Artists
Designing for Light
Back to the Hirshhorn, from yesterday's post. Director, Richard Koshalek, has asked Doug Aitken, a Los Angeles based artist to redesign the museum's bookstore and shop. I was amazed with what he's come up with. He's designed a space that refracts light with mirrored, angled walls. The shop is located in the basement and currently has no natural light. He intends on using a shaft to a window from the floor above as the light source. He came up with the idea based on what he thought books meant to him — "enlightenment." This was the illuminating idea to spark his creative process. The design will cost between $500,000 –…
Practical Painting
I read in interesting story in my local newspaper (Washington Post) about a teenage artist who had painted a 4 x 21 foot mural at his high school as a reaction (and with encouragement from his art teacher) to the assassination of President Kennedy. He was 17 at the time at The Washington Lee School. As John Kelly's article states, typically high school murals are painted directly on the walls and do not survive renovation. Luckily and wisely, Jon Friedman, the muralist painted his mural on sturdy paper. When The Washington Lee School was torn down, the mural was removed, stored and reframed and reinstalled in the new building. The…
Real Art DC Contest
There is a call for the Washington area's best aspiring artists to upload their work at washingtonpost.com/museums to be featured in a new posting, With Real Art DC, regarding canvassing the local neighborhoods for aspiring artists. Contest Rules. Expiration for entry is September 30, 2010. There are so many entries (1,652 at the time of this posting) that I almost had to stop reviewing but when I got past 1,000, I figured I could get through them all. I'm sure there will be many more after this since it was mentioned in the paper over the weekend. Within a week of the deadline, the public will be able to vote…
