We’ve seen artists work with process related materials, but that was nothing in comparison to this.  Recently I visited Steven Dobbin’s studio to view his new work, and I was impressed.

If you happened to visit the Zip Code show in our pop up gallery in Arlington, VA, then you’ve seen the predecessor of this work.  He has a show that recently opened in New York.  Yes. Yes.  All tremendous area artists end up there, but with out rambling on too much where the good artists are, let’s take a second to look.  

Steven takes an icon, and obsesses about it.  Seriously.  We’re not talking about a few cans stacked against a wall.  We’re talking about volume, and that means work.   He preps the cans, which includes proper disposal of the paint, and the instigation of the deterioration of the cans with both chemical and natural means.  Yes, yes, oxidation in nature is chemistry, but let’s move beyond that,  his yard has been full of containers filled with paint and cat littler to aid the drying of left over paint.  Think of the 100s of gallons of dried paint which receive proper disposal!   It’s also important to note that these are all essentially recycled, from paint left overs that were either found or donated to the project. 

I’m constantly in awe of what he does with diligence and perfection,  which is followed by obsession.  One work isn’t enough.  He continues the idea until it’s done, and this time we’re talking well over 850 cans in our friend’s gallery in NY.  Steven has often told me that he wished he could stop, but he can’t.  He’s compelled to move forward.

View his  current installation entitled “Reclamation” at Causey Contemporary below.  We are so lucky to get to see his process of installation here.

View the show here, check out the images of rust and pigment on a panel.  Well worth the visit!

If there’s a phenomenal established  artist in the Washington, DC area it’s Sy Gresser. He’s a master and has an amazing control on the surfaces that he works with.  For years he’s worked with stone, however he’s started to develop a series of wood panels that convey love, fear, suffering, and more.   You have to see his work, and that’s not enough.  I visited his studio the other day, and took this snap shot to give you an idea of his work.  I’m blown away by this sculpture.  I could stare at this panel for a life time.  I think that’s really the judge of a great work of art, a piece that you could stare at for the years to come, constantly finding new things.   With lack of reference in my snapshots, It’s important to note that these panels are quite large.  Many are over 8ft wide.  The figures and faces tend to be close to life size.

Sculpture by Sy Gresser 2009
Materials: Wood Panel 
Dimensions: Over 8ft wide. 

Detail image of Sy Gresser’s Sculpture

You can read more about Sy in a City Paper article here. 

City Paper image: Committed Stoners: Sculptors Sy Gresser, left, and Bill Taylor aren’t concerned with arty trends. (Darrow Montgomery)

Alexandra Zealand, who we’ve listed below in our “art you must acquire category” has created an amazing installation at this year’s Artomatic.  I am constantly blown away by her work, and her drive.  I’m proud to say, that we showed her work first in DC at our ’07 U st. show, which was curated by Mark Waskow where we were pleased to sell one of her coffee filter works to a local collector.  Then, this year we curated a duo show with Lexi, and Andam Eig entitled surfaces.

Some times there are moments, while they are rare, I feel like I can see the future.  In this case, I see great success for Alexandra.  People are starting to notice her, and I hope I’m right about my gut feeling towards her success.   I’m excited that I can say that we were the first!

Her grapefruit pith installation is simply wonderful.  She keeps finding new materials to work with!!!  Buy her work now while you can still afford your very own Zealand.  Contact me if you would like to set up a studio tour.

Check out her new peice for Artomatic here:

Kim knocks me out.  There are few artists that really have a visceral impact on me like her work does.  The first time I experienced this physical reaction to art work was with Rosemary Covey.  It could boil down to the shock of seeing an artist that really understands pain.  This really allows them to create incredibly personal work that allows you to see inside their heads, or maybe even their spirits.  Again, if you don’t own work by Kim Reyes, you should.  She’s quite serious about what she does,  buy her work before we can’t afford it!

She creates wonderful sculptures out of ceramics.  Included in this post is a large image of the whole series and a few detail shots.  They are for sale individually.  

Title: Imperfect
Price:  $3000 for the collection; $300 each individual bust
Dimensions:  15 pieces hung together is 42″ x 44″.
Each individual piece is about 12″ x 5″ x 3″. 

Detail 1

Detail 2

 BIO:   

In many ways I feel my journey as an artist has just begun even though as a child I was always creating.  

 Growing up in Europe exposed me to such creative and diverse designs, people and experiences which have had a strong influence in my artistic development.  I learned the basics of ceramics in my late twenties from my mother and father, both accomplished potters.  Later I enhanced my techniques by studying at Penland School of Crafts and Arrowmont School of the Arts and Crafts.  I am drawn to dark and emotionally charged figurative sculpture and often use elements from nature in my pieces.

Each bust is hand-sculpted from stoneware, fired once, broken into pieces and then pit-fired for smoke markings. The pieces are then re-assembled, and embellished with gold oil paint, gold leafing and mixed media.

A series of 15 Ceramic/Mixed Media Wallpieces that contemplate varied physical and emotional imperfections in humanity. Some of the imperfections are obvious, some implied and therefore each piece is not individually titled to leave an impression in the viewer’s mind. “Imperfect” is not meant to be judged as good or bad, rather indifferent. We all have imperfections, some seen, some unseen, some imagined, some real.

Please contact us if you would like to purchase one of these great works of art.

Antoinette is a close friend of mine and a former Studiomate from the NY ave. space.  From day one I knew she was a talented artist.  While she doesn’t live in the DC area anymore (she left for New York like many great artists) she had a lot to do with the start of artdc.org, so I think it’s important to post some of her art here on artdc.com.  

Back in March of 2004, she posted an ad on Craig’s list looking for artists who wanted to see changes in the Washington, DC area art scene.   Stevephen Mead was there too.  We’ll post some of his art soon.    We all agreed, we loved being artists and we wanted to see changes develop.  We wanted to see more awareness of the art scene.   That night, I spent a great deal of time on the computer, and I put together the beginings of artdc.org which at that time were just a brief glimpse of things to come.  The site lived as a small subdirectory in my personal site.  Talking about the idea with Antoinette, Steve, and others, we realized this idea was too big to be part of my site, and soon the domain was acquired.  The site had to be it’s own thing.  Many hours were spent developing the bulk of the content, and Antoinette’s knowledge of art and the world around it have always impressed me with an impact on our direction.

I think her work is quite important, and if you are a serious art collector, you should know Antoinette’s work, and more importantly, you should own it.  If you’d like to know more about her work, or possible receive more images, please contact us through this article: art you must acquire.

Title: Pacific Time
Dimensions:  22×30 inches
Materials: on rag paper
mixed media-ink charcoal acrylic graphite
Price: $800.00USD 
 Work on hold for a collector!

 BIO: 

BFA 2000, Painting, San Francisco Art Institute 
San Francisco, California 1993-1995 Interdisciplinary 
Maryland Institute College of Art Baltimore, Maryland 
1995,2004 Continuing Education, Corcoran College of Art Washington, DC 

Antoinette is an expressionistic painter that uses mixed media on organic material. Creating images of an obsessive repetitive nature, by use of  manipulating various mediums that change and metamorph into a recognizable theme. 

Through bold brush strokes, violent colors, and often heavy inks; she lures the viewer into close introspection of the organic forms. A diary is then revealed of hidden drawings and text that seduce the viewer to be a voyeur for a moment into her world.. 

Antoinette was a grant recipient for an artist program through the Sante Fe Art Institute. Antoinette has shown in galleries in San Francisco, Sacramento, Seattle, New Mexico, New York, London,  as well as the Washington DC metropolitan area, including the Mid Atlantic Painters exhibition at Mary Washington College. Antoinette has worked as an artist-in-residence with inner city schools in San Francisco, assisted in public art pieces with the San Francisco Art Education Project, worked with emotionally disturbed adolescence in the District as a Special Education teacher and created community service programs for students with severe emotional disturbances. Antoinette is a member of the Washington Project for the Arts/Corcoran, a founding member of ARTDC.org  and currently resides in Washington, DC.

We took a few days off for the Holidays, and now we’re back with another suggestion for our Art You Must Acquire  project.  Matt Sesow is an incredible force.  Sesow works and lives art.  IMHO he’s really doing it, which moves him far above many artists I run into.  He has a very positive philosophy about art and art sales.  He believes everyone should own a work of art, and he prices many of his paintings accordingly.  You need to have a studio visit now to meet this artist.  

He’s recently painted this amazing work of art that we’d like to see you buy:
 
Title:  “Early Supporter”
Dimensions: 60″ x 30″
Materials: oil/mixed on DC street banner
Price $600 
A gallery just picked this painting up!  Matt is amazing! If you’re interested in more of his work, we’d be glad to send you pics.

Contact us if you are interested in this work of art.
Find more information here.

Alex Zealand, a.k.a lexi on artdc.org will become an important artist in the DC area. She’s moving in a direction that I find very exciting. She’s working with recycled materials which I think is rather tough to move into a real art form that truly becomes a 3d work of art. Often I’ve looked at recycled materials and thought, huh. That looks like a pile of trash. This is not true for her work. When I take a look at Lexi’s art, I’m pulled away in another dimension of thought left with many questions which often end up in how did she do that, what is it made out of, and why.

Her work does not look like recycled material, and every angle or bend is done with intent. Many times she’ll create the materials herself to produce the work, which I find exciting. I like to envision what artists are doing, possibly because I’m an artist to, I can imagine myself in their shoes. So I picture Lexi in her apartment eating grapes and drinking coffee till she can’t hold it down any more in order to prep these materials. It’s not Dumpster diving, it’s creative material development.

Watch her. Buy her art, and pay attention to where she goes. On amazing patron bought some of her art when Lexi was fresh in town and her work was curated into the artdc.org U st. show by Mark Waskow. That brought new life and energy to her career to find that sort of acceptance as a new resident in the DC metro area.

While we make a habit of only selecting one work of art to suggest to collectors here are two which differ in both size and composition.

Lexi chooses to back light many of her pieces,  which explains the variation in color.

Title: A dream of weight (addiction 2), 2008
#2 and #4 coffee filters, coffee grounds, nylon thread, acrylic medium
26″x24″x18″
$300

Addiction # 3, 2008
5’x5′
#2 and #4 cone filters, coffee grounds, nylon thread
$750

Note: as mentioned above, the color difference is due to a back light which is included with the sculpture, though there may be an extra fee for installation which can be worked out with the artist.

Detail of #3:

Statement:
What interests me most in making art is the transformative process of massing – when an object that we think of as ‘gross trash’ becomes beautiful and even inspiring when multiples are gathered into a new form.

I started working with coffee filters in 2006, after I left one in my studio coffee pot for several weeks. I’d never bothered to keep a coffee filter around before – usually they’re kind of gross and slimy after use, and I’d throw them away immediately, in order to make room for a new one. But this time, when I opened up the coffee pot and found the filter completely dried out – with a high-tide mark from where the grounds had rested, and a brown ring around the lip – the contrast between the paper’s translucency and the dried grounds sparked something in my imagination. Right then, I saw the image of a mass of filters hanging in my huge, opaque window, lit from behind by the day light.

So as always happens at the start of a new piece, I started collecting. I saved every cone filter I used at home, and even got my co-workers to save them from our pot at work – I gathered size 2s and 4s, as well as bleached and unbleached filters, whatever I could find. And after about 6 months and after exploring several unsuccessful forms and constructs – because the tricky part of making my work is figuring out how to actually produce what I’ve imagined – I started sewing the filters together, creating larger and more complex forms. I’ve created three finished pieces so far – a small wall-hanging piece, a set of 3 relatively-spherical objects, and the 5′ wide wall piece, which was created specifically for Artomatic in 2008.

Bio:
Alex grew up in New England, but after a 10-year post-college stint in NYC – where she started out in theatre design but eventually got her MFA in sculpture – she currently lives in Northern VA, with her husband and young son who both graciously put up with whatever she’s collecting and drying for the next piece. She also works at the Arlington public library.

If you would like to acquire one of Alex’s works, please read about our project and find contact info here: http://artdc.com/art-you-must-acquire/

Barry Schmetter is a fine photographer. His work is quite impressive. He often uses alternative process photography with 4×5 negatives. Large format photography is an art and a passion, and he’s a master. Recently he’s been tackling wet-plate “Collodion” images which are incredibly time consuming, however for our 3rd pick, we are selecting a very clean photograph of a vacuum tube. This image is perfect for an art collector, especially for an audiophile. These images have wonderful clarity, and I need a copy for my personal studio. If you’re a musician, an audio lover, an art collector, or anyone with a passion for technology or photography, you need this print!

Artist: Barry Schmetter
Title: Vacuum Tube #2
Price: $285
17 X 25″ pigment ink print, framed and matted, edition of 20

“The vacuum tube photographs are part of an ongoing series on generative technologies–significant technological achievements with far reaching cultural and societal effects. The vacuum tube was part of the foundational technology of mass communications–radio, television, as well as computers. I believe one of the responsibilities of photographers is to bring forth the unseen and the unexamined. My father was an electrical and audio engineer, and I grew up surrounded by electrical components including crates of vacuum tubes. I found the endless variations of tubes fascinating–each one contained a small world of architectural forms. These typologies examine the subtle variations in technological and functional form.”
-Barry Schmetter

Barry Schmetter has been a photographer for over 20 years and is currently working with large format cameras and historical photographic processes. A work from his Memory Series is currently part of the FotoWeek DC group show at the Warehouse Gallery in Washington, D.C.

Introducing our second pick for our Art you must acquire project:

Gratification was created by Michael Janis, an amazing artist.  His work is strong and powerful.  His technique is growing, and he continues to develop new series and directions at every turn.  If you intend to collect art, you must own some of his work.  Start here:
 

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Title: Gratification
Author: Michael Janis
Sgraffitto technique, glass & steel
Price: $500
Dimensions are 20″ x 20″ x 2″

The basis of imagery started as soft-core pornography, where he pixelated a (severely cropped) image and created square separately, using crushed black powdered glass. The individual squares were then re-assembled & fused together.
Artist bio:

Born in Chicago, IL
Lives and works in Washington, DC

I first began working with glass in Australia during the 1990’s, where my architectural projects received international design awards. I returned to the United States and moved to Washington, DC in 2003, and became part of the Washington Glass School teaching courses in high relief cast glass. I became Co-Director of the Washington Glass School in 2005.

My artwork involves kilnworking my fused glass images together in an uneasy juxtaposition or creating a transparent environments where reflections and shadows remove all boundaries. With a technique called “sgraffito” where figures and forms are shaped by manipulating glass dust with sifters, brushes and scalpel blades. The delicate nature of glass powder is exploited and the frit powder images can be changed by the slightest tap. My goal is to move glass from craft and technique-driven work towards content-driven artwork.

Working in various glass techniques, I teach at the Washington Glass School, and have taught at the international glass center: The Glass Furnace in Istanbul, Turkey and at the Penland School of Crafts.

My work is part of the permanent collection of the Art Institute of Chicago, and is also featured in the new international book about the best in glass art and design; 50 Distinguished Contemporary Artists in Glass.

My themes deal with issues of identity and transformation, and my latest series is based on Tarot Card imagery. 

Contact us for more information or visit artdc.org for images by Michael Janis