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ELLYN WEISS

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Ellyn's Blog

Latest News and Thoughts from Ellyn Weiss

I am Ellyn Weiss, aka Gessohead. I live and work in Washington, DC and in Truro, MA during the summer. I use this blog for my news and to comment on the art I see in and around both towns. That includes the galleries, studios and alternative spaces that sometimes get lost amidst the art-industrial complex of institutional Washington and official Provincetown.

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Nevan Lahart at Salon Contra

Latest News and Thoughts from Ellyn Weiss

March 9, 2010

Nevan Lahart

You gotta love Nevan Lahart. He looks just like one imagines an Irish artist would look: a bit disheveled, a little dessicated; wiry, to be kind, skinny to be accurate; gap-toothed, big-smiled and gripping a can of beer. Words pour forth that could be poems of urban decay and disillusionment. My favorite: “Giotto didn’t make art, he made propaganda for the Church.” Hard to argue with that.

Lahart's mechanical painter

He makes his art quickly, spontaneously, with whatever is at hand. He doesn’t overthink or overplan and he makes in-your-face work about what he is thinking and doing at any time. His titles are terrific, e.g.: “The Everyday Miracle of Turning Drink Into Piss.” I don’t know about you, but I really wish I’d thought of that one.

Lahart and Kathryn Cornelius

Lahart has been brought to Washington by Solas Nua, an organization dedicated to showcasing contemporary Irish culture. He will be here for a month, during which he will fill a large space on the ground floor of 1200 First St. NE, made available by the NOMA Business Improvement District. Last night he was the featured guest at Salon Contra, Philippa Hughes’ series of episodic evening arts events. Kathryn Cornelius was there to act as questioner, but there was hardly ever any need for prompting or probing since Lahart is a life force of ideas and opinions.

part of the Royal Hibernian installation

Much of the talk centered around Lahart’s recent exhibit at the Royal Hibernian Academy in Dublin, which came down just a couple of days before he flew to DC. Titled “A Lively Start to a Dead End” (originally ‘Shit in my Brain at 40 cents an Hour”, an accurate assessment of the value of an artist’s labor), it is a sprawling installation of dozens of paintings on wooden structures, a deconstructed car, a dead horse, a painter’s garret and much much more. It is messy, assaultive and all over the block and, amazingly, it manages to work. I cannot wait to see what emerges in NOMA.

Thoreau's Legacy at the Union of Concerned Scientists

Latest News and Thoughts from Ellyn Weiss

March 6, 2009

Been missing me? I've been in Boston and then in Florida but I'm back in DC and seeing some art. The first is a show, an organization and a cause tthat I have a strong connection with.

Tom Drymon, Elliott Negin, Micheine Klagsbrun

In 2009, the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) (which I serve as a member of the Board of Directors) in partnership with Penguin Classics published “Thoreau’s Legacy,” a book of personal essays on the effect of global warming in the tradition of Henry David Thoreau’s “Walden.” More than 70 writers participated in the project, which can be viewed at http://www.ucsusa.org/americanstories/.

Rita Elsner and "Tranquil"

As a follow-up, UCS invited visual artists to submit work responding to the same theme, the personal significance of the environmental changes associated with climate change. Over 140 pieces of work were submitted with 15 ultimately selected by the jurors, which included Michael O’Sullivan, Washington Post art critic; Elliott Negin, UCS Media Director, and yours truly. The artwork is hung in the public spaces of UCS’s Washington, DC green offices at 1825 K St. NW (ask them to tell you about that if you visit) and will be there for a year.

Kathy Karlson, simon O'Sulivan, Pat Goslee

I am constantly bowled over by the generosity of my fellow artists who donate work to worthy causes many times each year. On this occasion, the artists have agreed to lend their work for a year, which is just amazing and I can’t thank them all enough. Note: it is all for sale without commission, so come on by and take a look.
Having said all that, I must confess that the reception was so crowded that I really couldn’t take pictures of the art, just the people with little hints of the art in the background. I will get some images of the art soon and post them.

Sondra Arkin, Jessica Beels, Jenny Freestone

The work, which covers the widest range of media, truly reflects distinctly individual responses to climate disruption, from the delicate drawing of bees, whose pollination makes our food grow, by Rebecca Clark; Laura Moriarty’s wax “Erosion Mountain”, her imaginary geological structure; Elizabeth Morisette’s ominously disquieting oil spill made of shoelaces; JoAnne Schiavone’s photograph of a work of environmental art made by placing a long rope of crocheted plastic bags at the water’s edge, mimicking the tide line; Rita Elsner’s goache of a homestead sinking beneath the rising water; Sondra Arkin’s encaustic of the Sargasso Sea, where the convergence of ocean currents brings the plastic detritus of civilization to one of the world’s great biological nurseries.

Michael O'Sullivan and UCS's Cheryl Siebert

Meanwhile, as you can see, the reception was cooking and of the 15 artists, the 11 who live more or less locally were all there.
The artists include: Sondra Arkin, Jessica Beels, Joan Belmar, Rebecca Clark, Rita Elsner, Jenny Freestone, Pat Goslee, Kathy Karlson, Micheline Klagsbrun, Laura Moriarty, Elizabeth Morisette, Mary Ott, Mark Parascandola and JoAnne Schiavone.

Margo Humphrey at the David Driskell Center

Latest News and Thoughts from Ellyn Weiss

February 7, 2010

Margo Humphrey at the David Driskell Center

The David Driskell Center at the University of Maryland has mounted a show of the work of Margo Humphrey that must be seen by afficionados of the art of printmaking and anyone else who loves vibrant in-your-face color and the energy of art that reflects a richly idiosyncratic personal vision. It’s that good.

The Last Bar B Que

This is the first time that I have ventured so deep into the territory of the University of Maryland campus at College Park and I have to say that Ms. Sondra and I came close to giving up after an hour’s crawl through rush hour traffic from DC, followed by a frustrating search in the dark for the location. Note to the rest of you: 1) do not go in rush hour; 2) the Driskell Center is in the same building as Cole Field House. When you’re asking directions, no-one knows the former but everyone knows the latter.

The Red Bed

But I am so glad we persevered, because this is a terrific exhibit. Margo Humphrey has been making prints – mostly stone lithographs, a difficult and dying technique – for more than 40 years. While she is academically credentialled with a BFA from California College of Arts and Crafts and an MFA from Stanford, plus a faculty appointment at the University of Maryland, her work has the immediacy and subjectivity characteristic of the naïve, or “outsider”, artist. Nor does it for a moment seem forced. This is the work of a woman who has been able since childhood to access and express her individual world and lush imagination. Each piece is teeming with fecund (I love that word) imagery, thick with figures, objects and designs, pushing through the edge of the picture plane.

We managed to arrive just as Ms. Humphrey was beginning her discussion. She’s the person you wished you had for your favorite auntie and the person who had to make this work: animated, energetic, full of life and without pretense. She said that her objective is to "give things a soul and make them come alive" and I would have to say that she has accomplished that goal in many of her prints. So what are you waiting for?

Some new work from moi

Latest News and Thoughts from Ellyn Weiss

January 27, 2009

Here is some of my newest work - it's all encaustic on board. I wish I took better pictures.

"Paperworks" at Pyramid Atlantic

Latest News and Thoughts from Ellyn Weiss

January 23, 2010

There is a little gem of a show now at Pyramid Atlantic, the fabulous printmaking/papermaking/letterpress atelier/school/gallery in renascent Silver Spring. It’s called, appropriately enough, “Paperworks” and the works include a bit of everything on paper, from etching to drawing to cut-outs to photography.

me taking a bad picture of Ress's piece

Beverly Ress contributes three entrancing pieces that feature tiny, delicate drawings and cut paper marooned on full sheets of paper. In less sensitive hands, the elements could easily have seemed random, but Ress combines and places them with sure-handed elegance. (My picture utterly fails to show anything about her piece, regrettably, but it does have a reflection of me taking the picture, which I kind of like.)

Jake Muirhead's Broken Windows

Sikorska's grid

I was also drawn to Jake Muirhead’s work, particularly the etching titled “Broken Windows,” which is appealing in an entirely different way. It’s dark and dense, evoking urban decay, perhaps the detritus of our once-proud industrial infrastructure. Elzbieta Sikorska’s grid of drawings on rice paper hang suspended about a foot off of the wall. I love the drawings of imaginary animals but, I gotta say, the suspended grid format is beginning to feel like a gimmick for her. Time to cut the cord, m’dear.

Jessup at Adams Bank and Jenne at Civilian

Latest News and Thoughts from Ellyn Weiss

January 17, 2009

There is perhaps little that unites these two shows except for the fortuity that they opened on successive nights in DC and as I think about, they could be argued as bracketing the current art scene.

Georgia Milld Jessup

one of the original eight in the Vogel collection

The first, at the Adams National Bank on 17th St NW, is a modest show of a small portion of the work of Georgia Mills Jessup, but it comes with a terrific story. Ms. Jessup, a descendant of the Pamunkey Tribe of Virginia, is now in her gorgeous, vibrant 80’s. She is one of 18 siblings of a large DC family of many artists (including my friend and her niece Adrienne Mills, the well-known local photographer). After earning a BFA from Howard and an MFA from Catholic U., she went on to teach all kinds of art to DC pubic school students and to oversee the art curriculum for the entire system – back in the day when every public school kid had art and music classes twice weekly.

And there’s much more to the story: One day in the early 60’s, the young artist and teacher arranged to rent a home in DC from Leonard Vogel. When she met him to conclude the agreement, they began to talk. (Having spent just ten minutes in discussion with the engaging Ms. Jessup, I can imagine this conversation.) When he learned that she was an artist, he asked to see her work. She packed 8 paintings onto the roof of her car and drove it over to him, whereupon Mr. Vogel said he would buy them all and that she would not be a renter because they would constitute her down payment on the purchase of the house.

a new piece - the view from Jessup's deck

Those eight paintings constitute the core of the current exhibit, supplemented by a few of Ms. Jessup’s recent work. The exhibit has been arranged by Mr. Vogel’s son, Kenneth, as a tribute to both Ms. Jessup and his father. And so it is.

Paul Ruppert and Phil Barlow at Civilian

Ms Civiian, Jayme Maclellan

Civilian Art Projects recently moved to 7th Street across from the Convention Center, in one of the buildings that until recently housed the Ruppert family’s Warehouse theater/gallery/café complex. I love the location, which is still redolent of those days and the space has not been scrubbed antiseptically clean.

the sick boy scout

George Jenne is a Brooklyn artist who supports himself by making props and models for tv and movies. He is showing in DC for the first time at Civilian. “Don’t Look Now” is billed as an installation, a “multi-media environment reminiscent of a movie set.” I don’t know if I buy the installation as a coherent whole, (e.g. the graphite drawings are pretty great-looking but what’s their connection with the skewed movie posters and the props?) but there are a couple of terrific objects definitely worth the visit. My favorite is a deeply disturbing boy scout with a furry monster head, scuffed-up bloody knees and other obscurely allusive parts.

Fowler, Ben-Achour and Manley at Gallery Plan

Latest News and Thoughts from Ellyn Weiss

Jan. 13, 2010

Heidi Fowler at the opening

Bravo to Gallery Plan B’s Paula Amt and her crew, who continue to show strong regional artists in the 14th Street corridor, economy be damned. The current offerings are Heidi Fowler’s and Anne Manley’s paintings and Sabri Ben-Achour’s ceramics.

Ben-Achour's work

Fowler's work

I was immediately drawn to Ben-Achour’s macho ceramics; the best are muscular and aggressive in their prickliness. Which is in substantial contrast, actually, to the sweet young guy who made them.

Sabri Ben-Achour

I also love Heidi Fowler’s work. In her paintings, the most stark elements of modern industrial architecture loom over cities and landscapes. They are done on fairly subtly textured surfaces that enhance a quality of transience that is quite evocative.

Kick Start?

Latest News and Thoughts from Ellyn Weiss

Jan. 13, 2009

I seem to be suffering a bout of creative lassitude. So I taped a big piece of paper to the wall and this is what happened. Papersmoke? Maybe it's the germ of something new.

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