Artomatic

March 23, 2024 – Day 8

Cherry Hill Park, College Park MD

Yesterday was “Be A Tourist” day. Today is “Be A Local” day. Ann was taking us to Artomatic.

Artomatic is a multi-week, multi-floor, multimedia arts vent held in the Washington, D.C. area. It was founded by Washington, D.C artist and arts activist George Koch. The non-juried, open event has provided a venue for artists of all types (visual, performance, and literary) and abilities (from novice to professional).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artomatic

Basically when a building is being transformed, say from a dead office space into a residential area, Artomatic will pop up. As you can imagine it’s had many locations over its 25 years. This year’s Artomatic is at 2100 M Street. Ultimately this building will be converted into residences. The non-profit rents out office space to artists who are then invited to transform their spaces into galleries or performance spaces. Beyond their entry fee of $150 for a space (which can be shared with other artists). The only other requirement is to do a set number of hours working the venue. Obviously if you want to do more that’s encouraged.

This year Artomatic’s 2100 M location is an eight story building. We took the elevator to the 8th floor, which was configured as an open space. (susan here: I liked this floor the best. The former office spaces I found to be more confining.)

Any commercial building that is being decommissioned is not in the best of conditions and the Artomatic building was no exception. Each artist is responsible for decorating their space, which always includes paint, even if someone has bashed a wall in.

Painting was the popular medium, followed by photography, but sculpture, fiber arts, film and even music were represented. This sculpture was made up of old electronics parts, but better, yet, you could spin it. “Spin Gently” the sign said.

That’s a hockey soldier in the background…

Paul even made his own “art,” LOL.

Everything was for sale. Prices ranged from outlandishly expensive to exceptionally affordable. Paul was tempted to bring some home, but nothing spoke to him and his wallet with sufficient force. Susan felt the same. BTW, you can buy that photo above for $1,000.00.

The seventh floor was a warren of offices, each a gallery.

We headed down to the 5th floor looking for Joe Shanahan, a painter who Ann knew. We eventually found Joe’s gallery and had a nice visit. Many of the artists were in present in their spaces. We both liked and hated this. If you liked their work you could talk with them, but if you didn’t, you felt bad about giving them 10 seconds of your time and then leaving. Paul recalls customers at the Charles-Baltivik gallery looking at his work for 10 seconds and moving on. Many of the windows shoppers said to him cheerfully, “We’ll be back.” He told Katherine Baltivik and she said, “Oh, more be-backs.”

Eight floors of galleries is a lot. Since it’s free to visit, we can see visiting this building in smaller chunks if you live here, maybe a floor at a time. It would be less overwhelming and easier to appreciate the local art scene. It was quite a firehose of art. We never did find the gallery where the parents filled an entire office with their children’s macaroni art. Paul kind of wanted to see that. Susan did too.