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DC Art Scene: Art all night + (e)merge

DC ART SCENE (e)merge and Art All Night

One of my dreams is to just travel and attend art shows. I love love love it. We recently had art all night and (e)merge here in DC. They were both fantastic. I took photos at both, but I must have had one to many drinks during art all night (which, I think is understandable considering I hosted a chili+cornbread dinner at my house and the event went until 3am) because this is the only photo I feel ok publishing:artallnightshaw-1

The next weekend we headed over to (e)merge, a huge art event that intends to connect the collector and emerging artist. This year it was at Capitol Skyline Hotel near the Waterfront in SW. Val and I biked over on a Sunday and spent hours wandering the hotel rooms. On the way, we found some public art as part of 5x5.

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We said hi to our friend Fawna who does fine art printmaking and is off on an epic adventure right now.

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We ran into people we knew, or kind of knew, or lived in places we used to know -- like Ana Schmidt who had a landscape acrylic painting of Arenas on view. AMAZING. I used to live in Sopelana and teach in Getxo when I lived in the Basque Country. Really, quite crazy. I was staring at the painting thinking, this feels familiar, and then I looked closer and recognized the bridge, the maze-like neighborhoods, the port...I looked at the title and sure enough, it was Getxo. I'm still kind of shocked by this coincidence.

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We met artists and gallery attendants that sometimes looked bored and sometimes chatted with us, like Justine Otto. I was asking her about Hamburg and she was sharing her experience of DC and apparently we were talking for too long because my sister claimed she went through the rest of the rooms and came back in that time frame (lies!). Anyway, I love Otto's work and I hope you check it out!

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We also met Mercedes Teixido who was doing a site-specific letter writing piece where a person reads and she draws two copies of the same thing using a contraption that was used by Thomas Jefferson. Here's Val reading her article about the female body being exhibited so people could learn more about anatomy.

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There was a garage, called the 'lower level', that house more installations. We loved this interactive piece:

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And this column:

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And this:

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And upstairs this photobooth set up (where you had to pay to get your picture taken). I really liked the concept, but not the awkward moment when the artist kept asking us to take a photo and us not really wanting to and being confused. Or I was confused, Val just turned around.

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When we started to get tired, we got coffee.

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Then we got tacos.

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Then we went to an opening at Blind Whino and ended the night at DC9.

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Me taking photos of myself.

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Other people taking photos of us.

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WE MISS YOU FAWNA!

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