I am seriously regretting not swiping the HUGE commemorative plaque to "Randall" from the Randall School. I walked past it regularly to get to my space. I remember looking him up when I first moved into the building, now I can't remember his name.

So I've posted the novella I sent to Lenny Campello about the end of the Randall School. While I've had numerous occasions to call myself a 'part-timer' in the past few weeks, honestly, I have been thrown for a loop by loosing the studio. Twice I've left the house and accidentally driven 1/3 to a 1/2 of the way to the Randall School before I've remembered that I don't have a studio at the present moment.

I've only had time to look at one place, that lo & behold, was right for the price, but it was big enough that (surprise) - I would have had to become the landlord and set up sublets. I have some other major priorities at the moment: school, DCAC and getting running water back in my kitchen, I can't be collecting security deposits. With that said, read on....

Mr. C, thanks for giving us the incentive to speak our minds. This is a little long - I could not resist a "Dylan Thomasy" sort of response, considering my feelings for my time at the Randall School.

You mentioned that DC's lack of affordable studio space was a factor in the deal with the Corcoran to include space for practicing artists in their plan. While no one would argue that financial and real estate issues have touched everyone in the past five years, personally I think that the Randall School community of artists and our cultural presence is of equal importance in explaining what lead us into this Jonah & the Whale scenario.

When I saw the artists that were residents in the building when I was a prospective renter 3-4 years ago, I knew I had to get in on this space. There were a number of artists that I really respected by reputation and work that had just recently cut the graduate school cord and had taken DC by storm. There were artists that I knew as bastions of the Downtown Art Scene in the 80's and 90's, that had had their studios over the porn and wig shops across from the National Portrait Gallery. Back in the day, this group had put on events of smaller scale but greater intensity than almost anything that's been seen at Art-o-Matic. Not surprisingly, many of these people now work their asses-off to make Art-O-Matic's possible.

Lastly there were plenty of people like me; not legendary, not the toast of the town; but with work ethic and solid bodies of work that appeals to some little niche otherwise we would not keep doing it.) Really, at the core that's what almost every resident of the Millennium Art Center (MAC) was, that kind of community is often harder to come by then available space.

Unfortunately when I became a renter at MAC the future of the building as studios, let alone an art center, was already on shaky ground. I was lucky to have my studio in one of the older parts of the building; Randall is a beautiful and old building and honestly it would not have lasted much longer without a deal like this happening. I hope the developers are held to refurbishing as much as they are allowed to demolish.

I had tried to rent studios in the preceding years and had not been successful. I once lost a space to a former employee because the landlord said his voice was on his answering machine before mine. The competition for individually leased spaces was and is high. Most artists are not willing or capable of taking on a lease and responsibility for the bankroll and slum-lording it takes to get the rent paid for an entire floor of a mid-century office building or an unused warehouse, let alone a 6.5 million complex of school buildings. Income statements, credit reports are as much a part of getting a studio as a "regular" person renting or buying a house or apartment.

There is studio space is out there, but there is sorry little initiative out there from investors and agencies that could afford to cut up larger spaces and offer them for fair prices. This was what was on the table at MAC, the opportunity for renting a studio - not having to become a landlord too.

While I've barely left the building, I'm nostalgic for the neighborhood already. Many of the remaining artists had been tenants for close to ten years, I can't imagine how they feel. I'm concerned that this project is a positive move for the neighborhood. There is a lot of public assistance housing in the neighborhood and it needs an art center that is going to reach out to the community more than anything.

Many other mixed use development projects seem stalled in this neighborhood and the Corcoran has not been very forthcoming about exactly what's going on with their project. I'm concerned that this project gets off the ground and doesn't become another shipwreck in the "Corcoran Triangle". Like the large historic church that sits behind the Randall building, it could end up sitting there boarded up for a decade which would break a lot of hearts.

There are only a few entities that can presume taking on a building that fills a city block and a leadership role in supporting a community of more than thirty artists and at least two non-profits; think about it, that's bigger than most graduate schools.

Private entities and city governments come to the top of my mind as good candidates.

The Corcoran has already put some roadblocks in the way of establishing good relations with the artists and the SW community. With the Gehry building not happening, it's hard to say what they have in mind.

Given that these are my feelings at the present moment, why would I presume that the Corcoran would be open to truly working in consort with the community, the government and private investors to create a truly visionary art center that could eclipse the Gehry or a ubiquitous mixed-use development. Outstanding not because of what it looks like or how financially good it looks on paper but in the positive and supportive impact it has on the community and the city. I know that running a museum or any arts organization is not a cakewalk, but I wish I could have more faith in the Corcoran assuming a role that maximizes the leadership role by at least trying to bring in the resources and a spirit of community and communication and could really make something happen.

I am willing to admit, itÂ?s a little unfair to saddle our Â?localÂ? museum with this huge responsibility when they really do need to fix their school. Sadly, I think it took this bleak lack of faith to spur the Ex-MAC community get organized. If itÂ?s not prudent for the Corcoran to do it, listen up isnÂ?t there Â?someoneÂ? else out there that sees what I am talking about and can step up to the challenge? Stay tuned. Ex-mac'rs will hopefully be having a celebration of some sort in the spring in the hope that we can galvanize much more of the DC community to support art, artists and the positive investment that art is to the city as a whole.

Thanks.

Karen Joan Topping

The Mountainous Mitigation of Mnemonics at Travelling with Gulliver June/July 2005

OK so it's been more than a year and half since I've posted. oops. The good news is I have been totally using my studio, the two other artists I collaborate with and I have made leaps and bounds, we have a website for Kiosk dc our collaborative entity, and we have a show opening at dcac with major new work. hot damn - it's so excellent!

Well, I never got around to reporting this months ago, but I am sharing a studio with two other artists at the Millennium Arts Center now. It's been a bit rocky, I've never enough time to go over there and I am still not really all the way moved in which makes it hard to work. I have taken slides-thought I still need to edit and dupe them. Taking this space was a huge step, but it's criminal the way time flies.

I feel a victim of myself, I have kind of let all my blogs slide, I update the calendar on groupiegirldc, then don't write anything, because I am lucky to get to one show a month for lack of money or time. There are a number of new bands and new to me bands I would like to go see, yet my energy wanes. The other groupiegirls and myself all see the correlation as when you stop going to shows and energy does wane and it puts us in foul moods and them we have to battle back at ourselves and hit the music. If only I hope things turn around soon, I miss the night and the clubs and the new people and NEW MUSIC!

Likewise with The Big Eye Blog, it gets hits, especially in the Summer when the press release came out that Steinhilber got Directions and again now that the show is open. I would love to be able to write something insightful about it. I'm quite pleased with the art banter and the shows of the last few months, I want those that have put in a lot of hard work to know they should keep it up. I've made a point to keep up with many of the shows that Steinhilber has been in DC. I missed my chance to meet him at the Transparent opening, having thrown my back out pretty bad that week (post 6 flags, doih), but can you just see it...Me, the Ducksauce Detractor, crawling into the slickee clean Numark like Quasimodo, being like, "Hi, Dan. I know I wrote this crappy little screed about a few of your pieces but I only did it because I care. I think your work is really sublime-I just think there were some bad choices made in showing certain pieces-it could have been a curators/gallery owners fault, but rarely does the blame fall to them."

Anyway, the other thin I don't want to forget about is the similarly crappy City Paper feature on why Fugazi is to blame for DC being uninteresting-I can't find an archive link though it was a feature in October '03. His observations on going to a club in DC and the denizens and dilettantes in them was right on the bobbing-no-dancing and strict grunge prep thing, etc. etc., but what that has to do with Fugazi is a long shot. If your talking to me, it all fits into the book idea - the 60's & 70's f'd this town & the people in it up.

Wow, It's been a long time since I've written anything, I've been a bit distracted. Doing tours at the Phillips Collection undoubtedly enriches my thinking about art, but it takes an awful lot of time that I do not have. There was Margaret Bourke White, who I never liked-however I had fun with the tours-as the show only covered the first decade or so of her work, the information was audacious yet to the point. And I did not know about her being the first journalist in Russia (or the 'new' USSR in the late 20's ( trips in '29-'30 &'31, I think). Just goes to show that there is a six degrees of separation when it comes to research and celebrities too-look into something more that one or two layers and you'll find someway to apply it to yourself.

Now there is the Marsden Hartley show. Refreshing my reading on him is making me resent doing the tours, which I find funny. Talking about photographer exhibits or mishmash shows, things like 'Surrealist Still Lives of the Rich and Famous', has become second nature, easy to puke up the predigested on the tourist (though to toot my own horn a little, I often include subversive comments about conceptual art and it's modernist roots that occasionally get me in trouble with the tourists ) Now, when I have to talk about an exhibition on one specific painter, I start identifying and sympathizing with the artist and start resenting doing the tours BIG TIME. On a personal note I should teach, I really really really should. Doing this Hartley research has opened up new information about his early work done in Europe,and the Berlin work and the abstract portraits. Hartley was a "Big Eye" striving to observe his present-I've always liked his work and have now read quotes from his letters where he says things like he's got "No use for making his thoughts apparent in painting, but instead wants to show a true intuitive observing of the present." He loathes artists that are always explaining their work with theory and expect him too. He catches on early, from the 1913 trip to Paris and throughout his life, that there are a lot of artist's commodifiying their work. I can't help but think about the present state of affairs and the direction I am headed in exactly that-a-way, commodifying my skills, selling myself to sell my work-it's scary. I am going to have to create a thought puzzle about this, who are our contemporary Steigliz's & Hartley's

On a personal note when it comes to my work, I was reminded of all the PAINTINGS I've got laying around from back in the day, I've been moving away from them (the paintings) at semi-breakneck speed doing sculptures, finding quotes left and right from living artists about wanting to make 'things' that inspire other people to want to make things. It's all very stream of consciousness, not about money, very 'game-theory' economics, to win sometimes you don't destroy other people but protect and inspire them, even if it means you starve.

Of course in the a larger sense I am not going to starve and I wonder at these turn of the century artists who would go without food. In the contemporary U.S. I can't imagine starving, it's losing my health insurance that I live in fear of that keeps me tied to my pathetic job. I better stop writing now, I could whine about this more and I will.

Mama Mia, I have been busy, but that's OK. woohoo. I have been working on (and continue to work individually on PR for) and installation at 14th & G Streets, NW in Downtown Washington, DC for The WPA/C (Washington Project for the Arts/Corcoran). The show is going be the name "WPA/C's CornerViews Gallery: To Be Determined". Here's a bunch of text and stuff that led up to my being in this "little do" with three other artists.
(and by the way, my piece is NOT titled do you want to play a game? anymore. Its called the longest march

.
THE LETTER


February 7, 2003








Dear Mr. Beers,


Please consider the following package proposal for the old Hahn Shoe store at the corner of 14th and G Streets, Northwest. It¡¦s been very exciting putting this together and I thank you and the WPA/C for the opportunity. The piece is entitled Do you want to play a game? and is intended to be very response to the space, the neighborhood and current events.


Please find enclosed my application to the WPA/C, the written proposal and two pages of drawings. I am prepared to meet all the requirements listed in the submission guidelines. I would hope to be notified by the 23rd of February in order that I could have all the materials assembled for the installation.


Thank you for your consideration.



THE PROPOSAL


Mixed Media Installation Proposal

For Old Hahn Shoe Store

Window Display at 14th & G Streets, NW

Spanning 3/23/03 to 5/17/03






Sick of working in a dead end job? Tired of repetitive day to day tasks that feed the bureaucracy? On autopilot? Feel like someone else it calling the shots?


Do you want to play a game?


This installation proposes to invigorate the conveyor belt like retail window space that wraps around the corners of fourteenth and G streets by presenting at least twenty four robots made of hand sewn crystal clear vinyl. They march in the same direction, blindly following each other.


The only differentiation one notices in these robots is that within their clear bodies, half of the robots have office implements and other objects of professional career climbers inside; business suits, neckties, and high heels, pens, staplers, newspapers, current periodicals, paper clips, staplers, disposable coffee cups and lunch containers. Each of the down-to-business robots is filled with a jumble of these items, looking like a typical office desk or back seat of a commuter¡¦s car. In contrast the other half of the robots are filled with toys, games, dolls, stuffed animals and children¡¦s drawings, like the typical wake and eddy of any child engaged in playtime.


Juxtaposing objects of childhood obsessions with the implements of adult workaday reality is intended to provide surprising visual stimuli that challenges passersby to reflect on how they feel about their life at the present moment. The see-thru, human-size, robots, once icons of a future filled with luxury, stand in line like drones, seeming like they are marching up and down the display platform in an endless circle. This is accomplished by suspending the robot receptacles from the walls and ceiling with fishing line, like marionettes. Individuals are free to enjoy their memories of childhood, embrace the installation as a metaphor for their own life, or challenge their opinion of the future they imagined for themselves. These are just a few of the many possible responses.


In the artists opinion the most that can be hoped for is to live life more creatively and purposely, less like a robot, more like a child. It gives a visual voice to everyone¡¦s artist within.






DISCLAIMER


This project is pretty much complete, I do not need any more stuff.



THE COLLECTION LETTER


Hello kind friends and art enthusiasts,


I am happy to announce that I had a proposal accepted the WPA/C for an art installation in the window of the old Hahn Shoe store at 14th & G Streets, NW. The piece¡¦ working title is Do you want to play a game? And is to be installed on March 23, 2003, less than two weeks from now, and will run until May 17, 2003.


I desperately need your help to make this project happen. You may be pleasantly surprised to know that I am looking to help get junk off you hands. I was informed late of my participation in this project. I have only a very short amount of time to construct and fill as many robots as I can. I will need a large amount of stuff to in order to fill up these lifesize robots. In addition, I am looking for items in two specific categories.


The following is a list of specific items that I need you donate or save for me. I will not be returning any items, but will make every attempt possible to reuse, recycle or donate to an appropriate charity everything that you give me.



Career Climbers


* Men¡¦s and women¡¦s business suits
(or parts there of, vests, jackets, pants)

* High heels and dress shoes

* Used makeup/cosmetics

* Non-functioning computer equipment (mice, external drives)

* Old office phones, cell phones, headsets

* Junk computer disks, cd-roms or software manuals

* Staplers, tape dispensers, pens, paper clips, rubber bands, file folders headed for the trash, no stealing

* Trade periodicals or promotional materials (like tote bags, desk clocks, lunch bags and esp. from the law, technology, banking & publishing sectors)

* Front page of the Washington Times, New York Times and Wall Street Journal , Newsweek or Time Magazine

* The disposable cup from your morning coffee and upscale deli/salad bar takeout containers (rinsed out please-no organic materials allowed)

* anything with the ¡§Whitehouse¡¨ on it



Children

* board games

* dolls

* action figures

* fast food children¡¦s meal toys

* stuffed animals

* children¡¦s drawings

* puzzles

* stray game pieces

* used crayons, markers and coloring books

* toy trucks & other vehicles

* pre-school toys like blocks and big books

* toy guns and soldiers

* toy jewelry and dress-up costumes

* child lunch boxes


DISCLAIMER


This project is pretty much complete, I do not need any more stuff.

Ok, the City Paper printed an e-mail of mine in "The Mail" as follows:

Hi, for the most part, I have been pleasantly surprised by the increase in
your visual arts coverage over the past year and a half and use of many
new freelance reviewers.



Now it would be fantastic if some of those columns and reviews were
available online on a regular basis the week following their publish in
the paper. It would be a great resource.


If arts coverage were a race, I'd have to say the The City Paper has been
doing O.K. in getting reviews and coverage out on the more cutting edge
shows. For instance way back in the fall there was a lovely article on
Tony Feher's work at Numark Gallery (the Pickup Artist," 6/14/02). It would take the Washington Post until the
closing weekend of the show to "box" it in the Galleries column.



Again, I can't stress enough getting the arts columnists online. While I
live in the city and have for over a decade, I repeatedly hear complaints
from my artistically minded friends who for whatever reason live outside
the beltway and can't get the City Paper thereby missing a lot of the
great writing from the past year.



You've got a buzz going with a lot of these new writers. I'd run with it
if I were you.



Thanks,



Karen Topping


This has been a very weird week and this whole letter thing was quite amusing. Emailing people at work that you have never met is a hoot, especially when they work in places like newspapers and help organizations where they are paid to be responsive. What else is funny is that the City Paper makes no mention after the letter that they ARE preparing to put the arts columns online soon with back archives, thank god.

Truth told the chain of thought leading me up to writing the note is just kind of stupid. I noticed in a recent City Paper that a Chris Richards, or THE Chris Richards, or THE OTHER Chris Richards had written a letter talking about this famous, if that's possible, Glenn Dixon City Paper review of the Cecily Brown show at the Hirshhorn. Well even though I've been hoarding City Papers at work, creating a firehazzard, for some reason I do not have this issue and have not read this review. The Modern Art Notes crowd was all a twitter about it last month, or the beginning of this month, I have no conception of time anymore. I am very very curious abut this thing, but not curious enough to go down to the City Paper and pay cold hard cash for a copy of it, duh. I really should have written in June when the Feher was open and I was all up in arms. Oh well.

So I have not written anything here in a while and I am struck by my statement, "This is the real millennium". It's more like "Welcome, to the real millennium" It seems it got here a little late. There is really heavy stuff going on and everywhere I turn it is as though you can see peoples eyes opening up like they are one week old kittens. The time for Victorian parlor games are over and at least some people seem to be reconsidering all that they have been spoon fed in the past.

Before, I forget attending a lecture by Jim Wine at the National Building Museum in conjunction with the exhibit "Big and Green" really was like the cake topper this week, there was an intensity about taking about sustainable architecture in the terms of art and experience and quality of life that was really revolutionary. The dollars and cents of sustainability will prevail I think because it does make so much sense. The unqualified thing is the people in the equation and if they can center themselves enough to make the same life decisions to sustain rather than consume.

Wow, a Mind Set. Here is a lecture that sums up much of what has been gnawing at my mind for the past year & a half. I think it's incidental that it jumps off of the Burning Man event, it's much more phenomenological than that. This is the real millennium.

"remembering pleasure" GETS MENTIONED IN THE POST!!!!


excerpt from Art-O-Matic for the People


By Michael O'Sullivan


Washington Post Staff Writer


Friday, November 8, 2002


"Surprisingly -- or perhaps not, given Washington's artistic conservatism -- there is very little video art of note. Save for Renee Butler's flower-themed video installation (reminiscent of a poetic piece I saw last year by Cuban expatriate Maria Magdalena Campos-Pons at Baltimore's Contemporary Museum), and an abstract musing by Alan Callander (part of a strong, three-person room that explores the theme of "Remembering Pleasure"), the examples of interesting multimedia are depressingly few."

yay! Wow, but how great it feels to get mentioned in the newspaper in such a well thought out article. The funny thing is it's not ME that is is mentioned, but the show and the & idea that takes the precedence. And while it was Ian & I that started tossing the ideas around months ago the show became collaborative, taking on other meanings from George and Alan as well. And sweetly, so sweetly-O'Sullivan understood this!

'gone like my innocence'-November '02 Artist Statement

At a community art gallery opening for a group show (the worst kind of hang-it-yourself kind of random fiasco), at the end of the summer in 2002 a friend of mine overheard and elementary school aged child say to her guardian "can we make that when we get home" in reference to a 3-D collage that I had done on a plastic easter egg. When my friend told me about it, I suddenly realized how long I had been looking for that kind of justification for making art. Instead of the proverbial age-old "my kid could do better than that", an actual child upon seeing this work of mine not only thought she could do it, but found it interesting enough to want to do it herself. I take this as a huge compliment. Children are interesting and incredibly observant. On the same note, in a painting class in the late 80's/early 90's, the artist Glenn Goldberg said to me "to be an artist you have to be at least as interesting as your plumber". Odd sounding, but his reasoning was that he had never met a plumber who did not like to chat-ad infinitum explaining what went wrong with your plumbing, genuinely wanting you to understand his craft. After 10 years of painting on my own, I am finally starting to understand this. The message in art DOES NOT have to be a simple, it DOES need to be honest.

My first large scale sculpture 'gone like my innocence' takes three simple elements. Dead brown leaves, disc-shaped lollipops wrapped in cellophane, and an almost full-size matress shape constructed out of clear vinyl. The leaves and lollipops are contained in the matress, can be clearly seen, and their shear volume serves as the support and foundation for the matresss.

The piece began as a simple meditation on Autumn, as the show I was intending to use it for would open on October 31st, Halloween. It was not suprising that these three elements began to suggest some of the contexts, symbols and juxtapositions that have been running through my work for years.

Autumn is an overtly visible time of death in nature and time of transition in the calender year for us people as well. Metamorphasis, journey, and growth often figured into my paintings in the past in the form of butterflies, boats, and plants. But like Autumn, these other symbols also signify time dedicated to transition and transformation rather than being something or somewhere.

Yet to meditate on the transitory nature of things brings with it the worldly confrontation of pleasure and pain. The form of the matress indicating sleep, a non participation in the world like a hibernation, it's own kind of death. Or the matress can be viewed as the place of procreation in the modern home, the boudoire, a sex den, not for making babies at all. Again, the proverbial 'come-hither', the prophylactic of the clear vinyl keeping you from the dirtyness of sexuality or just from the the buggy leaves and seathing naturalness (one of the prefered interpretations of George Panagi in the text for the show 'remembering pleasure') though you can see it plainly.

The asseptic lollipops, heat sealed in cellophone for your protection like the doctor,dentist or bank teller would give to a child for behaving themselves. A reward of sugary candy, addictive candy, that many as a children would horde and devour in an orgiastic frenzy, eating it until it sickened you. This addiction to pleasures, even when they bring pain in rarely fully outgrown.

Individuals have no problem believing exclusively in the microcosm of their individual experiences and sensations, and base their perception on this microcosm. The breath like condensation that forms inside of the clear pillows gives the piece actual life. It turns out that you can see the insect tracks going through this condensation on the interior of the sculpture. They are like the memories and and sensations in or minds that make us perceive our waking hours through this filter of the past, our own past. A bubble we can never break free of that forms the microcosm of our individual perception. Microcosmic perception that makes each of us both special, yet separate.

PRESS RELEASE:

REMEMBERING PLEASURE
Video, Drawing, Sculpture by Alan B. Callander, Ian Jehle, Karen Joan Topping
Curated by George Panagi
Curated Exhibition at Art-O-Matic 2002
401 M Street SW, Waterside Mall
October 31, 2002 - November 30, 2002
For more information Contact George Panagi at kiosk@visionload.com
Digital images of the art are available upon request.

“Remembering Pleasure,” curated by George Panagi, gathers together the work of three Washington area artists, Alan Callander, Ian Jehle and Karen Joan Topping. Presented as part of Art-o-Matic 2002, “Remembering Pleasure” looks at the relationship between pleasure and memory, or more specifically, the differences between the experience of pleasure and our memories of pleasure.

Alan Callander presents his video FR01 as part of an ongoing experiment in the narrative possibilities of abstract video and sound. Technology and desire, landscape and experience, violence and memory are a few of the relationships layered into this visually arresting work. Alan Callander has shown work at film festivals in Washington DC, Toronto, Sydney, and Aukland, New Zealand.

Ian Jehle conceived the idea for his portrait of the art critic and writer Dave Hickey after hearing him speak in New York City in 2000. Hickey is known as a long-time advocate for “the art of pleasure.” While poking fun at Hickey and his idea of “if it feels good, it is good,” Ian’s portrait also manages to examine ideas of pleasure - physical vs. intellectual, visceral vs. remembered. Arecent graduate of the Visual Arts Program at Columbia University, Ian lives and works in Washington, DC.

Karen Joan Topping’s piece “gone like my innocence” included in this show is a deviation from her past painting. This work continues her exploration of perception and memory through symbols, materials and implied narrative. Simple juxtapositions challenge personal experiences of perception, memory, reverie, fantasy and fear. Other works by Karen have been seen in 2002 in conjunction with Ladyfest D C ’s District of Ladies and Velvet Hammer Auction. Karen lives and works in Washington DC.

George Panagi was asked to curate this show based on the themes of pleasure and memory which appeared in the works of the three artists. Relying on his experience as a speaker on the subject of modern art and his post graduate studies of contemporary art in London, Mr. Panagi has created an essay and installation which creates a theoretical dialog among the pieces.

“Remembering Pleasure” is presented as part of Art-o-Matic 2002 and is located in room Cheverly on the second floor of the Waterside Mall, 401 M St. SW.

The Press Preview for Art-O-Matic is on Wednesday, October 30, 2002. (Visit www.artomatic.org for more information.) The show opens to the public with a Halloween Costume Ball on T h u r s d a y, October 31, 2002. Art-O-Matic is open noon till midnight, Wednesday through Sunday until November 30, 2002. (Closed Thanksgiving.)

Art-O-Matic is accessible by Metro at the Waterfront/SEU Metro Station on the Green Line. Parking is also available on site.

possible names
1)misfit toys
2)raise the bar
3)smartypants
4)GORBY says "Naploeon's Academic Mother"

1/finish sewing sculpture
2/get leaves and cardboard
3/vinyl sign
4/pack
5/swim
6/do flo-do
7/statement for binder(?)
8/write about LTH at state
9/write about MUSE
10/get ff grafix

sleeeeeeepppy..................

so much time spent on this blog today-I have so much else to do....yet it is creative, and fun and communicative...

Girl-Woman-Man-Boy anyone can be a groupiegirl. Check out the listserve connected to the chronicles of my music compulsion, to see live and local music, in the Washington, DC Metro area. While a lot of the shows I attend will be Americana/Alt-Country/Roots Rock-or what ever you want to call it, you will also find forays into other Rock Music, some Pop, Punk and other solo-songwriter performers. Find out about venues and bands, new and old, in the DC Metro area from the audiences perspective, for that's all groupiegirl is, a glorified audience member, not a musician or critic. All you need to do to become a groupiegirl is:

#1 - LISTEN and people I can't stress this enough, step one is the most overlooked.

#2 - If you like what you heard, support the talent. Sure buy their stuff, go to their shows, but did you ever think of, hmmm, contacting LOCAL radio stations and requesting their stuff? I'm sure there are other ideas out there.

#3 - Subscribe to the listserve groupiegirls-subscribe@topica.com.

I hope to pass on my enthusiasm about the inspiring group of artists that are in our own back yard and I hope to continue my education in the rich music history that is still growing day by day in this region.

Rock On DC!

Talked to Ian today. Very happy he is up for the marketing thing, 'sooner rather than later'. Mentioned we should try to curate some artists for ArtOmatic. This will take some thought to decide who to feature (Ian, Allen, Me, Joan,. Phoebe-hmmm, Hennessy) and under what guise? How to bring out the work-do it well.

If I were to be in this and to start messing around with Installations I had better start preparing. getting the Plexi/egg things off the ground would be good-Ian is seduced by the plastic sheathes, they are a possibility as well. Having Allen project on our work would be smashing.

Lastly, Thursday, I want to go see shows, the ART ISN"T in G-town, the Tatlin at the Corcoran, and maybe Bucci's Party Animal.

This is taken from the Washington, DC City Paper, July 26 to August 1 issue, page 48, City Lights Column:

SUNDAY
(July 28)

MoMA doesn't want your plastic Easter-egg sculpture? Well, "1460 Wall Mountables," the District of Columbia Arts Center's annual fundraising exhibition, portions out 2-foot-by-2-foot squares of hip-gallery wall space to anyone with a fiver. With art stacked floor to ceiling, crowded conditions make strange neighbors: High school art projects hang beside Rape Series #5, a slashed-canvas painting by Manon Cleary, whose work hangs in the National Museum of Women in the Arts. The crush also forces the issue of placement, sometimes (however unintentionally) to the artists' benefit: Kelly Posey's handmade Mary Tyler Moore paper dolls shimmy in an air-vent breeze, and Rebecca Lowery's acrylic-on-wood depiction of a snow-bleached Minnesota landscape is its own quiet world at the bottom of a jammed wall. The exhibition runs to Sunday, Aug. 4, and today is open from 2 to 7 p.m. at the District of Columbia Arts Center, 2438 18th St. NW. Free. (202) 462-7833. (Shauna Miller)

I, I am "plastic Easter-egg sculpture" !!!! Ah, how beautiful that I irritated someone at the City Paper. I don't really know how to read this little critique. But over all I have a beautiful feeling about it, because it is definately has all kinds of interesting unspoken connotations. I am finally born into the 'the fringe' or the anti-establishment of the anti-establishment. wow. Welcome.

WOW, Reinvention. Again, what was the thing I was thinking of when I was talking Debbie last nite, people just taking advantage of each other, was that it? Look at Culture Flux, Bust, blogging, Cherry Red, Taka, Fugazi, Dischord, DIY-whoa, these are things that are pushing in the 'right' direction. They all use money, but resist taking advantage? Is this a true statement?