PoP Weekend Picks (From Weekly Emails)

This Friday, the National Press Club will put the FUN back into fundraiser with Commedia dell Media, an evening of comedy hosted by WTOP’s ‘Man About Town’ Bob Madigan and featuring performances by a roster of DC’s most respected journalists.

Pessimism and economic doom may dominate the headlines, but on April 3 these reporters will cast off that pall of gloom by voraciously scratching the comedic underbelly of their industry. McClatchy’s Nancy Youssef will tell the audience what it’s really like for an Arab woman to cover the Pentagon. Newsweek’s Mark Hosenball will sing an ode for the scoundrels of Wall Street. Anna Mulrine of US News will expose the humorous side of military embeds. Conde Nast’s Matt Cooper and David Corn of Mother Jones will exercise their notorious comedic chops as part of a line-up that also includes radio personality Jamila Bey, Bloomberg’s Scott Lanman, UPI’s Shaun Waterman, long-time WUSA anchor Mike Walter, and the Washington Post’s Delphine Schrank.

Proceeds from the event will help support the important work of Reporters Without Borders and the Eric Friedheim Memorial Library. Tickets are $15 in advance, or $20 at the door, and are available for purchase at http://www.press.org/comedy/. A pre-show reception will open the doors at 7 pm, with the comedy beginning at 8.

Lettie Gooch moves from 9th Street to 1517 U Street and will celebrate it’s third anniversary Friday and Saturday.

From an email:

We will be celebrating our grand opening and third anniversary. The event is Friday April 3, 2009 from 6-9pm, as well as Saturday April the 4, 2009 from 11-8pm. Friday we will be serving champagne and cupcakes provided by Live Love Life. We will also have a small fashion that starts at 8pm presenting our new spring collection as well as our new “Boyfriend Corner.” Equipped with a seating area and men magazines, as well as denim from Fresh Ink and and new long sleeve and short sleeve shirts for men.

More picks after the jump.

Conner Contemporary Art Celebrating 10th Anniversary

Conner Contemporary Art takes great pleasure in announcing our 10th anniversary. We are especially pleased to celebrate our first decade with concurrent solo exhibitions of new work by three gallery artists: Erik Thor Sandberg, Dean Kessmann and Isaac Maiselman.

Erik Thor Sandberg calls forth the regenerative powers of nature in Cyclical Nature, his third solo exhibition with the Gallery. Viewing the artist’s latest series of large oil paintings on canvas elicits as much pleasure as he evidently took in painting them. Freeing figures from interior settings of his previous compositions, Sandberg opened magnificent landscape vistas as sites for the enactment of life, death and regeneration. In his inventive allegories, people and animals negotiate a tenuous balance between knowledge and irrationality. Sandberg reconciled the unsettling eventualities of his protagonists’ actions by grounding them in vital elements which assert nature’s boundless forces of reclamation and rebirth.

Dean Kessmann furthers his exploration of unusual ways of seeing familiar architectural spaces in Architectural Intersections, his third solo exhibition with the Gallery. In this new series of photographs the artist rediscovers the simple delight an imaginative world inspired by childhood memories of lying on his back and looking at the ceiling upside-down. Kessmann photographed his current apartment with a large-format view camera, focusing on points where off-white walls meet an off-white ceiling to define the shape of a room, at corners, as well as at junctures with encased supports and conduits. Kessmann’s elegant minimal images challenge preconceptions about gravity and light as they evoke the plasticity of abstract forms. Catalogue available with essay by Karen Irvine, curator, The Museum of Contemporary Photography, Chicago, IL.

In his first solo exhibition with the Gallery, *gogo projects artist Isaac Maiselman critiques political exploitation of religion in the video installation Entre el Dios, El Diablo. The videos disclose Maiselman’s efforts to symbolically internalize, cleanse, and reform biblical scripture into a tolerant ethical code unstained by human aggression. The artist’s imagery combines unfathomably black objects, casting nearly impenetrable shadows, with translucent materials and bright surfaces that convey pure light. These uncompromising visual qualities of light and dark, which symbolize good and evil, figure the polemic that impels Maiselman to remake white pages with black text into his own Bible through video.

Additional information may be found at: http://www.connercontemporary.com/

For further information or images, please contact the gallery @ 202-588-8750 or [email protected].

Conner Contemporary Art is located at 1358-60 Florida Avenue, NE –Washington, DC 20002 in the H Street Corridor/ Atlas Arts District. Parking available. H Street shuttle available FROM 5 to 2pm.
Gallery hours: Wednesday through Saturday 11-5pm or by prior appointment.

Greater Deanwood Heritage Trail Launch

Saturday, April 4, 2009

Unveiling Ceremony 1 pm

Riverside Center, Division Avenue and Foote Street, NE

With Ward 7 Councilmember Yvette Alexander and Councilmember At Large Kwame Brown, arts, and entertainment

Walk the Trail 2 – 4 pm

Join your neighbors, city officials, and Cultural Tourism DC staff to walk the Greater Deanwood Heritage Trail. Explore on your own or join a group tour led by a Deanwood resident expert and member of the Heritage Trail Working Group.

Look for the Greater Deanwood Heritage Trail welcome station at the Minnesota Avenue Metro (Orange line). Shuttles will be available for transportation to the Riverside Center.

Saltman Knowles HR 57

This weekend would be a great time to introduce HR-57 (14th Street next to Rice Restaurant) since local jazz group Saltman Knowles (www.saltmanknowles.com) will be having a CD release party for their new release, “Return of the Composer,” which is currently making its way up the World Jazz charts (no. 8 last week).

The Joan Hisaoka Healing Arts Gallery

Poetry Reading by
Alexandra Villard de Borchgrave

Washington, DC, – Poetry Reading, Friday, April 3, 2009, 5:30 – 8:00 pm, handsthe Joan Hisaoka Healing Arts Gallery located at 1632 U St NW, DC. Alexandra Villard de Borchgrave will read from her inspirational books of poetry Heavenly Order: Twenty Five Meditations of Wisdom and Harmony and Healing Light: Thirty Messages of Love, Hope and Courage.

The poems in Healing Light: Thirty Messages of Love, Hope and Courage was inspired by the tragic events of 9/11 and were designed to give hope and solace to the families of the victims. Her second book of poetry, Heavenly Order: Twenty Five Meditations of Wisdom and Harmony, is based on the Ten Worlds of Buddhist philosophy and illustrated with seventeenth century Japanese art.

Alexandra Villard de Borchgrave’s Message:

“I was inspired by the children going to Ground Zero and calling out their parents’ names with great courage and sadness. In writing prayers for them I found a universal humanity in my three themes:
· The need to find courage to overcome the fears within us.
· The need for kindness, generosity and love to bring comfort and solace at a
time of suffering.
· The need for hope and resiliency to rebuild after a tragic and traumatic event.”

Reinvent the circus to benefit Clowns Without Borders

Friday April 3rd, 2009

Tickets pre-sale: $10 at http://www.ticketalternative.com/Events/4709.aspx $15 after March 27th

Dance to the music of DJ Carlo, Sequoia, Tubbo & Kebunny and DJ Dustin

This event will feature the greatest circus performers, fire dancers, sideshow attractions and clowns on the East coast!
As well as performances by Archedream for Humankind and Dance Afire!

ArcheDream for HUMANKIND is a multi-disciplinary mask theatre dedicated to inspiring and empowering through innovative performances and workshops utilizing dance, music, multimedia and visual arts. Two of ADHK’s performers will be presenting three 10-15 mins EPISODES featuring contact juggling, hip-hop and circus arts in ArcheDream’s vibrant blacklight reactive costumes. View a sample of their work here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=klrelWkCfGw

Dance Afire is a collective of professional artists and dancers who have come together to develop and promote the practice of accentuating the art of movement with the rich and beautiful spectacle of fire. See one of their performances here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iVM1dHItjoY

Station 9, Washington DC @ 10pm

Dress Code: Clown Formal (be creative!)

This event benefits Clowns Without Borders Sudan 09. All the proceeds of the ticket sales will go towards the expenses of the mission. More info here (http://www.clownswithoutborders.org)

And for Monday: Library Lecture Series: [ Monday, Apr 6, 6:00pm ] Principles of Nonviolence

Library Lecture Series: [ Monday, Apr 6, 6:00pm ]
Principles of Nonviolence: Gandhi, non-violence, and the Salt March.
Presented by Paul Sweeney, MLS.
Watha T. Daniel Library, 945 Rhode Island Ave, NW
For more info call (202) 671-0265