MICHAEL BOOKER’s solo “Veil” highlighted in Washingtonian Magazine

Here’s what you should check out this week:

A one-of-a-kind performance: Ben Folds, multi-platinum selling singer-songwriter and artistic advisor to the National Symphony Orchestra, is bringing his greatest hits to the Kennedy Center’s Concert Hall for one night only. He will be performing songs from his time as frontman of the Ben Folds Five, his solo career, and his many collaborative records. Monday 11/15 at 8 PM; $39-$79, buy tickets here.

Makin’ music: Bring the kids downtown for a lunchtime go-go music workshop in Franklin Park. Dante Pope, soul-vocalist and drummer, will teach the young musicians about the role of percussion instruments in creating the funky rhythms. Drumsticks will be provided. Tuesday 11/16 at 11 AM; Free, register here.

Fall vibes: Learn the art of floral design in a fall wreath-making workshop from local women-owned flower shop She Loves Me. While the florists will teach you how to put a variety of fresh seasonal flowers and plants on a brass structure, sip on a complimentary beverage from Denizens Brewing Co. in Riverdale Park, Md. Tuesday 11/16 from 6 PM-8 PM; Free, register here.

Reclaiming herself: Hear from model Emily Ratajkowski as she talks about her new memoir, My Body with New York magazine’s Hanna Rosin. In her book, Ratajkowski describes her personal exploration of feminism, sexuality, and power in a collection of essays that also investigates society’s fetishization of female beauty, the contempt for women’s sexuality, and the gray area between consent and abuse. Tuesday 11/16 at 7 PM; $12-$35, buy tickets here.

Have a laugh: Stand-up comedian Ali Siddiq started his comedy career by telling jokes in prison, which gave him the unique perspective and distinct style that has made thousands of people laugh over the past several years. This week, the Bring the Funny finalist will headline for his fourth time at the DC Improv Comedy Club. Wednesday 11/17 through Saturday 11/20 (times vary); $25-$30, buy tickets here.

Wine down: Relax after work with a watercolor painting session at Shop Made in DC’s Georgetown location. The self-guided DIY event comes with two prints to paint and two glasses of wine. Bring a friend, or come solo to meet some new friends. Wednesday 11/17 from 5 PM-7 PM; $20, buy tickets here.

Indigenous films: The National Museum of the American Indian’s Native Cinema Showcase started last week, and features several movies and panels from filmmakers from Indigenous communities throughout the Western Hemispheres and Arctic. Films include Rez Metal—which tells the story of a Navajo heavy metal band’s rise to fame—and Run Woman Run, about a bereaved single mother who gets her life back on track with the guidance of the ghost of her ancestor. Other programming includes short films that reflect Native storytelling traditions and panels about the hurdles that Indigenous filmmakers face. Through Thursday 11/18; Free, learn more here.

Storytelling through art: “Veil” is a new art exhibition at Morton Fine Art in Truxton Circle that depicts artist Michael Booker’s psychological journey throughout the pandemic and recent moments of social injustices. Booker combines watercolor, pen, and hand stitching to portray the resilience and strength of the Black community through troubling times. Through Saturday 12/4; Free, learn more here.

That’s all for now! Don’t forget to drop me a line at dbaker@washingtonian.com to let me know what you’re up to.

Damare Baker

ASSISTANT EDITOR

Before becoming an assistant editor, Damare Baker started out as an editorial fellow for Washingtonian. She has previously written for Voice of America and The Hill. She is a graduate of Georgetown University, where she studied international relations, Korean, and journalism.

MICHAEL ANDREW BOOKER’s solo exhibition “Veil” at Morton Fine Art

Video credit: Jarrett Hendrix

Morton Fine Art (52 O Street NW #302, Washington, DC) is pleased to present Veil, a solo presentation of new works on paper by artist Michael Booker, on view from November 6 – December 4, 2021.

Rendered on paper and Yupo, Booker’s latest body of work depicts surreal scenes evocative of the artist’s psychological journey through tumult and towards inner peace. In Booker’s compositions, portraits are partially shielded by swaths of color, and views are intercepted by lush organic forms. Joining geometric designs with figuration, Booker’s large-scale drawings are rich in dynamism and detail, the artist acting as a conductor of a broad symphony of colors and tones. Owing to the drawing practice itself as a healing mechanism, Veil documents the emotional terrains crossed by the artist amidst the COVID-19 pandemic and concurrent instances of social injustice. The exhibition’s title gestures towards the strategies of emotional self-protection harnessed by the artist during periods of vulnerability and contemplation, barriers made visible in the layered effects captured by the drawings themselves.

Despite the complexity of Booker’s compositions, each line and brushstroke remains visible, the artist using a wide range of materials and instruments, including fine liner pen, colored pencil, watercolor, and alcohol ink. Booker’s mastery of his tools is evidenced by his ability to create dense fields of light, shadow, and texture through the careful application of fine lines, resulting in superimposed tableaus reminiscent of collage or digital manipulation. Reverberating with the work’s themes, the meticulous process by which such depth and emotion is rendered echoes the strained experiences of self-reflection, growth, and reconciliation experienced by the artist during the course of these drawings’ creations.

“This exhibition chronicles a personal and emotional journey caused by the effects of a prolonged pandemic and moments of social injustice,” said artist Michael Booker. “Volatile social interactions became commonplace in both media and amongst friends. Over time, a realization of resiliency set in, as these drawings became a form of cathartic therapy to search for a nuanced visual reflection of the turmoil that lingered within.”

Though invested with fraught emotions, the cohesion and harmony of the resulting works ultimately foreground hope and optimism. Capturing individuals immersed in solitary contemplation as well as in embrace, Booker’s drawings suggest resilience and reconciliation amidst societal and interpersonal volatility, demonstrating a multiplicity of pathways toward new light.

Available Artwork by MICHAEL ANDREW BOOKER

MICHAEL ANDREW BOOKER speaks to his drawings in his solo exhibition “Veil” at Morton Fine Art

Video credit: Jarrett Hendrix

Morton Fine Art (52 O Street NW #302, Washington, DC) is pleased to present “Veil”, a solo presentation of new works on paper by artist Michael Booker, on view from November 6 – December 4, 2021.

Rendered on paper and Yupo, Booker’s latest body of work depicts surreal scenes evocative of the artist’s psychological journey through tumult and towards inner peace. In Booker’s compositions, portraits are partially shielded by swaths of color, and views are intercepted by lush organic forms. Joining geometric designs with figuration, Booker’s large-scale drawings are rich in dynamism and detail, the artist acting as a conductor of a broad symphony of colors and tones. Owing to the drawing practice itself as a healing mechanism, Veil documents the emotional terrains crossed by the artist amidst the COVID-19 pandemic and concurrent instances of social injustice. The exhibition’s title gestures towards the strategies of emotional self-protection harnessed by the artist during periods of vulnerability and contemplation, barriers made visible in the layered effects captured by the drawings themselves.

Available Artwork by MICHAEL ANDREW BOOKER

MICHAEL BOOKER in Create! Magazine

Create! Mag is pleased to share the announcement of Veil, a solo presentation of new works on paper by artist Michael Booker, on view from November 6 – December 4, 2021, at Morton Fine Art. Rendered on paper and Yupo, Booker’s latest body of work depicts surreal scenes evocative of the artist’s psychological journey through tumult and towards inner peace.

In Booker’s compositions, portraits are partially shielded by swaths of color, and views are intercepted by lush organic forms. Joining geometric designs with figuration, Booker’s large-scale drawings are rich in dynamism and detail, the artist acting as a conductor of a broad symphony of colors and tones. Owing to the drawing practice itself as a healing mechanism, Veil documents the emotional terrains crossed by the artist amidst the COVID-19 pandemic and concurrent instances of social injustice. The exhibition’s title gestures towards the strategies of emotional self-protection harnessed by the artist during periods of vulnerability and contemplation, barriers made visible in the layered effects captured by the drawings themselves.

Michael Booker, I Need a Forest Fire, 2021, 35.5″x35.5″, Fineliner pen, color pencil, watercolor and alcohol ink on paper and Yupo, Courtesy of the artist and Morton Fine Art

Michael Booker, Unwritten, 2020, 34″x25″, Fineliner pen, watercolor and doily on paper and Yupo, Courtesy the artist and Morton Fine Art

Michael Booker is a mixed media artist originally from Jackson, Mississippi who currently resides in Maryland. He received his BFA in Studio Art – Painting from Mississippi State University in 2008, and received his MFA in Studio Art from University of Maryland in 2012. He has exhibited in various galleries across Mississippi, Alabama, North Carolina, Maine, Maryland, Virginia, and Washington DC. His work has been acquired by the David C. Driskell Center in College Park, MD. He is an Assistant Professor of Art at Montgomery College Takoma Park/Silver Spring. Booker has been represented by Morton Fine Art in Washington, DC since 2019.

Headshot of the artist, Courtesy the artist and Morton Fine Art

Alicia Puig

Available Artwork by Michael Booker.

Wayne Thiebaud | Vonn Cummings Sumner | Manetti Shrem Museum | San Francisco Chronicle’s Datebook

ART & EXHIBITS

Celebrating Wayne Thiebaud’s influence as artist turns 101 at Manetti Shrem Museum

Tony Bravo October 30, 2021Updated: November 1, 2021, 9:07 am

“Three Treats” is one of more than a dozen Thiebaud works on view in “Wayne Thiebaud Influencer: A New Generation” at the Manetti Shrem Museum.Photo: © 2021 Wayne Thiebaud / Licensed by VAGA at Artists Rights Society (ARS), NY. / Photos by UC Davis/Greg Urquiaga

In his celebrated seven-decade career, painter Wayne Thiebaud has created a body of work that continues to captivate and inspire new viewers.

A pre-Pop Art innovator and figurative artist known for his elevation of everyday objects, Thiebaud has intersected with generations of students, beginning in 1960 when he joined UC Davis’ then-fledgling art department as a professor. Although he officially retired in 1990 (he continued teaching until 2002), he remains a professor emeritus at the school.

His larger reach in the world of painting is the subject of an exhibition at UC Davis’ Jan Shrem and Maria Manetti Shrem Museum of Art, titled “Wayne Thiebaud Influencer: A New Generation,” on view through Nov. 12 — closing just three days before he turns 101. The Sacramento artist, who still paints every day, will be honored along with the Wayne Thiebaud Foundation, which will receive the Margrit Mondavi Arts Medallion at the museum’s annual gala the weekend of Thiebaud’s birthday.

For the Manetti Shrem Museum’s associate curator, Susie Kantor, there was a desire that the exhibition not just look back at the 100 years of Thiebaud’s life and work, but also “look ahead to the next 100 years” of art inspired by him. Of special interest to Kantor was work by students from his more than 40 years of teaching at Davis.

“He describes himself as a painter and a teacher, and I think they’re equally important to him,” Kantor says. “He gets so much from the teaching and from his students. He talked about it keeping him young, so maybe that’s longevity’s secret.”

“Wayne Thiebaud Influencer” features work by 19 artists, 13 of whom have been his students, who have been inspired by different aspects of Thiebaud’s canon. Their work is presented in conversation with Thiebaud’s own, allowing viewers to make comparisons and connections and see the chain of influence from one generation to the next.

Among the artists presented are Christopher Brown, April Glory Funcke, Grace Munakata, Bruce Nauman, Vonn Cummings Sumner and Patricia Wall, who all studied with Thiebaud, along with Andrea Bowers, Robert Colescott, Alex Israel, Jason Stopa, Jonas Wood and Lynette Yiadom-Boakye. Many of the artists featured became teachers themselves.

“A lot of the artists who studied with him talked about the idea of a daily practice,” Kantor says. “Many of them still do sketchbooks. That rigor in the daily practice, this idea of process is really key, but the value that they place on it comes from working and studying with Wayne.”

Vonn Sumner, “Shopping,” 2020. Oil on canvas.Photo: © Vonn Sumner

Sumner, who is based in Santa Ana and Palo Alto and has seven paintings in the exhibition, chose to attend Davis because Thiebaud was a member of the faculty. He earned both his bachelor’s degree (in 1998) and his MFA (in 2000) with an emphasis on painting from the school.

“I wanted to study with him because I loved his paintings, and to my surprise and good fortune I discovered that he was a truly great teacher,” Sumner says. In graduate school, he became Thiebaud’s teaching assistant and developed a deeper creative dialogue with the older artist. The two have maintained a “close mentor/mentee relationship” for 20 years.

Among Sumner’s works featured in the show is the 2020 oil “The Elephant in the Room II,” a work in which Sumner sees Thiebaud’s influence. It’s a memory painting created with no photo reference, a practice Thiebaud also employs.

“Wayne teaches his students how to see, essentially,” Sumner says. “This kind of ‘seeing’ includes critical thinking, developing our own questions, setting up tensions and problems to solve with paint.”

Munakata, a mixed-media painter based in Berkeley who has three works in the exhibition, also studied with Thiebaud as both an undergraduate and graduate student in the 1980s and was his teaching assistant for his beginning color class. She still remembers seeing Thiebaud’s painting “Yellow Dress” in 1974 and shows it to her students at Cal State East Bay “to help students see color within a single ‘color,’ and sense the human hand and intelligence in the choices he made.”

Grace Munakata, “Sitka Colonnade,” 2020. Acrylic and wax pastel.Photo: © Grace Munakata

Munakata’s 2019 acrylic painting “Reykjanes,” an abstract inspired by an Icelandic landscape, is one of two works of hers in the exhibition. She notes: “In Thiebaud’s city- and riverscapes, impossible combinations of planes and scale converge, though unlike my work, his devices read as a single, crazily knit landscape.”

Berkeley painter Christopher Brown,  whose 2017 oil “Twice Over” is in the exhibition, says the influence of Thiebaud’s “Cityscape” series depicting San Francisco remains meaningful even 50 years after he first viewed studies for the work in a show at the Davis student union. The tension between organization and chaos represented in the grid-like patterns of the “Cityscape” works is evident in the architectural subject matter of “Twice Over.”

“When you’re a young artist, you see the most obvious, alluring things in any other artist’s work,” says Brown, like technical skills you may not yet have mastered. “But, you learn by just looking at it: ‘Oh, that’s how he put that together, that’s how he made the paint, look at the way he uses color.’ His paintings are about those fundamental things. What’s beautiful about his work is the way that he takes those things, those elements, and he intensifies them.”

Christopher Brown, “Twice Over,” 2017. Oil on linen on panel.Photo: © Christopher Brown / Berggruen Gallery

“Wayne Thiebaud Influencer: A New Generation”: 11 a.m.-6 p.m. Thursday-Friday; 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Saturday-Sunday. Through Nov. 12 (closed Nov. 11 for Veterans Day). Free; reservations recommended. UC Davis’s Jan Shrem and Maria Manetti Shrem Museum of Art, 254 Old Davis Road, Davis. 530-752-9623. manettishremmuseum.ucdavis.edu

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