DCAC - District of Columbia Arts Center

Distributed Processes paintings by William Whitaker
Curated by Thomas Drymon

February 15 - March 17, 2013
Opening Reception: Friday, February 15, 2013, 7 - 9 PM
Artist Talk: Sunday, March 17, 5 PM

The paintings in Distributed Processes reflect William Whitaker's ongoing interest in the invention and experience of painted space.

It's hard for me to call William Whitaker's work abstract because it seems to suggest that it is based on something in the visible world, but it is not, and should not be read in that way. Rather, viewing his work should be thought of as a journey through neural pathways, a sometimes random and sometimes deliberate route designed to recreate the space around us.

The paintings in Distributed Processes reflect Whitaker's ongoing interest in the invention and experience of painted space. He describes his work as informed by (capital M) Memory—not the recollection of past events, sensations or feelings but rather the way Memory works throughout the brain informing sensation and movement and feeling and free will. From this process, Whitaker strives to create new spaces using these cobbled-together bits.

Whitaker's work begins on paper with a series of drawings. Looking at his sketchbook, it would be easy to assume that these are random scribblings. But page after page reveals patterns, repetition, movement that are part of the artist's muscle memory. It's like automatic writing but from a completed script—meditative, yet purposeful and guided by rules as much as whimsy.

These drawings become part of the larger works, transferred to canvas by tracing or projection.

In his case, Whitaker chose diptychs rather than single canvases to force a disruption in the current, requiring a willful disregard of previous impulses to respond in a similar way—the line interrupted must find a new way; color against color becomes a choice of compliment or contrast; perspective must be altered or ignored; and space becomes ambiguous. Whitaker's work achieves a difficult balance—intent and spontaneity co-existing to create new and unexpected worlds.

Wlliam Whitaker is a graduate of Rhode Island School of Design and a 2011 Trawick Prize semi-finalist. This is his first solo exhibition and second exhibition with curator, Thomas Drymon.

JOHN SAPP:
A RETROSPECTIVE

Above Image: John Sapp, Jefferson Sapp with Fish
December 7, 2012 to Saturday, January 5, 2013 at Studio 1469
Closing Reception and Artist Talk on Saturday, January 5 from 6-8 pm

Studio 1469 in collaboration with DC Arts Center presents paintings by John Sapp; the first public exhibition of this prolific, self-taught artist, naval aviator, CIA operative and chef. “As far as I’m concerned, art speaks for itself, and who I am as the maker of it has damn little to do with it,” says Sapp. It is evident in his paintings, however, that the spirit of the maker is in fact wholly present, in the portraits of his beloved grandfather, the Oklahoma landscape of his childhood, and the accidental paint spills that become expressive images themselves – a process that seems to reflect Sapp’s meandering life course.

Studio 1469 is located at 1469 Harvard Street NW, REAR GARAGE, Washington DC. (Enter via alley on 15 th Street between Harvard and Columbia.) Gallery hours are Saturdays and Sundays from 2 to 6 pm and by appointment. All events are free and open to the public.

October 12 - November 25
Opening Reception: Friday, October 12, 7 - 9 PM
Artist Debate: NOVEMBER 7 at 7:45 PM

Over 40 area artists in two spaces create DCAC’s new exhibition which declares that there is a distinct Washington School of art and offers a manifesto to prove it!

JW Mahoney, DC curator, artist and arts writer takes on the task of proving that there is a distinct “school” of art that has been coming from Washington, DC for decades. As he states in his manifesto, “We've always recognized the unique qualities of what we've been doing here, fundamentally distinct from the values, and fashions of mainstream contemporary art. Signals isn’t intended simply to showcase the best artists in DC, but rather, to demonstrate how alternative the Washington art scene really is.”

40 area artists and created a massive salon-style exhibition. Included in the exhibit will be work by Hannah Sears, Simon Gouverneur, Jeff Spaulding, Greg Hannan, Robin Rose, Richard Dana, Sharon Fishel, David Jung, Renee Butler, Joe White, Tazuko Ichikawa, Susan Greenleaf, Kurt Godwin, John Dreyfuss, Bill Hill, Carol Goldberg, and Renee Stout. Mahoney will hold a debate on the subject and there will be a poetry reading and other events surrounding the exhibition.

Since the exhibit is far too large for the DCAC gallery walls additional space needed to be commandeered, and a pop-up gallery across the street in the now vacant space once occupied by the Café Lautrec will handle one particular theme while the home gallery hosts the other. The mural of Toulouse Lautrec’s face still holds commanding sway over Adams Morgan and will watch over audiences crisscrossing 18th Street to go between the spaces to decide for themselves whether or not Mahoney proves his case.

From the early 1950's into the 21st century, Washington's art has sustained a history of contemporary visionaries. We've always recognized the unique qualities of what we've been doing here, fundamentally distinct from the values, and fashions of mainstream contemporary art.

2. Is there really a Washington School of Art? Definitely - but in Alice Cooper's Words, School's Out Forever.

The Washington School consists of renegades and outliers. As a School, we're Well-Educated Outsiders. We've been functioning as anomalies, working under the radar.

3. What makes Washington art so Independent? It's the Genius Loci, the spirit of the place.

What Washington area art has to offer is only its authenticity, its unique identity. 150 years ago, this city was a war zone. What was at stake in that war was the overdue liberation of an enslaved people - and black culture's own outsider status has predated and conditioned every aspect of Washington's aesthetic identity - a city of abstract ideals and open but regularly disempowered culture.

Here in DC, artists are most comfortable as speculative symbolists... We see we live in a city full of symbols, so why not make our own? And our power is the power to speculate - to re-imagine power itself. We know that information is power - so our art is often information-rich, no matter what its media or language.

4. What does "speculative symbolism" mean? Why invent such a term? Because it works.

We're used to the idea that symbols often signal clear meanings, as a bald eagle, a handshake, or a stop sign can. But a symbol offers a communion between an invisible significance and a visible graphic presence. A cross, a yin-yang, or a swastika mean a great deal more than their visual forms may imply Our locality incites us to compete, challenge, consciously by-pass, adore, or otherwise process such established symbols. And our power is the power to speculate - to re-imagine the power of visual images themselves. We know that information is power - so our art is often information-rich, no matter what its media or language.

5. Is our art "alternative" here, the way there's alternative music elsewhere?

There are sustaining traditions in "alternative music” that center on cities like Athens, Georgia, Portland, Oregon, and Austin, Texas.. Why has an "alternative" visual art, such as our own, remained so behind the curtains? Here, we're already convinced, and inspired by our past and our present, so that we're released to be as meaningful as we want to be. Our work insists that we live in a universe rich with an infinite array of new symbols. We're looking through windows onto something else. It's what we do.

In a petrie dish in a science lab, bacteria breed, wage war and grow on a microscopic level. A swimmer breaks the surface of water, while, thousands of miles away in space, a comet races through the expanse of darkness and planets slip in and out of one another’s orbit. The artists in Microscapes pay homage to these elegantly entangled phenomena through their work and practices, each one capturing the humbling and fascinating flux of the universe. Selin Balci, Joseph Shetler, Victoria Fu, and Edmond van der Bijl examine and re-imagine these biological, molecular, and interstellar marvels through hazy film stills, carefully wrought pen and graphite drawings, canvases colored by blooms of bacteria and biomorphic installations. By creating their own universes within their artworks, the artists in Microscapes acknowledge the often imperceptible and always evanescent quality of life.

Wallmountables

July 20 - August 25
Deinstallation: August 25 and 26 2 - 7 PM

Any artist can purchase up to four 2' x 2' spaces to hang their work. Work is accepted from a wide range of media created by artists at various stages in their careers. There is no curating; if it fits, it shows. Spaces may not be combined to accommodate larger pieces. You may purchase up to 4 squares. You must claim your spaces in person.

Spaces sell on a first-come, first-served basis for $15 per square, with DCAC members receiving one free space and brand new members receiving four spaces for their membership fee of $30.

Spaces must be claimed and art hung on the following days and times: Wednesday, July 18 from 3-8pm, Thursday, July 19 from 3-8 pm, and Friday, July 20 from 3-6 pm.

The most recent works of the five artists in Sparkplug display a deft navigation of the juncture between collectivism and the individual.

Loose Ends is the final exhibition of the current members of Sparkplug, DCAC’ artists collective. The exhibition features the works of Chajana denHarder, Joe Hale, Chandi Kelley, Matt Smith, and Dafna Steinberg. Through video, photography, painting and sculpture these artists study themes of shifting frames, deconstruction of systems, and neo-romanticism. Loose Ends incorporates these themes as threads that link artist to artist but never tie them together, thereby highlighting the paradoxical interplay between collectivism and the individual.

These artists negotiate with and unseat the canons of their chosen disciplines: Matt Smith utilizes techniques originating from the craft of quilt making within the convention of minimalist post-painterly abstraction to make pictures that look like paintings but are ultimately stitched fabric. Chandi Kelley uses digital photography, a medium associated with the obsolescence of photography’s authority on the truth, to document museum- constructed environments that emulate a disappearing natural world . Chajana DenHarder compromises the indexical nature associated with photography by not only physically tearing through pictures and disrupting them with paint, but she also re-photographs the aftermath, self-consciously reigning materiality back into the realm of illusion. Dafna Steinberg tries to make sense of the present by piecing it together from the future, and Joe Hale raises his subjects to epic status using painterly gestures to break them apart with a machine. Loose Ends represents each of these artists as open systems operating within the mutable environment of Sparkplug.

ZEITGEIST III
TOO MUCH INFORMATION?
Curated by Ellyn R. Weiss and Sondra N. Arkin

This is the third in an episodic series of exhibitions beginning in 2008. The literal meaning of zeitgeist, in German, is “spirit of the times.” It is the general cultural, intellectual, ethical, spiritual, or political climate, the ambiance and mood associated with a point in time. For each show, we have invited artists to create work expressing their responses to the theme.

This time, the theme is “Too Much Information?” The question mark suggests our ambivalence about this subject; we are alternately fascinated, troubled, overwhelmed, and exhilarated by the increasing streams of information coming to us non-stop, from an ever-growing array of devices and directions. Mostly, we feel the effects in our bones, and now evidence is emerging that our brains and behaviors are being altered by the information surge and the means by which it is delivered.

March 23- April 29
Opening Reception: Friday, March 23, 7 - 9 PM
Artist Talk: Sunday, April 29, 5 - 6 PM

Perhaps better known for bricolage sculpture and constructed paintings, Rex Weil has always worked with paper as support and medium. Ripography is Weil’s name for the process of making new images by ripping up existing ones. His sources are the gratuitous reminders of the pleasures of success that drift daily through the mail slot: luxury store catalogs, realtors’ brochures, home renovation magazines and the like.

Recalling Barthes’ Mythology, Weil uses intuition, analysis and mordant humor to illuminate the discourse of repression, desire, exploitation and frustration percolating just below the surface of commercial photography. For the artist, each shred of imagery is tantamount to an isolated bit of DNA from which the complete texture of our social and economic relationships can be surmised.

While the exhibition includes traditional collage on paper, other works push formal boundaries by eliminating the traditional rectangle in favor of irregular ovals, by attaching shreds of paper directly to the wall, and by adding commonplace craft techniques into the mix.

February 10 - March 18
Opening Reception: Friday, February 10, 7 - 9 PM
Artist Talk: Sunday, March 18, 5 - 6 PM

This exhibition is the first solo show of Washington DC artist Stephanie Williams and presents drawings and sculptures that playfully prod the constructs we formulate to understand our world. The show takes its title from Williams’ exploratory artistic method, in which she uses strangeness to make space for creative questioning. Her works, ripe with texture and oozing sensuality, invite us into bizarre yet enticing ecological systems.

DCAC ART DECATHLON

January 13 - February 5
Opening Reception: Friday, January 13, 7 - 9 PM
Panel discussion: Tuesday, January 17, 7 - 8 PM
Artist Talk: Sunday, January 29, 5 - 6 PM
Closing ceremony: Sunday, February 5, 5 PM

The semi-finalists show the results of months of hard work as the Decathlon draws to a close! After centuries of specialization in art that has relied on labels such as painter, sculptor or photographer, DCAC asked artists working in the DC metropolitan area to submit proposals that explore the significance of what being “unspecialized” means to being a working artist today. For the competition, decathletes were required to produce work falling under 10 disciplines-- textiles/fiber; painting; drawing; printmaking; photography; collage; sound; video; conceptual art; and sculpture. Semi-finalists, Shanthi Chandrasekar, Lee Gainer, Lisa Rosenstein, and Mary Woodall, will exhibit their works at DCAC. This exhibition will culminate in a medal ceremony, but only one artist will walk away with gold!

The Panel discussion on Tuesday, January 17 brings together moderator Kriston Capps with panelists Ken Ashton, Kathryn Cornelius, Mike Hamberger, and Karen Joan Topping to talk about the intersections between art and sport.

The Blues and Other Colors
Presented by Black Artists of DC and DC Arts Center

November 18 - January 8
Opening Reception: Friday, November 18, 7 - 9 PM

The Blues and Other Colors assembles photographs and paintings by nine artists in an attempt to visually express and interpret The Blues. A musical form and genre originating in African-American communities at the end of the 19th century, The Blues have permeated jazz, rock and roll as well as multiple other music genres. Yet, the word blue also connotes the primary color perceived from light of wavelength 440–490 nm and may represent happiness, optimism, or, conversely, sadness. The artists in this exhibition interpret the blues as a color, musical form, and emotional state. Work by Cedric Baker, Magruder Murray, Adjoa J. Burrowes, Gloria C. Kirk, Bruce McNeil, Hubert Jackson, J’Nell Jordon, Carolyn Goodridge, and Jarvis Grant will be presented. Curated by Tim Davis.

Tim Davis
Tim Davis is a multi-media artist, gallerist and educator. He holds a Masters in art from the University of Illinois and a Bachelor of fine arts from Eastern Illinois University. He is the owner and Director of International Visions Gallery in Washington DC. He has curated over 25 exhibitions throughout the US including The Black Fine Art show in New York and Atlanta, The DC Convention Center, the DC Mayor's office, The Ethiopian Embassy, and the Embassy of Venezuela. He has exhibited his work widely throughout DC area and the United States.

Black Artists of DC
Black Artists of DC (BADC) is an artist membership organzation founded in 1999. BADC has grown since then to over 400 members, associates and supporters from every discipline who at one time lived, were educated, or worked in the Washington DC metropolitan area. It is composed of artists, arts administrators, educators, dealers, collectors, museum directors, curators, gallery owners and arts enthusiasts. Together members lend artistic skills and insight to the cause of supporting and enlivening the arts. The organizations acts as resources for other artists by encouraging them to explore new techniques and to improve their professional approach to art. BADC compliments the diversity of a cosmopolitan nation’s capitol.

The Phono-Graphic Cycle, Champneys Taylor's first solo exhibition in the Washington, DC area, features nine paintings, for which Taylor utilizes Brian Eno's 1975 album Another Green World as a generative device, that reflect Taylor's ongoing interest in color, luminosity, and invented landscapes, both physical and psychical. Produced and presented with poetic undertow.

ORGANIC PLASTICITY

September 9 - October 9

Opening: September 9, 7-9 pm
Members Happy Hour Reception: September 22, 6:30-8:30 pm
Artist Talk: October 9, 5 pm

Organic Plasticity features works by Selin Oguz Balci and Natalie Cheung, highlighting the organic vs. artificial manipulation of forms. The work of Selin Oguz Balci is produced through the stimulation of organisms whose byproducts result in colorful biological close ups reminiscent of scientific texts. The work of Natalie Cheung utilizes the chemical to capture the natural reactions to light and air, leaving behind crystalized formations that evoke forgotten landscapes. Although their methods and materials are very opposing there is a familiarity ever present in the patterns they’ve created.

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work by Chajana denHarder, Todd Gardner, Joseph Hale, Chandi Kelley, Matt Smith, and Dafna Steinberg

Sparkplug presents Something Other Than The Present, a group exhibition exploring the desire for non-existent places, unreachable times, and unattainable states of being. The common human longing to transcend one's current existence is reflected throughout contemporary culture, from romance novels and sci-fi conventions to rapture-obsessed religious groups and nostalgic political movements. In Something Other Than The Presents, the members of DCAC's Sparkplug collective present work that both reflects and comments on the common human longing for places, times, and states that are, ultimately, unattainable.

"The famous saudade of the Portuguese is a vague and constant desire for something that does not and probably cannot exist, for something other than the present, a turning towards the past or towards the future; not an active discontent or poignant sadness but an indolent dreaming wistfulness."

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Poet, author and writer Steven Henry Madoff recently stated at a lecture addressing the meaning of space:

“….Great artists make new kinds of hinges for space and time – a new kind of flexibility”.

My first encounter with Victoria Greising’s work conjured up that exact thought as I contextualized her work within the age of mechanical reproduction, and more currently, in the age of digital repetition. The use of fabric in her work could be viewed as ‘low tech’, yet the way she creates a discourse around the significance of personal history and material within the surrounding space it occupies, is what Madoff would declare as “breaking the joint”. Conversely to what post-Minimalist sculptor Eva Hesse investigated in her work as a pioneer in her use of unconventional material to convey the idea of the anti-form, Tori is seduced by the form and how it exists in space using textiles not to transcend its ‘objectness’, but rather to imbue it with meaning.

Tori’s webbed installations of manipulated fabric and cord proposes to the viewer an experience that is at once sculptural as well as environmental. These landscapes of collected and woven three dimensional lines elucidate a symbolic coming together of a specific grouping of family and friends, as well as a manifestation of an enigmatic logic of determined handiwork. While many theorized Eva Hesse’s use of material to be evocative and evident of her emotional chaos, Tori’s fabric is charged with confidence and strength. Collected and gathered by numerous friends and family members, each piece is laden with their individual personality and story that informs each decision to knot, weave, cut and pull. The result is an inertial form that beckons us to experience these memories inside and out.

Growing and connecting from wall to ceiling to the floor, the fabrics are stretched, twisted, and tied to create a meshwork of branch like forms, blood veins and muscular tendons that respond to the specific dimensions and particulars of the place. There is a disquieting feeling that you are inside a human body, trapped and claustrophobic. However, within these layers of webbing and weaving, negative spaces part like a mouth to a cave that lure us to cross these thresholds to an unknown place where the outcome becomes liberating and comforting.

Once inside, there may be a pillow beckoning the guest to spend more time, zone out or maybe even take a nap. The light and shadow on the wall further cultivate a hypnotic state of awareness and solitude. A feeling of security sets in akin to being in a fort or a cozy reading nook. Tori surrounds herself with her friends and family as she fills up her life with the fabric remnants of so many people. “Each piece was worn by someone, it maintains a history. It tells a story.”

Tori challenges us to transmute this process of alchemy so we too can contemplate on what is most important – the people that populate our lives.

In a world where there is so much to filter, Tori’s work allows us to be confronted with the present moment– to be launched into a kinetic yet momentary space that is lived, secure and malleable made permanent and tangible by a memory.

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Chloe Watson uses acrylics, colored pencil and contact paper to create abstract imagery of familiar spaces that creates a dialog between individual memories and collective spaces. Her paintings present a world of places, previous dwellings, studios, galleries, and hotel rooms. The stripping of details, save for patterns which serve as a surrogate for the real, form highly geometric representations, which become spaces for reflection and the projection of experience.

Baltimore sculptor Stewart Watson's installation, "Family Room," will transform DCAC's exhibition space into a living hive of connectivity, a network of metal rods and soft cushions that will telegraph a dialogue between unresisting softnesses and restlessly irresistible forces. The word "family" is a deliberate ambiguity - from the idea of a human domestic interior, with its own psychodynamics, to the "families" of subatomic particles, whose invisible relations occur at unimaginable speeds - and the "room" will have become the site of a dauntingly abstract drama.

Looking forward is much like delving into history; it requires knowledge and an awareness of where I am right now in order to proceed. Genealogy and my family history continue to inform me as I reveal other generations of ancestors with every future construction. So much of what we are - as a family or species - is similar, that the tiny bit which makes us unique is what interests me.

My work, is about time and decay; celebration and fear; balance and material; humor and family; mysteries and solutions; genetics and codes; pain and propping; dropping and arching; failing and succeeding. Through non-mechanical reproduction, multiples are created that are similar, but never the same. This is phenomenon is crucial as evidence of the human hand and its imperfections in my process oriented work. Sewing pillow forms with exposed seams emphasizes the industrial nature of their construction. The upholstery fabrics I have chosen are meant to evoke luxury and the perception of well-to-do living rooms or the opulence of a romantic costume classic. This is the ideal, not the reality of what I know, rather, it is a fabricated memory of my past. Lush fabrics have always lured me in with their shiny, gilded surfaces, and a decidedly false sense of wealth. By heaping the amorphous pillows together, I suggest both the comfort of a well-worn sofa, and the relationships people have with things in their everyday lives.

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"Paint Mix: Five DC/VA Painters" highlights the work of four emerging painters who live and work in Virginia and Washington, DC. Curator Becca Kallem invites Emily Do, Christopher Dolan, Mike Dowley, Brian Kelley, and Joren Lindholm to show their work. As a group, the paintings play with the slippery boundaries between abstraction, representation, and nonobjective art. Whether showing us a recognizable landscape or a cluster of shapes, each artist makes a beautiful mix of colors, marks, feelings, and ideas.

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ReSolve, is abstractionist Richard Siegman’s re-examination of a 30 year painting process that finds him creating his most realized and freshest work to date. By balancing his signature expressionist gestures against a contra-indicated slick, hard-edged ground, the result is a controlled dynamism of infinite proportion.

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Presented by Black Artists of DC (BADC). A discussion on how material languages are deciphered, valued, interwoven, and acquired.

Featuring work by Kristen Hayes, Jamea Richmond Edwards, Amber Robles-Gordon, and Danielle Scruggs

Curated by Zoma Wallace

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Please join us for a silent auction of ceramic piggy banks, hand-painted by DC artists! Proceeds from the auction will benefit the DC Arts Center.

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Video artist Alberto Roblest brings his latest public art project to the heart of Adams Morgan for two nights only. "Present Interval / Intervalo en el Presente" is a temporary video installation that will transform a triangle of redbrick and asphalt at the intersection of 18th Street and Columbia Road NW into a museum experience without the museum or even a roof. It will be a cultural experience that you can stroll through, under a starry sky.

The installation will be in the alley behind SunTrust bank at the intersection of 18th Street and Columbia Road NW.

Featuring work by Jessica Beels, Graham Boyle, Katie Cassidy, Vincent Colvin, Suzanne Izzo, and Stu Searles

July 23 - August 29
Installation: July 21 3-8pm, July 22 3-8pm, July 23 3-6pm
Opening Reception: July 23, 7-9pm
Deinstallation: September 1 - 5, 2-7pm

Grab your hammer and nails and get ready for this year’s 1460 Wallmountables! A tradition since 1990, Wallmountables is DCAC’s annual open exhibit. We divide the gallery walls into 2’ by 2’ squares, you come and hang your work!

Abstract Realities
May 14 - June 13
Opening Reception: May 14, 7-9pm
Artists Talk: June 13, 5pm

Featuring work by Allen Levy, Ann Elizabeth Gedicks, Zoé Hathaway, Cherie M. Redlinger, Felisa Federman and Damian Yanessa

6 contemporary artists in a variety of media explore reality with abstract presentations.

image: Zoé Hathaway, Earth Song, 42”x29”x5”, glass, 2010
photograph by Greg Staley

Mythical Scenographies
Work from Salamandra Studios
April 9 - May 9
Opening Reception:April 9, 7-9pm
Artists Talk: April 11, 5pm
Curated by Alfredo Torres

Mythical Scenographies brings together work by Uruguyan artists Lizzy Magariños, Gustavo Genta, Rogelio Osorio and Roberto Piriz. While producing work in vastly different styles and mediums, these four artists have found inspiration, friendship and a shared vision of creativity through Salamandra Studios, their shared space in Montevideo, Uruguay. This exhibition of their work highlights the distinctive style and practice of each individual artist, while emphasizing the importance of sets, series and seriality in the group’s otherwise divergent artistic practices.

Khánh H. Lê: Born Too Late
February 26 - April 4
Opening Reception:February 26, 7-9pm
Artists Talk: Sunday, April 4 at 3pm
Curated by Lea-Ann Bigelow

Twenty years after fleeing his native Vietnam, Khánh Lê is in ardent pursuit of his own legend. On a stubborn quest to decode the cultural patterns of the America he now inhabits and confront the mythologies which cling to the fast-changing land he left behind, Lê raids visual archives both familial and public. The result of the artist’s systematic scouring of this historical inventory? Arresting photogravure etchings that betray the mechanics of propaganda. Swarovski-studded tableaux that obscure so as to reveal. Ethnographic revelations fueled by an exile’s yearning to – somewhere – belong.

Born in 1981 in Mỹ Tho, Vietnam, Khánh Lê received an M.F.A. from Syracuse University in 2008 and is currently Artist-in-Residence at the Children’s Studio School. This show will mark the first exhibition of Lê’s prints and drawings in the Washington DC area.

ADAM DE BOER
Memory Meets Imagination Halfway
January 15 - February 21
Opening Reception: January 15, 7-9pm
Conversation with the Artist: February 21, 5pm
Curated by Laura Roulet

Themes of social ritual and emerging sexuality are set against the luminous landscapes of Southern California and Mallorca, Spain in Adam de Boer’s new series of narrative paintings, Memory Meets Imagination Halfway. Evoking Vladimir Nabokov as psychological literary muse,
de Boer also engages the art historical influences of Francisco Goya, Balthus and Eric Fischl.

Black Artist of DC and the DC Arts Center Present
BLACK
Friday, November 20 – Sunday, January 10,
Opening Reception: Friday, November 20, 7:00 pm-9:00 pm
Artists Talks/Closing Reception: Sunday, January 10, 5:00 pm-7:00 pm

Jurors: Renee Stout, Blake Kimbrough, and Marvin Bowser
Curator: Amber Robles-Gordon
Co-Curator: Daniel T. Brooking
Judges: Teresia Bush and Eugene R. Vango

Black asks artists to think introspectively about the emotional and theoretical, the spiritual and cultural, the intellectual and physical aspects of their personal percpetions of blackness. Each artist's objective was to move beyond black as an absence of color and into the predominance of black as a physical and conceptual part of their creations. Artists were able to claim, adorn, redefine and enfold the black experience in and throughout their work. Audiences will be able to relish in black: it's elegance, depth, and sensation of infinity.

The show's artists have captured the emotional impact of the joy, passion and spiritual response audiences experience to the blues, gospel, jazz and hip-hop. The energy, elegance, and spiritual nature of the black preacher, politician, academic, actor, and activist is communicated in each individuals interpretion of the color and the concept of Black.

Featuring work by John Earl Cooper, Arcmanoro Niles, Cedric Baker, Jacqueline Lee, Valentina Andaya, Akili Ron Anderson, Viola Leak, Bruce McNeil, Gloria C. Kirk, Stanley Squirewell, Claudia Gibson-Hunter, Michael Platt, Sonya Clark, Ann Marie Williams, Alec Simpson, Daniel T. Brooking, Amber Robles-Gordon, Prelli Williams, Kristen Hayes, Serinity Knight, Anne Bouie, James Brown, Jr., T. H. Gomillion, Adjoa J. Burrowes, Deidra Bell, Willard Taylor, Carlton Wilkinson, Constance Porter Uzelac, Juilett Madison

Poetics of Material
Work by Kate Carr, David D’Orio and Lisa Hill
September 11 - October 11
Opening Reception: September 11, 7-9pm
Curator: Landria Shack
Curatorial Mentor: Laura Roulet

The Poetics of Material explores the role of materiality in contemporary sculpture, featuring three artists who explore and exploit a variety of materials and processes. The resulting work marries the conceptual with striking formalism, drawing from and expanding on the legacy of post-minimalism.

1460 Wall Mountables 2009!
Show Your Art | Sell Your Art
DCAC's Annual Open Exhibit!
July 17 - August 30
Installation: July 15 3-8pm, July 16 3-8pm, July 17 3-6pm
Opening Reception: July 17, 7-9pm
Deinstallation: September 2 - 6, 2-7pm

Get more information and read all the guidelines for 1460 Wall Mountables here..

Sparkplug: New Work
in the Jenkins Community Gallery at Arlington Arts Center
June 19 - August 22
Opening Reception: June 19, 6-9pm
Artists Talk: July 22, 7-9pm

DC Arts Center’s resident arts collective Sparkplug is, at present, a spirited gathering of ten artists and curators who meet twice a month to discuss their work, explore the arts in the nation’s capital, grow their community, and dream up creative engagements in DC and around the globe. In the context of this closely-focused show, Sparkplug’s mission will be to testify to its own mutable now: the now of its production, the now of its collective exchanges, the now of individual stances outside of the collective, the now that will inevitably be then soon. For a collective whose very existence is based on a charter of becoming, of sharing, of transitions, of emergence, of change…the privileging of a specific Sparkplug moment presents a persistent (albeit purposeful) challenge.

Curated by Lea-Ann Bigelow and Blair Murphy, the show will highlight painting, drawing, video, photography, and mixtures thereof by:

Deborah Carroll-Anzinger, Peter Gordon, Lisa McCarty, Kathryn McDonnell, Michael Matason, Mark Planisek, Karen Joan Topping and Jenny Walton.

The Twelfth Man
June 12 - July 12
Opening Reception: June 12, 7-9pm
Gallery Talk: July 12, 5pm

In the game of American football eleven players take the field. For those familiar with football colloquialisms, the phrase "The Twelfth Man" refers to the collectivity of the crowd and the fans’ emotional investment in the action. In the context of this art exhibition, the title "The Twelfth Man" carries connotations of spectatorship and serves as introduction into the artistic reconsideration of fandom, achievement, play, and new-age masculinity presented by Kenny George and Patrick McDonough. Seen together in this installation, the selected works challenge the marginalization of the individual fan, and re-establish recreational outlet as a valuable and creative, albeit problematic, social act. Utilizing model cars, super-soakers, pogo-sticks, stilts and video games as instruments of artistic expression, George and McDonough address alternative mythologies of play and maleness through varying degrees of agency that offer compelling recapitulations of boyhood informed by the development of a virtual, cyber world, as well as humorous respite from the mundane obstacles of adult life.

“The Twelfth Man” marks George and McDonough's first public collaboration. Before crossing paths as students in the MFA program at The George Washington University, George and McDonough completed BA's at the University of Akron, and the University of Wisconsin-Madison, respectively. George currently works in several mediums, including photography, lenticular flip animation, interactive video, and video games, while McDonough's craft is much more hands-on, often employing embroidery, collage and painting within a single object. Although each artist’s work appears disparate in medium, scale and material, the confrontation of unnecessary obstacles—the essence of any game—links the two in intention. What do these pieces tell us about the status of play in our society? Is art play? Can play be art? As the visibility of a global community of spectators grows with the unprecedented interactivity of the Internet, and leisure activities become more and more coveted during this period of economic downturn, such questioning of achievement and play conceivably identifies the real salience of George and McDonough’s art and the tropes displayed within "The Twelfth Man."

Gift Exchange
May 8 - June 7
Opening Reception: May 8, 7-9pm
Gallery Talk: June 7, 3pm
Curated by Laura Roulet
Apprentice Curator: Landria Shack

Inspired by Lewis Hyde’s classic 1979 book The Gift, Gift Exchange presents the work of six accomplished Washington D.C. artists paired with six works by associated artists received in exchange. Relationships between artists such as teacher-student, mentor-acolyte, and collaborators are conveyed in the stories of these exchanges. The notion of art as a gift rather than a commodity, but also a gift as talent, as inspiration, and as catalyst for change, underlies the exhibit

Ellington Robinson
Yesterday's Tomorrow
March 27 - May 3
Opening Reception: March 27, 7-9pm
Artist Talk: May 3, 5pm

Ellington Robinson’s new paintings and mixed media works are inspired by the wisdom of Lao Tsu’s poems, “Tao Te Ching.” They appropriate the geometric forms of records, Dan, and Dogon masks used to initiate youth into adulthood and draw on the seascapes of St. Thomas — which are, for the artist, spiritual locations where introspection and reflection take place. Using the elemental hierarchy of shape and color, Robinson hopes to evoke a sense of solitude through interior and exterior spaces and reconnect people with a sense of “nothingness.”

“In the role of artist-philosopher, Robinson uses his works to illuminate the world around him. There is a wonderful intention in each stroke that goes beyond any formal elements that he employs in his painting. His calculated spontaneity informs and delights, while constantly being grounded in his own definition of reality.” — Jefferson Pinder

"The past is present is what comes to mind when I see the works of Ellington Robinson.'Yesterdays Tomorrow' represents the Essence of Ellington. In this body of work he explores topics that are close and dear to him — music, civil rights and the necessity of a positive environment. He reconstructs the urban decay of his youth by using elements from that same environment, thus allowing the viewer to harken back to Washington, D.C. during the mid 1980’s. The pieces are a snapshot of where a young man watches jazz hand the baton to hip-hop." — Billy Colbert

Ellington Robinson earned his M.F.A. in painting and mixed media at the University of Maryland, College Park where he is currently serving the David C. Driskell Award of Excellence teaching fellowship, as a Lecturer of Drawing. He was born in Washington, D.C. and grew up with six siblings and dozens of cousins and close relatives nearby. The Robinson household was a retreat for civil rights activists, jazz and soul enthusiasts, politicians, artists, and writers including Max Robinson, Mohammed Ali, CLR James, Stokley Carmichael, Toni Morrison, and Nina Simone. In 1980, Ellington moved to St. Croix, Virgin Islands, where the family lived on a former sugar plantation. Ellington moved with his family from St. Croix to St. Thomas in 1985 where he attended both Lutheran and Anglican elementary schools. He returned to Washington during the late 1980’s and attended public school. In this period of his life, the artist delved deeper into Hip Hop culture which has had a profound impact on his art. After graduating from Woodrow Wilson High School, he went on to Morehouse where he received a B.A. in English. He has traveled extensively and his explorations combined with the vicissitudes of his experiences growing up are the amalgam that makes up his artwork.

David Hartwell
Broad Street Pilgrimage, Richmond, Virginia
January 9 - February 8
Opening Reception: January 9, 7-9pm
curated by Bridget Sue Lambert

On a sunny day in October 2007, David Hartwell took a long walk. He hiked 16.82 miles on U.S. Highway 250 in his hometown of Richmond, Virginia, counting the steps as he went. The highway—named Broad Street—is home to urban, suburban and rural environments. During his journey he stopped at 14 specific sites to take photographs, collect objects, and record data. Broad Street Pilgrimage, Richmond, VA presents the images that document his journey, his memories, and the souvenirs collected at each site. The memories associated with the sites are not those of high impact, traumatic, formative, or atypical events. They are, in fact, quite ordinary. David's work examines memory and its relationship with personal history and location.

"Flow" represents the most recent work by Washington DC's 's Pat Goslee, an intuitive artist whose paintings seek to part the curtain that, according to Kabbalah, separates the physical world from the spiritual.

The most obvious unifying element in Pat's work is pattern: layers of color and form seen here as a visual metaphor for layers of awareness. The results achieved often depict isolated moments, visualizations of energetic states, not things.

The work hopes to raise questions: How do we store information, emotional baggage, awareness? What do we know or not know? What do we take in? What do we filter out? What layers need to be removed, or rearranged, in order to achieve change?

Pat Goslee is funded in part by the DC Commission on the Arts Humanities, an
agency supported in part by National Endowment for the Arts

Suspicious Activities
Paintings and Works on Paper by Aziza Claudia Gibson-Hunter
Curated by Michael Platt
October 17 – November 16
Opening Reception: October 17: 7-9pm

Rather than accusing the individual of “suspicious activities,” Gibson-Hunter turns the phrase on its head in this collection of paintings and works on paper, exposing the corruption of language and meaning that pervades our current political climate. The suspicious activities shared in her works are building blocks for a dangerous Orwellian world. The work examines language from a variety of recent and ongoing crises and conflicts, including the Iraq war, Hurricane Katrina, the numerous unsolved murders of African Americans in Washington D.C, and the ongoing crisis in Darfur, exposing parallels between the local, national and international use of political language and the covert activities they conceal. The work was created to encourage the public to acknowledge and confront the contradictions of our era.

above image: Aziza Claudia Gibson-Hunter, Collateral Damage, Bleach color pencil and acrylic, 22” x 30” 2007

Herb's Choice 2008:
ANHEDONIA
Recent Work by Will Schneider-White
Curated by Sarah Tanguy
September 12 – October 12
Opening Reception: September 12, 7-9pm

In psychologically charged works, Schneider-White creates haunting scapes populated by figures of indeterminate expression and features. At once passive and simmering with energy just beneath the surface, they hover on the edge of reality. Suspended in time, their state is unknown and perhaps unknowable too: are they merging, trapped, or coming out of space? The neutral background and agitated brushstroke heighten their existential isolation, while the earthen palette reinforces their humanity and ties to nature.

above image: Will Schneider-White, Trio, oil on canvas,

1460 WALLMOUNTABLES 2008!
Show Your Art | Sell Your Art
DCAC's Annual Open Exhibit!
Deinstallation: September 3 - September 7, 2-7pm

Get all the details on Wallmountables here...
Read the DCist review here...
Read the Washingtonpost.com review here...

June 13 - July 13
Opening Reception: June 13, 7 - 9pm
Film Screening and Artist Talk: July 13, 5:30pm
curated by Ellen Tani
curatorial project mentor: J.W Mahoney

Featuring work by Peter Chang, Brandon Hill, Debbie Yarrington, Andrew Wodzianski
and Steven Strawn

Kid Mutiny takes a sampling from a movement both fascinated with the material culture of childhood and rebellious against what it told us to be. Stimulated by the burgeoning subculture of vinyl toys and escapist narratives, the show objectifies violence as a plaything, a readily available commodity in an apocalyptic world. Mutations of gender and form, fiction and reality, and man and machine create fantastical narratives far darker than those we enacted as children.

In response to an oversaturated consumerist world, the selected works blur the lines of “norm” that this socio-commercial context has packaged and presented to us. Both good and evil, both male and female, the works in Kid Mutiny rebel against the fineries that toys once enjoyed, evading or taking advantage of the proper childhood narratives that Barbie and G.I. Joe made famous.

Anne Benolken
The Apotheosis of Kali
May 16 - June 8
Opening Reception: Friday, May 16, 7 - 9pm
curated by Carolyn Reece-Tomlin

Anne Benolken’s first solo exhibition of photographs is inspired by her artist book “The Apotheosis of Kali.” Worlds collide in Benolken’s boxes, dollhouses and photographs, the fruits of a career-long exploration into how culture intersects with emotion and intellect. Hindu philosophy meets B-movie sci-fi horror backdrops and toy store gizmos, creating a new narrative where we are allowed to peer in on the artist-made figurines of the domesticated goddess Kali as she contemplates the forces of creation and destruction that she holds within her power. Thought-provoking, occasionally humorous, always poignant captions draw us further into Kali’s gray, Peyton Place-esque habitat. It is a world punctuated by the saturated colors of dime store novelties and religious icons that elevates Benolken’s spot-on observations of human nature to a culture-crossing miniature epic for the here and now.

Kate Hardy
AMERICAN IDOLATRY
A site specific installation
June 8 - July 8, 2007
Opening Reception: Friday, June 8, 7 - 9pm
Artist & Curator Talk, 8pm
A curatorial project organized by: Anne Surak
Assisted by Margaret Boozer and Claire Huschle

a site-specific installation by Kate Hardy that examines the ever-increasing existence of art as a commodity and explores the abstract value attributed to consumer goods in a capitalist society.

‘American Idolatry’ is a conceptual artwork that aims to be
accessible in its content, visual appeal, pricing, and the collaborative action
of exchange. I am presenting the audience with objects that appeal to me.
Familiar objects: toys, knick-knacks, souvenirs, etc. They are objects that I have
collected from thrift stores, found on the streets of DC or have been given
to me by friends. They are a set of unique collectibles. They are not things
that I necessarily need but they are things that I want to have. The artist,
the consumer and the collector in me would like to have them. Their value
system is based on my own personal relationships with and associations to
them. They have been ranked and priced according to my preference, and I
am presenting them in a gallery setting where by purchasing an object, you
will be participating in the completion of the piece.

— Kate Hardy

...Hardy’s installation is a conceptual piece that discusses the commodification
of artworks as well as subverting the typical protocol of the
art market. Projects like this do not attempt to bypass the valorization and
commodification of the work, but instead embrace it. It is this embrace
that completes the work of art. The artistic act is the interactive process of
shopping.

— Anne Surak

This exhibit was made possible by a generous grant from the Warhol Foundation to support the DCAC Curatorial Initiative which helps develop and mentor emerging curators in Washington DC

IAN AND JAN: The Undiscovered Duo
A Secret History of the Washington Body School
Jeffry Cudlin and Meg Mitchell
Exhibition Advisors: Rex Weil & Central Intelligence Art
May 11 - June 3, 2007
Opening reception, Friday 5/11 7-9pm

This spring, many local museums and galleries will celebrate the Washington Color School , a group of abstract painters who, in the early 1960s, briefly made D.C. the center of the visual arts universe.

Local artists Jeffry Cudlin and Meg Mitchell won’t be playing along. At DCAC, the two will stage an art historical intervention, weaving an alternative history for Washington art.

Cudlin and Mitchell will mount a retrospective for their alter egos, Ian and Jan—a fictitious husband-and-wife performance art duo. According to the exhibition’s premise, Ian and Jan led the Washington Body School , a group that, in the late ‘60s and ‘70s, exhibited their body art alongside the work of prominent Washington abstract painters.

Ian and Jan: The Washington Body School will provide humorous commentary on Washington ’s cultural legacy, on revisionist art historical agendas, and on gender bias and power politics in the arts. The show will include photographs, drawings, props, and videos of the couple in action.

The centerpiece of the show will be a video featuring interviews with D.C. gallerists, collectors, and historians, all recalling the rich, heretofore unexplored history of these two obscure performance artists. Participants in the video include: Jonathan Binstock, Curator for Contemporary Art at the Corcoran Gallery of Art; Sam Gilliam, celebrated artist; J. W. Mahoney, contributing writer and editor for Art in America; Joshua Shannon, Professor of Contemporary Art History at The University of Maryland, College Park; Andrea Pollan, Director of Curator’s Office; Janis Goodman, critic for WETA’s Around Town and instructor of art at the Corcoran College of Art and Design; and Tyler Green, blogger for Arts Journal and contributing writer for Fortune magazine and The Wall Street Journal.

Though the show exists as a parody, it also investigates the seductive power of master narratives, even discredited or demonstrably false ones. Ian and Jan may make you laugh, but they will also change the way you think about the business of cultural production—and Washington , D.C. —forever.

Friday, April 27th - Monday, April 30th
Washington Convention Center , Hall E
801 Mount Vernon Place, NW , Washington DC
Friday (Free Day) April 27, 11 AM - 7 PM
Saturday April 28, 11 AM - 7 PM Sunday April 29, 11 AM - 7 PM
Monday April 30, 11 AM - 5 PM

April 13 – May 6
“ American Icons through Indigenous Eyes”
curated bySuzan Shown Harjo*
opening reception Friday 4/13 7-9pm
gallery talk, closing day 5/6 3:00pm

Twelve Native American artists in an exhibit curated by Suzan Shown Harjo ( Cheyenne and Hodulgee Muscogee).

The views of most Native American people are never heard or seen by anyone near the shores of the Potomac. But that doesn’t stop a lot of folks in Washington , D.C. from believing they know who Native Peoples are, what we think and what’s best for us. ..I wanted to curate a show that would expose Washingtonians to unfiltered views of some Native people outside D.C. After settling on the broad exhibit theme, I contacted a dozen topnotch Native American artists, with an open-ended request for new or existing work on any subject they wanted to address in the nation’s Capitol.

-Suzan Shown Harjo, curator

check out the Washington Post review here:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/04/12/AR2007041201748.html

*This exhibition was made possible by a generous grant from the Warhol Foundation to support the DCAC Curatorial Initiative which helps develop & mentor emerging curators in Washington , DC .

March 16 – April 8, 2007
“The Jolly Cowboy” curated by Cara Ober*
opening Reception: Friday, March 16 7-9pm

If the taming of the Wild West is our nation’s legend, the central character is the cowboy.
More myth than history, the cowboy’s identity varies wildly. From outlaw to hero, from
cattle rustler to gunslinger, from drunkard to sheriff, his mystery, his bravery, and his
autonomy remain constant. Visual artists from different nationalities, backgrounds, ages,
and sensibilities create a complex and contradictory image of this character and with it,
an exploration of American identity and individualism.

Featured Artists: Laurence Arcadias, Julie Benoit, Zoe Charlton, Billy Colbert, Rob Sparrow Jones, Charman Lewis, Lump Lipshitz, Jack Livingston, Gabriel (Baby) Martinez, Lauren Schott, Rene Trevino, and Elena Volkova

February 16- March 11:
“By Chance…”. curated by Lisa McCarty*
opening reception Friday 2/16 7-9pm
curators talk Sunday 3/11 4:00pm

LaRinda Meinburg, If Frank and Cynthia Had Kids.., mixed media & Michael Matason, Untitled, silver gelatin print

This is the fourth Curatorial Initiative show supported by the Warhol Foundation. This show is curated by emerging curator Lisa McCarty who also worked on “Hystoria” with JW Mahoney.

In this show Lisa explores chance within the context of curating and artmaking, inquiring into the processes involved in both these pursuits when the element of chance is involved.

Lisa includes six artists that use, invite, or embrace chance within their work. She selected the first three artists, Thomas M. Lowery, Michael Matason, LaRinda Meinburg and each of these three artists then picked one additional artist each to include in the show: Jym Davis, Wendy Downs, and Andy Holtin & Galo Moncayo.

The show is made up of artists that all utilize chance in their work, and is also brought together by chance in the DCAC exhibition space.

In a larger context it also facilitates an investigation into the process of curating, and provides a forum to rethink the relationships between artists, their works, and curation.

Jan. 19 - Feb. 11, 2007
"In a Land Far, Far, Away..."
Opening Reception: Friday January 19th, 7-9pm

The four artists in this show create characters and landscapes that tell stories both exotic and mundane. The show brings up questions about illustration as fine art and the psychological and emotional stories artworks can tell.

December 15 - January 14, 2007
Obsession, recent works by Amy Lin
curated by Anne Collins Goodyear, assistant curator of prints+drawings
at the National Portrait Gallery
opening reception 12/15 7-9pm, curator's remarks 8pm

Separate Worlds, Fluid, and Circle by Amy Lin

With a soaring blue mass anchored above a small pink enclosure, “Separate Worlds” reads almost like a question mark. The comparison is apt where Amy Lin’s work is concerned. Enveloped in the artist’s meticulously rendered drawings is an implicit question: what are they? It is precisely in their resistance to easy categorization that the works reach out to spectators.

Lin’s work, with an exquisite calligraphic quality of interweaving cables, is composed of tiny spheres, rendered painstakingly, at varying scales, by the artist. Yet the work does not read as pure abstraction, concerned only with formal properties of color and composition. Instead, a careful examination of these lively surfaces reveals fascinating intersections between the minute units themselves—microbes of a sort— some of which seem to cohere with magnetic pull while others seem to resist one another. Through her use of pattern and repetition Lin has put into play dynamics that seem almost human in nature.

If the artist’s intensity, or “obsession,” reveals itself graphically, the work also brings about a deep sense of contemplative satisfaction. For through an act of meditative creation, Lin has constructed pictorial environments that produce a sense of immense space. Here the viewer can become lost in the delicate task of untangling skeins of threaded dots that tease the mind.- Anne Colins Goodyearfor more information go to: www.amylinart.com

Exchange: Richmond @ DC - 'Twisted Roots'
curated by Tosha Grantham
Presented by DCAC & WPA\C
November 10 - December 10, 2006

Opening Reception: November 10, 7-9pm

Curator Tosha Grantham selects Richmond artists to exhibit at DCAC.

Featuring: Sanford Biggers, S. Ross Browne, Caryl Burtner, Sonya Clark,
Taliaferro Logan, Ayo Ngozi, and Heide Trepanier

check out the washington post review here

Herb’s Choice: Born Again Dada!
curated and juried by J.W. Mahoney
October 13- November 5, 2006**
Opening Reception: Friday, October 13, 7-9pm- curator's remarks 8pm
**Night of Live Performances + Poetry: Sunday 10/29 at 7:30pm (free) featuring: Blk w/ Bear, Eigenvalues, J.D. Smith, and Dee-Ranged!!! come see the dada-ness of it all...

DCAC put out an open call for Dada artists, poets and performers. This show will feature artists selected by curator, J.W. Mahoney and will also include a variety of performances and readings throughout the show’s duration. A gluttonous $250 prize will be awarded to the most ‘dada’ submission from the open call.

Featuring work by:
JS Adams, Ian Chase, David Hartwell, Linda Hesh, Brendan Howell, Mariah Josephy,
Carolina Mayorga, Aaron Oldenburg, Betsy Packard, Anne Stillwood, Paul Thomas and
Charles Westerman

Space of Change is an exhibition about "liminal spaces"...that pocket of time during which things/people transform from what they were into what they are going to become.

The exhibition, curated by Claire Huschle and Margaret Boozer with help from Anne Surak, will introduce the work of five artists: Amy Kaplan, Martin Brief, Justin Rabideau, and the collaborative team of Wendy Weiss and Jay Kreimer.

Kaplan explores issues of trust, faith and illusion with her mummified stuffed animals, Brief takes a literal look at reading between the lines, Rabideau uses his native Georgia clay to explore the physical extensions of his thoughts and actions, while Weiss and Kreimer create a motion-triggered sound and fiber installation with social and political underpinnings.

In very distinct and disparate ways, each artist addresses the theme of liminality, creating an exhibition rich in the poetry of their connections and contrasts. A brief talk with artists and curators will accompany the opening reception.

for more info, artist bios and images click here

Sunday Art Forums at DCAC -
Sundays at 7:30 in the DCAC theater
Admission: FREE!

get your weekly art fix, and hear about issues that face today's artists, art historians,
curators and collectors.

photograph by Gabriela Bulisova

June 11: Social Commentary in Art, moderated by Marc Cohen, PhD
Featured Panelists: Gabriela Bulisova, Laura Burns, Geoff Bell and Jack Rasmussen

June 25: The role of art historians, curators and critics in the contemporary art scene, moderated by Marc Cohen, PhD
Featured Panelists:
Joshua Shannon, Assistant Professor of Contemporary Art History & Theory at the University of Maryland
Rex Weil, independent curator, critic and artist
Judith Brodie, curator of modern prints and drawings at the National Gallery of Art
JW Mahoney, independent curator, critic and artist

July 23: Making, showing and collecting video art, moderated by Marc Cohen, PhD Featured Panelists: Kathryn Cornelius, Djakarta, Philip Barlow, Jefferson Pinder

*this series is funded by the Humanities Council of Washington, DC which is an affiliate of the National Endowment of Humanities

The Document- a presentation of The B-Boy Project
August 18 - September 3, 2006
Opening Reception Friday Aug. 18th 7-9pm
Artist Talk- Sunday, Sept. 3 at 5:00

Featured Artists: Bat, Brandon Hill, Alex Meiners, Peter Chang

The Document is an exhibit of the documentation of the artists' use of Breakdancing as a means to move paint over canvas. The idea was three-fold: first creating two-dimentional art pieces as a result of a performance; second documenting the entire process by video; and third, photographing every step and action taken during the breakdancing sessions. The Document is a collaborative visual, musical, and physical exploration of the B-boy/hip-hop culture.

July 28 - August 13, opening reception July28 7-9pm
Installation July 26, 27, 28
Each year we section the gallery into 2'x2' squares and have an open call to artists.
for complete rules/regulations click here: 2006 1460 Wall Mountables

Vox Populi- "Home Free"
June 30- July 23, 2006
Opening Reception Friday June 30 7-9pm

photograph by Stefan Abrams

Homefree, a group exhibition of the artist members of Vox Populi, is a nod to our recent agoraphobia (we haven’t traveled in a while) and also, an attempt to put a positive spin on our impending homelessness (our building is being torn down sometime this year). Expect the unexpected as Vox members pack up their paintings, videos, sculpture, photos, prints, and concepts, and in our rented minivan careen down 95 to show DC how we do it in Philly and make some new friends.

Red Mountain, Corey Antis / Lens Flare, Matt Suib

Founded in 1988, Vox Populi is a nonprofit artist collective that supports the work of emerging artists with monthly exhibitions, gallery talks, performances and lectures. For nearly 20 years, Vox has occupied a unique role in the artistic and cultural community in Philadelphia by bringing our audience cutting-edge contemporary art and a diverse range of programming, while at the same time providing a supportive environment where young artists can feel free to experiment, take risks and gain valuable experience to help them lauch their professional careers.

Participating Artists: Kate Abercrombie, Stefan Abrams, Doina Adam, Amy Adams, Anita Allyn,
Corey Antis, Leah Bailis, Gabriel Boyce, Robert Chaney, Micah Danges, Sarah Daub,
Nadia Hironaka, M. Ho, Charles Hobbs, Joseph Hu, Maximillian Lawrence, John Lorenzini,
Roxana Perez-Mendez, Matthew Suib and Eva Wylie.

"Subdivisions"- curated by Matthew Best
"unit 8" by Andrew Prayzner
May 26 - June 25, 2006 . Opening Reception May 26 7-9pm
Featuring work by:
Sandra Jeknavorian, Andrew Prayzner, Matthew Clay-Robison and Joseph Segal
Images of suburbia are prevalent in contemporary visual culture. At their best, the suburbs are portrayed as a safe and peaceful utopia, full of happy and healthy families, and free of crime; at worst, conformist and lacking in diversity and individual expression. The suburbs have come to represent an ideal, the fulfillment of the American dream of land ownership, a house, two cars, and 2.5 children. This American ideal has been the subject of constant scrutiny. This exhibition seeks to explore suburbia as both the birthplace of, and an inspiration to, artists, portraying the love/hate relationship that those who grew up in the suburbs often share. - Matthew Best
"Don't Bring No Bad News"- curated by Barbara Blanco

April 28 - May 21, opening reception Friday April 28th 7-9pm
Featuring the work of: Michael Platt, Harlee Little, Kasha Stewart + Kim Johnson
The exhibit entitled, “Don’t Bring No Bad News”, will focus on positive imagery that reflects the African American experience. It captures our spirit, our hopes, our joy, our laughter, our faith and the inspiration we encounter everyday in our lives.

It is essential that we show the African American experience is the human experience, as our stories share a common history with our families, friends, and neighbors. These images will include everyday messages of love, hope and appreciation. The overall aim of this exhibit is to share visual stories whose good news should be told. - Barbara Blanco

photograph by Jeff Jaffe

“From Sea to Shining Sea” March 31 – April 23
Curated by Ori Z. Soltes and Cara Ober,
part of the curatorial initiative, funded by the Andy Warhol Foundation
Opening Reception Friday, March 31 7-9 pm , Artist Talk, April 23 4pm

The exhibit title and underlying concept play with the rich visual possibilities that the sea as a subject has to offer to so many artists. It alludes specifically to the doctrine of Manifest Destiny, which asserted that it was God’s will that the republic expand from ocean to ocean, and its relevance today.

The artists represented in this group show come from coast to coast and their subject matter relates to the sea

H Y S T O R I A
curated by J.W Mahoney and Lisa McCarty
March 3-March 26 , Opening Reception March 3rd 7-9pm
part of the curatorial initiative, funded by the Andy Warhol Foundation

Featuring the work of:
Geoff Bell
Julee Holcombe
Betsy Packard
Jeffrey Smith
Champneys Taylor

Artist Talk: March 12 4:00pm

The anxieties that the present course of history induces in artists are often most creatively bourn indirectly.
The social chaos, and the pressure of information, the “wreckage,” is monumental. Turning aside offers periphera
l vision a full scope. And turning around to the Past offers a very different range of worlds than the one that our
present ceaselessly opens. All this data can feel useful, and strangely beautiful. These five artists in Hystoria present
unfamiliar beauties emerging from our image and form-rich visual history –created in the context of the strong
geopolitical uncertainties we’re witnessing right now.

Bruce McKaig- TIME MARKERS
JANUARY 27- FEBRUARY 26, 2006 curated by art critic Andy Grunberg

Opening Reception Friday January 27, 7-9pm
In-gallery events February 11,18 and 25 at 2:30pm

A project that simultaneously makes a single cumulative pinhole photograph and a digital time-lapse
animation of scenes from the arts, science, business, family and social rituals

Since January 2005, Bruce McKaig has been photographing people in their places of work, simultaneously
using a pinhole cameramade froma paint can and a digital camera to capture time-lapse stills at regular intervals.
The project is called Time Markers anduses both crude pinholephotography and digital technologies to record and
display events from science, the arts, nature, business,social and family rituals. The materialresults from Time Markers
include the single cumulative pinhole exposure, large digital contactsheets of the still images, and a DVD where allimages
have been clipped together to produce a flipbook-like animation. This projectexamines activities that surround us but that
are rarely observed: a bookkeeper, a construction site, a business meeting, a family reunion, a cake decorator, a Rock
and Roll band rehearsal, waiters at a sidewalk cafe, an archivist, people watching the news, a photography class,
a paper mache artist, an exotic dancer, a frame shop, tourists in DC, a pianist rehearsing, me hand coloring photographs.

The DCAC exhibition will display monitors for the DVD animations, large prints of the time-lapse images, and light boxes
with transparentpinhole images. In addition, events will be scheduled and photographed in the gallery during the exhibition to allow the public to see the paint can and digital cameras in action.

Time marker events: Events will take place in the DCAC gallery and will demonstrate the pinhole camera techinique.

Dec 16, 2005- Jan 22, 2006:
In Memory D Thompson, curated by Buck Downs
Opening Reception December 16 th 7-9pm

A series of visual poems created by rubbing words from the names and related inscriptions found on headstones in historic Congressional Cemetery, Washington DC. Equal parts ghost story and concrete poem, each sequence teases out a mysterious syntax buried in the names of the dead.

Buck Downs is a poet and book artist, publisher of Buck Downs Books.

Nov 11 - Dec 11, 2005: Points of Departure:
works by Nathan Manual and D. Billy,
curated by Trish Tillman

Opening Reception November 11 th 7-9pm

Enter into a conversation between the two newly acquainted DC area artists Nathan Manuel and D. Billy,
and you might think you are entering a choreographed sitcom. Mix the silly nature of throwing around
language and shapes paired with a whimsical yet careful attitude towards the outcome of their collaborative
artworks, and you'll find that it's not only about the art, but that it's also a game. In fact, the more the two
artists learn each other's artmaking aesthetics, the more strategic the game gets. The resulting gems of
painted and collaged panels speak miles with an array of caricatures cut out from books, scraps of food packaging,
cardboard boxes and discarded educational materials. Lines section off compartments to define thoughts and put
stereotypical lifestyles on a pedestal. Circular clouds waft ideas across the composition, projecting questions into
the garish jabber jaw of fleeting discussion. In the end, the games Manuel and Billy present extend through to how
life's idioms can be taken out of context and put into someone else's set of rules. One large-scale drawing in the
exhibition will be made using 'viewer input' from ballots (available at DCAC) that are submitted in the month
leading up to the show.

Nov 7, 2005 : An Art Exhibit & Reception
Featuring Stella Mercy Atal Artist/Painter of Uganda
on Monday, November 7th, 2005, 6:30pm – 9:30pm
hosted by Angelique Shofar, Executive Producer & Host of “Africa Meets Africa” on WPFW 89.3 FM
To RSVP Call 202-588-0999 ext 319
Or email info@africameetsafrica.com
A drawing will take place for a fabulous
gifts and prizes bring your business cards
A donation of $5.00 is appreciated
www.africameetsafrica.com

DC Arts Center resides in a facility that is donated rent-free by arts supporter and avid collector,
Herb White. Now retired and living in Miami , FL , each year Mr. White chooses a DC artist and
offers an exhibition of their work. This year he has chosen to feature the work of visual arts
students from the Duke Ellington School of the Arts. The exhibited work will be a selection from
their annual Spring Exhibition from 2004 – 05 which initially featured 296 pieces of art. The work
will represent three levels of the department’s curriculum, 9 th, 10 th, and 11 th grades. It will
showcase the enrichment and experiences of various techniques, processes and mediums while
exploring a variety of subject matter. The work also represents a focus in developing excellence
in craftsmanship and compositional skills as well as individual creative thinking skills.

Opening: Friday, September 9th from 7-9 PM
Old trees, girls with slight mustaches, malformed animals, hippies, trash, a slew of faces,
pretty things and tinfoil robots are just some of the topics covered by these Team Lump
artists. Paintings, drawings, sculpture, and probably other suprizes will be made by the
likes of Justin Crosby, Stewart Sineath, Gary Smith, Tory Wright, Bob Schatte, Josh Rickards,
Jeremy Taylor and Allyson Mellberg.

"a timeless region, an eternal presence in complete quiet,
lying beyond human clocks and calendars altogether…
the quiet of the Now in the time-pressed, time-tossed
existence of man…this small non-time space is the very
heart of time." - Hannah Arent

"The Fleeting Instant of Now" consisted of a series of drawings that evoked both history
of place and the experience of non-place (space-time, the mystery of the unknown, the
spirit that fills a place).

In Karey Kessler's work, color represents both nature and industry. Paint pigment comes from
the earth - rocks and minerals - and is used in industry for everything from cars to billboards
and houses. Color can create a mood, evoke a memory, or it can represent something beyond
this world, something closer to time than space, closer to feeling than experience --
not nothingness, but everythingness.

Dina Weston, Dave Snead, Rebecca Murtaugh, Kate Hardy, Claire Sherwood.
Four artists used ceramics and other materials as a point of departure to study transformation
in the artisticprocess - what is lost and what remains. Kate Hardy (DC) examined the slippery
deliniation between art & craft (in public collections). Rebecca Murtaugh (NY) considered the
permanent and ephemeral elements of clay. Claire Sherwood (WV) looked closely at the
transformation of materials like coal and clay over varying conditions and periods of time. Dina
Weston Snead (MD) studied the record of time and touch in an installation that uses
existing architecture.

LATENT was the first exhibition in Washington of work by one of the city's most promising young artists.
A graduate of CalArts and winner of a prestigious 2005 Creative Capital grant, Tan makes photographs
that are at once conceptual explorations of our current social unease and technical forays to the medium's
outer limits. From dark shapes etched against a cold midnight blackness, to figures shimmering in blasted
territories of white heat, her stunning images suggest a psychic landscape latent under the surface of our
surroundings. This exhibition was organized for DCAC by Paul Roth, associate curator of photography and
media arts at the Corcoran Gallery of Art. Read the Washington Post article on Latent here

Art and superstition are both forms of secular spirituality that ambitiously seek to define fate
and environment. Often associated with fear and ignorance, superstitious is a term that society
has used to label folks who choose their own paths and their own sets of beliefs. Bad luck and
good fortune are often connected to a whole series of actions that ultimately are determined by
the rationale of the subscriber. In this delicate existence, a broken mirror could curse an individual
for years or an umbrella opened indoors could spell uncertain doom. Similarly, artists often forge
unique paths while abiding by a personal sense of truth and spirit. In creating myth and illusion,
artists weave enigmatic "real world" elements into objects that become personal relics and icons.

The artists' collaborative KIOSKdc (Karen Joan Topping, Ian Jehle, Alan Callander) and “Dirtfarm”
cartoonist Ben Claassen III present an exhibition titled Traveling with Gulliver which uses the four
lands visited by Gulliver to showcase four original works of drawing, video, installation and cartoon
by the artists. With the help of text provided by writer Peter Donovan, Traveling with Gulliver invites
the viewer to experience the lands of the Lilliputians and the giants, the philosophers and the horses
with the same sense of wonder, good humor and befuddlement as Jonathan Swift's hero.
For more information on KIOSKdc visit www.kioskdc.com

Nov 11 - Dec 11, 2005: Points of Departure: works by Nathan Manual and D. Billy, curated by Trish Tillman

Nov 11 - Dec 11, 2005: Points of Departure:
works by Nathan Manual and D. Billy,
curated by Trish Tillman