Morton Fine Art invites you to Open Studios, Saturday 11/16/19 from 12pm-6pm

 

 

Our November 16th Open Studios, in collaboration with STABLE, invites the public to tour Morton Fine Art and the creative work spaces of the artists and designers at 52 O Street & STABLE from 12-6pm. Conveniently located a short walk from the NOMA Metro Station on the Red Line and Mt. Vernon Square/Convention Center on the Yellow and Green Lines, 52 O Street is located in the Truxton Circle neighborhood in Washington DC. Street parking available.

Morton Fine Art 52 O St. #302 Washington, DC 20001 mortonfineart@gmail.com (202) 628-2787 www.mortonfineart.com

Don’t miss it!
Open Studios @52ostreetstudios next Saturday, November 16th from 12pm – 6pm in collaboration with @stablearts

 

 

VONN SUMNER’s “Only Painted Fire” exhibition at Morton Fine Art

On view:

Morton Fine Art

52 O St #302

Washington, DC 20001

(202) 628-2787

http://www.mortonfineart.com

mortonfineart@gmail.com

 

Neo-Byzantine (Red Hot), 2019, 24″x20″, oil on panel

 

 

Betrayal Wall,  2019, 24″x24″, oil on panel

 

El Ingres-Frida (Appropriation of Culture), 2019, 24″x24″, oil on canvas

 

Balloon Dumpster (The Party’s Over), 2019, 16″x20″, oil on panel

About Only Painted Fire

In the summer of 2018, I travelled to Italy to see many of my favorite paintings in person for the first time: the early Renaissance frescoes of Giotto, Masaccio, and Piero della Francesca. Though I was very familiar with the work through reproduction, seeing it with my own eyes was a transformative experience. When I returned home to California, I began a nearly life-size copy of one of my favorite panels of the Giotto frescoes at the Scrovegni chapel in Padua (alternately referred to as The Betrayal of Christ or Judas’ Kiss). I wanted to inhabit the painting, rather than just look at it; I wanted to feel what it was like to make those paintings.   During the process of copying this painting, I became intrigued with Giotto’s stylized depiction of fire, which blazed at the end of several torches along the top of the painting. I realized I had never really painted fire, and for some reason this became an irresistible challenge. At the same time, I was following the news and trying to make sense of the polarized and turbulent political climate of our time. Perhaps due to my newfound fascination with painting fire, certain phrases that commentators and pundits would use grabbed my attention: “dumpster-fire” and “trash-fire” especially, used as hyperbolic expressions of frustration and outrage.    I began to think more deeply about the uses and depictions of fire, symbolically and literally, and the ways in which humans have used fire in rituals. Fire is dangerous and out of control, which also makes it beautiful and sexy and alive. Fire is violent and destructive, which leads to change, regeneration and rebirth. We speak of ‘trial by fire’ and ‘lost torches’; passionate people can be ‘on fire’’ and have ‘fire in their belly.’ In California we have “Fire Season” and “high fire danger” alerts. There are “fire eaters” to entertain us, and parties that “burn down the house” and light “the roof on fire,” etc… All of these phrases and notions have been on my mind this past year as I have painted fire and searched for personal and artistic renewal.   The resulting paintings are not meant as a definitive or conclusive statement, rather as evidence of one painter engaging with the world, following a gut instinct, and doing “research paintings” in order to see what happens. The work can be seen symbolically or literally, or both; and I invite the viewer to bring their own interpretations and resonances to the occasion. No matter how we look at our current cultural moment, regardless of ideology or affiliation, it seems we are living through a time of great change. These paintings are in some way a response to that condition.   – VONN SUMNER, 2019

 

 

Dumpster Fire III,  2019, 16″x16″, oil on panel

 

Dumpster Fire IV, 2019, 18″x18″, oil on panel

 

Dumpster Fire II, 2019, 18″x14″, oil on canvas

 

KOR, 2019, 16″x12″, oil on canvas

 

About VONN CUMMINGS SUMNER

 

Vonn Cummings Sumner grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area, the son of a picture framer and a school teacher. Seeing the art that his father was framing, as well as travel in Europe, Central America and India shaped Sumner’s visual aesthetic during his formative years.

 

He attended the University of California, at Davis, where he earned both a Bachelor’s degree and an M.F.A. in painting, with highest honors. While at Davis he worked closely with Wayne Thiebaud both as a student and as a teaching assistant. Sumner also took summer classes at the San Francisco Art Institute, and is influenced by the Bay Area Figurative movement that centered around that school in the postwar period.

 

Sumner has exhibited nationally and internationally since 1998. He has been featured or reviewed in many publications including New American Paintings, Elle Décor, The Washington Post, The Huffington Post, L.A. Weekly, Art Ltd., Riviera magazine, Hi Fructose, Cartwheel Art, The Painter’s Table, Boom magazine, and Quick Fiction. Sumner has shown regularly throughout the Los Angeles area since 2003, including in a solo museum show- Vonn Sumner: The Other Side of Here- at the Riverside Art Museum in the fall of 2008. A second solo museum exhibition, Vonn Sumner: Stages, followed in 2011 at the Phillips Museum of Art on the campus of Franklin & Marshall College in Pennsylvania. Sumner’s paintings have been shown internationally in Venice, Italy; Manchester, England, and Switzerland. He is represented by Morton Fine Art in Washigton, DC.

 

Only Painted Fire marks his forth solo exhibition at Morton Fine Art.

 

 

Standing Man (on fire), 2019, 16″x12″, oil on canvas

 

Trashfire IV, 2019, 18″x14″, oil on canvas

 

Trashfire III, 2019, 18″x14″, oil on canvas

 

Neo-Byzantine (Japonaiserie), 2019, 24″x20″,  oil on paper mounted on panel

 

A Fire Without a Trashcan, 2019, 16″x12″, oil on canvas

 

Trashfire II, 2019, 14″x12″, oil on canvas

 

Trashfire I, 2019, 12″x9.5″, oil on canvas

 

Link to available artwork by VONN SUMNER

VICTOR EKPUK’s recently created “Mother Series”

We are very excited to announce the arrival of three new mixed media on paper creations by internationally renowned artist, VICTOR EKPUK. The three new works are from his “Mother Series” which were created this year during his time in the US.

 

VICTOR EKPUK, Mother Series 1, 2019, 25.5″x20″, acrylic, graphite and collage on paper, Contact for price.

 

 

VICTOR EKPUK, Mother Series 2, 2019, 25.5″x20″, acrylic and collage on paper, Contact for price.

 

 

VICTOR EKPUK, Mother Series 3, 2019,25.5″x20″, acrylic, graphite and collage on paper, Contact for price.

 

About VICTOR EKPUK

Victor Ekpuk is a Nigerian-American artist based in Washington, DC.

His art, which began as an exploration of nsibidi “traditional” graphics and writing systems in Nigeria, has evolved to embrace a wider spectrum of meaning that is rooted in African and global contemporary art discourses.

Guided by the aesthetic philosophy nsibidi, where sign systems are used to convey ideas, Ekpuk re-imagines graphic symbols from diverse cultures to form a personal style of mark making that results in the interplay of art and writing.

Ekpuk’s art reflects his experiences as a global artist – “The subject matter of my work deals with the human condition explained through themes that are both universal and specific: family, gender, politics, culture and Identity”.

 

Mr. EKPUK’s artwork can be found the permanent collection of the following museums and institutions:

Smithsonian National Museum of African American History & Culture, Washington, DC, USA

Smithsonian Museum of African Art, Washington DC, USA

Krannert Art Museum, USA

Hood Museum, USA

Brooks Museum, USA

Arkansas Art Center, USA

Newark Museum, New Jersey, USA

The World Bank, Washington DC, USA

University of Maryland University College Art Collection, USA

The U.S. Department of State

 

Link to available artwork by VICTOR EKPUK

 

Morton Fine Art

52 O St NW #302

Washington, DC 20001

+ 001 (202) 628-2787

mortonfineart@gmail.com

http://www.mortonfineart.com

AMBER ROBLES-GORDON is first Artist in Residence at DC’s The Nicholson Project

 

SEP 10, 3:16 PM

The Nicholson Project, An Artist Residency And Neighborhood Garden, Comes To Ward 7

Natalie Delgadillo

A room in 2310 Nicholson.

Linen & Lens

On the outside, it looks like any other single-family rowhouse in the District. But 2310 Nicholson Street SE will soon be opening up as a project unique to the street and rare for the city: a residency for artists, with a community garden in an adjacent lot tended by the neighborhood.

“[I’m interested in] looking at where you have rapid change in urban settings and how you can utilize a place to harness creative energy and build a revitalized community in a really inclusive way,” says Stephanie Reiser, a developer in the city who owns 2310 Nicholson and founded the artist residency. “My guess is that the artists who find us will have a great familiarity with this type of work.”

Reiser has christened the venture the Nicholson Project. It will have its opening event on September 14 from 3 p.m. to 8 p.m., featuring several art installations, a studio tour, and performances by East River Jazz, DJ Jahsonic, and Hirshhorn ARTLAB. (The event is free, and you can RSVP here). The gallery is also open for viewing by appointment through October 26. The project joins already-established art venues east of the river like Honfleur Gallery, Congress Heights Arts and Culture Center, and Anacostia Arts Center.

The developer says she started out her career flipping houses, and slowly became more and more concerned with issues of affordability and inclusivity. She debated for a time about what she wanted to do with the property on Nicholson, which she purchased in 2014, knowing only that she wanted to do something associated with “affordability and the arts.” Eventually, she says, it became clear to her that she wanted something more lasting than a one-time art show, for example.

“I want to have a conversation and dialogue around some of these questions of affordability, access, how development is done, and the way the arts and the creative classes can be part of revitalizing and strengthening the social fabric of communities,” Reiser says. “The idea of having a residency really rose to the front of the type of work we wanted to do. An artist residency program would help us to support artists as they advance their career. And it just resonated, it seemed to be the right for for Nicholson.”

The house itself is more restored than renovated, Reiser says, with much of the original architecture left in place. As well as offering installations, she hopes the home will become a community space that groups can use for meetings or anything else they might need. The garden in the adjacent lot, in particular, Reiser imagines as a community resource.

The artists in the residency will receive $2,000 per month and can live and work full-time in the renovated rowhouse, Reiser says. Reiser is currently funding that stipend herself, but has set up a non-profit foundation to raise money for it, she tells DCist. Applications to the residency will open up twice per year—the next round opens on October 1, 2019.

The first artist in residency at the Nicholson Project will be Amber Robles-Gordon, a D.C.-based visual artist who’s had exhibitions in six countries. She’s created public art installations in the region with the D.C. Commission on the Arts and Humanities, and Northern Virginia Fine Arts Association, Howard University, and other local entities. She hosted a workshop and created an installation for the #ifyoulivedhere project produced by the Pink Line Project and the Anacostia Smithsonian Museum, and has also created installations in Maryland.

Robles-Gordon began her residency in July 2019, and will create a room-sized installation that will debut at the opening of the residency on September 14.

_____________________________

 

Available artwork by AMBER ROBLES-GORDON

 

Morton Fine Art

52 O St NW #302

Washington, DC 20001

(202) 628-2787

http://www.mortonfineart.com

mortonfineart@gmail.com

 

KATHERINE TZU-LAN MANN’s artwork featured in Harper’s Magazine

Harper’s Magazine features KATHERINE TZU-LAN MANN’s glorious mixed media creation, “Private Domain”. Her work was on view at the Carlow University Art Gallery in Pittsburgh in April.

 

My work’s abstractions arise from the subjects I portray: ecological and geological cycles, processes of chemical corrosion and natural efflorescence. With roots in traditions of Chinese landscape painting, my monumentally sized paintings and installations evolve a fantastic, abstract vision of the natural world. My latest work confronts the challenge: the resuscitation of landscape painting in a world where “landscape” is represented and defined through an ever-widening field of digital, graphic, and visual forms. How can a painting capture flux, abundance, waste, fertility, and the collision and collusion of diverse forms? How can it respond to the pressure we place on our era’s fragile ecosystem? My paintings explore both questions by sustaining tension between what is artificial and what is natural, between what is chemical and what is biological, between organic and inorganic. The paper on which I paint is not only a recognition of a tradition of Chinese painting; it is also a medium of vulnerability and expansiveness, susceptible to crease and tear as well as to collage and collation. My own role in the creation of the paintings strikes a balance between the purposive and the protective. I trust to process, chance, and change, but I encourage, direct, and facilitate all of these. In my most recent work, I hope to live in the tradition of landscape painting, experiencing it for what it has always been: an occasion for radical experimentation and confrontation with the world, in the broadest sense of the term that sustains us.

-KATHERINE TZU-LAN MANN, 2019

 

 

Available Artwork KATHERINE TZU-LAN MANN

 

Morton Fine Art

52 O St NW #302

Washington, DC 20001

(202) 628-2787

http://www.mortonfineart.com

mortonfineart@gmail.com

 

 

ROSEMARY FEIT COVEY’s solo “The Dark Re Imagined” opens Saturday 9/14/19

Inspired by evolutionary biology, ROSEMARY FEIT COVEY pushes the boundaries of printmaking in her solo exhibition “The Dark Re Imagined”. In this series of artworks she has collaborated with scientists and integrates fungus, lichens, animals, decay and broken insects.

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ROSEMARY FEIT COVEY The Dark Re Imagined September 14 – October 9, 2019 Opening Reception Saturday, September 14th from 2-6pm Artist Talk at 4pm EXHIBITION LOCATION Morton Fine Art 52 O St NW #302 Washington, DC 20001 HOURS Wednesday – Saturday 12pm – 5pm Sunday – Tuesday by appointment

ROSEMARY FEIT COVEY, Just One Day 2019, 36″x24″, painting, found objects and plastic on canvas

ROSEMARY FEIT COVEY, Amethyst Deceivers 11, 2019, 36″x48″, wood engraving, thread, painting on canvas

About The Dark Re Imagined My current work on fungus and lichens, broken insects and evolutionary biology is not scientific in the sense of medical illustration but a continuation of a life time artistically reacting to mortality’s hold on our subconscious. My earlier work was more overtly psychological. Now I glory in exploring texture and new methods of printmaking. After decades working alone I embrace collaboration. Working with other artists and scientists who all share passion for their chosen subjects and understand mine, they are generous in answering my questions with care and enthusiasm. As the young entomologist, Rebecca Cathleen Wilson told me in one of our many conversations, “we study insects because we love them but to do so we have to kill them, working with you gives them another life”. – ROSEMARY FEIT COVEY, 2019 Available artwork by ROSEMARY FEIT COVEY

ROSEMARY FEIT COVEY in her studio

About ROSEMARY FEIT COVEY Rosemary Feit Covey was born in Johannesburg, South Africa. Her work is housed in over forty major museum and library collections worldwide, including Yale University Art Gallery, the New York Public Library Print Collection, the National Museum of American History, Harvard University, and the Papyrus Institute in Cairo, Egypt. In 2012 over five-hundred of her prints were acquired for the permanent collection of Georgetown University Library, Special Collections. She is the recipient of a Rockefeller Foundation Fellowship (Bellagio Italy), an Alpha Delta Kappa Foundation National Fine Art Award and a fellowship to Georgetown University Medical Center as the 2007-2008 Artist-in-Residence. Her solo museum exhibitions include the Butler Museum of American Art, the Delaware Center for Contemporary Arts and the International Museum of Surgical Science in Chicago. In 2014, a retrospective of her prints, paintings and installation work was held at Johns Hopkins University’s Evergreen Museum. Her larger public art has been installed world wide, including at Burning Man and at Culture Summit 2017 in Abu Dhabi. Articles on her work have been featured in magazines including Art in America, Juxtapoz, and American Artist Magazine. She has fully illustrated books for Simon & Schuster and William Morrow as well as for fine art presses. While an artist in residence at Georgetown University Medical School, Feit Covey wrote one chapter and illustrated the text for the book, Maldynia: Multidisciplinary Perspectives on the Illness of Chronic Pain, published by CRC Press. Previously she worked with a brain tumor patient for three years chronicling his illness artistically. This work was featured on Studio 360, Public Radio International, and in articles for The Los Angeles Times and CR Magazine. Since 2017 she has collaborated with evolutionary biologist Paul Andrews working on a ground breaking book using evolutionary biology to understand depression and evaluate pharmacological and psychological treatments for depression. This work will be published by Oxford University Press in 2020 or 2021. An article on this work appeared in Sci-Art Magazine in 2018. Currently, she is working with two botanists and an entomologist who have greatly aided in inspiring and informing her most recent series of work. She is represented by Morton Fine Art in Washington, DC.

About Morton Fine Art Founded in 2010 in Washington, DC by curator Amy Morton, Morton Fine Art (MFA) is a fine art gallery and curatorial group that collaborates with art collectors and visual artists to inspire fresh ways of acquiring contemporary art. Firmly committed to the belief that art collecting can be cultivated through an educational stance, MFA’s mission is to provide accessibility to museum-quality contemporary art through a combination of substantive exhibitions and a welcoming platform for dialogue and exchange of original voice. Morton Fine Art specializes in a stellar roster of nationally and internationally renowned artists as well as has an additional focus on artwork of the African Diaspora. Morton Fine Art 52 O St NW #302 Washington, DC 20001 Wed – Sat 12pm-5pm and Sun-Tues by appointment

NATE LEWIS’ “For Carter G. Woodson” on view in MEN OF CHANGE: Power. Triumph. Truth.

 

August 17, 2019 – December 1, 2019
National Underground Railroad Freedom Center
50 East Freedom Way, Cincinnati, OH 45202
Skirball Gallery, Third Floor
Admission: $10 with general admission, $5 for members

Become a member today!

MEN OF CHANGE: POWER. TRIUMPH. TRUTH. profiles the revolutionary men—including Muhammad Ali, James Baldwin, Ta-Nehisi Coates, W.E.B Du Bois, and Kendrick Lamar—whose journeys have altered the history and culture of the country. The achievements of the men are woven within the legacy and traditions of the African American journey—achievements of excellence in spite of society’s barriers.

Through literary and historic quotes, poetry, original works of art, dramatic photographs, and a dynamic space that encourages self-reflection, this innovative exhibition weaves together the historical and the contemporary to illuminate the importance of these men within the context of rich community traditions. It invites visitors to consider predominant narratives and engage in the authentic stories of history, politics, art, culture, and activism. Twenty-five contemporary artists were invited to reflect and celebrate the significance of these ground-breaking individuals through their own creative vision. These works of art serve as counterpoint to the sumptuously backlit photographs and inspiring quotes, and together honor the truth of the African American experience in history and today.

While these men made their mark in a variety of disciplines—politics, sports, science, entertainment, business, religion, and more—all understood the value of asserting their own agency by owning their own stories.

Men of Change was developed by the Smithsonian Institution Traveling Exhibition Service and made possible through the generous support of the Ford Motor Company Fund and Community Services.

 

NATE LEWIS’ “For Carter G Woodson”, 2019, 50”x50”, hand-sculpted paper inkjet print

 

Available artwork by NATE LEWIS

Morton Fine Art

52 O St NW #302

Washington, DC 20001

(202) 628-2787

mortonfineart@gmail.com

http://www.mortonfineart.com