“A Life Lived” by Mike Weber, 2011, 24″ x 36″ x 2.5″ Mixed Media on Panel, Resin Coated>> In exciting art news, Artomatic will be returning to Crystal City this year. Whether you love it or hate it, this non-juried art show of epic proportions will open May 18 and run through June 24. Keep an eye open for registration announcements and more on this soon.
>> Artists’ Bloc at the Artisphere is offering five days worth of workshops sessions to help keep you busy. Beginning today at 7:30 p.m. the public will have an opportunity to offer the artists their honest opinions about their work. Two of Artists’ Bloc core programs will be presented: 12×6 which gives six artists 12 minutes each to present a selection from their current work for written and verbal feedback. Modern Scribes allows the artist to bring their work from first to final draft through the constructive criticism of the audience. Tickets are $5 for each session.
>> Growing up in St. Louis, Missouri offered Mike Weber the opportunity to explore abandoned homesteads in the farmland outside of the city. He took inspiration from these once loved and well cared for homes and translated it into his fine art multi-media works. The history and mystery of the abandoned homesteads comes through in his layered work and it will be on display at Long View Gallery in his solo exhibition Homesteads opening on Thursday from 6:30 to 8 p.m.
>> 30 Americans, the special exhibition at the Corcoran Gallery of Art, continues its lecture series on Thursday with a conversation between artist Barkley Hendricks and Trevor Schoonmaker, Patsy R. and Raymond D. Nasher Curator of Contemporary Art, Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University, and curator of the recent retrospective, Barkley L. Hendricks: Birth of the Cool, at 7 p.m. Hendricks will discuss his artistic practice when it comes to his large-scale portraits of ordinary people. Tickets for members are $15, tickets for non-members are $20.
>> Looking for something to do with the kiddos this weekend? Head over to the Kogod Courtyard in the Smithsonian American Art Museum and do some printmaking as a part of Multi-Prints Family Day. George Mason University artists will demonstrate printmaking after which everyone can participate in making their own. 11:30 a.m. to 3 p.m.
>> Three exhibitions opened at the Greater Reston Art Center on January 6 as a part of their 2012 Winter Focus and there will be an opening reception and gallery talk this Saturday from 5 to 7 p.m. The exhibitions feature artists from the mid-Atlantic region whose work is inspired by personal experiences and are primarily conceptual. In Extensions of the Hand, Suzi Fox manipulates materials in order to explore the act of making objects and her ideas of identity, while Leah Frankel focuses her work on documenting the passage of time through evaporation and decay in Light and Dense, and David Meyer uses photographs as a starting point in an effort to examine the many aspects of the human conditions in his exhibition, Distorted.
>> This weekend’s free films at the National Gallery of Art are a part of the series David Gatten: Texts of Light. Gatten will also be on hand to present some of his films and discuss his work and experimental 16mm process. On Saturday at 2:30 p.m. Secret History of the Dividing Line, a True Account in Nine Parts: Parts I-IV will be shown. It focuses on one of the largest libraries in colonial times, that of William Byrd II. At 4:30 p.m. Gatten will present Four Films toward Part V of Secret History of the Dividing Line, a True Account in Nine Parts, which includes The Matter Propounded, of its Possibility or Impossibility, Treated in Four Parts (2011), How to Conduct a Love Affair (2007), So Sure of Nowhere Buying Times to Come (2010), and Film for Invisible Ink, Case No. 323: Once Upon a Time in the West (2010). On Sunday at 4:30 p.m., the Gatten series continues with Silent Mountains, Singing Oceans, and Slivers of Time which will also include two films from the series What the Water Said. Free in the National Gallery of Art East Building Auditorium.
