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"Dark Matter" - my new show at Nevin Kelly

Latest News and Thoughts from Ellyn Weiss

September 4, 2009

"Lost Continent" - the invitation image

My new work, titled "Dark Matter" will be shown at the Nevin Kelly Gallery from September 17 - October 17. It's all made of tar, it's oddly luscious, and I think you'll like it. Come party with me at the gallery at the opening reception, Thursday, September 17, 6 - 9 pm. The official info follows, along with a snippet from the press release that the gallery put together.

Nevin's new space is right at the Columbia Heights metro. Be there!

"Dark Matter"
New Work in Tar by Ellyn Weiss
Opening Reception Thursday, September 17, 6-9 pm.
Nevin Kelly Gallery
1400 Irving Street, NW, #132
Washington, DC 20010
P: 202.232.3464
F: 202.232.3465
This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it
Show runs from 9/17 - 10/17

"Weiss has discovered that tar is not the dull and uniformly black substance it first appears to be. It contains a range of subtle hues—rich browns, subtle grays and warm amber tones. She uses these colors to coax images from the tar. The images are not planned in advance, but reveal themselves as she works.They have an eerily organic quality to them, appearing to the artist like living things “swimming up from the primeval darkness.” They register with us at the most basic level of all, as if triggering a memory we carry in our DNA of the moment life began."

Weisses do the Tourist Thing

Latest News and Thoughts from Ellyn Weiss

August 28, 2009

Weiss and Emo and a very steep dune.

For reasons that are too long and boring to bother with, we had to put 100 miles on Nora the Spawn's car quickly in order to qualify it for re-inspection, so Weiss and I decided to do the tourist thing and visit the various beauty spots in the National Seashore Park that occupies 2/3 of the land mass up here at the ragged end of the Cape. And beautiful they are, too.

Weiss and Emo at Highland Light

Cape Cod Light at Highland is the oldest lighthouse on Cape Cod, chartered by President Washington in 1797. As a result of the relentless push of the winter storms, the 10-acre plot of land designated by Washington has eroded to 4 acres and a couple of years ago the lighthouse was moved 500 yards back from its original spot to avoid slipping into the ocean.

Race Point solitude

Race Point is at the tip of the Cape where the Atlantic ocean and Cape Cod Bay meet. There are fields of dune grass, rolling dunes, and miles of space where one can, if one chooses, find solitude. Or you can go over to where the fisherman are camped in their humongous RVs drinking beer and waiting for the poor fishies to swim into their range.

Non-Toxic Yet Oddly Threatening

Latest News and Thoughts from Ellyn Weiss

August 28, 2009

A couple of doses of the SARS virus

Tony curating my Swine Flu print

I just had the true privilege of working for a week at the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown with Tony Kirk, a Master Printer who has done editions with artists like Helen Frankenthaler, Mary Frank and Donald Sultan. He used only non-toxic materials and worked with six experienced printers to teach his methods and to assist us in producing multiple plates and prints. In an ironic repudiation of the theme of environmental friendliness, I did a series of plates based on viruses (swine flu, SARS, etc.) that I can use all winter. No-one will ever believe the prints are mine, lacking as they do the ubiquitous ink thumbprints that are my signature.

Those Crazy 12 x 12's at PAAM

Latest News and Thoughts from Ellyn Weiss

August 5, 2009

Now THAT'S an opening reception!

Nathalie Ferrier's piece

Every summer the Provincetown Art Association and Museum does a very successful fundraiser; artists are invited to bring in a piece measuring 12” x 12”, everything is hung mega salon-style in one of the big, airy rooms in the museum and a silent auction goes on for a month.

Phyllis Ewen's piece

my 12 x 12 - encaustic, monoprint, etc.

The opening reception is a colossal must-attend scrum of artists and art lovers. Everyone participates, from the amateurs to many of the big names in these parts. To bid, you buy a paddle for $10 and drop in periodically during the month to see how your bids are faring and decide whether to go higher. It gets really interesting and competitive in a passive-aggressive kind of way on the last day or two.

Varujan Boghosian at PAAM

Latest News and Thoughts from Ellyn Weiss

July 30, 2009

The Provincetown Art Association and Museum (PAAM) is hosting a major show of the work of Varujan Boghosian. Boghosian, who taught at Dartmouth for many years before his recent retirement, has been called an artist of the found object but is to my mind an artist of the selected object; he has assembled an enormous collection of evocative, weathered, heavily used artifacts by haunting dumps and junk stores, as well as looking around himself with an always observant eye. All of this stuff is stored on shelves and other visible spots inside his working space so that his eye can constantly assess the possibilities of combination and construction. When the eye and mind reach a decision, a piece is made – always from the available material, nothing new added. The resulting pieces are redolent of past times, often of the constant use of people now gone, of a time when everything was made by hand and had a functional purpose.

The PAAM show, rather than a career retrospective, is made up almost entirely of work completed within the last couple of years, which I find hugely moving – a testament to the brilliant vitality of a man whose life has been spent in the making of art.

The Maskman Cometh

Latest News and Thoughts from Ellyn Weiss

July 30, 2009

Ron, Sondra and a squashed penny

The mask

Maskwoman, actually, but that does ruin the reference, not to mention the meter. Ms. Sondra Herself, and her faithful accomplice, Ron, spent some time with us on the beautiful Cape. Usually, we do mad amounts of printing while she’s here, but this time she brought along the mask she is working on for a fundraiser for women with head and neck cancer. Each participant was given an actual patient’s unique mask – they use them for the therapy – and began with that. Ms. S has spent prodigious amounts of time and thought on this project and she finished it up here. The mask is based on an African nkisi nail fetish, used by Congolese to protect people, to destroy evils spirits and prevent or cure illness. It is fierce, frightening, potent, a thing of concentrated power. All of the 100 masks made for this benefit will be exhibited at the Katzen Center in September.

Sinel and Farrell at Wohlfarth in PTown

Latest News and Thoughts from Ellyn Weiss

July 25, 2009

GessoHead has been a woefully neglectful bad bad girl and needs punishment. Do I have any volunteers?
It has been a freakish year meteorologically (try saying that one a few times) on beautiful Cape Cod, as I gather it has been most other places as well. Cold rain – on July 24 it was wet and down in the 50’s – punctuated by tragically infrequent days of sun. I feel positively soggy, like I need to be wrung out periodically. BUT, I do digress.

opening reception at Wohlfarth PTown

The proud proprietor, Vinnie Wohlfarth

Soggy notwithstanding, I have been to see some art. First, appropriately, the PTown branch of Wohlfarth, the eponymous gallery run by Vinnie Wohlfarth with a longtime location on 9th Street NE in Washington’s Brookland neighborhood. For many years, Wohlfarth up here was largely known for the lush American impressionist work of the Cape Cod School and its modern landscape progeny, but 2009 has brought a big and interesting change. The gallery has moved to a new location in the East End of PTown, closer to some of the good contemporary galleries, and is featuring a small group of diverse contemporary artists, including Ellen Sinel and Lisa Farrell from DC.

Ellen Sinel and work

Lisa Farrell and work

Ellen (whose studio, I must reveal, is so close to mine that I could throw a rubber chicken into it on a good day) is showing some of her gorgeous trademark Truro grasses, along with a large and impressive painting of birch trees shining in the sun that I watched her develop over the winter. Alas, for you fans, that one has already sold.
Lisa has several large, dense black and white landscape drawings, wintry and prickly and looming. It's just really nice to see a little outpost of DC thrive up here, so you go, Wohlfarth.

Tabitha Vevers at the Provincetown Art Asso. and Museum

Latest News and Thoughts from Ellyn Weiss

July 15, 2009

Tabitha Vevers is the scion of Provincetown artistic royalty Tony Vevers and Elspeth Halvorsen and she grew up in the house once owned by Mark Rothko, but she has a distinct and entirely individual voice. She has a large and stunning show ongoing at the Provincetown Art Association and Museum.

Vevers’ work is shaped in contrast: grotesque and exquisite, heavenly and monstrous, serene and violent. The technique is Renaissance in detail and refinement, the subjects are on their face timeless, women like Boticelli’s, scenes even a bit reminiscent of religious paintings. But look closer and the subject matter is often shocking: rape, disfigurement, genetic mutation.
These paintings are the product of a mature and thoughtful artist, with the highest level of technical skill married to thoughtfulness and intelligence.

Provincetown: the good, the bad and the just strange

Latest News and Thoughts from Ellyn Weiss

July 8, 2009

Provincetown Harbor

There is no place quite like Provincetown – the end of the road, where everything that didn’t adhere elsewhere comes to roost. There are lots of places all over the world where breathtaking natural beauty butts up against the most crass of commercial touristism – Carmel, Capri, Aspen, just to name a few. But there aren’t so many where the scraggly folk and the artists and the wildness of the protected dunelands manage to somehow continue to overcome, or at least to maintain a fragile balance.

Pilgrim Monument

Spank the Monkey

Each year there is a new threat to the edge of the Cape, from mansionizers, commercial developers, price craziness, even the weather. There are endless meetings of endless commissions and boards, demonstrations, letter screeds to the editor. It changes, not always for the better, but it endures, so far.

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