Harry Callahan

I really recommend the Harry Callahan exhibit at the National Gallery of Art. Looking at his work, I see a guy always attuned to the visual world, to whatever moments and phenomena and bits ands bobs that he might encounter. And also always willing to perform all sorts of experiments with his photography -- collaging, double-exposing, etc (see the photo above that is of a stationary flashlight in a dark room, with Callahan moving the camera).

A faith in intuition and experiment, and in always LOOKING. I have been painting a lot from imagination and photos lately, but I need to go back to painting from life, experiencing that intense kind of seeing that lets you observe the marvelous in the ordinary. Seeing Callahan's work made me think about this, and the Ralph Waldo Emerson quote about being "uplifted into infinite spaces, -- all mean egotism vanishes. I become a transparent eye-ball; I am nothing; I see all."

I'd like to know more about Callahan's life and his art-making and art-teaching. The exhibition text described him as a quiet, modest, doubt-full sort of teacher. He took so many shots but selected a very few for finished works.

Here are some quotes:

I think nearly every artist continually wants to reach the edge of nothingness - the point where you can't go any further.

The photographs that excite me are photographs that say something in a new manner; not for the sake of being different, but ones that are different because the individual is different and the individual expresses himself.

I photograph continuously, often without a good idea or strong feelings. During this time the photos are nearly all poor but I believe they develop my seeing and help later on in other photos. I do believe strongly in photography and hope by following it intuitively that when the photographs are looked at they will touch the spirit in people.

Nick Cave

So great to see some of Nick Cave's "Sound Suits" in person at the Corcoran's 30 Americans show.

Clare Grill, Annie Leibovitz and Josephine Halvorson

Clare Grill, E.T.

What a beautiful convergence here -- the living, human (or alien) presence of the object; and you can really, physcally FEEL both Leibovitz and Halvorson looking. I love Halvorson's idea of the painting/motif 'looking back.' Interesting -- the similar close-up, cropping in all three.

Annie Leibovitz, Emily Dickinson's dress from Pilgrimage

Josephine Halvorson, Concrete Chest

"Unlike her staged and carefully lit portraits made on assignment for magazines and advertising clients, the photographs in this exhibition were taken simply because Leibovitz was moved by the subject. The images speak in a commonplace language to the photographer’s curiosity about the world she inherited, spanning landscapes both dramatic and quiet, interiors of living rooms and bedrooms, and objects that are talismans of past lives...Visiting the homes of iconic figures including Thomas Jefferson, Emily Dickinson, Georgia O’Keeffe, Pete Seeger, and Elvis Presley, as well as places such as Niagara Falls, Walden Pond, Old Faithful, and the Yosemite Valley, she let her instincts and intuitions guide her to related subjects—hence the title “Pilgrimage.”" Smithsonian American Art Museum

"Josephine Halvorson has an itinerant practice. She searches for objects willing to ‘look back’. Working perceptually on site, Halvorson’s paintings contain the reciprocities that develop between artist and object, and become testaments to time spent. The exchanges, which take place in a single session, test the limits of the body, witness the vagaries of weather and light, attract passing strangers, and - when materialized in paint - take on unexpected meanings. The works on view were made in places as diverse as Shoshone, California; Canaan, New York; Akureyri, Iceland; and Shoreham, England. Halvorson's explorations are not only geographical, but also psychological. Chance encounters with objects in their environments realize internal glimpses of paintings unmade yet somehow anticipated. Halvorson considers a painting successful when it asserts a life independent of its power to represent either the original object or the experience of its own making. She hopes these paintings return the attention that produced them and, as a group, evoke an everevolving narrative." Sikkema Jenkins Press Release

closing reception/artist talk

Please Join Us!
Saturday, November 12th, 2-3:30 pm

If you haven't seen the show yet or would like to see it again, please come to our closing reception and talk. An informal conversation with some of the exhibiting artists begins at 2pm, followed by snacks and drinks.

HOPE CHEST features artwork by DC/Baltimore artists Mariah Anne Johnson, Becca Kallem, Chandi Kelley, Michelle McAuliffe, Erin Murray, Elle Perez, Katherine Sifers, and Dafna Steinberg. These emerging artists challenge and reinvent tradition, romance, gender roles/expectations, and sexuality. Their work also investigates what we keep, save, and treasure in contrast to what is discarded. Photography, installations, mixed media work, and paintings present the domestic, nostalgic, and personal in new contexts.

GreenHouse 11
1123 11th St NW
Washington, DC

This Satuday, 2-3:30pm

Questions? Email Becca Kallem at rebeccamarion@gmail.com

Katherine Sable

Katherine Sable, Show a Little Ankle, 2011, oil on linen, 66 x 54 inches

at Heiner Contemporary

DC Guide

I am so impressed with Grace Bonney, who has become a huge success with her design blog (and book), Design*Sponge. In the relatively small art department where we both went to undergrad, she fortunately found a prof. who got her interested in design, decorative arts, and the like...now look! I especially admire the help she and her co-bloggers give to women entrepreneurs.

On Design*Sponge is a DC Design Guide. I love that people hee and all over are seeking out unique furniture, handmade decor, craft pieces, DIY project opportunites, and the like... I swim around in the (not mutually exclusive) ponds of 'fine arts' and 'craft' and 'design', and sometimes I wish that 'fine arts' might be a bit more accessible, locally, in the commercially robust way that craft and decor have become. (As an educator, I want art to be accesible in general, too -- a whole 'nother pond o' fish.) Ayway, I do love how "ambassadors" like Kristina Bilonick of Pleasant Plains Workshop promote local art and craft, how Chandi Kelley of Project Dispatch makes art collecting affordable and fun, while helping working artists support their creative endeavors.

For what is is worth, I added the comment below to the D*S DC Design Guide -- I know it isn't an 'art guide', but there is such an intersection, and the more the merrier in generating new and creative ideas and making DC a place where original visions thrive!!

***

Great guide, and I'm glad to see DCAC included and Crafty Bastards mentioned, above! I'm a DC artist and would love for more folks to discover our creative scene. Here are some other great spots:

Check out Pleasant Plains Workshop, an artist-run studio/gallery space/store near Howard University. Cool silkscreened items and other crafts and art by local artists: http://pleasantplainsworkshop.blogspot.com/

Industry Gallery features international design: http://industrygallerydc.com/Site/Home.html

52 O Street Studios is a decades-old studio building with dozens of artists and crafters, from painters to furniture makers to filmmakers and more. There are occasional open houses: http://www.52ostreetstudios.org/

Check out Pyramid Atlantic in Silver Spring! In addition to their awesome gallery and papermaking and printmaking studios for resident artists, they offer classes in letter press, papermaking, and more. Upstairs is the Washington Printmakers Gallery, with some beautiful (and relatively affordable) work. http://www.pyramidatlanticartcenter.org/

The annual Capitol Hill House Tour is great and occasionally also includes a peak into work spaces, like the one I share with decorative painters, custom furniture makers, photographers, and florists! http://www.chrs.org/Pages/1_Projects_11Tour/2011-chrs-tour-brochure.pdf

Flashpoint, Transformer, Civilian, Hamiltonian, Project 4, Harmon Art Labs, The Fridge (near Eastern Market), Heiner Contemproary (in Georgetown) and Conner Contemporary are some galleries that feature work by emerging and mid-career artists from DC and elsewhere, often inculding work at all sorts of price points for those interested in buying original art. There are also some artist-curated 'house galleries' and alternative spaces like Bloombars, and the Washington Project for the Arts presents the work of area artists. For an extensive list of art goings, the Pinkline Project is a great resource, http://pinklineproject.com/.

Painter's Group

Pop over here to follow the studio visits I am doing as a part of a DC-area painters' group. Basically, every month an artist hosts the group in their space for some art chat, feedback, and general camaraderie. So far, visits have been with Lisa Rosenstein, Deborah Carroll Anzinger, and myself -- more to come!

Amber Robles Gordon

DC artist Amber Robles Gordon

artifacts of a community

HOPE CHEST: emerging women artists

HOPE CHEST
: a young woman's accumulation of clothes and domestic furnishings (as silver and linen) kept in anticipation of her marriage; also : a chest for such an accumulation


Join us for a special event featuring artwork by DC/Baltimore artists Mariah Anne Johnson, Becca Kallem, Chandi Kelley, Michelle McAuliffe, Erin Murray, Elle Perez, Katherine Sifers, and Dafna Steinberg. These emerging artists challenge and reinvent tradition, romance, gender roles/expectations, and sexuality. Their work also investigates what we keep, save, and treasure in contrast to what is discarded. Photography, installations, mixed media work, and paintings present the domestic, nostalgic, and personal in new contexts.

September 15, 2011, 6-9 pm
@ GreenHouse 11
1123 11th St NW
Washington, DC
work on view September 15 - November 15 by appointment
**another special event will be held on September 24 to coincide with Shaw's NUIT BLANCHE Art All Night and the (e)merge art fair.**

HOPE CHEST is curated by Becca Kallem and hosted by Michael Schaeffer and Taurus Development Group. GreenHouse 11 is a unique new work space designed to grow small businesses and non-profits. Limited space is available.

images (details), l-r: Chandi Kelley, Two Stories, from Timelines; Becca Kallem, Pillow II; Erin Murray, Hope Chest; Dafna Steinberg, from Whenever I'm With Him, I'm Thinking Of You; Michelle McAuliffe, Ideas Begets Ideas; Katherine Sifers, Kalf #13; Mariah Anne Johnson, Sheet Installation; Elle Perez, A., from Conversations.

Women by Women

Such a Good Listener, watercolor on wood panel, Suzannah Sinclair

If you are in DC, you should stop by Heiner Contemporary in Georgetown to see their current show. Here's my write-up for the blog Where the Girls Go:

Heiner Contemporary is a fresh new gallery in Georgetown, with an awesome bright pink door and some awesome art inside. Currently on view is “Women by Women,” a group show of women artists. According to gallery owner Margaret Heiner, the exhibition focuses on “conceptions of femininity and the ways that women both embrace and struggle against gender stereotypes.”

Originally, Heiner considered staging a show about domesticity. But she ultimately decided to show work featuring diverse manifestations of femininity, with depictions of women by women artists who deal with a broad range of themes in various media.

Kim McCarty presents large watercolors of waif-like adolescent girls, sometimes vulnerable, sometimes self-assured. Her pieces are somewhat similar in technique to work by Egon Schiele and Marlene Dumas (a contemporary South African/Dutch artist who is definitely worth a look). The blurry watercolor conveys how slippery and constantly changing adolescence can be.

Edwina White’ fashionable ladies are fun, stylized, and cartoony — she draws women with cinnabon coifs, aristocratic masculine dress, and fanciful swimming costumes, with surprising little moments of collage studding the drawings.

Suzannah Sinclair’s works reference vintage erotica as well as more contemporary subjects. She paints with watercolor on wood panel, gently staining the surface so that the images seem to emerge like delicate projections or overexposed camera film. Her sexy, beautiful pieces capture women in intimate moments — are they posing for the viewer, reveling in their own desires and sexuality, or both?

Judie Bamber’s amazing drawings riff on mid-century photos. Her “Mom Reading 2″ shows a domestic but intellectual woman. Australian artist Bridget Mac’s photos feature less conventional presentations of female identity and the female body — her subjects are athletic, androgynous, powerful. She explores and blurs gender categories in such works as "Masculine/Feminine", a portrait of the same woman in both “masculine” and “feminine” guises. Mickalene Thomas, known for her powerful paintings of women of color, has the screen-print "Michelle O" in the show. It is a bold, pop-art portrait — made of Mrs. Obama before she became first lady, but showing her with all the iconic power she has since attained.

Women by Women will be on view at Heiner Contemporary through August 20, 2011. The gallery is located at 1675 Wisconsin Ave, NW. BONUS! If you are looking for queer art in DC, check out the beautiful photography by Elle Perez at Conner Contemporary Gallery’s “Academy” group show of work by DC-area art students.

SEND*OFF

Paint Mix Closing Pics

Here are some photos from the DCAC show:

Lauren Rice

So excited to see this. I saw a little drawing of hers and loved it, then fell in love with the pics of installation work on her blog. I also read that she is intereted in Goya's Disasters of War and Dutch still life painting. And you look at that, and it is totally decadent Rachel Ruysch flowers meet dismembered bodies draped over trees limbs, curved by gravity. So cool.

Also, here is the baroque taxidermy chaos of Petah Coyne:

Dante's Inferno (Black Cloud) Sculpture

paint mix

save the date!!!! you're invited to our opening reception, february 11 7-9 pm

work by emily do, christopher dolan, mike dowley, brian kelley, and joren lindholm
curated by becca kallem

feb 11 - march 13
the dc arts center
2438 18th st NW
washington DC

Mark Morrisroe

Three beautiful photos by Mark Morrisroe; the first and last images are included in the SI's Hide/Seek show. The Wojnarowicz censorship is unfortunate, but at least it has people rallying in support of artistic freedom, arts funding, and LGBT expression. And props to the gallery for putting on such a really excellent show. That the National Portrait Gallery is presenting this exhibition means a lot.

Claire Feng

Late Nights

The Stage

Love her work. Website here.

painting no. 47 at hide/seek

by Marsden Hartley

A painting about love.

paradise

Cecilia Paredes, Paradise, 2009, photo-performance with body paint, Lambda print on paper mounted onto aluminum, 39in x 47in, ed. of 7. @ the curator's office

Hiroshi Sugimoto

I love this beautiful, spare, romantic image by Hiroshi Sugimoto. Haydon Orpheum, Sidney, 1997, gelatin silver print.

WPA IceBox

ICEBOX
December 3 - December 23
First Friday Opening Reception: Friday, December 3, 6-8pmSpecial Shopping Event: Monday, December 20, 6:30-8:30pm

Washington Project for the Arts is pleased to announce the opening of our second annual holiday gift shop, IceBox. The shop will feature a wide variety of artworks and other handmade goods by WPA member artists. Participating artists include Double A Projects (Athena Robles and Anna Stein), Denee Barr, Sandy Gold, James Halloran, Linda Hesh, Ellen Hill, Rebecca Kallem, Alice Kress, Laurel Lukaszewski, Susana Raab, Amy Carmichael Smith, John Totaro, Katharine Watson, Robert Weiner and Claudia Vess. Featuring jewelry, small works of art, household goods, totebags and greeting cards, IceBox offers a great selection of creative, unique holiday gifts!

IceBox, which will take over the WPA office at 2023 Massachusetts Avenue NW, runs from December 3 through December 23. There will be an opening reception on Friday, December 3 from 6-8pm, in conjunction with Dupont Circle First Fridays, and a special shopping event on Tuesday, December 21 from 6:30-8:30pm. The shop will also be open Monday-Friday, from 12pm-5pm and by appointment.