AFTER HURRICANE KATRINA, the federal government gave people along the Gulf Coast formaldehyde-tainted trailers to live in (if it gave them anything at all).

But since 1995, earthquake refugees in Japan, Turkey and India, among other places, have received elegant paper-tube houses designed by the Japanese architect Shigeru Ban, who has also created churches, museum installations and several unforgettable expo pavilions from paper and cardboard.

After studying at the Southern California Institute of Architecture and the Cooper Union, Ban caught critics' eyes with a series of villas in the mountains around Nagano, Japan, before he burst onto the global scene with his provisional houses built from pulp products.

The structures are not usually all paper — there is rain and fire to consider, so you might find plastics as well as bamboo or cane, but they seem always to satisfy the building-code cops. And they're typically not permanent but do recycle nicely.

Continue Reading "Living Large on Maple Street: Architect Shigeru Ban" »

THE GREAT THING ABOUT being married is that you have to appeal to only one person — and it isn't even you. The same goes for all kinds of romantic bonding, and it creates a dynamic that is utterly irreproducible.

Coupling is culture, the creation of an ever-evolving two-person civilization. Each pairing creates its own language, music, play — all of which evaporate on parting. Or on simply being exposed to another person.

And yet coupling is precisely what Amy Sillman is interested in. The painter asked friends to pose, then made taut, rubbery representational ink sketches, some of which hang at the entrance to her Hirshhorn "Directions" show, subtitled "Third Person Singular." In the gallery behind are the larger abstract oils they sometimes led to, sometimes followed.

Continue Reading "Life, Memory, Me & Us: Amy Sillman" »

ART LOVERS, listen up: Works by D.C. favorites such as Tim Tate, Colby Caldwell and Amy Lin can be bought at the Corcoran Gallery of Art for just one crisp Benjamin. No joke.

It's all part of Art Anonymous, a mysterious guessing game in which eagle-eyed art collectors sifting through unsigned work can score a bargain — if they know what they're looking for.

But even the pros might get confused. For example, Mark Cameron Boyd, a Corcoran instructor and conceptual artist best known for his scrawled illegible chalkboard installations, donated a "mystery work" that will involve post-purchase correspondence with the lucky buyer.

"The thing about Art Anonymous is most artists probably just donate a smaller version of their usual work," Boyd said. But he said he decided to donate a piece vastly different from his typical work.

Boyd isn't the only artist taking the "anonymous" directive to heart: Local painter Anne Marchand posted the titles of her two donated works on her blog — then deleted the posting. And all artists — painters, sculptors, costumed performance artists — are restricted to two-dimensional art measuring 5 inches by 7 inches.

Since Tim Tate's iconic glass sculptures or the mutant animal trophies from Joshua Levine's "Trophy Room" series won't mat very easily, they'll have to come up with an artistic work-around. "It'll be interesting to see how they interpret the guidelines," said organizer Zoe Heineman Myers.

The sale is being hosted by the Corcoran and the Friends of the Corcoran, who promise drinks, dancing and mingling with some of the nearly 200 participating artists. Of course, there's also the thrill of getting a deal on some fantastic art.

Continue Reading "A Collector's Mystery: The Corcoran's Art Anonymous" »

"IN 'SHOOT,' I'm shot in the upper left-hand arm by a friend of mine with a .22 rifle."

So Chris Burden describes one of the most notorious actions in the annals of contemporary art, the 1971 piece that got even the most mainstream of media outlets to pay attention to this guy from L.A. who insisted on making life difficult for himself.

Screening on Thursday as half of the Smithsonian American Art Museum's splendidly provocative "Performance as Art" screening, "Documentation of Selected Works 1971-75" runs through nearly a dozen pieces, such as "Icarus," in which Burden, lying naked on his back, has two long, winglike panes propped on his bare shoulders, doused in gasoline and set alight, before he jumps to his feet, shattering the glass.

Some performances are over in an instant. For all its career-making iconicity, "Shoot" plays out rather plainly. Burden's matter-of-fact voice-over, which paradoxically combines utter earnestness with puckish irony, consumes more screen time than the film does.

Other pieces test both Burden's endurance and our own. "Through the Night Softly" is both beautiful and excruciating, as the artist crawls, nearly nude, hands clasped behind his back, across pavement strewn with broken glass.

Continue Reading "Burn to Shine: Chris Burden and Ant Farm" »

THE 18 PAINTINGS in Jason Wright's "New Ruins" exhibition at Georgetown's Fine Arts and Artist Gallery have a romantic sadness about them. Many of them are saturated in sepia-toned colors and fiberglass finishing; all represent "lost" images from Wright's past.

"The whole show is kind of a combination of pain, love, hopes and fears," he explains. "When you look at the images, some of them are very dreamy with cloud and seascapes — very ethereal. They all have a little bit of sadness to them but with some hope."

Wright got the idea for "New Ruins" after surfing in Hawaii, where he grew up and where, he noticed, the landscape has vastly changed since his childhood. "It really bothered me, because I spent so many years surfing there and had this place imprinted in my mind," he says.

Continue Reading "Childhood's End: Jason Wright Explores His Lost Past" »

"I DON'T CAPTURE an animal for the sake of television," said Brady Barr.

"There's a scientific spine — I'm doing research and the camera's there to document it," said the host of TV's "Dangerous Encounters," set to give a kid-friendly talk on Saturday at the National Geographic Museum.

Those who have watched Barr crawling around in a crocodile or hippo costume — or screaming in a river of bat guano while being bitten by a giant python — may scoff, but Barr says there are scientific rationales behind even his most novel National Geographic Channel exploits.

Continue Reading "From the Reptile Brain: Brady Barr Versus the Beast" »

AS A PHOTOGRAPHER FOR U.S. News & World Report, Jim Lo Scalzo has shot everywhere, from rural Texas to Iraq to Antarctica, and in his memoir, "Evidence of My Existence," he brings his photographs to life.

Tonight at the Corcoran, Lo Scalzo discusses his fondness of exploration (he's a self-proclaimed "travel addict") and photography as a means by which to get his fix. He will also sign copies of his book after the talk.

» Corcoran Gallery of Art, 500 17th St. NW; Wed., 7 p.m., $10; 202-639-1700. (Farragut North)

MICHAEL BERMAN IS HOLDING a print of a photograph. It's a scene from Eastern Market in 1970 — long before a fire last April gutted the building — and he has blown up the photo and rendered it crisp and poster-like.

Berman points out Louise Morgal, her husband, Elmer, and her son Dave, in the print as they market fresh produce in the open air. Thirty-eight years later, Louise and Dave still sell their produce at Eastern Market, although business has flagged since the fire. And Berman still sells his art there, too.

"I wanted to make something positive in spirit that honors the food vendors," says Berman. His print, along with those of nine other artists, has been included in "Eastern Market Artists Interpreting Eastern Market," an exhibition focusing on the old building and its neighborhood.

A few stalls over from Berman, Victor Kinza is selling paintings of Washington scenes. His "Rainbow Over Eastern Market" was selected for the show, and he has dedicated it to the market's 135th anniversary.

The exhibit contains 12 5-foot by 5-foot vinyl stickers of artwork showing the building or its surrounding community. The pieces are mounted on the north side of the East Hall, which is the temporary structure erected across the street from the burned-out South Hall.

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"THE WORLD'S BECOME completely unpredictable on a large scale," says writer Bernard Welt.

He says that pollutants and man-made alterations have rendered our rock-steady notions of Earth as stable algorithm totally obsolete, and while he would love for this to be manifested as "a rain of frogs," we'll just have to settle for ice caps melting, winters becoming intemperately warm and other subtle indications of irreconcilable climate change.

He says all of these things when summarizing the message of a seminal piece of environmental literature: Bill McKibben's 1989 book "End of Nature," which helped plant the idea of global warming into the lives of everyday Americans.

Welt, along with fellow writers Judith McCombs and Nan Fry, will be tackling McKibben's ideas in a poetry reading on April 19 at the Warehouse Gallery, in conjunction with the art exhibition "The End of Nature."

Continue Reading "Natural Poetry: Bernard Welt, Judith McCombs & Nan Fry" »

THE CONSTELLATION OF MASON JARS in the window, each a brightly colored gem, is how the Gallery at Warehouse's "End of Nature" exhibition starts. Dozens, maybe hundreds, line the window in claustrophobic closeness.

Renee Shaw filled the jars, collectively titled "Preserved," with Americana. One sample contains flag toothpicks, birthday candles, fishing lures, blue glop, a Ken-like figurine. They are captivating and chilling.

In the exhibit, 30-plus artists address what they would miss most from nature if it were to disappear "in the globally overheated future," the gallery's Web site says. The works include sculptures, paintings, wallpaper, video and bumper stickers.

Continue Reading "Left Behind: Warehouse Gallery's 'End of Nature'" »