Arts
‘Bugatti’ at Easton’s Academy Art Museum
Georgetown Art Walk
• September 21, 2012
Unique things are happening in Georgetown’s gallery community. From microscopic sculptures, to affordable contemporary art sales, to themed shows devoted to relationships and natural wonders, it’s a great time to get involved with the local gallery scene before the fall art season kicks into high gear. Don’t miss these late summer exhibitions.
Addison/Ripley Fine Art
On view through Aug. 31, Addison/Ripley Fine Art is presenting a group exhibition guest curated by gallery artist Dan Treado. In his work, Treado uses squeegees, scrapers, and invented brushes to build up many thin layers of paint that produce taut, skin-like surfaces that have almost no evidence of a mark of the hand. Often individual images are combined to form a single larger painting. Treado also takes on interactive projects with friends and fellow artists and has worked on a few series with the theme: “All My Friends Are…” The latest project, titled “All My Friends Are Painters,” a continuation of this theme, is currently on view at Addison/Ripley. Artists include W.C. Richardson, Jeffrey Smith, Tom Bunnell, Steve Cushner, Colin Treado, Katherine Mann, Chris Gregson and Maggie Mitchell.
1670 Wisconsin Ave., NW – www.AddisonRipleyFineArt.com
Heiner Contemporary
“Winging It,” a group exhibition devoted to all things ornithological, has been extended through Aug. 24 at Heiner Contemporary. The exhibition takes as its starting point three works by American naturalist painter and ornithologist Roger Tory Peterson. Peterson’s 1934 field guide, “A Field Guide to the Birds,” was the first available to amateurs, which revolutionized and popularized bird watching through a new identification system. “Winging It” brings together Peterson’s bird studies with work by a new generation of artists who share his fascination and appreciation of the natural world and its feathered inhabitants.
1675 Wisconsin Ave., NW — www.HeinerContemporary.com
Parish Gallery
Parish Gallery is exhibiting the pea-sized work of Willard Wigan in “The Half Century Collection,” on view through Jan. 31, 2013. To the naked eye, Wigan’s work is virtually invisible. Yet when viewed through magnification, the effect is truly mesmerizing. Wigan’s micro-sculptures are so minute that they are only visible through a microscope—each piece commonly sits within the eye of a needle or atop a pinhead. To create his art, Wigan enters a meditative state in which his heartbeat slows, allowing him to reduce hand tremors and sculpt between pulse beats. Even the reverberation caused by outside traffic can affect Wigan’s work. So, he often works through the night when there is minimal disruption. Wigan has been honored throughout the world for his work and his exhibitions frequently sell out. Washington is lucky to have such an intimate venue available to view the work of this micro-visionary.
Canal Square, 1054 31st St., NW — www.ParishGallery.com
The Old Print Gallery
The Old Print Gallery, like Heiner Contemporary, is featuring a themed show devoted to nature’s beauty. “Water,” a group exhibit featuring prints by local, national and international contemporary artists, yields both personal and universal interpretations among artists, which turns into a very natural and effecting conversation with viewers. No matter how it is represented—abstracted or literal, meticulously detailed or vaguely suggested in loose and emotionally charged compositions—its capacity to mesmerize and captivate artists’ attention is undeniable. It’s a swell viewers are sure to get caught up in as well. “Water” is on view through September 14.
1220 31st St., NW — www.OldPrintGallery.com
Susan Calloway Fine Art
Susan Calloway Fine Arts is presenting a new exhibition tailored to new collectors and first-time art buyers. “You Too Can Buy Art: Affordable Art for Young Collectors” will open on Friday, Aug. 17, with a reception from 6 to 8 p.m. The exhibit features a selection of affordable contemporary and vintage artworks, hung in an assemblage style—in other words, there’s a lot to see. Since she opened her doors almost 20 years ago, Susan Calloway’s unswerving commitment to quality, along with a sharp eye for curating an array of periods and styles, has earned her a following. This exhibit will showcase the gallery’s taste in unique fashion—and allow anyone to join in the experience. The show runs through Sept. 8. To RSVP to the opening, call 202-965-4601.
1643 Wisconsin Ave., NW — www.CallowayArt.com
[gallery ids="100935,129865,129858,129836,129852,129845" nav="thumbs"]
City Center Gallery Walk
•
The American cultural anthropologist Margaret Mead was a keen observer of the riches of modern city life. She spoke of a city as a center “Where any day in any year there may be a fresh encounter with a new talent, a keen mind or a gifted specialist. This is essential to the life of a country.”
“To play this role,” she noted, “a city must have a soul — a university, a great art or music school, a cathedral or a great mosque or temple, a great laboratory or scientific center, as well as … libraries and museums and galleries …”
Scrolling through Mead’s list of highest urban attributes, Washington hits all the marks. We have the schools, the religious and scientific institutions. We are awash in great museums and historic libraries.
By its very nature, the District is a kaleidoscope of history and progression, holding onto our tenets while moving ever into the 21st Century.
And we have galleries. Boy, do we ever. In the heart of this city, encircling Gallery Place and Metro Center amid the glistening glass and steel of arenas, storefronts, apartments and office buildings, art galleries flare against the cultural skyline. Like the Viennese salons of the late 19th Century, there is always someone admiring the artwork worth their weight in conversational gold.
“A city must be a place where groups of women and men are seeking and developing the highest things they know,” said Mead.
In the galleries listed below, the lifeblood of Mead’s persevering philosophy runs strong, proffering the visual arts as a channel to understanding our history, our surroundings and our collective selves.
Plus, they’re just great venues to see some damn cool stuff. ?
Adamson Gallery
1515 14th Street NW, Suite 202,
www.AdamsonGallery.com
“Wild Things,” the summerlong exhibition at Adamson Gallery, is certainly wild, but don’t go in with the expectation of seeing much in the way of the living. This collection of animal photographs showcase the inhabitants of our oceans and wilderness in a not-so-lifelike light (save the charming Weimaraner portraits of William Wegman). Granted, this is not just an arbitrary portrayal of animals post-mortem. For instance, Martin d’Orgeval’s photograph of an owl is an eerie beakless specimen, perched on a dirty pedestal. This image comes from his project to document the aftermath of a 2008 fire in a 170-year-old taxidermy shop in Paris. The artist photographed everything from singed butterflies to charred bears, offering an interesting observation into the nature of what was — or wasn’t — really destroyed in the fire, while showcasing life’s breathtaking diversity. Other notable artists included in the exhibit include Annie Leibovitz, Jim Dine, Roberto Longo and Roni Horn.
Touchstone Gallery
901 New York Avenue NW,
www.TouchstoneGallery.com
Two simultaneous exhibits at Touchstone Gallery show that traditional practices can still thrive in contemporary art. In his exhibit “Being Affected” (through July 29), Charles St. Charles gives us rows of faces with varied reactions to shared circumstances. The show is influenced by work Charles has done in theater and improvisation, where a satisfying portrayal of reality depends on the actor being affected by the other characters and the environment. Charles skillfully uses color, facial expressions and distortions to reflect the status interplays that result in increasingly crammed physical or psychological spaces.
“A 3D Collage the Adventure” is the work of David Alfuth, a longtime art educator who began this series as a class project for his students. The lesson, which used old prints and engraving, “allowed the students to create a surrealistic situation to present to the viewer,” he writes. “The addition of the 3-dimensional qualities allowed for a world of variety and interest.” The works represent a collective narrative journey, dealing with space, architecture and its effects on human experience: relief sculptures with bizarre and funny titles such as, “They landed on the Moon, planted the flag, and then they left. That is when the party got started;” cubist-like constructions of architectural spaces; and simple, powerful line drawings of architectural elements.
Civilian Art Projects
1019 7th Street NW,
www.CivilianArtProjects.com
Civilian Art Projects has enough to keep patrons busy for a while to come, presenting installations by three acclaimed artists working in a variety of media through July 28. Richard Chartier is a sound artist, considered one of the key figures in the current movement of reductionist electronic sound art, termed “microsound,” or Neo-Modernism. Chartier’s minimalist digital work explores the inter-relationships between the spatial nature of sound, silence, focus, perception and the act of listening itself. In his exhibit “Interior Field,” he transforms the center gallery at Civilian Art into a darkened space where a visitor may relax and focus to this sound composition. A significant portion of this piece utilizes several audio recordings made at the 1905 McMillan Sand Filtration Site in Washington, D.C. during a sudden heavy rainstorm.
Bridget Sue Lambert is exhibiting a photographic series of large-scale prints in which she explores and emphasizes the complicated nature of relationships through the humorously messy rooms of a dollhouse, which she has been working with for the last three years. In them, she has constructed and captured scenes that simulate the emotional and physical clutter that surrounds romantic relationships, as well as a woman’s relationship with herself.
Finally, Shamus Ian Fatzinger presents his show ‘Personal Frontier,’ a series of photographs created from negatives found in a cardboard box belonging to his mother that tell the story of the artist’s childhood, and his family’s move West. What emerges is at once a collection of seminal mid-century American snapshots and a lens into our own grainy, beautiful pasts — weird and sexy, vague and pointed, and somehow very familiar.
Flashpoint Gallery
916 G Street NW,
www.CulturalDC.org
From July 20 to August 18, Flashpoint Gallery will exhibit the work of Interdisciplinary artists Hana Kim and Shana Kim, who join forces to work between the disciplines of architecture and interactive media to create an immersive environmental installation. The show, “Atmospheric Front,” combines pulleys, motors, hand-knit textiles and wires that expand and contract in time with sound and light projections. The texture and movement of the multidimensional piece reference biological and natural systems, which evoke breathing cycles, pulse and emotion. For more information on the process behind their work, visit their blog: AtmosphericFront.wordpress.com.
There will be an opening reception Friday, July 20 from 6 to 8 p.m [gallery ids="100899,128306,128299,128279,128292,128286" nav="thumbs"]
Richard Diebenkorn: Everything All At Once
•
The moment I saw the paintings of Richard Diebenkorn for the first time was one that shifted the course of my life as an artist. I was an 18-year-old student wrestling with things like color, form and, more onerously, ways to convey my ideas and break free from the self-aggrandizing egotism that artistic practice so easily brings about. Something in the style of my complaints must have triggered my teacher to offer me a book of Diebenkorn’s work. I had never been so affected by paintings.
Even in the cramped dimensions of a catalogue, his works felt huge—they carried the visual grandness of a mural in a few square inches. His endless washes of color, falling through and beneath one another in farm-like grids, conveyed a vibrant and somehow weathered atmosphere, like sunlight piercing through morning fog. It was dilapidated doors, smoke, hot asphalt, sweat, fields, style, color, shape, geography, line, form, joy, peace, war. It was paint. And it had never looked better to me.
I remember wanting to run my hands all over these paintings, these fields and strips of color that looked like Mondrian charged with a scuffed, pulsing static. I wanted to lift up the veils of yellow paint to explore the oceans of red ochre and blue-grey beneath the surface. Diebenkorn lets viewers into his process in this way, allowing us to know his paintings inside and out—and he offers this portal to us without reservation or anxiety. In his time, Diebenkorn was a famously generous and patient teacher, and this comes out in his work—even his paintings are good teachers.
Unlike so many artists of the past century who went to great lengths to hide their techniques, Diebenkorn unveils his methods to us garnished on a plate. This was a man who wanted painting to survive when others denounced it as dead, to move the arts into the future in a way that connected and involved audiences.
For the second half of the 20th century, Diebenkorn was the painter’s painter. You would be hard pressed to find a working artist today that does not adore this man’s work. It is painting as the idea in itself, which seems to speak about everything—about an artist in his environment, but also about things transcending any singular time, place or individual. “The idea is to get everything right,” Diebenkorn once said, rather prophetically. “It’s not just color or form or space or line—it’s everything all at once.”
Take a moment to spend time in front of his paintings and you will know what he’s talking about.
Through the end of September, the Corcoran Gallery of Art is hosting “Richard Diebenkorn: The Ocean Park Series,” a retrospective of the artist’s landmark series made between 1967 and 1988, which marks the first major museum exhibition focused on these luminous, grid-like paintings. Small works on paper, prints, drawings and collages—even some “cigar box” studies—share space with his signature massive canvases, many of which are over eight feet tall.
“These works are powerful investigations of space, light, composition, and the fundamental principles of modern abstraction,” said Philip Brookman, chief curator and head of research at the Corcoran. “Diebenkorn investigated the tension between the real world and his own interior landscape… These are not landscapes or architectural interiors but topographically rooted abstractions in which a sense of the skewed light and place of that time emerges through the painting process.”
A lifelong inhabitant of the west coast, Diebenkorn (1922 – 1993) served in the U.S. Marine Corps after attending Stanford University and afterwards took advantage of the G.I. bill to study art at the California School of Fine Arts in San Francisco. Among his teachers was Mark Rothko, the acclaimed abstract expressionist who doubtlessly effected his perception of modern art. A look at Diebenkorn’s Ocean Park series leaves no doubt that Rothko influenced his sense of composition and color palette. (And as The Georgetowner’s Gary Tischler often points out, “Washington is the Rothko City.” All the more reason to welcome this show to our town.)
As a young painter in the 1950s, it was no small feat to reckon with the wild assault of abstract expressionism on the contemporary art scene. To come into your own at the tail end of one of art history’s most explosive, brazen and contentious periods was a considerable strain on many emerging artists. But with that pressure came a certain liberation for Diebenkorn. Willem De Kooning later would say that the abstract expressionists (and Jackson Pollock, specifically) “broke the ice”; afterwards, art could go anywhere and be almost anything.
During this time, however, Diebenkorn did a rather unusual thing: he pioneered a representational movement, at once a gesture to the tradition of art history and an outright rejection of modern art critics like Clement Greenberg, who argued for “advanced art” that renounced subject matter and representation for the “purity” of abstraction.
Along with fellow artists such as Wayne Thiebaud—most recognized for his over-saturated paintings of cakes and patisserie treats— they together founded The Bay Area Figurative Movement, which pioneered an expressive, representational style that brought together the thick, lustrous brushwork and wanton impasto of abstract expressionism with the earthy romance of the Impressionists.
Though a far cry from his later work with the Ocean Park series, Diebenkorn began in his early paintings a pattern of weaving the threads of familiar people, family members and California landscapes with a grand intimacy that connected his quiet, precise observations to the collective subconscious of postwar America. It was a mutual search for peace, balance and beauty. He learned what it meant to be a modern painter as the world around him learned to see as a modern audience. His work was met with acclaim from critics, viewers and patrons alike.
In the mid 1960s, Diebenkorn took a teaching position at UCLA, moving from San Francisco to Santa Monica. It was during this time that he moved away from his figurative style, for which he had by now become quite popular, and began work on his Ocean Park paintings, a pursuit that would last him the rest of his life and become one of the most influential bodies of work in the second half of the 20th century.
Named for the beachside community where he set up his studio, the Ocean Park series cemented Diebenkorn at the forefront of his generation as an artist dedicated not just to his own work, but to the history and future of his medium.
The shift happened gradually but surprisingly, according to the artist, and in a way he always had trouble explaining. “Maybe someone from the outside observing what I was doing would have known what was about to happen,” he said in an interview in the late ’60s. “But I didn’t. I didn’t see the signs. Then, one day, I was thinking about abstract painting again… I did about four large canvases—still representation, but, again, much flatter. Then, suddenly, I abandoned the figure altogether.”
But looking at these paintings, what we see in fact is an unprecedented balance of abstraction and representation. These paintings are not just shapes that resemble things, like looking up at the sky and seeing a cloud shaped like a poodle. They are distillations of whole environments from which they are born.
Within the canvases are the layouts of suburban neighborhoods, the aluminum siding and split-level houses of mid-20th century America, power lines and clotheslines, interstates and parklands, oceans and shorelines, even the great frontiers of the Wild West. But while these visual tropes are tangible and intriguing, no one theme sits within any particular canvas. You will not find a painting in this exhibit titled “House by the Sea.” Diebenkorn named each piece in this series with a number in the order by which he made them.
The numbers become markers of the passage of time that denote the changing and shifting of the artist’s environment as he lived it. Just as Monet painted the Rouen Cathedral in different lights of day and Matisse evoked the emotional sentiments of his era with the wild, dissonant color palette of Fauvism, so did Diebenkorn acknowledge his time and place by sweeping his brush across his own physical and cultural landscape. He captured the grand, clean-shaven, perhaps diluted idealism of his time in wash- worn, infinitely expansive color fields, cut up with arbitrary vanishing points and the stark measurements of clean, straight lines.
Still, the paintings impose almost nothing upon us as viewers. We are free to explore the pictures in our own way and at our own pace. Diebenkorn’s postwar American abstraction offers glimpses of harmony and calm, a generalization of that “American Dream,” the sincerity and earnestness of which has not really been seen since.
I still wrestle with the same issues as I did when I was first introduced to Diebenkorn’s work, but he helped me to learn that these artistic dilemmas are not just equations that you solve and move past. These issues are themselves the pursuit of art. Diebenkorn’s work inspired me beyond myself. When that happens, you cannot help but to believe in art. ? [gallery ids="100901,128322,128315,128302,128310" nav="thumbs"]
Beyond the Blooming Sculpture Gardens
• August 10, 2012
Between the sculpture gardens at the National Gallery, the Kreeger Museum and Hirshhorn, there’s a lot to see around the streets of Washington. Throw in the fraternity of bronze-cast historic figures scattered throughout the city and there’s an all-star cast of artistic and historic characters around every corner. You’ll see Henri Moore and Henry Longfellow, Giacometti and Ghandi, Alexander Calder and Alexander Hamilton.
Indeed, there are so many longstanding outdoor fixtures that we miss on our daily commute alone (who among us has ever actually seen a Boundary Stone?), that it’s all too easy to overlook a new public installation. Doug Aitken’s “Song 1” at the Hirshhorn was a deserved success before it came down early last month, with projectors flashing a fully encompassing video around the building’s elliptical façade to a remixed exploration of the 1930s pop song “I Only Have Eyes for You.” It left audiences wanting more of that interactive, environmentally specific experience. Thankfully, the Hirshhorn isn’t lacking for new outdoor installations, and neither is the National Museum of Women in the Arts. And now is just the right time of year to be outside and experience them.
Chakaia Booker Scultures Roll Into New York Avenue
There is a peculiar group of sculptures on a well-kept, grassy median on New York Avenue between 12th and 13th Streets NW, amid the oil drum echoes of construction by Mount Vernon Square and the arterial bustle of downtown. Black and unusually textured, they appear almost aloof to their surroundings — curious as to what exactly is going on around them.
This is the work of sculptor Chakaia Booker, the second artist selected for the National Museum of Women in the Arts’ (NMWA) New York Avenue Sculpture Project, the only public art space featuring changing installations of contemporary works by women artists. Booker, by integrating discarded construction materials into large outdoor sculptures, works here with recycled tires which she slices, twists, weaves and rivets into radically new forms. Tires resonate with the artist for their versatility and rich historical and cultural legacy: The harvest and production of rubber is entwined with a history of brutal colonization, cultural injustices and slave labor in Africa and the world beyond.
Given the space they occupy, these sculptures are oddly modest in size, as if refusing to compete with surrounding noise and structures. They stick out from their environment by utter disassociation of urban aesthetics. They do not try to be big—and in this way they grow. These dancing forms, with interlacing planes that revolve through and around each other, are Brancusian in their suggestive shapes and movement, while their texture and tactility remain rooted somewhere firmly in the earth of this world.
They have the texture of nature, vines, bushes and nettles, like fictitious plants you might see in a Maurice Sendack illustration. Also like Sendack’s work, there is an undertow of darkness about them—a keyhole’s peek into a world of magnificent intrigue and epochal wrath. Perhaps it’s the wondrous patterns and textures against the sheer literality of the tires—once you get close to them, the sculptures are upfront about their material: masses of diced, slit rubber and hundreds of heavy screws securing them to their skeleton.
While there is a good chance you already passed them by without even noticing their presence, Chakaia’s sculptures are worth serious consideration. The good news is they will be on view through 2014, so there’s time to see them.
For more information visit www.NMWA.org.
Ai Weiwei Turns Heads at the Hirshhorn
“Circle of Animals/Zodiac Heads” is the first major US public art project by internationally renowned Chinese artist and political activist Ai Weiwei. The installation comprises a dozen bronze sculptures, each roughly ten feet tall, that represent the signs of the Chinese zodiac (snake, horse, ram, monkey, rooster, dog, pig, rat, ox tiger, rabbit and dragon).
The sculptures are re-envisioned and enlarged versions of original eighteenth-century heads that were designed during the Qing dynasty for the fountain clock of the Yuanming Yuan (Garden of Perfect Brightness), an imperial, European-style retreat outside Beijing, which was pillaged in 1860. The Hirshhorn placed them encircling the fountain in the center of the Hirshhorn’s rounded courtyard.
Weiwei went to great pains to depict the animals with detail, down to the veins in the rabbit’s forehead and the chicken’s grainy crown, every surface suggestive of hair, feathers or skin. The heads cut off abruptly at the neck, the stanchions they are affixed to connecting rather artlessly underneath, as if they were each severed from the body and mounted on coarsely carved wooden spikes—like the pig’s head in William Golding’s “Lord of the Flies.”
There is always a lot of historical and political baggage when dealing with Ai Weiwei—and I mean that in the best possible way. A noted dissident, Weiwei has spent his career speaking up against social and political oppression in his homeland. He is a master of the conversation between abrasive confrontation (including a photographic series of his own middle finger interrupting otherwise innocuous snapshots of historic Chinese landmarks, such as Tiananmen Square) and subtle symbolism (covering the floor at London’s Tate Modern with hand-painted porcelain sunflower seeds—a comment on mass consumption, among countless other things).
Knowing this, why would Weiwei go to the effort of such odd and meticulous realism if he didn’t mean them to be perceived that way? Without forcing anything on the audience, the work raises questions about repatriation and intention as well as our own blindness to suffering, religious misinterpretation and historical injustice.
For more information visit www.Hirshhorn.si.edu. [gallery ids="100821,125482" nav="thumbs"]
Taste, Tour and Explore the Eastern Shore
•
With summer upon us, many District dwellers will participate in their annual early summer excursions. On long weekends—such as our gone-too-soon Memorial Day—Washington area residents retreat to their preferred fair-weather getaways. Resorts and B&Bs throughout Maryland and Virginia play host to those reveling in the year’s most vibrant and blooming weather.
When making plans, finding less conventional avenues and avoiding throngs of tourists is a recurring trend. The Eastern Shore is less than a two-hour drive from DC and promises some of the season’s best activities. Spending the weekend on the Eastern Shore is an unconventional yet unparalleled experience, one sure to enliven your season.
Talbot County, Maryland is a great escape—a world apart on less than one gas tank’s distance. The setting is rich with history and offers some of the best cuisine, family activities and outdoor activities to be found. What’s more, Talbot County presents visitors with several distinctive towns to choose from, each with a personality all its own. Guests to the area may choose to intimately explore one or town-hop for a taste of the entire area.
Oxford
Founded in 1683, Oxford is listed in the National Register of Historic Places. Few towns have endured the marked phases of change that Oxford has. The landscape, once dominated by tobacco plantations and home to famous figures of the Revolution, later gave rise to oyster harvesting and packing industries. Despite the increase in tourism to the area, Oxford retains its small-town feel. It is a town that lets you feel at home almost as soon as you arrive.
Perhaps the biggest draw to Oxford is the world-class cuisine. Those looking to dine in town would do right to give Pope’s Tavern, or else the Robert Morris Inn, a try. Both restaurants provide impeccable service and dining ambiance while affording incredible views of the water.
At the Robert Morris Inn, Chef Proprietor and British Master Chef Mark Salter, brings a modern British sensibility to the kitchen combined with classical feeling. A Bay resident since 1993, Salter has immersed himself in the region’s cooking and seafood bounty. A friend to local farmers, artisan producers and the seasons, Salter turns to sustainability and the richness of Maryland’s local bounty of herbs, fruit and vegetables at every opportunity. His signature dishes go well with the wide array of vintages the inn has stocked. Dine in Salter’s Tap Room & Tavern or one of two 1710 dining rooms, a few feet from Oxford’s ferry dock.
As an after dinner treat, The Scottish Highland Creamery is a choice find, offering premium handmade icecreams—some of the best and freshest you’ll ever taste. The creamery sources local ingredients, fresh milk, cream and flavorings imported from Italy. And with over 600 flavors to choose from, there’s sure to be one that suits everyone’s fancy. The Mexican vanilla, double Belgian chocolate, fresh crushed strawberry and pumpkin pie are all must-haves.
Perhaps no other event captures the spirit of Oxford like the annual Cardboard Boat Races staged each June since 1988. Launched from the shore of the Tred Avon River, the festive and colorful event begins at 11 a.m. and continues until all five races are complete. Boats are intended to be inexpensive and biodegradable, and contestants are strongly encouraged to be creative in their designs.
The Oxford Picket Fence Project is another annual treat. Begun in 2009, the process begins with 18 unpainted red cedar wood picket fence segments. Local artists decorate the posts, reconfiguring and reinventing the fence in the process. Completed fences are then placed on display from Memorial Day to mid-September., scattered throughout town in fun and surprising locations, the locations designed around a town-wide treasure hunt. This is a unique event that showcases local artists, town history, charm and beauty.
St. Michael’s
St. Michaels rests along the “Bay Hundred” stretch that runs to Tilghman Island. In its heyday, St. Michaels was a major shipbuilding center that produced such models as the Baltimore Clipper, which served as privateers during the Revolutionary War and War of 1812. Thus, it should come as no surprise that the Chesapeake Bay Maritime Museum is one of its premier attractions.
Founded in 1965, the Maritime Museum occupies 35 buildings across 18 waterfront acres and features 10 exhibits that explore the geological, social, and economic history of the Chesapeake Bay. The museum also houses the largest collection of indigenous Chesapeake Bay watercrafts in existence.
Ava’s Pizzeria & Wine Bar and The Crab Claw Restaurant are two popular local eateries. Ava’s is complemented by its diverse selection of beer and wine. The Crab Claw has served steamed Maryland blue crabs since 1965. Also worth a look is Bistro St. Michael’s, which rounds out the town’s wide range of restaurants.
Not far off is the Inn at Perry Cabin. An elite escape, the Inn’s waterfront property offers a gorgeous panorama of the Shore at its finest. Though the inn has lost some of its exclusivity with an expansion to 78 rooms, the lavish accommodations and amenities make this less noticeable. In addition, the inn’s convenient location makes it the perfect place to stay if you plan on seeing the sights around “The Town that Fooled the British.”
Easton
The most urban of Eastern Shore towns, Easton just celebrated its 300-year anniversary, adding historic flavor to the vibrant atmosphere. But nestled just outside the town are family-owned farms, such as Chapel’s Country Creamery. Dairy cows graze its sprawling fields, attesting to Easton’s pastoral grandeur. The farm itself sells its all-natural produce on site. Additionally, many of the Shore’s best chefs use local creamers and farmers as their purveyors, strengthening Easton’s communal bonds.
One such chef is Jordan Lloyd, whose Bartlett Pear Inn recently received the second highest Zagat rating in all categories for the East Coast. Lloyd owns the inn with his wife Alice, his fourth grade sweetheart reunited by fate 10 years later. The two embarked on a journey that led from Mason’s, another local favorite, to Michel Richard’s Citronelle here in DC, New York, Atlanta, Miami, and back again. Along the way, Lloyd apprenticed with four-star chefs at five-diamond and five-star enterprises, including DC’s Four Seasons Hotel. The end result is his upscale American bistro, where classic French techniques meet contemporary plate design, in an impressive 220-year-old establishment. You can easily spend a long weekend in the warm embrace of the Bartlett Pear Inn.
Poplar Island
Known as “the island that almost vanished,” Poplar Island amounted to around 1,000 acres in the 1800s. By 1990, erosion had cut the island into three separate chunks of land and squeezed it to less than 10 acres. Today, thanks to a successful restoration effort led by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, it has returned to 1,140 acres and may grow by another 570 acres before the project is finished.
For now, it’s a unique destination for eco-tourism, where visitors can charter boats around the premises, viewing wildlife and a burgeoning ecosystem in its infancy. The island is already drawing scads of wildlife—almost too much for biologists to keep track of. Ospreys, egrets, terns, herons, eagles, double-breasted cormorants, black ducks and other wild fowl have already been discovered on the island, unfazed by workers and heavy equipment that move and shape the dredge material that is bulldozed onto the island from barges. Diamondback terrapins are nesting in large numbers on the island, predominantly along the sandy beaches of the southeast.
The Eastern Shore is an often overlooked and underutilized travel alternative. Add to this its breathtaking vistas and insulated townships, and the Shore might just be among the most well-guarded vacation secret in the country—for now. Now is a great chance to see it before it inevitably catapults into the national tourism limelight.
A Locavore’s Cheese Tasting Weekends
• June 18, 2012
Virginia and Maryland cheesemakers are a tight-knit bunch. They are largely artisanal, small-batch producers that got started with the most basic, homegrown means. Many are self-taught hobbyists that went pro. Others followed their passion for dairy together with a passion for the local landscape. These cheeses are diverse, unique and delicious, running the gamut, from cow milk to sheep and goat milk cheeses.
There has been enormous headway within the community since the local industry got off the ground in the 1990s. According to Adam Smith, manager of Cowgirl Creamery cheese market in Penn Quarter, there is a hugely impressive array of cheesemakers within a stone’s throw of the District.
“I love introducing people to cheeses from around the area,” says Smith, who spent years in the California cheese industry before relocating to oversee Cowgirl’s flagship East Coast shop. “It isn’t just because it’s local, but because of the quality of the product. The diversity and quality of cheeses in the region allows people to find what they want.”
Smith, who promotes local cheeses through his shop, is not alone in his opinion. Cheeses from the area have been taking home national and international awards. They are now on par with France, Vermont, Spain and Switzerland as world-class artisans and producers. For those who are interested, there are opportunities to get to know their local, cheese-producing community. Everona Dairy, Firefly Farms and Caromont Farm are three regional dairy farms that bring visitors into the process of cheesemaking.
Don’t be fooled: These are working dairy farms, not tourist attractions — but the cheesemakers here offer us a chance to see into their process and get a better understanding of what is being accomplished just beyond the Washington area. With locations in the historic Maryland and Virginia countryside, surrounded by vineyards and bed-and-breakfast inns, it’s well worth carving out a cheesy weekend in your travel schedule.
Everona Dairy
“There would be no cheese in Virginia if it weren’t for Pat Elliott,” says Gail Hobbs, owner of Caromont Farm. “She’s a pioneer.”
Pat Elliott is the owner of Everona Dairy in Rapidan, Va. — just an hour south of Washington by way of Charlottesville — one of the country’s most acclaimed producers of sheep’s milk cheese. Elliott’s frank, casual disposition belies her achievement in the industry. You probably won’t hear her waxing poetic about divine dairy inspiration or the rejuvenating aroma of a windswept countryside. She’s more likely you to tell you that you just stepped in sheep manure and show you the most effective way to clean your sneakers.
A doctor and family practitioner by day, Elliott got her start in the cheese industry rather unusually. “I bought a border collie in the early ’90s,” she says, “and eventually had to get something for her to do. So, I got sheep for her to wrangle! And then I decided the sheep needed to pull their weight. So, I started to milk them and realized we could make cheese.”
By 1996, Everona Dairy was up and running. Easy.
Many of us consider cows to be the dairy- and cheese-producing animal — and in America that’s largely true. But Elliot points out that sheep’s milk is the predominant milk for cheeses throughout the Mediterranean, Italy, Britain, France, Belgium and Denmark. “It’s a good trivia fact,” she says. “There is actually more sheep’s milk being made in the world than cow’s milk.”
Everona’s signature cheese is the Piedmont, which won the Farmhouse category for sheep’s milk cheese at the American Cheese Society’s annual competition in 2005. “It’s unique to its category,” says Smith over at Cowgirl Creamery. “We’re constantly selling out of it. It has an insane amount of depth — when people taste it, they’re awed by it.”
Its Shenandoah (the cheeses all have place names), created in 2008 by Elliott and cheesemaker Carolyn Wentz, is the only Swiss-style sheep’s milk cheese in the world. In 2009, it received a Bronze award in the United States Cheese Contest and placed tenth in the world at the 2010 World Cheese Championship.
Open Wednesday through Sunday in the afternoon hours, Elliott invites guests to come see how Everona Dairy works. Visitors are taken through the cheesemaking process, shown where the milk is made and the cheeses are ripened, and invited to a tasting afterward.
Guests should call ahead if they plan to visit. “There’s almost always someone here,” Elliott says. “But we want to be ready to host.”
With Charlottesville just down the road, as well as the Caromont Farm cheese folks, make it a wine and cheese weekend.
Caromont Farm
Continuing past Everona Dairy and passing south of Charlottesville, you will find Caromont Farm in Esmont, Va. Owner Gail Hobbs started out producing and distributing her fresh goat’s milk cheese through her community, but soon expanded and began experimenting with aging her product. “People tend to think of goat’s milk cheese as only fresh cheese around here,” says Hobbs. “But in Spain and France, goat’s milk cheeses are frequently and successfully well aged.”
Caromont’s raw, aged goat cheese is unique in its category, with wonderful flavors and textures. “It’s a very well crafted cheese,” says Smith at Cowgirl Creamery. “And there are not a lot of people making and aging mid-sized wheels of raw goat cheese for several months. It’s pretty cool.”??Another mission for Hobbs is to bring out the distinct flavor of the local land — or terroir — into the cheese. “That’s why we work so much with raw milk,” she says. “More terroir is expressed in the final product with less water and electricity used. We’re so new that it’s really uncharted territory. But I was encouraged by what our area has to offer: big farms, lots of grass, and it’s not industrial. It’s just very new for this area. But we’ve come quite far.”
Caromont recently decided to utilize the great resources of cow’s milk in the surrounding area and has since started sourcing milk and making cow’s milk cheese as well.
And while the cow’s milk cheese is very good, their goat cheese is ethereal. The Esmontian, Caromont’s premier raw goat’s milk cheese, is a dense cheese with a runny interior that tastes faintly acidic and slightly sour, with a delicate, sweet overtone.
The Alberene Ash is a small, aged pyramid of cheese with a thin layer of ash through its center and dusted on its outside, which is aged in a wild blue mold-filled cave for three weeks. When the pyramid is perfectly covered in wild blue, they’re ready. This one is as pretty as it is tasty.
Caromont doesn’t have the open door policy for visitors the way some larger dairy farms do. However, if you call them, they’re usually happy to take cheese enthusiasts around the farm. “We don’t really have an area for visitors,” says Hobbs. “But we try to accommodate people who are interested in seeing what we do. By appointment only, we say. If you’re interested, give us a call. We want to encourage people to see what we’re about.”
“A lot of these places are very small,” says Hobbs about her fellow cheesemakers and their facilities. “And it can be a very sensitive area — hair nets, boot covers. It’s not like going to a petting zoo or a chocolate factory. That’s why our goal is to have something in town where people could learn about cheese and experience it there. It’s in the works.”
FireFly Farms
Cheesemakers Michael Koch and Pablo Solanet started to make goat cheese in their home as a hobby in the late ’90s, taking the milk from their neighbor’s goat. When they went to submit their two varieties of homemade cheese in the annual American Cheese Society’s amateur competition, they accidentally entered them in the commercial category. The cheeses received gold and silver ribbons.
Needless to say, Koch and Solanet decided to give cheesemaking a go. By 2003, FireFly Farms was off the ground.
FireFly Farms offers nationally and internationally award-winning goat cheese that features the distinct regional flavors of Maryland’s Allegheny Plateau. “Our cheese is flying off the shelf,” says Andrea Cedro, director of marketing for FireFly Farms. “We just moved into a new creamery in July of last year after we outgrew our last barn.”
This summer, FireFly plans to do more tours of the back of the house. Meanwhile, its market in the front has windows that look into the “make room” (where the cheeses are made) and the aging room. Cheesemakers are always around to answer any questions. “The store has really given us an outlet in the country for people to stop by and visit,” Cedro says. “But soon we will be able to bring you in to see the back of the house if you’re interested.”
Besides selling Firefly Farms cheeses, its new storefront offers cheese from around the country, selected by Firefly’s cheesemakers. Also available are regional boutique wines and beers. Wine and cheese pairings are offered on weekends. “We want a place where people can visit us and get a taste of cheesemaking,” says Cedro. “A place to experience the artisan cheese world.”
Cheese around the District
If you can’t make it out to the country in pursuit of the perfect cheese, these locations across the Washington area have great selections, including a variety of local cheeses (including the ones mentioned above). If you’re looking for something specific, we recommend calling ahead and asking about it:
Cowgirl Creamery
919 F St. NW
La Fromagerie
1222 King Street
Alexandria, Va.
Arrowine and Cheese
4508 Lee Hwy
Arlington, Va.
Whole Foods
Various locations in DC, Virginia, and Maryland
Wegman’s
Various locations in Virginia and Maryland [gallery ids="100497,118110,118088,118104,118097" nav="thumbs"]
Georgetown Gallery Walk: Book Hill
• May 17, 2012
The Georgetown galleries on Book Hill are one of the few remaining true gallery clusters in the city. Meandering along a few blocks of Wisconsin Ave., we are surrounded by art, free to walk into galleries that call to us from their vibrant window displays. This group of galleries offers us a great variety of works to explore, from renowned glasswork to classic landscapes and the contemporary and avant-garde. Here’s a look at what’s happening on Book Hill. For more information on the Georgetown Galleries on Book Hill, visit GeorgetownGalleries.com.
Addison/Ripley Fine Art
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Washington artist Isabel Manalo is a painter who has taught at American University’s art department for ten years, as well as shown locally, nationally and internationally throughout her career. “Bits of Elsewhere” is Manalo’s third exhibition with Addison Ripley, and the new work follows her ongoing pursuit of capturing memory and the tenuous, ethereal uncertainty of human nature. Her mixed media works mix paints and photographs with unprecedented subtlety and grace—it’s hard not to be moved by their pulsing, expansive nature. March 10 – April 14.
1670 Wisconsin Ave. NW. AddisonRipleyFineArt.com
Heiner Contemporary
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Through March 3, the collages, sketchbooks, prints and installations of Austin Thomas turn Heiner Contemporary into a center of social and artistic discourse. Thomas’s centerpiece for the exhibit, an interactive desk and workspace, engages visitors to talk, read, draw, think, and listen. The show will close with an artist discussion on March 3 at 4 p.m. On March 10, Heiner Contemporary will open its next exhibition, titled: “Avery Lawrence is Moving a Tree and Arranging Suitcases.” Details are still trickling in, but if the title alone doesn’t get your attention, what will?
1675 Wisconsin Ave. NW. HeinerContemporary.com
Maurine Littleton Gallery
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Renowned Seattle-based glass artist Ginny Ruffner will open an exhibit of her work on February 29, in conjunction with a screening of an award-winning documentary of the artist’s life and work at the Smithsonian’s Renwick Gallery on the same day. The film will be screened at noon, followed by a gallery event at 2 p.m., where the artist will be in attendance. Ruffner’s works are constantly evolving “visual thought experiments,” and her glass sculptures and drawings turn life’s daily props and occurrences into remarkable visual experiences.
1667 Wisconsin Ave. NW. LitteltonGallery.comhttp://www.littletongallery.com/)
Susan Calloway Fine Arts
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Local interior designer Andrew Law will employ his craft and eye for refined, classic and approachable design to “create a room” in Susan Calloway Fine Arts’ already gorgeous and comfortable gallery, pulling from contemporary artworks, antique paintings and prints from the gallery’s private collection. The collaboration, “At the Crossroads: Art + (Interior) Design,” pursues a common and important objective of enhancing design and lifestyle with art, and offering a platform for beauty in our daily lives. March 2 – March 17.
1643 Wisconsin Ave. NW. CallowayArt.com
Galerie Blue Square
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Two series of works by Russian-born artist Yevgeniy Fiks will open with a public reception on March 3, from 4 – 7 p.m., and continue through April 14. Fiks explores historical, communist threads in his conceptual works and projects, presenting the cultural, Post-Soviet practice of “making the absurd seem normal, at the same time the West is seduced and implicated in it.” His latest series, “Magnitogorsk Guide to the National Gallery of Art,” will be on view, and a “performance” tour at the National Gallery of Art on March 24 accompanies the exhibit.
1662 33rd St. NW. GalerieBlueSquare.com
Neptune Fine Art
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Gallery Director Chris Neptune, recently moved into DC from New York, specializes in Modern and Contemporary art. With an extensive collection of artists ranging from contemporary masters such as Mel Bochner (now on view in the Tower of the National Gallery) and Alex Katz, to the timeless works of the Cubists and Impressionists, Neptune Fine Art has work to suit anyone’s palette. Opening April 21, “On Paper: Picasso & Matisse” offers a look into the drawings and prints of these renowned artists, who had a history of healthy competition with each other.
1662 33rd St. NW. NeptuneFineArt.com
Robert Brown Gallery
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Formerly on R St. near Dupont Circle, gallerist Robert Brown specializes in 20th century and contemporary works, as well as rare Chinese advertising posters from the early 1900s and Chinese antiques. Currently on display are works by prominent DC-based artist Linn Meyers, who has been commissioned in the recent past by The Phillips Collection, as well as William Kentridge (South Africa) and Oleg Kudryashov (Russia), two of the most significant living printmakers who were exhibited together at The Kreeger Museum in 2009. This is an exhibit for contemporary and historically minded viewers, and one you don’t want to miss.
1662 33rd St. NW. RobertBrownGallery.com [gallery ids="100501,118157,118151,118145,118125,118140,118133" nav="thumbs"]
Renegade DC
•
Picture the statues of soldiers at the Korean War Memorial. Nineteen stainless steel troops, each one a modest giant over seven feet high, poised and erect, caught in a still moment between the tumult of battle, their faces weary, cautious, but brave. Each figure weighs 1,000 pounds, and their cold weight shows, as if they were heaved begrudgingly up from the earth. They wear full combat gear, dispersed among strips of granite and juniper bushes, mirroring the rugged Korean terrain.
Now picture a gaggle of children playing ‘war,’ dressed up in plastic helmets, wearing oversized shirts and wielding toy guns, urgent and sincere in that way only children can be. Of course, as with all children’s games, it’s not just boys. There’s a girl there, too. The frilly poof of her ballerina dress and flower-laden headband are too tempting to forgo, so of course she wears it to battle. This doesn’t make her any less formidable of a soldier; on the contrary, her eyes are filled with a grave and startling glare powerful enough to face any boy she encounters. She holds her plastic pistol straight, pointing it firmly and directly at anyone who crosses her path.
Imagine these children playing ‘war’ in this field of looming, steel warriors, bounding through them like trees in a forest, peaking their heads around sculpted kneecaps to check for signs of the encroaching enemy.
Haunting? Yes. Grim? You bet. Heartrending? I’d say so.
Jodi King took a picture of it.
Actually, King not only photographed this event, she conceived it, recruited the children, put together the production and flat-out photobombed the Korean Memorial to get the shot.
However, it’s more than just the Korean Memorial she blitzkrieged with her camera. Jodi has been doing this all around the city, selecting historic, cultural and industrial landmarks in Washington and using them as the stage for her no-holds-barred conceptual photo shoots. And she usually gets them done before security arrives to kick her off the premise.
Part photography, part social activism, part artistic battle cry and entirely original, this is the Renegade DC project. Spawned from a number of personal and professional issues she’s harbored with the District’s professional arts scene, King took to its famed public spaces and local mainstays to speak out on behalf of creative expression. “There seems to be a lot of red tape around this city,” says Jodi. “It’s just hard to break into any of the good creative jobs around here. If you’re an already established artist, DC is a good place to be. But there are a lot of young and emerging artists who are struggling and under the radar because of what they want to do. And with a lack of grassroots support, artists grow timid to push the envelope a little bit.”
A commercial and editorial photographer with an enviable resume, King seems to have undertaken this project in some degree to coax the young artistic community out of its shell—to tell them that it’s okay to take risks, to march to their own beat.
A merchandising major raised in Alexandria, Va., King attended the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York City and landed a job with the now defunct Hecht’s department store chain. Unhappy as an assistant buyer, she applied for an opening in the photo studio for “an all around assistant—to the producer, stylist, whoever—and started hands-on assisting the fashion photographer for about a year.”
Quickly promoted to fashion producer, her new position found her scouting locations, booking models and crew, setting up shooting schedules, budgets, and everything in between—in effect, supplying her with all the tools she would later employ with Renegade DC.
When Hecht’s merged with Macy’s in 2006, she decided to get back into photography and began working freelance. “My business built as a word of mouth kind of thing,” she said. “I’ve been working freelance for about five years now, all in DC.”
Eventually she got into editorial work with some major local magazines and was hired for fashion editorial shoots by many of the major magazines, including Washington Life. “It’s still more on the safer side,” King says. “And as an artist, it can get a little frustrating, having to do everything the client wants. And so some of the reason we started Renegade DC is because we didn’t want to be told what to do anymore—at least for this project.”
When she talks about Renegade, Jodi says “we,” never “I”—she adores the collective nature of the project, and her team is an invaluable component to its realization. She has been working with Tyler Larish, her Renegade partner and a by-day hair stylist, on editorial shoots around DC for a number of years. “We started working together a lot,” she says, “and had all these discussions about how work in DC goes in this industry. The conversation drifted to how we wanted to push the envelope around here. We decided we wanted to do something that excited us and utilized our creativity. Stuff that we want to do.”
Being in Washington, they decided to use its nationally recognized landmarks and tourist attractions as the backdrop for their creative energies, reinterpreting the significance of these cultural markers and reinvigorating their relevance through a prism of contemporary language and expression.
With Renegade DC, King and Larish have employed members of the DC arts community and produced an invigorating perspective of our nation’s capital. It is a blend of architecture, landscape and fashion, placing models and performers in specific historic environments to create daring, fun and imaginative scenarios that do not conform to conventional expectations. Among the locations Renegade has enlisted are the Washington Monument, The National Cathedral, The Korean War Memorial, Ben’s Chili Bowl and the Wonder Bread Factory.
But don’t expect these to be your standard tourist snapshots—these photographs look like alternative realities of Washington, ala Planet of the Apes, a Humphrey Bogart flick or a psychedelic post-apocalypse. You might have trouble recognizing the locations at all.
A lesbian Goth wedding outside the Cathedral. The DC Rollergirls taking over the roundabout in front of the Capital. The Baltimore Aerial Dancers defying gravity outside the Wonder Bread Factory. Dancers from the Washington Ballet adrift amidst billows of cherry blossoms.
“We had about 15 locations over the last two years,” King says. “We wanted to do something with each location that brought it out in a unique way. Some are straightforward beauty, like a fashion story. Others are quirky, a little bit strange.”
“Tyler comes up with things so outrageous that it’s almost foolish,” she laughs. “And I would scale it to fit a fashion-oriented concept. For instance, he came up with Muscle Beach on the National Mall, and I produced a very vintage, retro body builder -type image. We wanted each picture to tell a story with a concept that went along with each location.”
Of course, it was a slow process because of all the preliminary work that had to be done. First, King and Larish would mock up inspiration sheets, figuring out makeup and wardrobe. Then they would book the models, “or whoever we could think of to fit the characters—friends, family, even each other. It really became more about the characters we were creating than anything else.”
King and her team would go to the location, do a quick test shoot to figure out the physical positioning of the models, and then rehearse and choreograph it in King’s apartment. With the scene in their minds, they ran up to the location of each shoot—literally—and shot pictures quick as bandits.
The children in the Korean War shoot had to hop a fence to get in among the statues. “They stepped over the gate, just enough to get them in the scene,” says King with an air of caution. Despite the ‘outlaw’ nature of the shoots, King does not disrespect the locations where she works. “I looked online, and tourists hop that fence all the time for photos. Just Google it. I didn’t do anything that everyone wasn’t already doing—I just did it with costumes and makeup.”
“Everyone volunteered,” says King of the project. “We had virtually no budget. We had to make our own props, and we had food and beverages for our team, but that was the only thing we put real money into. Everyone who worked with us just wanted to be involved. I think that fresh, penniless mentality really turned the project into something special—we were focused on the art, not the job.”
To exhibit the Renegade DC portfolio, King found a perfect collaborator in Theo Adamstein, founder and executive director of Foto DC, a nonprofit organization whose mission is to make photography accessible to audiences through provocative and inspiring exhibitions and collaborations with the local and international community (which is just the icing on the cake of a ridiculously cool guy with a hell of a fascinating resume).
King already knew Adamstein, and when she approached him about showing the work—and showed him some of it—he jumped at the prospect of exhibiting it. “But this show is off the record,” King clarifies. “This really isn’t a Foto DC event. Theo is more supporting us as a friend by letting us use his space. And we seriously appreciate it.”
For the future of Renegade, King has some big thoughts. “We were thinking we really love this so much, we might take it on the road, sort of see where it goes. We’re really open with it. Obviously, New York City would be a clear next step, because there’s so much there. Tyler and I also had the idea to do all 50 states, and hit one major landmark within each capital or major city. Vegas might be fun. But imagine what we would do in Fargo…whatever it is, it would probably be awesome.”
Any place that keeps the Renegade saga going is where King wants to take the project, as long as it stays true to her original message of creativity and cultural expression. “Wherever there is a story to be told,” says King, “we’ll be there.”
Renegade DC will be available for viewing Thursday, May 10 from 7–10pm, at Foto DC’s FotoSpace, 1838 Columbia Rd., NW.
Event Features Full Renegade Cocktails by Atlantico Rum, Sounds by DJ Keenan Orr, Napoleon noshes, and after party sounds by DJ Adrian Loving.
For more information, email Jodi King at JRKingPhoto@gmail.com.
[gallery ids="100780,123738,123698,123733,123705,123727,123713,123721" nav="thumbs"]The Art of Japan At The Textile Museum and the National Gallery
• May 3, 2012
When taking on the art of an unfamiliar cultural tradition, it’s difficult to know where to start. There are immediately questions—namely, Do I understand what I am looking at? The aesthetic terrain, symbolism and subject matter are foreign, often incongruous to our own knowledge. For instance, as far as everyone in America and Europe is concerned, a hexagram is synonymous with the Star of David (the Jewish Star). However, in ancient Indic lore, the hexagram was a symbol of creation, the overlapping triangles representing “the divine union of male and female.”
When dealing with a culture as deeply rooted, multifaceted and intricate as Japan’s, there is almost no way to take it all in. Japan has a cultural and religious system of symbols and an artistic tradition as unique and fascinating as any in the world, and to know it would require years of time and effort. However, in the same way Picasso found revelation in African tribal masks for their raw aesthetic radiance, it is sometimes enough to admire the beauty and facility of cross-cultural artisanship.
Right now, The Textile Museum and the National Gallery of Art are hosting monumental exhibits of Japanese art, both of which expose the sheer beauty of the country’s sophisticated craft and artistic traditions.
The Textile Museum’s “Woven Treasures of Japan’s Tawaraya Workshop” (Mar. 23 – Aug. 12) display the Japanese textile traditions of the Tawaraya, a still-operational silk workshop over 500 years old, that has woven fine silk garments for the Imperial Household for centuries. The National Gallery’s “Japanese Bird-and-Flower Paintings by It? Jakuch? (1716 – 1800),” on view only through the end of the month, exhibit Jakuch?’s thirty-scroll series of nature and wildlife, proving him to be an unprecedented innovator in style, technique and aesthetic. Both exhibits are a master class in composition, color and design, and both beg to be viewed live. In photographs they are impressive, but in person they are breathtaking.
(It must also be noted that the Sackler Gallery, on the National Mall, is hosting an overwhelming exhibit of printmaker Katsushika Hokusai (1760–1849), perhaps the most acclaimed artist in Japanese history, titled “Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji.” However, this exhibit demands coverage all its own, and thus is not included in this article.)
Based in Kyoto, Japan, the Tawaraya silk workshop is perhaps the oldest and most illustrious workshop in the country. While popular among the public for producing fabrics used in traditional theatrical costumes, Tawaraya is renowned for their production of yusoku orimono—garments of fine silks in patterns, weaves and color combinations traditionally reserved for the Japanese Imperial Household. On display in The Textile Museum, they read like an installation work, speaking of harmony, balance and serenity.
In a peculiar way, they are reminiscent of Sam Gilliam’s hanging fabric installation at The Phillips Collection, which closed almost a year ago. The Japanese fabrics of vibrant and subtle colors and ancient symbols, whose aesthetic is rooted in a centuries-old practice, become suddenly and hugely contemporary. This is a little ironic, as the man behind Tawaraya’s operations today, Hyoji Kitagawa, is the 18th-generation successor of this family-run workshop, who has painstakingly maintained silk weaving techniques passed down over a millennia, right down to dye recipes from the tenth century.
One remarkable aspect of these designs is the length that is taken in pursuit of subtlety and understatement. Where it is more familiar in the Western tradition for the elite to be wearing louder, flashier clothing, in Japanese aristocracy it would seem that bold symbols and wild colors are considered crass and unsophisticated. The Emperor’s yusoku orimono is composed of but pristine white and earthy brown ochre silks.
The patterns and symbols are similarly more nuanced. On the garments of a regular citizen, the symbol of a tortoise—which represents long life—would likely be a large, obvious and rather literal interpretation. On a yusoku orimono, the creature is represented by a pattern of hexagonal blocks, each one an individual shell, that stretch monochromatically across the silk. You will see cherry blossoms, cranes, pine trees, phoenix, bamboo and butterflies, each of which carry their own meaning and significance, but all of which are independently beautiful.
These symbols carry over to the National Gallery, where the 30 scrolls of 18th century Japanese painter Jakuch? might actually bowl you over. The expansive scrolls are intricate and effusive: a pair of chickens embroiled in a dynamic mating dance, feathers ruffled in exacting detail and eyes wild among a craggy hibiscus plant; an adumbrated landscape of seashells, crabs and starfish on the ocean’s floor; a wild goose in the reeds, hurtling toward a pond’s icy surface; a rooster amidst a plant of small, piercing red nandina berries. Yet within the paintings there is a fluidity of composition, a pristine sense of geometry and an unquantifiable harmony of color that link them to the same tradition as the Tawaraya silks.
Both offer an otherworldly glimpse of tradition, discipline and aesthetic near-perfection. The Japanese history is rich in artistic life, and Washington is lucky to have such resplendent exhibitions of their works to appreciate and compare.
For more information on “Woven Treasures of Japan’s Tawaraya Workshop,” on view through Aug. 12, visit www.TextileMuseum.org. For information on “Colorful Realm: Japanese Bird-and-Flower Paintings It? Jakuch?,” on view through April 29, visit www.nga.gov. [gallery ids="100740,121552,121541,121549" nav="thumbs"]
Mount Fuji’s Fleeting Immortality
•
The epoch of ukioy-e encapsulates the final phase of traditional Japanese history and a time of flourishing cultural arts from about 1600 through the 1860s. Due to the country’s policy of national seclusion (starting in the 1630s for fear of the impact of European colonial expansion on native culture), Japan was a world almost entirely unseen by foreign eyes until the late 19th century.
During this period of isolation, Japanese art acquired a singular character with few external influences. The style of ukiyo-e, which means “pictures of the floating world,” blended the realistic narratives of ancient picture scrolls with inspiration from the decorative arts and observation of nature. When these artistic traditions finally reached Europe and North America, their radical approaches to space, color and subject matter shook the Western tradition, revitalizing graphic design and penetrating the consciousness of painters from Monet to van Gogh.
Katsushika Hokusai (1760 – 1849), the ukiyo-e’s most prolific and renowned artist, produced an estimated 35,000 works during seven decades of ceaseless artistic creation. His images have matured into icons of world art, most famously his woodblock prints of Mount Fuji and its relationship with the surrounding villages and countryside. At the Sackler Gallery through June 17, “Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji” exhibits the full collection of Hokusai’s original prints, showcasing the intricate beauty, intimacy and grandiosity of these masterworks. They will leave you swooning and weak in the knees, enraptured by their ephemeral delicacy like a cherry blossom’s silky petals caught in spring’s first light.
Mount Fuji occupies a special place in Japanese culture. The ancient Japanese were sun worshipers and in the bustling city of Edo (modern Tokyo), this 12,000-foot volcano, resting like a lazy giant in the distant landscape, was the first piece of earth to catch light from the rising sun. A lifetime resident of Edo, Hokusai was intimately familiar with Mount Fuji’s snowcapped crest when he finally immortalized it in his print series at the age of seventy.
As a teenager, Hokusai apprenticed with a woodblock engraver, but quickly shifted his efforts to drawing and painting. Like most ukiyo-e artists, his career began as an illustrator for yellowbacks—cheap novelettes named for the color of their covers—before moving into illustrations for the major novelists of the day.
Hokusai’s work spanned the gamut of ukiyo-e subjects: album prints, genre scenes, historical events, landscape series, paintings on silk and privately commissioned prints for special occasions called surimono. Well regarded throughout Japan, his model books for amateur artists were very popular, as were his caricatures of occupations, customs and social behavior. From age twenty until the year of his death, Hokusai illustrated over 270 titles, including several books of his own art.
“But nothing I did before the age of seventy was worthy of attention,” said Hokusai, who envisioned his artistry maturing well past his centennial. Indeed, in the last two decades of his life Hokusai produced his finest work, unrivaled within the genre as the apex of the ukiyo-e tradition.
What Hokusai manages to capture in these prints precedes Impressionism in capturing the fleeting wonder of natural phenomena, realizing the texture and mood of atmosphere, seasonality, temperature and light. (It’s worth noting that Hokusai was actually rather familiar with European and Chinese art when he made these prints, as his country had by then opened international trade relations in some capacity, allowing glimpses of foreign artistic traditions.) In studying the mountain and its relationship to the surrounding world, Hokusai shows us the serenity and violence, the danger, mystery and allure of our natural world.
Perhaps another aspect of Hokusai’s genius was in bringing the tonal reservation and transient effusiveness of painting together with the bold, clean linear image-making and stark visual clarity of prints. The prints perfectly depict the external appearances of nature and symbolically interpret the vital energy forces found in the sea, wind and clouds.
In “The Waterwheel at Onden” and “In the Mountains of Totomi Province,” the sinewy legs and worn bodies of the laborers give way to serene facial expressions, a common thread throughout the series, as if the physical burden of the land is but an inevitable accessory to the life it sustains. The agonizing labor plainly and literally depicted, inconceivable in the reality of its strenuousness, goes almost unnoticed in the works’ overwhelming peace and inner beauty.
This cosmic push-pull between man and the larger forces of nature is fully realized in the breathtaking “Kajikazawa in Kai Province,” where a fisherman stands dwarfed atop a craggy rock jutting out from a violent sea, his fishing lines taut against the ocean’s current and caught in a heavy fog from which Mount Fuji barely emerges in the background.
One of the show’s last prints, “Sunset on Ryogoku Bridge,” shows a pale grey sky, with the wine-hued boldness of an unseen sun saturating the Prussian blue waters and glowing green bridge. Mount Fuji hovers like a deep, luminescent shadow behind a cluster of dim houses. An old man stands in his boat, leaning on his oar and staring at the distant mountain, as if overwhelmed by the site. It is a beauty he cannot resist. It is also a feeling that viewers can associate with: a sense of floating in time, in a reality beyond what we see before us.
Above all, Hokusai’s prints are studies in reservation, balance and ritual, mirroring the sentiments of his culture in his ceaseless, patient pursuit of Mount Fuji. The confluence of life, labor and the natural world press on, immortal but impermanent, much like the woodblock engravings from which the prints were forged, worn down with each unforgettable printing until its sharp-edged clarity vanished into but a vague impression of its past self.
“Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji” is on view at the Sackler Gallery through June 17. For more information visit Asia.SI.edu. [gallery ids="102450,121126,121120" nav="thumbs"]
