ArtSake

Boston Handmade, a group of Boston-area artists, artisans, and craftspeople who (totally apropos of their name) handmake their stuff, have been invited to open up shop in an empty storefront in Downtown Crossing! Well done, Boston Redevelopment Authority, well done indeed.

Magnum Photos blog has advice for emerging photographers, from like a stadium-full of established photographers. (Seriously, a ton of photographers offer advice - there’s gotta be something useful in there somewhere, right?)

Not sure how I feel about the cutting up of books (even so artfully), but this site featuring book sculptures is pretty cool. Makes me think of Sherrill Hunnibell’s (Drawing Fellow ‘04) altered books (such as the one above) and Mag Harries’ (Sculpture/Installation Fellow ‘03) book chairs.

On his blog The Writing Life x3, Massachusetts playwright and writer Patrick Gabridge shares impressions of a recent theater symposium in Boston. “I was struck over and over again how much we all want to work together better,” he writes, positing that a theater scene could greatly benefit from more reflection on just-concluded projects, learning from the successes and mistakes of the collaborative process.

Mirror Up to Nature has a perceptive post on how the current economic climate could (let’s choose to emphasize the word could) be a rife environment for attacks on government arts funding.

Fair use and copyright issues for artists are trickier than ever, what with this age of hyper-connected doo-daddery (also known as the Internet). Gallery owner Edward Winkleman goes over some recent fair use and copyrights cases concerning artists.

The LA Times book blog Jacket Copy covers Concord, Mass. author-turned-philanthropic-publisher Stona Fitch and his decision to give away his book Give and Take – with the caveat that the receiver then gives to charity (and in a whole ‘nother layer of meta, the plot of the book involves a modern Robin Hood type).

An interesting craft question posed at Practicing Writing: in historical fiction, should the words be spelled as we spell them now, or should the spelling reflect the period?

In The Art Newspaper, Roland Augustine has an opinion piece stating that artists should be able to deduct a fair market value in their taxes when they donate works of art. Currently, art collectors can, but artists can only deduct cost of materials. (Incidentally, this very change is part of President-elect Barack Obama’s arts policy, so there is reason to hope.)

Speaking of… Best American Poetry is sponsoring a contest for the best Inaugural ode.

And finally, GalleyCat covers last night’s National Book Awards ceremony. Sadly, neither Salvatore Scibona (Fiction/Creative Nonfiction Fellow ‘06) nor Joan Wickersham (Fiction/Creative Nonfiction Fellow ‘08), finalists both, walked away with shiny new awards (I’m assuming they’re shiny), but the blog quotes Salvatore’s publisher at Greywolf, Fiona McRae, as being sure that Salvatore will have many more award nights ahead of him. I still wish he and Joan had won, but, as David Mehegan says in the Globe’s Off the Shelf blog, “You’re all champs in our book.”

Incidentally, check out this video interview with Salvatore on GalleyCat (Salvatore speaks about halfway in, after Candace Bushnell and the awards director). Asked how he as an artist, already to some extent resigned to a not-rich life, reacts to the Wall Street crisis, he says that when “everybody who’s rich suddenly gets poor, we feel like we’ve come up in the world!”

See, ask an artist, and everybody wins.

Image: Sherrill Hunnibell, COMING FIRST (2001), mixed media altered book, 7 in x 9 in x 1 in

We’ve begun the 2009 Commonwealth Awards process, and there are two things for which we humbly ask: nominations for 2009 recipients and proposals to create the art object given to award winners (such as the above image, the 2005 Commonwealth Award Art Object, designed by Deb Todd Wheeler).

But if you find yourself asking, What are these Commonwealth Awards you speak of? then read the next sentence: They are the state’s highest honor in the arts, humanities, and sciences, presented every two years to individuals and organizations that have made extraordinary contributions to the cultural life of Massachusetts. Such cultural luminaries as Yo-Yo Ma, David McCullough, Stanely Kunitz, Robert Brustein, Stephen Jay Gould, and Doris Kearns Goodwin have received them since their inception in 1993. The awards are sponsored by Bank of America.

Nominations are now being accepted for outstanding individuals and organizations in the categories of: Creative Economy Catalyst, Leadership, Creative Community, Individual Achievement, Creative Learning, and Cultural Philanthropy (read more about the category descriptions and past winners). The nomination form has been simplified and streamlined this year, so you should be able to ace the Monday, December 8, 2008 deadline for nominations.

We’re also announcing an open call for proposals to create the 2009 Commonwealth Award Art Object. The MCC will commission an artist to create nine art objects; eight for the award winners and one distinctive piece to be presented to the Keynote Speaker at the awards ceremony.

There’s no time to lose, as the deadline for proposals is Monday, December 8, 2008. All nine art award objects will need to be completed and delivered by January 9, 2009. The total budget may not exceed $5,850 (approximately $650 per object).

Find more information and the submission form.

Image: Deb Todd Wheeler, 2005 Commonwealth Award Art Object, etched and shaped copper, from computer-generated patterns of an unfolded acorn. More information about the process to create this object, and all of the Commonwealth Award Art Objects, can be found on our website.

At first glance, their work bears little resemblance. Candice Smith Corby (Painting Fellow ‘08) creates enigmatic paintings of peculiarly placed women and furniture, on unconventional surfaces like doilies and handkerchiefs. Julie Levesque (Sculpture/Installation Fellow ‘05) invents sculptures, installations, and drawings that tell mysterious stories of identity, memory, and duality through striking monochromatic figures and objects.

But creatively, the two artists draw from a similar place - a basis of stirring personal inquiry.

We invited Candice and Julie to engage in a dialogue about their work, and they found shared ground in explorations of family connections, domestic imagery, and frozen moments.

Detail from FORK, KNIFE OR SPOON? by Julie Levesque (2006), wood, mixed media

MCC: I am curious how a particular work of art begins for each of you. With an idea? With a material? With an image?

Candice: A lot of times, I get an image in my head, or at least a portion of it. Or maybe I’ll hear a phrase from a song, or when I’m reading, a phrase will strike me. Sometimes they’re family quotes. But they’re always visual - the language is always visual - so I get an immediate picture. And the material is already figured out for me: gouache and watercolor. Although sometimes I’ll bring other things in, like acrylic, flocking, glitter or different sprays.

Julie: For me, it really depends on what I’m doing. If it’s an installation, it almost always starts with a space. But if I’m just working on individual sculpture, it usually starts with an idea that has a sliver of potential. And then I just hope that, somewhere along the line, there’s that moment of magic that expands it and touches something that’s universal. Materials, in the beginning, were really important to me. They really helped me sort things out. But now it’s really moved more toward concept, and then the materials fit the concept.

Candice: So you have a concept, and then you think about how it might become physical, and what might make the best match?

Julie: Exactly. There are some materials that I’m really excited about, like salt. If I can drag that in there, I will.

MCC: One thing that you pointed out, Julie, was that both of you explore a kind of domestic narrative in your work, both in the materials you use and in your subject matter. What is it you find in this domestic place that’s so fertile for your art?

Candice: There’s a public image and a private image that are always hand in hand. What somebody might see from the outside might be completely false from the inside. Now that I’m a mother, there are days when I feel like I’m a crazy person, and then there are days where I feel totally at ease. You can be the same person and have opposite ends of saneness. I look to the women in my family as references - those are the stories I hear. I definitely have specific little dramas that I reference in my work.

Candice Smith Corby, ‘TIL DEATH DO US PART (2007), gouache on cloth napkin 14 in x 20 in

MCC: So it’s not as much that you’re attacking the grand theme of the domestic, but that you work from ideas and events from your own life and family?

Candice: I do both. I think there are definitely autobiographical stories that I’m referencing but I think everyone has those stories. I’d like it to be more universal so that not just I can identify with it.

To give you an example: one of my grandmothers is not a nice lady. And she never has been. She’s older and sort of senile but she’s still able to muster up some nastiness every time we see her. She went to church because you’re supposed to go to church, and she wore certain things because you were supposed to. But the way she behaved behind the front door is different. Ironically, everyone at the nursing home loves her and thinks she is the sweetest old lady. Those are the things I think about - the personal vs. the public, and the humor within the serious.

Julie: I think this is where we match up really well. Because I could have just said basically what you said. It’s that contradiction of what’s presented as what family life is supposed to be, as opposed to what it actually ends up being, when you get right down to it. Everybody thinks that they really shouldn’t be quite the way that they are. I think we really suffer from what marketing projects to us in that respect. It sets up a perfect tension.

I like to think in terms of spaces. When you’re a kid and you’re growing up, you have to walk that minefield. Whatever landscape you’ve got is the one that you’re going through, and there’s just no way out of it. When you look at it through a kid’s point of view, those worlds are really small and really intense. We have forgotten how intense they are. I keep dragging myself back there to visit that - like the second grade classroom that I built (What Remains). When people got into that space, they exploded with their own stories.

Julie Levesque, installation view of WHAT REMAINS (2002), wood & mixed media

MCC: Identity is such a strong current in both of your bodies of work. Can you describe how identity plays into your art, such as Julie’s installation Fork, Knife or Spoon?

Julie: Fork, Knife or Spoon? is a show that’s based on surprising people into telling the truth about themselves. The core of it is a table with a graphic of all the European silverware, like a pickle fork and a slotted spoon and a dinner knife. People are invited to trace the image of one and write why that utensil best describes themselves.

It started out with my mom. I had just seen Pat Shannon’s exhibit at Boston Sculptors. She had taken furniture that belonged to all of her family members and sanded it down to its bare wood and arranged it together. I started thinking about what I would choose as an object for my mother, and what would she choose. And so I tried to ask her that question. And she refused to answer me. It was hitting a button, and she just would not go there. And I got really frustrated with her, and I said, “Okay mom, just tell me, are you a fork, a knife, or a spoon?” And she immediately said, “Oh my God, I’m a salad fork. I just like to poke a little bit!” And we laughed so hard because it was so true. That’s exactly her. I built the idea into a show at Clark Gallery a while ago, and I’m bringing it back to Babson College. I’m expanding it to an online conversation. It’s a blog and a network. People can post there directly, or they can text or email me and all of their responses will be on the site and then printed out and taped to the windows as part of the physical exhibit. I want to see how viral I can get this to go.

Candice: That’s really exciting.

Julie: It’s something really different for me. It’s made me talk a lot to other artists who are working with collaboration, like my studio-mate Deb Todd Wheeler and Jane Marsching.

Candice: When I choose furniture (to depict) in my work, I’m thinking about how they represent people. Or somebody’s posture. The way that the chair might be positioned. I try to find furniture that gives a sense of personality or a point of view, confrontational or coy, turned over or turned away.

Candice Smith Corby, STARVING FOR ATTENTION (2007), gouache on handkerchief 12 in square

Julie: Is there furniture that you use that’s authentic, like your grandmother’s couch?

Candice: There are a few. But I also have a furniture fetish. So if I could, I’d probably have ten couches or more.

Some of my images aren’t exactly someone’s specific piece of furniture, but they do reference the situations they’re from. Some are symbolic, too. Furniture and objects also go back to that idea of representation of perfection, what you have and what you don’t have.

Julie: A lot of your imagery could come from a ’50s ad, with that perfect woman in there holding up hundreds of objects. I love the balance you’ve gotten in that frozen moment. There’s a sense of, if I could just hold on! I think you capture that so well. I have the sense that there’s stillness there in that chaos. That contradiction totally speaks to me.

Candice Smith Corby, BENDING OVER BACKWARDS (2008), gouache on paper, 20 in x 24 in

Candice: I like how you talk about the stillness and the frozen moment. I don’t deal with change very well myself. It makes me think of a drawing I made once. It was 95% finished. This drawing was pretty detailed, immaculate, no mistakes. Then I spilled my whole cup of coffee on it. It’s on the paper, it’s there. You can’t erase it. So I looked at it, mopped it up some. And I think - there was a train or an airplane - and it all became the exhaust smoke.

I’m always trying to freeze things, but you don’t always have control. And you have to keep going.

Julie: I’ve come to really cherish that. Being a sculptor, there are times when I have made a mistake on an expensive piece of material, completely shattering what I was trying to build. And in that physicalness, I end up really changing it - having to sit down and say, now what? Most times, that will shift me into a direction that is almost always 100% better than where I was going. That’s where a small idea starts to change to something that becomes meaningful.

MCC: What’s up next for both of you?

Candice: I’m working on a project in which I’ll do a wall installation that goes beyond one wall, an interior space. But I’ll be using furniture.

Julie: Using actual furniture or paintings?

Candice: They’re painted, life-size furniture on canvas that I cut out and then apply to the wall. A lot of times I paint the wall either a graphic, flat pattern or a wallpaper pattern. But I might play with having more of a spatial situation to set the furniture in. But it all comes back to a flat surface.

Julie: Which works really well - taking a three-dimensional object and making it two-dimensional in three-dimensional spaces. That’s a lovely play in itself.

Candice: Thanks. So I’ll make some new pieces for that. And then I have a series of drawings/paintings that I’m working on, that are loosely based around feats of strength.

Julie: Kind of the supermom thing.

Candice: Playing on that.

Julie Levesque, SMOKE (2008), 48 in X 34 in X 3 in

Julie: After “Fork, Knife or Spoon?” I’ll be in the salon show at Clark Gallery in December and then I’ve got a show in Appleton WI at Lawrence University next March. So that is going to carry on the two-dimensional work I’ve been doing.

My work is really changing. I’ve been making these drawings of crouching figures on large white panels that are really spare. Working on “Fork, Knife or Spoon?” has given me a break from that. I’m not quite sure where I’m going quite yet, but I hope that it gels into something new.

Candice Smith Corby’s (Painting Fellow ‘08) paintings have shown at Miller Block Gallery, Danforth Museum of Art, and HallSpace Gallery, among others. She has an exhibition forthcoming at the Essex Art Center in Lawrence, May 8-June 12.

Julie Levesque (Sculpture/Installation Fellow ‘05) has shown at Rice/Pollak Gallery, AJ Japour Gallery, and Clark Gallery, among others. Her installation Fork, Knife or Spoon? runs at the Reynolds Center at Babson College, through December 15. You can read and contribute to the online version of “Fork, Knife or Spoon?” here.

Join the dialogue - share your own responses to these questions or the artists’ discussion by adding a comment below.

In Three Stages, we ask Massachusetts artists to shed light on their art-making process by focusing on three stages in the creative life of one work of art.

Here, 2008 Fiction/Creative Nonfiction Fellow Tracy Winn takes us through the writing process that produced the upcoming story collection Mrs. Somebody Somebody (Southern Methodist University Press 2009).

INSPIRATION

The best part of writing a story is probably the rush of thinking I’ve finished - that sizzle up the spine that comes with believing I have accomplished something. A closing sentence announces itself. I type. I see the circle of the story come around to meet itself. I hear closure in the rhythm of the final sentence slowing the pace of words, coming to a stop, coming into the station like a train, finding its long-anticipated point of rest.

For a couple of days, I’ll walk around propped up by my secret success - there is a new story written and I’m the clever one who wrote it. I marvel at the characters I’ve brought to life in the story, savor the metaphors, and affectionately retrace the connections that bind it as a whole. In re-reading it, I might strengthen a phrase or two. However, I’m not really working to improve it, just hoping to feel again the tingle of accomplishment - the congratulatory pat to the ego - that goes with re-realizing I’ve made something new.

Getting to this point of completion has challenged me deeply. My process is messy and slow and inefficient. It usually begins when I notice a quirk of reality like a blind man hitchhiking, or a small child in expensive clothes giving the finger to passersby in a park, or a solar eclipse reproduced precisely, in miniature on the sidewalk a hundred times through holes in the leaves of a sickly little tree. The wind shakes the leaves and all the tiny eclipses projected on the ground, dance, igniting in me a sense of wonder, attracting my imagination and inspiring me to begin something. I write little blocks of a story - a paragraph or a scene to each block - not knowing the story’s shape or where they will fit into the flow of the piece. I move them around to discover what their proximity provokes. Then I write in my notebook about what I see in front of me, naming the possibilities of what happens in what order, adding new blocks and discarding those that seem less vital.

My process resembles what my great grandmother did when her edema was bad. She’d take up residence in her rocker, crochet hook in hand, her ankles swelling over the tops of her lace-up heels. She’d pile completed afghan squares at her feet. Each square had its own color scheme and logic, but eventually it would need to connect to its abutters, need to be sewn in so the assemblage would make a sensible and pleasing whole. Similarly, the blocks of my story must be hooked in and smoothed until seamless. So when that ultimate sentence arrives for me, my relief and delight at having finished overwhelms my better judgment. The fox of forgetfulness steals in and pilfers all memory of other times I’ve “finished” a story.

CHALLENGE

The illusion of completion can last for quite a while, during which the story sits on my desk. Or, even worse, the story gets sent to some journal with a contest deadline approaching. You’ll notice the passive voice in the last sentence - as if I play no part in acting on the assumption that the story is finished. But written work demands an audience as fervently as the visual or performing arts. The story needs to create a reaction in someone other than its writer. So begins the second stage in the process of creation. I share the work with a trusted reader or two. They challenge my assumptions. They ask questions that reveal their misunderstanding of a key component of the story. I rewrite. Time passes. I get to know the story a little better. I collect a few rapid rejections from periodicals. Eventually, the reasons cited for rejection, the passage of time, and the questions asked by my writer friends crack the illusion that the story has arrived.

Time passing allows for a certain distance from the work. I begin to see only everything wrong with it. Before you can say “solar eclipse,” the story has become a poor limp thing, dead in the water, an embarrassment to its maker, and I wonder how I could ever have been so thoroughly deluded as to show it to anybody, never mind sending it off to garner praise and awards. If I am lucky and smart at this point, I will hear my former teacher, Tracy Daugherty saying, “You have a beautiful problem.” His words remind me that the reactions the piece has elicited from my trusted readers are not all bad. They’ve recognized something vital in there that might still be released. If I climb back into the story, sharpening images, clarifying the shape and intent - those intangibles that have begun to reveal themselves more clearly to me - I might still rescue it.

COMPLETION

I am thinking now of the title story in Mrs. Somebody Somebody, my book of linked stories to be published by SMU Press in April ‘09. That story was once an eighteen-page piece called “Lucy’s Notes.” It now spans sixty pages and doesn’t include a single one of Lucy’s notes. The re-write required a concentrated time of dreaming, which was afforded by a stay at the MacDowell Colony where my characters tugged on me, even as I slept, insisting that I plunge back in and re-work. When the next version of the ultimate sentence presented itself, I suspected it was an impostor, and knew that only time would tell. I let time pass as the story sat in a drawer, doing whatever stories do in their secret lives, gestating, fermenting, aging, ripening. Whatever I call it, time seems an integral requirement to the process, as important to finishing a story as the close re-writing that results from the annealing questions from trusted readers.

I forget every time that the real ending - the final sentence that replaces all impostors - won’t make its appearance until the story has been tempered like glass or steel by readers’ reactions, by time, and by revision. Inspiration must be followed by challenge. And the story can’t really be completed until after time has passed - long enough for me to know the story so well that I can solve my “beautiful problem.”

Images (top to bottom): Tracy Winn; quote from the story “Mrs. Somebody Somebody;” quote from the story “Blue Tango;” cover image from Tracy Winn’s story collection Mrs. Somebody Somebody (Southern Methodist University Press 2009). Tracy Winn’s short stories have appeared in Hayden’s Ferry Review, Calyx, New Orleans Review, Western Humanities Review, Alaska Quarterly Review, and others.

For anyone who…

… could use some space and support for their choreographic art: Green Street Studios in Cambridge is accepting applications (due 12/12) to their Emerging Choreographers Program. The program fosters new work by giving six choreographers 40 hours of rehearsal space between Feb. and May ‘09 and by matching them with a Mentor/Choreographer. This round’s mentors are Anna Myer and Martha Mason (check out the tributes to Martha in the comments section of our post on Martha’s late, great Snappy Dance Theatre). March onward to the Green Street Studios website for more info.

… hankers for some great CNF*: Robin Hemley, the director of the Nonfiction Writing Program at University of Iowa (and a recent panelist in our Artist Fellowships Program), let us know he’s got an ongoing column in McSweeney’s Internet Tendancy, called Dispatches from Manila.

… will be in New York City this weekend: check out Jane Gillooly’s (Film & Video Fellow ‘07) stunning documentary Today the Hawk Takes One Chick at its New York premiere screening, part of the Margaret Mead Film and Video Festival on November 15, 6 PM.

… lives/makes stuff in the Berkshires: you all have some great art blogs at your disposal. Both Berkshire Creative and the Berkshire Cultural Resource Center feature opportunities and news of interest for Western Mass. artists. Check ‘em out and add ‘em to your feed (and while you’re at it, see what’s doing on the MASS MoCA Blog).

… wants to beam with Massachusetts pride: Geoff Edgers reports that four Massachusetts artists have received $50,000 United States Artists fellowships – Le Thi Diem Thuy of Northampton (Literature), Ann Carlson of Boston and Dianne Walker of Mattapan (Dance), and J. Meejin Yoon of Boston (Architecture and Design).

… needs some encouragement to create your literary art: write or die. What more needs be said? (It’s a web application to promote creative writing, from the lab of a diabolical sort named Dr. Wicked… when the writing stops, there are dire consequences.)

… has irrational fantasies about the new administration creating a new WPA Federal Theatre: at Extra Criticum, Rolando Teco does, too.

… wants to smile: following up on our guest post by Bren Bataclan, a Chicagoan named Susan shares her own personal experience with Bren Bataclan’s Smile Project.

Image: Still from String Beings by Snappy Dance Theatre. Premiered at the Virginia Wimberly Theater, June 2007. Images are by MIT scientist and New Media artist, Jonathan Bachrach. Photos by Allison Evans.

* What the cool kids are calling “creative nonfiction.”

Updated 11/14: responding to my request for Massachusetts Obama art to add to this post, artist and calligrapher Emily Gallardo sent the above cross-stitched Obama portrait. More of her original pins are posted on her blog. Thank, Emily!

Whatever your politics, if you’re an artist or otherwise art-centric individual, you’ll be glad to hear that President-Elect Barack Obama has a vigorous arts policy.

In an October Bloomberg article, Americans for the Arts president Robert L. Lynch said that no candidate in recent history has crafted such a detailed arts platform. Obama’s arts ambitions include creating an Artist Corps to work with low-income schools and communities, increased funding to the National Endowment for the Arts, focus on healthcare for artists, and tax fairness (allowing artists to “deduct the fair market value of their work, rather than just the costs of the materials, when they make charitable contributions”).

He’s publicly made the case for arts education. And it bodes well that by the day after the election, he’d already named a leader for the transition team overseeing cultural agencies: Bill Ivey, who has led the NEA and the American Folklore Society. (I should note that he named all his transition teams on that Wednesday. But at least he didn’t leave the arts for day two!)

Many artists have reacted to Obama’s arts support with a right-back-atcha. There were countless artistic efforts in support of Obama’s candidacy, from street art to literary and visual art auctions to benefit concerts. There is an Arts and Creative Industries for Obama website. Artists made YouTube videos.

Perhaps most encouraging is knowing that arts luminaries like novelist Michael Chabon, a member of the policy committee, has Obama’s ear when he says things like:

America’s artists are the guardians of the spirit of questioning, of innovation, of reaching across the barriers that fence us off from our neighbors, from our allies and adversaries, from the six billion other people with whom we share this dark and dazzling world. Art increases the sense of our common humanity. The imagination of the artist is, therefore, a profoundly moral imagination: the easier it is for you to imagine walking in someone else’s shoes, the more difficult it then becomes to do that person harm.

(Quoted from the Obama Arts Committee statement)

Now that’s good policy.

Image: Emily Gallardo, Barack Obama portrait pin (2008), cross-stitch embroidery. Emily describes how she created the pin on her blog.

The National Book Foundation just posted some great interviews with the current National Book Award finalists, including MCC Fiction/Creative Nonfiction Fellows Salvatore Scibona (’06) and Joan Wickersham (’08).

From the interview with Salvatore, by Bret Anthony Johnson:

BAJ: An interesting similarity among the fiction finalists this year is how all of the novels focus on the past. What is it about the past that so captivates readers and writers?

SS: We write about the past because there is so much more of it than the present.

I once asked Marilynne Robinson, who was my teacher at the time, why most novels were written in the past tense. This was at a party in honor of her book of essays, The Death of Adam, which has been a life-shaping book to me. And she said, “Excuse me—who lives in the present?”

Full interview.

From the interview with Joan, by Meehan Crist:

MC: What is one moment from the process of working on this book that you’ll never forget?

JW: In the fall of 2004 I was at the MacDowell Colony and they happened to put me in a studio designed for photographers. The first day, I looked over the manuscript I’d brought with me – a numb, lyrical novel about my father’s death – and threw out most of it. Only a few pieces survived. Suddenly I saw that one long wall of the studio was made of tackboard. I tacked up the pieces and realized I could write the book in fragments, big and small pieces that would be true to the fragmentary nature of the experience. It was electrifying: spreading it out visually, actually seeing it on the wall, rather than having it be a neat polite pile of paper.

Full interview.

You’re strolling around your city, and you see this cartoon-inspired painting.

Then you see the attached note saying the painting is free, with one catch. So you take the painting, follow its instructions, and with that… you’ve joined Bren Bataclan’s Smile Boston Project.

We asked Bren Bataclan, a street artist like no other, to guest post and describe his effort to use his paintings to lift the corners of a few mouths in cities across the map.

This month marks the fifth year anniversary of Smile Boston Project. I still can’t believe that I am now painting full-time and that the street art project is now global. When I first started in the fall of 2003, I thought that my project would last for just a couple of weeks.

I began painting these cartoon characters that I have been drawing since I was a kid back in the Philippines during the summer of 2003. Back then I was one of those unemployed ex-dotcommers affected by the economic crash (that was nothing in comparison to today’s crisis). I had plenty of time that summer to get to know my childhood imaginary friends again and explore painting them on canvases (they were just rendered as drawings prior to this venture). I premiered my cartoon inspired acrylic paintings during CAOS (Cambridgeport Artists Open Studios) and to my surprise 49 out of 56 paintings sold during that summer!

The practical thing to do after such a successful show was to look for a job. My confidence was skyrocketing, and I was just truly elated. I would have won over anyone at any interview. Instead, I poured back the money I made during CAOS into my very first street art project. I grew up in San Francisco, and so I was exposed to a lot of graffiti. Though I was (still am) a huge fan of street artists, I was not the type of kid who would spray paint a wall. And so an idea came to me while in bed at 2 AM in the morning a few days after CAOS… Why not leave paintings for folks to take for free all over Boston? I didn’t want to vandalize nor to wait for a gallery show. So I decided to use the city as my exhibit space.

Aside from wanting to do my own street art, my other goals were to expose people to art who normally do not go to galleries or museums and to give original art to folks who may not be able to afford them. I also thought that giving away my pieces would be a great way to thank Boston for purchasing so many paintings in just two days.

I also wanted to see more smiles in New England. I was in the Midwest for grad school prior to moving here to teach at UMASS Amherst, and I was missing the warm interactions and eye contact. I complained about the lack of smiles in Boston for almost a decade. But that all changed when I saw Bostonians smile when they saw my paintings. In many ways, this was the catalyst for the Smile Boston Project. I told myself to stop complaining and to be proactive. And so for five years, I have been leaving paintings for folks to take for free with a note saying, “This painting is yours if you promise to smile at random people more often,” across the country and around the world. Below are feedback and photo samples from my recent Smile Chicago Project.

Know what? After doing Smile Boston Project for five years, I was proven wrong. Bostonians are friendly– they are just different from the Midwesterners or Californians. I’ve since ceased to complain. How can I not? I feel the love here in Boston… I am a full-time artist during this economic disaster! What more can I ask for? This is the best job I have ever had.

With that in mind, I am altering my street art project for a while. Instead of leaving my smile-related note, I will now tape a different one saying, “Everything will be alright.” I can’t think of a better way to uplift peoples feelings than to give free paintings during the Wall Street Blues. Look out for free paintings this month because I will be leaving them all over Boston and NYC!

Responses from the recent Smile Chicago Project:

I’m a 19 year old college student who lives in Chicago… I was out on a jog when I stumbled upon one of your paintings. I glanced at the bench in disbelief. I had heard of this project before and couldn’t believe my luck. I had a problem though. I had just started my run and still had about a mile to go. Do I take it and risk ruining it by clutching it tightly? Or do I leave it and if it’s here on the way back it’s meant to be. I made a deal with myself. Smile at everyone on the rest of my run and if it’s still here you can take it. If it’s gone, at least you smiled. Well I imagine I looked pretty funny sprinting down Columbus with a smile plastered on my face, but when I got back it was still resting just where you left it. I was so happy. I snatched it up and skipped home… My older brother and I are going on a backpacking trip around the world this summer. We’ve scrimped and saved enough to just get by and maybe be able to eat every once in a while. But I’ll be sure to smile at every one I see. Thanks for all your great work. I admire your strength and determination to spread love and respect in the world. Laura

Dear Bren, I was running some errands in the rain today when I spotted one of your paintings (the cutest little blue guy, sporting a big smile and a pair of red antennae). I stood there a minute and read and re-read the note, making sure it was really OK to take it–and then yoink! it was mine. Not only that, but then as I kept walking down the street, I smiled at someone who (now that I see your photo on the site) might have been you. Thank you for the painting, and for putting a smile on my face! I will keep up my end of the deal! What a wonderful way to put good energy into the world. I feel so lucky. xo Anne

Thank you for brightening my return to work on this rainy Chicago day!! I will take very good care of my whimsical little guy. And, ironically I AM a SMILER!!! and I will definitely pay it forward over and over again. Susan

Images: Bren Bataclan, UNTITLED (2008), 24 in x 36 in; Bren Bataclan and his paintings (photo by Yuri V.); Laura from Smile Chicago; Anne from Smile Chicago; Susan from Smile Chicago. Bren Bataclan and filmmaker David Tamés collaborated on a documentary film about the Smile Boston Project. Watch a preview. A book featuring Bren’s work, The Smile Project, is forthcoming from Ginko Press.

On the CinemaTech blog, Scott Kirsner shares audio from a recent “Lunchbox Lab” that was organized by a number of Boston-area film organizations. The discussion centered on film/video distribution on the internet for independent filmmakers. Scott recorded the conversation and is streaming it on his site. To quote Scott:

It’s not a wonderfully-produced podcast, but it may be useful to folks thinking through the digital distribution landscape. We talked about iTunes, EZTakes, Amazon/CreateSpace, the re:frame project, new business models and new formats filmmakers should be exploring, and lots more. It’s about an hour-long.

The MP3 is here. I’m the first person to start jabbering.

The speakers, who include Susi Walsh of the Center for Independent Documentary; David Tamés of the website Kino-Eye.com; Jim Flynn of EZTakes and iArthouse; Chris Renzi of Netfilm; Denise DiIanni of WGBH; Sean Fitzroy; Lyda Kuth of The LEF Foundation; Bonnie Waltch of Filmmakers Collaborative; and Cynthia Close of Documentary Educational Resources, touch on Google Ads, paid downloads, streaming content, the creation of additional or malleable content for specific audiences, and numerous other topics in this interesting conversation.

The Boston area is a particularly appropriate place for the discussion, because, as one speaker (I think it’s Scott) puts it, there are thriving film and technology communities, and “it’s interesting when you get the two of those things together.”

(Incidentally, in the non-virtual world, Scott Kirsner has a free talk tonight (7 PM, Wednesday) on his book Inventing the Movies at the Museum of Science Boston. Check it our to hear more about the technological history of film.)

There’s a free, two-day artist professional development event at the Boston Public Library this weekend, called the Second Annual Massachusetts Artists Leadership & Entrepreneurship Conference. It’s open to artists of all disciplines. Here’s a link to this year’s schedule. It’s also a great opportunity to meet fellow artists and explore the art and architecture of the incomparable BPL - the first U.S. public library to lend books!

Speaking of art career development, the fascinating Mission Paradox arts marketing blog offers this intriguing bit of straight talk: when you decide to be an artist making a living wage, you’re no longer just an artist – you might be a fundraiser, marketer, and/or networker, too.

As a follow-up to our Obama and the arts post: Filmmaker Magazine blog shares producer Noah Harlan’s interesting supposition: something called section 181 from the bailout package (Editor’s note: Noah shares some more information about Section 181 in the Comments section) coupled with Obama’s plan to increase the capital gains rate for large investors has the potential to create a much more favorable climate for investing in independent film.

While we’re on tax plans: The Chronicle of Philanthropy posits that Obama’s plan to increase taxes on the wealthy could encourage more charitable donations. And taking that one step further, possibly more charitable donations to the arts…

Have you made a great film and need to get it seen? Perhaps what you need is a big box of film festival secrets. (Or, well, a website of them. And a book. Which you can read via the website.)

Technology in the Arts wants to remind you the wide-ranging potential Creative Commons licenses offer to artists.

A couple of recent interviews with Massachusetts artists in reputable rags: Needham artist Rachel Perry Welty (Drawing/Printmaking/Artist Books Fellow ‘04) is profiled in the Boston Globe; Belmont novelist Leah Hager Cohen answers some stray questions from the New York Times book blog.

Bloomberg covers an ongoing and spirited discussion of whether women playwrights are getting their due portion of major productions. (In case you’re as late to this dialogue as I am, it all started with this provocative editorial by Theresa Rebeck.)

Image: Rachel Perry Welty, Detail of PRODUCT, a site-specific sculptural installation, J & J Global Design Headquarters, Chelsea, NY (2007 - ongoing), Laserprints and adhesive, 108 x 216 x 2 inches. Rachel’s work is on exhibit at the Lehman Art Center in North Andover, November 14-January 24.