It’s not over yet folks: April is about to culminate with the biggest art weekend in recent memory. Artomatic and ColorField.remix continue to bring us a healthy helping of visual and performance art, and now we get one big, fat cherry of an art fair to top it all off this weekend, sprinkled with about a billion other shows placed to coincide with it, including one at a particular venue that deserves your attention.
>> Usually you’d have to hop a shuttle up or down the coast to find a fully-stocked, contemporary, international art fair, but this weekend D.C. officially makes itself a destination point for the worldwide art scene, outside of being memorialized in a Smithsonian. Tonight the Washington Convention Center bursts open with artDC, a festival hosting work from hundreds of artists and over 80 galleries — a full 18 of them from the D.C. area. Tonight you can check out the Opening Night Preview, if you’re willing to pony up $100 between 5:30 and 7:30 p.m. (includes drinks & hors d’oeuvres) or $30 between 7:30 and 9:30 p.m. (cash bar), sponsored by the Cultural Alliance of Greater Washington. Tomorrow they’ll have free admission all day and a tour at 2 p.m, but you might want to make the trek down tonight just to see Kathryn Cornelius strut her stuff during some red carpet performance art at 8 p.m. We’ll be bringing you a full preview tomorrow, so sit tight and get ready to explore the international art scene brought to your doorstep.
>> If “artDC” isn’t literal enough for you, how about “Big Art Show“? Either way, this traveling show is coming to town this Saturday for a little art and music extravaganza at The Rock & Roll Hotel. Fifty regional artists and five bands will round out the evening, including a few bands we already love: Deleted Scenes, The Hard Tomorrows, and Let’s French. All this for $10 $5? Deal.
>> We told you about Warehouse’s big tax issues earlier today, so now that you’re all fired up over this injustice to the arts community, go support it tonight by attending the opening of Supple, the show given a new home when their first venue suddenly slammed the doors last week. We’ve already mentioned some of the local hardballers — Colby Caldwell with his video and film skills, Laurel Lukaszewski and her fascinating porcelin sculptures — but the real focus of the show are the materials used (thus the title of the exhibit), like Robin Rose’s abstract encaustic paintings. Tonight and Saturday at 8 p.m. the show will feature a performance of musical works by Matt Sargent, who this writer can recommend after attending last summer’s Landscape Circles.
