Blink

The dealmaker

Local art gallery owners may be worried about the impact hotshots like Ted Pillsbury, new partner with Gerald Peters in Pillsbury and Peters Fine Art, and Talley Dunn, principal with Lisa Hirschler Brown in Dunn Brown Contemporary, are going to have on the competitive commercial gallery scene. But Blink thinks they need to watch out for David Quadrini, Angstrom Gallery director, who's making connections with all the right people in New York and California. Up to his ears in deals and potential deals with contemporary art powerhouses like Paul Bloodgood, director of NYC's AC Project Room, Quadrini attended the Manhattan opening of Description Without Place, featuring Angstrom artist Erick Swenson, who showed "Edgar," a mythical beast of burden.

"The response was amazing," Quadrini says of the show that runs through December 4 at the Staff USA fashion house on Broadway. Quadrini is tight with Bloodgood, who discovered DMA-featured video artist Doug Aitken. Quadrini met Aitken at last summer's Venice Bienniale, where Aitken was named "Best Young Artist." Sources say Quadrini may be close to a commitment to represent Aitken in Texas, but Quadrini's not talking. "I don't want to say anything now," he says. "I'm sure if he wants to do a project in Dallas, he'll do it with me, but Doug is insanely busy right now."

Quadrini should talk. He's so busy, he hired Sean Slattery, former Good/Bad Art Collective artist and former assistant curator-museum manager for the Arlington Museum of Art, to mind the store at Angstrom.

Hamburger helper

The current issue of American Theatre tackles a touchy subject in an article by Jim Lillie titled "When Local Actors Get Cast -- and When They Don't." In exploring an ages-old debate over whether local theater companies have an obligation to cast local actors, or may simply follow the trend of producing plays locally but casting them with out-of-towners, Lillie interviewed Dallas Theater Center artistic director Richard Hamburger, who has garnered his share of criticism for overlooking local performers. Yet Hamburger didn't sound his usual arrogant note about his artistic vision overriding any concerns about hometown allegiances. Hamburger told Lillie that more than 50 percent of DTC's actors live in the Dallas-Fort Worth area, and that the Theater Center "will always audition Dallas actors first." "It's not our perception that this is actually what's happening," says one local actor. "If DTC really feels that way, I'll take it as a good sign."

— Annabelle Massey Helber