See below for details on upcoming exhibits and more. To see past opportunities posts, you can click the banner above. Good luck!
Philadelphia Craft Show
Late deadline: April 12, 2013. The 37th Annual Philadelphia Museum of Art Craft Show, a juried exhibition and retail sale, will be held at the Pennsylvania Convention Center from November 7 to 10, 2013, with a preview party on November 6. The jury will accept 195 craft artists. For more information and to apply, click here.
Detail from “Le Pecheur” by Art League instructor Sara Linda Poly.
In fits and starts, warmer weather is on its way to the DC region, and our thoughts are turning to sunny days to come. For this edition of Artful Links, we’re sharing some artful ways to take advantage of the great outdoors:
The Purkinje Effect: If the longer daylight hours have you thinking of breaking out the pochade box for some painting en plein air, you should check out this article on the unique effect of low light on the eye’s perception of color, on Artist Daily’s Plein Air blog. You’ve noticed it, and now you have a name for it! Continue reading Springtime Links: Art Outdoors
April 2013 solo artist Linda Lawler in her studio.
“Everyday Gods & Goddesses”
April 4–May 6, 2013
Opening Reception: Thursday, April 11, 6:30–8:00 pm
Portraits of friends and family are injected with a sense of divinity in Linda Lawler’s whimsical exhibit of oil paintings, “Everyday Gods & Goddesses,” opening Thursday at The Art League.
“I wanted to do a series of portraits that you could look at and come to know what that person is like on the inside, not just what they look like on the outside,” Lawler said. To do that, she used figures from Greek and Roman mythology — painting her brother-in-law as Poseidon and interpreting her mother’s nurturing spirit as Gaea, or Mother Earth: Continue reading Linda Lawler’s Pantheon in Portraiture
Americans For the Arts needs your help supporting federal funding for the arts:
National Arts Advocacy Day is on Tuesday, April 9. We are in the final stages of preparing to welcome more than 500 arts advocates to Capitol Hill. Now here’s where we need your help.
Even though you cannot attend in person, you can help your state arts advocacy delegation members who are coming to DC. We need you to write to your Members of Congress by this Friday, April 5th at noon. We are going to tally all of these letters so that your state arts advocacy captain can walk in each Congressional office and say, “Today is Arts Advocacy Day and I want to add my voice to the # other constituents who have already e-mailed you about the importance of the arts and arts education in our state.”
Take two minutes to send a pre-written, customizable Arts Advocacy Day letter to your members of Congress.
See below for details on upcoming exhibits and other calls for artists. You can click the banner above to view past opportunities posts. Good luck!
Plein Air Event
The Workhouse Artists of Gallery 902 are hosting a plein air painting event Saturday, April 27, with awards and prizes. Participants will paint at the Workhouse Arts Center & Occoquan Regional Park in Lorton, VA during SpringFest Fairfax 2013. For details, download a Word document here.
18″ x 18″ at artdc Gallery
Artists are invited to submit art limited to 18 x 18 inches for this all-inclusive show at the artdc in Hyattsville, MD. Installation is Sunday, April 28. For details and to register, click here. Continue reading Artist Opportunities: April 2, 2013
Spring classes at The Art League School are starting soon — but it’s not too late to register! Check out our online catalog to find that new class in a medium you want to try out, a style you want to learn, or a technique you want to master. In addition to our nine-week classes starting the week of April 8, there are shorter-term workshops taking place over a day or two. Here’s just some of what’s on tap one upcoming weekend:
Drawing the Human Head with Rick Weaver (April 6 & 7): Working from a live model, learn the principles behind drawing the head, including the mechanics and anatomy of the head and neck.
Basic Photographic Lighting Tools with Robin Reid (April 6): Learn about tools like flash, strobe, reflectors, umbrellas, gels, gobos, grids, and snoots, and how to make some of your own.
Painting Children’s Rooms with Patrick Kirwin (April 6 & 7): Painting and drawing instructor Patrick Kirwin shares ideas and techniques for creating a unique environment in a child’s room or nursery.
We also just added a new seven-week class in Tapestry taught by Tea Okropiridze. You can register for Tapestry here, and read our interview with the instructor in this blog post.
“Four Birds,” ink on handmade bark paper by Lee Gerry Wertheimer
Four Birds by Lee Gerry Wertheimer, above, was selected by the juror for the Jane McElvany Coonce Award for representational realism in March’s all-media show at The Art League. Lee Gerry told us more about her art career and art as a form of archaeology, below: Continue reading Lee Gerry Wertheimer on “Four Birds”
One of the award-winners in this month’s all-media exhibit will be familiar to recent visitors of The Art League Gallery: Sheila DeLaquil also won an award in July’s group exhibit. This time around, her painting Under the Microscope was awarded the Evelyn Turner Award for abstraction. The juror, Stefanie Fedor, said she was drawn to the palette and strong mark-making.
Last time around, Sheila told us about her creative process and working with a subdued color scheme — that interview is here. This time, we asked her more about the choices that go into each painting. Read our Q&A, below, and come see the show through April 1!
What informs the decisions you make about things like palette, materials, size, and so forth when you start a new painting, or how do these things emerge?
Sheila: I was working to constrain the use of color, as in Just Waiting [July’s award-winner, pictured below]. So the neutral greys dominated. Materials were acrylics and format was square, which is what I have chosen to use for the past few years. Don’t know exactly why, though. I guess that I was attracted to the square format because it seemed challenging to me and because it is less commonly used.
Did you have any goals for things you wanted to accomplish with Under the Microscope?
I wanted to create an uncomfortable composition, using large shapes and line to pull it all together. Continue reading Q&A with Award Winner Sheila DeLaquil
See below for details on upcoming exhibits and other calls for artists. You can click the banner above to view past opportunities posts. Good luck!
Trawick Prize
Deadline: April 1, 2013.The Trawick Prize: Bethesda Contemporary Art Awards is now accepting applications for the annual juried art exhibition and awards. $14,000 in prize money is awarded annually to the top four artists and a group exhibition of the finalists’ work will take place in September 2013 at Gallery B in downtown Bethesda. Artists must be 18 years of age or older and permanent, full-time residents of Maryland, Virginia or Washington, DC. For more information and to apply, click here.
The Art League School’s stained glass department at Artfest 2011.
Thanks to an extraordinary donation, The Art League School will host a Stained Glass Materials Sale Sunday, March 24 from 12:00 noon to 4:00 pm in the Sculpture room at the Madison Annex! Find us at 305 Madison Street in Alexandria, Virginia. We’re selling glass sheets in a wide array of sizes and colors, foil, solder, bevel clusters, bevels, grinders and other tools at discounted prices.
Beginning April 8, The Art League will sell stained glass materials at the Madison Annex during the following hours (only while classes are in session): Monday, 7:00-9:30 pm; Tuesday, 7:00-9:30 pm; Thursday, 10:00 am-12:30 pm; Saturday, 10:00 am-3:00 pm.
Come join us and get supplies for your next project!
The Art League Gallery is hosting two free events in the next seven days — tomorrow, there will be a presentation on matting and framing for professional artists, and next Thursday, there will be a demo and presentation by a Liquitex acrylics representative. Please call or email the gallery to register at 703-683-1780 or [email protected].
How to Successfully Mat & Frame Your Artwork
Friday, March 22, 1:00–3:00 pmin the Gallery
Join Art League instructor Eileen Yeager for a presentation on how to successfully mat and frame your two-dimensional artwork for exhibitions. Please call or email the Gallery to register: 703-683-1780 or [email protected].
Liquitex Demonstration Thursday, March 28, 2:00–4:00 pm in Torpedo Factory room 221 Liquitex artist Tony Zatzick will be back at The Art League next week for another free demo on topics including color mixing, permanence, product history, mediums, pigment characteristics, and techniques! Attendees also get a free bag of samples to take home. Tony is part of the Liquitex Artist Outreach Program — read about one of his past visits here.
“Geometric Interplay” by Art League instructor Delna Dastur.
If you’re an artist and you don’t have a website yet — or if you want to change the one you have now — it’s never too late!
Even if you’re a technophobe and you don’t have a cousin to build a website for you, there are lots of easy and even free options to make a website — and some of them are specifically geared to artists. The benefits are obvious: people looking for art can find you by Googling your name or your type of artwork, and they can contact you to make purchases. If you don’t have a website, you’re missing out on lots of potential collectors.
And if you aren’t sure what to put on your website, that’s simple too. Every site will be different, but the necessities are:
There’s more good advice in this checklist of dos and don’ts.
The options
Not quite sold? We polled our Facebook audience to see what our community of artists likes and dislikes about the web platforms they use. Here’s what they had to say:
1. WordPress: WordPress is well-known as a blogging platform, but it can also easily be used to build a regular website using static pages. It’s likely the most customizable option short of a custom-built site, with hundreds of different themes, and many options for beautiful galleries and slideshows of your work. There’s both a free option, WordPress.com, and the self-hosted software WordPress.org, which is free to use but will require you to pay for hosting (probably around $10/month). This article explains the pros and cons of each service.
2. Heavybubble: Unlike WordPress, heavybubble is designed specifically for artists, with easy-to-set up templates for galleries, artist bios, links, and contact form. Options start at $20/month.
As seen on: Gallery Director Rose O’Donnell’s website. Rose: “I liked the ease of setting it up but now find that I need more from them, and they don’t provide things like a link to my Facebook and Twitter pages.”
3. Other People’s Pixels: Another service geared toward artists, OPP promises “the best shameless-self-promotion that money can buy.” Like heavybubble and Fine Art Studio Online (below), it offers a free trial. Plans start at $16/month. OPP’s blog has a Tips & Tricks section with tutorials on things like search engine optimization, protecting images of your artwork, and setting up a “virtual business card” with a mobile site.
As seen on: The microWave project site. Co-founder Allison Nance shared that she loves the service, but the sites don’t work as well on mobile devices.
4. Fine Art Studio Online:FASO includes easy-to-change image collections, events, and built-in visitor statistics. Two features that may make it more attractive are the option to sell artwork through the website, and a way to manage and send email newsletters. The cheapest option, $8/month, allows you up to 25 images; the next step up is $28/month.
As seen on: Art League members Web Bryant‘s and Jill Banks’s new websites. Jill said that while she doesn’t like the idea of using templates and looking too similar to other websites, the service’s ease of use makes it “fantastic.” She said the email newsletters were the main factor in her decision. Web writes that FASO is great for displaying art and for the integrated blogging, but “you need to play with it to not look like all the other templates.”
5. Weebly: Weebly features free hosting as well as an easy drag-and-drop way to build your website.
As seen on: Grayson Heck’s website and Art League instructor Nancy Freeman’s new website. Nancy posts videos, demos, and blog entries there and reports that building it was easy.
6. Others: There are lots more ways to make a website! We sent out a call for feedback on Facebook, and our fans suggested, in addition to the sites above, Sitewelder (seen here), Behance (seen here), JimdoPro (seen here), Yahoo! Small Business (seen here), the artist-focused Big Black Bag (seen here), and more.
For photographers, there are a number of options, like SmugMug and PhotoShelter (used by Art Leaguer Carol Simons Huddleston), both of which offer built-in ways to sell prints. You can see what everyone had to say on Facebook here.
And of course, there’s always the option of building from scratch, either on your own or with a web editor program like Adobe Dreamweaver (used for Art League member Pam Coulter’s site). Jenny Reeves built from scratch, though she also happens to be a web developer. She recommended the easy-to-use WordPress software for non-technical artists.
There are lots of things to consider other than price. How is the technical support? Can you track visitors? Are image galleries attractive and easy to manage? Do they have an easy way to set up a mobile site so it looks good on smartphones? Other considerations:
Picking a domain name (e.g. “theartleague.org”) is a big decision, but it boils down to choosing something that will be easy to find and not too long to type out. Usually, this will be your name (dot com) or, if that’s not for sale, your name studio (dot com) or your name art (dot com). If your name’s not in the domain, make sure it’s at least featured in the page title so people can still find you on Google!
Picking a hosting service. Heavybubble, Other People’s Pixels, Fine Art Studio Online, and Weebly all include hosting and a domain name in their price. If you want to self-host on WordPress or a different service, you’ll have to find a web host. WordPress recommends some reliable services here.
How about it, Art Leaguers? Any other services to recommend? What do you use, and how do you like it?
It’s that time of year again! Summer Art Camps for kids ages 5 and up (and summer workshops for teenagers) are a great opportunity for budding artists to try something new, or explore their favorite medium in-depth.
Art camps start up the week of June 17 and continue throughout the summer. You can read more about children’s classes and camps, including parent testimonials, in this post. And this YouTube playlist includes some work from past camps, including claymation videos made by campers and a short feature on 2012’s art camp:
See below for details on upcoming exhibits. You can click the banner above to view past opportunities posts. Good luck!
Art in City Hall
Deadline: March 29, 2013, 6:00 pm. The latest Art in City Hall exhibit opens this April. (To read about the Art in City Hall partnership, click here.) Entry open to members of The Art League, Del Ray Artisans, and the Torpedo Factory Artists Association. Online entry only — for more information, click here.
Strictly Painting
Deadline: April 19, 2013. McLean Project for the Arts is calling for entries to this summer’s “Strictly Painting” exhibit. All Mid-Atlantic artists (DC, VA, MD, PA, NJ, DE, WV) are invited to submit up to four jpegs of paintings or works related in some way to painting completed in the last two years and not previously exhibited at MPA. For full details, click here to download the PDF prospectus.
(e)merge art fair
Deadline: May 18, 2013. The (e)merge art fair connects emerging-art professionals from around the globe with collectors, curators and cultural decision makers in Washington, DC. Applications are now open. For more information, click here.
There are plenty of opportunities to get involved with The Art League this week! Check out what’s happening:
“State of Emergency.” Photo by Greg Staley.
Alice Ferguson Foundation Talk Thursday, March 21 at 6:30 pm in The Art League Gallery
The Art League is pleased to partner with the Alice Ferguson Foundation during Sabyna Sterrett’s “State of Emergency” to raise pollution awareness and motivate residents to action. Representatives from the foundation will discuss their Trash Free Potomac Watershed initiative, a five-pronged approach to solving regional pollution issues, in a presentation on Thursday, March 21 at 6:30 pm in The Art League Gallery. All are welcome to attend!
How to Successfully Mat & Frame Your Artwork
Friday, March 22 from 1:00-3:00 pmin The Art League Gallery
Join Art League instructor Eileen Yeager for a presentation on how to successfully mat and frame your two-dimensional artwork for exhibitions. Please call or email the Gallery to register: 703-683-1780 or [email protected].
Stained Glass Sale Sunday, March 24 from 12:00 noon-4:00 pm at the Madison Annex, Sculpture room
Thanks to an extraordinary donation, The Art League School will host a Stained Glass Sale Sunday, March 24 from 12:00 noon to 4:00 pm in the sculpture room at the Madison Annex. We are selling glass sheets in a wide array of sizes and colors, foil, solder, bevel clusters, bevels, grinders and other tools at discounted prices.
Art in City Hall Entries Due Friday, March 29at 6:00 pm
Enter your work in the next Art in City Hall exhibit! The exhibit will be on view April 22-November 15, 2013 at Alexandria’s City Hall. Submissions (digital entries only) are due by Friday, March 29 at 6:00 pm. Click here for specifications.
“Big George I” by Nancy Freeman, created with the SketchBook Pro app.
Next month, The Art League premieres a new course in digital art: Apps for Artists, starting Monday, April 8.
With smartphones and tablets everywhere, digital arts programs have grown much more advanced since the days of MS Paint. Apps for Artists will cover tools that manipulate existing images, work with the iPad camera, create new work from scratch, or do all three — the possibilities are endless, as Nancy writes on her website: Continue reading Prep Your Digital Canvas for “Apps For Artists”
Artist Sabyna Sterrett, right, and Solo Artist Coordinator Megan Fox install half of the behemoth “Environmental Pleading/Dead Conversation.”Work from the March All-Media Exhibit.
March on into The Art League Gallery today to see our new shows — the March All-Media Exhibit and “State of Emergency” — and stick around for the opening reception tonight, March 14, at 6:30 pm.
For the March All-Media Exhibit, juror Stefanie Fedor of Arlington Arts Center selected a wide variety of work submitted by Art League members. See some more of what’s in store on Flickr and below: Continue reading “State of Emergency” Reception Tonight
See below for details on upcoming lectures and exhibits. You can click the banner above to view past opportunities posts.
Solo exhibits at Arlington Arts Center
Deadline: March 15, 2013. Each year AAC selects artists from across the mid-Atlantic region for solo exhibitions in AAC’s seven separate gallery spaces—or outside on the grounds. Artists are encouraged to submit proposals for works in progress, new bodies of work, as well as site-specific installations in any and all media. For more information and to apply, click here.
How to Successfully Mat & Frame Your Artwork Friday, March 22, 1:00-3:00 pm: Join Art League instructor Eileen Yeager for a presentation on how to successfully mat and frame your two-dimensional artwork for exhibitions. Please call or email the Gallery to register: 703-683-1780 or [email protected].
You might also be interested in this month’s framing workshops:
There is often a common thread that runs through many of the works that are selected for Art League exhibits. While our jurors come from a myriad of artistic backgrounds and visual disciplines, they all feel that the same qualities make up a successful work of art: a combination of skill and personal vision.
It is widely accepted that Art League artists have excellent technique. And while technique is certainly an essential ingredient in creating a great artist, it isn’t enough. To make the leap from good to great, an artist must uncover their inner creative voice – what they have to say and express, visually, in a way that no one else can.
Below are some of the most common buzzwords and phrases from the juror’s dialogues in 2012. And, as you read the following excerpts, you’ll quickly see the theme of “skill and vision” emerge. (Click the links to read the full juror’s dialogues)
Technical skill
Vision, unique voice, intent
Visual drama
Personal voice
Emotion
Innovation
Consistency
Clean, unobtrusive framing and presentation
Eye-catching
Mastery of medium
Completion
Visual statement
Individuality
Composition
Craftsmanship
January 2012 (All-Media): Alan Beland believes that a successful work is one that stirs an emotional reaction within the viewer. He stressed how important is it for artwork to emotionally connect with the viewer – for there to be substance, an ideal, a concept in a piece. Aesthetics, the principles of art and design, of course play an enormous role as well.
March 2012 (Play): Judy Bass selected works for “Play” based on the same criteria in which she grades her students: composition and craftsmanship. Successful works had good design, whether a photograph or a painting, and demonstrated technical excellence.
April 2012 (Earth): Juror Helen Frederick noted that she hoped to see urgent messages in the pieces submitted – reflective images that demonstrated an educated personal point of view, and not just emotional statements about the earth and the environment. Continue reading What Are Art League Jurors Looking For?
Sculpture: “Unfurling” by 2014 solo artist Natalie Shudt.
Shows that ask you to submit images of your artwork online or on CD will also usually have strict rules about how to size and format those images. For example, The Art League’s upcoming ceramics show “Tabletop” is digital entry only: “Images must be in jpeg format, 300 dpi, and no larger than 2100 pixels at the largest dimension. All files must be labeled with artist’s first initial and last name followed by entry number (e.smith01).”
If rules like those leave you stumped, here are some easy tools to help you:
1. How to resize: Whether you use a PC or a Mac, there is built-in software you can use for this. Details on resizing using Preview (Mac) and Paint (PC) are in this blog post. For the example above, you’d want to set the resolution to 300 pixels per inch (300 dpi), and then, if one of the dimensions is larger than 2100 pixels, reduce that dimension (the other one will change proportionally to keep from distorting the image).
There’s also a free online tool, picresize.com, that lets you crop, rotate, and resize your images online. Use “custom size” in step 2 to choose the number of pixels — again, change only the width or the height, not both, to keep from distorting the image. At the bottom of the page, choose JPG from the Save As menu. This website also has a batch resize tool to resize many images at once.
Our latest trip to The Art League School took us to Peter Ulrich‘s classroom in the new Madison Annex, where he showed his class “The Watercolor Experience” how to paint a rainy-day scene with a limited palette.
Peter used only Daniel Smith Indanthrone Blue, Da Vinci Cadmium Red Light, and Winsor & Newton Raw Sienna, covering the rest of his palette up with paper. Working from several photos he took in Paris, he demonstrated painting treetops, painting figures as gestures, recreating reflections on wet pavement, and playing cool against warm to create interest with a limited palette.
See below for details on upcoming exhibits and more. You can click the banner above to see past opportunities posts. Good luck!
(Edited to add: This Friday, March 8, is the deadline to enter the 9th Annual Plein Air–Easton! Competition. Click here for more information.)
Torpedo Factory jury
Receiving: March 18, 2013. A reminder for all aspiring Torpedo Factory artists: the annual jury is coming up soon! The whole process is spelled out in this TFAA blog post.
The Artist’s Magazine Competition
Deadline: May 1, 2013 (early bird deadline April 1). The Artist’s Magazine is accepting entries for its 30th Annual Art Competition. More than $25,000 in cash prizes will be awarded, and Top Award Winners will be featured in the December 2013 issue of The Artist’s Magazine. All winners will also appear in a special online gallery. For more information and to enter, click here.
By Vanessa Maranon (Manga Character Creation with Dana Yang)
By Gesa Noeske (Drawing and Painting with Karen Day, ages 9–12)
By Fiona Hendrickson (Art Fun-damentals with Ali Wunder, ages 5–8)
By Eric Wei (Art Fun-damentals with Jennifer Yamane, ages 5–8)
By Caroline Gant (Creative Drawing and Painting for Teens with Karen Day)
By Maeve Barbour (Creative Drawing and Painting for Teens with Karen Day)
Along with the annual Student/Faculty Show open now in the Gallery, we’re showing off work by our young, budding artists (ages 5 and up) on the second floor of the Torpedo Factory.
By the way, registration is open for Spring classes and Summer Art Camp! There’s more information and a full catalog of youth and teen classes and Summer Art Camp on our website.
