Doug,
I've sampled "Hometown Holidays" for quite a number of years. It's an easy drive & park. But the
booking of musical acts remains an intriguing curatorial puzzle for me. One factor may simply be
cash budget: I suspect they can't afford acts at the height of their popularity, so I get free
samples of acts whose numbers are diminishing. The tastiest sampling was 2-3 years ago, when
we were treated to both LIVE and the Gin Blossoms. On the other hand, perhaps 6 years ago the
remnants of Iron Butterfly played nothing memorable other than a bathysmal rendition of their one
hit. Still, the sociology of taste can justify a variety of brief samples for me.
Can anyone tell me which "Rockville" REM references?
Otherwise, the only visual art space in Rockville has a sophisticated curator, and I'm subtly
responsible for one of the artists being in a show that opens next Sunday.
STEPPING STONES
June 1 – July 7, 2008
Featuring the art of Gene Davis and his
students. Plus artists influenced by the
Washington Color School.
Yesterday I witnessed a painting by Gene Davis within 15 feet of a work by Canadian-born painter
Jack Bush amongst the Color as Field exhibit at the Smithsonian American Art Museum.
Color as Field: American Painting, 1950–1975 is the first ever full-scale examination of the
sources, meaning and impact of the Color Field movement. Color Field painting, which emerged in
the United States in the 1950s, is characterized by pouring, staining, spraying or painting thinned
paint onto raw canvas to create vast chromatic expanses. These works constitute one of the
crowning achievements of postwar American abstract art. The exhibition includes 39 beautiful and
impressively scaled paintings by such major figures as Gene Davis, Helen Frankenthaler, Morris
Louis, Kenneth Noland and Jules Olitski. Color as Field presents a remarkable opportunity for
viewers to fully comprehend the aims of these artists, view their finest works in close relation to
each other and experience the beauty and visual magnetism of their pictorial handling of space
and color.
There were also 3 paintings by Larry Poons, the subject of my first published piece of art criticism
(in Toronto's "Only Paper Today", edited by Victor Coleman at A Space), a review of Poons'
exhibition of chance-poured paintings at the David Mirvish Gallery.
Barry
On Sat, 24 May 2008 08:31:31 -0600, Douglas Barbour <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>Whew, some of the stuff you find out for us, Barry!
>
>Your research knows no bounds!
>
>Doug
>On 24-May-08, at 6:25 AM, Barry Alpert wrote:
>
>> I prefer downtown Rockville to downtown Silver Spring, but these
>> headliners! Ugh!
>>
>> Why "Hometown Holidays" didn't book REM remains unclear, though
>> perhaps the band refused their
>> invitation. Can't imagine anything other than positive resonance, &
>> lots of it, considering "the hook".
>>
>> www.rockvillemd.gov/events/special/hth/index.html
>>
>>
>> Barry
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