…the beer and the attention.
Who doesn’t love being linked from a site called Big Slice of Awesome?
(Don’t go getting all meta on me and point out he linked to me ’cause I linked to him, that takes all the joy away).
I do believe I’ll have a Flying Dog or two tonight at Artomatic to celebrate.
Neal Stewart loves Artomatic. Read all about it at denverpost.com.
Artomatic loves Neal. He’s the marketing director for Flying Dog, our awesome beer sponsor. We’d love Neal even if he didn’t work for Flying Dog. We’d love Flying Dog even if they weren’t our beer sponsor. But they are, so everyone wins.
Tonight is Blogger’s Night at Artomatic. It’s my night off (famous last words). I need some sleep, but you should go and hang out and have some free pizza. Thanks to Angela, Erin, and Jack for making this happen.
Despite being the Steering Committee Co-Chair, I was slow to sign up for Artomatic this year and ended up way way down on the waiting list. I’ve got a site now and and lots of people are anxious to know if the ants are returning.
I won’t keep you in suspense, I’ve convinced Roger we should use my installation space to get as many people as possible involved in our Sunflower Project (see also: sunflower art festival).
I’m also doing a performance piece, but more on that later, I’ve just returned from a run in Golden Gate Park and I smell like a yak. I should really take a shower since Jessica and I are going to while away the rest of the day eating and drinking coffee and shopping for yummy shoes.
In the May 2008 issue of Art in America magazine, J.W. Mahoney writes about the DC Art scene in, “To a Different Drum.” On the 2nd page of the article, he talks about Artomatic:
Of two particularly avant-garde institutions that have endured the test of time, though, only one has a fixed address… (he then talks about DCAC before moving on to Artomatic)
The other institution, Artomatic, established in 1999, is fluid in every respect. It is an annual – sometimes semiannual – resolutely non-curated exhibition of Washington-area artists, a pay-for-space proposition open to anyone at all who wants to show something they have made. it takes place anywhere large enough to accommodate the deluge of art that comes in, making exhibition spaces out of anything from a former children’s museum to two floors of an office building, to an enormous empty laundry complex. The presence of so much amateur work is overwhelming, promting the Washington Post’s chief art critic, Blake Gopnik, to compare visiting Artomatic to an extended dental appointment. But the beauty of Artomatic’s esthetic anarchy is in its abundant innocence, not in any obviously savvy consideration of contemporary art issues. And, critically viewed, some surprisingly serious, innovative work crops up in unusual places, just around some unlikely corner of the show.
Nice to see some kind words about now, everyone is in overdrive creating and hanging work and complaining and generally getting on one another’s nerves (not to mention placing dozens of phonecalls and generating hundreds of emails per day) so it’s good to be reminded why we’re doing this.
It’s been another 15 hour day and I’m losing my voice so enough is enough. Time to finally watch The Orphanage, if I can stay awake.