Curating for a Cause and Jackie Cantwell
• July 26, 2011

Jackie Cantwell is a courageous young dynamo in the DC art world who has created Curating For A Cause, an organization that benefits non-profits through promoting DC artists. She spoke to us about her unique organization and her life.

Where are you from?

JC: I was born and bred in good ol’ Reston. My Dad is a painter and professor of computer art and animation at Montgomery County College. He also frequents my auctions as the Auctioneer and is known for hamming it up. I grew up in a house stacked high with artwork. One early memory I have is being perched on my Dad’s hip, with him asking me why each painting had a good composition. My Dad and I used to draw a cartoon called “Fuzzy Bunny” every night before I went to bed, about the adventures of an excitable male rabbit looking for love.

Later I majored in painting and printmaking at Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond.

My Mom has done it all: she got her BFA in photography and worked for NASA.

Who are you favorite artists?

JC: I admire people who do what makes them happy, no matter the stakes. I would include films by Wes Anderson and David Lynch. I also love the graphic nature of Jenny Saville’s paintings. Pablo Picasso is an oldie but goodie.

What got you into connecting artists to auction their work for charity?

JB: Last year I was fortunate enough to be introduced to a local non-profit called Dreams for Kids. With no budget and very little experience, I planned their first arts fundraiser in the form of an art show and auction.

I wanted to create arts events that were accessible to everyone. I was sick of stuffy, expensive, quiet events where everyone whispered and went home early.

I created Curating For A Cause, an organization that not only benefits non-profits monetarily, but also provides a platform for people to access good art, promote artistic talent, and connect with various networks, thus creating marketing opportunities for all parties involved. Our events are accessible to a diverse group of audiences and truly benefit all participants. These are charity events where there are real people, and good music, and there just happens to be high quality art that you might fall in love with, all to benefit a great cause.

What is your connection with Pink Line Project’s Philippa P.B. Hughes?

JC: I was looking for advice and wanted to see if Dreams For Kids could work with the Pink Line Project in some way. After putting on a show of work at Paolo’s in Georgetown I was looking for my next venture. Philippa told me to keep doing what I was doing and that I would find my way. She asked me if I wanted to write for the Pink Line Project and now I do. I learned from Philippa that you must be true to your own voice.

Who have been your mentors?

JC: Adam Lister, from the Adam Lister Gallery in Fairfax, has been a great mentor on all accounts. I admire Adam and how he provides free art activities for children. Also Andrew Horn, the executive director of Dreams For Kids in DC, has been there for every second of the growth of my organization. His energy and outlook are truly inspiring.

What’s been the biggest surprise for you in Curating For A Cause?

JC: The biggest surprise is what a great artistic community DC really has. I have also been surprised by the willingness and genuine interest the artists have shown in working with me.

Do you enjoy teaching, and what does it bring you?

JC: I love teaching kids. Watching a kid realize that blue and yellow make green: that’s it for me!

Visit Curating for a Cause online for more information. [gallery ids="99587,104914" nav="thumbs"]

Tamara Laird’s “Paisley Monuments”
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The Cross Mackenzie Gallery, in Canal Square in Georgetown, has kicked off their artistic season with a small but resounding triumph. “Paisley Monuments,” the gallery’s latest exhibition of DC artist Tamara Laird, brings together a playful, natural whimsy with serene elegance, offering a fittingly contemporary aesthetic in a subtle sea of history.

Laird is an accomplished professional artist and a ceramics professor at the Corcoran College of Art and Design, whose travel has had a tremendous impact on her work. When still a student, she traveled to England and met many renowned British ceramists, including Bernard Leach. She spent time in Zaire, and in 1984 moved to Nairobi, Kenya, where she worked at the National Museum of Kenya on a project funded by the United Nations and taught art at the Kenyatta University. From there, she went to Bangkok Thailand, where she conducted extensive research in local ceramics, from traditional village production to full-scale industrial ceramic factories.

She participated in a tour of ceramic factories in Mexico that integrated traditional and contemporary industrial majolica production. She currently teaches majolica techniques for an annual summer study abroad program in Amalfi, Italy. Her studies and travels all work toward Laird’s is interested in finding the connection between local cultural and artistic development.

Her current works, exhibited in “Paisley Monuments,” are ceramic sculptures based on the paisley motif, a universally recognizable pattern that has been used for thousands of years. It originated in Persian culture, as a fertility symbol among other things, inspired by the shape of the cashew nut. The shape, mainly seen patterned in fabric throughout the world, is given vibrancy and tremendous fullness in the way that Laird has transformed these symbols into sculpture. It is reminiscent of the delicate beauty of a pregnant belly, the crane of a swan’s neck, the budding of a flower in springtime, and countless other allegorical allusions throughout so many cultures of the world.

And this is precisely why the work has such power. The work prompts your imagination to engage with it.

Which is not to take away from the raw aesthetic power of the works. The texture and luster Larid is able to achieve through her glazing process is remarkable. The works are all high fire ceramics, but she uses metallic glazes, called lusters, on many of the works, giving the feeling of soft, smooth metal. While some pieces resemble the clay from which they are molded, others look equally as if they were cast in bronze.

It would be impossible to review any individual piece in the show, as they all work socialistically (Tea Partyists be warned) toward the collective strength of the show. Walking into the Cross Mackenzie Gallery amidst these sculptures, reminiscent of Brancusi and Tim Burton in the same breath, is like stepping into a garden of suspended creation.

The garden-like quality is not lost on Laird, who has designed them to be outdoor friendly, to be fit among gardens and as outdoor sculptures. She was even in a recent show at the National Botanical Gardens involving plant-inspired artwork. But don’t mistake my intentions—the works would be beautiful anywhere.

The Cross Mackenzie Gallery, at 1054 31st St NW, in Canal Square, is run by Rebecca Cross. For more information about this exhibition and others, visit CrossMackenzie.com or email Becca@CrossMackenzie.com. [gallery ids="99602,105037" nav="thumbs"]

Ken Ludwig Returns the Love
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-The eminently successful playwright Ken Ludwig insists that no one has ever called him a dinosaur.

“My kids maybe sometimes,” he said. “But as far as I remember, no one has said that to my face or in print.”

Well, there’s always a first time. Ken Ludwig is something of a dinosaur. And I mean that entirely
as a compliment.

In the theater world, Ludwig is like one of these environmentalists that runs all over the world trying to save species of animals from extinction.

In Ludwig’s case, he’s almost single-handedly kept alive such genres as the pre-Rodgers and Hammerstein musical, stage adaptations of young people’s literature, plays that can be called farce, star-studded (or not) comedies about theater, movie and show business folk, and the oft-remembered but rarely sighted “well-made play.”

I don’t mean to suggest now that he’s re-staged, produced or mounted new productions of old plays—otherwise known as revivals—no sir. He has written well over a dozen plays that are basically examples of all of these genres, as authored not by George Kaufman, Mark Twain, P.G. Wodehouse,
or anybody else you can name now tap dancing in show biz heaven, but by himself.

“I’m not a dinosaur,” he said. “I don’t see myself that way, let’s put it that way. I write and create plays that are in the form or genre of plays that I’ve loved, or forms of entertainment that I love. Most of them are comedies, which are, as you know, are serious business.”

Example one, and the latest: the world premiere of “A Fox on the Fairway,” now at the Signature Theater in Shirlington through November 14. It’s a comedy—farcical, no doubt—about golf.

“Specifically, it’s about two American country clubs and some of its members competing for an annual trophy,” Ludwig said. “From there, you can just imagine.”

Now think for a moment, who made a literary sideline of writing wry comedic books and stories
about golf, besides American sportswriter Dan Jenkins?

It’s none other than the great comedic British stylist P.G. Wodehouse, the man who gave the world “Jeeves,” the impeccable, perfect literary butler.

“Exactly,” Ludwig said. “I love comedy, and Wodehouse is an example of a certain kind of style of writing comedy. Writing comedy in book form is terrifically hard. So is writing comedy for the stage. To my mind, it’s the most difficult art form in literature because, first and foremost you have to make people laugh—out loud, preferably—chuckle, smile. In the theater, you don’t want silence during a comedy. It’s a kind of homage to Wodehouse, yes, but it’s very American also.

“I loved Wodehouse. I loved his golf stories. I loved Jeeves. I love J.B. Priestley, whose writing
has a little more edge. They’re both great stylists.”

So ‘A Fox on the Fairway,’ you can be sure, is going to be funny. “We heard good things during performances for preview audiences,” Ludwig said.

There are other things Ludwig loves—besides his family. He loves old movies, you guess. He loves show tunes and the great composers of the American songbook like George Gershwin and Cole Porter. He loves comedy. He loves classic and popular literature and stories, like those by Mark Twain and Robert Louis Stevenson. He loves show biz people, of which clan he is now a certifiable and certified member.

He says what he tries to do with his plays is to look at them in a fresh way, to make them come alive for contemporary audiences. That’s probably true, but there is a greater force at work here. Put simply: it is love.

Ludwig brings a first-love quality to his work, the boyhood crush you never get over, the grateful
love for whomever gave you that first kiss that was really stupefying, the first movie you ever saw that made an indelible impression, the love you still feel for all the lyrics you can’t get out of your head like “Summertime,” “Porgy” or any Gershwin and Porter tune, the love you feel for the great clowns and their pratfalls and that moment during a comedy when there are three people hiding in closets and three people coming through the door.

All of this stuff sounds old fashioned—dinosaur-like if you will—except for one thing: it works for him and for us. He doesn’t do revivals, but his own plays are continually being revived and performed on Broadway (“Lend Me a Tenor” most recently) and in just about every regional and local theater in the country and around the world.

Consider that his very first produced play, the aforementioned “Lend Me a Tenor,” is a side-splitting comedy about the world of opera and was produced by none other than Andrew Lloyd Webber, a gentleman with a fairly decent show biz track record who once wrote a musical called “Jeeves.” Or consider “Crazy for You”, the 1990s musical that he wrote in the mode of Gershwin’s original musical which won a Tony for him (He also pulled off a similar epic with a production of Gershwin’s “An American in Paris”). Consider the stage versions of “Treasure Island” and “Tom Sawyer” and “The Three Musketeers,” geared toward young audiences and the family trade. Consider one of my personal favorites, that of “Shakespeare in Hollywood,” a grand, affectionate comedy about the making of “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” at Warner Brothers Studio in 1930s Hollywood. Consider “Moon over Buffalo,” already revived and an adaptation of Thornton Wilder’s “The Beaux’ Stratagem” or “Leading Ladies.”

Now take a look at Ludwig’s website and check out where Ludwig plays are, or have been playing. Why, they are just about everywhere: Aurora, Ohio, Broadway, the Crested Butte Mountain Theater, The Minstrel Players, the Villainous University Theater, the Scarborough Theater in Ontario, Canada, “Moon Over Buffalo” in Moldova, The Three Musketeers, in London, “Crazy for You” in Melbourne.

High-minded critics haven’t always been crazy for Ludwig. But theatergoers have. Those plays live on, in much the same way that the forms, writers and shows that Ludwig loves so much live on in his mind. In a way, he’s returning a favor of happiness found, happiness returned.

“As somebody said: tragedy is easy, comedy is hard,” Ludwig said. Actors like Barry Nelson, Hal Holbrook, Carol Burnett, Joan Collins and the late Dixie Carter have shown that.

Not bad for a guy who’s also a certified lawyer and graduate of Harvard Law School, family man, husband to wife Adrienne (also a lawyer), and father of Olivia and Jack, resident not of Hollywood or New York, but of Northwest Washington. And he just keeps on rolling because, well, the game’s afoot. Oh wait, that’s the title of his next play (subtitled “Holmes for the Holiday”) about William Gillette, the great actor who made a career of playing Sherlock Holmes on stage.

Foundation Fighting Blindness
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On Mar. 29, The Foundation Fighting Blindness (FFB) held the 9th Annual “For the Love of Sight” Visionary Awards Dinner at the Mellon Auditorium. The evening honored Arkansas Senator John Boozman and Smith W. “Smitty” Davis of Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld LLP. NBC News Chief Foreign Affairs Correspondent Andrea Mitchell emceed the event which benefited the Foundation’s mission to drive the research that will provide preventions, treatments and cures for people affected by the entire spectrum of retinal degenerative diseases. Created in 2003 by former Burson-Marsteller COO Worldwide Ken Rietz and former U.S. Secretary of Labor Ann McLaughlin Korologos, “For the Love of Sight” has raised nearly $3.5 million for blindness research, with a goal of $400,000 this year. [gallery ids="99636,105234,105238" nav="thumbs"]

Ball on the Mall Kick-Off
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On Feb. 16, the L’Enfant Society chose Cities on 19th Street to host the 2011 Ball on the Mall Kick-Off Event. Now in its third year, the Society has raised […]

Scavenger Hunt
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Rebecca Klemm purchased a Georgetown scavenger hunt for 30 happy hunters as an auction item at the 2009 Citizens Association of Georgetown Gala held at the Russian Embassy. The hunt was the brainchild of Colleen and John Girourard, Constance Chatfield-Taylor, Florence Auld, Jackie Pletcher and Charlie Eisen. On Nov. 19, Rebecca welcomed her guests to a “spirited” reception on P Street where they were divided into five teams and given instructions to unveil Georgetown’s hidden mysteries before reconvening at the Girourard’s home on 34th Street to enjoy a fabulous repast for their efforts. Clues took them on a merry chase that included The Georgetown Inn, St. John’s Episcopal Church, Georgetown Cupcake, The Tombs, 1789, Georgetown Club and the infamous Exorcist stairs. After the points were tallied, Rebecca’s team led the pack. [gallery ids="99570,104841,104839" nav="thumbs"]

Aidah Collection
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3rd Anniversary runway show and benefit. [gallery ids="99726,99727,99728,99729,99730,99731,99732,99733" nav="thumbs"]

Come and Play During the Day
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DC event planner Andre Wells hosted a Bagatelle style brunch bash on May 1. Lincoln restaurant was transfomred into an adult playground with DJs, bulresque dancers, and a photo to go station. Red velvet curtains blocked the sun while attendees danced the afternoon away. Far from your average brunch!! [gallery ids="99734,99735" nav="thumbs"]

Bejeweled Dream Home at Design Center
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Eight interior designers have used jewelry as their inspiration for room styles and decorations for the Washington Design Center’s 2011 Dream Home: Jewel Tones of Design. Seven jewelers and a jewelry designer helped the teams pick the fitting piece. The showcase is free and open to the public and runs through Dec. 9 — 300 D Street, S.W. — www.dcdesigncenter.com/dreamhome. [gallery ids="99627,105160,105156,105149,105152" nav="thumbs"]

National Rehabilitation Hospital Goes Gaming
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National Rehabilitation Hospital (NRH) held its 2nd Annual Last Vegas Nights Benefit on Feb. 18 at the National Museum of Women in the Arts with Carole Randolph and Karin DeFrancis co-chairing. Guests were met by plumed showgirls and could fortify themselves with a “black martini” before heading to the gaming tables with a special guest appearance by Texas Hold’em Champion Mary Jones. Mike Walter emceed the evening. Goodie bags included something for everyone—NRH playing cards, Baileys Irish Cream and Eucerin skin therapy. Celebrating its 25th anniversary, NRH is a private, not-for-profit facility in NW Washington and a proud member of MedStar Health. The benefit raised funds for the hospital’s various patient disability programs including brain and spinal chord injuries and stroke. [gallery ids="99192,103330,103314,103326,103322,103319" nav="thumbs"]