News

ELLYN WEISS

Home

GessoHead - Blog

GessoHead

Delicacies at Biagio’s Studio B

Latest News and Thoughts from Ellyn Weiss

May 30, 2010

“

These people are having too much fun

Doris Ross and Colin Wnterbottom

Delicacies” is a charming little bijou of a juried show currently residing through June at Studio B, the small gallery adjacent to Biagio’s Fine Chocolate at 19th and T Sts. NW.

Weiss Weiss and Nora Weiss

Eighteen artists are represented, ranging from some of DC’s iconic names like Lou and Di Stovall, including many that the frequent DC art consumer will recognize (e.g. Pat Goslee, Novie Trump, Jody Bergstrasser, Helga Thomson, Sondra Arkin and moi) to the relatively new to the scene.

Tanja Bos's delicacies

Pat Goslee's work

Hung and curated by Ms. Arkin, it has been thoughtfully assembled and manages deftly to finesse the chief problem of group shows, which is bringing some level of visual coherence to the disparate. Tanjo Bos's tiny delicate landscapes are lovely, Doris Ross's glass pieces have a diginified minimalist presence, Pat Goslee's paintings are lusciously aquatic.

Helga Thomson's icons

My three addresses

I love Helga Thomson's scary little angel icons, full of mysterious imagery, Sondra's gorgeous new oil pastel and Susan Finsen's two airy abstractions. The last three of my pieces from the "My Life From the Satellite" grid are also here for your delectation.

by Susan Finsen

The Misses Sondra Arkin and Mary Beth Ramsey

The reception Wednesday evening was busting out of the space and people seemed exceptionally cheerful, which was no doubt at least partly attributable to the extraordinary chocolate provided by Biagio in addition to the wine. There will be another reception Thursday, June 24 so you have another chance to see this art and sample the amazing chocolate at the same time – that’s my kind of multi-tasking.

Joan Belmar, Cameron Petke and Marie Ringwald at Neptune Gallery

Latest News and Thoughts from Ellyn Weiss

May 30, 2009

Eliyse (left) and the civilians

Elyse Harrison, doyenne of Neptune Gallery, has, along with Cate Fraser of Fraser Gallery, consistently brought serious work by local artists to Bethesda. Neptune’s show this month is particularly rewarding, combining the depth of Joan Belmar’s otherworldly paintings with the zen of Cameron Pietke’s ceramic bells and the architectural discipline of Marie Ringwald’s constructions.

Joan and Elyse

I am normally too afflicted with shpielkes (i.e. antsy) to sit comfortably through artists’ talks, most of which are interchangeably vapid in any case. So I was surprised: a) to see so many civilians turn out on a Saturday afternoon in May for artists’ talks, and b) to find these talks interested and informed me. The artists are all thoughtful and genuine about their work, which can be seen in the product.

new Belmar work

Joan Belmar is a friend whose work I admire greatly. Born in Chile, resident in Spain and then the US, the element of layered experience, of more in the background than is revealed on first view, of lives that have been lived in the past but never left entirely behind, is always present in his work. The image of the bicycle, which appears prominently in a number of the new paintings, seems an almost literal expression of life as a traveler among cultures.

more new Belmar work

The newest work, which includes pieces that are physically flatter than the dimensional pieces of the last several years – that is, drawn and painted on a flat surface - is stunning. They create multiple visual layers, deep with information yet breathing in space, conjuring a kind of cosmic pattern-making. I love these.

Marie Ringwald

Marie Ringwald has the franchise on paintings/constructions based on architectural ideas. She uses found and embellished materials of all kinds and compresses the essentials of the built environment into each piece, ranging from the very small on up. The new pieces at Neptune, all of which were created very recently, represent a shift in direction from more monochromatic industrial buildings to color-drenched, almost tropical places. They have a human-scaled charm and accessibility.

Cameron Petke, family and bell

Cameron Petke is a new artist to me. A ceramicist and teacher, Petke’s MFA project involved research into the acoustic variables of ceramic bells. He has created a series of white ceramic bells, lovely in the clarity of their form and the simple dignity of their decoration, each of which has a unique tone and pitch. They add a serene quality to the gallery.

Cabaret re(RE)Voltaire Returns!

Latest News and Thoughts from Ellyn Weiss

May 13, 2010

B Stanley emotes

Be patient, I’ll get there. A bit of context first:

The original Cabarets Voltaire were a product of the chaos, dislocation and slaughter that World War I visited on Europe. Artists from all parts of the continent had sought refuge in neutral Switzerland. Cabaret Voltaire was the name that a group of said uprooted young artists and writers living in Zurich formed. They invited all comers to give performances and readings and generally to assert their right to a new expression of life and art, rejecting the strictures of form and content imposed by the hierarchical worlds of academia and criticism characteristic of the pre-war establishment utterly discredited in the rubble of Europe. Participants included Kandinsky, Paul Klee, de Chirico and Max Ernst.

Silvana Straw channeling mama

On July 28, 1916, Hugo Ball read the Dada Manifesto at Cabaret Voltaire. Here are some excerpts:

“How does one achieve eternal bliss? By saying dada. How does one become famous? By saying dada. With a noble gesture and delicate propriety. Till one goes crazy. Till one loses consciousness. How can one get rid of everything that smacks of journalism, worms, everything nice and right, blinkered, moralistic, europeanised, enervated? By saying dada…

Each thing has its word, but the word has become a thing by itself. Why shouldn't I find it? Why can't a tree be called Pluplusch, and Pluplubasch when it has been raining? The word, the word, the word outside your domain, your stuffiness, this laughable impotence, your stupendous smugness, outside all the parrotry of your self-evident limitedness. “

Ain’t that great? Dadadadadadadadada Flumsocket.

Betsy Stewart and Vivian Lassman

Richard Gould not making eye contact

In 1992, The WPA organized a series of Cabarets Voltaire that are remembered most fondly by those lucky enough to have attended; this year we have our own contemporary Cabarets Voltaire inspired by these distinguished forbears, sponsored by the WPA and Pink Line Project, curated by Alberto Gaitan and held in the fabulous-with-a -touch-of-grungy outdoor space of Gallery O/H on H St. NE, across from the Atlas Theater. Last Monday was the first of four Cabarets scheduled for Monday evenings in May, each of which will feature an entirely new set of performers, music, poetry, comedy, dance, food, drink and craziness.

Phillippa Hughes and Judy Jashinsky

B. Stanley, Director General of the DC Art Center (DCAC), was the heavily-emoting emcee and his odd little ditties and turn-of-the-century costuming were worth the price of admission alone, not to mention the bratwurst and trimmings provided by Biergarten Haus. There was a variety of live and filmed entertainment, all fully clothed – after all, it was quite a chilly evening. Among the highlights for me were Silvana Straw, a very funny woman with a very funny mother, and the consensus pinnacle of the evening, the dance performance by DC treasure Maida Withers and three compatriots. (full disclosure: I had to leave a bit early and didn’t get to see the films of the 1992 Cabaret, which I really regret.)

does this really need a caption?

Dancer Pile

Withers and her crew, in black and white with pillows fastened around various parts of their bodies with strapping tape, slithered around imposing themselves on walls, floors and the audience, coming together in various combinations and piles, always moving slowly as if through a dense liquid. It was strangely moving and sexy.
I’m looking forward to the next edition, Monday May 17.

This Saturday - Open Studios For Me, Mt. Rainier and Beyond

Latest News and Thoughts from Ellyn Weiss

May 11, 2010,

three guys want to meet you

We only open our studios to the public twice a year and this Saturday from 12 - 5 is one of those times. So come by and see my new work as well as my studio-mates Ellen Sinel and Betsy Stewart. and have a tipple. Then wander around our little art hive and see the Washington Glass School (Tim Tate, Michael Janis, Erwin Timmers, etc), Red Dirt (Margaret Boozer, Ani Kasten etc etc), Flux (Novie Trump, Laurel Lukaszewski, Mila Kagan etc.) and more. Then go on up Rhode Isand Ave. a few blocks and see the artists in the new Brentwood Arts Center, then up to Hyattsville for artdc. The fun never stops!

Where: Sinel/Stewart/Weiss Studios

3706 Wells Ave, Mt. Rainier, MD 20712

When: Saturday May 15, 12 - 5 pm

We're just two blocks from the DC line, so no excuses!

SOFAlab Part Deux

Latest News and Thoughts from Ellyn Weiss

May 5, 2010

the panel

SOFAlab is a joint project of Hamiltonian Gallery owner and George Mason physics professor Paul So; Helen Frederick, Director of the Printmaking program at George Mason; and Shanti Norris, Director of Smith Farm’s Joan Hisaoka Healing Arts Gallery. The general objective, as I understand it, is to explore the ways in which artists and scientists make sense of the world, identifying differences and commonalities and to look for opportunities in which collaborative efforts would be fruitful.

Helen Frederick and Giorgio Ascoli

Virgil Wong

So far, there have been two SOFAlab events. In the fall, Tod Machover of the MIT Media Lab - musician, scientist, composer, inventor of instruments that allow people with very limited muscular control to make music – gave a truly awe-inspiring lecture to a couple of hundred people at the Carnegie Institution. (Gotta say, I left that evening feeling like I waste space on this planet)
The second event was April 23rd at George Mason. (There is a rant which must precede my discussion of this fascinating event: It took me well over an extremely painful hour in stop and lurch traffic to get the 15 or so miles to Fairfax and I cannot understand how anyone lives in Virginia with that every day. It is mind-numbing, rage-inducing and incompatible with human life. Really – why aren’t you all marching every single fecking day in the faces of your legislators in Richmond who are clearly far more concerned about making laws that allow loaded handguns in elementary schools – I’m not making this stuff up - than in doing anything about your real problems?? OK then.)

Paul So and Helen Frederick

The second edition of SOFAlab featured three pairs of collaborators, one scientist and one artist in each. I was entranced by the work of Dr. Giorgio Ascoli of George Mason’s Krasnow Center for Advanced Studies. He is a biochemist and a neuroscientist and his interests center on the relationship between the structure of neurons at the cellular level and their functionality. He and his group make digitally reconstructed neurons, which are highly detailed drawings of individual neurons, each different, each with thousands of branching axions, the “output” branches that connect each neuron to the other neurons it is required to communicate with. Ascoli is just beginning a project with visual artist Michael Iacovone, whose artwork documents the navigation of space in directions mandated by either random or mathematically-driven decisions. While the fruit of the collaboration remains to be seen, I don’t think there’s any question but that Ascoli’s reconstructed neurons are artworks in themselves and hey have inspired me to think about some new work.

reconstructed neuron of a rat

Virgil Wong and Koan Jeff Baysa’s collaboration begins with medical imaging, but of a far more interactive and imaginative kind than an MRI or an xray. Wong, who is frighteningly qualified in both science and art, has created, for example, a medical avatar unique to an individual body that embodies – literally embodies – the patient’s medical records and conditions. You can use the mouse to explore throughout the interior of the body, enlarging and homing in on areas of interest. It is truly astonishing.

Frederick, Shanti Norris, Virgil Wong, Jeff Baysa

The final collaboration, one which has been going on for some time, is the work being done at Howard by Al Smith, chair of the art department, whose long-standing scholarly and artistic nterests involve the visualizing of music, and James Lindesay, professor of physics and founder of the Computational Physics Lab. Smith and Lindesay, whose scientific credentials include a raft of distinguished fellowships and publications, have developed a cross-disciplinary class called "Time as the Rhythm of Experience". They play with one of the central concepts of modern physics - that there is no "objective" time separate from the experience of the moment, an idea that can be traced through contemporary film-making, music and art.

Clarke and the Contrarians

Latest News and Thoughts from Ellyn Weiss

April 17, 2010

Clarke Bedford is a conflicted man, but that only became apparent well into his recent appearance with curator Laura Roulet, at Salon Contra, Pink Line Project’s series of intimate artist/art lover interactions. Bedford invents histories, sometimes beginning with a real life (General William Tecumseh Sherman, e.g.) and reimagining the possibilities, embellishing, embroidering, enlarging, filling in the blanks. Sometimes he creates whole lives, as in F.D. Kalley, “Prince of the American Renaissance.” And he does so quite joyfully and without restraint.

Curator Laura Roulet

Bedford, whose day job is as conservator of Paintings and Mixed Media Objects as the Hirshhorn, sees more than his share of the underbelly of the contemporary art world, particularly in its haute conceptual manifestations. His daily life is, therefore, full to bursting with possibilities for parody and he plows with great gusto in those fields. Bedford is smart, funny, self-deprecating and really fun to spend an evening with.

from the wundergarten

His current installation at Hillyer Art Place, “Wundergarten: Sa[l]vaging the Family Archive”, is a bit different, however, hence the tinge of ambivalence I detected. These are, or were, people that Bedford knew, a family whose extensive archive of photographs were put out on the street as refuse and were salvaged by Bedford. He spent hundreds of hours with the photos, each of which is carefully annotated on the back (e.g. “the Thanksgiving table before the turkey was brought in”) and which in the aggregate show a mid-century American family that was dedicated to doing all the things and visiting all the places mid-century America offered and to documenting each experience, all the while disintegrating. Based on the photos, Bedford created a richly cluttered interior that contains and reflects the family.

A lively discussion

Because of the distance in time and the ironic lens through which we now reflexively view every aspect of post-war America, there is a mocking aroma that can’t be avoided; even though Bedford does not intend it, it is the inescapable product of time and distance. And Bedford knows this, which makes him a little queasy. I appreciate him and his art all the more for this vulnerability.

Plan B is Five, Hooray Hooray

Latest News and Thoughts from Ellyn Weiss

April16, 2010

David and Paula toast to five Gallery Plan B is 5 years old and in honor of that milestone – nothing to sneeze at these days of vanishing art venues – Paula Amt, David Kalamar and crew mounted a show of figurative art by the gallery artists. I caught it just before closing, alas, so you can't actually see the show any more, but the artists have a long-term association with the gallery.

the Widerkehr wall

Chad States' work

My favorites were the little wall of Melissa Widerkehr’s women, more or less floating in space and asserting their right to be ethereal and superior, and Chad States’s photographs. States, a Philadelphia artist, asked people to classify themselves according to their degree of masculinity and then photographed them in what appear to be their own habitats, looking at the camera straight on, without overt expression. Two of the “masculine” portraits are in the gallery, the irony being, of course, that one is a biological woman. I was drawn to the photographs even before learning about the context because of the quality of the images and the in-your-face aspect of the subjects. (note to self: you MUST start wearing your glasses in galleries so you can read the wall text.) While I don’t always react well to art that requires lots of explanation, this time the experience requires it and enhances it.

Al Miner is naked at G Fine Art

Latest News and Thoughts from Ellyn Weiss

April 16, 2010

As I write this, I’m looking at a piece by Al Miner that I acquired years ago in a trade and while it has many of the same technical characteristics and concerns of his current work – almost life-size figuration zoomed in on a face that cannot be contained by the picture’s edge, it was painted by a different person. I go way back with Al Miner; we were members of the same artists coop back in the day when Al was Alison. I’m not revealing any secrets here since Al’s show, “Naked”, the inaugural one at G Fine Art’s wonderful new space on Florida Ave NE chronicles the changes in his body that have transformed him from a dumpy, unhappy woman to much more happy and, frankly, adorable man, although some of the paintings seem to reveal Miner having doubts about his choice mid-stream.

Al is much better lookiing than this

The pictures, portraying as they do an inherently brutal physical process, can make you wince (In my case, I swear I could feel a shooting pain in my boobs) but they are not gory; they are honest depictions of a journey and a courage both emotional and intensely physical. Miner's subject has traditionally been the face, I generally assumed they were his face, although the images have been depicted from distorting angles and at such close range that identity is difficult to be sure about. The close-in portraits done prior to transformation had the paradoxical effect of creating distance between viewer and subject. In "Naked", Miner has revealed himself in a more intimate and, again paradoxically, approachable way.

Cohan at Curator's Office

Latest News and Thoughts from Ellyn Weiss

April 14, 2010

Curator’s Office makes a good case this month for the proposition that less is more. Andrea Pollan, the curator in question, is showing the prints of Charles Cohan in her working and exhibition space at 1515 14th Street NW, the building that is home to several of DC’s high end galleries. Cohan uses only black (or perhaps off-black) ink in these unframed prints, which are fastened to the wall with silver magnets.

Pollan with Race Track

There are two series, one called “Tracks”, in which the artist has used a collagraphic process to overlay the aerial views of the racetracks used in various motor race series, including the 2008 Formula One series and the 2009 motoGP motorcycle series. If there is a reason, other than aesthetics, why these have been chosen, it is not apparent nor is it particularly necessary. (Frankly, I’m relieved to be spared the usual b.s.) The prints are strong and visually compelling; while the imagery is all on one plane with no effort at perspective, they nonetheless exert a kind of magnetic pull into the center – at least for me.

a peak

The second series, of which two examples are shown, is called “Peaks.” While it was explained to me, I’m still not exactly sure how they were made, but it has something to do with incrementally printing up to 24 plates on the same paper, each adding small bits of ink corresponding to topographical slices of the mountains, in this case Mt. Rainier and Mt. Hood. The end products are dreamy, smoky marks that seem to almost float above the surface of the paper, darkest at the highest points of the peaks.

<< Start < Prev 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 Next > End >>

Results 10 - 18 of 247