Arts & Society

Ari Post • May 3, 2012

By the door of the entrance into “Pilgrimage,” a new exhibition of photographs by Annie Leibovitz at the American Art Museum, hangs a photograph of the messiest workshop you’ve ever seen. Blanketed in the green, swampy light of an old fluorescent bulb, wires, saws, copper pipes, oil canisters, paint cans, pruning shears, and drills are crammed within every dimension of a wooden worktable, built into the wall against a peeling, dust-caked window. Chairs are covered in such clutter that they are only recognizable by the legs that stretch toward a ground. This is Pete Seeger’s workshop, just off from the log cabin that he built for his family’s home in Cold Spring, New York, in 1949. He has lived there ever since.

But Pete Seeger is conspicuously absent from the photograph. And for Annie Leibovitz to take a picture of a renowned icon without the presence of the individual is, if nothing else, unprecedented.

Throughout “Pilgrimage,” the audience is in the presence of important figures and icons, tied loosely but surely to a collective American-European consciousness. But the figures all lie just beyond the lens. We see a doorway. It is the entrance into Georgia O’Keefe’s New Mexico studio. We see a wicker bed frame. This is the bed that Thoreau slept on at Walden Pond. We see a windowless room bathed in red light. This was Ansel Adams’ darkroom in Carmel, California, where he developed his photographs in the last twenty years of his life. We don’t get but a haunting of Leibovitz’s subjects—all of whom are dead, save Seeger—yet there their presence is engrained deeply within the images, connecting us to the past not through nostalgia, but within the context of our present.

Annie Leibovitz was 21 years old and still in school when her portrait of John Lennon ran on the cover of Rolling Stone magazine in January of 1971. By 1973, she was the magazine’s chief photographer. Almost over night, she became a photojournalism sensation, and through the years her camera has captured some of the most recognizable and iconic portraits of our time, revealing her to be among the foremost documentarians of the American social landscape. Her most famous photograph is arguably that of a nude John Lennon cocooned around a black-clad Yoko in 1980—taken five hours before Lennon was shot and killed.

Rather than focusing on her subject’s face, or having them pose with the banal glam of your typical high-profile photo shoot, Leibovitz is known for photographing her subject’s full self, from head to toe, engaged in something beyond the camera, frequently posed amidst objects from their lives.

Herein is perhaps the lead-in to “Pilgrimage.” Leibovitz has divested herself of her subjects all together, to tell their stories with only their significant surroundings. The subjects of her photographs, as with the Pete Seger workshop, are only shown in absence. From a busted television to a hat (Elvis and Lincoln, respectively), from a concert gown to a bedroom wall (Marian Anderson, Virginia Woolf), we only see these people through the objects and places tied to their lives.

The focus of these photographs is still celebrity, in a way. Perhaps “persons of significance” is a better way to say it—you won’t see George Clooney’s liquor cabinet or Angelina’s dirty laundry in this show. You will see Sigmund Freud’s bookshelf, Elvis Presley’s busted television (he had a habit of breaking them, with apparent force), Emily Dickinson’s nightgown, her only surviving dress, and Yosemite Valley, from the same location that Ansel Adams took his archetypal photographs of the landscape throughout the early 20th century.

Leibovitz’s own pilgrimage, which led to this exhibit, began by accident. “I started the project at a difficult time in my life,” she said at a tour of the exhibit on Jan. 24. Two years ago, she explains, she was in the middle of some financial and personal hardships. “I took the kids to Niagra Falls as a day trip. As they were leaning on the rail, I walked up behind them and snapped a photo. It’s a photo that anyone could take—an American snapshot.”

This photo hangs in the exhibition, marking a jumping off point for the journey to come. “I hope that what anyone can get out of this is that we are in a great country, and there is so much to see if you just hit the road. That’s what happened to me.”

Through her exploration, Leibovitz revisited locations repeatedly, letting them lead her to new ones, like a subconscious scavenger hunt. Concord, Massachusetts, for example, was a particularly rich area of discovery. First going there to photograph Walden Pond, she was drawn into the world of Thoreau, which led to Ralph Waldo Emerson, Louisa May Alcott and her father Bronson. All these figures are represented in some way in the exhibition. One of the Alcott sisters was a mentor to Daniel Chester French, the sculptor who created the statue of Lincoln in the Lincoln Memorial. Leibovitz followed the trail, winding up in French’s studio in western MA, which led her to the National archives, where she found a rare multiple-lens glass pate of a Lincoln portrait. The National Archives led to Gettysburg. This led to Matthew Brady’s studio. And so on.

“I was trying to find a reason to live, places to be inspired,” Leibovitz said. “This is the kind of project that doesn’t end. The show went up, but that doesn’t mean it’s over. I did this to feed my portrait work, to save it. And it did. But there’s no reason I can’t return to this later.”

She also discussed the significance of children to this work: “Hanging this show, I saw children running around the museum. I loved it. So I hung everything low, cluttered the rooms with pictures, for children. The book [accompanying the exhibition] is dedicated to my children. I can’t wait to see a classroom in here, to see what the children think.”

Equally significant to the show are two technical facts regarding Leibovitz’s process. Unlike the work that made her into the presence she is today, none of this work was commissioned. This is Leibovitz’s first personal assignment since she was a student. This is also her first foray into digital photography. She used an array of cameras, starting with a cheap digital number that fit in her pocket, and eventually upgrading to a wide-angle lens with tripod.

“Pilgrimage” is significantly smaller and more intimate than almost anything Leibovitz has ever done. And its audience of museum goers is comparatively more modest than the national and international syndication of the magazines she works with. But Leibovitz is thrilled with the outcome and location of her project. “The Smithsonian is popping right now,” she said. “Doing a lot of great things. I feel very cool being here, so steeped in history.”

“We think we know who people are,” Leibovitz said. “But when you try to really understand someone, you find out how much there is to know,” and perhaps how much we can never know. Through her explorations, however, Leibovitz doesn’t seem to be worried about how well she knows her subjects. Her understanding is on a different level—an interpersonal one, tied to her intellectual roots, her heritage, her family and her sense of self. To put a face to self-discovery is no small feat, especially for someone who has lived her life behind the public spotlight, not in front. This show offers a portrait of a portrait artist and, as it turns out, there is not a face to be seen—just the essence of various selves.

For more information visit [AmericanArt.si.edu](http://americanart.si.edu/exhibitions/archive/2012/leibovitz/)
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Ari Post •

Post-Impressionism is a movement that often diverges the innovations of the collective whole among its individual artists. The painters are known and respected— Cézanne, Gauguin, van Gogh, Seurat—but their styles varied wildly and their directions were individually effusive and disparate. They also thrived in the precarious decades between Impressionism and Cubism (roughly 1890 – 1910), two of the most profound, loud and influential art movements of the past 300 years. As such, they are frequently and easily unhinged from their art historical parameters in museum settings.

“Snapshots: Painters and Photography, Bonnard to Vuillard,” the newest exhibit at The Phillips Collection, deals extensively with the Post-Impressionists, rethinking the movement and redefining everything in its wake. It not only solidifies the distinct and long-term influence of Post-Impressionism, but illuminates the profound artistic impact of a landmark technical innovation from 1888: the Kodak handheld camera.

The amateur camera made it possible for a broader public to capture daily life in snapshots, and in the hands of painters the door was opened to an entirely new understanding of composition, value and spatial relationships that reenergized the artists’ methods and creative vision. “Snapshots” presents works by seven of the first artists to experiment in photography: Pierre Bonnard, Edouard Vuillard, Maurice Denis, Félix Vallotton, George Hendrik Breitner, Henri Evenepoel and Henri Reviére.

This exhibition is the first of its kind, presenting over 200 photographs along with about 70 paintings, prints and drawings by the artists who took them. We are brought into the world of photography at its inception, and through these artists we see how the Kodak altered the perspective of our cultural lens. Even without a single work by Picasso, Braque or Duchamp, the urgency of cubism to resuscitate the future of painting becomes pertinently clear. We feel just why fine art began moving so quickly, without ever stopping to look back.

Entering the exhibition, you come upon a handful of small paintings by Bonnard. One is a portrait of the artist’s sister and brother-in-law. They sit smoking in a sharp, stark light, and at the bottom of the canvas is a large hand holding a pipe. It comes from outside the canvas, presumably belonging to the artist.

Immediately, we get an understanding of a photo-influenced composition. The figures act as compositional devices rather than subjects. As in a Rothko painting, Bonnard’s family members become strategically placed shapes that support an abstract harmony.

The perspective of the artist’s own hand and pipe is not a view Bonnard would ever have had before his canvas, but only if he put his hand before the camera lens. There is also radical foreshortening of the figures in space, making the painting almost graphic, illustrative or claustrophobic—we are contained in the space with them. This is the cropping and lighting of a photograph.

Sure enough, Bonnard primarily photographed his family and immediate circle of friends at home or during summer days in the countryside, examples of which abound in the exhibit, many strikingly similar to the scene in the painting. The eye of the camera, as it seems, is a contagious and invasive visual filter. It didn’t take even a decade to alter artists’ sense of space.

Walking through the exhibit, these moments reoccur and overlap: we see photographs that look like studies for paintings, paintings that bring together surrounding photographs, sketches and prints filtered through a camera lens. To these artists, photography was still a mimetic medium, used to better understand their paintings—to clarify a perspective, to study the shape of a figure or the dimensional accuracy of a mirror’s reflection.

Photography was initially frowned upon by critics, which made the artist’s reserved about revealing their work with it, which is perhaps why most of these photographs have never before been on exhibit. It is interesting, though, that even within this exhibition we start to see a certain superfluity of the paintings, not the photographs. However beautiful the paintings are, the act of painting what is captured in the photograph becomes redundant.

Breitner’s photographs, among the others in the show, are in fact more compelling than his paintings. A pioneer of street photography, he focused on the city as a visual resource: his street scenes of carriages, canals, sand carters and mill workers, construction and urban bustle, are some of the most moving images on display.

In the work of Vuillard, the marriage of painting and early photography becomes almost seamless. His photographs of family and friends, posing in the mundane theater of quiet existence, sit alongside his paintings of domestic moments. They inform one another, communicating to its audience the artist’s world and vision. The works in this room serve also as nice companions to similar Vuillards currently on view in the National Gallery of Art’s “Small French Paintings” exhibit.

“Snapshots” comes at a unique time, as Kodak files for bankruptcy and digital photography poises to monopolize the industry, leaving traditional film with almost no place in contemporary culture. But just as oil paints took the place of tempera and egg-based paints in the 15th century, the takeover of digital photography does not negate the impact of the precedent set by film. The introduction of photography altered our perceptions of our surroundings, but it took a group of painters to reveal the potential of its beauty.

Exhibiting the works among this subset of Post-Impressionists showcases an important development within a movement that is often difficult to pin down, concentrating the significance of the exhibition as well as the unity of these artists. These works seem in many ways like the sparks that set off the explosion of 20th century art. And yet here they hang, delicate, pensive and ethereal, as if standing on the precipice of an endless free-fall without thinking to look down.

“Snapshots: Painters and Photography, Bonnard to Vuillard,” is on view at The Phillips Collection through May 6, 2012. For more information visit PhillipsCollection.org

Gary Tischler •

On a windy, cold Friday night in Southwest Washington, a mostly bald middle-aged man and a young, wiry, slight younger man came out of the Arena Stage doors, dwarfed by the glass and wood edifice. Watching them from a distance they were like longtime friends, coming off from a long day’s work, walking within the halo of a weary and mutual satisfaction.

The two men were the actors Edward Gero and Patrick Andrews, who had spent the latter part of the night battling back and forth as the American abstract expressionist painter Mark Rothko and a fictionalized young assistant. They yelled at each other, splattering red paint, arguing passionately about art and life in the play “Red,” in what often seems like a life-or-death struggle before an appreciative audience. I couldn’t hear what they were saying and soon their voices receded and they moved from view.

But their voices stayed with me nonetheless, and sometimes I hear them still—the debates about art, the volatility of passionate gobs of words amid flying gobs of paint.

“Yeah, it’s a little like that,” said Gero over coffee at Politics and Prose a few days later. “We’re close, we’re friends. We’ve been doing this a while now, here and in the Goodman Theatre run in Chicago.”

“But it’s still surprising. It’s still remarkably challenging to do this for both of us, and we’re still learning about each other.” Gero said. “Every night is a new experience with theater, but that’s rarely as true as it is in this play. It’s even more true now that we’re here at Arena. Here the audience is in the studio practically, because of the intimacy of the space, which really raises the level of intensity. And with a show like this, it can be exhausting.”

“One night I kicked a bucket of paint over accidentally,” Gero recalled.

When I asked him how he handled the situation onstage he said: “What Rothko would have done. I told him to clean it up.” You think—and more importantly, feel—that this happened, these feelings were expressed, the words unleashed.

And when Rothko and Ken grab paint brushes and buckets and commence to apply a load of red base paint on a mighty blank canvas, tossing paint around like giant swaths of wet spitballs, moving over and under one another, it’s thrilling. You get a real sense of the physicality of the creative process.

“The whole thing is choreographed,” Gero said. “But it’s never the same, it’s tricky, it’s tough, it’s musical and exhausting, it’s sexual. It was my idea to smoke the cigarette afterwards. People get it right away, it’s like a punctuation.”

What the intimacy of Arena’s Kreeger theater creates is a kind of stillness and respect in the audience, because you believe in the reality of the people—and how can you not, with the red and black battling on the canvases, with the elevated, painful verbal arguments.

Not to mention, Washington is something of a Rothko town: the National Gallery installed the Seagram murals in 2010 that figure so strongly in the art-commerce battles of the play, and the Phillips Collection has their famous Rothko room, designed by the actual artist himself to facilitate his meditative, tragic and aggressive paintings.

One of the reasons that Washington is such a great theater town is actors like Gero, who has worked almost nonstop for decades in most of the area’s venues, from the Shakespeare Theatre Company—where he’s been a company mainstay—to Arena, Ford’s, Studio and a host of others. Gero joins a thespian host that includes the likes of Ted van Gruythiesen, Nancy Robinette, Holly Twyford, Rick Foucheoux and others, who have all scaled the heights in DC theater with uncommon versatility and talent over the years.

“It is not easy, but it’s what I love,” he says. “My wife has been an elementary and special education teacher in the DC School District and it’s her love, too. You have to have something you love to do in addition to the family you love, the people you love.”

Family is central in his life. Upon winning a Helen Hayes Award for playing Bolingbroke in “Richard II”—he’s won four Helen Hayes Awards and been nominated 14 times—he dedicated the award to “my father, Sal of Jersey,” in reference to the show’s aging father figure, John of Gaunt. “My dad had passed away that year,” Gero recalled.

“I’ve got nothing on the plate after this right now, which is unusual,” he said. “But I’d love to do ‘Waiting for Godot’ with Stacey Keach somewhere down the line.”

Somewhere, down the line, you suspect he’ll also be visiting the Rothko Room at the Phillips, and spot a daub of red in some shirt he’s wearing.

“Red” has been extended through March 11 at Arena Stage. For more information visit ArenaStage.org

Mary Bird •

No stranger to Washington through his collaboration with The Washington Ballet, Trey McIntyre brought members of his Boise, Idaho-based company to the Katzen Arts Center at American University Jan. 10 to share his creative process. The host committee included Kay Kendall, Eve Lilley and Rhona Wolfe Friedman, who watched enthusiastically as the choreographer and two stellar dancers created on the spot. The artist said of his work, “I seek unconscious narrative.” As one of four American dance companies chosen by the U.S. Department of State and Brooklyn Academy of Music to participate in Dance Motion USA, the troupe will tour to China, South Korean, the Philippines and Vietnam this spring. [gallery ids="100475,116514,116460,116507,116469,116500,116477,116493,116486" nav="thumbs"]

Gary Tischler •

Outside of the mad scene in “Lucia Di Lammermoor” or climbing Mount Everest every year to sing your favorite aria, there are few bigger challenges in opera for a singer than singing and acting Violetta in the last act of Verdi’s “La Traviata”— okay, the whole opera, but definitely the last act.

The noted American coloratura soprano Elizabeth Futral, she of the pitch-black locks and voice rich with rangy emotions does it on a regular basis almost every year, it’s like a yearly to-do list that includes “sing Violetta somewhere in the world.”

If Futral doesn’t own what is a legendary part — Maria Callas was famous for it — lock, stock and legend, she is at least a major, controlling shareholder in the lore and history of the part. She was here at the Washington National Opera four years ago and held her audiences spellbound in the famous last act in which the consumptive consort Violetta sings her way through nearly an hour-long death scene and commands the stage with a powerful voice and a frail but unforgettable beauty and shimmering physicality. It’s like watching a butterfly expiring in a burst of musical longing.

“Obviously, the part doesn’t get old for me,” Futral said during a telephone interview. “I find something new, some additional challenge, a feeling in her as does my voice. And it’s gratifying that people remember it so.”

But now she’s back at the WNO, opening the second half of the season performing as Fiordiligi in director Jonathan Miller’s production of Mozart’s stylish, sophisticated “Cosi Fan Tutte.” Unlike the long-standing relationship with “La Traviata,” this is a first for Futral. “I don’t know, I’ve never quite felt right for the part or I wasn’t ready for it,” she said. “But I think it’s time now. And I love the setting for this, the contemporary outlook. Mozart, to me, his music always looks to the future, it’s so rich with so many layers.”

On the surface, “Cosi” would look to be one of those oh-so-clever and funny opera romcoms, full of game-playing, deception, implausible and romantically dangerous and opportunities for intricate singing and arias. I mean the plot alone is enough to make you dizzy: two soldier buddies, married to two sisters, always a little competitive with each other, get into a discussion about women (the title is a variant on the theme of men’s inability to understand them after they get them). Each feels his own wife is rock-solid faithful and true. So, fools that they are, they make a bet that each can seduce the other’s wife. First one to seduce wins the bet.

“It sounds a little silly and light, and it is very comic on the whole,” Futral said. “But with Mozart, musically, nothing is simple. It’s almost as if some of the arias and the music undermines the plot, it’s layered, beautiful, rich but complicated, sometimes at odds with what’s going on. And the arias are a real challenge to sing because Fiordiligi is a complicated woman. She’s the older sister, and she is formidable.”

You can be pretty sure that the complications of the role will shine through, because Futral, a wonderful singer, is also noted for her acting ability, not always a top priority among divas and stars.

She’s also up to a challenge. She likes contemporary opera and new classical music, and she’s performed in an opera version of “A Streetcar Named Desire,” directed by Andre Previn. “I love new music,” she said. “You have to find a way to live in the present professionally.”

In the opera world, she is something of a rock star, although she hardly behaves like one — no diva doings to report here. She and her husband Steven White, a conductor, live in a secluded house in Roanake, Va., although they don’t spend as much time together as they like.

“Roanake is just far enough away from here that I don’t go home,” she said. “And besides, Steven is conducting for the New York City Opera right now.”

That would be a production of “La Traviata.”

“We have similar careers,” she continued. “We live professionally in the same world. So, that’s rather nice. You don’t have to explain things when you talk about what happened during a performance. Not that we always agree about things. But we’re both successful, both passionate about what we do.”

Traviata. Check. Lucia. Check. Cosi, check.

Mt. Everest.

Nope.

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Mary Bird •

Disappointment that mezzo-soprano Susan Graham had a last-minute cancellation of her afternoon Kennedy Center Washington Performing Arts Society concert Feb. 4 was softened when Bonnie McElveen-Hunter informed Daren Thomas, WPAS’s director of leadership and institutional gifts, that the post-performance cocktail reception at her stunning Georgetown residence was “always on.” When Thomas presented her with a bouquet, she quipped, “Am I the entertainer?” As a former ambassador to Finland and chairman of the American Red Cross, she said her humanitarian commitment had led her to realize that “the arts lift us up.” She thanked WPAS president and CEO Neale Perl for his leadership in expressing the “generosity of spirit through music.” He, in turn, said that over his ten years with the WPAS, despite cancellations, “Our track record is very good” and urged everyone to hold onto their tickets because “Susan Graham will be back.” Guests listened raptly to Samantha McElhaney, who sang her signature roles from “Porgy and Bess,” concluding with a cherished spiritual. The hostess invited guests to explore her wonderful home and welcomed Ambassador of Finland Ritva Koukku-Ronde. [gallery ids="100486,117350,117317,117343,117324,117337,117332" nav="thumbs"]

Mary Bird •

Cultural Tourism D.C. hosted its inaugural conference entitled “Arts, Culture, and Tourism: Strategies for Success,” Jan. 26. The event included four productive workshops focusing on communications, customer service, social media and fundraising. Johnetta Betsch Cole, director of the Smithsonian National Museum of African Art, delivered the keynote address highlighting the museum’s efforts to think outside of the box and market to a younger generation through the use of technology. Cultural Tourism D.C.’s annual meeting followed the conference focusing on 2011’s accomplishments. The Fourth Embassy Chef’s Challenge, which will be held at the Reagan Building on Mar. 8, was all the talk at the evening’s networking reception at Nage in the Courtyard Marriott. The annual fundraising event is a friendly competition among embassy chefs, which features international tastings, awards, entertainment and a world-class silent auction.
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Mary Bird •

Les Dames d’Escoffier, a unique worldwide philanthropic society of professional women leaders in the fields of food, fine beverage and hospitality, returned to Janet Wu’s definitely “worth a detour” Hollywood East Café in the Westfield Wheaton Shopping Center to celebrate Chinese New Year in grand fashion. This year’s eager crowd crammed the popular eatery, which prepared a seemingly unending traditional banquet with virtually every course bringing the promise of good luck. Imbibers had the additional pleasure of wines selected by Janet Cam, who is renowned for creating innovative wine lists which pair perfectly with the restaurant’s cuisine. Lion dancers provided wonderful entertainment. [gallery ids="102433,121522,121496,121508,121503,121515" nav="thumbs"]

Ari Post •

Nestled like an egg in a courtyard of high-rises and apartment buildings just off Dupont Circle sits Gold Leaf Studios. A 10,000-square-foot carriage house built in 1903 by Evalyn Walsh McLean, the building stands as an urban anomaly — one of those small architectural wonders that momentarily suspends reality when first seen. Its stucco walls and adobe tile roof recall something of the Old West, as if at any moment a cowboy-capped young stablehand will swing open the heavy wooden door and wonder aloud what sort of business a confused looking man in strange, foreign clothes has with the boss.

But the traditions at Gold Leaf Studios date much further back than the old west. And the boss, William B. Adair, a master gilder, frame historian and catch-all depository for aesthetic and historical idiosyncrasies from here to Byzantium, knows a little more than your average rancher.

Adair is among a small handful of international authorities on frame fabrication, conservation and the nearly extinct art of gilding: applying fine gold leaf to the surfaces of paintings, wood, frames or anything else you could possibly conceive (Martha Stewart did it to pumpkins — Adair taught her how). He has employed his expertise extensively with every major museum in the city and consults with gallerists, architectural firms and private collectors throughout the world. His eyes look not into a work of art from the outside, but out from the artwork into the world it reflects.

Walking into the studio, you are greeted by a flurry of activity and projects, which it becomes clear is a reflection of Adair himself. His five studio assistants occupy every dimension of the crammed and cavernous workshop, wielding brushes, cotton swabs and an arsenal of unidentifiable tools that date back to the Renaissance. Indeed, the gilding techniques employed at the studio are of an age-old craft that has remained unchanged since the Late Middle Ages

“Man has worked with gold as long as it’s been around,” says Adair. “Gilding, in fact, is the third oldest occupation in history — behind prostitution and advertising.”

As with the other two oldest professions, there are varying techniques for gilding. But the oldest and most common form is a process called water gilding, which Adair employs exclusively at Gold Leaf Studios. After first applying layers of gesso to linen or wood — for a painting or a frame — the gilder then applies a layer of clay and glue, called bole, to help the small thin sheets of gold leaf adhere. The applied gold is then burnished and can be lightly manipulated. For a textured, dynamic surface, such as embossed vines wrapped about a picture frame, warm gesso can be carefully ladled upon the surface to create the patterns before laying the gold leaf, a process called pastiglia.

Examples of gold leaf abound in museums and buildings around the District, perhaps most prominent displayed in the National Gallery of Art’s permanent collection of 13th and 14th century Italian paintings, which is all but overrun by brilliant gold leaf altarpieces. “The National Gallery is resplendent with examples of Renaissance gilding,” says Adair. “There’s really nothing like it in the area.”

The collection’s few paintings by the Italian master Duccio (about 1260 – 1319) illuminate the ethereal splendor of gold leaf, as well as the sweep of humanist philosophy at the heart of Renaissance. (But that history is for another day.)

Adair began his long tenure with framing and gilding rather fortuitously. After studying fine art at the University of Maryland, he found work with the National Portrait Gallery. “I was hired to work in the exhibits department,” he says. “And they put me in charge of framing. Of course, one thing led to another, as it goes, and in 1982, I left to found Gold Leaf Studios.”

He tells the story like a shrug, undermining the inevitable mad passion that evidently took him over. This is not an occupation one just happens to fall into, like business administration. Adair’s multifaceted work requires him to be a historian, anthropologist, diligent researcher, tedious craftsman and sharp intellectual — usually all at once. He can distinguish periods and demographics in history from the geometric flourish on a strip of wood lining a painting that most of us would entirely disregard.

“But that is precisely the job of the frame,” he says. “If the frame jumps out at you or feels incongruous to the artwork, it isn’t doing its job. It’s a little bit like God — if it’s doing everything right, most people won’t even notice that it’s doing anything. In the Middle Ages, it was said that an empty niche in a cathedral is where God dwells. They were often left empty intentionally — like an empty frame can stand for an unspoken wonder otherwise within its borders.”

His history with gilding began in 1975, when the Smithsonian awarded him a grant to travel to Europe to learn about tools and techniques from the few remaining master gilders working in the Renaissance tradition. Working back and forth between these interwoven ancient crafts, Adair found his calling.

The year after he founded Gold Leaf Studios, Adair mounted the first ever exhibition of American frames, titled “The Frame In America, 1700 – 1900.” Along with the exhibition, which was sponsored by the American Institute of Architects, he produced a catalogue that is still regarded as an invaluable reference for American frame history. (The book, titled after the exhibit, is available at Blurb.com.) In 1995, he curated a follow-up exhibition, “The Frame In America, 1860 – 1960,” which traveled around the country through the Mid-Atlantic Arts Alliance for five years.

In 1991, the American Academy in Rome awarded Adair’s achievements with the Rome Prize in Design, wherein he spent six months further immersed in the elusive study of the origins of frame design. He is a founding member of the Society of Gilders and a member of the American Institute for Conservation of Historic and Artistic Works. The list of accolades, acclaim, professional anecdotes and associations stretches on like the scrolls of Ancient Alexandria, but talking to him, all that seems to matter is the craft and the history.

“Back in the 13th and 14th centuries,” he says, “as much time and money was spent on the frame as the artwork. They were custom designed to fit each individual painting.”

A well-designed frame is integral to illuminating a sound work of art. And Adair has made it his life’s work to preserve these traditions, while reintroducing them to the cultural market.

At his studio, Adair develops new frame designs and reproduces period frames. Each frame is handmade to enhance and relate to the work it holds. Through the years, he has amassed a repertoire of frame designs that pays homage to historical periods and styles around the world.

Meanwhile, in his conservation department, he preserves and repairs antique frames, gilded objects and furniture better than any in the trade. Since its founding, Adair has held his studio to museum standards of conservation, and it has long been a member of the American Institute for Conservation of Historic Artistic Works. “We’re committed here to combining contemporary techniques with age-old and proven methods,” he says. “Nothing is more important than preserving the historic and aesthetic value of each piece, whether we’re working with an old family portrait from the turn of the century or a Cézanne watercolor.”

Adair also hosts regular seminars throughout the country and internationally on gilding, finishing techniques and frame history. Instructing students, hobbyists and field professionals, he is a regular at the annual Frame Convention in Las Vegas, and is frequently booking classes at the Washington Design Center, just off L’Enfant Plaza.

For several years, Adair has been in partnership with Montgomery College in Silver Spring, holding seminars for educators on gilding practices. “My goal right now is to train the trainers,” he says. “I want teachers to be familiar with the art of gilding so that it can be reintroduced as a viable art.”

Through these seminars, he hopes to combat the decline of trade skills in education in the U.S. But despite what Adair calls, “a lack of artisanship in the world,” he has begun to notice an increasing interest in these forgotten arts.

“Along with the digital revolution,” he says, “there has been a parallel movement in homegrown craft revival. It has taken many forms. You see it in the local food markets and in the growing interest in vintage and custom goods. People want to know where their products come from, their histories, and they want to know that they are made well.”

Adair has found a unique companion for championing this cause in Prince Charles.

The Prince of Wales has long noticed this cultural and utilitarian deficit and called on Adair to consult in his international mission, The Prince of Wales Foundation’s Artisan Training Program. “From tiles, to woodwork, to gilding, The prince has a keen interest in reviving lost arts,” says Adair. “When he found out I was teaching those things here, he contacted me.”

Adair’s last seminar took place at the Intersections D.C. American Arts Festival, through Atlas Performing Arts Center, on U Street. On the weekend of Feb. 27, Adair’s staff hosted two free interactive seminars, demonstrating and teaching the application of gold leaf to mirror frames.

If you missed that one, there are always more to come. Adair’s latest exhibition is currently on view at the Muscarelle Museum of Art, the museum for the College of William in Mary, in Williamsburg, Va., which he will accompany with a lecture and gilding seminar on Friday, March 16. Invited by Scholar-in-Residence John T. Spike, a noted art historian, author and lecturer specializing in Italian Renaissance and Baroque art, Adair has put together a show of “The 20 greatest frames from my private collection, representing the history of frames from Byzantine to modern.”

Accompanying the exhibition are the paintings of artist Kay Jackson, Adair’s wife and collaborator. An acclaimed painter whose work has been exhibited nationally and internationally, including a commission by President Clinton for the official White House holiday card in 1997, Jackson’s work has a long history of addressing environmental concerns such as endangered species, pollution and loss of habitat. Jackson frequently employs gold leaf techniques in her work, which she learned through her husband, and for the coming exhibition she has created gilded icons of endangered species, drawing parallels to the endangered craft of gilding.

A technically brilliant artist, Jackson has made more than just paintings in these gold leaf works. She has constructed intricate, cryptic, glowing panels and boxes, encasing the endangered animals — from crayfish and salmon to the spotted owl — in armatures of gold and surrounded by symbols that span eras and iconologies.

Jackson custom designs the frames for each work, inspired by 14th century panel paintings. She herself observes that her boxes are like 16th century cabinets of curiosities, those assembled by wealthy European collectors to celebrate and catalogue their knowledge of the world. Yet despite these callings upon the past, the works look entirely contemporary. Her pieces depict both the fragility and resiliency of our ecosystems and species, and connect the vulnerability of our planet with the delicacy of our artistic culture.
“Creating art is an act of faith,” says Jackson. “With each passing year it takes an increasing commitment to continue what most people think is a spontaneous and blissful activity.”

The sentiment is echoed in the work of her husband. Adair works daily to pull a near-extinct art form back from the fate of obscurity, just as Jackson puts her artistry to work to combat environmental threats. It is a bond that, in many ways, must move beyond love and into a commitment that bridges more than just the distance between two persons. They are committed to eight centuries of artistic traditions, the preservation of cultural heritage, life and ideas. As a gilder lays each feather-like sheet of gold leaf delicately to the frame, they approach their work with a focus that must be narrow and unwavering, but with a vision that sees into and beyond the picture as a whole.

For information about William B. Adair and Gold Leaf Studios, visit www.GoldLeafStudios.com. To get information on Adair’s exhibit and lecture at the Muscarelle Museum of Art and to sign up for his gilding seminar, visit web.WM.edu/Muscarelle. For information about other workshops hosted by Adair on gilding, frame history, or inquiries regarding framing or consultation, call Gold Leaf Studios at 202-833-2440. [gallery ids="100519,119175" nav="thumbs"]

Ari Post •

Just a few blocks from the Dupont Circle and McPherson Square Metro stations, the art galleries around 14th Street, between U Street and Logan Circle, hold some of the strongest collections of contemporary artwork in the city. Original, effusive, tasteful and energetic, the community of galleries in this area hosts work by new and emerging local artists as well as nationally and internationally renowned artisans. It binds communities and creates ambitious dialogues not only between the viewers and the works but among the artists. The common thread throughout the galleries, on top of its contemporary bent, is the impressive quality of the work. From the photographs of Annie Leibovitz to interactive sculptures with their own idiosyncratic attitudes, the works on view at these galleries should not be missed. And they’re all within a 15-minute walking radius. The weather is about to turn warmer, and there’s no better way to celebrate a nice Friday evening like a walk down the 14th Street galleries. Here’s what’s coming up.

Hamiltonian Gallery

Hamiltonian will feature the work of gallery artists Jenny Mullins and Sarah Knobel, March 17 – April 14, with an opening reception on Saturday, March 17, from 7 to 9 p.m. The drawings and paintings of Jenny Mullins, who recently completed a Fulbright Nehru grant in India researching spiritual tourism and traditional Buddhist Thangka painting techniques, explore the Western adherence to Eastern spirituality, while exploring notions of commercial mythology and consumer culture. They are “a world of low-budget mysticism . . . consumable, disposable and filled with the empty calories we crave.” The works are — perhaps ironically — gorgeous, engaging and meticulously rendered. The video art of Knobel explores individuality when forced through the sieve of cultural assumptions. The photos and videos in this exhibit are tied together by the use of origami, wherein Knobel focuses on its connections to ritual and spirituality.
www.HamiltonianGallery.com

Gallery Plan B

Five artists, all working with metal or metallic mediums in painting, etching, photography and sculpture, are featured in Gallery Plan B’s latest exhibition, “Precious Metals,” on view now through April 8. Andrew Wapinski layers gold and silver leaf with acrylic, graphite, pigments and resin resulting in substantial panels with visual and physical depth. Using photos of local scenes, Shelley Carr etches copper, then cuts and composes the copper pieces within a composition. Filmmaker Donna Cameron shifts focus of her film to the subject matter of photographs applied to aluminum surfaces. Mike McClung burns through layers of vellum into heavy paper underneath and treats the burned edges with metal leafs and layers them into whimsical patterns. Well known local artist Robert Cole will round out the group with a few of his whimsical, stylized steel sculptures. In addition, on the weekend of March 24-25, Tina Bark will be showcasing her jewelry designs from 1 to 4 p.m. each day.
www.GalleryPlanB.com

Project 4 Gallery

Rhode Island-based artist Paul Myoda’s latest works will be on view in the exhibition “Glittering Machines” at Project 4, from March 24 – April 28. A Yale MFA graduate, who has been awarded grants from the NEA, the Warhol Foundation and Howard Foundation, Myoda has been developing this series of interactive sculptures for several years now, out of his studio near Brown University, where he works as an assistant professor in sculpture and new media. “Glittering Machines,” writes Myoda, “are modular, kinetic, interactive, and illuminating sculptures. Each sculpture behaves in different ways depending upon the proximity and behavior of the viewer. Taking cues from various bioluminescent animals and insects, these behaviors range from attraction to repulsion, camouflage to revelation, predictability to spontaneity.”
www.Project4Gallery.com

Hemphill Fine Arts

“Gun Shy,” an exhibition by photographer Colby Caldwell, will open March 24 at Hemphill, with a public reception from 6:30 to 8:30 p.m. on Saturday, March 24. Caldwell’s photographs of depleted shotgun shells, abandoned buck blinds, found birds, feathers and abstractions derived from a corrupted film frame highlight his preoccupation with the relationship between photography and memory. “A photography embeds time, freezes it and carries it forward,” says Caldwell. His works, inspired concomitantly by the changing landscape of his rural Maryland home and by a corrupted frame of Super 8mm film of landscapes shot while traveling, conjure feelings of nostalgia and loss, serving as “epitaphs for the now antiquated film age that Caldwell himself mourns.” These beautifully alluring depictions of things discarded and left behind are captivating.
www.HemphillFineArts.com

Adamson Gallery

Master printer David Adamson, who lives and works locally out of his Adamson Gallery, was the man who made the archival pigment prints for photographer Annie Leibovitz’s landmark exhibition, “Pilgrimage,” now on view at the Smithsonian American Art Museum (for our coverage of that exhibition, visit www.Georgetowner.com and visit our Arts & Society page). If you would like to spend time with Leibovitz’s photographs outside of the crowded museum atmosphere and in a more intimate setting, Adamson is currently exhibiting a selection of her photographs in his gallery through March 24. This is a unique opportunity to get some “alone time” with one of the most lauded living artists working today.
www.AdamsonGallery.Jimdo.com [gallery ids="100521,119226,119185,119219,119212,119196,119205" nav="thumbs"]