Join MFA for champagne and chocolate during Washington Properties & DC Magazine’s 3rd annual HOME & DESIGN WEEKEND!
Saturday, April 13th & Sunday, April 14th from 11am-6pm
Plan your trip to our block of 1781 Florida Avenue NW and also catch AND BEIGE’S Daren Miller giving a seminar on “How To
Create the Perfect Table Scape” on Saturday at 2:00PM.
Best of the City – January 2013 edition of DC Magazine
by Erin Hartigan, Tiffany Jow, Jennifer Sergent, Karen Sommer Shalett, Tobey Ward and Katie Wilmeth
Washington sails into 2013 boasting – and embracing – a bevy of bests. From beauty, health and style stars to arts, culture and dining headliners, here’s a peek at the scene.
CULTURE
Material Girl
Artist MAYA FREELON ASANTE discovered a stack of water-stained colored paper in her grandmother’s basement in 2005, and her fascination with bleeding paper was born. The 30-year old has since erected countless patchwork quilt-esque spectacles, including a stained-glass-like wonder called “Ubuntu” at the Corcoran and a three-story sculpture at the U.S. Embassy in Madagascar. Now, she’s collaborating on an evening-length theatrical production with her mother, six-time Grammy Award nominee Nneena Freelon, and her mother-in-law, Kariamu Welsh, called The Clothesline Muse and prepping a site–specific installation for the U.S. Embassy in Jamaica. “Its a blessing to come from a family that’s so inspiring,” says Asante, the daughter of award-winning architect Philip Freelon and granddaughter of famed impressionist painter Allan Freelon.
Visit www.mortonfineart.com to view available work by artist MAYA FREELON ASANTE.
DC Luxury Magazine’s Arts & Power issue (December 2012)
“It’s not an exaggeration to say that in certain circumstances, art saves you,” says collector Karen Conwell Smith. While in the midst of a heart-breaking divorce, the Federation of American Hospitals lobbyist attended an opening at Morton Fine Art and was captivated by a painting of an injured WWII-era nurse. “She’s a woman of texture on canvas: a caregiver in her depleted feminine state, gorgeous in her emptiness- I saw her and I wasn’t alone,” says Smith. When she confided in the artist, Laurel Hausler, the two discovered a shared understanding of the emotions captured in the aptly titled piece, “First Aid,” which now hangs in Smith’s bedroom. Every piece Smith owns evokes a memory from her past, a theme echoed by Charlottesville-based Hausler’s work.
Filled with ghostly characters rendered more sad than scary, her paintings are permeated by everyday emotions in a conscious effort to better understand things broken and unknown. “I try to see the beauty in torment,” says 34-year-old Hausler, a Virginia native who began pursuing art after a stint in New Orleans, where she cultivated a love of folk art. “It was liberating to realize I didn’t have to have a fine-art degree to make beautiful things,” she explains. The layers of paint on her canvases feature lines, scratches and rips- a symbol of the intense process that goes into each piece. Hausler credits Smith’s patronage with validating her work. “It’s a blessing to feel like your work is appreciated, loved and getting a good home.” (pp 98-99)
Read the article here: http://digital.modernluxury.com/publication/?i=135819&p=100
All Wound Up
Local Artist Hadieh Shafie is on a roll, showing to packed galleries in DC and abroad
By Tiffany Jow
At the recent opening of Hadieh Shafie’s solo show at Washington’s Morton Fine Art (mortonfineart.com), the gallery was filled to the gills with patrons keen to glimpse the rising star. Surrounded by her most recent body of work – assemblages of thousands of tiny hand-dyed, meticulously wound paper scrolls- the artist revelled in the reveal of the pieces that have earned her international attention.
At 42, the Baltimore-based, DC-represented talent finds herself suddenly center stage, having been short-listed for the Victoria and Albert Museum’s esteemed Jameel Prize, an international award for creatives roused by Islamic traditions of craft and design. The London megapost crowns a winner every two years, with Iraqi starchitect Zaha Hadid as the prize’s patron. In July, Shafie’s 3-D scroll works will be included in a two-month exhibition of all 10 contenders at the V&A. If she wins the gold in September, her pieces will travel around the world, gaining intense international exposure.
In the limelight or not, the tenderness comprising each of Shafie’s creations demands a closer look. For each work, she tirelessly inscribes the word eshghe (the Farsi word for “love”) onto every inch of the thin paper strips dyed at the edges and curled into tight circles. Their titles – “10250 Pages”, “12001 Pages,” and “22500 Pages”- reflect the number of paper strips within each opus. Unlike the iconic hoops of Jasper Johns and Kenneth Noland, Shafie’s wheels are spun using method, repetition and time, all rooted in the artistic sway of her native Iran. “The language of love is reflected in Hadieh’s work,” says the V&A’s Salma Tuqan, a co-curator for the Jameel Prize exhibition. “It’s the story of its creation and meditative process that allows the work to breathe and take on life.”
Having moved from Iran to Maryland at 14, Shafie was consistently encouraged to pursue her creativity. “Even in the most difficult economic times, my mom would take me across town to study with a private art teacher,” says Shafie, who went on to attend Pratt Institute School of Art and Design.
“One of my fondest childhood memories is decorating cookies with my grandmother, placing little dots of saffron in the center,” she says. That same power of repetition is echoed in her contemporary scrolls, whose methodical nature makes for creative addiction. “It’s so much about control, while simultaneously letting go and leaving things to chance,” she says.
Shafie’s representation at MFA, which she gleaned after owner and chief curator Amy Morton tapped her for a pop-up exhibition last year, is testament to why she’s on the radar of the international circuit. “Hadieh’s artistic identity is authentic, resourceful and culturally enhanced,” Morton says.
The artist’s global credentials have also caught the eye of several District collectors, who just can’t get enough. “Hadieh represents all that is wonderful about DC as a thriving art destination,” Morton says. “Its inspiring to see an artist span nationally and internationally, both in terms of collector acquisition and recognition.” In many ways, then, Shafie has already won the prize.
Morton Fine Art: curator's notes 