Hill Rag | February 2008 | Art and the City

Art and the City

Artist Profile: Patrick Campbell

by: Jim Magner

“Promise” is a great thing. It’s the future – the future of art and the future of hope for civilization. If you think that’s too dramatic, you just have to look at the work of Patrick Campbell, a 17-year-old student at the Duke Ellington School of the Performing Arts. He was following his four older brothers, all graduates of Duke Ellington, into the arts when he suffered a stroke three years ago. The struggle to recover and continue on for Patrick and his parents has been Herculean, but there has never been a doubt that he could not only recover, but excel and accomplish whatever he wishes.

If it has meant endless hours of grueling physical and speech therapy while fighting incomprehensible city bureaucracy, so be it. If it meant auditing classes and accomplishing work on his own, so be it. And if it means learning to draw and paint with the left hand rather than right, then that’s what it takes.

Patrick doesn’t speak of any of this. He just opens up his art portfolio like any other graduating senior applying to colleges and art schools and lets his work do the talking. It includes the whole inventory of techniques taught in art curriculums: pencil drawings, monotype prints, watercolors, rubbings, acrylics, etc., and it is very good. He has a good grasp of space and how patterns of lights and darks create solids. He has an innate sense of composition and how the arrangement of form tells the story.

But there is something else you can’t help but notice, especially when you look at his portraits. There is a love of creating art and a sensitivity to life that looks into the future, the great gaping unknown, with a determination to find the best – the beauty of the world and the beauty of life.

That’s his promise to all of us. The promise that gives us hope.

Jim Magner’s Thoughts on Art
Dear Metro Board: (an open letter)
I read the story in the Post (Jan. 11) about the changes contemplated for the Metro cars. The two pictures drew me in: the inside of the cars as they are now versus the new recommended look. It was then that I realized how comfortable I am with the Metro and how well it has held up since my first ride over 30 years ago. Please take a close look at those pictures. The current car is warm and friendly. The leather-tone seats and yellow-gold carpeting are welcoming in a homey way – and sound-absorbing to boot. The proposed new interior is ice-cold: blues, grays and black. The carpet is replaced by cellblock “resilient flooring.” The dark blue seats have a neurotic confetti pattern – it would be like sitting on Don Knotts – and the armrests are gone. It has that hose-it-down, reform-school institutional-modern look.

Having been recently forced to ride the New York subway a few times, I am reminded of how aesthetics so greatly affect our communal lives. We think of art as something on a canvas, but the art we live in comes with a much higher price – and even greater rewards when it is done right. Unlike the NYC subway, we don’t have mind-numbing graffiti – eye-garbage – on everything. There is no trash on the floor or the afraid-to-touch essence of disease slathered on every surface and filling the whole space. And yet we are the same humans doing the same ordinary things.

Art is the start. It compels unanimous rules of behavior like not eating, drinking or spitting on the floor.

Please. Before you decide on a final design, think “inviting” – “genial”—and I, and other riders, will be happy to act the same way. Thank you.

At the Museums

“Impressed by Light”
National Gallery of Art
West Building
Feb. 3-May 4
“Impressed by Light: British Photographs from Paper Negatives, 1840–1860” is the first exhibition to explore photographs made from paper negatives – calotypes – in the 1840s and 1850s. Included are works by the inventor William Henry Fox Talbot (1800–1877) and other masters of the process. The calotype introduced multiple copies of a photograph, as compared to the daguerreotype that produced one-of-a-kind images. It has been long thought that the calotype became obsolete in 1851 when a sharper way of making negatives was invented, but many continued to use the process because of its preferred aesthetic qualities. The exhibit includes some of the first photographs of “exotic” places from around the world by professionals and hobbyists alike.

“Bronze and Boxwood”
National Gallery of Art
To May 4
While you are at the National Gallery, take in the collection of Renaissance statuettes in, “Bronze and Boxwood” Masterpieces from the Robert H. Smith Collection.” In addition to the 46 bronze sculptures are related “objects” carved out of boxwood and ivory … all quite beautiful.

Fourth Street and Constitution Avenue NW, 202-737-4215, www.nga.gov.

At the Galleries

Black Matter
Zenith Gallery
The Alternative Gallery Space
1111 Pennsylvania Ave. NW
To March 16
Mixed media and sculpture by Washington area artists from the Black Artists of DC collective light up the gallery space at 1111 Pennsylvania Avenue during Black History Month and beyond. The works are individually unique but reach for similar themes in African/Negro sensibility and spirit, inspired by the artists and professors at Howard University. 202-783-2963, www.zenithgallery.com.

Scooter Flaherty
Gallery Plan b
1530 14th St. NW
To Feb. 17
Scooter Flaherty works with combinations of blocks of color and texture with repetitive and self-reflecting lines which provide visual opportunities to extract a range of emotions, relationships and interactions. 202-234-2711, www.galleryplanb.com.

Selected Works
Marsha Mateyka Gallery
2012 R St. NW
To Feb. 29
The Marsha Mateyka Gallery is showing a new selection of works by well known artists represented by the gallery: Gene Davis, Christopher French, Kathleen Kucka, Sam Gilliam, Nathan Oliveira, and William T. Wiley. The selections include paintings, monotypes, and sculpture. 202-328-0088, www.marshamateykagallery.com.

Robert Freeman
Zenith Gallery
413 Seventh St. NW
Feb. 8-March 9
Robert Freeman was influenced by Rembrandt’s “masterful use of light,” in a recent visit to Amsterdam’s Rijksmuseum and demonstrates his confident, colorful paintings of African-Americans at sophisticated gatherings in this one-man show titled “Golden Light.” Look for overlapping shapes, strong gestures and subjects crowding to the front and edges of his canvases. Opening Reception, Feb. 8. Artist talk: Feb. 9, 3-6 p.m. 202-783-2963, www.zenithgallery.com.

Mary Early
Gallery 101
Georgetown University
Department of Art, Music & Theater
1221 36th St. NW
Mary Early’s new sculpture allows the simplicity of form and materials, surface quality and irregularities to create the experience. Her forms are based on modularity and reference manmade structures more so than naturally occurring objects that predominated in her previous works. Look for warmth and a sense of enveloping light. 202-687-7010.

“Fascinating Rhythm”
Capitol Hill Art League
545 Seventh St. SE
Feb. 9-29
Don’t miss the CHAL opening Feb. 9 (Second Saturday) from 5-7, to meet the artists selected for the February show and listen to the comments by juror, David C. Levy – the former president and director of the Corcoran Gallery of Art and its College of Art and Design. 202-547-6839, www.chaw.org.

New Members
Foundry Gallery
1314 18th St. NW
To March 2
The oldest local artist’s cooperative gallery in the Washington area features the artwork of their six newest members. The artist’s works ranges from realism to abstraction, and includes oil and acrylic painting, mixed media and collage. 202-463-0203, www.foundrygallery.org.

“My Baghdad: Photographs”
Irvine Contemporary
1412 14th St. NW
To Feb. 16
Phil Nesmith’s solo exhibition, “My Baghdad,” is a series of photographs produced on glass plates using a dry plate ambrotype process accompanied by editioned C-print enlargements from the glass plates. Contemporary images made with early photographic processes create a timeless context, and provide an endless chain of emotional references—especially with war photos. Nesmith served a year in Iraq and experienced the “daily existence of soldiers” that probably differs little from the experience of professionals going back to the Romans…despite our whiz bang technology. He came back looking for a way to “evoke this sense of historical telescoping.” It’s very successful. 202-332-8767, www.irvinecontemporary.com.

“Way, Shape, and Form”
Hillyer Art Space
9 Hillyer Court NW
To Feb. 22
“Way, Shape, and Form: Small Abstract Paintings,” by Bill Schmidt, features Schmidt's gouache paintings embellished with colored pencil to achieve a juxtaposition of the organic and the structured. 202-338-0680, www.artsandartists.org/artspace.php.

Mills/Alexander
Hemphill
1515 14th St. NW
To March 1
With “Dark World,”Joseph Mills creates objects that embody surrealist-inspired collage imagery. John Alexander rips the political world, all sides, with fun and fury. 202-234-5601, www.hemphillfinearts.com.

Jim Magner is a Capitol Hill artist and writer. He can be reached at ArtandtheCity05@aol.com.


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Art and the City
Artist Profile: Patrick Campbell
by: Jim Magner
“Promise” is a great thing. It’s the future – the future of art and the future of hope for civilization. If you think that’s too dramatic, you just have to look at the work of Patrick Campbell, a 17-year-old student at the Duke Ellington School of the Performing Arts. He was following his four older brothers, all graduates of Duke Ellington, into the arts when he suffered a stroke three years ago. The struggle to recover and continue on for Patrick and his parents has been Herculean, but there has never been a doubt that he could not only recover, but excel and accomplish whatever he wishes. If it has meant endless hours of grueling physical and speech therapy while fighting incomprehensible city bureaucracy, so be it. If it meant auditing classes and accomplishing work on his own, so be it. And if it means learning to draw and paint with the left hand rather than right, then that’s what it takes. Patrick doesn’t speak of any of this. He just opens up his art portfolio like any other graduating senior applying to colleges and art schools and lets his work do the talking. It includes the whole inventory of techniques taught in art curriculums: pencil drawings, monotype prints, watercolors, rubbings, acrylics, etc., and it is very good. He has a good grasp of space and how patterns of lights and darks create solids. He has an innate sense of composition and how the arrangement of form tells the story. But there is something else you can’t help but notice, especially when you look at his portraits. There is a love of creating art and a sensitivity to life that looks into the future, the great gaping unknown, with a determination to find the best – the beauty of the world and the beauty of life. That’s his promise to all of us. The promise that gives us hope. Jim Magner’s Thoughts on Art Dear Metro Board: (an open letter) I read the story in the Post (Jan. 11) about the changes contemplated for the Metro cars. The two pictures drew me in: the inside of the cars as they are now versus the new recommended look. It was then that I realized how comfortable I am with the Metro and how well it has held up since my first ride over 30 years ago. Please take a close look at those pictures. The current car is warm and friendly. The leather-tone seats and yellow-gold carpeting are welcoming in a homey way – and sound-absorbing to boot. The proposed new interior is ice-cold: blues, grays and black. The carpet is replaced by cellblock “resilient flooring.” The dark blue seats have a neurotic confetti pattern – it would be like sitting on Don Knotts – and the armrests are gone. It has that hose-it-down, reform-school institutional-modern look. Having been recently forced to ride the New York subway a few times, I am reminded of how aesthetics so greatly affect our communal lives. We think of art as something on a canvas, but the art we live in comes with a much higher price – and even greater rewards when it is done right. Unlike the NYC subway, we don’t have mind-numbing graffiti – eye-garbage – on everything. There is no trash on the floor or the afraid-to-touch essence of disease slathered on every surface and filling the whole space. And yet we are the same humans doing the same ordinary things. Art is the start. It compels unanimous rules of behavior like not eating, drinking or spitting on the floor. Please. Before you decide on a final design, think “inviting” – “genial”—and I, and other riders, will be happy to act the same way. Thank you. At the Museums “Impressed by Light” National Gallery of Art West Building Feb. 3-May 4 “Impressed by Light: British Photographs from Paper Negatives, 1840–1860” is the first exhibition to explore photographs made from paper negatives – calotypes – in the 1840s and 1850s. Included are works by the inventor William Henry Fox Talbot (1800–1877) and other masters of the process. The calotype introduced multiple copies of a photograph, as compared to the daguerreotype that produced one-of-a-kind images. It has been long thought that the calotype became obsolete in 1851 when a sharper way of making negatives was invented, but many continued to use the process because of its preferred aesthetic qualities. The exhibit includes some of the first photographs of “exotic” places from around the world by professionals and hobbyists alike. “Bronze and Boxwood” National Gallery of Art To May 4 While you are at the National Gallery, take in the collection of Renaissance statuettes in, “Bronze and Boxwood” Masterpieces from the Robert H. Smith Collection.” In addition to the 46 bronze sculptures are related “objects” carved out of boxwood and ivory … all quite beautiful. Fourth Street and Constitution Avenue NW, 202-737-4215, www.nga.gov. At the Galleries Black Matter Zenith Gallery The Alternative Gallery Space 1111 Pennsylvania Ave. NW To March 16 Mixed media and sculpture by Washington area artists from the Black Artists of DC collective light up the gallery space at 1111 Pennsylvania Avenue during Black History Month and beyond. The works are individually unique but reach for similar themes in African/Negro sensibility and spirit, inspired by the artists and professors at Howard University. 202-783-2963, www.zenithgallery.com. Scooter Flaherty Gallery Plan b 1530 14th St. NW To Feb. 17 Scooter Flaherty works with combinations of blocks of color and texture with repetitive and self-reflecting lines which provide visual opportunities to extract a range of emotions, relationships and interactions. 202-234-2711, www.galleryplanb.com. Selected Works Marsha Mateyka Gallery 2012 R St. NW To Feb. 29 The Marsha Mateyka Gallery is showing a new selection of works by well known artists represented by the gallery: Gene Davis, Christopher French, Kathleen Kucka, Sam Gilliam, Nathan Oliveira, and William T. Wiley. The selections include paintings, monotypes, and sculpture. 202-328-0088, www.marshamateykagallery.com. Robert Freeman Zenith Gallery 413 Seventh St. NW Feb. 8-March 9 Robert Freeman was influenced by Rembrandt’s “masterful use of light,” in a recent visit to Amsterdam’s Rijksmuseum and demonstrates his confident, colorful paintings of African-Americans at sophisticated gatherings in this one-man show titled “Golden Light.” Look for overlapping shapes, strong gestures and subjects crowding to the front and edges of his canvases. Opening Reception, Feb. 8. Artist talk: Feb. 9, 3-6 p.m. 202-783-2963, www.zenithgallery.com. Mary Early Gallery 101 Georgetown University Department of Art, Music & Theater 1221 36th St. NW Mary Early’s new sculpture allows the simplicity of form and materials, surface quality and irregularities to create the experience. Her forms are based on modularity and reference manmade structures more so than naturally occurring objects that predominated in her previous works. Look for warmth and a sense of enveloping light. 202-687-7010. “Fascinating Rhythm” Capitol Hill Art League 545 Seventh St. SE Feb. 9-29 Don’t miss the CHAL opening Feb. 9 (Second Saturday) from 5-7, to meet the artists selected for the February show and listen to the comments by juror, David C. Levy – the former president and director of the Corcoran Gallery of Art and its College of Art and Design. 202-547-6839, www.chaw.org. New Members Foundry Gallery 1314 18th St. NW To March 2 The oldest local artist’s cooperative gallery in the Washington area features the artwork of their six newest members. The artist’s works ranges from realism to abstraction, and includes oil and acrylic painting, mixed media and collage. 202-463-0203, www.foundrygallery.org. “My Baghdad: Photographs” Irvine Contemporary 1412 14th St. NW To Feb. 16 Phil Nesmith’s solo exhibition, “My Baghdad,” is a series of photographs produced on glass plates using a dry plate ambrotype process accompanied by editioned C-print enlargements from the glass plates. Contemporary images made with early photographic processes create a timeless context, and provide an endless chain of emotional references—especially with war photos. Nesmith served a year in Iraq and experienced the “daily existence of soldiers” that probably differs little from the experience of professionals going back to the Romans…despite our whiz bang technology. He came back looking for a way to “evoke this sense of historical telescoping.” It’s very successful. 202-332-8767, www.irvinecontemporary.com. “Way, Shape, and Form” Hillyer Art Space 9 Hillyer Court NW To Feb. 22 “Way, Shape, and Form: Small Abstract Paintings,” by Bill Schmidt, features Schmidt's gouache paintings embellished with colored pencil to achieve a juxtaposition of the organic and the structured. 202-338-0680, www.artsandartists.org/artspace.php. Mills/Alexander Hemphill 1515 14th St. NW To March 1 With “Dark World,”Joseph Mills creates objects that embody surrealist-inspired collage imagery. John Alexander rips the political world, all sides, with fun and fury. 202-234-5601, www.hemphillfinearts.com. Jim Magner is a Capitol Hill artist and writer. He can be reached at ArtandtheCity05@aol.com.