Don’t let life get your goat

My favorite rabbi/painter, Jonathan Blum, takes an offbeat and humorous look at life through his colorful works that feature whimsical animals – like goats, ostriches and cats dreaming of oranges.

You can find him – always cheerful – at art festivals, street fairs and his brick-and-mortar studio gallery in the very happening Park Slope section in Brooklyn, where he’s spent his last 13 years.

If you get a chance, go meet this charismatic, inspirational and fun-filled man at his upcoming street shows:

Sunday, Sept 29th, 11-6pm, Hoboken Art and Music Festival.

Saturday, Oct 5th, 10-6pm,
Art on the Avenue,
Mt. Vernon Ave, Alexandria, VA. Go see the rabbi at booth W 70 between Del Ray Ave and Custis Avenues.

Downtown DC Holiday Market
Friday, Dec 13th through Monday, Dec 23rd. 12-8pm everyday.
National Portrait Gallery/Smithsonian Museum of American Art on F Street between 7th and 9th Streets NW. This exceptional market features vendors changing every week and live music throughout the day.

You’ll also find Rabbi Blum’s works weekends at DC’s Eastern Market, which is still one of his favorite places in the country. It’s a food/art/craft/antique/flea market located at 7th St, SE on Capitol Hill. About 4-6 times a year, the rugged rabbi visits DC and makes cameo appearances at Eastern Market!

And, yes, he is still accepting holiday commissions!

jonathan blum portraits
285 5th Avenue
Brooklyn, NY 11215
By appointment and Sundays 12-6 pm
To find him: (917) 855-6564!

Goat Farm, oil on monoprint collage, 42″ x 42″ (2003).

Erotic energy and male figurative art

The naked and the nude.

Langage cru. Langage cuit.

Is today’s man threatened or aroused by erotic depictions of the male form?

The Vitruvian Gallery in Washington DC, addresses the need of male and erotic energy in a one-of-a-kind space for artists to draw, paint and show uninhibited and primal works.

In SMUT, the gallery’s current show, Pennsylvania-born graphic artist J. Eric Goines showcases his academic training. Yet he reveals himself as slightly pervy painter and sketch artist.

The one-man show features Goines’s recent oeuvre, which culminates a year-long project working with the Vitruvian Gallery Men’s Sketch Group and the NDG, also based in the Vitruvian Gallery space.

Goines’s passionate paintings and drawings of the male form draw from the classic and erotic vernacular, revealing his energetic closeness to the model.

Voyeurism, fantasy role-playing and fetish-gear rule in a world of idealized bears and musclemen — topics featured in the African-American artist’s blog, “Sex. Politics. Art. Cuisine.” In a digital age of manipulation and mechanical and technological reproduction – as Walter Benjamin called it – artists such as Goines are going back to basics: the beauty of the male form, paper, charcoal, pencil and ink.

The work is a raw yet depicts DC models by an artist who honed his skills drawing at the gallery almost every week.

Goines is a “wonderful man,” says Vitruvian Gallery owner Larry Hall “and an important part of our sketch sessions…he makes it to every session he can, sometimes twice per week.”

Regardless of model type or physique, Goines gets some great drawings from poses lasting 20 minutes or less.

Find out for yourself what happens when the artist defies studio conventions and see Goines experiment with the titillating question, “What if model and artist were both naked?”

Opening reception:

September 21, 2013
4:00-10:00 pm
Vitruvian Gallery
734 7th street SE, Second Floor Washington DC
Metro: Eastern Market

Men’s boundaries and thresholds

When do men face thresholds?

Between land and water.
Between land and air.
Between land above and land below.
Between each other.

Each threshold, though, is a new opportunity to grow, a challenge to defy or an obstacle to overcome.

Trinity West Fine Art Gallery in the Dallas Design District recently announced painter Robert Dye’s new body of work, “At the Threshold,”
that will be featured at a solo show at the gallery.

Dye, known for his water-filled landscapes, blurs the distinction between landscape and pure abstract imagery. Painterly yet precise.

After beginning his career at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts and exhibiting in numerous group and solo shows in the Philadelphia area, the painter now lives and creates his art in Dallas.

Dye declared that Texas, “with its big skies and wide-open landscapes, has brought more atmosphere” to his paintings.

The opening reception will be Saturday September 21, 2013, from 6-9pm at the gallery, a new addition to the Dallas Design District focusing on North Texas art and artists.

Trinity West Fine Art

2335 Valdina Street, Dallas, Texas

Hours 10:00 to 5:00 pm
Tuesday through Friday
Saturday by appointment.

Tel. 214-688-0288

gallery@trinitywestfineart.com

Erotic energy and male figurative art

The naked and the nude.

Langage cru. Langage cuit.

Is today’s man threatened or aroused by erotic depictions of the male form?

The Vitruvian Gallery in Washington DC, addresses the need of male and erotic energy in a one-of-a-kind space for artists to draw, paint and show uninhibited and primal works.

In SMUT, the gallery’s current show, Pennsylvania-born graphic artist J. Eric Goines showcases his academic training. Yet he reveals himself as slightly pervy painter and sketch artist.

The one-man show features Goines’s recent oeuvre, which culminates a year-long project working with the Vitruvian Gallery Men’s Sketch Group and the NDG, also based in the Vitruvian Gallery space.

Goines’s passionate paintings and drawings of the male form draw from the classic and erotic vernacular, revealing his energetic closeness to the model.

Voyeurism, fantasy role-playing and fetish-gear rule in a world of idealized bears and musclemen — topics featured in the artist’s blog, “Sex. Politics. Art. Cuisine.”

The work is a raw yet depicts DC models by an artist who honed his skills drawing at the gallery almost every week.

Goines is a “wonderful man,” says Vitruvian Gallery owner Larry Hall “and an important part of our sketch sessions…he makes it to every session he can, sometimes twice per week.” Practice inspires perfection.

Regardless of model type or physique, Goines gets some great drawings from poses lasting 20 minutes or less.

Find out for yourself what happens when the artist defies studio conventions and see Goines experiment with the titillating question, “What if model and artist were both naked?”

Opening reception:

September 21, 2013
4:00-10:00 pm
Vitruvian Gallery
734 7th street SE, Second Floor Washington DC
Metro: Eastern Market

Exhibit runs until late October. Showings by appointment available.

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A world of bonds and connections

The world is not a world of cleavages at all, the world is a world of bonds.

Frederick Sommers

What’s your color?

What’s your color?

Blue, does it represent you highest spiritual aspirations?

Red, does it symbolize greed, lust, avarice, jealousy? Can you even see red?

Yellow, does it stand in for rationalism and the intellect?

Green, your natural self, your hopes?