This week and its lessons
So I guess I really only decided to pursue a career as an artist pretty recently. I’ve been studying political science for four years, writing papers electoral patterns and voting behavior the like, and as fed up with that as I’ve been for the past couple years, it wasn’t really until I went to the Whitney Bienniel in March that it became so totally clear to me. So since then, I’ve been so focused on getting to New York that it didn’t even fucking dawn on me that there is a lot happening here in DC and that I should be getting involved with it. Maybe because it’s that I’m so revolted with politics and working in politics and thinking about politics that I felt that DC no longer had anything to offer me. But that’s pretty dumb.
So last weekend I went to the opening of “Punk Love,” Susie Horgan’s show of photographs from the birth of the DC punk scene. I wouldn’t have even known about it (which is crazy) if my friend Aley hadn’t told me she wanted to go when she came to visit from Kansas. So how ridiculous is it that it took someone coming into town from Wichita to get me out to a gallery opening? Anyway, the work was amazing and the opening was just about as fun as it possibly could have been. All of Fugazi was in attendance as was Henry Rollins and all the folks from Dischord and all of that.
Then, Saturday night, we went to Antonia Tricarico and Lely Constantinople’s double opening at Transformer. It was packed since it’s a tiny space, and the Dischord crew was there again and it was as much as fun as Punk Love. I finally met Cynthia Connely, whose show also at Transformer had quite an impact on me in April ’05, and she had seen the photograph I had taken of the opening (the only other DC opening I’d ever attended) that ran in the Washington Post Magazine. Ok, so anyway, she was handing our postcards for a new show of her own, which opened this past Friday at the Arlington Arts Center.
I love Cynthia’s work and went to her opening two days ago. She has 15 images of roadside arrow signs hanging there, with their titles pressed right on top of the image in red block letters (I wrote an extensive review of Cynthia’s ’05 Transformer show where I talked about her inventive and charming ways of presenting her work) and she had chairs set up to kind of hang out. Her opening was either part of are going on at the same time as a larger one, but her little gallery was the only one that had the feel of like, a family reunion or something. And I met Antonia, who recognized me from the other two openings the week before. She invtied me to yet another opening at the Corcoran on the 22nd.
So. All of this is really to say that there is a small and lively community of very talented photographers here in town, and I’ve been kind of a moron to get involved. All I have to do is go, and I haven’t been! At a party Saturday night, I ran into an artist who I know from my short stit at the Corcoran a couple of years ago who told me about her involvement in the WPA/C anonymous show that’s coming up. I’ve lived here for four years and I’m still not even a member of WPA/C! I’ve never been to Artomatic. I’ve missed huge shows that have come through the National Gallery and the Phillips Collection. I’ve been to Transformer twice. I almost never go to the Corcoran. When I go to New York, I do and see everything I possibly can, from like Reena Spaulings to MoMA and in my own fucking town I’m totally detached. I mean, I’m more connected to the art scene in Houston.
So that’s ridiculous. I’m going to live here for like a less than six more months, so I have to get moving.