UMBC selects public art finalists

The University of Maryland Baltimore County (UMBC) joined the MSAC in announcing the names of three finalists selected to create a public art installation outside of the new Performing Arts and Humanities Building (PAHB). A national call was issued for the $397,000 commission.

The three finalists — Barbara Grygutis, Thomas Sayre and the collaborative Mags Harries and Lajos Héder — have previously created works of large-scale public art and were selected based on the merit of past work and the proposed vision for UMBC.

“The artists have had a month to create a site-specific design concept that supports a year-round destination where people can gather, sit, reflect and engage with each other in an outdoor setting,” says Lucas Cowan, public art program director at the MSAC.

UMBC partnered with the MSAC for guidance on commissioning the public art project. The Maryland Public Art Initiative (MPAI), signed into law last year, requires state-funded construction or major renovation projects to include a public art component. 

The University invited the MSAC to add its expertise to this highly visible public art project, and expects the project to be completed by August 2014.

Under the Influence

Opening on March 21, 2014, Under the Influence, curated by Kaitlin Filley and Ashley Wilson promises to be a very cool "back to the future" show.

Spread out between two locations, within the Catholic University community (Salve Regina Gallery, 620 Michigan Ave, NE, W, DC 20064, Victor L Selman Community Gallery, 3305 8th St, NE, W, DC 20017) , the show will serve as a catalyst for discussion and engagement with the legacy of the Washington Color School, and the effect on current artists in Washington, D.C. The show will feature the works of Jeffry Cudlin, Bill Hill, Ryan Carr Johnson, Barbara Januszkiewicz, Katherine Tzu-Lan Mann, Meg Mitchell, Robin Rose, and Samuel Scharf. 

Running through April 12, the show wil also feature a curator tour on closing day at 2:00 pm.

WHAT:  Under the Influence

RECEPTION: Friday, March 21, 2014 6:00 – 8:00 pm

SHOW DATES: March 21 – April 12, 2014

CURATOR’S TALK: April 12, 2014 2:00 pm

WHERE: Salve Regina Gallery, 620 Michigan Ave, NE, W, DC 20064
Victor L Selman Community Gallery, 3305 8th St, NE, W, DC 20017

I've seen this movie before...

One of my really deep personal interests is history... man I love history!

It's one of those things that I've always done good well in school and as a result I have incorporated that interest many, many, many times in my own artwork.

It is a nerdish thing I realize... to some anyway....  I read history as if they were novels, and of course...

You know where I'm going next: "He who does not learn from history is bound to repeat it" or something like that, goes the saying...

And is it me? ... or does the Russian invasion of the Ukraine seem a little familiar, from a historical perspective? Nikolai Kondratiev's famous "wave theory" (which is unfortunately usually just applied to economics, when it can actually be applied to almost anything such as art trends, history's cycles, etc.)... easily predicts what will happen next here... But first a little things that seems to have repeated itself rather recently...

• We have a former European evil superpower that a handful of years ago was taken apart and embarrassed by the West. They've since re-invented themselves on a fervent nationalistic fever.
• The Socialist dictator of that nation uses that embarrassment as a potent drive to not only stay in power (15 years so far), but also to convince the West that all is fine, while driving the flames of nationalism and craftily rearming and building its war machine.
• He then "tests" the will of the West by annexing large chunks of its neighbor, as Russia did to Georgia in 2008. Lots of verbal threats from the West lead to nothing.
• He then begins persecuting a segment of his nation's population... In Russia's case its gay citizens... And anyone who disagrees with Putin, and I would not be surprised if Jews are blamed next for something (or everything)... most probably the failure of the Russian economy, which will happen when the West imposes sanctions.
• He then hosts an Olympic game... As a showcase of national pride.
• He then invades yet another neighboring country under the pretext of protecting ethnic Russian citizens within its borders. 

Now... I expect that the West will react by trying to appease Putin, and someone will have to play the part of Neville Chamberlain in order for this unbelievable performance to reach its inevitable conclusion.

We've seen this movie and some of us know how it ends... Kondratiev must be laughing somewhere and Poland is getting a little nervous while France is probably already drafting a surrender treaty... cough, cough.. I was only serious.

Get ready to batten down the hatches!

Craig Kraft at VisArts

Craig Kraft, owner and founder of Craig Kraft Studio in Washington, DC, will unveil his new series of work Markings: Graffiti from the Ground Zero Blues Club, at an exhibition at the VisArts Center in Rockville, Maryland from March 5 - April 20, 2014.


“The exhibition marks the culmination of over a year's work exploring a new subject matter in a new style,” says Craig Kraft, internationally known light sculptor. “The inspiration for my work is based on the excitement of discovering the unknown, or unrecognized; such as the power of the graffiti at the Ground Zero Blues Club in Clarksdale, Mississippi.”

Curated by Claudia Rousseau, PhD, Professor of Art History, School of Art + Design at Montgomery College, Markings: Graffiti from the Ground Zero Blues Club, uses found graffiti and neon light to create an artistic expression that is truly one-of-a-kind.

Traveling last year to see the Ground Zero Blues Club firsthand, Kraft took thousands of photos of the graffiti covered walls, furnishings, ceilings and windows. From these he selected certain images—for him, “the most poignant”—and had them digitally printed on 3’ x 2’ matte enhanced paper and later mounted on wood. The artist has attached painted and scratched neon tubing to their surfaces, as he has said, "to highlight, deconstruct and reinvent the original images.”

Rousseau states, “The graffiti that Craig Kraft found at the Ground Zero Blues Club in Clarksdale, Mississippi, is heroic in its extent, density, and history. Layer upon layer of it covers every inch of its interior. It depicts a full range of human emotion in words, signs, signatures, and graphic renderings of figures and animals accomplished over decades of repetitive marking.”

“Kraft’s neon additions to photographed sections of the graffiti at Ground Zero give prominence to certain of these marks. A deliberate inversion or counter gesture, therefore, of Kraft’s neon tubes, being three- dimensional and, of course, lit, take precedence over everything beneath them,” she adds. “His intervention further brings attention to the graphic forms of the writing itself that now takes a certain priority over the significance of those messages. As works of artistic appropriation, the series transforms and transfers the ‘found graffiti’ on the walls of the Ground Zero Blues Club into new and complex juxtapositions of form and content in the changed environment of the art gallery.”

"Much like Bruce Nauman and other contemporary artists who have worked with light, Kraft treats the medium as both tangible (the glass tubes), and intangible (the light), conveying both its materiality as sculpture and its transparency in abstract form. The very flexibility of the medium has allowed the artist a range of possibilities from very minimal abstract compositions to his extremely complex Unintentional Drawings of 2010, also in this exhibit. His Ground Zero pieces are an exciting continuation in his exploratory trajectory."

36th Years on a Creative Journey

Where: 1429 Iris St., NW Washington, DC 20012-1409
When: March 7-April 26, 2014
Opening Reception: Saturday, March 8, 2:00-6:30 PM, 2014 and Sunday March 9, 2:00-4:00pm
Gallery Hours: Friday and Saturday 12-6 pm any other times by appointment

36 years, where has the time gone, hundreds of art shows, 1000’s of clients, vast new technologies in the art world. The artists’ still knock my socks off and creativity is thriving. How Washington and the world have changed. The artists keep on creating and astounding us at every turn. Art is more important than ever in this media over exposed world. That the artists can come up with an original thought and execute it in an original way fascinates me and keeps me enthusiastic and dedicated to the artists, my clients, Washington and the art world. Come celebrate with us and experience art, art and more art. The entire Zenith Family thanks you all for keeping us in business for all of these years.

                                               Gallery Owner, director and artist, Margery E. Goldberg

Lists of Artists: Kim Abraham, Lenny Campello Renee DuRocher, Eric Ehlenberger, Estella
Fransbergen, Robert Freeman, Julie & Ken Girardini, Margery E. Goldberg, Stephen Hansen,
Christine Hayman, Philip Hazard, David Hubbard, Robert Jackson, Katie Dell Kaufman, Peter
Kephart, Susan Klebanoff, Joan Konkel, Chris Malone, Joey Manlapaz, Michela Mansuino, Donna
McCullough, Davis Morton, Carol Newmyer, Tom Noll, Fernando Roman, Sica, Ellen Sinel, Paula Stern, Bradley Stevens, Cassie Taggart, Tim Tate, Marci Wolf-Hubbard, Paul Martin Wolff, Joyce Zipperer and more.

Zenith Gallery est. 1978

Celebrating 36 Years in the Nation’s Capital

1429 Iris St., NW, Washington DC 20012-1409

202-783-2963 www.zenithgallery.com art@zenithgallery.com