Pictured above: POST COVID: SACRED GEOMETRY CIRCLE WITH PEARLS by Annette Polan; Acrylic on panel with pearls and other jewels, 24” diameter

By Lennox Campello

The month of August not only brings the latest edition of The Old Town Crier, but it will also bring the first of fifteen – yup! Fifteen! – Openings at 15 venues, which are now part of the Women Artists of the DMV, survey show. This makes this show not only the first ever major survey of the female artists working in the fine arts across the Greater Washington capital region, but I am also told that this is now the largest ever curated group show – ever – in the USA.

Curating about 400 artists from nearly 4,000 applications was a major labor of patience and curatorial bravado on my part, and over the last few months I have highlighted some key and emerging artists via this column, and with your (as Stephen King would say “constant reader”) indulgence, let me discuss a few more.

Let me introduce you to several superwomen of the DMV art world.

Sophia McCrocklin’s is an artistic tornado! But the kind of tornado that leaves behind impressive artwork where the powerful artistic winds are fueled by her inspiration to explore the natural world and to explore the intricate details and hidden beauty of often-overlooked plants in the forest.

She observes that “each species I encounter presents a unique challenge and an opportunity to delve deeper into the fascinating world of botany. This journey has resulted in the creation of large-scale fiber botanical sculptures and small pen-and-ink drawings of the plants found in the forested areas of Rock Creek Park and Dumbarton Oaks Park.”

And just like the aforementioned tornado, her process to create the artwork is almost exhausting to behold!

She explains that “creating each large-scale fiber sculpture takes three to six months, depending on the complexity of the work required. The fun begins by enlarging photographs of each specimen up to 15 times the specimen’s original size to examine its circulatory system. Then I draw an image of the specimen on woven white Dacron. Next, I cut out the drawing, sew the pieces together by machine, and insert copper wires along the seams to support the stalk and stems. Afterward, I carefully cut out the fine details with tiny surgical scissors and hand-sew the remaining parts using pliers and heavy thread to complete the sculpture. Finally, to finish the botanical fiber sculpture, I paint it (because it is still white) with colorful acrylic paints to reveal the vascular system of the plant. It is then mounted on stretched canvas painted with subtle impressions of cherry blossoms, to reflect its deep connection to the District of Columbia. The whole piece is placed in a deep shadow box, further enhancing its visual appearance as a three-dimensional specimen.”

This is what you call a process!

I am fully convinced that Margery Goldberg is fine arts AI.

In the world of the fine arts, Margery Goldberg can do anything and has in fact done pretty much everything related to the fine arts in the Greater Capital region! I cannot think of a single human being who has had more of an artistic footprint on this region than this superpower of a woman!

She is not only a brilliantly talented artist herself, as her gorgeous sculpture “He She Tree” proves (it will be exhibited at the American University Museum at the Katzen Arts Center in Washington, DC next month), but also a fine arts gallerist with the longest running independent fine arts gallery in the DMV — one which has been running for decades and decades – a curator, activist, arts advocate, political mastermind, and may I add that she will forget more about the fine arts than most of us will ever learn!

In the past, I have discussed all the art created as a result of the COVID monster that was released upon the world in 2019.  An exceptional work inspired by the Covidian Age (a.k.a. Covidism) is Annette Polan’s “Post Covid: Sacred Geometry Circle with Pearls” which is part of a series of abstract paintings that Polan has been working on since the Pandemic. “It grew out of my abrupt shift away from commissioned portraits in 2020 when it wasn’t possible to interact with clients in person,” she explains.

She goes on, “At this time, I read Carl Jung’s essay on “Sacred Geometry” and was fascinated with the idea that all space, both macro and micro, is divided into circles and squares. I limited myself to working with only these basic geometric shapes and gave myself different formal problems to solve in each painting.”

To finish, the DMV is home to over 200,000 immigrants of all legal statuses (yes – that is the plural of status); the second-largest Salvadoran population in the United States and the largest immigrant group in the DMV.

In September at the Katzen,  one of the works from Muriel Hasbun’s series “Pulse: New Cultural Registers/Pulso: Nuevos registros culturales”, which is a series which recognizes the cultural legacy of El Salvador during the 1980s and 1990s using Hasbun’s personal and historical archives.

She told me that “it imprints the rescued archive of the renowned Galería el laberinto –an epicenter of cultural activity in El Salvador during its civil war, founded by my late mother Janine Janowski — along with my own photographic archive of the time onto the national seismographic record of El Salvador. The constructed photographs transform the land into a fully lived and witnessed “thirdspace” of memory and “vivencias,” while mapping personal and collective history into a new meeting ground for the future.”

In her work, both the past, family history, and cultural legacy, all live together.

About the Author: F. Lennox Campello’s art news, information, gallery openings, commentary, criticism, happenings, opportunities, and everything associated with the global visual arts scene with a special focus on the Greater Washington, DC area has been a premier source for the art community for over 20 years. Since 2003, his blog has been the 11th highest ranked art blog on the planet with over SIX million visitors.