Glasshouse shattered

From Kriston Capps in 2005:

"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."

Back then three years ago I didn't think that Capps was right, but just in case I quit immediately contributing gallery openings information ( which is the only data and info that I ever contributed) to DCist.

But now Washington City Paper art critic and many other outlets' contributor Kriston Capps has become a "producer" himself when he curates the current show at Project 4 in DC.

Will I twitch now or whenever I see a future Project 4 feature in the Washington City Paper or any of the other freelance outlets that Capps writes for?

I don't think so, because inside me I think that those outlets, like DCist was in 2005, and it is now, know how to separate themselves from unethical procedures. And because Project 4 is a terrific gallery in the DC art scene and deserves attention. And I sort of hoped that Capps would have had the same "inside me" feeling about the data that I was contributing to DCist back then... but he didn't and perhaps rightly so, lowered the ethical limbo pole for "art producers" who are also art critics or writers.

Inside me, I know this is not 100% the case, and that the art universe has plenty of room for critics who want to be curators and vice versa. And it is not Project 4's fault or the WCP's, or any of the other places that print Capps' eloquent words, that this unwarranted ethical attention has been brought onto to them by Capps' actions, as it wasn't DCist's faults that the unethical spotlight caused by my gallery openings contributions was focused onto them in 2005 by Capps.

But words count, and we Cubans tend to have long memories, and I recall being pointed out for something that was almost smelling unethical in Capps' words, without the courage to say so, and so I took the high road and quit contributing to DCist.

Right away.

Not writing reviews for DCist -- mind you... I never wrote a review for DCist as some less than accurate bloggers erroneously reported -- but just being associated with DCist at all... just in case Capps' ethical testing strip might have a tiny chance of being right...

But now I think that it is time to throw a stone at that Kristonian ethical glasshouse, and put Kriston to the same limbo test that he put me three years ago when he was not a "producer" as he is now as a curator for a gallery show in the city where several of the freelance outlets that he writes for... ahhh... cover.

"It's bitchy of me to say — and I don't know the extent to which Kriston Capps contributes or what Mark Athitakis [the Washington City Paper Arts Editor] has to say on the subject — but I twitch whenever I see a feature in the City Paper about work on display at the gallery that employed Kriston as a curator. I don't doubt the conviction Kriston clearly feels about the art he curates or enjoys, and I don't think that it's unreasonable that he writes about artists [that] he curates on his own blog. But you really can't don the critic's cap when you're a producer in the community."

I was never, ever a critic for DCist.

Thus, if it was an issue for me to contribute multi-gallery opening data to DCist while being an art "producer," then it definitely is an issue for Capps to contribute to the City Paper or his other art writing outlets that may cover the District, as a writer... while now being a commercial gallery curator, which falls neatly into the set of "producer."

And please do not try to justify it as curators are not producers.

What is the solution?

Sounds like it would make a great topic for discussion at an art panel or over a few beers.... first round on me.

DCAC? AU? AAC?

Smithsonian Official Resigns

The head of the Smithsonian Latino Center resigned in February after an internal investigation found that she violated a variety of rules and ethics policies by abusing her expense account, trying to steer a contract to a friend and soliciting free tickets for fashion shows, concerts and music award ceremonies, according to records released yesterday by the Smithsonian.

Read the story by James V. Grimaldi and Jacqueline Trescott in the WashPost here.

Dia de los Muertos

The German artist Gregor Schneider is planning the ultimate performance piece: showing a person dying as part of an exhibition.

I shit thee not... read about it here.

Artist Talk: Baltimore

Hamid Kachmar will be discussing his inspiration and creative process, at New Door Creative in Baltimore this Sunday from 3-5PM.

Congrats

To DC artist Kathryn Cornelius, who has been included in "Ad Absurdum
Energies of the absurd from modernism till today" running April 18 - July 27, 2008 at the MARTa Herford Museum in Germany. Ad Absurdum is a joint project by MARTa Herford and the Städtische Galerie Nordhorn.

Curated by Jan Hoet, the exhibition includes work by Jost (Jodocus) Amman, Joseph Beuys, Jurgen Bey, Guillaume Bijl, Erwin Blumenfeld, Michaël Borremans, Katharina Bosse, Constantin Brancusi, Sebastian Brant, George Brecht, Marco den Breems, André Breton, Marcel Broodthaers, Veronica Brovall, John Cage, Rui Chafes, Jake and Dinos Chapman, Giorgio de Chirico, Kathryn Cornelius, Philipp Corner, matali crasset, Wim Delvoye, Matthias Drechsler, Felix Droese, Marcel Duchamp, Jimmie Durham, Elmgreen & Dragset, Max Ernst, Nick Ervinck, Robert Filliou, Katharina Fritsch, Dorothee Golz, J. J. Grandville, Kristján Gudmundsson, David Hammons, Al Hansen, Raoul Hausmann, Jürgen Heckmanns, Dick Higgins, Andreas Hofer, Ottmar Hörl, Séverine Hubard, Jan Van Imschoot, Marcel Janco, David Kaller, Tadeusz Kantor, Allan Kaprow, Kristof Kintera, Martin Kippenberger, Milan Knízák, Imi Knoebel, Arthur Koepcke, Surasi Kusolwong, Ulrich Lamsfuß, Le Corbusier, Zoe Leonhard, Via Lewandowsky, Zbigniew Libera, Edward Lipski, René Magritte, Jacques Mahé de la Villeglé, Dirk Martens, Fabio Mauri, Jonathan Meese, Rik Meijers, Otto Muehl, Bruce Nauman, Chris Newman, Honoré d'O, Meret Oppenheim, Eduardo Paolozzi, Anna Lange, Francis Picabia, Pablo Picasso, Sigmar Polke, Emilio Prini, Royden Rabinowitsch, Man Ray, Odilon Redon, Tobias Rehberger, Tejo Remy, Thomas Rentmeister, Jason Rhoades, Georges Ribemont-Dessaignes, Mimmo Rotella, Dieter Roth, Michael Rutkowsky, Michael Sailstorfer, Takako Saito, Fabian Sanchez, Wilhelm Sasnal, Sebastian Schmieding, ManfreDu Schu, Thomas Schütte, Kurt Schwitters, Michael Sellmann, Hannes Van Severen, Floria Sigismondi, Nedko Solakov, Louis Soutter, Klaus Staeck, André Thomkins, Rosemarie Trockel, Susan Turcot, Pieter van der Heyden, Koen Vanmechelen, Ben Vautier, Wolf Vostell, Friederike Warneke, Emmett Williams, and Carmelo Zagari.

Open Studios: DC

Saturday & Sunday, April 26 - 27, from 11AM- 5PM at 52 O Street NW in Washington DC - website here.
Work by:

Stevens Jay Carter
Brooke Clagett
Betsy Damos
Christopher Edmunds
Adam Eig
Thom Flynn
Cianne Fragione
H2O n2 Wine Films
Andrea Haffner
Peter Harper
Mike Harris
Matt Hollis
Luke Idziak
B. Neal Jones
Micheline Klagsbrun
Raye Leith
Greg McLellan
Brandon Moses
Kendall Nordin
Holly & Ashlee Temple
Lisa Marie Thalhammer
Ben Tolman
Gabriel Thy

Artists' Websites: Diane Ramos

Photography by Diane Ramos

I am hearing good things about Diane Ramos' MFA thesis show at the Latin American Youth Center's Art & Media house on 15th St NW in Columbia Heights in DC. This young and talented artist will graduate from GWU next month.

Visit her website here.

Mellema on Lin

Kevin Mellema at the Falls Church News-Press reviews the current Amy Lin show at the Art League in Alexandria, Virginia and notes:

Alexandria resident Amy Lin has been on the radar screen of the D.C. area arts scene for a couple of years now and was last seen in December 2007 at her solo show in Heineman Myers Contemporary Art Gallery in Bethesda...

... Lin was included in Washingtonian Magazine's 2007 list of “40 Under 40 to Watch.” To be sure this is one rising star in our midst.

Still, I've had my reservations. Not so much on the eventual outcome, but rather the timing of it all. In Lin's last show, I saw too much centered and seemingly static work that didn't quite get up and dance for me. Shafts of brilliance are mixed with moments of weakness, as befits the process of artistic growth. At 29, Lin's best work is most assuredly ahead of her.

The current show in the Torpedo Factory's Art League Gallery is comprised of only six works, yet bears witness to a significant amount of artistic growth in a scant four months' time. While there are still occasional moments of weakness visible, the powerful work to come is clearly breaking out of its shell...

... Welcome the new Amy Lin.

Read this really excellent and insightful review here.

Predicted Mini Controversy

The National Endowment for the Arts has announced a design competition, in partnership with the Joint Committee on the Library and the Office of the Architect of the Capitol, for a statue of civil rights pioneer Rosa Parks. Commissioned by the U.S. Congress, the sculpture will be permanently installed in National Statuary Hall in the U.S. Capitol Building. The Chrysler Foundation has provided $100,000 to support the administration of the competition.

Chances are that the selected winner will be a classic sculpture to complement the works already there. But, and this may be a bit of a stretch considering the site and the probable set of jurors, if a jury dares to select something a little different from a classical statue, then expect the usual angst and fight over contemporary art.

This event could be an instant career-maker a-la-Maya-Lin and the Viet Nam War Memorial, but only if the jury sidesteps the tradition of traditional statuary (yes, yes.. I know) and selects - as an example - a life size glass reliquary featuring objects that belonged to this amazing lady, plus a running video of her life couple with motion detectors to kick in a little audio when someone stops in front of it.

Details for the competition here, and if I was an art professor teaching some 3D class somewhere, I may just make this a school assignment and have my students each submit a proposal for this call.

Application Receipt Deadline: May 30, 2008
Notification of Semi-Finalists: August 1, 2008

PMA and regional artists

Here's something that you will never see in a Washington, DC museum: This spring the Philadelphia Museum of Art collaborates with the Center for Emerging Visual Artists -one of this region’s artist organizations - to present "Emerging to Established: Twenty-Five Years of the Center for Emerging Visual Artists."

Organized in conjunction with the CFEVA in celebration of this milestone anniversary, the exhibition includes works on paper by 25 artists, including current and former Fellows from CFEVA’s Career Development Program, as well as members of its Board of Artistic Advisors, who select the Fellows. It will be on view through July 6 in the Director’s Gallery.

While the CFEVA program encourages work in all mediums, this exhibition concentrates solely on those making works on paper: drawings, prints, photographs, and mixed-media.

The Center For Emerging Visual Artists, formerly Creative Artists Network, was founded in 1983 by Felicity R. “Bebe” Benoliel to encourage the career development of emerging visual artists. Since then, the organization has worked steadily harder to provide the support essential to talented individuals building careers in the visual arts.

Artists' Talks: Philadelphia

Bill McRight and Alex Lukas are both members of the artist collective Space 1026, McRight creates strange and fantastical creatures for magazines, sidewalks, walls and skateboards. He has worked with Cannonball Press, Saturday Skateboards, Swindle Magazine and Mishka NYC. Lukas, originally from Cambridge, MA, creates ‘zines under the name Cantab Publishing. His work has been seen in New York, Boston, Philadelphia and Los Angeles as well as in Swindle Magazine, The Village Voice and The New York Times Book Review.

This Saturday, April 19, from 2:00–3:00pm, they will be discussing their work at The Print Center in Philly. Free and open to the public; to register, contact Eli VandenBerg at evandenberg@printcenter.org or 215.735.6090 x1

Artomatic update

The District of Columbia's massive arts extravanganza known as Artomatic already has almost 700 visual artists and nearly 150 performing artists signed up to participate in the coming AOM, and in order to accommodate the large number of 2-D artists that still needed space and for those on the wait list they met with the building owners and got permission to expand.

Artomatic will now be on the 4th - 12th floors of the Capital Plaza I Building. The massive Opening party is Friday, May 9, Noon, the Meet the Artists Night is Friday, May 16th, the Artist Social I is Sunday, May 18th, and Artist Social II is Thursday, June 12th.

AOM Closes on Sunday, June 15, 2008.

Details here.

Huge Arts Friday in Philly tomorrow

This Friday is crazy in Philly... first is the opening weekend for the Heartworks series of multimedia events. On Friday there's an ecletic mix of sights and sounds that will greet you during the HeartWorks Opening Weekend events, taking place over two days at two different venues. Musical performances, video art, mixed media presentations and DJ sets by Gang Gang Dance, Douglas Armour, Cory Archangel, Professor Murder, Chad Brown, Megawords. All the details are here and online auction here.

Then also on Friday is the Center City District gallery night from 5-8:30PM, with the City Paper's after-party with free food and drink specials at Vango (116 S. 18th Street) - must RSVP as space is limited. Visit this website for details.

My picks? Drop by and see Dennis Beach at Schmidt Dean, also the Philadelphia Sketch Club's 145th Annual Exhibition of Small Oil Paintings and Amanda Means at Gallery 339.

Art Businesses Across the Nation

"As of January 2008, the Creative Industries are a formidable industry in the United States — 2.98 million people working for 612,095 arts-centric businesses (2.2 percent and 4.3 percent, respectively, of U.S. employment and businesses)."

From the top 50 most populated US cities, Seattle (first) and San Francisco (second) and Atlanta (third) are way ahead in the Arts businesses per 1,000 residents; Seattle has 6.98 and SF has 6.5 and Atlanta has 5.0 - all other cities are below 5.

By comparison, DC has 4.06, Philadelphia 1.71, NY 3.25, Minneapolis 4.84, Miami 3.35, LA 4.72. The US city with the least interest in doing business with an arts business? That would be Detroit at 1.19 art business per 1,000 residents.

Want to know how many creative industries are located in your community?

Want to know how your community compares to other regions in the country?

Then visit this website.

Trib does Tim Tate

I am not familiar with the Chicago Tribune's art critic Alan Artner, but apparently much like his counterparts in DC and Philly, he rarely does galleries. But last week he did in writing about Narratives at Marx-Saunders Gallery

The easy seductiveness of glass as an artistic medium has in 20 years given rise to a virtual industry in sculpture in which prettiness is all. But what is there beyond technique? One answer comes in the four-artist exhibition at the Marx-Saunders Gallery: Narratives.

Each of the artists — Carmen Lozar, Catharine Newell, Minako Shirakura, Tim Tate — is to some degree a storyteller. So glass is less important in and of itself than in how it conveys the artists' tales, either alone or in combination with other materials. This shifts the works' emphasis from physical appeal to presumably something more inward.

The pieces incorporating video by Shirakura and Tate accomplish this best, still without convincing us that glass was essential to the enterprise. Could their glass components have expressed as much if they had been executed in another medium? Yes. And in Newell's pieces the new material could have been as simple as paper, as chief interest is in her representational drawing. Even so, only Lozar's cartoonlike tableaux disappoint with an equal coyness in execution and idea. If not there yet, Shirakura and Tate are clearly onto something to deepen the discourse. Here narrative is interesting enough to be periodically revisited.

Read the entire column of reviews here.

Artists' Talk: DC

Join co-curators Andrea Pollan and Jayme McLellan for a conversation with the artists featured in Civilian Art Projectss current exhibition, craigslist, on display through April 26. Artists John Dumbacher, Jason Horowitz and Jason Zimmerman will discuss and share their ideas and artistic process with the audience. This April 18, 2008, 7PM at Civilian Art Projects.

RSVP to info@civilianartprojects.com or 202-347-0022. Refreshments provided.

Artists' Websites: Katie Miller

Child Standing on a Dresser. Oil on canvas, 46x70" c.2007 by Katie Miller
I recently juried an art exhibition for VSA Arts in Washington, DC - the show will be at the Kennedy Center... more later on that - and during the jurying process came across the fantastic paintings of Katie Miller. I had never heard of her, but Katie Miller is a young artist in the Greater Washington, DC area and she received her B.F.A from Maryland Institute College of Art in 2007.

Visit her website here.

Opportunity for illustrators

The Chester River Press is looking for an experienced artist to illustrate a fine letterpress limited edition publication of Homer's Iliad and Odyssey. Illustrations, fullpage in theme of black figure Greek vase paintings, should be accurate quality reproductions of the various Homeric forms. Approx. 50 full page illustrations are anticipated. Qualifications: quality artist,strong working knowledge of Iliad, Odyssey, Greek Homeric period painting and drawing. Familiarity with Greek language a definite plus. Project dates: June to Sept. 2008. Not an 'in-residence'position. All welcome. If poss. include resume, work sample, and comp. requirements.

Contact:

Gerard Cataldo
Chester River Pres
Chestertown Old Book Co.
113 South Cross St.
Chestertown MD 21620

Mangravite on Prestegord

Gregory Prestegord at F.A.N. Gallery in Philly is reviewed by Andrew Mangravite:

Gregory Prestegord’s city scenes get right down to business. He doesn’t do the sort of work that you have to stare at and stare at, trying to decipher its message.

Read the whole review here.

Gopnik on Dumbachers

The WashPost's Chief Art Critic Blake Gopnik pops in with a terrific profile of the Dumbacher brothers, whose work first made a debut in 1999 at Artomatic and by 2001 had evolved dramatically was a hit at the Corcoran...

Looking at the brothers, their oneness comes as no surprise. They're only fraternal twins, but you'd swear they were identical. They have precisely the same athletic, 6-foot-something build. They also have the same shoulder-length brown hair. And the same attractive face, just a bit too quirky to be model-handsome.

There are differences. John's a touch slighter, sunnier, more sociable; Joe's a bit more solid and remote. Joe's sunglasses, always dangling from his neck, hang over clothes that are California casual. John's ever-present sunglasses tend to pair with sporty-chic outfits.

Read this really good profile by Gopnik here.