Martin Luther King Day

David Datuna, "Portrait of America"

David Datuna, “Portrait of America”

In honor of MLK Day: Artist David Datuna‘s “Portrait of America” The work is a large collage is layered over with different optical lenses – a gigantic, 12-foot-long American flag, covered with portraits of American luminaries from George Washington to Martin Luther King, Jr. to Steve Jobs. As the entire piece is covered with eyeglass lenses of different prescriptions, it either magnifies or distorts the images, depending on how you look at them. 

Datuna used about 2,000 lenses to build his work.

Datuna used about 2,000 lenses to build his work.

Before he became an artist, David Datuna made his living working in an eyeglass store.
Learning to fit people with glasses, in many ways, was a lot like making art, he says. Every day, he saw how people viewed the same object through different lenses, colors, shapes and frames. In some sense, he could alter the way people saw the world.

'Portrait of America', the seminal work of David Datuna’s “Viewpoint of Billions” series, is the first public installation and artwork in the world to utilize Google Glass. The vision of an artist whose story is akin to the American dream, Portrait of America chronicles the journey of a diverse and great nation through a new visual language.

‘Portrait of America’, the seminal work of David Datuna’s “Viewpoint of Billions” series, is the first public installation and artwork in the world to utilize Google Glass. The vision of an artist whose story is akin to the American dream, Portrait of America chronicles the journey of a diverse and great nation through a new visual language.

In Memoriam: Marvin Lipofsky (1938- 2016)

Marvin Lipofsky

Marvin Lipofsky

Some sad news just came to the studio – we received word that Studio Glass great Marvin Lipofsky passed away. 

Marvin Lipofsky was one of the six students that Studio Glass founder Harvey Littleton instructed in a program at the University of Wisconsin-Madison in fall 1962 and spring 1963. He was a central figure in the dissemination of the American Studio Glass Movement, introducing it to California through his tenure as an instructor at the University of California, Berkeley and the California College of Arts and Crafts. 

Marvin Lipofsky - L'viv Group, No. 2, 2001-2002. Blown, cut and sandblasted glass. 8.5 x 18.5 x 18 in.

Marvin Lipofsky – L’viv Group, No. 2, 2001-2002. Blown, cut and sandblasted glass. 8.5 x 18.5 x 18 in.

Many of Lipofsky’s works are colorful “bubbles” of glass. Often semi-translucent they allow the viewer to examine their depths. He was best known for the organic form of his pieces. “His art is about the visceral and the gestural,” wrote Studio Glass connoisseur Dan Klein. “The forms are inspired by internal organs, intestines, breast, stomachs, brains; their colorful, mottled, crumpled, broken shapes and expression of turbulence and restlessness.” Lipofsky is well known for having devoted his career in glass to endless variations on the turbulent, broken bubble form.

His work, in short, was about glassblowing and the way the ways in which a blown glass sphere could be opened, shaped and distorted.

Tina Oldknow, the retired Senior Curator of Modern and Contemporary Glass at the Corning Museum of Glass, has written that she admires Lipofsky “for his devotion to material and form. His non-objective vessels break apart and rearrange the blown glass mass while retaining the breathy, ephemeral quality that is one of the medium’s most intriguing characteristics”.

Marvin Lipofsky’s beautiful work provides a powerful and enduring legacy.

Call for Entry: EMULSION 2016!

third-annual.emulsion

East City Art (ECA) announces its Third Annual Regional Juried Show: EMULSION!

This call for entry is open to all residents of the Washington-Baltimore metropolitan area, providing an opportunity for artists from the central Mid-Atlantic to showcase the extraordinary diversity in regional contemporary art.

An emulsion combines two seemingly incompatible ingredients to produce a third yet entirely new substance.  In this spirit, East City Art’s EMULSION seeks to combine the culturally different yet geographically close regions of Washington and Baltimore and to combine a wide array of art forms and mediums from two-dimensional work to performance based pieces.

This call for entry is open to all residents 18 years of age or over who reside or create art within 50 miles of East City Art’s headquarters located at 922 G Street SE. 

PRIZES
$1,500 First Place Prize
$1,000 Second Place Prize
$500 Third Place Prize
Two $150 Plaza Artist Materials Gift Cards via People’s Choice Awards

Location
Gallery O on H located at 1354 H Street NE in the heart of the Atlas Entertainment District

Exhibition Dates
Opening Reception Sat. April 9, 2016
People’s Choice Awards: Sat. April 16, 2016
Exhibition on view April 9-15, 2016 with weeklong programming

Application Deadline
Monday, February 15, 2016 at 11:59:59 p.m. EST

JUROR

Maryland Art Place Executive Director Amy Cavanaugh Royce

Full ECA Prospectus HERE

Apply online HERE

Fees: The application fee is $40

Work to be Considered: All work will be considered including but not limited to two dimensional work (painting, photography, digital imaging, drawing), three dimensional work (sculpture), performance art and new media.

About ECA: East City Art ’s mission is to connect local artists with the community at large by creating a dialog between artists and members of the community. As a community-based publication, East City Art highlights the irrefutable link between economic development and the arts, drawing attention to the valuable contributions artists, galleries and educational centers bring to neighborhoods. The visual arts provide neighborhood vitality and stimulate local businesses while encouraging residential and retail development. Most importantly, the arts provide a vibrant forum for community discussion, debate and discovery. East City Art believes art’s most important role lies in its ability to lift the human spirit through a common visual language that transcends class, race and gender.

For all inquiries please direct emails to editor@eastcityart.com

Get Back To Work!

The holidays are over – time to address the backlog of work for upcoming exhibits. Artist Sean Hennessey begins to work on a new series for shows this coming spring.

Glass artist Sean Hennessey, co-owner of Otis Street Arts, works it in the glass studio.

Glass artist Sean Hennessey, co-owner of Otis Street Arts, works it in the glass studio.

Sean Hennessey gets back to work. Look for Sean's work in NYC at upcoming art fairs!

Sean Hennessey gets back to work. Look for Sean’s work in NYC at upcoming art fairs!