Our slot was 1:30pm Saturday and floors 2,3,8, and 9 had been opened. We decided to take advantage of the fact that spaces could be picked -after- your time slot, but not before and so we waited all day Saturday to see if floor 7 would be open. It never did open Saturday, so we had to come back this (Sunday) morning at 9am.  We ended up getting core walls on 7. Everyone was crazy helpful, nice, cheery, and definitely helped get this kicked off on an exciting gear.

The space I picked is just to the left of the elevators on the side opposite of the bar on the 7th floor. You’ll be able to tell what it is quickly and easily because I’ll be using a projector mounted on Sherill Gross and Stephanie Bonifant ‘s partition (thank you!!!!) to display art on the wall. It should be easily seen from the elevators.

Other cool kids up there include the wonderful: Caitlin Phillips from Rebound Designs, Sean Welker the Secretworm, and Justin Cameron

The wait Saturday wasn’t a waste of productivity, either! Paivi and I put in a lease application at The Onyx on First. It’s an apartment building just over a block from Artomatic and 2 blocks from the Nationals stadium in the Capital Waterfront district. If all goes well, we’ll be moved in before Artomatic even opens! Here come the after parties and extra volunteer hours! Woot.

More on my art later. It’s going to be moving, projected, dada-esque, sarcastic, and inspired by comments from Paivi Salonen, Barry Schmetter, Jesse Cohen, and others.

Everyone, if you’re in DC any time between May 29 and July 5, come on out and check it out! You’ll have a blast with the Art, the performances, the music, the people, da beer and wine.  Artomatic is just above the Navy Yard Green Line Metro station and if you’re coming to/from a Nats game by Metro, you can’t miss it.

For registration questions, e-mail register@artomatic.org. To volunteer, e-mail volunteer@artomatic.org.

You can also visit the forums (which I help moderate) at: http://artdc.org/forum/index.php?board=37.0

I participated as an artist in both 2007:

• http://sintixerr.wordpress.com/2007/04/27/new-artomatic-in-second-life-event-schedule/
• http://sintixerr.wordpress.com/2007/04/04/artomatic-second-life-splattered-paint-oh-my/

and 2008:

• http://sintixerr.wordpress.com/2008/04/27/python-photography-digital-art-artomatic/

Both times were phenomenal experiences as an artist and as a visitor. The art was fun, good, bad, amusing, awful, and totally worth seeing. More than that,  being part of such a huge volunteer-run event outside of the uptight art snootery and commodities market you normally encounter is totally worth it.

The official press release can be found here:

—

Artomatic 2009 to be held in D.C.’s Capitol Riverfront neighborhood

In celebration of its 10th anniversary, Artomatic will be bringing its trademark one-of-a-kind
multimedia arts event to Half Street’s 55 M Street, S.E., in Washington, D.C.’s Capitol
Riverfront neighborhood in summer 2009, the arts organization announced today.

In conjunction with the Capitol Riverfront Business Improvement District (BID) and Monument
Realty, Artomatic will be presenting more than five weeks of art, music, theater, workshops
and more — all of it free for visitors. Located between the U.S. Capitol Building and the
Anacostia River and between Barracks Row Main Street and South Capitol Street, the Capitol
Riverfront is a vibrant new business center, urban neighborhood, entertainment district and
waterfront destination.

“We’re thrilled to be partnering with Artomatic on this unique arts event. With both Artomatic
and Major League Baseball within blocks of one another, the Capitol Riverfront will be the goto
location for summertime entertainment in 2009,” said Michael Stevens, executive director
of the Capitol Riverfront BID. “Artomatic sets the stage for the type of future festivals and
entertainment that you will see in the Capitol Riverfront at the three new parks — Diamond
Teague, The Yards Park and Canal Park — which begin opening spring 2009 through 2011.”
Artomatic 2009 will be held at 55 M Street, S.E., a new 275,000 square feet LEED Silver Class
A office building developed by Monument Realty. The building, currently under construction, is
located atop the Navy Yard Metro stop and within a block of Nationals Park, home to the
Nationals baseball team.

“We are pleased to be hosting Artomatic at 55 M Street for its 10th anniversary,” said Michael
Darby, principal of Monument Realty. “It is not only a great opportunity to promote the
neighborhood and attract new visitors but also to bring some very talented artists to the
Capitol Riverfront.”

Held regularly since 1999, Artomatic transforms an unfinished indoor space into an exciting
and diverse arts event that is free and open to the public. In addition to displays by hundreds
of artists, the event features free films, educational presentations and children’s activities, as
well as musical, dance, poetry, theater and other performances. Artomatic 2008, held in D.C.’s
NoMa neighborhood, attracted a record-breaking 52,500 visitors and 1,540 participating
artists.

The 2009 Artomatic event promises to be an equally appealing destination for D.C. area arts
fans as well as those looking for summer entertainment, said Artomatic President Veronica
Szalus.

“The D.C. area has a vibrant, energetic arts scene and we are excited to be able to showcase
that talent and share it with the community,” Szalus said.

Artomatic 2009 will be held May 29 to July 5. The event will be open Wednesdays and
Thursdays from noon to 10 p.m., Fridays and Saturdays from noon to 1 a.m., and Sundays
from noon to 10 p.m. Artomatic will be closed Mondays and Tuesdays. Admission to Artomatic
is always free for visitors.

Registration for participation in Artomatic will open in March and will be open to all artists —
including painters, photographers, sculptors, graphic designers, musicians, poets, actors and
dancers. Artomatic is an unjuried event, so all artists are welcome, from professionals to
beginners. Registration will be on a first-come, first-served basis and will end once space is
filled. To be notified of the date when registration will open or to stay up on other Artomatic
news, sign up to receive ArtoNews, the Artomatic newsletter, on the Artomatic Web site.
Artomatic is run entirely by participating volunteers, and new participants are sought yearround.
To volunteer and help make plans for Artomatic 2009, e-mail volunteer@artomatic.org.
“Artomatic 2009 will fulfill 10 years of commitment to the growth of our cultural community
and help fuel our creative economy,” said Artomatic Chair George C. Koch.

More details on the event will be available on the Artomatic Web site, www.artomatic.org, in
coming weeks.

###

About Artomatic: Artomatic is a creative community that collaborates to produce and
present a free arts spectacular. Participation is open to all, from recognized artists to
undiscovered talents, who work in a variety of arts forms. In partnership with the
development community, Artomatic transforms unused building space into a playground for
expression, serves as a catalyst for community growth in up-and-coming neighborhoods, and
helps to grow the creative economy. The nonprofit Artomatic organization is headed by a
volunteer Board of Directors and is funded in part by the D.C. Commission on the Arts and
Humanities, an agency supported by the National Endowment for the Arts. For more
information, visit www.artomatic.org

About the Capitol Riverfront BID: The Capitol Riverfront Business Improvement District
(BID) is dedicated to making the Capitol Riverfront neighborhood clean, safe, friendly and
vibrant; to creating the best quality of life in the neighborhood; and to attracting office
tenants, residents, retailers and visitors. For more information, visit www.capitolriverfront.org
About Monument Realty: Monument Realty is an award-winning full service real estate firm.
The firm’s diverse portfolio includes mixed use, office, residential and hotel properties.
Monument Realty has developed more than 5 million square feet of office space, nearly 5,000
residential units and three hotels valued at more than $5 billion. For more information, visit
www.monumentrealty.com.

Histogram of major words in the US Stimulus Bill. Big Grey blob in the second "mountain peak" from the left represents "Health" in the Bill. You can see it takes a disproportionate place in everything.

The Stimulus Mountains

Originally uploaded by sintixerr

This is a follow-up to a previous post and is philosophically related to this post.

On the subject of these “data visualizations as art”, I’ve been trying to better articulate why I think they’re art and how I’m trying to evolve my process.

What it comes down to is that there seems to be two pieces to developing the visualizations:

1. Choosing the right structure and things to measure about the text or data…what makes sense to compare to what. How do you reduce the noise and non-dependent variables? Each type of text you’re measuring and each circumstance has different relationships. There is a lot of science to this part, but it’s not completely predicatable. There is art.
2. How do you visually best enhance and needle out the important details, contrast between points, etc so that they can be “seen” in the noise that doesnt matter? This is all art. Understanding how color, shape, contrast, etc all work together and how to use all of those to present a dense amount of information without being overwhelming is tricky and depends on the skill of the one creating it…

It’s my belief that playing to what we understand as people’s abilities to process and comprehend aesthetics in art involves exactly the same techniques and takes advantage of the same aspects of peoples brains/senses as good visual data analysis. So, if you’re doing data analysis, you start out figuring out #1, and then move to #2 based on #1.

What I was trying to do with these stimulus images – and the last of my security visualizations – was start out with concepts of what I’d like for #2 (how they would “feel”) and then figure out what I needed to do in #1 (massage the data) to get there…while still remaining true to the underlying information.

Next up (and once I learn more Objective C), I’m going to try and read in the stimulus bill to Quartz Composer and combine my recent interactive/music visualizations with the Bill. We’ll see if that goes anywhere interesting.

Also, Artomatic returns to DC this year. I very well may be displaying this stuff there when it comes around. This or the music/webcam visualizations.

These were my final selections:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/sintixerr/sets/72157608876695189/

Paivi put up some of her BritishInk pics from Artomatic (hers was more last minute than mine since her original venue, Bar Pilar, fell through. Too bad!)

ABOUT:
—
PixTour: a project of FotoWeek DC 2008
Travel the city to check out PIX TOUR.

PixTour, a project of FotoWeek DC 2008, is showing the work of
area photographers at 40 bars, clubs, restaurants, theaters, and
shops around DC. Artist and Place meet and invite you.

PixTour brings art to the people who are out and about.
Take a walk, have a drink and a meal, and see the art of photography in Dupont, Adams Morgan, Columbia Heights, 14th Street, Anacostia and More. PixTour is an informal showing of photography on local walls and windows.

Curators: Molly Ruppert, Heather Goss, Beth Baldwin

PixTour was created as a project for Fotoweek DC 2008 by Molly Ruppert molly@warehousetheater.com and Warehouse.

VENUES:
—

DC9                                            1940 9th St NW
Nellie’s Sports Bar                  900 U St NW
Vegetate                                    1414 9th St NW
Velvet Lounge                           915 U St NW
Dos Gringos                            3116 Mt Pleasant St NW
Gala Theatre                            3333 14th St NW
Red Rocks Pizza                     1036 Park Rd NW
Room 11                                   3234 11th St NW
Sticky Fingers Bakery             1370 Park Rd NW
Wonderland                             1101 Kenyon St NW
Asylum                                       2471 18th St NW
Bedrock Billiards                     1841 Columbia Rd NW
Bossa Bistro Lounge              2463 18th St NW
Chief Ike’s Mambo Room      1725 Columbia Rd NW
Idle Times Book Store            2467 18th St NW
Tryst                                           2459 18th St NW
Caramel                                    1603 U St NW
Lee’s Flowers and Cards      1026 U St NW
Mocha Hut                                 1301 U St NW
Polly’s Cafe                               1342 U St NW
Solly’s u street tavern              1942 11th St NW
Vinoteca                                    1940 11th St NW
Cafe Tropé                                2100 P St NW
DC Café                                     2035 P St NW
Soho Tea and Coffee              2150 P St NW
Stars Bistro                               2120 P St NW
Tangysweet Yougurt  Bar      2029 P St NW
Garden District                         1801 14th St NW
Playbill Café                             1409 14th St NW
Timothy Paul Bedding            1529A 14th St NW
Universal Gear                        1529B  14th St NW
ARCH Training Center            1231 & 1227 Good Hope Rd SE
Baked and Wired                     1052 Thomas Jefferson St NW
Big Bear Café                           1700 First St NW
Mocha Ground                          4706 14th St NW
Warehouse                               1021 7th Street NW

ARTISTS
—

Giamoco Abrusci
Ken Ashton
James Calder
Daniel Cima
Jason Colston
Brett Davis
Thomas Drymon
Elsie Dwyer
Josh Gibson
Steve Goldenberg
Jason Gottlieb
Kyle Gustafson
Justin Harris
Linda Hesh
Justin Hoffmann
Seth  Kaplan
Angela Kayklers
Angela Kleis
Brian Knights
Marie Kwak
Bridget Sue Lambert
Pamela Leahigh
Jeffrey Lear
Martin Locraft
Dale Lowery
Cesar Lujan
Pat Padua
Linda Plaisted
Mark Planisek
Michael Platt
Drew Porterfield
Katy Ray
Bruce Robey
Lisa Rosenstein
Julie Seiwell
Kerri Sheehan
Myrna Smernoff
Matthew Smith
Parikha Solanki Mehta
Paivi Solonan
Michael Starghill
Linda Strating
Sanjay Suchak
Ira Tattelman
Raul Valda
John Thurman
Jack Whitsitt
Pete Van Vleet
Amber Wiley
Ken Wyner

I’m going to be showing some data visualizations at the My Space on 7th art show in Washington, DC starting Friday, July 11 at the Touchstone Gallery! Everyone should come out. I took a look at the space and there’s some interesting work hanging already. (And I have to thank Paige, here, who unintentionally helped me decide what to show…but more on that in a later post.)

Oh. And there will be wine tasting opening night.

There will be three old, but reworked images and one new one created just for this show.  Only one has ever been printed before and they all look pretty fantastic.

The new one consists of two superimposed graphs (a paraplot and a scatterplot) of illegitimate traffic going to/from “jackwhitsitt.com” (that would be, uh, most of it).

The three older ones are:

Destination Port Traffic Volume (global sample)

(Test Data from custom developed SEM correlation  modules)

(Pcap data from 10,000 spam emails)

As far as social stuff goes: Angela Kleis’s blogger night at Artomatic was pretty cool. I don’t want to post a lot of thoughts on that yet (I will tomorrow), but it did reinforce the fact that a lot of event management will have to be done at the June 6th ArtDC Artist’s tour dinner. Unfortunately, people have short attention spans and the time each artist speaks will have to be managed and expectations set ahead of time. 5 minutes seems to be about the “max”. We’ll have to bring a timer or something. It’s going to be a -really- interesting night, though, and a lot of fun.

More info on the upcoming dinner can be found in this thread:

http://artdc.org/forum/index.php?topic=8997.0

Pictures of Blogger’s Night can be found here in a set:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/sintixerr/sets/72157605133432629/

Finally, Erin Antognoli took a couple of great shots of my space while I talked about it to what was left of the crowd:

I got to look at my installation finally that night in a variety of lighting conditions and Im -really- happy with how the plastic helped out. It doesnt prevent the glare completely, but it does fix it from all the important angles.

It was also definitely still satisfying to watch people look at the installation from a distance. They’d look at it from 15 feet away. Walk up to it. Move back. Walk up to it. Interact with it…too cool.

We came in beforehand so Paivi and Angela could talk to Paul (britishink…I didnt have much to say, though, I was zoning out for whatever reason – sorry! ) and we got to roam around for a bit. Waved at Danny and the crew manning the blood drive (sorry I didnt give, lost track of time…I was a bit distracted when I arrived). Saw jennifer, who was fun to talk to as always…

And we saw Tracy‘s piece beforehand as well, which I honestly liked a lot. As I’ve said things about Tom’s partition resonated with me, so did Tracy’s. I think using pieces from one’s life and arranging them into art can be dramatically effective, as hers was. Particularly (and Im not sure this was intentional), but she had a lot of materials there from her childhood….things that smelled like everyone’s childhood does after it’s been sitting in a box or the attic for decades. That made the installation tangible and personal, to me. It enhanced the impact and created a connection to the piece that wouldn’t have been there otherwise (for myself).

On shift, I helped out Barry with lighting (and worked it on my own for most of the shift) and worked as an errand boy in between problems. I -really- enjoyed this shift a lot more than the last one and felt I made some more concrete impact on the event. I enjoy solving problems – mine or others’. I’m not going to go into the ins and outs of which floors had which lighting problems other than to say there is probably a short or something odd on the 6th floor that makes it markedly different from the others.

I took care of issues on 5, 6, and 8 at least. If you had a problem on another floor which wasn’t resolved, I apologize – I didnt hear about it. (Someone told me the THIRD floor had an issue. Uh. Yeah. It would )

Did some trash duty…found out Aaron is in a similar profession to mine ….and did other odds and ends. At some point, a guy who had seen my piece started gushing over how good it was to meet me. I didnt really know how to respond to that.

I also met Angela’s 5th floor volunteer-mate, Ann Saybolt, who was nice, conversational, and has some photos up on 5 that I particularly like.

At the end of the shift, I transitioned lights over to one of the incoming volunteers that indicated he’d had lighting/electrical experience.

We roamed around a few floors for awhile, but I was a bit too gone to remember much of it by then….Paivi pointed out -her- volunteer-mate’s (they were on one of the 1st floor bars) photos on 8. Some of them were from the south pole, where he took a job there for 4 months just to be able to go there and take pictures. The south pole ones were cool, but that guy had THE BEST picture of Burning Man I’ve ever seen. Really, it’s fantastic. First name was Pat…8th floor…can’t remember the rest. Try and check that piece out if you can.

Artomatic Piece

Originally uploaded by sintixerr

So -

As mentioned earlier, when I first really started thinking about AOM this year, I thought I was going to be in Arkansas for the majority of the show and wanted to put together something “simple” (yeah, right, me? simple?). I was so strapped for time, in fact, that Angela and Paivi had to grab me some space for the second year in a row while I was out of town. ( My space is on the 8th floor at SE D6 btw.)

Ok. Great. Have space. Project? Art? No so much.  Ultimately I decided to do a huge (6′x6′) self portrait installation (covered in earlier blog posts – http://sintixerr.wordpress.com/2008/04/27/python-photography-digital-art-artomatic/ )

So, uhm, how do you print a photo that’s 6′x6′??? I ended up deciding to print the picture in 9 sections, 24″x24″ each. I originally wanted to do an 8′x8′ image, but at 24×24″ sections I could go one price category lower at Chrome than 32″x32″. Still, lots of cash. Hrm. Where else will print this? For a much more reasonable sum?

It turns out that -Ritz Camera- of all places will print really large images for less than half the price of Chrome. Supposedly archival. I test printed one 24×24″ section and it came out perfect. Sweet. I had a printing solution.

For framing I went with Angela’s suggestion of American Framing and picked the smallest frame borders I could – with no matting. The ultimate effect would hopefully look like the face was peering in through…something (window-esque?). That was an easy process and everything showed up toot-sweet.

I went with overnightprints.com for the business cards. They did a good job but, in hindsight, I didnt. I think my cards are a little bit juvenile and cheesy, but, we all make mistakes sometimes I mean, who puts “Artist” on their cards? I guess I do. Meh.

While I was still playing with my final image, I met Angela and Paivi at our spaces last Sunday to help them paint, do lights, and take a look at my space.

I got there first and spent an hour or so mocking up what I wanted things to look like with rope and gorilla tape (it made sense then). The final result was looking pretty good and I was feeling very satisfied. Until Ang and Paivi showed up.

“Thats not your space, Jack”

“Whu?”

“Thats. Not. Your. Space. Its the one next to it.”

–Insert vulgar words here–

Luckily I hadn’t done anything permanent and I sheepishly took down all my stuff. At any rate, I knew what it was going to look like and everything was good.

Angela and Paivi that day managed to paint their space, buy lights, put up lights. I managed to…put down duct tape and put up one wall of the shadowbox (seen in pics later). Really, I hate this part. Im slow as HELL at painting walls and usually a mess. People always regret asking me to help them paint their house/interior. I suck at it.

I came in the next Thursday after work by myself to try my luck alone and got a lot further. I managed to put up the second shadowbox wall, put down a layer of paint, and not end up with blood or paint all over my clothes. It was a good day in that regard. Still, I had forgotten paint rollers and had to use a brush. Those partitions, even with primer, suck. up. the paint. I was despairing a little bit about how things were looking, but put that aside knowing how much was left to do.

So far, I’d run into a couple of people here and there that I knew, but the AOM space is -so- large this year that unless youre actively wandering around looking for people or just outright lucky, it’s entirely possible to work with a dozen people you know there at the same time and miss them completely. (Except for Melissa, whom I run into every single time Im in the elevator.)

This past Saturday night I had my first volunteer shift with Angela and Paivi, so I came in ahead of time to get some work done. I met my “partition-mate”, who’s name I can’t recall at the moment, but who’s work I had been familiar with and am really psyched to be next to. If I had space in my apartment, Id buy some of it honestly. More painting ensued and things were good.

Queue the volunteer shift.

I have a gripe here. We were given a 3 minute introduction to our responsibilities by the GM on duty. The instructions did not mention two big things that we were asked about -all- night:

1. Lights. Anything about them. Where to get them? What to do if any were broken? Etc. I know this was a GM responsibility, but by Saturday you’d have figured that there were enough questions being asked that the volunteers should be given some sort of heads-up.

2. Brightest Young Things:

Anyone who was at AOM that night figured out very quickly that there was some shindig on the first floor. The only instructions of info we were given by anyone about the first floor party was “oh yeah, tell people bathrooms are on the 10th and 12th floors if they start bitching about the first floor bathrooms”.

What about the first floor bathrooms? Huh? And who’s making all that racket next door? Apparently Philipa Hughs’ Pinkline and Artomatic collaborated to help throw a relaunch party for a website called BrightestYoungThings.com ( http://www.brightestyoungthings.com/events/byt-relaunch-party-1200-1st-street-ne/ )

So, in addition to AOM people, there were tons of the trendiest, coolest, hippest, artsiest, brightest young things wandering in and out of the front door. Nothing against them (and it was cool something else was going on there), but it was really a pain in the ass to do “lobby” duty while there were bands playing, a plastic fence between us and them, etc.

I was asked to “keep people from there going up to AOM”…but really…how was anyone supposed to tell the difference? There were also a lot of people bringing in artist materials through the lobby that I didnt catch because I couldn’t always pick them out from the crowd milling about in the lobby.

This all would’ve been cool if we had been given heads-up….but we weren’t. We were left to piece it together ourselves…

I also wish I’d NOT worn the -skankiest- shirt I own to paint in. Felt like I was bringin the place down just sitting next to the party Wink

The monotony was broken up a bit by a trip to Sketchies (aka Wendy’s) to bring us back some much-needed diet cokes (Angela and Paivi were covering Loading Dock duty that night) and also by Jim, who gestured for another volunteer and myself (I think he meant me too) to come out front where he proudly showed us the new lighting for the Artomatic signage in the windows. The “ART” in “ARTOMATIC” was glowing red! Cool!

By the end of the shift, we were all -done-. Id gone running that morning for the first time since the Cherry Blossom 10 miler and between that, working on the space, and the volunteer shift, I was no longer human. Paivi wanted to take some pics of the graffiti kids up on our floor (Cool doing their thing (didnt work out), but we did run into Halo and Arty4ever putting down some finishing touches on Michael’s space (which looks great!).

I also met a couple of cool volunteers, but unfortunately was too brain-fried to ask for the business card of one of them and now forget her name. Ill need to check the volunteer list later if I can…

That brings me to today. Lights are up, painting is finished, etc. I just need to get some fabric to frame the shadowbox, hang the piece, and add some other artistic touches to the installation (and it will be an installation) that I dont want to describe here. I managed to frame all 9 sections (woohoo – Im really slow at that, so Im proud of myself here) today as well!

Ok, whew. Finally, this behemoth of a post is at it’s end.

(As a side note, the lighting in the first pic is provided by a couple of White Lighting 10,000 strobe, which we’ve now started using as generic apartment lamps lately. Heh.)

Press Release

“black and white and… all over”
A group exhibition of Washington, DC-based black and white photographers
Curated by J.T. Kirkland
February 27 – March 29
Opening reception: Saturday, March 1 from 5–8pm

H&F Fine Arts is pleased to announce a group exhibition of Washington, D.C.-based photographers. Taking its name from the old standby about newspapers (“What’s black and white and read all over?”), the show presents a survey of black and white photography from the D.C. metropolitan area.

The exhibition features dozens of photographs hung salon style throughout the gallery. The artists themselves will assist the curator in hanging the show, collectively attempting to author a visual narrative that explores the voices and concerns of today’s Washington photographers by constructing a mosaic of styles and perspectives. To highlight the joint articulation of the various works, the identities of individual artists will be subordinated; the price of each piece and the initials of its creator will be presented on a brightly colored sticker meant to contrast with the dominant black and white palette. With the names and reputations of the artists subtracted from the exhibition, the work of seasoned veterans will hang alongside that of newcomers just finding their footing in the art world. The curator challenges viewers to try and tell the difference while posing the question of whether the distinction is even significant.

Artists included in the exhibition are Erin Antognoli, James W. Bailey, Danny Conant, Max Cook, Stephen Crowley, Justin Hoffmann, Michael Dax Iacovone, Nick Jbara, Jane Jeffers, J.T. Kirkland, Angela Kleis, Prescott Lassman, Thomas Paradis, Aleksei Pechnikov, Susana Raab, Alexandra Silverthorne, Jim Tetro, Bryan Whitson, and Lloyd Wolf.

3311 Rhode Island Avenue, Mount Rainier, MD 20712

What is a human face without eyes? So much of who we are exists in them that to abstract them to the level of “footballs” is, to use a bad pun, a bit of a punt. I’ve been told:

“Well, everyone isn’t into realism.” Fine – that’s a perfectly valid perspective. But what’s the point of depicting a face at all then? Some animals have “spots” on them that are supposed to make others think they’re “looking” at them. Do these spots depict the nose? No. The mouth? No. Ears? No. Simply giving the impression of “eyes” is sufficient, even in nature, for instinct to recognize “face”.

So, unless you’re intentionally removing the humanity from a piece of art (which I don’t believe is usually the case), why not use allegorical imagery instead? I’m honestly much more likely to feel a connection to an expressionist rendering of a monkey in a clown suit than I am a human face with football eyes. And, with the pieces where Coleman did use monkeys/apes, I thought he was much more successful.

Looking at the pictures in this post, just imagine how much more impact they’d have if even the faintest attempt was made to bring humanity into the eyes.

More on the Art Whino space later, just wanted to get these thoughts out first.