When: Saturday, September 19, 2010, 11:00 am – 2:00 pm.
Where: Old Town Alexandria
A stipend will be offered. Call Kathy at the Potomac Riverboat Company, 703-684-0580!
Year: 2010
Ikenobo Ikebana at Baltimore Clayworks
Remember this past spring’s Ikebana show at The Art League Gallery? Why not learn the ancient art of Japanese flower arranging for yourself at Baltimore Clayworks!
‘Scapes: the Annual Landscape Exhibit at The Art League
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| Rainy Day in NYC by Jill Banks |
Juried by Joey P. Mánlapaz
Juror’s Dialogue with Erica Fortwengler
Traditional, idyllic, pastoral landscapes are expected in a landscape exhibit. Joey P. Mánlapaz, juror for the 2010 ‘Scapes exhibit, hoped to find works that went beyond the view of traditional, sweeping landscape, and instead explored different viewpoints and elements of our exterior world. While the vast majority of the work submitted was conventional, she hopes that she was able to curate an exhibit that will expand the idea of what “scapes” means.
“When I jury an exhibit, I’m looking for strong technique and point of view – a good composition, placement of the subject, subject matter, and a proficient handling of the medium. I want to see quality – when it’s there, I can see it, smell it, and know it.
The works that were not selected largely fell short in the areas of technique and point of view. Mánlapaz thought that the digital and photographic submissions were overall the strongest. She felt that many of the paintings were lacking in technique. “It’s important to practice, practice, practice and take classes with skilled instructors who are talented at teaching.”
Guarding Bethany Beach by Jackie Saunders received the Potomac Valley Watercolorists’ Award. “I like the loose quality, I like that I can see the sketching. The handling is sparse, not overdone. It’s lighthearted. The composition is strong, the perspective is good, and there is a good balance throughout the piece.”
Rainy Day in NYC by Jill Banks was awarded the Chameli and Amiya Bose Memorial Award for best oil or acrylic painting on canvas. “I like the handling of the paint and light. The abstract quality is really nice. I love how the patches of color come together to make the painting work. The composition and perspective are excellent.”
The works Mánlapaz selected as Honorable Mentions were among the strongest technically in the show, and were pieces she was drawn to because of their color. “This is an accomplished traditional landscape, it reminds me of a Wolf Kahn” (speaking of Nancy Fortwengler’s Journey into the Canyon). Manlapaz found Marsha Staiger’s Graft CB, Alert really intriguing: “The color and line remind me of the siding on a house.”
Joey P. Mánlapaz received her MFA in painting from George Washington University. Mánlapaz exhibits extensively in the US and has received numerous accolades for her unique form of painterly photorealism. Her solo exhibit in Spring 2009 at the Corcoran Gallery of Art featured her Reflections series, highly complex paintings of reflections on glass storefront windows in DC. Mánlapaz maintains a studio in Capitol Hill and is a faculty member at the Corcoran College of Art and Design. Her work can be viewed at www.joeymanlapaz.com.
‘Scapes will be featured in The Art League Gallery August 4 – September 6, 2010. Opening reception: Thursday, August 12, 6:30-8:00 pm
The 2010-2011 Art League School Catalog!
Open publication – Free publishing
National Cherry Blossom Festival 2011: Art Competition
Official Art Competition seeks illustration portfolios from professional visual and graphic artists. This is the first stage of the process in attaining artwork to be used to represent the next spring festival. Cash awards available. No entry fee. For more information, contact: National Cherry Blossom Festival, 1250 H St., NW, Ste. 1000, Washington, D.C. 20005; Phone: (877) 442-5666; email: [email protected]; or check website: www.nationalcherryblossomfestival.org.
How To Write An Artist’s Statement That Doesn’t Suck
Are you updating your artist’s statement/resume? Gearing up for the upcoming Solo Artist Jurying?
Check out this post from the Abundant Artist for some helpful tips on improving your artist’s statement!
Artist Housing at Loree Grand in DC
Cultural Development Corporation is currently accepting applications for live/work apartments at Loree Grand – 250 K Street NE, Washington. Many 1- bedroom units available, with limited studio and 2-bedroom units. All apartments feature stainless steel appliances, individual washer and dryer and individual heating and cooling. The building also features a rooftop garden, private courtyard, community room and fitness center. Applications, rent schedule, FAQ, virtual tours and more can be found at www.culturaldc.org. Units will be leased on a first come, first serve basis to applicants that meet the artistic and financial eligibility.
Arts Funding News
NEA Funding Increase
The U.S. House Interior Appropriations Subcommittee, which sets the initial funding level for the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA), approved a $2.5 million increase for the NEA in its FY 2011 spending bill. Chairman Jim Moran (D-VA), a longtime champion of arts and culture, presided over his first Interior spending bill as chairman of the subcommittee. It is significant that Chairman Moran has proposed an increase for the agency in light of a spending freeze on federal discretionary funds and a lower budget request by the administration. Please write to thank Chairman Moran for his leadership.
The U.S. House Interior Appropriations Subcommittee, which sets the initial funding level for the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA), approved a $2.5 million increase for the NEA in its FY 2011 spending bill. Chairman Jim Moran (D-VA), a longtime champion of arts and culture, presided over his first Interior spending bill as chairman of the subcommittee. It is significant that Chairman Moran has proposed an increase for the agency in light of a spending freeze on federal discretionary funds and a lower budget request by the administration. Please write to thank Chairman Moran for his leadership.
Write your Congressman to support Congressman Moran’s initiative.
Arts in Education Week
Yesterday (July 26), the U.S. House of Representatives passed H.Con.Res. 275, legislation designating the second week of September as “Arts in Education Week.” Authored and introduced by California Representative Jackie Speier (D-CA), this resolution is the first Congressional expression of support celebrating all the disciplines comprising arts education. This is a very positive showing of support for arts education and comes at a key time when Congress is making plans to overhaul federal education policy. Take two minutes to send a message of support for arts education to your member of Congress!
Everybody Wants to Rule the World
In celebration of its 40th Anniversary, Smithsonian Magazine recently published a list of “40 Things You Need to Know About the Next 40 Years”. Nestled between predictions of scientific breakthroughs and political triumphs is an article written by Hirshhorn Museum Director, Richard Koshalek, which delves into the future of contemporary art.
Koshalek believes that by 2050, artists will play an even larger part in society. Technology will become more and more important in the arts, as a way of creating new art forms, reaching wider audiences, and influencing change.
We will see new types of artists emerging as technology evolves. This does not mean, however, that established forms of expression will be abandoned. Artists working in painting and sculpture will adapt to the changing artistic environment, which fosters increased creativity.
Technology will broaden the audience for art. We will see greater accessibility and communication between artists and their audiences. Koshalek also encourages artists to take a greater role in social decision-making and change–to use their creative minds for the greater good.
Koshalek’s predictions for art in the next 40 years are extremely hopeful. How do you think technology will change art? Where do you see art going in the next 40 years?
CMDupré’s Alice Opening at National Harbor
Great opening last night at our National Harbor space! Everyone should check out the NEW Alice, open through Labor Day.
Patrons’ Show Donations
Hey Art League Members!
Have you been cleaning out your studios, trying to find space for all your work? If so, feel free to start donating pieces to our Annual Patrons’ Show!
The Art League is featured in this month’s Washingtonian Best Bet’s issue under “Zaniest Art Events” for “Best Art Fundraiser” for our Annual Patrons’ Show! Go grab an issue and check out the great review!
We are ready for your donations!!
First Annual Youth Arts Festival of Alexandria
Great Opportunity for Young Artists!
Children through age 19 are encouraged to enter original artwork for display at the festival.
Arts activities will also be made available for children to explore their own creativity.
To participate, download application materials here.
July All-Media Membership Exhibit
Gallery Talk: How to Start A Blog with Solo Artist Megan Coyle
Thursday night in the Art League Gallery, 17 League members gathered to glean some insight into the world of blogging. This month’s solo artist, Megan Coyle, began her discussion with the basics of blogging for artists: reasons for starting a blog and what to actually blog about.
A blog is a great (FREE!) way for an artist to begin to establish an online presence. They are easily updatable with fresh content. Becoming involved in an online community is a way to build connections with other artists, find resources and inspiration, and reach a wider audience for your work.
The possibilities for the content of your blog are endless. Megan suggested posting both works in progress and finished pieces. Linking to other artists and responding to arts news articles draws interest to your page. Interviewing yourself about your work and process adds another layer to simply posting images of your work online.
The final point of Megan’s discussion was the importance of using good quality images of your work for your blog. She also stressed the importance of resizing or watermarking the images to prevent others from using the images without the artist’s consent.
A brief Question & Answer session brought up topics such as HTML, Facebook vs. the Blog, Photoshop, and additional resources. What do you think about these topics? Are you interested in learning more?
If you’re an Art League Gallery member and have a blog, let us know!
Touchstone Gallery Has Space for Four New Members!
Get in on the Ground Floor of the new TOUCHSTONE GALLERY. Only four new memberships still available. Guys in hard hats wielding hammers and wires are putting the finishing touches on Touchstone’s new modern gallery at 901 New York Avenue NW, an attractive street-level space in the heart of Washington, DC. It’ll be fantastic! Members Benefits: a biennial solo show, monthly member shows, artist bins, gallery website/online artist pages/store, fulltime director.
Contact Ksenia Grishkova now [email protected] or 202 347-2787. She’ll answer questions and explain our flexible jury process designed to accommodate your individual circumstances and location. http://www.touchstonegallery.com.
CM Dupre’s Alice at The Art League at National Harbor
CM Dupre’s new series Alice will be featured at the new Art League Gallery space in National Harbor, MD from July 20 – September 5, 2010. Opening reception: Tuesday, July 20, 6:30-8:30 pm.
Who else has continued to lead such an eventful and fascinating existence as Alice? Compared to saints, heroes, screen stars, musicians and artists, intellectuals, inventors, politicians, she’s given us more: in elaborate chains of circumstance, indelible processes of redefinition, psychological growth and exorbitance. Her strengths arose from curiosity and imagination. There is no doubt that Alice IS—and more—she is transformation.
So the titles tell part of her story. “Alice is the Variable ‘X’,” “Alice is a Leaping Metaphor,” “Alice is the Deus ex Machina,” “Alice Is and Alice Isn’t”: clues to Alice’s potential and her increasing influence (initiated by the spell-bound gaze of Lewis Carroll). Her potential is step-by-step, beginning in childhood calculations, punctuated rebuttals, word-games, chance meetings, and entry into several worlds at once. They award her perceptions while creating her as virtual abundance—a hybrid artwork in an interrogatory space.
The second series takes Alice’s motivated forces further than self-identity and the Self as inscribed, as expression, as contour-context, or as a subject-summary.
Alice’s role goes on from a reality-fantasy condition that can begin to remark on the world through her infinite varieties and shifting shapes—that give her fame and fortune—onto different terrains, times, places, including for instance, the year 2010 of inclusion.
Her inner complexities become a sifting, sieving, filtering drama that stretches out beyond Alice in Wonderland, the proverbial Looking Glass, or Alice Liddell, flowing onto a world stage of reciprocal cycles and surrounds of meaning: the air that is breathed by others, cures found only in the unknown, in the shade of mourning and memory. Alice begins to search through living archives, finding in them an inconsolable poetics as she discovers varied replacements to the ‘unknowable sublime,’ presentable for now in the most compelling language of all, imagery.
Location: The Art League at National Harbor is located at 120 American Way, Oxon Hill, MD 20745.
Hours: Wednesday–Friday, noon–7:00pm; Saturday–Sunday, noon–6pm.
Exhibitions and events are free and open to the public.
Target Gallery Exhibition Opportunity: 5 x 5 Exposed
5×5 Exposed
Exhibition Dates: November 6 – 21, 2010
Deadline for Entry: September 13, 2010
The gallery will be participating in the FotoWeek DC 2010 Festival by hosting our biennial small works show, this year with an emphasis on photo based mediums. All artwork must not exceed 5 inches in any direction, inclusive of frame.
Exhibition Dates: November 6 – 21, 2010
Deadline for Entry: September 13, 2010
The gallery will be participating in the FotoWeek DC 2010 Festival by hosting our biennial small works show, this year with an emphasis on photo based mediums. All artwork must not exceed 5 inches in any direction, inclusive of frame.
Our juror is Kathleen Ewing, owner of Kathleen Ewing Gallery, which specializes in photography. She represents over 40 contemporary photographers and maintains an inventory of 19th and 20th century vintage photographs. She was the Executive Director of The Association of International Photography Art Dealers, from 1991 to 2007 and is also the Executive Director of the Art Dealers Association of Greater Washington.
You can now apply online, follow the link below:
<http://www.torpedofactory.
For a hard copy of a prospectus, send a SASE to:
Target Gallery
Torpedo Factory Art Center
105 North Union Street, Alexandria, VA 22314
Call: 703-838-4565 x 4
Email: targetgallery@torpedofactory.
http://www.torpedofactory.org/
Visit World-Class Glass Exhibits with Jimmy Powers
 Join internationally known stained glass artist and Art League instructor Jimmy Powers as he guides you through a day filled with incredible visual delights in Richmond, VA on Sunday, August 1.
First we’ll visit the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts and view the Tiffany: Color and Light exhibit – the only US viewing of this exhibit celebrating one of America’s greatest artists, Louis Comfort Tiffany. The exhibition focuses on his primary achievements – the innovative techniques and artistry he developed to achieve original and spectacular effects in glass. Among the exhibition’s more than 180 objects are examples of the leaded-glass windows and lamps, for which he is best known, as well as blown-glass vessels and decorative objects such as mosaics, jewelry, bronzes, paintings, watercolors, architectural elements, and silver. Click here to read more about this exhibit. We’ll then go to the Lewis Ginter Botanical Garden for the exhibit, Glorious Glass in the Garden: The Art of Hans Godo Frabel. This world-class exhibit by the renowned glass artist will feature more than one hundred pieces ranging from the realistic to the whimsical. Prestigious collectors of Frabel’s glass creations include Queen Elizabeth II, the Emperor and Empress of Japan, and President Jimmy Carter. Click here for more details about this exhibit.
A motorcoach will depart the Torpedo Factory Art Center at 7:00 am. Cost: $105. Includes a boxed lunch and guided tours through both exhibits. Time to explore and visit the museum gift shops is included.
Spaces are extremely limited as Tiffany: Color and Light closes on August 15!
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City Gallery’s First Annual Regional Juried Exhibit
This is a great opportunity! Visit their website for the entry form and prospectus: http://www.citygallerydc.com/
Exhibit Opportunity!
Call for Exhibitors: Juried art fair with awards
THE BOOK (R)EVOLUTION
11th Biennial Pyramid Atlantic Book Arts Fair and Conference
The 11th Biennial Pyramid Atlantic Book Arts Fair and Conference presents an exciting weekend of events which will examine the evolution of the book as art and the latest innovations and interpretations of this versatile form. For the first time, this year’s Book Arts Fair will also include a contemporary print component, which will examine the print form as an independent medium as well as its relationship to the book.
November 5-7, 2010
Silver Spring, MD (Washington DC Metro Area)
Fair exhibitor application due July 12!
Apply now at www.zapplication.org.
Details available on the website: http://
Confirmed Speakers:
– Peter Bushell, Associate Professor of Graphic Design, School of Art,
Illinois State University
– Deborah Cornell, Chair of Printmaking, School of Visual Arts, Boston
University
– Steven Daiber, Proprietor of Red Trillium Press
– Harry Lee Poe, Charles Colson Professor of Faith and Culture, Union
University & President of the Board of Directors, Edgar Allan Poe Museum
– Tony White, Head of the Fine Arts Library, Indiana University Bloomington
& Field Editor for Artist’s Books and Books for Artists, CAA.Reviews
– Guild of Book Workers, Potomac Chapter
Films:
– Between the Folds
– Proceed and Be Bold!
– Typeface
– Who Does She Think She Is?
More details forthcoming on the Book Arts Fair website and blog!
http://www.
http://
The Art League is a Washingtonian Best Bet!
The Art League is featured in this month’s Washingtonian Best Bet’s issue under “Zaniest Art Events” for “Best Art Fundraiser” for our Annual Patrons’ Show! Go grab an issue and check out the great review!
Mezz Gallery @ Artisphere
LAST WEEK TO APPLY!
MEZZ GALLERY @ ARTISPHERE
Deadline Extended to June 29, 2010
Artisphere, the metropolitan-DC area’s newest cultural center, is set to open in Arlington on 10-10-10 with multiple venues, including: a 4,000 square foot ballroom space, a wi-fi lounge, a café, three distinct gallery spaces, as well as three flexible theater/performance spaces!
MEZZ Gallery at Artisphere
CALL FOR VISUAL ARTS EXHIBITION PROPOSALS: Deadline Extended: June 29, 2010
The Mezz Gallery at Artisphere provides Arlington artists, arts groups, organizations and curators a new and exciting exhibition opportunity.
ELIGIBILITY: Proposals will be accepted from individual artists, arts groups, organizations, and curators who live, work, study or maintain a studio in Arlington County.
AWARDS: $500 honorarium will be awarded for each selected proposal.
ENTRY FEE: $25 application fee per proposal.
PROPOSALS: May include themed or solo exhibitions by Arlington artists. Arlington based curators may propose exhibitions featuring multiple artists in or outside of Arlington. Proposals may include single- or mixed-media. Media may include photography, hand-pulled prints, letterpress, wall hung sculptural installations, crafts, textiles, fashion, drawing, painting, etc. All proposals must be submitted via https://arlington.slideroom.
Who is Hygeia?
The Journey of Hygeia
In conjunction with National Breast Cancer Awareness Month, the juried show at The Art League Gallery in May 2010 was Curves, featuring works based on and celebrating the human figure. The Art League wanted to tie in a fundraising event for breast cancer awareness while maintaining a connection to the arts.
Art League member Paula Stern serves on the Board of Directors of Avon Products, Inc. and encouraged The Art League to donate the proceeds from the fundraising event to the philanthropic arm of the organization, which promotes a dual mission of supporting breast cancer research as well as domestic and gender violence awareness.
Lisa Schumaier, Torpedo Factory artist and Art League member, was approached to create a sculpture to connect the fundraising event and The Art League exhibit. She created a papier-mâché figure of Hygeia, the Greek and Roman goddess of health and cleanliness.
The Art League donated funds raised to the Avon Foundation through “The Sisterhood of the Traveling Ta-ta’s” team. Donations were collected as individuals wrote a message of remembrance or victory on a strip of pink paper. These strips were applied to the figure of Hygeia. Many Torpedo Factory artists donated pink paper in various shades, which was put to use overlapping Hygeia’s newsprint-covered frame. Lisa further encouraged the success of the drive by pulling the sculpture out into the middle of the Torpedo Factory on weekends, talking to people about the cause, and asking for donations. Throughout the course of the fundraising event, visitors to the Torpedo Factory and The Art League donated over $500.
View the journey of Hygeia here.
300 People Sweat it Out For "Paint" Alexandria 2010
June 19 was a blistering day in the DC area, but the heat did not keep artists and art appreciators away from coming to Old Town Alexandria for The Art League’s first FREE “Paint” Alexandria event. Seven demonstrations were held throughout the day in a variety of media, and over 300 people came to enjoy the event! Thank you everyone!
Peter Ulrich’s completed demo piece during “Paint” Alexandria 2010.