Posts Tagged ‘Artists’

New Podcast: Reflections of 5 Years of “Connecting You to a World of Art”

Monday, May 10th, 2010

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Image: Sharon J. Burton by Pasley Place Photography

5 birthday

Welcome to our fourth podcast for the year 2010. For the month of May 2010, we are celebrating Authentic Contemporary Art’s 5th Anniversary of Connecting You to A World of Art!

In recognition of this achievement, this podcast features an interview with Sharon J. Burton, Founder of Authentic Contemporary Art (ACA) by her friend and creative collaborator, Risikat “Kat” Okedeyi of LiL SoSo Productions.

During this podcast, Sharon shares her thoughts about being an artist, working with artists, her passion for art, shares art collecting tips and her thoughts for the future of ACA. Don’t miss this special podcast!

About Sharon J. Burton

Sharon J. Burton is a Metro Washington, DC area visual artist and independent curator. She founded Authentic Contemporary Art in 2005 to provide beginning collectors an opportunity to learn more about art and to connect to emerging and undiscovered visual artists in the Metro DC area.

Sharon is the DC Fine Arts Examiner on Examiner.com. In this capacity she shares information about gallery/museum exhibition openings, conferences, special events and guidance on collecting art online to a variety of readers across the Metropolitan Washington, DC region. She also serves as a curatorial advisor to Space 7:10 at Kefa Cafe, an “organic art space exhibiting an evolving mix of local, outsider, visionary, and world cultural artwork” located in downtown Silver Spring, Maryland.

She has also served as an art curator, consultant, juror and intern to the former Ramee Art Gallery in Washington, DC, Overdue Recognition Art Gallery of Bowie, Maryland and the U.S. Department of Education in Washington, DC. Sharon holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Business Administration (with a concentration in Marketing) and a Master of Public Administration. She has also received a certificate in Art History from the Smithsonian Associates (Smithsonian Institute, Washington, DC) and has taken studio art classes from a variety instructors in the Metro DC area.

She is active in the community and currently holds membership in the Millennium Arts Salon, Women’s Caucus for Art, and Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, Inc. She serves as a volunteer “Reading Buddy” with the WVSA Arts Connection’s School for the Arts in Learning program in Washington, DC and Teen Sircles, a teen mentoring program based in Prince George’s County, Maryland.

About Authentic Contemporary Art

Authentic Contemporary Art (formally Authentic Art Consulting) was founded in 2005 and now serves as an alternative source for emerging and contemporary art. Based in the Metropolitan Washington, DC area, Authentic Contemporary Art (ACA) creates opportunities for art collectors and emerging contemporary artists to connect through exhibitions and through a juried online art gallery. We also work with a variety of design and art professionals to find the right artwork to fit the right space.

ACA also provides opportunities for individuals who are interested in visual art to learn more about collecting and conserving art through workshops, gallery visits and special events. ACA partners with a variety of art and interior design professionals and organizations to present contemporary art that is accessible and affordable to the novice collector and attractive to established art connoisseurs.

The mission of Authentic Contemporary Art is:

-To provide affordable and accessible original art for the public

-To provide unique opportunities for talented emerging artists to show their work

-To assist new art collectors in appreciating the value and beauty of original art in their homes and offices

-To provide an opportunity to give back to humanity through art sales generated by exhibitions and art events.

Recommend books on Art Collecting mentioned in the Podcast

Collecting African American Art: Works on Paper and Canvas by Halima Taha

The Intrepid Art Collector: The Beginner’s Guide to Finding, Buying, and Appreciating Art on a Budget by Lisa Hunter

The Art of Buying Art: An Insider’s Guide to Collecting Contemporary Art, by Paige West

Down load and listen to the conversation here (or the podcast player on the right column of this blog).

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DC Arts Center Sparkplug Call for New Members

Friday, March 26th, 2010

Deadline: April 5, 2010

Sparkplug, a collective of emerging artists and curators sponsored by DC Arts Center, is currently seeking new members interested in participating as curators or artists. New members chosen during the Spring of 2010 should be prepared to participate in an exhibition this June and remain active members of the group for the next two years. Members are expected to attend monthly meetings and participate in studio visits.

Applicants should be 21 years of age, live in the DC metropolitan area and not currently have gallery representation or institutional employ as curators or art writers.

Currently composed of nine DC area artists and curators, the Sparkplug collective meets regularly to discuss their work, explore common concerns, grow their community and dream up creative engagements both in DC and around the world. Through its support of Sparkplug, DC Arts Center provides meeting space, legal and technical resources and exhibition opportunities to emerging artists and curators. Via a continuing dialogue encompassing the theoretical and the practical, the group’s members share experiences, perspectives, preoccupations, challenges, and topics informing their ongoing artistic practice. Find more information on Sparkplug, including its exhibition history and current members on DCAC’s website here.

To apply, send the following materials to Sparkplug.DCAC@gmail.com by April 5, 2010. See the applicant survey for more information and details about sending images and linking to video.

Artists:

Completed Applicant Survey
Artist statement (200 word maximum)
Resume
5-10 images of work completed in 2009 or 2010
Slide list to accompany images
*Artists who work in 3-D or time-based mediums (ie, sound installation or video) can submit links to public website where work can be viewed in lieu of images. Submissions should include no more than 10 works or 10 minutes of total duration.

Curators:

Completed Applicant Survey
Resume
1-3 writing samples, total word count not to exceed 750 words
Abstract for a hypothetical exhibition not to exceed 200 words.

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Why Business Leaders Should Act More like Artists

Wednesday, December 9th, 2009

Tuesday December 1, 2009
by John Maeda, Harvard Business Publishing

Stereotypes abound about artists: they range from the mild (“they have fuschia-colored hair”), to the absurd (“they starve,”), to the disturbed (“they do things like uncontrollably peeing in the fireplace as depicted in the popular movie Pollock.”). Granted I know artists with wild-colored hair and others who are certainly struggling to make ends meet, but they all choose to use the restroom. I’ve also met artists who are quite plain-looking and plain-acting CEOs, lawyers, stockbrokers, and scientists.

Even as someone who has worked to weaken some of the sillier stereotypes about creative types, I must admit that I’ve carried a few stereotypes around myself. In particular, I’d always believed that artists are much like the kind of geeks I grew up with at MIT — passionately focused on their work with little regard to their own physical or financial circumstance, and often more comfortable working as a lone constructor instead of as a collaborative player on a larger team.

So when I observed RISD students exhibiting the classic “lone wolf” traits of this kind of “creative geek,” my mental model was confirmed. But when I recently spoke with two RISD textile entrepreneurs in Chicago about this stereotype, my mind fortunately re-opened.

The three aha’s I received from my conversation with partners Robert Segal and Alicia Rosauer were:

1. Artists constantly collaborate. The example given was the common occurrence of an exhibition with multiple artists showing together, or the so-called “group show.” Even in the context of a solo show, the artist works with the gallery owner, the curator, the framers, the installers, the lighting person, the publicist to bring their vision to life. Every exhibition is a collaboration to the nth degree.

2. Artists are talented communicators. The whole point of a work of art is to communicate something — a thought, an idea, a feeling, a vision. More explicitly, the artist frequently gives a talk to explain the thought process behind the artwork. Engaging the audience in a meaningful, expansive dialogue is often critical to the exhibition’s success.

3. Artists learn how to learn together. Perhaps the reason why artists collaborate and socialize so well is that they learn in the studio model — ten or more students in the same room for hours on end. Bonded together in a personal space of intimate self-expression, they come into their own through the familial ties of the studio setting. When interviewed recently about the differences in her education at Brown and at RISD, one student who is getting a dual degree from both institutions said, “At RISD there’s a lot of learning from your peers. Brown (in the classes I’ve taken so far anyway) is about listening and note-taking in class.”

Whether they explicitly acknowledge themselves as leaders or not, artists often move others to follow them — into neighborhoods, into a new a social movement, or even just a dialogue.

They do it through the skills that are inherent in their work as professional “inspirers” and provocateurs. Sure, some artists might be introverts and some extroverts, but through their art, they act as creative leaders in their boldness to often express a point of view as the naked truth.

We’ve all seen the business world increasingly crave an approach that balances values with profits. One natural way to do this is to adopt an artist’s point of view; the honesty and integrity that artists naturally bring to their work will be increasingly relevant.

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The “Art” of Thanksgiving

Saturday, December 5th, 2009

Last month, DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities invited local DC artists to provide some love to the Sasha Bruce House. This video, from the Commission, highlights their efforts to make the day brighter for a few of the District’s residents.

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Already Struggling, Artists Hit Hard by Recession, Survey Finds

Monday, November 30th, 2009

PND News, November 30, 2009

A new survey of American artists — two-thirds of whom say they earned less than $40,000 and a third less than $20,000 last year — found that slightly more than half experienced a drop in income in 2009, the New York Times reports.

Commissioned by nonprofit artist-support organization Leveraging Investments in Creativity and funded in part by the Ford Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts, the survey found that 51 percent of the more than fifty-three hundred respondents saw their incomes fall in the past year, while 18 percent reported a drop of at least 50 percent.

The report, The Artists and the Economic Recession Survey: Selected Findings (8 pages, PDF), found that the most commonly reported impact of the recession was a decline in sales, followed by lower rates or fees. In addition, more than a third of the surveyed artists reported fewer and smaller grants, fewer grant opportunities, and fewer scheduled bookings and chances to exhibit, perform, or present their work.

The survey also provided statistical support for long-held beliefs about artists, such as they tend to work day jobs to support themselves, musicians and architects tend to do better financially than writers and painters, and more than a third of working artists lack adequate health insurance.

According to Judilee Reed, executive director of Leveraging Investments in Creativity, “A lot of the artists who were reporting were telling us, ‘I live in a recession all the time, so this downturn has really not been so different for me.’”

Kennedy, Randy. “A Survey Shows Pain of Recession for Artists.” New York Times 11/24/09.

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Say My Name screening and Women in Hip-Hop Beyond Misogyny

Wednesday, September 16th, 2009

Saturday, September 19, 2009
12:30pm – 2:15pm
FREE

Lincoln Theatre
1215 U Street, NW
Washington, DC
Metro: U St/African-Amer. Civil War Memorial/Cardozo (Green Line)
Email: goldie@wblinc.org

Traditionally, hip-hop scholarship and commentary has focused on the misogynist and sexist nature of the cultural product. Debates ranging from the treatment of the video girl to Nelly’s “Tip Drill,” have characterized the way the community most effectively discusses sex. For the forthcoming issue of the bi-annual publication, Words. Beats. Life: The Global Journal of Hip-Hop Culture, “Sex and Hip-Hop Beyond Misogyny,” WBL invited scholars, students and practitioners to submit papers related to nuanced takes on gender and sexuality within hip-hop.

This panel will bring together voices from their upcoming “Sex” issue (January 2010 release) and artists (MCs, b-girls, etc.) to discuss the female voice in hip-hop and beyond. Before the panel, check out the DC premier of Say My Name (winner of the Bootleg Festival Jury Award).

Part of the Words, Beats and Life “Bootleg Festival” Festival pass holders will be given priority seating/entry to this event.

Speakers: Hanifah Walidah (scholar/artist), RatheMC (local emcee), Toni Blackman (scholar/artist), Maimouna Youssef (singer/songwriter), Iona Rozeal Brown (scholar/artist), Aysha Upchurch (hip-hop dancer) and Roxanne Shante (pioneer emcee)

Moderator: Goldie Deane, DC Urban Arts Academy Director/Playwright

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