ARTOMATIC!
May 7th, 2009
Today mark’s the first of many future posts discussing and promoting the 2009 Artomatic show. Artomatic was held last year in NoMa at the Capital Plaza building which was conviniently located across the street from my job site (which we posted about frequently last year). This year it is being held at Half Street’s 55 M St, SE in the Capitol Riverfront neighborhood. For those familiar with DC, it is the building that you come up underneath when you exit at the Navy Yard metro station for a Nat’s game.
For 2009 the AOM folks have over 1,000 artist of all mediums (from photography to fire dancing, and fine oil paints to tattoos) lined up and they are expecting ~70,000 people to attend. MAKE SURE YOU ARE ONE OF THEM! Artomatic will run from May 29 – July 5th so unless you are like some of those people over in France that take entire months off for vacation durring the summer you should be able to find some time. Oh, also…it is free to the public and they have multiple bars and bands on the weekends (just taking away excusses not to go left and right arn’t I?).
Last year I exhibited ~25 pictures but this year I am choosing to have a much more edited and themed exhibit (more in the realm of 6 – 8 pictures) with the working title of “White Wash”. It will focus on urban abstracts of white walls, fences, sheds, etc. and the effects of time, decay, exposure, and wear on the once crsip white veneer. We will post more details closer to 5/29 about specific events, opening times, etc. Half Street’s 55 M Street, S.E., in Washington, D.C.’s Capitol Riverfront neighborhood
studs.
May 1st, 2008
Tonight we finished the infrastructure of my display at Artomatic. I was unable to get to the site selection process early enough to get one of the true walls that were reserved for the 2-D artists and was asked to be “creative” with my display area. I ended up grabbing a smallish wall that was divided a 10′ wide window. After looking at things for a bit I decided that there wasn’t going to be enough true wall area to display my photos how I wanted to….so I decided to build more. After toying with the idea of a rather complicated wire/tension system I opted to go with a grid of 2×4’s which seemed a bit easier. Lori was so excited that we finished the wall that she decided to do some star jumps.
ARTOMATIC!
April 11th, 2008
The NoMA BID and Artomatic hosted the “Blank Canvas” Media preview of the new space for Artomotic 2008 yesterday, and I, as an esteemed member of the media, was able to get a sneak peek of the space. Artomatic will be taking up 8 entire floors of the new Capital Plaza building at the corner of 1st St. and M St. NE. From the press release Artomatic is billed as “a creative community that collaborates to produce and present a free arts spectacular.” 2008 will be the 6th installment of Artomatic since it was started back in 1999 and displayed at the historic Manhattan Laundry buildings on Florida Ave NW.
Artomatic has grown steadily from then and has gained significant media and artistic community attention. The event will run from May 9th to June 15th and over 50,000 visitors are expected. Of the 1,000 artist spaces available to register over 600 visual artists, 80 performance artists, and 80 bands have signed up. The growth of Artomatic has this year attracted bands from as far away and NY and Texas. It should be quite a spectacular event, but of course the main reason you should attend is to see my photography exhibit (and then purchase the prints). Also, they are going to have an “interactive” tattoo exhibit if you are in the market to get some ink done.
The “Blank Canvas” event gave me the opportunity to scope out the raw space, appreciate the tremendous views from the 12th floor, and take a look at the cute little model they had of a typical floor plate. The friendly folks from DC On The Fly were at the event to provide refreshments; I had some turkey chili that was spectacular. These are the guys with the funny little green electric vending carts that have begun popping up around the city.
As a start of the “Blank Canvas” event they had a litteral blank canvas available for visitors to do some painting on. Here is one of my masterpieces and here the other.
I am greatly looking forward to this event.
