Book — 100 Artists of Washington, D.C. by F. Lennox Campello

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Complete text from the City Paper website. Saved copy on the AI drive (_GROK_BOT/SHARED/citypaper).

In case you missed it, last week The Washington Post announced Steven Silburg as the winner of its Real Art D.C. contest. It’s an honor to be the top dog in any race, but this prize is a little dubious—-and not just because of the title, which evokes two reality shows that create more court jesters than kings, The Real World and Real Housewives. Seventeen thousand Washington Post readers voted in the contest, but 75 percent of the votes were split between Silberg and runner-up Stephanie Booth. Silberg barely stayed on the island with a 200-vote margin.

While this competition was no doubt spurred by art patron Mera Rubell‘s December observation of D.C.’s “artists in isolation,” the Post‘s Jessica Dawson—-as the (presumed) lone judge and jury before the final round—-blurred some boundaries: Should a critic also be a judge? Sure, art criticism and contest judge are subjective exercises (bound by bits of objectivity). However, being an arts writer for a major newspaper requires, at the very least, to withdraw from criticism if there is a conflict of interest. Does judging affect her objectivity for future criticism, or did past bits of criticism and show-hopping cloud her judgment regarding who was selected as a finalist? Since the goal of the contest was to “discover the Washington region’s newest talents,” I can’t say she was effective at bringing new talent to the table… and in some cases she should have known better.

Of the 10 finalists, six were already familiar—-if not yet fully exposed—-talent. Lisa McCarty, Kristina Bilonik, and Silburg have exhibited at the larger regional nonprofits over the past few years, and a couple of them have been written up in Post pieces by Michael O’Sullivan. Joel D’Orazio‘s been around a lot longer. Adam Dwight has had quite a bit of buzz throughout the year, and Travis Childers was a Sondheim semifinalist in 2009.

That Keinyo White is an illustrator might create a bias against his craft from a fine-art perspective, but his selection as a finalist will broaden his audience and blur those fine art-commercial art boundaries. Recent graduates Jenny Yang and Chloe Watson (despite whatever exposure they may have had from Corcoran and MICA) and public school art teacher Stephanie Booth are also welcome newcomers to the WaPo readership.

But the contest had other problems. If you wanted to judge for yourself and traipse through the 4000-plus image entries submitted to the site, it would have taken at least 90 minutes on a DSL connection. Fast math says that each image would then get less than a one-second glance, though 50 percent of the time that was too long for any of a number of reasons: the slide was a duplicate, the work wasn’t really qualified to be in the competition, or the artist was overqualified. Even submitter “Prince George” recognized his work didn’t belong, stating, “there is some good art on this site. This is not one of those sets…”

To clarify, roughly half of all work entered had one suitable place: Artomatic. Perhaps it is elitist to declare that the conversation of contemporary art has no space for micro-lens floral photos and poorly rendered graphite celebrity fan art, but it is the truth. The only spaces for such work are waiting rooms and refrigerators (respectively). As for the artists who were more-than-qualified: It’s sort of embarrassing that six people from Lenny Campello‘s top 100 (Laurel Lukaszewski, Carol Brown Goldberg, Matt Sesow, Dana Ellyn, Tim Tate, and Renee Butler), not to mention the book’s author, all submitted work. And simply because they were not among Campello’s hundred doesn’t excuse submissions by Christopher Sims, Ryan Hill, Katherine Mann, and Trevor Young.

Of the rest that remain… well, there was a lot of academic stuff that I wouldn’t be surprised to find in galleries named Apex or Pinnacle (not that that’s a bad thing). But that’s not to say those academic submissions weren’t at least mildly interesting, especially when bookended by Obama art. Of the remaining art that was arguably decent, about 50 artists caught my eye. In the spirit of the competition, I’ll give a list of 10. This is not to discredit the finalists. In fact, I don’t even know if I would classify these as finalists, since I won’t ruminate heavily over them. Consider this my “in addition to.” Here are there usernames (some of them neglected to fill out a profile). I’ll spare them less-than-constructive suggestions and snarky/snide quips to summarize their efforts:

dant2 kraghvon 1armywife gbdriggers1 chezkevito topperfiona billyfriebele singersus mahajohn croft58 On the whole, the Real Art D.C. experiment contained some fun. One major criticisms of the D.C. art scene is that the Post needs to be the paper of record when it comes to the art in and around the nation’s capital. Support of the local art scene by a national paper with the fifth largest readership in the country helps solidify the region as an art destination. To see the energies of Dawson and the Post invested into the region with this contest—-not to mention some of chief critic Blake Gopnik‘s recent forays into D.C. galleries—-has been welcome and refreshing. But the experiment had plenty of flaws, too—-and they don’t entirely belong to the Post. Some rest on the shoulders of art faculty at the two dozen or so area colleges and universities for not encouraging their talent to submit to a contest partially designed for them.

Still, if exercises like Real Art D.C. are executed enough times, and end up energizing new talent, and the Post continues to pay attention to that new talent, then maybe the museums and galleries of Washington, D.C., can stop revisiting the Washington Color School every three yearsand dusting off Gene Davis’ corpse every time their gift shops need to make a buck.

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Photographed by Matt Sesow from his press packets, October 18, 2026; text transcribed from the photos by Claude.

100 Artists of Washington, D.C.

F. Lennox Campello

Schiffer

Copyright © 2011 by F. Lennox Campello

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Dana Ellyn
Website: www.danaellyn.com

Dana Ellyn lives and paints in her studio in a subsidized artist housing unit in downtown Washington, DC, where she paints everyday at a frenetic pace. Ellyn committed herself to full-time status in 2002 when she decided to leave her corporate job and pursue painting. Her work is exemplified by a risk-taking vision, strong content, and colorful critiques of social norms.

Ellyn's style sits on the fence between social realism and expressionism. Having spent her childhood and college years honing her skills and striving to be technically correct, she has tasked herself with unlearning those restrictive habits during the past eight years.

Ellyn strives to infuse more emotion and meaning into each new painting she creates. Ellyn's paintings have stories to tell and opinions to profess. She delivers hard slaps to myths of all kinds—from religion, to politics, to what it means to be a woman. Ellyn's goal is to employ humor when holding a subject up to her artistic scrutiny. But humor is as subjective as art, and Ellyn's brand of humor has tended to be a polarizing factor in her art. Love it or hate it, she definitely starts a dialogue.

From childhood until about the age of 30, Ellyn was quiet and reserved. She has now found her voice and she's making up for lost time.

[Captions:]
Image courtesy of the artist.
The Last Tango, c. 2010. Acrylic on canvas. 24" x 36". Image courtesy of the artist.
Divine Wine, c. 2009. Acrylic on canvas. 24" x 30". Image courtesy of the artist.
[Painting text: DIVINE WINE / Bottled at the Source + mise en bouteille]

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Making Up Jesus, c. 2009. Oil on canvas. 44" x 70". Image courtesy of the artist.

Children of the Corn Syrup, c. 2009. Acrylic on canvas. 24" x 30". Image courtesy of the artist.

The Books, c. 2010. Acrylic on canvas. 14" x 18". Image courtesy of the artist.

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Matt Sesow
Website: www.sesow.com

Matt Sesow, born 1966, began painting in 1994 as a hobby while working at IBM as a software engineer. Sesow is a self-taught artist and attributes his physical disability (Sesow lost an arm as a child) as the primary influence for his painting style, iconography, and inspiration.

His travels, politics, and reaction to popular culture add to the diversity of his subject matter while maintaining the consistency of a raw-edgy style. He is a ferocious painter with an extraordinary production rate: Sesow is always painting.

Matt Sesow is an international artist with well-reviewed solo exhibitions in cities such as Barcelona, Spain, and Albi, France.

Domestically, Sesow has had numerous solo exhibitions across the continental United States as well as participating in a multitude of group showings including the "Holy H20" exhibit at the American Visionary Museum (Baltimore) in 2004/2005.

As a fiercely independent artist, and in spite of showing his work worldwide in many galleries on two continents, Sesow sells the majority of his paintings directly to his collectors from his website, which has been active since 1996.

[Photo caption:] Image courtesy of the artist.

[Captions:]
Lady, c. 2010. Oil/Acrylic on canvas. 48" x 22". Image courtesy of the artist.

Self-Portrait, c. 2010. Oil on canvas. 40" x 30". Image courtesy of the artist.

Scoundrel, c. 2010. Oil on canvas. 40" x 30". Image courtesy of the artist.

Below Shoulder Amputee Queen, c. 2010. Oil on canvas. 24" x 18". Image courtesy of the artist.

Innocent Intention, c. 2010. Oil/Acrylic on canvas. 30" x 40". Image courtesy of the artist.

Superman or Scoundrel, c. 2010. Oil/Acrylic on paper. 40" x 26". Image courtesy of the artist

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Artist's Bibliographies

[...end of previous artist's entry:]
May 11, 2000.
O'Sullivan, Michael. "Different Strokes." The Washington Post, November 26, 2004.
Wennerstrom, Nord. "Erik Thor Sandberg." Art Forum, Summer 2009.

Matt Sesow
Knight, Molly. "Vanguard: Drawing Lines." Washington, DC Style Magazine, January/February 2006.
Nose, A.V. "Meeting of Naïve/Self-Taught Artists." Raw Vision Magazine, Fall/Autumn 2009.
Selen, Betty-Carol. Self taught, Outsider, and Folk Art. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, Inc., 2000.
Smith, Brendan L. "Breaking News." DC Modern Luxury Magazine, July/August 2009.

Foon Sham
[Bibliography of Foon Sham follows — not about Sesow; partly transcribed:]
Dawson, Jessica. "Foon Sham at Project 4: (Phone) Book Smart." The Washington Post, June 5, 2009.
Genocchio, Benjamin. "Modern Twist to an Age-Old Idea." New York Times December 16, 2007.
Harper, Glenn. "Tangible Reality: The Work of Foon Sham." 3-5. The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, May 2006. An exhibition catalog [cut off]

Dana Ellyn
Basu, Moni. "Taking aim at God on 'Blasphemy Day.'" CNN, September 30, 2009, http://www.cnn.com/2009/LIVING/09/30/first.blasphemy.day.
Larmondy, Leanne. "Did you celebrate Blasphemy Day?" USA Today, October 2, 2009.
Zak, Dan. "D.C. couple put hearts to canvas at their wedding turned gallery show." The Washington Post, February 10, 2010.

Fred Folsom
Allen, Henry. "Where Reality's on Tap." The Washington Post, December 4, 1992.
Campello, F. Lennox. "Editor's profile: Fred Folsom." Washingtonpost.com, September 23, 1999.
Peterson, Gordon. "Studio 9: Fred Folsom at WPA." WUSA TV, Washington, DC, December 12, 1992.

Helen C. Frederick
[cut off]

Artist's Bibliographies