I don’t know if Kaira “Nikki” Johnson is positioning herself to be a curator, promoter, or impresario for a new generation of visual artists, including herself (graphic artist) but she’s pushing an exhibit of new work by women artists in DC titled “Art of the Soul.” Workshops are included presented by Words Beats & [...]
This is the last week of the Man Ray, African Art and the Modernist Lens exhibit at the Phillips Collection in Washington, DC. If you know DC, you know it’s tough for a native like me to shell out $12 to see an art exhibit with all the free Smithsonians in town. But [...]
For me origami has been more than just paper folding. Once you get the hang of the basic folds, it’s pretty calming for the head and the hands. I’ve used origami to center myself, to step away from the multi-tasked brain. I’ve also used it to calm tweeners. As I said, [...]
Two exhibits I’m definitely going to catch this month at the Smithsonian Institution museums:
IndiVISIBLE: AFRICAN-NATIVE AMERICAN LIVES IN THE AMERICAS
Opens November 10. I got the heads up about this one a few weeks ago from Phoebe Farris who has an essay in the exhibition catalog. Click on the title or here to [...]
Give me that Ole Time Photography!
Phil Nesmith is an old school photographer. I mean ooooold old school – silver nitrate (heard that word lately?), glass plates (been antique shopping lately?), and no camera. Have you ever made a pinhole camera from an oatmeal box?
Well, what was considered experimental and wierd science in its [...]
When DC artists come home for one of the city’s 3-H summers (hot, hazy and humid), you gotta jump on them and ask, “Why?” It’s like following Harriet Tubman south instead of north. That’s not the pattern for a DC born artist. “Go to New York, LA, Europe. Come back when [...]
Photo by Waldemar Hormat, 2008
The Burning Man Festival gates opened yesterday. The festival is one of those what you call “crazy fabulous things to do before you die.” Hat tip to my friend Naomi in Chicago who told me about it two years ago.
It’s a high octane annual fringe desert festival of the [...]
Just this month O Magazine featured a house tour of Peggy Cooper Cafritz’s mansion on Chain Bridge Road in Palisades, an affluent neighborhood in Washington, DC. Sadly the virtual O Magazine tour is the only opportunity Cafritz or anyone will ever have to see her home and her art collection again. Last night [...]
I see the moment we are witnessing as a civil rights movement rather than a push to topple the regime. If Rosa Parks was the American “mother of the civil rights movement,” the young woman who was killed point blank in the course of a demonstration, Neda Agha-Soltan, might very well emerge as its Iranian [...]
LUNCH AND DINNER WITH PAULA
When Paula suggested going to Legal Sea Foods on the wharf, I didn’t expect that we’d actually meet up for lunch in Boston. Legal is another Massachusetts institution like Dunkin Donuts, Herrell’s Ice Cream and Samuel Adams beer.
I had two cravings while in Boston: clam chowder and [...]
