A Winter’s Night with Ris

Ari Post • July 26, 2011

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Tis’ the season to be fat and happy. Let’s just face it.

There are endless news articles that come out this time of year warning the helpless public of the looming holiday season and its devious inclination to burden us all with blubbery baggage around our midsections. Then they will proceed to assure us that if we just follow some odd number of holiday eating tips, we can make it through to spring as bright and trim as a daisy.

Or we can be honest with ourselves and accept our fate.

I have always done what I can to keep fit, but despite my most diligent efforts, I never fail to pack on a few cold-weather pounds. That’s just how it goes. Squirrels do it and so do bears, and they seem fairly content on the whole. So I’m just not going to burden my conscience with a five-pound margin of error.

It’s frigid outside. There is less light. Our body’s natural reaction to these harsher elements is to cushion itself with a bit of insulation to keep warm. That’s surely one of the reasons we start craving heavier, thicker, more nourishing foods in the wintertime.

Foods like chicken potpie. There are few dishes that so instantly activate our receptors for things rich and savory, says Ris. A buttery, flakey crust enveloping a gluey union of chicken and softened vegetables in a milieu of thick gravy that binds all the parts together like an idea giving form to the words of a sentence.
Like many of the dishes Ris chooses to cook with me, potpie is a time-honored, traditional food that can be endlessly incarnated. It is one that takes kindly to experimentation and exploration. And as I have found with Ris, her concern isn’t always what she puts in these dishes, but how to handle the preparation and the ingredients in use to bring out as much natural flavor as possible. Whether you add kielbasa or andouille sausage, parsnips or carrots, peas or broccoli is not vital to the essence of the dish. Each substitute will add a different dimension.

What matters is that you put in the herbs first thing to season the melted butter, and make sure the vegetables are all nicely aromatic before mixing in the stock, releasing the flavors of each ingredient which fuse together as they simmer. Pre-roasting the pearl onions and mushrooms will ensure that much more flavor. Deglaze them with sherry for even more.

Ris prefers grainy roux for use in potpies. The proportions are roughly equal parts butter to flour, but adjust to preference, she suggests. Slowly whisking the flour into the melted butter keeps it from forming clumps. And cook it well, says Ris, “to avoid that raw flour taste and bring out the nuttier side of the four.”

Another point she stresses is to never add salt and pepper to the dish until after you have combined all the ingredients into the pot (added the stock and the roux and the potatoes to your vegetables) and your filling has had time to reduce. The reduction process intensifies the salt of the stock, and you run the risk of over-seasoning if you’re not patient. Also keep in mind that diced potatoes only take about five minutes to cook, so once you add them you should be nearly finished.

When the filling is looking like it’s ready, I watch Ris pick up a spoon and dab the underside against the filling in the pot. She is “napping” the back of the spoon, she explains to me as she reveals the gooey film that has adhered itself to the spoon’s belly. This tests the consistency of the filling and lets you know if it’s ready. Upon running a finger across the sticky spoon, if the gap you created in the gravy does not fill itself back in, your filling is at the right consistency. You are now ready to ladle it into its bed of pie crust and stick it in the oven.

Again, like many of the dishes Ris and I have cooked together, chicken potpie is a great vehicle for leftovers. “Just like borscht is a kind of Eastern European method for dealing with leftovers,” she says, “potpie is a very British way to use them.”

Use turkey, sweet potatoes, salmon, asparagus or anything in between, says Ris. A Shepard’s Pie, potpie’s Irish relative, is traditionally made with lamb or beef with a mashed potato topping in place of the pie crust.
But a true potpie demands a pie crust, and it’s important that it be done the right way. “You should always cook the crust with the potpie filling,” Ris tells me. “The crust should never be cooked separately. It must bubble together with the filling.”

Ris recommends 100% pure butter puff pastry, which you can buy frozen from the grocery store if baking isn’t your strong suit.

Don’t let cold weather get the better of you. Put on the burner, heat up the oven and bring some warmth into the winter months ahead. A few extra winter pounds have never been more worth it.

RIS’ Chicken Pot Pie

“In my humble opinion, there should always be plenty of light, flaky crust in a chicken potpie. At my house we would fight over my mother’s flaky pastry lining the bottom of the pyrex baking dish.?Make plenty of your favorite pie dough or buy 100% butter puff pastry, rolled to 1/6” and cut to cover and/or encase individual ramekins or larger casseroles.”
—Ris

For the roux
4 ounces butter?1 cup flour

For the filling
makes 3-4 quarts, 6-8 servings

8 oz mushrooms, quartered if large and roasted until golden, seasoned with S&P, fresh thyme and olive oil.
1 cup pearl onions, peeled and roasted until golden seasoned with salt, pepper, fresh thyme and olive oil.
2 Tbsp butter
1 large onion, diced, about 2 cups
2 large stalks celery, large dice, about 1 cup
2 carrots, large dice, about 1 cup
2 Tbsp chopped fresh thyme
2 Tbsp chopped fresh sage
2 qts chicken stock
1 bay leaf
1 large potato, large dice, about 1 cup
1-2 cups or to taste root vegetables that are available: parsnip, celery root, sweet potato, or all of the above, large dice
1 cup frozen English peas
2 cups roasted chicken meat, or to taste
Salt and freshly ground pepper?
Sherry vinegar

Roll out your pastry to suit your needs and keep covered in the refrigerator until ready to use.

Make the roux: Melt the butter in a heavy based saucepan. Whisk in the flour stir constantly, spreading the paste over the bottom of the pan to lightly color and cook the flour, for about 5 minutes. Set aside in a warm place until ready to use.

Roast the mushrooms and pearl onions. Set aside when done until ready to use.

In a heavy based 2-gallon soup pot or Dutch oven, melt the 2 Tablespoons of butter and add the diced onions, celery and carrots. Sprinkle with the chopped thyme and sage and cook until the onions are barely soft, stirring occasionally, just enough to release the aromatics from the vegetables, about 5 minutes. Add the chicken stock and bay leaf and bring to a boil. Let simmer for another 5 minutes to meld the flavors and season the stock.

Add the potatoes and any additional root vegetables. Season lightly with salt and fresh cracked pepper. Bring just to a boil and add the peas, roasted mushrooms, roasted pearl onions and chicken meat. Bring back just to a boil again, keeping in mind that you have about 5 minutes to finish from this point before the potatoes are overcooked.

Thicken with the roux, whisking in a bit at a time and dissolving each bit, not to leave lumps. Taste for seasoning and adjust with salt, pepper and a dash of sherry vinegar for brightness. Remove from the heat.
Prepare your pastry to accommodate your vessel. Fill with the potpie filling and cover with more pastry. Filling can be hot if put in the oven immediately or chilled and can be kept in the refrigerated until ready to use.
Cooking time will be in a 350 degree oven, but will depend on size of pie and whether or not filling was hot or cold. Individual portions take 20 minutes or so. Larger casseroles may take up to 1 hour.

10 Trailheads, Inside the Beltway

Ari Post •

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“I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.” – Henry David Thoreau

Billy Goat Trail
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Description: 4 miles. Moderate difficulty.

A roundabout portion off the C&O Canal Towpath, the Billy Goat Trail is rightfully a local favorite among hiking veterans and families. The trail stretches along the Potomac Gorge, a rocky, diverse 15-mile section of the Potomac River from above Great Falls and south to Theodore Roosevelt Island. The path itself is a tempered balance between dirt crosscuts woven through the lush forestry, and rugged cliff faces with sweeping views of the adjacent river, rock faces and woodlands. Convenient river access has also made it a popular destination for kayaking, canoeing and fishing.

The trail, broken into sections A, B and C, has varying levels of difficulty. Section A, stretching along Bear Island, while the most strenuous, is also the most frequented. And there are good reasons for this. Access to the trailhead is absurdly simple and conveniently located minutes outside the city – just off I-95 on MacArthur Boulevard, the parking area across from the Old Angler’s Inn. The path itself is a two-mile stretch along Bear Island, affording premiere vistas at the top of high rock faces that hikers must scramble up for the reward. The trail is something of a U-shape up the island, starting and ending at different points along the C&O Canal Towpath. Walking beside the reflective canal shaded by the forest’s florid, abundant eaves offers a nice cool-down from a challenging hike. The trail is almost always busy on a fair-weather day, so try and get there early to avoid the throngs.

Brookland
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Description: 8.5 miles with shorter options. Easy.

The Brookland section of Northeast Washington is an unusual and distinctive area of the city. It in fact feels like a separate community from the District altogether, comprised of so many churches and school campuses, residential neighborhoods and historic cemeteries. Walking along any portion of the nearly all-pavement trail, you are bound to run into friendly people bursting with local pride. This natural diversity and serenity makes it one of the best neighborhood hikes in the area.

The trail in full circles around Catholic University, Rock Creek Cemetery and National Cemetery, as well as the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception, cultural center, Brooks Mansion, Howard University Divinity School and an expanse of quiet neighborhoods.

This is the kind of hike where you put your dog on a leash, a smile on your face and be as sociable or contemplative as you see fit. It’s also right off the Metro red line at Brookland/CUA, so it doesn’t require any planning, so much as a slow afternoon and an itch for something experiential. En route, savor the striking exteriors, and consider returning another time to explore the interiors.

Capital Crescent Trail
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Description: 11 miles in full with shorter options. Easy.

For much of the 20th century, the Capital Crescent Trail was the right-of-way of a railroad spur line that delivered coal and building supplies to the Georgetown waterfront. When the remaining coal customers switched to truck delivery in 1985, the rail line was closed, but in 1996 it was reopened as a recreational nature trail, affording inner city residents from Bethesda and D.C. backyard access to an unanticipated community walkway. Used largely as a neighborhood recreational trail, and abuzz year-round with cyclists, dog-walkers and stroller-toting joggers, the CCT has been heralded by the International Project for Public Places as one of the 21 greatest places that show how transportation can enliven a community.

If you’re looking for a good hike, Fletcher’s Boathouse would be a good starting point. It’s about two miles above Georgetown and can be navigated upstream along the Potomac until it veers off and takes you all the way up to Bethesda. Once in Bethesda, treat yourself to a well-deserved meal at any one of the scores of restaurants within the city proper.

Columbia Island
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Description: 5.7 miles. Easy.

This is one of the city’s best-kept natural secrets. It’s hidden in plain sight, in the Potomac River across from the Lincoln Memorial. You might know it better as the beautiful forestry surrounding the GW Parkway with all those scenic outlooks over the Potomac onto mainland Washington. Surrounding the island, and crisscrossing over, under and around the shrouded parkways and arching, its concrete bridges and quiet pathways lie waiting to be explored. The 121-acre island has been designated by the National Park Services as Lady Bird Johnson Park to honor the then-First Lady’s efforts to beautify the country, and is now in rolling abundance with dogwoods, pines and flowering bushes. Access the trail from the Virginia side, where there is a juncture from the Mount Vernon trail.

Great Falls
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Description: Expansive. 1 mile-10 miles. Easy to difficult.

Great Falls is nothing short of a national landmark. Frequenters of this national park (and there are many of us) are sure to see tourists, family picnickers and recreational events in droves up and down the expansive recreational areas. The flagship representative for purple mountain’s majesty in the nation’s capital, visitors come from around the world to glimpse the thundering waterfalls of the Potomac that separate Virginia and Maryland. Good weather will find the park packed to capacity, amateur photographers sardined around scenic overlooks. Experienced climbers are known to hop the ledge and climb down the rocky cliffs to the riverside and look up into the ferocious mouths of the falls. If you’re lucky, you’ll see a kayaker braving the extreme rapids and freefalling thirty feet from one exhilarating threshold to the next. But the real beauty of Great Falls is that it’s really two parks rolled up into one: The Virginia side and the Maryland side. Each half of the park has a wealth of dynamic pathways and sites to keep a hungry adventurer occupied for weeks.

The Virginia Side
The Virginia side of Great Falls boasts rugged trails and convenient riverfront access (though if you’re venturing all the way down there, convenience is to be gauged relatively). You will hear many locals refer leisurely to “rock scrambling” along the water, as the staggered and jagged cliff faces make for deliciously spontaneous rock climbing. The mountainous heights and plumbing depths in such immediate vicinity to one another create treasure troves of natural beauty hidden from view of the trails, such as a cliff-encircled, sandy beach with jungle-like shrubs, and a small lake that may recall that fishin’ hole Mr. Griffith always whistled so fondly about.

The Maryland Side
With a maze of raised plank walkways that take hikers through a seeming marshland of tall grasses and overhanging trees, and a towpath running along an adjacent canal further inland, the Maryland side of Great Falls is also a northward connection to the Billy Goat Trail, off MacArthur Blvd. The views of the waterfalls themselves are arguably more expansive than its sister park across the river, and creeks and streams that feed into the Potomac offer hikers peaceful, secluded resting sites to wait out the beating sun.

Kenilworth Aquatic Gardens and Marsh
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Description: 2-4 miles. Easy.

For a hike within the city limits, just off Anacostia Avenue NE, the Kenilworth Aquatic Gardens and Marsh are disarmingly exotic and wild – and anything but urban. The Aquatic Gardens are part of the 77-acre marsh, located on the east bank of the Anacostia River. Within this marshland hikers will find tidy garden landscapes and small, explosive bursts of wilderness. Acres of water-lily ponds – containing enormous communities of butterflies – wildflowers, an impressive collection of flowering lotuses and tidal marshes rich with plant and wildlife patch together this diverse expanse of inner-city biodiversity. The water-lily blooming season lasts from May to September, and the land lilies are at their peak in June and July, so now is the perfect time to go experience the backyard you never knew existed.

Potomac Heritage Trail
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Scotts Run to Roosevelt Island
Description: 11.5 miles in full with shorter options. Moderate difficulty.

The longest trail east of the Mississippi after the Appalachian, the Potomac Heritage Trail is a network of trails extending from Pennsylvania’s Laurel Highlands to the Chesapeake Bay, which includes more than 800 miles of trails that are in many cases, pre-existing arteries of a different name. This branching path system has long been touted as a premiere urban-area hike destination.

Scotts Run Nature Preserve is at the base of the GW Parkway, where this hike begins, and where you could take any number of roundabout hikes of a different destination, as this is the meeting point of a number of other trails. Additionally, there are no closer waterfalls to the D.C. area than those in Scotts Run. Head north up the trail, designated as a segment of the PHT, parallel to the parkway, and enjoy a meditative hike along the Potomac, where you will pass Fort Marcy, a well preserved Civil War fort, some private riverfront estates, a small, rocky gorge equipped with handrails and eventually get to Potomac Overlook Regional Park. As you come upon the end of your journey, eyeing Roosevelt Island while passing under the Key Bridge, you might find yourself amazed by the ever-expanding natural world just beyond your doorstep.

Rock Creek Park
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Description: Expansive. 1 mile-10 miles. Easy to moderate difficulty.

Rock Creek Park was founded in 1890 as one of the first federal parks. When the park was founded, it was already a favorite area for rural retreat in the growing city of Washington. In the establishing legislation, Rock Creek Park was “dedicated and set apart as a public park or pleasure ground for the benefit and enjoyment of the people of the United States…[The park will] provide for the preservation from injury or spoliation of all timber, animals, or curi­osities within said park, and their retention in their natural condition, as nearly as possible.”

On forest hills lie systems of Union Army fortifications from the Civil War, woven seamlessly into the dense wildlife of the surrounding area. Paths run around and throughout the historic park, highlighting the northern to southern regions. The hilly and often-ignored forests of the northern section are some of the city’s best hikes for complete emersion into nature. The unpaved trails are laden with horse tracks and wildlife abounds. The central area of Rock Creek is a popular area comprised of a rocky stream valley set amid the forestry. The premiere attraction is the Boulder Bridge, a (arguably) beautiful concrete arch bridge, adorned with boulder faces, that stretches across Rock Creek. Well-wooded parklands comprise the southern section, and the hikes, much like your favorite record, only get better by repeating the experience.

U.S. National Arboretum
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Description: 8 miles in full with shorter options. Easy to moderate difficulty.

Though not as well known as perhaps it should be, the U.S. National Arboretum ranks among the city’s finest outdoor discoveries and easily the most botanically diverse hiking destination in or around the city. At almost 450 acres, the arboretum sits between New York Avenue and the Anacostia River. While it serves primarily as a U.S. Department of Agriculture horticultural research center, it is also a magnificent hiking destination that can overwhelm and dazzle the senses. Though deceivingly natural, the entire area is manmade, once but a plain tract of farmland. The scenery changes with each passing season, and communities of varying plants bloom through all 12 months, making it a great outdoor venue any time of year.

The scenery includes a five-acre forest of dwarf conifers, a single-trunk weeping blue Atlas cedar, an azalea grove, dawn redwoods (once believed to be extinct), tulip trees, a collection of plant life from Asia, Fern Valley, a wooded stream valley filled with Native American plants and even a collection of free-standing columns, once part of the Capital. There is more to be seen here than can be justly described in a few short paragraphs. We can only urge you to discover it for yourself.

Winkler Botanical Preserve
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Description: 2 miles. Easy.

A private nature sanctuary hidden in western Alexandria, the Winkler Botanical Preserve is a great way to jump outside of the city without ever actually having to leave. With its small, easy network of hilly trail ways that stretch over 44 acres, there is much to be explored, including a small lake with several streams, a baby waterfall, meadow and covered bridge and even a bonafide Hobbit House. The playful scenery changes every few meters. Through its collection of 70 species of trees and around 650 species of flourishing wildflowers and plants, the Winkler family has created a private botanical preserve dedicated to serving as both a sanctuary and an institution specializing in trees and plants native to the Potomac River Valley. Guided tours of this preserve are monumentally beneficial, as it is so small and the plant life is unlabeled.

Beyond the Beltway:
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Bull Run Mountains Natural Area
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Description: Expansive. Moderate difficulty.

If you’re feeling more adventurous than usual, or simply have too much time on your hands, Bull Run is worth the drive. About thirty miles down I-66 at exit 40, the Bull Run Mountains are made up of a 16-mile mountain range that rises above the Piedmont area. Around Haymarket, this nature preserve offers hikers 2,500 acres of heavily wooded mountains to explore, including the headwaters of the Occoquan River, and one hell of a cliff-top vista of the surrounding area.

The trails are well preserved and labeled, with references to the area’s rich history. They are color-coded and appear on the preserve’s maps. Guided tours are available and summer camps for children even run throughout the summer from the preserve.

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Remembering the Washington Gallery of Modern Art

Ari Post •

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If the Washington Gallery of Modern Art were mentioned in conversation, most would not register the name. It would likely be assumed that whomever speaking had been referring to any number of alternative DC art institutions – the East Wing of the National Gallery, the Hirshhorn, the American Art Museum, The Phillips Collection (famously America’s first museum of modern art). However, though few may remember it now, the Washington Gallery of Modern Art (WGMA), while only open for seven short years in the 1960s, was a major force in establishing the District in the forefront of contemporary art.

After the mid-century shockwave of painters like Jackon Pollock, Mark Rothko, and Willem de Kooning, who had together incinerated centuries of artistic boundaries and limitations, the direction of fine art was aberrantly unclear to many. With such an undefined and endless landscape of possibilities, painting became an entirely new, somewhat chaotic domain, ushering in a wide influx of late abstract expressionism and countless subsequent movements and conceptual innovations.

New York City, as the perpetual colossus of world culture, had claimed near authoritarian control of the fast-paced society of modern art. Prophetic gallerist Leo Castelli had built a personal infantry of loyal artists led by Jasper Johns and Robert Rauschenberg. The MoMA was acquiring amplitudes of new work and declaring the immediate genius of new artists almost as soon as they emerged from school – Frank Stella became among the elite museum acquisitions at the age of 23. Most major contemporary artists were working out of the city. There didn’t seem to be much noise coming from anywhere else.

On October 28, 1961, the WGMA opened its doors, bringing serious attention and notoriety to Washington’s art community, championing this new era of fine art and introducing one of DC’s own art movements into the vernacular.

Co-founded by Alice Denney – matron of the Washington avant-garde who went on to found the wildly successful community darling, Washington Project for the Arts – the gallery brought a wealth of influential American artists and works to the District, while garnering national attention to working artists within the city.

Incorporated as a nonprofit organization, the gallery resided in Dupont Circle, converted from the large carriage house of the headquarters of the Society of Cincinnati. (The Society of Cincinnati, founded in 1783 by the officers of the Continental army, is still the nation’s oldest patriotic organization, dedicated to preserving the memory of the American Revolution.) The gallery’s first director, Adelyn Breeskin, had just recently retired as director from the Baltimore Museum of Modern Art.

One of the gallery’s earliest exhibitions, which caught the attention of the art community at large, was the Franz Kline Memorial Exhibition in October 1962, put up almost immediately following the artist’s death in May of that year. Denney was curator of the exhibition.

The gallery’s collection included works from Ellsworth Kelly, Robert Indiana, Marcel Duchamp, and a cultivation of contemporary American art movements from the ‘50s and ‘60s. Late abstract expressionism, color field painting, minimalism, and pop art were all represented. Their “Popular Image Show” in 1963 brought to the District many of the most highly prized contemporary artists of the day; Robert Rauschenberg, Jasper Johns, George Brecht, Claes Oldenburg, and James Rosenquist among them.

At the gallery’s turbulent “Pop Festival,” also in 1963, composer John Cage performed with the Judson Dancers, and Rauschenberg debuted his now famous performance piece, “Pelican.”

However, what propelled the WGMA to the forefront of the artistic community was its 1965 breakthrough show, “Washington Color Painters.” Touring around the nation, the exhibition introduced the art world to a group of local DC painters now known as the Washington Color School, which included artists Kenneth Noland, Gene Davis, and Morris Louis. With bold, thick lines of colors, harmonious compositions, and clean shapes, the Washington Color Painters created iconic reflections of Matisseian joy and the subconscious melancholy behind all beauty.

Towards the mid 1960s, with the expansion of the National Gallery of Art, a more active contemporary arts program at the Corcoran, and the loudly touted development of the Hirshhorn Museum, the WGMA, small and relatively modest, lost its unique foothold in the Washington art community. The Oklahoma Art Center, now the Oklahoma City Museum of Art, purchased the WGMA’s 154-piece collection in September 1968 and the gallery shut down.

The WGMA came and went like many of the art movements of its time: riveting, innovative, and short-lived. The Hirshhorn still frequently displays pieces by the artists of the Washington Color School, including masterworks by Noland and Louis. While the gallery is long since closed, it brought life and national attention to Washington’s art community when it was in dire need. And in the richness of the DC art community, the echoes of its spirit can still be felt today. [gallery ids="99188,103298" nav="thumbs"]

The King of the Kastles

Ari Post •

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Mark Ein, owner and founder of the Washington Kastles, the District’s World Team Tennis franchise, has brought his love of tennis to the nation’s capital, and in doing so has created a home base for the city’s widespread tennis scene and a center for community development.

When I met Ein at Kastles Stadium during the team’s practice, the metronomic clop of tennis balls washed through the empty arena like a summer shower. The players, preparing for an evening match, lent a pensive aura of determination to the otherwise languid silence of the blistering July morning. The familiar sounds were a comfort, recalling countless hours spent courtside working on my elbowy forehand, being reminded to bend my knees, get my racquet back, and adjust my grip.

Ein can relate to these fundamental tennis foibles, but his game has progressed considerably more than mine ever has — or perhaps ever will. Hitting with the Williams sisters in his inner-city tennis stadium might have helped. “If I wasn’t doing this interview with you,” he says, “I would be out right now doing drills with these guys.”

A successful venture capitalist who grew up around the area and a lifelong tennis player, Ein founded the Washington Kastles as part of World Team Tennis only three years ago. World Team Tennis, started by Billy Jean King, matriarch of professional tennis and advocate for gender equality, is tennis most have never experienced. It is played in a co-ed team format whereby each set is a different combination of opponents. A five-set match covers every combination of players: women’s and men’s singles and doubles, and mixed doubles.

Nor is the etiquette quite in the vein of typical Wimbledonian cordiality. “It’s tennis in a basketball or hockey environment,” Ein says. “We have cheerleaders, mascots. We play music in between the points. And while 3,000 people [the capacity of Kastles Stadium] is actually a pretty good tennis crowd, it feels like three times that number because everyone’s rooting for your team. It’s a very different kind of crowd.”

It’s an environment unique to tennis that allows fans an opportunity to see their favorite players in a more congenial setting. The audience is encouraged to become part of the game, to interact with the players — root for them, even heckle them — and the players can let their own personalities come through. The Williams sisters, John McEnroe, Anna Kournikova, and Andy Roddick are among the national members that bring their game and their voice to the WTT stage.

For the Kastles, Ein has recruited Serena and Venus Williams as the marquee players, and assembled a veritable “who’s who” of all-star teammates, led by coach Murphy Jensen, renowned tennis personality and veteran champ who knows how to balance athletic discipline with the high-profile exposure of this tournament.

However, what makes WTT a unique institution is that, more than just showcasing competitive tennis, the cornerstone of the organization is bringing tennis into the local community, with a history of working with non-profits and charity organizations. “That’s honestly the core of this franchise,” says Ein. “When I started this, I had a mission statement … To expose tennis to a wider audience, create a center of fun activities in the middle of the city during the summer, help local charitable partners, and bring the city together … I never said win a championship. I never said win a match. It really was using this as the catalyst to create this sort of magnet where we could do all kinds of other great things. And that’s really what drives us.”

Ein has partnered with 35 leading charity organizations through the Washington Kastles. Every evening when the Kastles play a home game, between 100 and 300 children are brought to the match for free. Any fans under the age of 16 get a chance to rush the court after the match for autographs from all the members of both teams. Ein and the Kastles give out a thousand tennis racquets over the course of the season at free youth tennis clinics to children who want to learn the game but lack the means or equipment.

The Kastles host nine of these tennis clinics a season, the majority on the stadium courts in the heart of downtown, where the old convention center once stood. However, they sometimes go into the community to host them in rec centers and racquet clubs. The clinics are led by the players themselves — by the Williams sisters, Anna Kournikova or Murphy Jensen. It allows the star athletes to give back to the community and seems as meaningful to them as it is for the children.

“If you talk to Venus and Serena,” says Ein, “one of the reasons they love World Team Tennis is because when they were eight years old they went to a World Team Tennis clinic that Billy Jean King was throwing. They said it changed their lives forever to see Billy and get to meet her and be inspired by her. And so when they come to town, they do the same for inner city kids in Washington. They’ve done that every year they come. They did it again this year.”

Introducing tennis to youth culture is a critical mission of Ein’s, as well as the WTT league. He believes the fundamentals one learns in the game are resounding life lessons. “It’s the sport of a lifetime, not just because you can play your whole life, but because the lessons you learn stick with you in life,” he says. “Tennis is unique because of its individual nature. It teaches you discipline, self-reliance, problem solving — because it’s you against one person within four lines trying to figure it out. It teaches you strategy. It teaches you to think on your feet. It teaches you to be fit. And these are all fantastic lessons that you can apply to anything you do in life, whether it’s business as I’ve done, or anything you decide to do.”

Ein met Billy Jean King just over three years ago at the US Open tournament. After being introduced, the conversation moved quickly in the direction of organizing a World Team Tennis franchise in Washington. King had long desired a WTT team in the nation’s capital, but had never found the right owner. Until Ein came along.

King upholds a few major tenets within the league that inspired Ein in his efforts to spearhead the project: to promote gender equality — WTT is the only professional sports organization where men and women play together on the same team — make tennis accessible in a community atmosphere, expose new players to the sport in an engaging environment, and introduce tennis as a team sport, creating an entirely new dynamic within a well-established, traditional game. Or, as Ein simply states it, “Make it more fun.”

And while the causa causans of World Team Tennis holds steady, make no mistake that this is still among the highest quality professional tennis one will see outside of the majors. The companionship of teammates and a sense of home turf offense, almost unheard of to the solitary tennis champion, motivates players in fresh and unfamiliar ways.

Unlike most tennis tournaments, where players represent only themselves and fans cheer for good points more frequently than an individual, a WTT match really does function more as a baseball game. The home team will have the fans on their side. “Here, people are rooting for your team,” Ein says. “And that really gets people playing.” No one wants to see the visitors win, whether the Colts are trampling the Redskins, or the Washington Kastles are being defeated by the New York Sportimes.

And then there is the added pressure. In a typical tennis match, the pressure is largely internal. But on a WTT team, team pressure can keep a beaten player from giving up. Letting your team down can be far worse than letting yourself down, and this sharpens the players’ focus. It was this very sense of camaraderie that carried the Kastles to the championship last year.

“We were down three championship points,” Ein explains, crouching in, reliving the memory. “Olga [Puchkova] — who won it for us — she hadn’t had the greatest year. And she was playing … one of the best girls in the league, [Vania King]. And every point Murphy [Jensen] was coming out in between and saying, ‘You’re good. We love you. You’re gonna do this, you’re gonna do this.’ And he, like, literally carried her through. I mean, she was unbelievable, but the team really carried her through.”

Only three years after their founding, the Washington Kastles have a championship under their belt. Most matches in the 3,000-seat Kastle Stadium sell out. Ticket sales and sponsorships are by far the highest in the league — three times the league average and 40 percent higher than the second highest team. “It’s truly succeeded my expectations in every respect,” admits a humbled Ein, who attributes the ultimate and holistic success of the Kastles with the thriving state of the Washington tennis community

“I think D.C. is one of the best tennis communities in the United States,” he says. “I was a ball kid at what’s now the Legg Mason … There’s a long history of people supporting tennis.” With 60,000 adults in the Washington region registered with adult team tennis leagues, the District’s tennis scene would appear to be in its golden age.

To an outsider, tennis can seem beside the point, sluggish, even static. On television, the cameras don’t move, and it’s unnervingly quiet save for a few choice grunts and hollow popping sounds. But to those familiar with the game, that small green court with its clean white lines is the projection of interpersonal triumphs, of unresolved grievances. Surely I cannot be the only one to have stood gracelessly at the baseline, lamenting my hopeless serve and envisioning the superhuman potential unlocked by Sampras, Borg or Graf.

But a tennis player also understands that if you take away the stadium seating and the camera crew, those legendary showdowns between Nadal and Federer that seem to have happened in another world entirely, could have happened down the street at the local swim and racquet club.

Mark Ein and the Washington Kastles balance this experience exactly, bringing the Herculean battles of professional tennis stars down to the community level for all to enjoy. It is overwhelming and encouraging, inspiring and daunting all in the same breath. The season may have just ended, but the local Legg Mason tournament and the U.S. Open are just around the corner, and there are plenty of fair-weather months ahead. Now is a great time to pick up a racquet — and maybe start eyeing some season tickets to the Kastles.

Contact the author: ari@georgetowner.com. [gallery ids="99180,103234,103229,103224,103219,103243,103214,103247,103209,103251,103255,103239" nav="thumbs"]

Chuck Close at the Corcoran

Ari Post •

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In the jumbled lexicon of late 20th century fine arts, where endless styles and genres collapse into one another like a landscape of staggered dominos, few artistic voices have emerged with any lasting force. Chuck Close is one of the few. Famous for his large-scale portraits ranging in medium from painting and drawing to printmaking and photography, Close’s work has a mystifying staying power that attracts audiences with its grandiosity and astounding depth. “Chuck Close Prints: Process and Collaboration,” a retrospective at the Corcoran Gallery of Art, is perhaps the seminal exhibition of Close’s work — an immense yet intimate ode to the timeless appeal of portraiture and the boundless expanses of Close’s technical innovations in art.

Close’s colossal, hyper-realistic portraiture is as synonymous with his name as Jackson Pollock’s is with drip painting. He is one of a handful of working artists that can draw crowds well beyond artistic communities, and has played a large hand in reviving interest and relevance in realism after a tidal wave of artistic deconstruction and abstraction. His techniques have been groundbreaking, and the steady evolution of his work demands to be experienced.

The exhibition offers far more than a comprehensive collection of Close’s work. It delves further, inviting the viewer into his artistic process, which is in large part the source behind the awe his work inspires. “I think people can look at his work and understand what they’re looking at, but also be fascinated … and not quite understand how he’s managed to make the works that he’s made,” says Amanda Maddox, organizing curator of the exhibition. Thus, the show aims to help the audience understand Close’s work through his process.

Focused largely on his extensive body of prints, the show examines Close’s revisiting of printmaking in his visual experimentation. Ultimately, these experiments have resulted not only in some of Close’s most accomplished works, but new techniques and approaches that have greatly expanded the possibilities of the medium.

A piece in this show rarely just stands alone. Displayed is the geography of artistic process, a roadmap of studies leading up to a final image. Alongside his lithograph prints hang the actual lithographs used in the printing, with descriptions of his techniques and technical hurdles. The show displays the original grids that preceded each work, parchment rolls of matrices and proofs covered in scrawling notes by the artist. Color charts and value studies map the topography of Close’s artistic journey, a technical mastery wrought by compulsion and relentless experimentation. In a way, the show becomes a discussion of artistic tribulations, limitations, triumphs and revelations.

As a student, Close was primarily interested in abstract painting, claiming to have been something of a diluted, amateur Willem de Kooning, a painter he greatly admired. However, in 1967, he decided to abandon abstraction and turned his attention toward monumental, hyper-realistic portraits of himself, family and close friends.

He then took it a step further, abandoning the paintbrush for printmaking, a medium in which he had no expertise or facility, in order to challenge himself. His intention was to force a creative breakthrough. In 1972, with the help of printer Kathan Brown, Close created his first print, revisiting the archaic 17th century printing technique of mezzotint, the first printing technique to utilize halftones. The print, titled “Keith/Mezzotint” — displayed upon entering the exhibition — is an intricate study in halftones and textures, light and dark, producing a modern, layered effect while maintaining an astounding technical realism. This melding of photorealism inside abstract textures and patterns has become a trademark of Close’s work.

Over his career, and with the assistance of master printers and various collaborators, Close has created some of the most memorable images of the last 40 years. When making a print, Close and his team complete every stage of their process by hand, from translating an image onto a matrix to carving wood blocks, etching plates, and applying multiple layers of color. The sheer scale and technical complexity of his portraits, combined with this time-consuming process, often means that a single print can take years to complete. However, Close welcomes this challenge. “When you have very strict limitations,” he says, “you have to be … very creative to figure out a way of getting them to work for you. I found that kind of problem-solving very interesting.”

Much of the genius of Close’s work comes from the two contrasting views afforded to the onlooker in each piece — the audience must look at each work twice. From afar the portraits, while differing in tonal value and color pattern, range in appearance from photorealistic to a stylized, almost digitally altered realism. The way in which Close works from photographs dissected into grid, or incremental units, as he calls them, ensures that all his work will be anatomically accurate and perfectly balanced in reality, whether it is made with pulp paper multiples or his own fingerprints.

But the closer one moves in towards a piece, the more it begins to break up, until, inches from the paper, there is nothing to be seen but a kaleidoscopic field of colors and shapes and textures – a very real abstraction. As Maddox explains, “He’s interested in how much information you can convey or compact into a space, and then translate.”

In this regard, it really is the scale that mesmerizes. Reproductions of Close’s work fail to capture their essences much in the same way that Lichtenstein’s large-scale comic strip paintings, when shrunk onto paper, merely look like an excerpt from a comic. The shrunken copies, as the ones accompanying this article, are merely a shadow of the actual works, which are often more than six feet tall.

“I think the show presents an opportunity to really see his marks, and see how detailed his work is,” says Maddox. “Chuck is interested in scale and the destabilizing effect that scale can produce or impart. I think people find that fascinating more than anything else.”

The sheer nature of the realism and the quirks of his techniques cannot be understood unless experienced. His process is engaging, and the variations are remarkable. From traditional Japanese ukiyo-e woodblock prints to silkscreen, aquatint, and spitbite etching, his repertoire of printing techniques is a history lesson in itself, and the subtle, palpable printing methods are only comprehensible when viewed from inches away — an unusual and welcome intimacy for such grandiose work.

The exhibition has been touring domestically and internationally over the last seven years. Running through Labor Day weekend at the Corcoran, “Chuck Close Prints: Process and Collaboration” is one of D.C.’s finest offerings this season. It is a piece of history as it is being told, and an open-ended invitation into the mind of a modern artistic genius. More than any show most will ever see, the exhibition illuminates the agonies and ecstasies of the artistic process as it is usually only experienced by art historians, curators and restorers.

The Corcoran has additionally made itself free to the public on Saturdays through Labor Day weekend this year. There is no reason to miss this groundbreaking collection and experience the corridors of details, the overwhelming scale, and the fragile intimacy of Chuck Close.

Contact the author at ari@georgetowner.com. [gallery ids="99182,103270,103259,103266,103263" nav="thumbs"]

Fall 2010 Visual Arts Preview

Ari Post •

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Addison/Ripley Fine Art

Addison/Ripley will present “The 2nd Element: Stratus Series”, new works by Nancy Sansom Reynolds from September 10 to October 23. In her third exhibition at the gallery, Reynolds brings a large body of new sculpture in a broad range of new materials, creating sinuous, striated, elegant shapes, often suspended on walls. Much of the artist’s inspiration for this show comes from her three recent years in the Southwest desert. Reynolds has suggested that her forms reflect the “big sky” of the American Southwest.

Artisphere

Arlington County plans to open the Artisphere, an expansive cultural center, on October 10. Formerly the Newseum, the center is located on Wilson Boulevard in Rosslyn and will include three art galleries, two theaters and a 4,000-square-foot ballroom. Norma Kaplan, chief of the county’s cultural affairs division, promises something new in the use of the space and in the clientele the Artisphere hopes to attract. “We have a large younger demographic in the region,” Kaplan said. “They want to be participants, not be passive, and they want a place to go. We’ll be open 12 hours a day, seven days a week. People can come and hang out without much planning.”

A 4,000-square-foot Terrace Gallery will have room for exhibitions, seating with drinks and snacks, as well as an overlook into the ballroom. According to Kaplan, built into all Artisphere programming will be opportunities for interaction with the artists. “We are trying to attract audiences that normally don’t come into a cultural center,” she said. One idea is to have late-night dances with regional bands on the weekends. In Artisphere’s first exhibit, opening with the center on October 10, is the group show “Skateboarding Side Effects,” where artists capture the form, shape, line and gestural movements of skateboarding through photography, drawing, painting, film and sculpture.

Cross/Mackenzie Gallery

Cross/Mackenzie Gallery, Georgetown’s premier gallery for contemporary ceramic and applied arts, has an array of upcoming shows for art collectors and enthusiasts with an eye for the dimensional and functional. From September 17 to October 20, the gallery will feature Kathy Erteman’s work in the show “Architectural Ceramics – Tiles & Vessels.”

Opening October 22, Sarah Lindley’s “Poppenhuizen” will feature the artist’s full-sized ceramic cabinet houses, inspired by the extravagant and exquisite 17th century Dutch fine art furniture. The gallery will then close their fall season with a group exhibition, “Serve if Forth,” a platter and plate show featuring the area’s premiere wheel throwers and ceramic artists, opening November 19.

Foundry Gallery

In paintings inspired by the natural beauty of the earth, artist Ron Riley portrays images that evoke a sense of internal peace, tranquility, serenity and power, uniting us with the majestic forces we find within ourselves and in our natural environment. In his recent works, Riley’s tactile palette ranges from the soft and pastel to deep and intense, the varying hues engendering visions of some of nature’s more ominous forces. Riley is a member of the Foundry Gallery as well as Mid City Artists. The show, “Land, Air and Sea,” will be on view at the Foundry Gallery from September 29 through October 31. The opening reception is Friday, October 1, 6-8pm.

Four Seasons Hotel Washington, DC

The Four Seasons hotel in Georgetown has unveiled a completely new art collection selected exclusively for the hotel. The collection has more than 1,650 pieces and is heavily representative of American artists, of which 400 are premier, blue chip and commissioned pieces for the public spaces and corridors. Among the more prominent pieces, on display in conspicuous public areas, are works by Helen Frankenthaler, Andy Warhol, Robert Mangold, Ron Richmond, Andrea Rosenberg and Andrei Petrov. These were purchased from private collections and exclusive galleries throughout the United States.

Guests walking into the Hotel’s recently redesigned lobby will immediately encounter the largest installation along the lobby gallery wall. A commissioned series by Roni Stretch, an English artist residing in Los Angeles, evokes the essential composition of America featuring five ethnic faces, each with a unique appearance: Julia the American Indian, Sara the all-American, Gary the English/Irish, Tiffany the French/Russian, and Fabiana the Mexican. This compilation was selected specifically for Four Seasons Hotel Washington due to its international clientele. These human faces were painted in black and white and then layered with selective colors to create the subtly realistic, yet abstract work. If you have any guests coming into town, yearning for the vibrant DC art scene, you now know where to put them up.

Fraser Gallery

Acclaimed DC-based photographer Maxwell MacKenzie has long sought to capture the wild or pastoral terrain around the country, in exploration of his family’s history. A new series of MacKenzie’s aerial photographs of Vermont, Virginia and Minnesota will open to the public on September 10, from 6-9pm at the Fraser Gallery.

MacKenzie captured all of his images from his self-piloted powered parachute, an ultra-light aircraft where the bird’s eye expanses of trees and wilderness get broken up into a vibrant, organic geometry of color and texture. The show opening will be held in conjunction with the Bethesda Art Walk, which features downtown Bethesda galleries. The studios open their doors to the public from 6-9pm on the second Friday of every month. This is a wonderful opportunity to take in all the Bethesda art scene has to offer.

Irvine Contemporary

Irvine Contemporary will be running two shows simultaneously, from September 11 through October 30. Phil Nesmith’s exhibition “Flow,” a series of wet collodion photographs on black glass plate, was documented on the Gulf coast in Louisiana and Mississippi throughout June 2010. Using his box cameras and a portable darkroom, Nesmith created striking images of the environment and local communities encountering the worst oil disaster in US history. He was able to gain access to areas largely unseen by the public – such as taking a helicopter to a relief well rig at the BP Deepwater Horizon site. Looking damaged and washed out, much like the Gulf coast, Nesmith’s images have a devastating beauty about them, finding peace among the chaos and destruction.

In conjunction with Nesmith’s show, Irvine Contemporary will be presenting a new exhibition of work by Brooklyn-based artist Bruno Perillo, in his second show with the gallery. With a new series of oil paintings, the artist will present his continuing reinterpretations of historical and contemporary realist styles. Bruno Perillo appropriates the realist styles of painters from many eras – from Caravaggio to Degas – for composing masterful images that are at once classical, post-modern, and contemporary. The show, titled “Uniform,” will present male and female characters in narrative scenes with culturally encoded clothing styles and genre cues.

Parish Gallery

Long since established in the Georgetown community, the Parish Gallery is well known for featuring primarily, but not exclusively, artists from Africa and of the African Diaspora. From October 15 through November 16, the gallery will feature the works of husband and wife, Gwendolyn and Bernard Brooks, in an exhibition entitled, “A Marriage of Colors”. The show will open with a reception from 6:00 – 8:00 pm that Friday.

A native Washingtonian, Gwendolyn has been in the art world for over thirty years as a painter, contemporary quilt-maker and doll designer. Her mixed media works can best be described as Afro-Caribbean, having traveled to Africa, Trinidad, Brazil, and Tobago to research and find influences. Bernard is a second-generation artist, his uncle being the first black instructor at the Maryland Institute College of Art. Bernard retired as Howard University’s chief medical illustrator, relinquishing his post after 26 years. This exhibition will be showing his watercolors, many of which are fleeting scenes of an American countryside that we long for even as we observe it.

The Ralls Collection

This fall, the Ralls Collection will premier “Trojan War Years,” the first of three series of paintings by local artist David Richardson, from October 6 through December 31. There will be a private reception with the artist on Wednesday, October 6, from 6 – 8 pm at the gallery.

The paintings featured in “Trojan War Years” will display Richardson’s ability to convey a strong narrative of Homer’s epic tale in conjunction with his unique flair for color and exceptional conviction for abstract forms.
In the last decade, Richardson has painted three important series of works. The first, Trojan War Years, not only precedes the others, but it also continues to manifest. The impetus for the series came while Richardson lived in Japan. Wandering around Tokyo, Richardson noticed the Kanji inscriptions that the Japanese used to mark temples, civic buildings, and businesses. Fueled by his interest in the way Kanji weaved into the architecture of Tokyo in addition to his passion for Homer’s recollection of the Trojan War, Richardson began incorporating the symbols into his own art, eventually securing the foundation for Trojan War Years series.

Studio Gallery

September 29 through October 23 will find Studio Gallery featuring two very different artists, brought together by an uncontainable energy and strong personal voice. Chris Chernow, whose figural paintings consist of numerous layers of oils applied over many months, find edges where the figure and ground can be merged in order to create a sense of submission and solitude. The layers add to the richness of the paint and a reduction in detail, achieving an elegant, haunting simplicity. The figures become shadows before our eyes.

The other featured artist, Carolee Jakes, works primarily in screen-printing, etching and oil painting, and has recently been experimenting with combining these media to focus her works’ prevailing and intertwining themes of identity and music. Her most recent work focuses on the interconnectedness of musicians and their instruments. “There is a level of interaction that gives the instrument a life of its own,” says Jakes. “I see each instrument as a piece of art, and I refer to structural characteristics of the instruments in abstract drawings that are incorporated into the prints.” A reception for the artists will be held on October 16, from 6 to 8pm.

Susan Calloway Fine Arts

Opening September 24 and running through the end of October, Susan Calloway Fine Arts will host an exhibition of artist David Ivan Clark. Born and raised on the plains of Western Canada, Clark returns to them as the inspiration for his work. In his landscape series, Clark blurs the line between abstraction and representation with a haunting minimalism, allowing viewers to find sanctuary from the frenetic rigors of the mechanized world.

The results of his unique painting techniques – fine layers of oil on stainless steel with a glossy, reflective finishing coat – is seductive, serene and luminous, recalling the vast expanses of nature within an unyieldingly industrial framework. “My work braids reference to nature with reference to industry,” Clark says. “Screws may frame a vast sky. Paint may be pitted and scoured as if the depicted terrain has issued from dire industrial processes. Suggesting both Arcadian idyll and post-apocalyptic barren, these paintings dwell, as I am forced to myself, in limbo, yearning for one yet unable to deny the other.” The exhibition, titled “Presence/Absence,” will have an opening reception Friday, September 24, from 6-8pm. This is sure to be one of the highlights of the gallery scene this season, and it should not be missed.

Washington Printmakers Gallery

The Washington Printmakers Gallery will host “New Faces – New Prints II,” an exhibition introducing the five artists that have joined WPG in the past year. These diverse printmakers come from all over the country and are presenting a variety of new work and techniques. New artists include Trisha Gupta, who commemorates natural disasters, such as flooding in India, through personal relations. Trisha says her work “brings me in dialogue with events that have affected me personally, and allows me to give personal experiences the commemoration I know they deserve.”

Zenith Gallery

From September 15 through November 28, the Zenith gallery will be hosting an expansive group exhibition at the Chevy Chase Pavilion, featuring a wide array of Zenith’s art community. A “Meet the Artists” reception will be held September 15 from 6-8 pm, in Zenith’s space on the second level of the Pavilion.

Among the longstanding Zenith artists will be sculptor Carol Newmyer, who creates interactive, figurative bronze sculptures inspired by dance, yoga, balance and meditation. Along with her sculptures, she has a line of dramatic and unique sterling silver and high polished bronze wearable art sold in limited editions. New artists include the vivacious Joyce Wellman. Wellman uses vibrant colors, cryptic marks, and symbols referencing mathematics, anthropomorphic forms, and her personal experiences growing up in a household where “numbers” were played.

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MUSEUMS

National Gallery of Art

“Arcimboldo, 1526–1593: Nature and Fantasy” will run from September 19, 2010 – January 9, 2011. Sixteen examples of the fantastic composite heads painted by Giuseppe Arcimboldo will be featured in this exhibition, their first appearance in the United States. Bizarre yet scientifically accurate, the unusual heads are composed of plants, animals, and objects. Additional works, including drawings by Leonardo da Vinci and Albrecht Dürer, small bronzes, illustrated books and manuscripts, and ceramics will provide a context for Arcimboldo’s inventions, revealing his debt to established traditions of physiognomic and nature studies.

Opening October 31 is “The Pre-Raphaelite Lens: British Photography and Painting, 1848–1875.” In the first survey of British art photography, focusing on the 1850s and 1860s, some 100 photographs and 20 paintings and watercolors chronicle the roles photography and Pre-Raphaelite art played in changing concepts of vision and truth in representation. The exhibition illuminates the mutual struggle of photographers and painters of the era, wrestling with the question of how to observe and represent the natural world and the human face and figure. This rich dialogue between photography and painting is examined in the exhibition’s thematic sections on landscape, portraiture, literary and historical narratives, and modern-life subjects.

Corcoran Gallery of Art

“NOW at the Corcoran,” running from September 11 until January 23, 2011, is a series of one- and two-artist exhibitions that presents new work addressing issues central to the local, national, and global communities of Washington, D.C. and that responds to the collection, history, and architecture of the Corcoran.

The first feature will be “Spencer Finch: My Business, with the Cloud,” an exhibition of new work by the Brooklyn-based artist that includes a site-specific sculpture installed in the Corcoran’s Rotunda. Finch’s sculptural installations, photographs, and drawings seek to capture the elusive space between perception and the outside world, probing the intersections of science, nature, and memory. Drawing from the history and environment of Washington, D.C., his project explores the poetic, physical, and meteorological aspects of these natural phenomena.

The Phillips Collection

“Side by Side: Oberlin’s Masterworks at the Phillips,” opens September 11, 2010, and runs through January 16, 2011. Illustrating its unconventional approach to displaying art, The Phillips Collection will present loosely themed groupings of some of its own masterworks with 25 masterpieces from Oberlin College’s Allen Memorial Art Museum. Half of the 24 paintings and one sculpture on loan from the Allen are old masters, dating from the 16th to the 18th centuries. They include rare works by painters of the British, Dutch, Flemish, French, German, Italian, and Spanish schools. The other Allen pieces are important modern works of the 19th and 20th centuries. Oberlin extended the opportunity to display some of its treasures to the Metropolitan Museum of Art and to the Phillips while the Allen is closed for renovations. Highlights include unique pairings in works ranging from Francisco Goya to El Greco, Rubens to Turner, Cézanne to Ernst Ludwig Kirchner.

Hirshhorn Museum

“Guillermo Kuitca: Everything—Paintings and Works on Paper, 1980–2008” will run from October 21, 2010 to January 16, 2011. Since his first exhibition at the age of thirteen, Guillermo Kuitca has forged a distinctive path as an artist, creating visually compelling works that reflect his intense and often ambivalent relationship to his primary medium: painting. “Guillermo Kuitca: Everything” is the first comprehensive survey of the artist’s work in the United States in more than ten years, examining the artist’s continuing development between 1980 and 2008. The show presents the spectrum of Kuitca’s thirty-five year career, from early pieces inspired by his experience in theater, with titles often drawn from music, to recent complex abstractions that evoke the history of modern painting.

Since the early 1980s, the artist’s work has been characterized by recurring imagery, most notably spatial and mapping motifs. Central among these are images of theater sets and seating charts, architectural plans, road maps, beds, numerical sequences, and baggage-claim carousels, through which Kuitca explores universal themes of migration and disappearance, the intersection of private and public space, and the importance of memory.

National Portrait Gallery

Newspaper publisher Katharine Graham (1917–2001) led an extraordinary life in extraordinary times. Born into privilege, she was catapulted onto the international stage as publisher of The Washington Post during the Watergate scandal. “One Life: Katharine Graham,” running from October 1 through May 30, 2011, includes several photographs to narrate key moments in her life, including a portrait by Richard Avedon, drawings, original newspapers from the time of the Watergate scandal, the Pulitzer Prize for her memoir, “Personal History” and video of a “Living Self-Portrait” interview of Graham by former Portrait Gallery director Marc Pachter.

National Museum of the American Indian

“Vantage Point: The Contemporary Native Art Collection” runs from September 25 until August 7, 2011. The show highlights the National Museum of the American Indian’s young but vital collection of contemporary art, with significant works by 25 artists in media ranging from paintings, drawings, and photography to video projection and mixed-media installation. These complex and richly layered works speak to the concerns and experiences of Native people today, addressing memory, history, the significance of place for Native communities, and the continuing relevance of cultural traditions.

Smithsonian Craft2Wear Show and Sale

The Smithsonian “Craft2Wear” show and sale will be held the weekend of October 23 and 24 at the National Building Museum, featuring 36 premier exhibitors of wearable art, jewelry and clothing. All exhibitors have been previously juried into the Smithsonian Craft Show, so you can be sure that the show is filled with items of lasting artistic value as well as fashionable appeal. [gallery ids="99194,103349,103344,103339,103358,103362,103334,103366,103370,103329,103354" nav="thumbs"]

The Business of Being in Business

Ari Post • May 23, 2011

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The financial recession of the late 2000s found the stock market plummeting to near-record lows and real estate frozen. Housing foreclosures and a disturbing rise in small business failures pockmarked the economic landscape. Businesses that had comfortably kept their doors open for decades were going under. Entrepreneurs were suffering the full brunt of financial strife. It has been said that this recession was just short of a depression, that no industry was spared. It is now March 2010. Many economists still consider the country well in the midst of this great recession.

Now is a great time to start a business.

So submits Jack Garson, author of “How To Build A Business And Sell It For Millions.” Founder and head of business and real estate practice for Garson & Claxton LLC, a member of the Washington Airports Authority board of directors and with a veritable laundry list of professional accomplishments, Mr. Garson has credentials that dwarf most in his field. For all his success, his office is nonetheless unimposing — if spacious — and welcomes guests comfortably, without a looming intimidation. The first thing he does after shaking my hand is to offer me an espresso. Whirling clockwise in his chair, he gets to work. The espresso machine is closer to his desk than his computer.

“I’ve only been to Europe once,” he says. “We went to Paris. And my favorite thing was stopping for espresso. Everywhere. I was drinking them all day.”

Mr. Garson, an outed workaholic, is someone who has clearly made his quirks work in his favor. As he hands me the ambrosial caffeine bomb, he proudly exclaims that he knew he was going to be a lawyer since he was 13 years old. By the time he graduated law school, he had already worked as a law clerk for 2 years and found himself supervising men years above him. He knows how to take the bull by the horns, and according to him, now is the time to do it.

Given the recent economic climate, there has been a shortage of investment capital, resulting in few sales of businesses. Those that have been selling are going for exceedingly low prices. However, private equity firms, those in the business-buying profession, are starting to gear up again.

Equity firms buy a business, add to the executive team, beef up sales and revenue, and resell. Then they do it again.

“They want to build up the profitability,” says Garson, “and then flip them. They’re gonna start selling the businesses they’re buying today in three years, and they’re gonna make a ton of money, because they’re buying dirt cheap right now. And they’re gonna tell all of the world how much money they made, because they want to attract more investors.” This in turn will attract a flood of investment into the industry. Because money rotates.

In the last decade, money has bounced from stocks, to real estate, to cash and treasury bonds. “And one of the next places money is going to migrate to is businesses,” says Mr. Garson. “It’s like gold prices tripling, and everyone starts buying gold. People are going to make a fortune buying businesses, and that will attract a lot of money to this asset class. And all those people out there with funds of money are gonna pour their money into it. So, today is a great time to start a business if you have an eye towards converging with selling it in three to five years.”

However, Mr. Garson’s book does not just deal with building and selling a business in today’s financial market. Far more universal, the book is a guideline of advisory self-assessments, insider tips and premeditated judgment calls that any business owner will have to make throughout his career, in good times and bad. It shows a business owner how to keep an eye on the ball at all times, even while juggling prospective buyers and developing human resources. All of Mr. Garson’s advice is punctuated with stories from the field. Whereas many books of this genre tend to be academically formulated, Mr. Garson’s book is sharp, frank, and to the point — not to mention quite readable. This book has been written from the trenches.

“I’ve been in the room when a business has gone out of business because someone has ignored good advice,” says Mr. Garson. “I’ve been in the room when someone has gotten a hundred million dollar check. And I was also in the room for three years before that, and I saw every decision that led to both of those outcomes. I’m writing about real life successes and failures.”

Chapters discuss a variety of succinct topics from common business pitfalls and financial forecasting to government relations — a vital chapter for the Washington entrepreneur. Every one of these points is accented with hard-boiled, true-life anecdotes. “I have made mental notes of all these things for 25 years. There are lessons I learned 25 years ago that are in this book. And I couldn’t keep it in. I had to share it.”

The advantage of the Washington area is not lost on Mr. Garson, a Maryland native. The local economy is vibrant. Where D.C. has always had an anchor in the federal government, “we’re really seeing a lot more of the financial world shift down here,” he says. “A lot of the U.S. is shifting down here”

As a board member of the Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority, Mr. Garson has witnessed international flights that previously flew exclusively to New York now landing at National or Dulles. The national news has also been relocating a significant portion of their daily filming to the area. “We’ve always been the political capital of the country,” he says, “but we’re starting to have dibs on a portion of the financial capital. And that’s a tremendous benefit that we have.”

Mr. Garson understands the start-up business. He knows where the mistakes lie, and he is weary of the sore spots. “There’s a lot of rigorous analysis clashing with a lot of dreams,” he says. Mr. Garson balances a tender sympathy for the dreamer with the cold, hard pragmatism of profitability. He should know. He’s among the sect. This book is his dream.

“I always wanted to write. But I wanted to write fiction, I wanted to write the great American novel. I didn’t want to write a business book. But this is what I knew. You have to write from what you know.” And Mr. Garson certainly knows the business of being in business.

Wintry Weekends

Ari Post • May 5, 2011

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Every year around late February, the air begins to swell with a certain potential. As the mornings go by, the accumulating whistles of tree sparrows echo like a symphony reaching a familiar crescendo. The slog of post-Christmas drudgery lies vaster in our wake than in our precession. Legs begin to twitch inadvertently beneath office desks. We have done our time cooped up in our beds, fighting the cold, not knowing when we will escape again. Winter is on its last leg. It’s time to get out.

This year, unfortunately, there is still two feet of snow on the ground.

With this surplus of residual snow, however, comes a unique opportunity for those itching for a relaxing weekend getaway. Pastoral bed and breakfasts and luxury hotels surround the D.C. area. The landscapes of these mountain and riverside resorts are still in a rare, delicate state of wintry serenity, while the weather has become warm enough to enjoy nearby attractions. With the leftover snow keeping most people at home, it is an ideal time to take advantage of countryside luxuries with extraordinary intimacy.

The Shenandoah and Charlottesville

Just a stone’s throw from Monticello proper, The Inn at Monticello is a five-acre bed and breakfast, and a convenient base of operations while exploring all that nearby Charlottesville has to offer. Just far enough outside the city to enjoy the rolling landscapes from your private porch or cottage, and down the street from a handful of vineyards, the inn is still only a 10-minute drive from the center of town.

Once in Charlottesville, across the street from the UVA campus, visit the Corner. A stretch of coffee shops, restaurants, bookstores and nightspots frequented by the academic and local community, the Corner is a local watering hole, and a perfect place to enjoy a simple cup of coffee with a good book, grab dinner, or have a few drinks. Among the scenery, UVA’s historic chapel and the “Academical Village” are noteworthy sites that have been temporarily beautified by the snow.

For a more inclusive package, the Boar’s Head Inn offers enough amenities and activities to help you recharge your batteries for a weekend without having to leave the premise. With four restaurants and an in-room dining option, guests can dine as casually as they please. A sports club and spa, complete with a dozen indoor tennis courts, allows guests to strap on sneakers and shorts despite the snow.

Restaurants to check out around Charlottesville include The Ivy Inn Restaurant and Hamilton’s at First and Main. Producing cuisine inspired by seasonal and locally grown ingredients, The Ivy Inn offers classic American fare with modern twists, such as pumpkin ravioli or veal osso buco with sautéed local bok choy. At Hamilton’s at First and Main, inventive pairings such as roasted halibut stuffed with chèvre or crab cakes with lemon-basil aioli are the highlights of the menu.

The Middle Piedmont Region

When discussing luxury dining and accommodations in Virginia, The Inn at Little Washington garners the same reactions that one gets if mentioning Disney World to a four-year-old. The love child of renowned restaurateur Patrick O’Connell, a self-taught chef often accused of having “perfect taste” and a pioneer of the local, organic movement, The Inn at Little Washington is one of the most highly decorated restaurants and hotels in the country — and just about the only nationally lauded two-for-one.

This time of year, O’Connell’s celebrated kitchen is honoring the tail end of black truffle season, one of O’Connell’s favorite occasions to have a bit of elegant fun. Expect such menu items as Maine Diver Scallops with leek purée, caramelized onions, and black truffle. As an additional, limited-time treat that comes out with the meal if you behave: black truffle popcorn with truffle oil, Parmesan, parsley, and a sprinkling of black truffle. “It sounds ridiculous,” says Rachel Hayden, marketing director for the inn, “but it’s insanely addictive.”

The Middleton Inn, an award winning bed and breakfast just down the street from The Inn At Little Washington, sits on a knoll of a country estate with unparalleled views of the Blue Ridge Mountains. Enjoy a four-course breakfast or a wine and cheese hour surrounded by bucolic landscapes and the crisp mountain air. Art galleries and quaint boutiques such as the Middle Street Gallery and R.H. Ballard make for great day shopping.

While rusticating the winter weekends away, vineyards are ideal day trips. Linden Vineyards is a seamless compliment to low-key winter months, maintaining a philosophy of “quiet and calm.” A vineyard of considerable acclaim and prestige, the small-scale producer has earned a reputation as one of Virginia’s finest wineries — and likewise has had a large hand in opening the world’s eyes to the viticultural possibilities of Virginia and the Shenandoah Valley. Their chardonnays are regularly compared with California’s, while the variety of reds all have considerable aroma and full, rich flavors. Perfect to drink on the vineyard’s premise or in front of the fireplace later in the evening.

The Narmada Winery is quite new to the area, and already creating quite a stir. Among a full offering of different varieties, their dessert wine was voted the best in Virginia in 2009. This time of year, while visitors are sparse, visitors have a chance for intimate tours with an up and coming vineyard.

With the mountains still blanketed by a layer of soft, white snow, and streets clear enough for walking around town, now is a unique time to experience rare beauty in the Shenandoahs.

Hot Springs

Let’s be honest with each other. There might not be all that much in Hot Springs, Virginia (although George Washington National Forest is rather pretty). And, yes, it might be a little out of the way. But what Hot Springs does have is The Homestead. This is what matters, and it is worth the trip.

Resting on 3,000 acres of Allegheny Mountain terrain, The Homestead is a luxury mountain resort that has been spoiling their guests since before the American Revolution. This National Historic Landmark of a retreat is ranked among the world’s finest spa destinations, and has enough activities to keep someone busy through the entirety of winter.

There are a variety of suite accommodations from which to choose, including pet friendly rooms. Their world-class spa alone would nearly be worth the trip — even more so in these dragging winter months when skin begins to crave an escape from the dry, cold atmosphere. Revitalize the mind, body and spirit with a hydrotherapy treatment, and then, if the mood is right, go see a movie at the in-house theater or swim in the naturally heated indoor pool, play tennis on the indoor courts, go skiing, ice skating, bowling, snow tubing. To say the least, The Homestead understands how to make the most out of winter.

With nine restaurants to choose from, guests can dine in almost any manner they please. Put on a your evening’s best to enjoy French American cuisine at 1766 Grille, or enjoy a poolside lunch wrapped in a beach towel with a view of the snowcapped mountains just outside the window.

Spring is coming, and, as we stagger around slush puddles at intersections and flip up our collars to deflect renegade snow clumps falling from waning rooftops, most of us agree that it couldn’t get here sooner. Even still, life should be enjoyed in the here and now. With so many unique opportunities just hours away, there are plenty of reasons to enjoy the intimacy and the solitude of the last weeks of winter.
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