…I’m happy to report was a great time and very well attended, with over 200+ people showing up. I’ll be there tonight for an artist’s talk, and the show will be up until March 1 if anyone wants to stop by.
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| From Art of the Soul Opening 2/16/10 8:00 PM |
I’ll have some new drawings (preview above) in the Art of the Soul exhibition, which opens Friday, in one of those awesome not-yet-furnished spaces adjacent to the Busboys and Poets on K Street. Lots of other talented artists will be showing their work as well, so it will be well worth your time to swing by! Details below:
Location
486 K Street NW
Washington, DC 20001
Opening reception
February 12, 8pm-midnight
Exhibition runs from February 12 – March 1
Gallery Hours
Weekends 11am – 7pm, or by appointment only
Hello, bragging rights! Today I won a House Hunt DC prize after a Da Vinci Code-esque hunt through the National Gallery. (This is the contest created by Andrew Wodzianski in which clues are placed all over the city.) The prize includes free tickets to the House fundraiser and what I presume will be a delightfully weird after party, a painting from the show(!), soap on a rope noose, and this spiffy little number:
The last several months have not been artistically successful for me. Several gallery rejections, no Tim Tate-esque discovery at Artomatic (though my co-exhibitor Adam managed to get an awesome show at the Hillyer from his AOM work, which I highly recommend you go see). So it was with nothing else to lose that I applied for the new Bravo TV art reality show last Saturday. Partially just to see what it was like, but also because it seemed as though the time was right to play the artistic lottery. The odds are stacked against you in every possible way, but until you get that official rejection, you can daydream in the back of your mind about getting discovered.
It was anticlimactic, of course–after waiting in line for over six hours and having my portfolio reviewed by an intimidating blond woman who implied that she didn’t have a lot of time on her hands, I was given the classic ‘thanks, but your work doesn’t fit with our vision’ heave ho–but I met some fellow artists while waiting in line, and got six hours worth of interesting conversation, and three post-rejection drinking buddies (Dezi, a comic artist, Mike, a painter and Kim, a new media artist who advanced to a couple more rounds of interviews before getting eliminated). Over beer we decided that we should create an exhibit of reality show rejects (ie, ourselves), gossiped about the fellow artists waiting in line, and chatted about our art and lives, and movies, and jobs, and what we were going to do next. I wonder if this sort of camaraderie happens in other reality show lines.
Anyway, if you want a play-by-play account of the experience you can check out the Twitter page Mike wrote for BOMB magazine–he did an excellent job of documenting the weirdness of it all.
Ben Tolman gets my “Best of” pick for the second floor–his exquisite drawings, semi-crude presentation, and oversized, overtly-honest statement all seemed to strike the right note for AOM:
In case you can’t make out the writing on the wall, it reads:
Hello whoever you are,
here are a few drawings I made. Your [SIC] probably tired from too much walking around so feel free to sit in my chair here for awhile. Take a look at this stuff here on the wall or the stuff I left for you on the table. If you like some of this stuff you can get it on my website! Please put something in my guestbook so I will know you were here. I especially like it when people leave me little drawings. That means you. Oh, one more thing by the time you read this I will have just gotten married and I will off wandering around Europe, so I won’t be here to keep an eye on my space, so if you don’t mind, tidy it up a little for me. I hope I at least provided you a little entertainment while you rested up. And I hope you enjoy the rest of you [SIC] day.Ok, bye.
Ben Toleman
I took his suggestion and sat down to leave him a sketch. It’s difficult to draw in someone else’s sketchbook, I realized (how easily the part of your brain that allows you to work uninhibited gets switched off).
Apparently, his statement also inspired one of his viewers to write a confessional as well, which I thought was sweet:
More information to be found at our Facebook event page.
I am going to be painting a mural on Monday near the National’s Stadium, which I find tremendously exciting. I’m used to working small–most of my art can easily fit
in my purse, which comes in handy if you commute on the train 10 hours a week–so the scale will be a challenge. But even so! One of the things I always liked about drawing is that you’re never quite sure how it’s going to turn out until it’s done, which is doubly the case if the medium is new to you.
Pictures to follow. And if you want to swing by on Monday, April 13, I will be painting on near the National Stadium / Navy Yard Metro (Green Line) on Half Street SE, between M and N.
I’ll be selling some work at the Pyramid Atlantic Art for a Cause this weekend, which includes talks by collectors, wine tastings, and loads of good art. I’ll be there Friday evening (where the wonderfully innovative Philippa Hughes will be giving a lecture) but it’ll be on sale throughout Sunday. Proceeds go to youth outreach programs in DC and Montgomery County.
More info:
Pyramid Atlantic Art Center
Philippa Hughes: Arty Singles Night in Silver Spring
