Trapping the scammer

Yesterday I posted the art scam email that I received (it's also at the bottom of the email trail below); here's my initial response - let's see if we can scam him into wasting some of his time:

Dear Johnson,

Thank you so much for your inquiry. Were you referred to me by Mr. Saatchi? Your name sounds familiar, perhaps we met at his party in Cannes last year? Were you the guy who fell in the pool? No... that was Johnston, not Johnson.

Anyway, I would love to place some of my artwork in your collection, and will ship it to you provided that you can pay me with a money order. As soon as I have the money order in my hand, I will ship all the artwork to you... the same day that the money order arrives.

Before that, I would like to ask you one question, as I am very particular as to whom I sell my artwork: Are you descended from the Scottish Johnsons or the English Johnsons? I'm a little leery of selling art to sassenachs, you know...

But wait... is Johnson your first name? I think so now... that would make Taylor your last name, and that sounds English... are you of English descent?

Please let me know... Here's Tae Us – Wha's Like Us – Damn Few And They're A' Deid

Cheers,

The Lenster....

-----------------------------------------------------------------

From: johnsontay88@hotmail.com
Subject: Art Order
Date: Fri, 24 Jun 2011 15:08:49 +0100

Hi Dear,

My name is Johnson Taylor, i will like to order for some piece of your work from your studio as gift for my parent are celebrating their wedding anniversary, so i will be glad to have your reply as soon as possible, i will be glad if you can send me your website address to choose or send me four of your artworks via email that is available for me to choose.

Waiting to read from you today.so that we can make some progress.

I will be waiting to read from you at you convinet time.

Best Regards,

Johnson.

Scam art email

My response will be posted tomorrow... meanwhile, this is an art scam email:

From: johnsontay88@hotmail.com
Subject: Art Order
Date: Fri, 24 Jun 2011 15:08:49 +0100

Hi Dear,

My name is Johnson Taylor, i will like to order for some piece of your work from your studio as gift for my parent are celebrating their wedding anniversary, so i will be glad to have your reply as soon as possible, i will be glad if you can send me your website address to choose or send me four of your artworks via email that is available for me to choose.

Waiting to read from you today.so that we can make some progress.

I will be waiting to read from you at you convinet time.

Best Regards,

Johnson.

Opportunity for Artists: Wallmountables

The District of Columbia Arts Center (DCAC) has announced the return of 1460 Wallmountables, DCAC’s annual open exhibition. On Wednesday, July 21 DCAC will open its doors at 3pm, beginning a three-day installation process during which artists can purchase up to four 2' x 2' spaces to hang their work.

Spaces sell on a first-come, first-served basis for $15 per square, with DCAC members receiving one free space and brand new members receiving four spaces for their membership fee of $30. It’s not unusual to see returning participants lined up outside DCAC’s door by 2:30pm, patiently waiting for installation to begin with an eye towards grabbing the gallery’s prime wall space. Work is accepted from a wide range of media created by artists at various stages in their careers. There is no curating; if it fits, it shows.

To sweeten the deal, a $100 “Best Use of Space” prize is presented during the opening reception to the artist who makes the most innovative use of their 2’ x 2’ squares. Since the first Wallmountables in 1990, the exhibition has become a celebrated summer tradition at DCAC. One of the center’s most important fundraising events, the open exhibition runs from July 22–August 28.

The Facts:
1460 Wallmountables 2011
July 22 – August 28
Installation: Wed., July 20, 3–8pm; Thur., July 21, 3–8pm; Fri., July 22, 3–6pm
Opening Reception: Friday, July 22, 7–9pm
Contact: info@dcartscenter.org, call 202-462-7833, online at 0 comments

Lori Anne Boocks at Delaplaine

Saturday, July 2 from 3 to 5pm is the opening reception for The Distance Between from Germantown artist Lori Anne Boocks.

Using varying lengths of rope to mark both time and emotional space between opposing or related concepts, this installation invites viewers to consider where these intersections occur in their own lives.

The Distance Between builds on her on-going series of paintings called textscapes that incorporate the written word.

The Delaplaine Visual Arts Center
July 2 – August 21, 2011.

Tomorrow - BITE: Identity and Humor

Wilmer Wilson IV, one of the artists in the Strathmore Mansion mentorship program that Susana Raab, Tim Tate and yours truly has been working with, will have video works, film stills, and a sculpture in an exhibition entitled BITE: Identity and Humor, curated by Jefferson Pinder, at the Greater Reston Arts Center.

The show will be up from June 23 to July 29. There is an opening reception on Saturday, June 25, from 5-7p. In addition, my good friend Phillipa Hughes will moderate a dialogue in conjunction with the show on July 11 at 7:30p.

See ya there!

More TV drawings...

The Devil Shopping for a Blue Dress

Woman Dancing with The Devil

Woman Choosing Between Carrots and a Meat Loaf


Sculptor

The Hotel Room Art Intervention Project

For PLANNING PROCESS at the Arlington Art Center, I've tried to re-create a hotel room (and I am very grateful to the Hilton Garden Inn Rockville-Gaithersburg and to the Hilton Garden Inn Washington DC Downtown for loaning me all the various hotel peripherals used in this installation). Both of these hotels are gorgeous and their rooms look nothing like this installation, and in fact, they are decorated with real artwork from local artists.

Below you can see what my hotel room installation looks like so far...

Note that one piece of the "wall decor" has been removed from the "hotel room's walls" and is on the bed, waiting to be intervened upon...




And here it is, waiting for the magical transformation from wall decor to fine art; this transformation will be taking place throughout the exhibition, although typically I do this all in one night in a real hotel room.

“PLANNING PROCESS” as well as the concurrent exhibition “Damsels & Daemons” are on view June 22 – Sept 25, 2011. The opening reception for both shows is tomorrow, Thursday, June 23, 7 – 9 pm.

See ya there!

Arlington Art Center
3550 Wilson Boulevard
Arlington, VA 22201
703-248-6800

Go to this opening tomorrow!

For PLANNING PROCESS at the Arlington Art Center, juror Helen Allen — formerly of PULSE art fairs; currently planning D.C.’s first-ever (e)merge art fair, opening this September — selected 12 artists from across the mid-Atlantic region who were willing to reveal the ways they think and problem-solve in the studio (or in my case, in a hotel room).

The artists below (including yours truly) will exhibit preparatory drawings, computer models, and even notes scribbled in the margins of newspapers next to the finished artworks those starting steps inspired—including traditional paintings, sculpture, installation, earthworks, and even neon.

“PLANNING PROCESS” as well as the concurrent exhibition “Damsels & Daemons” are on view June 22 – Sept 25, 2011. The opening reception for both shows is this next Thursday, June 23, 7 – 9 pm.

Andrew Wodzianski shows a portrait project in which he compares members of his family to the crew of the Pequod in “Moby Dick.”

John James Anderson reveals his scheme to print blank newspapers as a prank—and how this ultimately led him to erasing the front pages of found newspapers by hand.

F. Lennox Campello offers a mock-up of a typical hotel room in order to demonstrate his ongoing project: defacing (and thereby improving) the tacky hotel art he encounters whenever he’s on the road.

R.L. Croft shows large-scale metal sculpture next to one of the R. Crumb-like pen and ink drawings that inspired it.

Craig Kraft reveals how he transforms notes and careless doodles in the margins of newspapers into wall-filling neon sculptures.

Magnolia Laurie uses her quirky pictorial language—referencing makeshift structures, natural disasters, and rubble—to create related works in recycled paper, foam, tiny pen-and-ink drawings and large finished paintings.

Jessie Lehson transforms one of AAC’s experimental galleries into a sort of giant soil mandala: an ephemeral meditative space composed with minimalist-inspired patterns.

Ephraim Russell tracks his own movements using his own homemade hand-held GPS device—and uses that data to create various drawings, printouts, and videos.

Samuel Scharf invites viewers into an unexpected encounter with deep saturated color in a small enclosed environment—an 8 foot cube with a small doorway and a lone LED lightbulb inside.

Dan Tulk creates giant minimalist grids directly on the walls of the gallery using threaded rods, string, and brightly colored yarn.

Jessica van Brakle creates hybrid graphic black and white images in which sublime landscapes are dominated by giant construction cranes.

Tom Wagner shows through a series of four studies how he melds images of contemporary architecture, figures from renaissance art, and the energy of Futurist painting.

Gallery hours: Wed – Fri, 7 – 9 pm; Sat + Sun, Noon – 5 pm

Arlington Art Center
3550 Wilson Boulevard
Arlington, VA 22201
703-248-6800

Sondheim Prize: Bet on Mark

A while back, five artists (two photographers, a sculptor, a film director, and a multimedia artist) were selected to compete for this year's $25,000 Janet & Walter Sondheim Artscape prize.

The five are Baltimoreans Stephanie Barber (multimedia), Matthew Porterfield (film) and Rachel Rotenberg (sculpture), and Washington area photographers, Louie Palu and Mark Parascandola.

The Baltimore Office of Promotion and the Arts and the Baltimore Museum of Art (BMA) will present a special exhibition of the five 2011 finalists at the BMA. Finalists’ works will be exhibited in the Alvin and Fanny Blaustein Thalheimer Galleries of the BMA from Saturday, June 25 through Sunday, August 7. The winner of the prize will be announced on July 9.

My bet? Mark Parascandola; for the competition he will:

For the competition, Parascandola presented his current body of work: photographic prints of abandoned constructions in Almeria, Spain. Almeria was discovered by European and American filmmakers in the 1960s, when they began using the area for building its impermanent backdrops and fake towns. “Lawrence of Arabia” and Sergio Leone's spaghetti westerns, for example, were filmed there. The artist is connected to the area through his mother’s family. Because of this personal attachment, he is compelled to document its stark desert landscape.

On exhibit at the Baltimore Museum of Art will be 12 photographic prints, chosen by Parascandola, mixing images of the western movies sets along with some images of the surrounding landscape and more recent constructions to provide context. The larger pieces are constructed from multiple images to create a single panoramic image.

The show will examine two atypical versions of the ghost town. Today some of the elaborate movie sets remain in the desert. While select few have been fixed up for tourists, others remain largely in ruins. The artist is also presenting his works that examine the empty residential enclaves and vacation developments along the Almerian coast. These properties were abandoned or left empty after the economic crisis and real estate crash.

Go Mark!

Opportunity for PG County Artists

Deadline: July 22, 2011

The Brentwood Arts Exchange is pleased to announce The Sky's the Limit, the 2011 Prince George's County Juried Exhibition. Download the prospectus here.

Photographic imagery is ubiquitous in nearly every aspect of our lives, from billboards, to cell phone videos, to keepsake albums, to Facebook profiles. It's no coincidence that it is just as pervasive throughout contemporary art - even in media that are often thought of in stark contrast to traditional photography. The Sky's the Limit presents a glimpse of the ways photography employs itself throughout the visual arts, here and now. Juried by Michael Platt, the exhibition presents the best photo-inclusive art by artists who live, work, or study in Prince George's County. Hosted in the Gateway Arts District for the second time, this Prince George's County Juried Exhibition is our chance to show off the important contributions that artists in our county make to contemporary art throughout the region.

APPLICATION DEADLINE - July 22, 2011
All submissions must be received by 5:00pm

PURCHASE AWARDS - Over $2,000

The Sky's the Limit will feature two purchase awards totaling over $2,000. One award will be presented by the Prince George's Arts Council, and one will be presented by the Prince George's County Department of Parks and Recreation, M-NCPPC.

DATES

Deadline for receipt of entries: July 22, 5pm
Notification of selected works: August 1
*All notifications will be sent by email.
Artwork drop-off period: August 15-19
Exhibition Opens: September 5
Opening Reception: Saturday, September 10, 5-8pm
Exhibition closes: October 31 Artwork pick-up period: November 3-5

Why Do I Need A Lawyer?

The Smithsonian Anacostia Community Museum (ACM) will be holding a two-part forum with the Washington Area Lawyers for the Arts (WALA), called “Why Do I Need A Lawyer?”.

The First Forum : Common Legal Issues for Writers and Visual Artists, will be held on Tuesday, June 21 at 7pm

The Second Forum : Common Legal Issues for Emerging and Existing Creative Businesses, will be held on Tuesday, September 13th at 7pm.

These valuable panel discussions with Q&A sessions include a brief presentation on common issues and pitfalls attorneys regularly see with their creative business clients. Targeting both emerging and existing entrepreneurs, this event can help you protect your creative endeavor and watch it grow. Bring you pads, pens and plenty of questions for our legal experts. Co-sponsored by the Washington Area Lawyers for the Arts.

The ACM is located at 1901 Fort Place, SE Washington, DC 20002. Parking and admission is free!

Another one closing?

I hear that another Bethesda gallery is closing... let me confirm it from them.

Sandra Ramos at the NGA

Please join the NGA's Michelle Bird on Tuesday, June 21, for the next program in the “Works in Progress” series “More Than 90 Miles Away” where her guest will be Sandra Ramos. The program will take place at 12:10 and 1:10 in the East Building of the National Gallery of Art Small Auditorium.

Like all the artists in the series, Sandra Ramos lives and works in Havana. Primarily a printmaker, she uses a variety of media to explore issues related to the recovery of both an individual and collective memory. Blending memorabilia from past events, real and imagined, personal and historical, the artist creates a phantasmagorical new world from the "ruins of a utopia." In this world, forbidden topics such as migration, marginalization, and the political manipulation of history become the quotidian subjects of her art. The main protagonist, a character that fuses her own self-image with that of a print of a 19th–century Dutch princess, navigates her way through the complexities of life on the island like a postmodern Alice in Wonderland. Floating somewhere between the foreground and background, the figure is not fully integrated into her surroundings, but exists in the intervening space of her environment and circumstance. As a result, Ramos' art is not solely autobiographical, but bears the weight and vulnerability of the island and its people.

Fathers' Day


See that big, hulking, smiling, blond man sitting in the driver's seat in the Jeep? That's my dad at the Guantanamo Naval Base in Cuba, sometimes in 1946.

Feliz Dia de los Padres, Dad!

Must go to opening this week?

For PLANNING PROCESS at the Arlington Art Center, juror Helen Allen — formerly of PULSE art fairs; currently planning D.C.’s first-ever (e)merge art fair, opening this September — selected 12 artists from across the mid-Atlantic region who were willing to reveal the ways they think and problem-solve in the studio (or in my case, in a hotel room).

These artists will exhibit preparatory drawings, computer models, and even notes scribbled in the margins of newspapers next to the finished artworks those starting steps inspired—including traditional paintings, sculpture, installation, earthworks, and even neon.

“PLANNING PROCESS” as well as the concurrent exhibition “Damsels & Daemons” are on view June 22 – Sept 25, 2011. The opening reception for both shows is this next Thursday, June 23, 7 – 9 pm.

Gallery hours: Wed – Fri, 7 – 9 pm; Sat + Sun, Noon – 5 pm

Arlington Art Center
3550 Wilson Boulevard
Arlington, VA 22201
703-248-6800

Game of Thrones: WTF?


I still can't believe they executed Ned Stark...

Wanna go to an opening tomorrow?

CultureScape opens at Addison / Ripley! On Saturday from 5 to 7 p.m., Addison/Ripley Fine Art will host a free opening reception for the artists.

CultureScape, curated by my good friend Isabel Manalo, runs June 18 - July 30, 2011 and includes work by:

Mei Mei Chang
Elise Richman
Lisa Blas
Hedieh Ilchi
Bridget Sue Lambert

Children Artists?

Read this as Grumpy Visual Artist breaks the story behind the latest "child artist" and does the job that reporters should have done.

BITE: Identity and Humor

Wilmer Wilson IV, one of the artists in the Strathmore Mansion mentorship program that Susana Raab, Tim Tate and yours truly has been working with, will have video works, film stills, and a sculpture in an exhibition entitled BITE: Identity and Humor, curated by Jefferson Pinder, at the Greater Reston Arts Center.

The show will be up from June 23 to July 29. There is an opening reception on Saturday, June 25, from 5-7p. In addition, my good friend Phillipa Hughes will moderate a dialogue in conjunction with the show on July 11 at 7:30p.

See ya there!

Help!

As I noted before, For PLANNING PROCESS: Drawings and Finished Works, I proposed re-creating the Hotel Art Intervention process itself by recreating an entire hotel room at the Arlington Art Center (or at least a subset of it). There would be a bed and other hotel paraphernalia, including some usual hotel wall décor hanging on the wall, and one disassembled piece laying on the bed and been “intervened” upon. At various times during the exhibition period, this piece would be worked on and added to (by me), and at the end of the show the “finished artwork” would be hung back on the wall.

If anyone out there works in a hotel or knows someone who works in a hotel/motel, etc. I need some assorted hotel peripherals for this installation and I need them now!

I'm talking stuff like ice cube bucket and tray, some of the advertising stuff hotels put in their rooms, etc. The more the better, but I have the rest sort of lined up. In the best case scenario, a hotel would lend me "everything" to re-create their room at the Arlington Art Center, but I'm happy with just some assorted hotel stuff.

None of this would be at any cost to the loaning hotel, and in return, during the exhibition I would have a visible note at the gallery stating that the hotel artifacts are courtesy of the hotel.

During the exhibition I will be creating a work of art at this re-created hotel room, and at the end of the exhibition I will give the participating hotel this new work of art as a gift and as a thank you for their assistance.

Can anyone out there help? If so, drop me an email to lenny@lennycampello.com or call me.