The big news this week came on Tuesday, as the Washington Project for the Arts announced it was officially splitting from the Corcoran Gallery of Art at the end of 2007. The success of the partnership has boosted the WPA to a place where they can function solo once more, and are currently setting up shop in Dupont Circle. The Post has an excellent summary of WPAC’s history.
>> The Arlington Arts Center is our pick this week, as it opens a huge show with lots of interesting local names. Start on the outside, where Alexandria artist Rosemary Feit Covey’s small drawing has been transformed into a 300 by 15 foot banner that stretches all the way around the center. The 0 Project features a shouting crowd that’s meant to encourage social and political participation. Inside the gallery is Fall Solos 2007, where you’ll find the often creepy, violent art of Chawky Frenn next to elegant sculptures by Laurel Lukaszewski (pictured above right), along with five other talents. Stop by the reception tomorrow from 6 to 9 p.m.
>> Hillyer Art Space goes far beyond the locals in featuring Beyond the Margins: Selections from Soweto, South Africa (pictured left). The art, chosen by the president and founder of the South African Fine Arts Congress, records the history as these artists, just outside of Johannesburg, lived through and after apartheid. The reception is tomorrow from 6 to 9 p.m. and includes catering by Nage.
>> Gallery 31, the relatively new venue for the Corcoran College of Art + Design, opens a show with two visiting artists today. Kyoko Ibe and Mark Lander are both paper artists who use their cultures’ traditional techniques. Ibe, from Japan, uses washi, a handmade paper, to create intricate installations, while Lander, from New Zealand, has designed many new techniques with his country’s indigenous flax to “influence a generation of artist-papermakers.” The reception is tonight from 6 to 8 p.m., admission is free.
>> The crafty contingent should enjoy the new exhibition opening at the Smithsonian American Art Museum, Going West! Quilts and Community. The show, which opens tomorrow, features 50 quilts made by frontier women as they struggled through the prairie on their journeys to the west.
Images courtesy of the Arlington Arts Center and the Hillyer Arts Space, respectively.
