Our Bethesda shows for 2005

Eight finalists were selected and invited to display their work at the Fraser Gallery from June 8 - July 6, 2005, and the top four painters will be honored with $14,000 in prize money, with a Grand Prize of $10,000. The competition was be juried by Churchill Davenport, Professor of Painting at the Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA); Chawky Frenn, an accomplished painter and Assistant Professor of Painting at George Mason University and Dr. Claudia Rousseau, a contemporary art critic and Professor of Art History at the School of Art & Design at Montgomery College. The Bethesda Arts & Entertainment District, though the generosity of Ms. Carol Trawick, sponsors the Bethesda Painting Awards. An opening reception and awards ceremony for the selected artists was held on Friday, June 10, from 6pm - 9pm.

Best in Show ($10,000 award) Joe Kabriel
Second Place ($2,000 Award) John Aquilino
Third Place ($1,000 Award) Dominique Samyn-Werbrouck
Young Artist Award ($1,000 Award) Catherine Lees

SoulSurfing - Joe Kabriel

 

Jacob - Andrew Wodzianski

 

Suburbs VI - Ousterhout

 

Great Blue - David R. Daniels

 

Blues on the Corner - Dominique Samyn-Werbrouck

 

Haircut and Paper Dolls in a Room with a View - Catherine Lees

 

Saturday Morning - John Aquilino

 

Interior Decorating 1/20 - Inga McCaslin Frick

 

JULY - AUGUST 2005 SUMMER GROUP EXHIBIT
July 8 - September 7

Self Portrait With Basketball , oil on canvas by Margaret Dowell, (50"x72")

 

Blues Legends, oil on canvas by John Winslow

 

The Edge, Photograph by Lynda Lester-Slack

 

Sixty/Forty, Photograph by Lynda Lester-Slack

 

Untitled No. 1, Photograph by Elena Volkov

 

Dark Greed, mixed media on panel by Hojin Kwak

 

SEPTEMBER 2005 - MICHAEL SPROUSE
September 9 - October 12, 2005

Chapeau:New paintings by Michael Sprouse. An opening reception for the artist was held on Friday, September 9 from 6pm - 9pm.

OCTOBER 2005 - JOHN WINSLOW
All the World's a Stage...
October 14 - November 8, 2005

New paintings by John Winslow. One of the most influential figurative painters in our region, Winslow was born in Washington, DC and studied at the Yale School of Art, from which he received both his BFA and MFA. Winslow, who is an Emeritus Professor of Art at Catholic University, retired from active teaching from CUA in 2000 after 31 years of teaching there, leaving behind one of the most influential footprints in our area's art scene. About his most recent work Winslow writes:

I paint scenes of choreographed performances staged in a large, studio-like space replete with all manner of stationary and airborne props. Actors (gleaned from my imagination, or from live models or media photographs) are caught in mid-dance or mid-plot, set off by a painted backdrop or scrim (usually a phootographic-looking meta-scene which can also be perceived as a video projection). The cast of characters includes dancers, dreamers, seers, functionaries and often, in a cameo role, the artist/director/me. But the subject of the paintings, in my mind, is neither the activity of the players nor the illusionistic background, but rather what comes out of the interaction of the two - the figure-ground relationship. My format provides opportunities for creating the jumps in scale and juxtapositions of flat and volumetric forms which one usually associates with collage. When it works, the paintings tell a new “visual” story.

NOVEMBER 2005 - TIM TATE
"Caged by History"
November 11 - December 7, 2005

New glass sculpture by Tim Tate. Considered by many to be the finest contemporary glass artist in the Washington area, Tim Tate is a brilliant creative talent who has gone beyond mastery of the technical skills of fine art glass and continues to push the genre into new areas where narrative content is the prime force behind the work. Tate marries his artwork with intelligent ideas and conceptual dialogues that bring forth reactions, opinions and set forward a whole new conversation and path for the genre of fine art glass.

And in this third solo show at Fraser, be prepared to discover yet new paths, histories, commentary and ideas, as Tate marries glass with steel and cement.

In these new works, and using events and details from his personal life as well as public issues, Tate incorporates this as a rich set of conceptual ideas so that his work is no longer about the technical frontier of the art glass genre, or the use of colors and forms, or the decorative beauty of the medium – it is all that and more.

And Tate continues to break new ground by continuing to add and expand a new vocabulary to the genre: A vocabulary made of content that requires and understanding of what the artist wants to express. In doing so, Tate has absolutely changed and refined his art and vision, a change that was first kindled by the death of his mother, which he expressed by an obsessive desire to create small, beautiful glass hearts, which have nothing to do with religion, but childhood memories of JFK imagery in his home and a receptacle for memory. In another series of glass slices that project from the walls, encased in steel, Tate offers us Cryptologic clues to events, influences, social and political statements, as well as the ever-present dialogue about disease and recovery. Tate, who is HIV-positive, continues to incorporate his daily issue with HIV into these works, some of which represent his own ideas of surviving the disease. In the wall glass slices, the narrative panels and the reliquaries, are hidden clues and figures that offer a constant desire for a cure that refuses to come into focus.

Tate studied at Dale Chihuly’s Pilchuck Glass School in Washington state, Corning Glass in New York and Penland School of Crafts in North Carolina. His work is in the permanent collection of the Smithsonian's American Art Museum's Renwick Gallery and the University of Virginia Museum of Art. He has also been chosen to design International AIDS Monument in New Orleans. Tate is also the co-founder of the Washington Glass School.

An opening reception for the artist was held on Friday, November 11 from 6pm - 9pm. Read the Washington Blade article about Tate here and then read the Gazette review here.

DECEMBER 2005 - WINTER GROUP EXHIBIT
December 9 - January 11, 2006

New work by artists represented by the Fraser Gallery and award winners from our juried competitions. Introducing the spectacular miniature paintings of Marianela de la Hoz, and new paintings by David FeBland, photographs by Maxwell MacKenzie and new work by Jinchul Kim, MaryBeth Rothman, Sharon Moody, Roberta Goschke, Tim Tate, Ellen Verdon Winkler, Andrew Wodzianski, Syl Mathis, F. Lennox Campello and many others. An opening reception for the artists will be held on Friday, December 9 from 6pm - 9pm.

The Fraser Gallery

7700 Wisconsin Avenue
Suite E
Bethesda, Maryland 20814
Tel/Fax: (301) 718-9651/2

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