GessoHead has just returned from an extended visit to the Isle of Sloth and is attempting to fling herself back into the current of DMV art. So far, efforts have been half-assed; I've poked a toe in and here comes the rest! There are a few shows that I want to write about ASAP before they disappear.
     

Laura Elkins and Mr. Fridge

First, there’s Laura Elkins’s solo at The Fridge, that funky little gallery in the alley on Barracks Row. Laura is continuing to mine the rich vein of her decade-long pre-occupation with painting self-portraits in the guise of our county’s first ladies. This time she’s gone big and even more scary – and I mean that in the best possible way. The show is called “White House Negligee” and features the first ladies in their dressing rooms in various stages of deshabillee, sporting alarmingly aggressive expressions and sometimes brandishing weapons. I find the Hilary Clintons most effective, probably because the pictures so vividly capture what I believe to be the woman’s true feelings.
 

Favianna Rodrigeuz

   Then there’s the group show at Studio Gallery called “The Magic of the Melting Pot: Immigration in America.” Let me start with a little nit-pick: as is often the case, I am a bit put off by the distance between the title of the show and what I see on the walls. What I see are some very interesting, sometimes superior pieces of art by artists who have come, or whose parents have come, to this country from various places around the globe. I don’t see all that much that speaks to me of the “immigrant experience.” I wish curators didn’t feel they had to assemble topical consistency, or suggest it. Is that too crabby?

Graham Boyle

    OK, on to the art - and there is a lot of that to like. I love Favianna Rodriguez’s high-key prints.  Rodriguez, from Oakland, California, uses the bold colors and hortatory text of 20th century political posters. The work is attention-grabbing and intelligent. Graham Boyle, whose studio is Mt. Rainier is across the driveway from mine, has contributed some evocative hand-altered photographs that create a feeling of time passing and memory dimming. Susan Cho’s parents emigrated from North Korea to  Northern Virginia before her birth and her images on layers of sheer cloth speak of ancestors left behind.

Joan Belmar

Finally, Joan Belmar, who was born in Chile and landed in DC 12 years ago after living in Spain, has long dealt in the emotional currency of memory. His meticulous, dimensional pieces create both the physical reality and the emotional content of distance, separation and nostalgia. As always, I find Joan’s work compelling.

    I finished First Friday in Dupont Circe with a visit to Hillyer Art Space, the gallery run by International Arts and Artists that fronts on the alley space it shares with such tony company as the Cosmos Club and the Phillips Gallery. The place was completely jammed with well-dressed young bodies. Gotta confess, it’s a mystery to me, but Hillyer openings  have somehow acquired a reputation with the cool kids. I’m not complaining. I wish I could bottle it. Anyway, truth be told, the work was pretty much obscured by the bodies and GessoHead suffered waves of clautrophobia, but she gave it her best..

A glimpse of Kyan Bishop's salt mountains

filling the main exhibition space. (The rumor is that she wanted to make them even bigger but that the Hillyer folks were concerned about possible collapse.) Visitors on opening night were given a 7-ounce packet of the salt in a plastic bag printed with the information that this is the approximate salt content in the average human body. The packets encouraged reflection about the meaning of “elemental” and the interdependence between the human body and the most basic aspects of the earth around us.
    Leah Appel’s photography show, “Southern Exposures”, occupies the front exhibition space. Her pictures of the park-like squares that define Savannah Georgia, each dedicated to a historical figure, are lyrical and lush, toned using an old technique called “Berg printing” that gives them a golden brown patina.
   

Craig Kraft's neon

There are some Ellyn Weiss encaustics back there

Finally, the terrific new Members’ Gallery, stripped, painted and spiffed, makes its debut this month with a three-person show curated by local sculptor, Barbara Liotta. I was lucky enough to be chosen for the show, where Barbara has hung a small grid of my “seascape’ encaustics, along with the amazing explosions of neon artist Craig Kraft and Lauren Kotkin’s, precise and delicate paper cut-outs. The show is called “Dispersed” and, according to the curator, “the pieces in this exhibition explode, flinging their elements outward and only retrieving them in the final arrangement.” Wow. Couldn’t have said it better myself.