Locals on the Canvas
The May issue of the art journal New American Paintings spotlights 40 mid-Atlantic artists, selected by Stephen Bennett Phillips, curator of the Phillips Collection. Among those selected are five D.C.-area painters: Rachel Jeffers, Courtney Jordan, Kevin Kepple (whose The Fuse is pictured), Amy Lin, and Renee Stout. (Phillips on Stout, in the issue's introduction: "Her multilayered collages contain passages of abstract surface interest, photorealist painting, and faux naif content that blends biography and fiction.")
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This would be more impressive if New American Paintings were a few more steps above those faux Who's Who-type publications that you pay to get into: NAP requires an artist to pay $30 and submit slides to be considered for inclusion. It's basically a juried exhibition in magazine form, produced by making a notable curator choose the handful of half-decent artists from among hundreds or thousands of no-hopers. Like most pay-to-play arrangements in the art world, it's, at best, a resume-padder for everyone involved.