Monday, June 08, 2009

Really selling well!

Campello Pinot GrigioCampello Pinot Grigio is available practically everywhere, most notably at Trader Joe's in those non fascist states where supermarkets can sell wine.

Reviews and comments here. For around six or seven bucks it has been getting rave reviews!

Keep buying!

Sunday, June 07, 2009

Opportunity for DC Artists

Deadline: Wednesday July 8th at 5:30pm

DC Creates! invites artists from the DC Metro area to submit works available for purchase. Selected works will be added to the Art Bank Collection.

Over 2,000 works are displayed in DC Government building corridors, conference rooms and office space and all open to the public.

Application deadline: Wednesday July 8th at 5:30pm.

To obtain a copy of the application, visit www.dcarts.dc.gov

For assistance in preparing your application DC artists can attend a workshop on Wednesday June 24 from 7-8:30pm at Artomatic - 55 M Street, SE; Washington D.C.
(By Metro - The building is located atop the Navy Yard Metro Station; Ballpark exit).

This is a terrific opportunity - don't blow it!

Saturday, June 06, 2009

Dawson on Foon Sham

The WaPo's freelance gallery critic Jessica Dawson has a great review of Foon Sham's latest work.

Read Dawson here.

Friday, June 05, 2009

Barlow and O'Sullivan on AOM

Terrific article in the WaPo on Artomatic from Michael O'Sullivan, who cleverly uses Phillip Barlow's intimate knowledge of the DC area art scene to deliver some brilliant AOM tips.

Read it here.

Congrats!

To DC's own hoogrrl, who has been appointed to be a DC Arts Commissioner!

That is the perfect pick! Go get them PH!

Wanna go to a Bethesda opening tomorrow?

Joe Barbaccia

Wednesday, June 03, 2009

Artists' Websites: Susan Lamont

Susan Lamont's technical virtuosity is easily evident in her work as is the deep intellectual seed that germinates in nearly all of her work. Check it out on level two of Artomatic.


He Searched the Room For Her Auburn Hair © 2009, oil on linen, 40" x 50"

Check out her website here.

Best pizza in America

I've been searching for the best pizza in the United States since my teens, when a slice of pie was a quarter and there were a dozen pizza places along Pitkin Avenue in Brooklyn.

Best pizza that I ever tasted was in Sicily, and the worst one was in London.

Best pizza in America is at Little Anthony in Media, PA.

Anthony is a Napolitano, and his pizzas are amazing, especially the garlic white pizza. His is the best pizza that I have ever eaten in the US.

Best pizza in the South?

Andrea's Pizza, located in the Riverdale Shopping Center off West Mercury Blvd in Hampton, Virginia.

Oportunidad para artistas

Deadline: July 13, 2009

NALAC Fund For the Arts offers funding to Latino arts organizations and to Latino artists for the creation and presentation of work, as well as career development. Funding available for the following disciplines: Visual Arts, Dance, Interdisciplinary Arts, Literary Arts, Media Arts, Music, Performance Art, and Theater Arts.

Funding for the one-year grant period (runs from Nov. 1, 2009-Sept. 30, 2010) is up to $10,000. Application deadline: July 13, 2009. For more information, contact:

NALAC Fund for the Arts
Grant Program Manager
1208 Buena Vista St.
San Antonio, TX 78207

Phone: (210) 432-3982; email: grantmanager@nalac.org; or check website: www.nalac.org.

Tuesday, June 02, 2009

Art advice for the Obamas

Waaaaay back I gave the Obamas art advice for the White House walls. They essentially ignored me.

Maybe it is because Cuban-Americans are the only Latino/Hispanics who overwhelmingly vote Republican (in the 90s percentwise).

Kiddin'

Here's what some other folks think the Obamas should acquire for the White House walls.

I still think that my recommendation is the best; the most plebeian and the clearest and closest to the ground and what I think the new White House tenants need to bring to the White House walls.

What art or artist do you think that the Obamas should acquire? Tell me in the comments.

Monday, June 01, 2009

DC Gallery moves

DC's Long View Gallery will relocate to a currently vacant building directly across from the Walter E. Washington Convention Center at 1234 Ninth Street, NW. The gallery’s new space will undergo major renovation, more than quadrupling the gallery’s exhibition capacity, enhancing its custom framing and special event offerings, and making it one of the area’s largest art spaces.

“With many other businesses closing, we have been able to swim against the economic tide, demonstrating that art is indeed a great investment. After three successful years in Shaw, Long View Gallery simply outgrew its current location,” said gallery director Drew Porterfield. “Thanks to Douglas Development, we were able to secure a building with great potential in a location that is impossible to beat—half a block south on Ninth Street from our current location, directly across from the Walter E. Washington Convention Center and closer to existing and planned fine restaurants,” Porterfield said. “Shaw has been a wonderful home, and we are thrilled to contribute to its renaissance.”

The gallery’s renovation, designed by local architect Will Couch, will maintain the raw feel of the new location's building while transforming it into a premier gallery space. The new gallery will occupy the southern portion of the building, comprised of nearly 5,000 square feet, more than quadrupling the square footage of the Long View Gallery’s current location.

Call to Artists: In the Spirit of Frida Kahlo

Deadline: June 6, 2009

Frida Kahlo remains one of the most influential artists of the 20th century, but her spectacular life experiences, her writing and her views on life and art have also influenced many artists throughout the years.

From July 1 - August 29, 2009 The Joan Hisaoka Healing Arts Gallery at Smith Farm Center in Washington, DC will be hosting Finding Beauty In A Broken World: In the Spirit of Frida Kahlo.

Photo of Gallery by Michael K. WilkinsonThis exhibition hopes to showcase the work in all mediums of artists influenced not only by Kahlo’s art, but also by her biography, her thoughts, and her writing or any other aspect in the life and presence of this remarkable artist who can be interpreted through artwork.

This will be the third Kahlo show that I have juried in the last decade and we are seeking works of art that evoke the prolific range of expression, style and media like that which Frida Kahlo used as an outlet for her life’s experiences.

Get a copy of the prospectus by calling (202) 483-8600 or email gallery@smithfarm.com or download it at www.smithfarm.com/gallery/FINALProspectus.pdf.

Sunday, May 31, 2009

Read this

Tom Wolfe, author, man-in-white, and social observer, has always had a keen and clear insight into the social undertows of contemporary society.

Wolfe's 1975 book The Painted Word, is the one that I consider the one of the most influential book on art, nepotism, networking, manipulation and 20th century art history (OK, OK art observations), that I have ever read.

If you want to understand the true historical beginnings (from someone on the scene at the time) of what we now call "contemporary art" and the seminal birth of the elitist attitudes of many intelligent members of the high art apparatnik, then read this book.

"The painter," Wolfe writes, "had to dedicate himself to the quirky god Avant-Garde. He had to keep one devout eye peeled for the new edge on the blade of the wedge of the head on the latest pick thrust of the newest exploratory probe of this fall's avant-garde Breakthrough of the Century.... At the same time he had to keep his other eye cocked to see if anyone in le monde was watching."
I read it when I first started Art School and it saved my Art Life and it cemented the foundations of what has become my opinions, judgements and attitudes towards art.

After you read the book, then and only then, you will understand why "traditional" art critics, desperately seeking approval from their colleagues, hate such an egalitarian art show such as Artomatic, when and if it takes place in our own backyard, but would love it in another location outside the US.

Saturday, May 30, 2009

New art space in Georgetown

It is at 3146 Dumbarton Place, NW (2nd Floor), Washington, District of Columbia 20007 and they're having a champagne toast to the new space tomorrow (6-8PM) to celebrate the new space and new paintings by Michael Weiss.

PostSecret at Hillyer Art Space

Artomatic's greatest launching success story: Tim Tate or Frank Warren?

PostSecret
Warren's spectacular worldwide success and multiple best-sellers with PostSecret comes to DC at Hillyer Art Space. PostSecret: Confessions on Life, Death and God has a First Friday Reception on June 5, 2009, 6-9PM. Soundscapes by DJ Underdog. Food and refreshments will be served.

Postcards and materials will be available for all to confess their own secrets (Postcards will be displayed at Hillyer throughout the show and then given to Frank Warren to add to his collection. Details here.

Friday, May 29, 2009

2009 William H. Johnson Prize

Deadline : July 31, 2009

The 2009 William H. Johnson Prize is 25,000 USD and the winner will be announced in September 2009. Early career African American artists who work in painting, photography, sculpture, printmaking, installation and/or new genre are eligible to apply.

Details here.

Wanna go to a Bethesda opening tomorrow?

Carol Goldberg


"Searching for Doctor Dean" 2008, acrylic on canvas, 72 x 48 inches

Tomorrow, Saturday, May 30, 2009, from 5-8 pm is the opening of Carol Brown Goldberg: Recent Works at Osuna Art, 7200 Wisconsin Avenue, Bethesda, MD 20814. The show runs through July 31, 2009.

The show includes large-scale, abstract paintings, created within the past 8 months, as well as a number of hand-made pulp-paper works.

Whimsical works of art at AU Museum through August

The exhibitions open to the public on Saturday, June 6 at the American University Museum, Katzen Arts Center.

Garry Knox Bennett: Call Me Chairmaker features 52 one-of-a-kind sculptural chairs created by Garry Knox Bennett, one of the foremost contemporary studio furniture makers in America. Inspired by well known furniture designers and architects such as Frank Lloyd Wright, Charles Rennie Mackintosh, George Nakashima, and Gerrit Rietveld, Bennett makes his wit and imagination come to life with such chairs as the “Great Granny Rietveld” and “Wiggle Wright.” By using bold new forms and constantly expanding traditional boundaries, Bennett makes furniture a form of art and brings new meaning to the words “sitting pretty.” The exhibition closes Sunday, August 16.

The Washington Print Club’s 20th biennal exhibition, Love, Let Me Count the Ways, is a compilation of approximately 100 prints, drawings, and pastels from print club member collections. Images of love range from the maternal and sexual to the mythological, patriotic/political, and psychological. The exhibition includes prints dating from the sixteenth century to contemporary productions. While most of the pieces are by Americans, works on paper by Spanish, German, French, Japanese, English, and Norwegian artists also are represented. The exhibition closes Sunday, August 9.

Robert Hudson and Richard Shaw: Collaborations brings together more than 60 collaborative and individual sculptural works created during the 40-year careers of Robert Hudson and Richard Shaw. Highlighting the unique and inventive partnership of these renowned San Francisco Bay area artists, the exhibition features works in porcelain and glaze that challenge perceptions of art, craft, and the conventional modes of artistic production. Collaborations has been made possible through the support of Braunstein/Quay Gallery in San Francisco, California. The exhibition closes Sunday, August 9.

The museum is open from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m., Tuesday through Sunday. Admission is free.

Call for artists

ArtDC.org has another call for artists. Check it out here.

Thursday, May 28, 2009

Glass Art Tours of Artomatic

Meet in the lobby of Artomatic for a guided glass tour. Hosted by members of the Washington Glass School, these informative tour guides will lead you directly to all the great glass on exhibit this year!

Every wonder how a piece of glass art was made or what was the artist's motivation? This is your chance to ask and learn. All tours leave from the Lobby of Artomatic, 55 M Street SE, Washington, DC. Wear comfortable walking shoes and join in the fun!

Saturday May 30, 2009 @ 5:30pm, Allegra Marquart and Lisa Osgood Dano will be your tourguides.