| | | Artomatic celebrates 10th birthday | | June 22, 2009 |  | | | Voice Correspondent | | Artomatic is celebrating its 10th anniversary this year with more participants than ever — a thousand visual artists are presenting displays on nine floors of the Half Street building at 55 M St. SE.
Directly above the Navy Yard Metro station, performances by 500 musicians, dancers, actors, poets and comedians are filling four stages. Films, workshops, kids’ activities, food vendors, fire twirlers and a tattoo parlor round out the offerings. Organizers predicted 70,000 visitors would come to the free event.
Artomatic kicked off its five-week arts extravaganza in late May in a brand-new, 275,000-square-foot office building one block north of Nationals Park. Each year. the mega-event takes over a different vacant building for a unique festival of visual and performing arts open to anyone from anywhere, though Washington-area artists predominate.
“It’s a pretty unique blend for the first occupants of 55 M St.,” said Artomatic president Veronica Szalus at a media preview attended by city politicians, corporate sponsors and artists, who talked about their experiences with the show, which has now taken place in all four quadrants of the city.
Artists run everything — from planning events to manning exhibits — on a volunteer basis. They collaborate with business improvement districts, which see Artomatic as a way to highlight their emerging neighborhoods.
“It’s a great way to bring people in to see that this is the most exciting new neighborhood in the country,” said Ward 6 D.C. Council member Tommy Wells.
One artist captivated by the Capitol Riverfront was Jack Whitsitt, who is showing at Artomatic for the third time. He and his wife, photographer Paivi Salonen, moved a month ago to the Onyx, a 14-story apartment building across M Street from Artomatic.
“We really found the area interesting,” said Whitsitt. “We kind of like where it’s going.” The couple was camped out at Artomatic a month ago, waiting for two display spaces near each other, and took advantage of the free time to explore the neighborhood. That’s when they discovered the Onyx, which was completed last year.
Whitsitt’s interactive installation occupies a seventh-floor wall near the elevators. The piece is about transience, something the artist considers especially apt for Artomatic. With a Web camera, it captures images of people standing in front of a screen on the wall. A computer program Whitsitt wrote then blows the images up and mixes them with ambient sound, as well as a looped song. Then it is all projected onto the screen in a kaleidoscope of colors and movement.
To emphasize the transient element, Whitsitt also periodically projects different photographic portraits onto the screen. He then quickly traces the portraits and lays the tracings over the photographs. The installation is an experiment that few other venues besides Artomatic would allow, he says. He credits the freedom with helping him develop his art.
Whitsitt’s wife is showing 13 black-and-white photographs on a wall nearby. She took them recently while traveling in Vietnam and Thailand with her husband. They crisply portray the region’s people and places like Angkor Wat and the Royal Palace at Phnom Penh.
Also on the seventh floor are Peeps dioramas, perennial favorites that place marshmallow chicks and bunnies in comical situations. There’s a whimsical “Mary Peepins,” showing a rabbit-eared Mary Poppins floating over a night cityscape, umbrella held high. Some three dozen others include winners of this year’s Washington Post Peeps Diorama Contest, plus other displays that feature Peeps on roller skates, Peeps as imperial Chinese terracotta warriors, Peeps in Camelot (“Peepsalot”) and a high-wire-walking Peep.
Artomatic will continue through July 5 in the Half Street building at 55 M St. SE above the Washington Navy Yard Metro station (use the west entrance). It is open Wednesdays, Thursdays and Sundays from noon to 10 p.m. and Fridays and Saturdays from noon to 1 a.m. artomatic.com. | | | | | Log in to comment on this article |
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