White Tree Line, Rosemary Luckett, 2003, monoprint, 8 x 11 inches>> Tonight, Adah Rose Gallery and Hillyer International Art and Artists team up to debate Bad Art/Good Art with a panel discussion featuring Harriet Lesser, curator at Strathmore Center for the Arts; artist, curator and WETA Around Town critic Bill Dunlap; City Paper art critic John James Anderson; and Washington Post art critic Michael O’Sullivan. Now’s your chance to find out whether that Dogs Playing Poker print above your sofa is good art or not. (It is, by the way.) Bring your own examples of good/bad art to share with the panel. 7 to 8:30 p.m. at Hillyer Gallery.
>> Touchstone Gallery hosts a pair of opening receptions for Charlie Dale’s abstract Color Grids that explore light using heavily-layered colors that complement Rosemary Luckett’s Seen/Unseen, a series of black-inked landscapes of textured primary shapes. Thursday from 6 to 8:30 p.m.
>> Washington Sculptors Group presents Platforms, an outdoor collection of works representing the diverse functions of an object designed to provide support and focus. Stop by the opening reception on Thursday from 6 to 9 p.m. in the Sylvia Berlin Katzen Sculpture Garden of the American University Museum.
>> Thursday is also the opening reception for Jorge Luis Bernal’s Guerra & Weapons at Evolve Urban Arts Projects. These encaustic monotypes ask questions about “philosophy of war, weapons and soldiering” using clean lines and delicate shapes, soft textures and an eye-pleasing color palette. 5:30 to 9 p.m.
>> L.A.-based art collective My Barbarian brings their Broke People’s Baroque Peoples’ Theater back to Transformer with Flat Busted Wig Beauty Window Fatale features a site-specific window display, a series of performances, texts, videos, and a site-specific window installation that “plays with artifacts of class, culture, femininity and queerness.” The opening reception is Saturday from 6 to 8 p.m.
>> Also on Saturday, newly-minted Hamiltonian Fellow Amy Boone-McCreesh shows her Heritage Aesthetic using traditional materials used in celebration throughout the world, with a reading room to further enlighten. The opening reception is from 7 to 9 p.m. at Hamiltonian Gallery. Mark your calendars for an artist talk at 7 p.m. on October 2.
>> Zenith Gallery shows us Home Is Where the Art Is with a mixed-media show by gallery artists. Saturday’s open house and reception features a new piece in the sculpture garden and a jewelry trunk show. 2 to 8 p.m.
>> This week’s free films at the National Gallery of Art start with Russian filmmaker Aleksei Guerman’s The Seventh Companion at 2 p.m. Saturday. Then at 4 p.m., catch Origins of the Czech New Wave, an illustrated lecture on Hollywood director Miloš Forman’s contributions to the movement in the 1950s and 1960s. Sunday’s 4:30 p.m. double-header includes the Forman films Audition and Taking Off. All films are screened in the Gallery’s East Building Auditorium and seating is on first-come, first-seated basis.
>> Don’t miss AIA DC‘s Architecture Week events, including Young French Architects—Exploring Landscapes and Architecture, a lecture and exhibit reception on Friday from 7 to 8 p.m. ($10) at District Architecture. Take a look a the full schedule of events for locations, ticket prices and registration.
>> On Sunday, Pleasant Plains Workshop unveils two new window displays by artists Dana Jeri Maier and Elizabeth Stewart with a reception from 4 to 5:30 p.m., followed by a Georgia Avenue Window Walk to see all four installations plus several other art stops, concluding at DC Reynolds Bar at 6:30 p.m.
