Next month I will be showing my work at Artomatic, an enormous, non-juried art event held in an empty office building in downtown Washington, DC. Artomatic has been held in and around DC eleven times since its founding in 1999 in an old laundromat, which inspired its name. I showed at six of the previous Artomatics and was deeply involved as a volunteer organizer for many years, until I decided that I was doing too much unpaid work.
Over the years, I have tried to become more strategic about my art career, rather than just grabbing opportunities as they come along. So when the announcement came out that Artomatic was back for the first time since 2017, I hesitated. Would I get sucked into the volunteer vortex again? Did it make sense to participate in a non-juried show, which would never be considered prestigious? (Like colleges, art shows are ranked according to how many applicants they exclude, and Artomatic is open to all comers)
I talked myself alternately into and out of it. Gradually, as more and more of my local artist friends signed up, I warmed to the idea. Vowing that I would keep firm boundaries on my time, I registered, although I still felt conflicted.
Then something happened.
After deciding to write this letter, I remembered that The Washington Post’s art critic had once written a scathing review about an Artomatic where I had shown my work. I thought I would go back and look at it for laughs. Well, I found it, but I didn’t laugh.
I’m going to share a few excerpts here, from “Artomatic 2004: Hanging Is Too Good for It” by Blake Gopnik, in the Washington Post, November 11, 2004.
Here's a fine idea. Let's find an abandoned school and then invite local dentists to ply their trade, free of charge, in its crumbling classrooms, peeling corridors and dripping toilets. Okay, so maybe we won't get practicing dentists to come, but we might get some dental students, hygienists and retirees to join in our Happy Tooth festival. What the heck, let's not be elitists here: Why don't we just invite anyone with a yen for tooth work or some skill with drills to give it a go. Then we can all line up, open wide and see what happens.
I'll be at the front of the line.
After all, it could hardly be more excruciating than this year's Artomatic, the fourth edition of the District's creative free-for-all, which opens tomorrow. Organizers have gotten about 600 local "artists" -- anyone who could ante up the $60 fee and 15 hours of his or her time, in fact -- to display their creations. …
The result is the second-worst display of art I've ever seen. The only one to beat it out, by the thinnest of split hairs, was the 2002 Artomatic, which was worse only by virtue of being even bigger and in an even more atrocious space, down by the waterfront in a vacant modern office building.
I won't dwell on the art. And I certainly won't name names. No one needs to know who made the wallfuls of amateur watercolors, yards of incompetent oil paintings, acres of trite street photography and square miles of naive installation art that will be polluting this innocent old building for the next three weeks. There's something for everyone to hate. The rest are works only a mother could love. …
A show like Artomatic, in theory organized and stocked by lovers and supporters of fine art, is actively insulting to all the genuinely talented artists who have managed the long slog to a professional career.
Actively insulting. Never mind that Artomatic 2004 featured artists whose works are now in museums. This type of ugly snobbery and outright cruelty is an absolute gut-punch to artists everywhere. It’s the kind of thing that crawls into your brain and makes you want to quit. And yet. The mean-spiritedness of this review is so extravagant that, in the ten minutes it took me to reread it, I once again became a passionate advocate for Artomatic and other shows like it, events that provide rare opportunities for self-taught artists like me. Filled with the fire that only a completely unfair appraisal can ignite, I am proud to be showing my work at Artomatic 2024.
So congrats, I guess, Blake Gopnik. Twenty years after you took a blowtorch to our efforts, many of us are still here, still making art, still feeling a little bit bad about what you said, and still using your nasty words as powerful fuel. You’ve achieved the same kind of immortality as the tiny, prehistoric creatures in my gas tank.
You can find my work in space 5108C at Artomatic, from March 8 through April 28 at 2100 M Street NW in DC. Please consult the website for opening times and more information. If you can’t make it to DC, you can always shop online
That was some grade-A 🐮💩, Dr. Gopnik. (Those who can’t do, criticize?)
This reminds me of this embroidery piece I saw the other day: https://www.instagram.com/p/C3fm2dir5aE/?igsh=MXM2b250am1peDJ1aQ==