Lunch with Kermit

Today I had the privilege of going to meet my friend artist Kermit Berg for a preview of his new exhibition at Washington DC's  Gallery Plan B on 14th St. at Q St. NW and going to lunch to catch up on some of what I have been missing since he moved to the west coast a couple years ago.

Kermit is a fine artist who uses Adobe photo-shop and digital photographs and manipulates them a lot to create many layered collages of urban scenes. He was the first person I knew who embraced the computer as a tool for making prints and his art. This show is focused on a trip to Japan about 18 months ago. They are layers of office building reflections in dark windows and lights. There are what looks to be airbrushed graffiti like lines and dots Incorporated into the layers but honestly it is nearly impossible to label them with any certainty one thing or the other. I love Kermit's work because it is so details without showing all the hours of work he puts into creating the final prints. He is the sweetest Midwestern guy who is fluent in German and he spends a lot of time in one of my favorite places, Berlin, Germany. I met him in a Washington Cafe because he was reading a German newspaper one day back in the 1990's and we hit it off as art pals right away.

Tom at gallery plan b 

Today he told me a little about the show and introduced me to Tom who is taking care of the gallery this afternoon. We liked him in his bright blue fleece jacket sitting at the desk in front of one of Kermit's Tokyo prints. The colors were well balanced...
We went to lunch in a little Crepe restaurant on 14th St. my friend Tom Palmer introduced me to a few months ago and had delicious crepes filled with mushrooms cheese and avocado.  Kermit's two person show is opening Saturday evening 6-8:00 PM, I plan to attend with Keith before we rush home to do our last minute packing for our next trip. Mom and her best pal Mildred are taking us down to Williamsburg, Virginia  with plans to visit Richmond's Fine Arts Museum one day next week in addition to all the cool stuff there is to see in Colonial W'burg and the discount shopping. I am looking forward to being in the Colonial village again. Today I had my sketch book and camera on my trip downtown on metro and walking and here a few things I wanted to share:

sailor in uniform napping on the metro

delightful colors on a home on Wallack St. NW 

detail of Wallack St. NW home

coleus on Wallack St. NW

10-21-11 morning sketch of begonia in the studio

quilt in the hoop getting stitched together 

I like the way the patterns look up close