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Please change your bookmarks and refresh your browser.  East City Art is now at its permanent home:

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The ECA team will continue to bring you the best coverage of the visual arts scene in Eastern DC  in a new web-zine format that will include an artist directory, a restaurant guide and a classified section.  Look for exciting ECA sponsored events and art openings in 2011

The Capitol Hill Art League Presents an All-Media Exhibit Juried by Gene Weingarten

| OPENINGS |

Opening Reception: Saturday, November 6 from 5pm to 7pm 

"Walking Down the Street" mixed media on canvas, Valentine Szybo.  Photo Courtesy Capitol Hill Art League

The Capitol Hill Art League (CHAL), a program of the Capitol Hill Arts Workshop (CHAW), presents an all-media juried exhibit opening on Saturday, November 6, 2010, from 5:00-7:00 p.m. at CHAW, 545 7th Street SE.  The juror for the exhibit is Gene Weingarten, a two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and columnist for the Washington Post Magazine who is also a Capitol Hill community member. Weingarten will speak at the opening reception. Admission to the opening and exhibit is free. 

The all-media show of original artwork continues through December 8, 2010.  

The Capitol Hill Arts Workshop is located at  545 7th Street, SE two blocks from Eastern Market Metro on the Blue & Orange Lines.  For more information call 202.547.6839 or visit their website at www.chaw.org Gallery hours are: 9:30AM-9:00 PM (M-Th), 9:30AM-6:00 PM (F), and 9:00AM-2:00 PM (Sat).

Industry Gallery Hosts "din-din" - An Exhibition of New Work by Jerry Mischak

| OPENINGS  | 

Opening Reception: November 6 from 6pm to 8pm

Studio view with elements for dinner table/such a night © Jerry Mischak, courtesy Industry Gallery

Industry Gallery will host din-din, an exhibition of new work by Jerry Mischak, opening November 6, 2010, 6-8 PM, and running through December 18, 2010.  Mischak, a senior critic at the Rhode Island School of Design, visiting professor at Brown University and instructor at the University of Rhode Island, will exhibit one large-scale installation and twelve chairs, all unique prototypes.  The installation piece dinner table/such a night is a 36-foot long table with 40 plates, 80 pieces of flat ware, 45 glasses, 25 empty wine bottles, and 100 empty water bottles, all wrapped in more than 3000 yards of orange vinyl tape.   The exhibition's 12 chairs are found objects reconstructed via sanding, cutting with the addition of plastic, Styrofoam and wood, and all encased in colored vinyl tape.

Mischak uses tape as a unifying element, or as he says, "a skin that covers a number of objects into a common form."  The tape appeals both for its color and as a bonding material.  He rarely ever works with sketches and never with a computer.  His works are developed through trial and error and a sculptural process of adding and subtracting.  Mischak says each piece "develops in real time and real space" and explains that with the chairs he is reinventing and redefining how each function with the body, likening the result to cover versions of well-known songs created by jazz musicians.

Speaking of the exhibition, Mischak said dinner table/such a night "evokes the remnants and memories of a grand dinner. Who was there? Who did you sit next to? What were the conversations? What was the food like? Did it get out of hand? Did you say the wrong things? Did you move ahead with your career? The chairs are separate thoughts from the enormous table, although as chairs they can relate."

About the Artis
Mischak grew up in Newark, New Jersey, in a house that he says had his first two studios - the dining room and front porch his mother converted into a beauty parlor, and a dirt floor basement where he built monsters and made movies with an 8mm Bell and Howell camera.  These were the places he could be alone and creative.  "I once made a figure out of wood wrapped it with strips of white cloth, put it in a metal box and buried it in the back yard.  It was after to my first viewing of The Mummy with Boris Karloff, my mom got worried she thought I was getting a little crazy. It was a time and world of fantasies, and performance while building the objects that helped create these stories."

"I feel that my work comes out of those early exploits and the industrial urban sections of Jersey where I would travel as a kid and later as a teen. Where the bridges embrace the port and the factory buildings."

Mischak cites an affinity for the work of Jorge Pardo, Ernesto Neto and Franz West for "their ability and vision to cross lines of sculpture, architecture and design."  He also admires the work of Tejo Remy & René Veenhuizen, saying "to me they are always on the edge, their concepts are genuine, clear and sometimes humorous." 

Mischak received his BFA from Rhode Island School of Design and MFA from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.  He has exhibited his work at the Palmer Museum, Penn State University; Cypress College Art Gallery, Cypress, CA; Islip Art Museum; Lehman College Art Gallery, NY; Pavel Zoubok Gallery, NY; Jim Kempner Fine Art, New York; the Boston Center for the Arts; and, Diverse Works Gallery, Houston.  Mischak is also a recipient of the Howard Foundation Fellowship and Rhode Island State Council of the Arts Fellowship.

Industry Gallery www.industrygallerydc.com is located at 1358 Florida Ave., NE, 2d Floor, Washington DC 20002,  info@industrygallerydc.com   (202) 399 1730.  The gallery is open Wednesday - Saturday, 11AM - 5PM, and by appointment.

Anacostia Fotoweek November 6 - 13

| OPENINGS |

Reception, November 6th starting at 7pm:

Stop by Anacostia's newest creative space, Blank Space SE, to check out American Poetry Museum's presentation O R G A N I C A: Photographic Series by Melani N. Douglass & Rachel Eliza Griffiths.

Vivid Solutions DC Print Lab is displaying Mixed Up: A Photography Showcase (a selection of client images printed by the Vivid Solutions DC Print Lab) at Big Chair Coffee & Grill. This group exhibit showcases select photographs from some of the clientele who have helped make the first year of business a great success.

 
Reception: November 10th from 6pm to 8pm:

 In his solo exhibition Neither...Nor, Vietnamese born artist Khanh H. Le is presenting 14 large scale images using the multiple plate polymer photogravure etching technique at The Gallery at Vivid Solutions. Le examines identity, through the bits and pieces of personal memory, the collective history from two cultures; Vietnam and the US.

Starting promptly at 8:15pm is a free performance from the contemporary classical group, The Analog Arts Ensemble. The group will be performing works by Roussel and Francaix, as well as a world premier by Dolf Kämper.

Reception, November 11th starting at 6pm:

 Honfleur Gallery is hosting "Likeness", the brainchild of DC based photographer, Joshua Yospyn. The exhibition includes twenty artists: ten photographers and ten street artists with an end result of ten original portraits and ten interpretations of that portrait.

Photographers and artists include:
Bo Zhang, Chris Usher, David Holloway, Erica Allen, Jason Horowitz, Josh Yospyn, Lois Bielefeld, Joshua Cogan, Matt Dunn, & Michel Frankfurter. Diabetik, Brandon Hill, Decoy, Asad Walker, Matthew Shlian, Lance Wiggs & Buck, Heather Stevens, Earnest Concepcion, Mike Estabrook, and Peter Chang.

Upstairs at Honfleur Gallery is a solo exhibit by Charlotte L'Harmeroult who is a painter and video artist based in Paris, France.  Her experimental, energetic video and photography projects use humor and colorful, surreal narratives.

Extended FOTOWEEK DC Hours are as follows:

Honfleur Gallery and The Gallery at Vivid Solutions
11/6 11am-8pm
11/7 and 11/8 12pm-5pm
11/9 12pm-8pm,
11/10 and 11/11 12pm-9pm
11/12 12pm-8pm
11/13 11-5pm

Blank Space SE
10am - 6pm

Big Chair Coffee & Grill
7am - 8pm

City Gallery presents Geoff Ault "Running with Scissors"

| OPENINGS  |

Opening Reception: Saturday November 6 from 6pm to 9pm

Geoff Ault "Running with Scissors" Photo Courtesy of CITY Gallery

 In Ault’s words:

“As children we are told what not to do.  Don’t touch that, it’s hot.  Don’t eat that, it’s dirty.  Don’t swallow your gum, don’t play with matches.  Don’t run with scissors.

Yet we did everything we were told not to do because we wanted to know why the adults didn’t want us to do these things.  So we found out what ‘hot’ is, what dirt tastes like, what happened when we swallowed our chewing gum, and the consequences of playing with matches.  But somehow we knew the consequences of running with scissors and usually didn’t try that one out.

In the art world, often we are told that we shouldn’t paint with acrylics because oils are better.  In photography, we should use film instead of digital cameras.  Often artists are admonished that we should stick to the tried and true methods.  To a certain point this is true.  One must walk before he or she can run.  The basics of  composition, technique and color are important in creating art in all forms.

At some point the artist must take a creative leap and forget the rules; run with the scissors this time and see what happens.    I like to twist the composition, play with color and try out new ways of creating images.   It is painting to the extent in that I use brushes, layering and blending.  The only difference is that I have a canvas and brush that are electronic, not physical.  This allows me to create work that can have various textures, colors that can be subtle or vibrant.  It also allows me to alter images to the point that they are unrecognizable from the original image.  

Some images begin as film photographs taken with toy cameras that produce blurry, dreamlike images.  I scan the negative into the computer and what is usually a black and white image of something rather mundane can become a colorful abstraction.  Other images are created from objects placed on a flatbed scanner and digitally manipulated to produce distorted, unrecognizable images.   A flower can become a landscape, a piece of slashed matboard becomes a seascape.  The possibilities are endless”.

City Gallery is located at 804 H ST NE second floor, Washington, DC 20002. Gallery hours are Fridays and Saturday 1-5pm. 

All Mixed Up: A Juried Exhibition of Mixed Media Work

| OPENINGS |

Opening Reception: Thursday, November 4 from  6:00 to 9:00pm 

Featuring the work of Melissa Burley, Nancy Donnelly, Angelina Hein, Tom Hill, Katie Dell Kaufman, Judith Kornett, Allen Linder, Megan Mueller, John Paradiso, Tim Tate, Erwin Timmers, Linda Lee Uphoff and Steven Williams.

Juror: Philippa Hughes

Exhibition Dates:  November 1 - 27, 2010.

Hosted at the Brentwood Arts Exchange in the Gateway Arts District for the first time, the 2010 Prince George's County Annual Juried Exhibition, All Mixed Up, is a prominent showcase for artists living, working, and studying in Prince George's County.  

"Dynamic, layered, textured and a little weird."  The juror uses these words describe herself as much as the works in All Mixed Up.  The words also come together as a surprisingly succinct way to sum up the Zeitgeist of contemporary art.  The title "All Mixed Up" proceeds to take on its own layers of meaning.  As it traverses from installation to abstraction, provocation to beauty, the show strikes a chord at the heart of what makes contemporary art so exciting.

Co-sponsored by The M-NCPPC Department of Parks & Recreation  and the Prince George's County Arts Council, All Mixed Up is also a bold reminder of the role Prince George's County increasingly plays at the forefront of the region's art community.  It is nationally prominent and emerging artists.  It is raw and refined, traditional as well as edgy, challenging and also affirming.

The Brentwood Arts Exchange at the Gateway Arts Center is located at 3901 Rhode Island Avenue Brentwood, MD 20722.  Call the center at 301-277-2863/ tty. 301-446-6802.  Hours are Monday through Friday: 10am - 8pm and Saturday: 10am - 6pm.