Beirut 1983

The more things change the more they stay the same... Check out this cartoon about Lebanon that I did for the Stars and Stripes back in 1983 when our Marines were in Beirut as part of the Multinational Peacekeeping Force...

A steal at Ebay

Signed vintage prints from my "Mujertrees" series have sold at auction as high as $500... this 1992 vintage piece is opening at Ebay for less than $50 bucks!!!

Update: I just looked at this again, and I believe that this is the original drawing from which the 100 prints were pulled, so this would be a steal at the current opening price!

Bid for it here.

Journal Pages: June 15-25, 1983

Alchemical Vessels 2015

Alchemical Vessels 2015

March 27 - May 22, 2015

Opening Reception: Friday, March 27 | 7-9pm

Benefit: Friday, May 1 (By Contribution Only)

 

Make your contribution starting on Tuesday, March 10th at 10am!

 

The Joan Hisaoka Healing Arts Gallery at Smith Center for Healing and the Arts is happy to announce the return of the Alchemical Vessels Exhibition and Benefit in 2015! This year's exhibition will run from March 27 - May 22, 2015, with the special by-contribution-only Benefit on Friday, May 1st, where everyone who makes a $150 Benefit-Vessel contribution (beginning Tuesday, March 10th at 10am) can select one of the works in the exhibition to add to their collection! The vessels are selected in the order contributions were made, so the earlier you make a contribution, the earlier you can select your work of art!

 

This year's exhibition and benefit features works from over 100 new artists hand-selected by 20 prominent curators. See below for a list of this year's incredible line-up of artists & our invited curators, and visit www.smithcenter.org/benefit to learn more and make your contribution beginning 10am on Tuesday, March 10th!

Artists:
David Alfuth, Beth Baldwin, Rhoda Baer, Emily Biondo, Ed Bisese, Julia Bloom, Raya Bodnarchuk, Joseph Bradley, Judy Byron, Lenny Campello, Jessica Cebra, Mei Mei Chang, Hsin-Hsi Chen, Patterson Clark, Billy Colbert, Susan Cole, Paula Crawford, Michael Crossett, Sarah Dale, Catherine Day, JD Deardourff, Jennifer DePalma, Robert Devers, Jessica Drenk, Patricia Dubroof, Pam Eichner, Dana Ellyn, Margo Elsayd, Susan Finsen & Michael Holt, Sharon Fishel, Kathryn Freeman, Marcia Fry, Adrienne Gaither, Michael Gessner, Carol Brown Goldberg, Pat Goslee, Matthew Grimes, Andrea Haffner, Courtney Hengerer, Jeff Herrity, Maurice "Mo" Higgs, Ryan Hill, Joseph Hoffman, Jeff Huntington, David Ibata, Martha Jackson Jarvis, Njena Surae Jarvis, Rose Jaffe, Mike Johnson, Mariah Anne Johnson, Wayson Jones, Maria Karametou, Sally Kauffman, Elizabeth Kendall, Joanne Kent, Hana Kim, Micheline Klagsbrun , Kitty Klaidman, PD Klein, George Koch, Yar Koporulin, Peter Krsko, Bridget Sue Lambert, Maria Lanas, Toni Lane, Khanh Le, Jun Lee, Kyujin Lee, Nate Lewis, Mimi Logothetis, Steve Loya, Akemi Maegawa, Alex Mayer, Donna M. McCullough, Kathryn McDonnell, Maggie Michael, Vanessa Monroe, E.J. Montgomery, Lucinda Murphy, Ziad Nagy, Leslie Nolan, Frederick Nunley, Cory Oberndorfer, John Paradiso, Elena Patiño, Miguel Perez Lem, Brian Petro, Thomas Petzwinkler, Jeneen Piccuirro, Michael B. Platt & Carol A. Beane, Pattie Porter Firestone, Tom Raneses, Red Dirt Studios, Ellington Robinson, Carolyn Roth, Bonner Sale, Jean Sausele Knodt, Matt Sesow, Foon Sham, Janathel Shaw, Lillian Shaw, Bernardo Siles, Steve Skowron, Jeffrey Smith, Anna Soevik, Langley Spurlock, Stan Squirewell, Rebecca Stone Gordon, Lynn Sures, Tang, Lisa Marie Thalhammer, Valerie Theberge, Michael Torra, Kelly Towles, Dan Treado, Ruth Trevarrow, Tariq Tucker, Pamela Viola, Ellyn Weiss, Lee Wheeler, Catherine White, Sharon Wolpoff, Sue Wrbican, and Jenny Wu

 

Curators:
Sondra N. Arkin, Artist & Independent Curator | Philip Barlow, Associate Commissioner, DC Department of Insurance, Securities & Banking; Board Member, District of Columbia Arts Center & Millenium Arts Salon | Chuck Baxter, Artist | Robert Devers, Professor of Fine Arts and Ceramics, Corcoran School of the Arts + Design, George Washington University | Thomas Drymon, Curator, doris-mae | Charlie Gaynor, Realtor and Photographer, member of the Mid City Artists | Aneta Georgievska-Shine, Lecturer in Art History, University of Maryland and Smithsonian Institution | George Hemphill, Gallery Director, Hemphill | Francie Hester, Visual Artist | Don Kimes, Professor, Director Studio Art Program, American University Department of Art; Artistic Director, Visual Arts at Chautauqua Institution | Zofie Lang, Artist | Mary Liniger, Executive Director, Art Enables | Akemi Maegawa, Artist | Jayme McLellan, Director & Founder, Civilian Art Projects | Twig Murray, Gallery Director, Athenaeum Gallery | Victoria Reis, Co-Founder, Executive & Artistic Director, Transformer | Nancy Sausser, Curator and Exhibitions Director, McLean Project for the Arts | Andy Shallal, Founder, Busboys and Poets | Stan Squirewell, Artist

Jackie with Tattoos

"Jackie Kennedy Onassis" is an original charcoal and conte drawing on 300 weight pH-balanced, acid free paper. Circa 1979 and done as an assignment for portrait class at the University of Washington School of Art. This drawing measures approx. 6x6 inches.

Which Art Fairs Attract the Most Visitors?

The number of visitors is a good indication of the chances of success of an art fair, not the only one, but certainly one of the key indicators. And some of the best-known art fairs are not necessarily the best-attended, but nonetheless rank at the top of the art fair food chain.

... a total of 1,032,729 people attended the world's top 20 art fairs in 2014. The best attended fair was ARCO Madrid, which attracted 92,000 visitors, followed by Art Miami, which attracted 82,5000 visitors, and Art BA, Buenos Aires, which attracted 77,000 visitors. 

The lower end of the table is occupied primarily by specialist fairs such as Paris Photo/LA, which attracted 12,000 visitors, Affordable Art Fair NY, which also attracted 12,000 visitors, and The Salon: Art + Design, which attracted 8,000 visitors.

Read the whole article here.

By the way, we'll be at the Affordable Art Fair New York (March 25-29), booth 1.37, showcasing the work of Jodi Walsh, Anne Marchand and Georgia Nassikas.

Bill Clinton's NPG portrait contains Monica Lewinsky reference

Stephanie Farr from the Philadelphia Daily News interviewed the well-known PA portrait artist Nelson Shanks, whose portrait of President Bill Clinton hangs at the NPG. 

And this came out:

Q: Who did you find was the hardest to capture?

Clinton was hard. I'll tell you why. The reality is he's probably the most famous liar of all time. He and his administration did some very good things, of course, but I could never get this Monica thing completely out of my mind and it is subtly incorporated in the painting.

If you look at the left-hand side of it there's a mantle in the Oval Office and I put a shadow coming into the painting and it does two things. It actually literally represents a shadow from a blue dress that I had on a mannequin, that I had there while I was painting it, but not when he was there. It is also a bit of a metaphor in that it represents a shadow on the office he held, or on him.

And so the Clintons hate the portrait. They want it removed from the National Portrait Gallery. They're putting a lot of pressure on them. [Reached by phone Thursday, a spokeswoman from the National Portrait Gallery denied that.]

What a brilliant example of the power of an artist to make history! This will make this portrait the most famous and visited and chuckled about Presidential portrait at the NPG! Velazquez did something similar with a variety of hidden (and some later deleted) clues in Las Meninas centuries ago, and one of them, when discovered 500 years later, changed the Spanish crown's line to the throne from the first male born to the first born, period!

I couldn't wait to contact a good friend at the NPG and ask him/her if the claim about the pressure being put on the NPG is true! Let me see if we/she/him can find some internal NPG emails on the subject that we can publish here!

Read the article here.

When art gets lost

Argentinean multimedia artist Jorge Caterbetti, between 1999 and 2003, consigned 105 artworks for sale to New York’s Belenky Gallery. In 2013, when the gallery alerted him it was closing, he went to a storage facility to pick up his works and found about 65 of them missing. The gallery told him some were lost or stolen,  his  subsequent lawsuit charged, and that others may simply have been thrown out over the years.

Read the rest here.

Mr. Spock

Leonard Nimoy, one of the great icons of my childhood died today at age 83. He was not only a terrific actor, but also a HUGE art collector and I am lucky to have my artwork as part of his collection!

"Eyes of Mr. Spock"

---

Charcoal and Conte on Paper. 1.5x3 inches, circa 2014 by F. Lennox Campello

Live long and prosper in whatever other Universe your seed has been reborn...

ISIS destruction of ancient art

By now, nearly everyone on the planet has been horrified by practically everything that The Islamic State, also known as the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS) barbarians have done in the name of their medieval interpretation of Islam. 

Now the ISIS militants have destroyed ancient Assyrian sculptures at the Nineveh Museum in Mosul, Iraq, and posted videos of the destruction online, another level of barbarism has risen to the surface for these troglodytes. ISIS seized Mosul, Iraq, last June, and already rules an area larger than the United Kingdom. In this century, we've seen this unforgivable destruction of ancient art before in the region... remember when the Taliban destroyed the Buddhas of Bamiyan in 2001?

In their conquering process, ISIS has beheaded, crucified, burned, raped, enslaved and tortured an unknown but large number of their fellow Moslems, Christians and other assorted so-called apostates who do not subscribe to ISIS' strict interpretation of Islam.

I expect that the destruction of these antiquities will continue, forever destroying an important part of mankind's cultural heritage. What bugs me the most, is that (as far as I know) other than Sheik Abdullah bin Bayyah, and some clerics in Saudi Arabia, no other prominent Muslim cleric has issued a fatwa against ISIS.

Where are the fatwas, from clerics all over the planet, denouncing these mutants and their barbarism?

Personally, I think that we are being all somewhat misled, by perhaps a well-intentioned, PC-driven, incredulous, but intellectually dishonest Western worldwide effort to deny the Islamic State’s medieval mindset religious nature.

The reality is that the Islamic State is Islamic. Very Islamic. Yes, it has attracted psychopaths and adventure seekers, drawn largely from the disaffected populations of the Middle East and Europe. But the religion preached by its most ardent followers derives from coherent and even learned interpretations of Islam.

Virtually every major decision and law promulgated by the Islamic State adheres to what it calls, in its press and pronouncements, and on its billboards, license plates, stationery, and coins, “the Prophetic methodology,” which means following the prophecy and example of Muhammad, in punctilious detail. Muslims can reject the Islamic State; nearly all do. But pretending that it isn’t actually a religious, millenarian group, with theology that must be understood to be combatted, has already led the United States to underestimate it and back foolish schemes to counter it. We’ll need to get acquainted with the Islamic State’s intellectual genealogy if we are to react in a way that will not strengthen it, but instead help it self-immolate in its own excessive zeal.

 Graeme Wood
"What ISIS Really Wants"
The Atlantic

This cancer within Islam must be destroyed and cured by Islam, and so I ask again:  Where are the fatwas, from clerics all over the planet, denouncing these mutants and their barbarism?

The Artist's Guide: How to Make a Living Doing What You Love

Artist Jackie Battenfield discusses her book The Artist's Guide: How to Make a Living Doing What You Love. 

Painter sues dealer

Painter Dean Levin has sued Upper East Side dealer Robert Blumenthal for nearly $200,000, claiming non-payment after a sold-out show in May 2014. The suit pits a 26-year-old artist represented by New York dealer Marianne Boesky and collected by Leonardo Di Caprio against a real estate investor and dealer whose gallery has been open for just a year.

Details here. 

The question is: "Did Levin have a contract stipulating when Blumenthal was supposed to pay him?" Is it 30 days after the sale of the work? or is it 30 days (or whatever) after Blumenthal gets paid?"

The moral of the story: Have a contract!

New Goya found

The Restoration Service of the Museums of France (RSMF) has authenticated a rare self-portrait by the Spanish master Francisco  Goya y Cifuentes owned by the Musée Bonnat in the small town of Bayonne, in Southwest France, Le Figaro reports

Details here.

Campello watercolor at auction

At auction here is a 1994 original watercolor starting at a decent price, as original works from this vintage and style have sold/been appraised as high as $5,000. Although I returned from Scotland back to the US in 1992, I went back to visit Scotland on a yearly basis through the early 2000s, so this piece is probably a Scottish-inspired skyscape.

Check it out here.

Scammers scammed by a scammer

Spanish Police have arrested two brothers from Girona, Spain, who attempted to sell a fake Francisco de Goya painting to a purported sheikh, EFE reports. But the "sheikh" was no victim: he paid the pair with photocopied money.

The con artists realized they had been tricked when they tried to deposit 1.7 million Swiss francs (€1.5 million) in a Geneva bank and were told that the banknotes were mere photocopies.

Spanish police officers found out about the scam in December 2014, when the Avignon customs warned them that they had intercepted two Spanish brothers trying to smuggle 1.7 million fake Swiss francs.

 Details here.

Anaïs Nin

Today is the birthday of Angela Anaïs Juana Antolina Rosa Edelmira Nin y Culmell, the Cuban sex virago who is perhaps best remembered as a diarist and as a writer of erotic tales and seducer of nearly everyone who came across her incandescent life.

Other than her famous diaries, Little Birds and Delta of Venus are my favorite books of erotica.

Touchstone Foundation Fellowship for Emerging Artists

Deadline: March 30, 2015.

An opportunity to exhibit, develop and grow as an artist. The Fellowship provides a 2 year membership in Touchstone Gallery in downtown DC. This guarantees a solo exhibition as well as participation in gallery group shows, mentorship and a presence on the gallery website. The monetary value of the fellowship exceeds $4500.00. The Fellowship is awarded to 1 or more emerging artists who have not been represented by a commercial gallery in at least 10 years. 

The application and related information can be found on the TFA website www.touchstonefoundationdc.org.

For questions email touchstonefoundationdc@gmail.com or call Ksenia Grishkova, the TFA Director, at 202-347-2787.

Broken Wing Ops

That's my right shoulder, which as previously announced, has been out of commission since December 23rd and will be cut open and operated on this morning around 8:30AM.

My doc went to Boston College and then to Harvard, so those elitist credentials better be good for something.

Two hours under the knife... see ya after that!

Call for Artists: Bethesda Painting Awards

Deadline: Monday, February 20, 2015.

The Bethesda Arts & Entertainment District is currently accepting applications for the seventh annual Bethesda Painting Awards.

Up to nine finalists will be selected to display their work in an exhibition during the month of June at Gallery B in downtown Bethesda, and the top four winners will receive $14,000 in prize monies. Best in Show will be awarded $10,000; Second Place will be honored with $2,000 and Third Place will receive $1,000. Additionally, a “Young Artist” whose birthday is after February 20, 1985 may be awarded $1,000. Artists must be 18 years of age or older and residents of Maryland, Virginia or Washington, D.C. All original 2-D paintings including oil, acrylic, watercolor, gouache, encaustic and mixed media will be accepted. The maximum dimensions should not exceed 60 inches in width or 84 inches in height. No reproductions. Artwork must have been completed within the last two years and must be available for the duration of the exhibit. Each artist must submit 5 images, application and a non-refundable fee of $25. Digital entries will be accepted on DC in JPG, GIF or PNG format.

For a complete application, please visit www.bethesda.org, send a self-addressed stamped envelope to the Bethesda Painting Awards, c/o Bethesda Arts & Entertainment District, 7700 Old Georgetown Road, Bethesda, MD 20814 or call 301-215-6660 x117.        

What ISIS really wants

The Islamic State is no mere collection of psychopaths. It is a religious group with carefully considered beliefs, among them that it is a key agent of the coming apocalypse. Here’s what that means for its strategy—and for how to stop it.

Read  Graeme Wood's eye-opening article in The Atlantic here.