My Thoughts on this Monday Memorial Day

I flew down to D.C. for the weekend and caught a quick glimpse of Rolling Thunder, which is a gathering of vets, tens of thousands of them from all over the world, on bikes (many, many Harleys) that meet every year on Memorial Day.  They ride from the Pentagon through Washington, it's really moving, even when the engines are silent.  I guess Sarah Palin crashed it last year and folks were bummed, but this year it seemed like a genuine celebratory gathering.  Below, a picture from today's Washington Post, which I thought so beautiful and caputured the event PERFECTLY!  (I couldn't read the photo credit online, sorry because you deserve credit.)

I also had the opportunity to catch an amazing, gem of a show at Curator's Office curated by Todd Levin.  It's always way worth any effort to go see what the very smart and affable Andrea Pollan is up too.  Together these two upped the ante by featuring works by Joseph Cornell, Rashid Johnson, Pipilotti Rist and Haim Steinbach! 

I also caught some new Chakaia Booker  sculptures along New York Avenue before heading back home.  I was able to relax and take it all in because before leaving I finished writing the press release for the next show: Ellen Letcher!!  Glimpses of her press release below...

“Leo, Romeo & Juliet,” 2002–2012, painting and collage, 16 x 20 inches

Wresting images from glossy magazines and pasting them down with paint, Letcher creates a highly idiosyncratic collection of pictorial data.  She replays this device of painting and pasting, maintaining a graphic energy while carefully editing, and anything might and does happen along the way (for instance, an impression of a leaf falls outside one of Letcher’s gridded, brushed blue-glue and pink strokes).  Evidence of a cup of tea is plastered by active orange paint strokes while on another one of Letcher’s pages, Muslims pray within a lattice of painted pink, orange, and blue.

A thoughtful Memorial Day.