12 12 Gallery

Call for Entries: National Juried Photography Exhibition

POSTMARK AND ONLINE DEADLINE FRIDAY, AUGUST 14, 2009

12 12 Gallery is pleased to announce the call for entries for our fourth annual photography competition ,the National Juried Photography Exhibition 2009.  This year's juror is Julian Cox, who currently serves as the Curator of Photography at the High Museum of Art in Atlanta, Georgia.

Julian Cox  joined the High Museum of Art, Atlanta, as the Curator of Photography in 2005.  Cox came from the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles where he served as associate curator in the department of photo-graphs.  He also worked at the National Museum of Photography, Film & Television in Bradford, England, and the National Library of Wales.  He received a Master of Philosophy degree in the history of photography from the University of Wales in 1990, and a Bachelor of Arts degree in art history from the University of Manchester, England, in 1987.

Cox has organized nu-merous exhibitions on subjects ranging from the dawn of photography's invention in Europe in the 19th century, to contem-porary practice in the United States.  He is the co-author, with Colin Ford, of the critically acclaimed publication: Julia Margaret Cameron: The Complete Photographs (2003), the first catalogue raisonné produced of the work of a photographer. Cox is the author of many scholarly articles and several books. His recent publications include: Road to Freedom: Photographs of the Civil Rights Movement, 1956-1968 (2008), Harry Callahan: Eleanor (2007), Spirit into Matter: The Photographs of Edmund Teske (2004) and Timekeeper: The Photographs of Anthony Friedkin (2004).

Please feel free to contact Martin McFadden, Gallery Director if you have questions regarding the competition.  You may also forward this announcement to anyone you think may be interested in the opportunity.  We will not have access to their e-mail address or contact information until they determine to submit work for the competition.

 

We look forward to seeing your most recent work and submitting your entries to Mr. Cox.

Download the 12 12 Gallery National Juried Photography 2009 prospectus

POSTMARK AND ONLINE DEADLINE FRIDAY, AUGUST 14, 2009

Manchester National Juried Fine Art Exhibition 2009: Award Winners

The third annual MNJFAE 2009 opened at 12 12 Gallery on Sunday, June 28th, 2009. The All Media exhibition  features 71 works from 40 artists selected by juror Andrea Pollan, Director and Curator of the Curator's Office, Washington, D.C.  Over 400 entries were submitted by 123 artists from across the US and Canada. In attendance were Jane Vaught (Richmond, VA), Alex Graebic (Farmville, VA), Jordi Williams (Lynchburg, VA), Amy Carmichael Smith (Silver Spring, MD)and Erwin Barona (Ontario, Canada).

Juror Andrea Pollan said of the show:

It is always a pleasure and an honor to be asked to jury an exhibition, particularly a national one as it is impossible to get around the country and see this much work in such a concentrated fashion. Small works carry their own gem-like intensity. The scale of small works calls for particular skill in rendering an image legible. Of the 415 works submitted, I culled it down to the 71 works on view. The last stages of selecting an exhibition are always the most difficult as one inevitably sacrifices some good work. Clearly artistic quality was the primary consideration in my selections. Generally I was trying to avoid work that looked too commercial, prosaic, or clichéd, given my background as a contemporary art curator. 

In addition to painting, drawings, and prints, this exhibition presents quite a bit of photography because there were numerous strong photographic submissions. Actually, almost 2/3 of the show is photography. Some may consider this a bias on my part, although I consider myself an equal opportunity curator for all media. It was clear that this show attracts good photographers, and the medium has taken its place as one of great importance since its inception in the 1830s, but it has had a long art historic battle to get here. 

The awards include works in all media. First prize goes to the extremely tight and powerful photographic composition by Gesche Wuerfel. I also admired its conceptual conceit, titled as it was by longitude and latitude. I awarded Second prize to the witty and eccentric drawings of Art McSweeney, whose work has a its finger on the pulse of a collective anxiety about the mechanization of the world. Third prize goes to the haunting portrait of a sister by Maron Resur. The acidic colors emphasize the internalized melancholic psychological stat of the model. Fourth prize goes to Jane Vaught for her formalist Denkmal series of photographs. These convey the authority of structure and direction with a poetic eye. Honorable mentions go to painters Claire Feng for her simple lush painterly portrait of a man with a beard and Leslie Lusardi for her alternate take on the landscape/cityscape tradition and how we mostly experience these in transit in contemporary life.

We heartily congratulate this year's award winners and feel fortunate to have had the opportunity to show their work along with so many other talented and dedicated artists.  This year's award winners and the work for which they were awarded are listed below.

 

Best In Show($500)

Gesche Wuerfel

"N 51°30.806 - W000°00.066"

Digital C-Print

 

Second Place ($250)

Art McSweeney

"Saint and Dragon"

Graphite, Ink Wash, Watercolor on Paper

 

Third Place ($150)

Maron Resur

"Sister 3"

Oil and Acrylic on Canvas

 

Fourth Place ($100)

Jane Vaught

"Denkmal Series"

Inkjet Prints

 

Honorable Mention

Claire Feng

"Maryland Man with Beard"

Oil on Canvas

 

Honorable Mention

Leslie Lusardi

"Cal/Train Commute Series"

Oil on Canvas

To see all the work chosen for the 2009 Manchester National Juried Fine Art Exhibition, kindly follow this link.

The exhibition continues through August 2nd, 2009 followed by an exhibition of collage and assemblage by The Virginia Collage Society opening August 23, 2009.

12 12 Gallery, South Richmond's Fine Art Gallery, is located at 12 East 12th Street, in the John B Anderson House, just east of Hull Street. Gallery hours are Thursdays and Fridays 12-4, Saturdays 11-6, and by appointment.

Are You Paying Atttention To Your Inner Critic?

Source: WSJ Health Journal

Silencing a Voice That Says You’re a Fraud

By Melinda Beck

A physician starts playing a harsh mental tape in her head every time a new patient calls: What if I make the wrong diagnosis? I’m a terrible doctor. How did I get into medical school?

An executive loses his job and despite 25 productive years, he tells himself: I’m a loser. I can’t provide for my family, and I’ll never be able to again.

An eminent scholar is offered a top post in the Obama administration and his first reaction is: They must have made a mistake.

If these real-life examples sound familiar, you may have a caustic commentary running in your head, too. Psychologists say many of their patients are plagued by a harsh Inner Critic — including some extremely successful people who think it’s the secret to their success.

An Inner Critic can indeed roust you out of bed in the morning, get you on the treadmill (literally and figuratively) and spur you to finish that book or symphony or invention.

But the desire to achieve can get hijacked by harsh judgment and unrelenting fear. “There’s a healthy version and an unhealthy version,” says Daniel F. Seidman, a clinical psychologist at Columbia University Medical Center in New York. In some cases, he says, “people may achieve a lot, but they are totally miserable about it.”

Unrelenting self-criticism often goes hand in hand with depression and anxiety, and it may even predict depression. In a study of 107 patients in the latest issue of Comprehensive Psychiatry, David M. Dunkley at Jewish General Hospital in Montreal and colleagues found that those who were most self-critical were the most likely to be depressed and have difficulties in relationships four years later, even if they weren’t depressed to begin with.

Self-criticism is also a factor in eating disorders, self-mutilation and body dysmorphic disorder — that is, preoccupation with one’s perceived physical flaws. “We have expanded what we expect of material success and physical appearance so that it’s completely unrealistic,” says Robert L. Leahy, a psychiatrist and director of the American Institute for Cognitive Therapy in New York.

Many people’s Inner Critic makes an appearance early in life and is such a constant companion that it’s part of their personality. Psychologists say that children, particularly those with a genetic predisposition to depression, may internalize and exaggerate the expectations of parents or peers or society. One theory is that self-criticism is anger turned inward, when sufferers are filled with hostility but too afraid and insecure to let it out. Other theories hold that people who scold themselves are acting out guilt or shame or subconsciously shielding themselves against criticism from others: You can’t tell me anything I don’t already tell myself, in even harsher terms.

Read the rest…

Drawing by Silje Alberthe Kamille Friis

A Letter to the Student of Painting

By Charles Philip Brooks
12 12 Gallery Artist In Residence

Your day contains a great measure of freedom. Your responsibility as a painter is here within the walls of the studio and in the setting of the landscape. You have the opportunity to exercise genuine mastery at every step, and it is in this spirit of grand possibility that I hope you will reflect on the advice made plain here.

Do not grieve too long for the troubles of the outside world. There is important work to be done here. We can best express our care for all others by attending to our work well.

Allow yourself the peace of purpose and the knowledge that to make another attempt with the brush is a noble thing. If you accept the discipline of the truest principles of art, then yours is the reward of an unbroken line of tradition.

Therefore, you may earnestly free your mind of all heartaches, sadness, and transitory despairs. Creation is above these things.

Your vocation is as real and as true as any other. Those who denounce the artist as idle manifest a deep ignorance of the nature of art. Have faith that the civilized will somewhere, at some time, value your well-wrought works. It is a miracle that the world keeps its havens for art and yet it does. Know that to create art is to do a necessary piece of work. The most noble pleasures and measureless joys result from such endeavors. True art is undeniable and it is a gift for all humanity.

The threefold responsibility of the artist is: to creation, the individual talent, and to humanity. For creation – the whole of nature – we must cultivate prayerful awe. This is our source of work and our refuge as well. We should seek harmony with nature. For the individual talent – long hours and years of steady industry hope to find our abilities fulfilled, our minds, hearts, and hands put to valuable service. In this way, we maintain the sanctity of art. Lastly, we make to humanity a willing gift of all we do. Our control over the material world lasts only a lingering moment and it takes a generous soul to build the ambition of a lifetime and then to hand it over in trust to the future.

Painting requires the bravery of solitude. Painting requires disciplined labor. To be a painter is to search the world with a benevolent eye for every subtle beauty that the infinite world offers.

Here is the opportunity to give your honest effort and to add in any small way to the legacy of art. Cultivate patience in your heart and you will improve. Learn to see well and your hand will become sure.

No pain or doubt can invade the honest soul engaged in the communion of creation. We artists must love the world with our deepest selves and forgive it at every turn.

To paint even a little passage with a measure of quality is to achieve a life’s triumph.

Spend your days wisely with the best thoughts and works of those who have walked the road before you. Search their paths, their timeless inspirations, and the lineage of their genius. Learn your craft well and your talent will mature into its full possibility. Keep an obedient heart before nature. She is the master above all other masters. Nature is the concrete manifestation of all that remains true and sublime. Let us always be thankful for her abundance and hopeful that we might approach her in our art. Nature will renew every generation of painters, ready to illuminate the minds of those who practice the art with what is calm, rational, beautiful, sublime, and eternal.

Such is the purity of your vocation. Treat every moment before the easel as a quick and tender opportunity. Invest your most noble self. Give your most noble self. To be a painter is to enjoy a precious state of life.

Manchester National Juried Fine Art Exhibition: Small Works 2009

12 12 Gallery presents its third annual all-media competition that features 71 works from 40 artists selected by juror Andrea Pollan, Director and Curator of the Curator's Office, Washington, D.C.  Over 400 entries were submitted by 123 artists from across the US and Canada. Awards presentation and artists' reception on Sunday, June 28th, from 2 - 5 pm.

 

The exhibition runs through Sunday, August 2nd.

Sister 3 | Maron Resur                 Saint & Dragon | Arthur Mc Sweeney Natalia Karpinskaia | Water Divisions Eddee Daniel | Alhambra Judith Krone | Northern Lights Virginia artists Alex Grabiec (Farmville), Michael Bednar (Charlottesville), Jason Stick (Norfolk), Jane Vaught (Richmond), and Jordi Williams (Lynchburg) are among the finalists competing for up to $1000 in cash prizes.   Other finalists are Jerry Atnip, Erwin Barona , Therese Brown, Chris Dame, Eddee Daniel, Adrian Davis, Laura Denardo, Barbara Dombach, Claire Feng, Sandra Freeman, Jenny Freestone, Harry Giglio, Suzanne Goldish, Tim Greyhavens, Karla Hackenmiller, Jeffrey Haupt, Esther Hidalgo, Bruce Ho, Petar Iliev, James Ivey, Mary Shannon Johnstone, Natalia Karpinskaia, Judith Krone, Leslie Lusardil, John Math, Brittain McJunkin, Art McSweeney, Marcia Middleton, Susan Mulder, Eric Rennie, Maron Resur, Amy Carmichael Smith, Mare Vaccaro, Megan Van Wagoner, and Gesche Wuerfel. It is not our policy to give out the artist’s current address and telephone number without first asking permission. We are happy to contact the artist on your behalf with a request.