exhibition dates: Sept 10-30, 2007. Send entries to:
ATTN: Dr. Sean P. O'Connell
MAIL ART SHOW
Albertus Magnus College
700 Prospect Street, New Haven, CT 06511
Grants
Deadline: August 13, 2007
National Endowment for the Arts Access to Artistic Excellence - Offers funding to foster and preserve excellence in the arts, as well as provide access to the arts and arts appreciation for children, youth, and intergenerational education projects. Applications may be submitted in the following categories: Dance, Design, Folk & Traditional Arts, Literature, Local Arts Agencies, Media Arts, Multidisciplinary, Music, Musical Theater, Opera, Presenters, Theater, and Visual Arts.
Funding range is from $5,000-$150,000. For more information, contact:
National Endowment for the Arts
Nancy Hanks Center
1100 Pennsylvania Ave. NW
Washington, D.C. 20506-0001
Curatorial Fellowship
The Rose Art Museum of Brandeis University has announced a search for The Ann Tanenbaum Curatorial Fellow (2007-08) in the area of modern and contemporary art.
This one-year full-time fellowship offers an outstanding opportunity to to gain professional curatorial experience with the Rose's internationally recognized collection, which includes iconic art works from early 20th century American masters to De Kooning and Warhol; Rauschenberg and Lichtenstein. The fellowship will offer curatorial training and support scholarly research in connection with the permanent collection to an exceptional graduate-level candidate.
The fellow will have a passion for modern and contemporary art, a proven desire for curatorial work and research, and have recently completed graduate work in art history, either a Masters or Doctorate, specializing in modern and/or contemporary art. The fellow will be exposed to all aspects of curatorial work, gain experience in education and research, publications and cataloguing, acquisitions and conservation. He or she will also participate in a major project of publishing a comprehensive catalogue of The Rose's permanent collection. With a start date of October 2007, the fellowship will carry a stipend of $25,000.
Applications must be filed by Sept. 1. Application requirements: letter of interest describing the applicant's interest in the fellowship, museum work, and reasons for applying; resume; two letters of recommendation from academic and/or professional settings; and two writing samples. Please send applications to:
Curatorial Fellow Search
The Rose Art Museum
Brandeis University
MS 069
415 South Street
Waltham, MA 02453-2728
Or Email: rosemail@courier.brandeis.edu
Separated at Birth
One of my favorite DC area sculptors is Adam Bradley. For years and years, even as a student at GMU, Bradley has been recycling junk and found objects and creating intelligent allegorical and narrative sculptures from them. He was doing "green art" without realizing it. See his work here.
One of my least favorite airports is the Philadelphia Airport, which essentially has been stuck in the 1970s for three decades. While at the airport, I spotted the below Honda ad:
Which looks suspiciously close to the well-known "Skirt" sculpture by Bradley shown below:
Curious
The Philly Inquirer's art critic Edward J. Sozanski has a curious statement in his recent review of "Kiefer, Polke, Richter" at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Sozanski writes:
"One doesn't hear much about Kiefer these days, or Sigmar Polke, Gerhard Richter, A.R. Penck, Georg Baselitz, Jorge Immendorf, or any of the other so-called neo-expressionists. While their moment dominated a good portion of the 1980s, an especially vigorous decade for new art, it's long past."Mmmm... that's news to me.
Sunday Morning Coming Down
By Kris Kristofferson
Well, I woke up Sunday morning
With no way to hold my head that didn't hurt.
And the beer I had for breakfast wasn't bad,
So I had one more for dessert.
Then I fumbled in my closet through my clothes
And found my cleanest dirty shirt.
Then I washed my face and combed my hair
And stumbled down the stairs to meet the day.
I'd smoked my mind the night before
With cigarettes and songs I'd been picking.
But I lit my first and watched a small kid
Playing with a can that he was kicking.
Then I walked across the street
And caught the Sunday smell of someone frying chicken.
And Lord, it took me back to something that I'd lost
Somewhere, somehow along the way.
On a Sunday morning sidewalk,
I'm wishing, Lord, that I was stoned.
'Cause there's something in a Sunday
That makes a body feel alone.
And there's nothing short a' dying
That's half as lonesome as the sound
Of the sleeping city sidewalk
And Sunday morning coming down.
In the park I saw a daddy
With a laughing little girl that he was swinging.
And I stopped beside a Sunday school
And listened to the songs they were singing.
Then I headed down the street,
And somewhere far away a lonely bell was ringing,
And it echoed through the canyon
Like the disappearing dreams of yesterday.
On a Sunday morning sidewalk,
I'm wishing, Lord, that I was stoned.
'Cause there's something in a Sunday
That makes a body feel alone.
And there's nothing short a' dying
That's half as lonesome as the sound
Of the sleeping city sidewalk
And Sunday morning coming down.
Senior Artists Initiative
Via artblog I've learned about the Senior Artists Initiative (SAI).
The purpose of the Senior Artists Initiative (SAI) is to assist senior artists in understanding the need for, and process involved in, organizing their life's work, and to develop programs that provide recognition for senior artists.Details here.
Oz
When this opportunity presented itself, I dug around for some doodles that I had done in the late 70s from a series that I titled "Unknown Events in the Wizard of Oz saga," back when all that I really wanted to be was a cartoonist.
Trashball
As I mentioned quite a while back, Chris Goodwin started a blog called Trashball! that documents some of the stuff that he finds (much of it in his PT job driving a dump truck).
He's got some really cool stuff online now. Check it out at Trashball!
Pool Woes II
I told you before about our pool woes, and your lack of feeling sorry has been duly noted (yeah, yeah, Campello, I feel bad for your pool problems as I bake in my apartment, buddy...).
Maybe these pics, which are directly proportional to the state of my savings account, will make you feel my pain.
Washington Glass at Touchet Gallery
Last night we attended the opening for "Moving Beyond Craft: Artists of the Washington Glass School," at the one-year-old Patricia Touchet Gallery in Baltimore.
Power of the Web
A while back I told you about Jackie Hoysted and her art project.
Jackie writes: "I just want to say a big thank you for posting information about my blog AshesToAshes on your blog. Joe Eaton from the Washington City Paper contacted me after you posted that info and published a feature yesterday on my project."
Viva Paglia!
When Sexual Personae first came out, once I got past the first couple of chapters, I began the process of being hypnotized and seduced by the eloquence and logic and intelligence of Camille Paglia.
By the end of the book, I was a Camille Paglia fan. And Sexual Personae remains one of my Top 10 books of all time and a must-read for all artists.
Since then, almost every thing that this tiny, brilliant and incendiary lady has published or talked about can be counted upon to make you think, make some of us mad, some of us happy, and almost always make all of us a little smarter.
Writing in Arion (thanks AJ), Paglia lobs another word bomb which is surely to piss off both right wing and left wing nuts. She writes:
"A primary arena for the conservative-liberal wars has been the arts. While leading conservative voices defend the traditional Anglo-American literary canon, which has been under challenge and in flux for forty years, American conservatives on the whole, outside of the New Criterion magazine, have shown little interest in the arts, except to promulgate a didactic theory of art as moral improvement that was discarded with the Victorian era at the birth of modernism. Liberals, on the other hand, have been too content with the high visibility of the arts in metropolitan centers, which comprise only a fraction of America. Furthermore, liberals have been complacent about the viability of secular humanism as a sustaining creed for the young. And liberals have done little to reverse the scandalous decline in urban public education or to protest the crazed system of our grotesquely overpriced, cafeteria-style higher education, which for thirty years was infested by sterile and now fading poststructuralism and postmodernism."I don't want to spoil the article, and its surprising offering and recommendation, but here's another bomb:
"The automatic defense of the Brooklyn Museum during the “Sensation” imbroglio sometimes betrayed a dismaying snobbery by liberal middle-class professionals who were openly disdainful of the religious values of the working class whom liberals always claim to protect. Supporters of the arts who gleefully cheer when a religious symbol is maltreated act as if that response authenticates their avant-garde credentials. But here's the bad news: the avant-garde is dead. It was killed over forty years ago by Pop Art and by one of my heroes, Andy Warhol, a decadent Catholic. The era of vigorous oppositional art inaugurated two hundred years ago by Romanticism is long gone. The controversies over Andres Serrano, Robert Mapplethorpe, and Chris Ofili were just fading sparks of an old cause. It is presumptuous and even delusional to imagine that goading a squawk out of the Catholic League permits anyone to borrow the glory of the great avant-garde rebels of the past, whose transgressions were personally costly. It's time to move on.Ouch! And all of this from "a professed atheist and a pro-choice libertarian Democrat." Read the whole article here.
For the fine arts to revive, they must recover their spiritual center. Profaning the iconography of other people's faiths is boring and adolescent."
Tonight
If you are in Baltimore tonight, swing by the new Patricia Touchet Gallery, which will be opening "Moving Beyond Craft: Artists of the Washington Glass School," from 6-9PM.
Come by and say hi.
See ya there!
Art Whino
Looks like the Greater DC area will get a massive new arts presence in a couple of months.
I'm referring to Art Whino, which will be opening a new art space in Alexandria: 22,000 square feet, of which 7,000 feet will be a new gallery and the rest available as artists' studios.
This will be by far the largest commercial fine arts gallery in the Greater DC region, and we wish them loads of success.
Dawson on Hernandez
One of a handful of Cuban-Americans in the DC area, a brilliant street photographer and a soft-spoken, amazing human being, Nestor passed away unexpectedly last year.
We all miss you Nestor.
New Painting
It only took me about six months of taping and painting, but below is a new oil painting from my "Digitalism" series.
It's about six feet long, and joins these guys from the late 1990s. Read the story as to how these paintings and concept came along here.
This painting is already sold (and set a new Campello record!).
Now we know where
Jessica Gould of the CP has the scoop on the imminent move by the Warehouse Galleries and Theatre complex. Read it here.
More on some other gallery moves later...
Correction: Paul Ruppert from Warehouse tells me that they "aren't moving the theater and gallery to that location. Just the music venue - if I can negotiate the lease. Still looking for a theater/gallery space."
A great Friday for art lovers
This is going to be a fun Friday for art lovers along the Mid Atlantic. Some tough decisions will have to be made!
In Baltimore, the new Patricia Touchet Gallery opens "Moving Beyond Craft: Artists of the Washington Glass School," one of three multi-city gallery shows which focus some attention at the movement that I have dubbed "The Washington Glass School School," and which is dragging glass away from craft and putting it firmly in the fine arts camp. Opening is 6-9PM and runs through Sept. 3, 2007. Work by Michael Janis, Erwin Timmers, Tim Tate, Deborah Conti, Cheryl Derricotte, Sean Hennessey, Syl Mathis, Betsy Mead, Evan Morgan and Alison Sigethy. By the way, last Friday WETA TV had a segment on the Washington Glass School - see it here.
In DC, there's a really strong group show opening at Gallery Myrtis, one of DC's newest galleries. Look for the work of Elsa Gebreyesus to stand out in this show. Also Washington Printmakers has its National Small Works 2007 Exhibition, Juried by Greg Jecmen, from the National Galley of Art, as some of the Dupont Circle area galleries will be open for First Fridays.
In Frederick, MD, the Artists' Gallery has a 23-artist group show opening on Friday, although the opening reception is on Saturday, August 4 as part of Frederick's First Saturday Gallery Walk. Work by Palma Allen, Janet Belich, Joy Boudreaux, Steven Dobbin, Nina Chung Dwyer, Lesa Cook, James Germaux, Christine Hahn, Linda Agar-Hendrix, Phyllis Jacobs, Regina Kaiktsian, Jan McIntyre Lamb, Craig Leonardi, Johan Lowie, Christina Lund, Nancy McLoughlin, Joanna Morison, Doug Moulden, Diane Santarella, Robert Sibbison, Irina Smulevitch, Shelley Stevens, Christine Stovall, Washington White.
In Philly it's time for First Fridays and time to wonder around Old City's 40-plus galleries, most of them open from 5 until 9 p.m.
Longhairs
I was looking through Osvaldo and Roberto Salas' brilliant photography book "Fidel's Cuba: A Revolution in Pictures" the other day, when a conversation that I had a few years ago with Irv Toefsky, a very well-known DC photography collector, who is unfortunately no longer with us, came to mind.
2007 Lucelia Artist Award Nominees Announced
The Smithsonian American Art Museum announced yesterday the nominees for the museum's 2007 Lucelia Artist Award.
The 13 nominees are Cory Arcangel, Bernadette Corporation, Tom Friedman, Gajin Fujita, Rachel Harrison, Glenn Ligon, Fabian Marcaccio, Josiah McElheny, Dave Muller, Laura Owens, Jessica Stockholder, Catherine Sullivan and Sarah Sze.
The Lucelia Artist Award is part of the museum's ongoing commitment to contemporary art and artists through annual exhibitions, acquisitions and public programs.
"The artists nominated this year for the museum's Lucelia Artist Award show a sustained commitment to distinctive work that challenges conventional thinking and expectations about the nature of art," said Elizabeth Broun, The Margaret and Terry Stent Director of the Smithsonian American Art Museum.
The Lucelia Artist Award, established in 2001, annually recognizes an American artist under the age of 50 who has produced a significant body of work and consistently demonstrates exceptional creativity.
SiteProjects DC on TV
I am told that SiteProjectsDC artist Tom Greaves was on the NBC Today show this morning at 8 AM. Tom was interviewed about his piece The Compliment Machine.
It's a good thing that this accomplished artist and the WPA/C project is getting national attention. See it here.
By the way, am I the only one that sees a very strong similarity between "The Compliment Machine" and Thomas Edwards' "Sycophant"?
I don't know which machine came first, but they essentially do the same thing based on the same idea, although Edwards' robot head, once its motion sensor detects you, actually follows you down a rail as it showers you with compliments.
It looks like another case of what I have called in the past "Remarkable Confluence." This is when two people, completely independent of each other, toil away and produce remarkably similar products.
Here's another example of "Remarkable Confluence."
Anyway, read the AP story on Greaves' machine here, it has been picked up worldwide! Also read the WaPo story by Joshua Zumbrun here.
Job in the Arts
Deadline: May 7, 2008
An established international art gallery located on New York's Upper East Side, specializing in museum quality Impressionist and Modern art, is seeking a director.
Starting salary is $50, - 60,000 (plus private healthcare), depending on qualifications and salary history.
The candidate must be able to work closely with the owner and will be responsible in overseeing all gallery activities including sales, administration and exhibition preparation.
He / she should have at least five years solid experience in the international art business. The ability to appropriately handle a high level clientele and knowledge of 19th and 20th century art are essential. We are looking for someone with excellent communication and organizational skills. Foreign languages abilities are favorable. An interest in long-term commitment would be favored.
Send C.V. with short covering letter to:
Caitlin Miller
The Art Newspaper
594 Broadway, Suite 406
New York, NY 10012
Or email: c.miller@theartnewspaper.com
Opportunity for Oz Freaks
Deadline: September 21, 2007
Ozspiration: New Work Inspired by 100 Years of the Wizard of Oz. Call for artists for an Art Show for Nov-Dec 2007 at Gallery 28 in Boston at the New England School of Art & Design, Suffolk University (NESAD/SU).
Please contact oz@niftyarts.com with questions. All info on this website.
