All Art Friday

All Art Friday

Amnesty International Art Festival

Amnesty International plans a multi-media Human Rights Art Festival, which is to take place in Silver Spring, Maryland, April 23-25. 

Produced by artist-activist and long-time human rights supporter Thomas Block, this is the first art festival under Amnesty's aegis and all events are focused on promoting awareness of human rights issues. All AI members and artists are donating their services to the event. In addition to art/advocacy activities, the festival will feature exhibitions of art, theatre, dance, and spoken-word performances, music, films, installations, and other media offerings, such as workshops, art walks, parades, and tastings of international foods. Local restaurants, art spaces, theatres, and community locales will be among the festival venues. The festival's executive producer is Norman Lear.

A schedule of festival activities is here. The long list of participating artists, organizations, and venues is here. Helpful information (maps, parking, dining) is here.

A brief video about Tom's Human Rights Painting Project is immediately below. (Tom's charcoal drawing on paper (see image to right) of Chinese dissident Wei Jingsheng, in exile and currently chair of the Overseas Chinese Democracy Coalition, is in my collection, I'm proud to note.) Additional information on the project is here.



Need to Make and View Art

The site Venetian Red, which I highlighted some months ago, posted a feature last week on the necessity of making and viewing art. I encourage you to read the post here. Though by no means the last word on the topic, the essay lends weight to the argument of "art for life's sake".

Rebecca Kamen in Art of Science - Science as Art

One of my favorite artists, Rebecca Kamen, about whom I've written a number of posts, will be showing in The Art of Science - The Science of Art, April 10 through May 5, at Frederick Community College, Frederick, Maryland. The group exhibition features works arising from interactions between artists and scientists to acknowledge their common creative processes. The show's opening reception, in the Mary Condon Hodgson Gallery on campus, is Saturday, April 10, 5:00 p.m. - 7:00 p.m. Don't miss this!

Pop-up Project 

Morton Fine Art is behind a "pop-up project" that will introduce the Washington, D.C., metropolitan area to contemporary artists — from our region and around the nation — in unusual settings or locations. The first exhibition, I Dream Awake, is scheduled for March 18 - May 28, in the Penn Quarter downtown (625-627 E Street, N.W., Washington, D.C.). The opening reception is March 26, 6:00 p.m. - 9:00 p.m.

Charleston Arts Festival

The Cultural Art Department of the City of North Charleston, South Carolina, will present its 2010 North Charleston Arts Festival April 30 - May 8. This nine-day gathering of the arts is one of the most comprehensive, featuring national, regional, and local performers, ethnic and cultural groups, and community groups offering juried art competitions, fine craft exhibitions, a gem and mineral show, concerts, theatre and dance performances, children's activities, an art walk, and scores of other events. It culminates in a display of fireworks over Cooper River. For updates, follow the festival on FaceBook. 

Laura Baron at Atheneaum

Singer-songwriter Laura Baron, known for her signature style of jazz, will be making an appearance April 8, 7:00 p.m., at the Athenaeum (201 Prince Street) in Alexandria, Virginia. Tickets are $10 and available at the door. To preview some of her songs, go here.

IKEA Gets Culture

No shopping experience is complete without art, or so it goes at IKEA. Read here about the future experience in store for shoppers in Russia.

Trine Bumller at Zg in Chicago

I recently came across the work of Trine Bumiller, an abstract oil painter who takes her inspiration from nature. Her newest paintings are on exhibit at Chicago's Zg Gallery. The show, Liminal, comprises individual oils on canvas and multi-panel assemblages of various-sized paintings, all of trees. (Don't scoff. These aren't trees as you might be accustomed to seeing them painted, although they always remain recognizable as trees.) Some of the assemblages have as many as six joined canvases or panels.

Though I could only view the images online, I find the paintings a thematically well-conceived and engaging mix. Bumiller's overlay or underlay of spirals or circles or other geometrics draws your attention into the center of a panel and then sends it back to the outer edges of a canvas; other markings that look like snow or rain evoke a finely observed sense of season or of season-to-come. Her use of color — built-up layers of oil glazes — beautifully sets time of day or season; the skies in her paintings, though in the background, are beautifully realized. Whether their colors are at their most vivid or muted, in the background or more forcefully present, the paintings create a sense of tranquility. They're meditative. I particularly like "Sunspots", "Distant Memory", "Light in the Forest", and "Ghost Story" on the Zg site. (Many more images are available on Bumiller's own site; be sure to go there and click on "work" to view. And visit the gallery pages to which I link below, especially that for Robischon Gallery, for images of earlier work.)

A hardcover book featuring the new paintings is available through Zg and is signed by the artist. Details are here.

In addition to Zg, Bumiller is represented by Kathryn  Markel Fine Arts in New York City and Robischon Gallery in Denver, Colorado.

Margery Goldberg To Be Honored

Artist, Zenith Gallery founder, and owner, nonprofit founder, arts activist, and arts mentor Margery Goldberg is one of Washington, D.C.'s treasures. Tomorrow, Goldberg will be recognized at the 3rd Annual Women's History Month Awards ceremony as a "Ward 4 Women in the Arts Honoree". She will be presented with the "Entrepreneurship in the Arts" award. (For information, telephone 202-724-8025 or e-mail RSVP4muriel@gmail.com.)

On March 22, Goldberg will be honored as one of four finalists, in the category "Excellence in Service to the Arts", at the 25th Annual Mayor's Arts Awards event. The honor is conferred by the District of Columbia on artists, arts organizations, and arts patrons. This event is open to the public and will take place at the Historical Society of Washington, D.C., 801 K Street, N.W. (Space is limited.)

Congratulations! Your awards are well-deserved for all that you've done for arts in our region.

He Said It!

A painting can help us to think something that goes beyond this senseless existence. That's something art can do. ~ Gerhard Richter, Doubt and Belief