Welcome to The Artful Five
-our weekly picks for getting your art and culture fix!
SEE Finding a Voice Through Printmaking: Works by Curlee Raven Holton at Pyramid Atlantic Art Center. This retrospective of print work by the internationally renowned artist shares over 50 works and represents a variety of print techniques and subjects from his nearly 40-year career. Says Holton, “The art of printmaking and its dynamic variations [allow] the intersections of studio-based art practices and new technologies… [producing] creative mutations and alterations that generate singular or multiple images that speak most effectively to my intellectual, creative, and aesthetic concerns.” Finding a Voice is on view through March 2.
LISTEN to interviews with Pulitzer Prize winning cartoonist Jules Feiffer, who died recently at the age of 95. Best known for his satirical cartoons, Feiffer also wrote stage plays (“Little Murders” and “Knock, Knock”); screenplays (“Carnal Knowledge” and “Popeye”); and illustrated and authored children’s books. In this 1982 Fresh Air interview with Terry Gross, he discussed his collection of work “Jules Feiffer’s America: From Eisenhower to Reagan,” and just last year, he chatted with NPR’s Scott Simon about “Amazing Grapes,” his first graphic novel for middle-school-age children.
WATCH contemporary artist Vincent Valdez discuss Just a Dream…, his first national touring exhibition, on PBS News Hour’s CANVAS. Valdez, who’s been making art since childhood, focuses on subjects that explore his observations and experience of life in the twenty-first century. The results are powerful images of American identity that confront injustice and inequity while imbuing his subjects with empathy and humanity.
CATCH The DMV Collects the DMV at The Kreeger Museum before it closes on February 1. The exhibit “celebrates the 60th anniversary of the Washington Print Club by presenting an encapsulated history of regional artists and institutions selected from members’ collections,” says guest curator and Washington Print Club member Laura Roulet. Works by forty-nine artists who lived or built their careers in D.C., Maryland, and Virginia (DMV) represented by works on paper, ranging from drawing, painting, and photography to print-making. This exhibition is presented under The Collaborative, a program developed by The Kreeger Museum to support Washington-area artists.
HELP CLARIFY history. If you can read cursive handwriting, The National Archives wants you! They have a lot of documents written in cursive, some centuries-old, that are difficult to read—particularly for those who never learned cursive. Become a transcriber in their Citizen Archive program and help make history understandable and accessible.
