Sight Scene: Fall Returns to 14th St.

OUT ON 14TH STREET NW, where art watchers vacation, the aspens are already turning. "They turn in clusters, because their roots connect them."

OK — so Scooter Libby wasn't writing about D.C., when he penned those now-famous lines, but this writer can't help but think of them when the turn in the weather returns the box fan to the closet and brings the humidifier out of retirement. (Also, D.C. just happens to be incredibly more verdant than this writer's native lands in central Texas.) But there is an area in the city where the change in the season causes everything to shift at once, owing to shared roots: The arts corridor on 14th Street NW. Today, we preview Saturday night gallery openings at the 1515 14th St. NW art building; in an upcoming installment, we'll feature shows from the D.C. area at large.

» CURATOR'S OFFICE: This fall marks a homecoming for Jiha Moon, one of D.C.'s favorite daughters. Before moving to Atlanta, Moon snagged viewers with an intricate painting style that blends Eastern drawing and woodcut compositional traditions with Western mid-century abstraction. (Blubber Blobber, 2005, is at right.) She has something of the globalized, grid sensibility foregrounded by artists Benjamin Edwards and Julie Mehretu, though she borrows more from atmospheres and traffic, shying away from the commercial/found imagery that those painters draw from. "Line Tripping," the artist's show at Curator's Office, features new works on Hanji paper. The show is accompanied by an essay by John Ravenal, curator of modern and contemporary art at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts.

» ADAMSON EDITIONS: The printmaster's gallery opens its fall with new work by Chuck Close. His stuff we know: The gallery opened its 2006 season with Close's daguerrotypes. This year, the medium is new. As if trying to one-up his use of holograms last year, Close will be exhibiting Jacquard tapestries. Svetlana at Brightest Young Things explains that Close's photographic images "are translated into large-scale jacquard tapestries using a customized 'digital' loom: using 17,800 warp threads and repeating groups of eight colors." Don't forget about the traditional pigment prints (more familiar terrain for the photography gallery).

» G FINE ART: Protesters who spend the day marching against the war in Iraq may want to march right over to G Fine Art to see a new portrait series by Ian Whitmore. The artist (who is also having a homecoming show, as he migrated to Brooklyn earlier this year) painted five portraits of each of the Bush administration principals: George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, at left, Condoleezza Rice, Karl Rove and Donald Rumsfeld. Whitmore painted each from photographs, introducing variations to question the authenticity of images, whether they appear on canvas or via the media. He's also exhibiting a series of paintings that do much of the same, blending abstraction and figuration in a pincer strategy to investigate the means and ends of painting. (Disclaimer: This writer counts the artist among his friends.)

» HEMPHILL FINE ARTS: Renee Stout has focused on sculpture as a medium for bringing out her inner medium. Over the years the artist has manifested the presence of various rootworkers, fortune tellers, and hoodoo mistresses. Also at the gallery, Fatima Mayfield is her current (and longstanding) visitor from another plane, and she's led Stout to produce a body of photography documenting the charms, drawings, spells, and other installations typically associated with her work.

Images courtesy the galleries