ArtSake

We’ve updated our Fellows Notes for August, a timely roundup of the shows, publications, and other assorted good news of MCC Artist Fellows/Finalists.

This month’s Noted include Stockbridge dance artist Dawn Lane (Choreography Finalist ’08), who was featured in a great article by Abigail Wood in the Berkshire Eagle. The story talks about Dawn’s choreography and about the integral work she’s doing in arts access.

“Dawn is all about bringing people together and creating a sense of community,” said [Ella] Baff [executive director at Jacob's Pillow]. “And she brings all of her vast choreographic skills — because she is a very, very highly trained dancer and dance maker — and she brings all of those skills to a mission, and the mission is inclusiveness.”

Read the full article.

While we’re on the subject of dance: The Disappearing Woman, a collaborative media and movement piece by Nell Breyer (Choreography Fellow ’06), Alissa Cardone, Lorraine Chapman, and Bronwen MacArthur (Choreography Finalists ’08) runs July 30-August 3 at the Daniel Arts Center, Bard College at Simon’s Rock, as part of Berkshire Fringe. The Disappearing Woman blends Nell’s fascinating new media creations (which you can see examples of here) with captivating choreography.

Also this weekend, the 11th annual Roxbury Film Festival screens at venues throughout the Boston area. On Saturday, August 1, 1 PM, as part of the Roxbury Shorts Program, Alla Kovgan’s (Film & Video Fellow ’09) film Nora screens at the MFA Boston. The film dramatizes the life of Nora Chipaumire through dance and stunning visual storytelling.

Read the Fellows Notes.

Image: Still from FOR HEAVENS SAKE (2005), choreography by Dawn Lane; Nora Chipaumire, from NORA (2008), co-directed by Alla Kovgan and David Hinton. Click images to see video clips.

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The path of a new play usually starts with the solitary labor of writing it and finishes with the deep collaboration of producing it with other artists. Playwright Joyce Van Dyke has crossed back and forth between solitude and collaboration – and between improvisation, personal history, and invention – to create Deported / a dream play. Joyce, whose play will be read on Monday, August 3, 2009, 7 PM as part of the Huntington Theatre Company Breaking Ground Festival of New Play Readings, spoke with us about the surprising journey of crafting a new work of theatre.

ArtSake: Deported / a dream play grew out of improvisational workshops with a group of actors. Is this the first time you’ve developed material that way? What has surprised you about that experience?

Joyce: I’ve never done anything remotely like this before. There were many, many surprises including how much fun it was to work this way, how eager all the actors and Judy [ed. Judy Braha, the director] were to help create a play (rather than receiving a finished script to interpret), the thrill and relief of feeling that I was not all alone as a writer, that I was sustained by everyone in the group. Because the process was completely new to me, I had no idea what the outcome would be, if it would even yield a play and, if so, would I feel like I’d written it? And that turned out to be another surprise, that the resulting play feels simultaneously like it’s mine and ours.

ArtSake: At the core of the play is a true story, the experiences of your grandmother and her friend during the 1915 Armenian genocide. What have you found to be the major challenges (and rewards) of working with such personally important material?

Joyce: I grew up aware of my grandmother’s and other Armenian relatives’ experiences during the genocide. It was knowledge that I fled from in the sense that for most of my life I avoided learning any more of the history. Writing this play gave me a purpose and perhaps a shield to venture into that territory, as well as the challenge of trying to find the aesthetic form for this overwhelming material. I also began to feel my way into an understanding of my grandmother’s lifelong refusal or inability to speak about what she experienced. To my amazement, partway through the writing of the play I started to feel a sense of happiness, despite the harrowing material, that never left me. There is both sadness and satisfaction in my sense that my relationship to my Armenian grandparents is so much closer now than it was while they were alive. I felt a deep sense of obligation to this material to tell the truth, to do justice to the characters impulses that belong to playwriting in general, but that operated in a doubly potent (and sometimes conflicting) way here, both on the historical/non-fictional plane and on the level of the drama. At times I felt my control of the play wrenched away almost physically by the primary material some of which included the words of my grandmother and her friend, the play’s two main characters. At times during the writing I simply had to yield to the power of that reality. I gave way, and said, I’ll go back and rewrite this, I’ll go back and turn it into a play, but first their story must come out.

ArtSake: Judy Braha, the director of your reading at the Breaking Ground Festival, also directed your play The Oil Thief at Boston Playwrights’ Theatre in Fall 2008. How does an ongoing relationship with a director impact the evolution of a new work?

Joyce: Judy’s direction of The Oil Thief came about because I’d already been working with her over a period of about two years developing Deported, which was our first collaboration. So I already knew she was a director who could help me see what my play wanted to be and I knew there was still work I wanted to do on the script of The Oil Thief. Judy is an unusual combination: very patient, very open (in a way that frees others), and very exacting. With The Oil Thief, she did some of the same things she’d done with Deported: for example, asking me to write what we called a “download” of everything that was swirling in my mind at all levels about the play’s issues, dreams, images, metaphors, characters, etc. Doing this turned out to be very helpful to me in revising both plays, and also in helping me to hold onto their original impulses. In terms of Deported, the collaboration with Judy was intrinsic to the whole process and resulting play. I might well have written a play on my own about the genocide, but it would never have been the play that emerged from our process. For a writer to have an ongoing relationship with a director you can trust completely both personally and artistically well it has to be a good thing, doesn’t it? We all want to trust, and we all want to work with people we can trust. I think it’s hard to generalize because there’s no recipe that’s the whole point, everything depends on the quirks of the individuals involved, their shared aesthetic, how they complement each other, the specific ways they talk and work together. For me the experience has been liberating, consoling, encouraging, inspiring and more.

ArtSake: Before turning your energies to playwriting, you taught Shakespeare and poetry, and worked as a speechwriter in D.C. Can you talk about how those “past lives” reverberate in your current work as a playwright?

Joyce: I think the reverberations are very extensive and deep especially with respect to teaching and Shakespeare but it’s not easy to put my finger on where and how and why. And it’s not as if I am always drawing on those past experiences in a conscious way. For example, Hamlet ended up becoming a sort of shadow-play that is woven throughout The Oil Thief, but not by design. It’s just that one character in The Oil Thief is an actor, and he needed to be cast in something and I wanted it to be a recognizable role so I made him Claudius in Hamlet. It was a simple decision, I thought. And then very much to my surprise, it was as if I’d opened a gate and Hamlet began flowing into The Oil Thief to an almost alarming extent to me. Right now I’m starting to work on a new play about a production of Othello. But it’s not as if I am trying to base my plays on Shakespeare’s or anything like that. The Othello story interests me because it’s about a real historic production of the play, and it’s a backstage story which is always fascinating although this particular situation also has big cultural and political ramifications. The fact that I also get to be immersed in a Shakespeare play that I love is part of the personal pleasure of working on this project. A lot of what I am conscious of in terms of reverberations has to do with technical and structural things or ways of thinking about character or the use of language. Or attitudes toward the audience. I think the audience is a brilliant organism, and I think I derived that sense from Shakespeare. As for the time I spent writing in D.C. it’s a reservoir I’d like to draw on, but haven’t yet. I’ve had quite a few Washington characters and themes that at first loomed large and then were pruned out of plays I’ve written. I’d like to center a play in D.C. In America hardly anyone writes plays (at least that that I’m aware of) about the people who run the government. Isn’t that strange? Why do we not write about the center of power in politics, and also in corporate life?

ArtSake: What’s next for you?

Joyce: I’ve just finished revising Deported / a dream play for the Breaking Ground reading at the Huntington on August 3 which I’m excited about. Hearing this newest version of the play along with an audience will give me a feeling for the whole which you can only get with an audience’s contribution the rhythms, proportions, sense of flow, and anything about the storytelling that needs work. I’m sure I’ll be making further revisions based on what I discover from the Breaking Ground reading. I’m also working on a couple of new plays, including the Othello play. And then there’s always the work of trying to get productions.

Joyce Van Dyke received the 2009 Elliot Norton Award for Outstanding New Script for The Oil Thief, which was commissioned by the Ensemble Studio Theatre/Alfred P. Sloane Foundation Science and Technology Project, and received its premiere in 2008 at the Boston Playwright’s Theatre. Her play A Girl’s War premiered at New Repertory Theatre in 2003. Joyce is a Huntington Theatre Playwriting Fellow, and her play Deported / a dream play will be read on Monday, August 3, 7 PM, at the Carol Deane Rehearsal Hall, Calderwood Pavilion at the Boston Center for the Arts as part of the Huntington Theatre Breaking Ground Festival of New Play Readings.

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Pop a wheelie! Procycle 2009 Art has a call to artists making work that is directly related to contemporary bicycling culture.
Deadline: September 17, 2009

Let your id, ego and super ego loose! The city of Worcester is having a 50 minute session on the couch… kinda, sorta. In celebration of the Worcester Cultural Coalition’s 10 years of creative city-making and to mark the 100^th anniversary of the visit by Sigmund Freud to Worcester (his only speaking engagement in the US), area artists are invited to help us “put Worcester on the couch.” This interactive public art project intends to allow people to take to the couch to express their visions and concerns about the City and region. For more information, visit their website or contact Erin I. Williams, Cultural Development Officer, at 508-799-1400 x265 or culture@ci.worcester.ma.us.
Deadline: 5:00pm, Friday, August 14, 2009

TransCultural Exchange is now accepting proposals for its Spring 2011 Exhibition Series called Here, There and Everywhere: The Art of Collaboration. Alert to the internet’s dissolving of borders and the explosion of innovation through collaboration, TransCultural Exchange invites artists working in all disciplines to reach out to individuals around the world to create works for a second series of collaborative exhibitions.
Deadline: November 15, 2009.

Photo Credit: Chicago Daily News negatives collection, SDN-003404, 1905. Courtesy of the Chicago Historical Society. Image depicts group portrait of cyclists balancing on bikes at the start of a race amidst a group of spectators at the intersection of North Michigan Avenue and East Chicago Avenue in the Near North Side community area of Chicago, Illinois. The cyclist L. J. Leonard holding a stop watch is the race starter standing in the background.

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On one hand, new ways for filmmakers to promote and distribute their work seem to be popping up all the time, particularly online. These days, filmmakers can more easily submit to festivals, or can stream and repurpose content online using sites like Vimeo or Youtube (see a related Public Humanist post). On the other hand, more DIY possibilities mean a more complicated landscape for artists who already have a lot to navigate.

So it’s nice when someone offers a few guideposts. Working Films, a North Carolina nonprofit that advances films with social causes, posted some tips on creating a screening guide – a tool to help hosts organize a screening of your film. Some highlights:

• Include the step-by-step process of planning and facilitating a screening. As people are becoming savvier about using media in their organizing efforts, a one-pager should suffice. Consider the different settings that people may be in: community screenings, house parties, church viewings, etc. We like how Made in L.A. lays out the steps online.
• If your film is on a social issue, it will most likely spark a lively discussion. You will not need to offer a plethora of discussion questions. Consider starting with a couple questions about the film and then shifting to the issue, how it resonates locally, and what can be done.

• Offer a downloadable flyer that people can either type their screening information on, or write it in. We like the fun poster maker that The Age of Stupid offers on their site.
• Offer branded badges that organizations can grab and use on their website, blog, or e-blast.

Read the full post.

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Ring my beh eh ell, ring my bell.
Ma Bell, I got the ill communication.
One ringy dingy, two ringy dingy.
One less bell to answer.

Let’s fast forward through the ages of painting, shall we? Once upon a time, artists made paintings on the walls of caves. Then they ventured out of the caves. They trundled about with their pots of paints and brushes and chemicals and set up easles in impossible places, cursing the wind that knocked over their canvases. Some paid landlords hefty prices in rent. Others found cheap places to paint their visions. Today, thanks to the modern miracle of technology, some artists now execute paintings at work, on their lunchbreaks, at school or in caves. How, you may ask? Well, on the mighty cellphone, that’s how. The work is made on the iPhone screen with a relatively inexpensive application called “Brushes.” The recent The New Yorker cover had an example of this type of work being created with the Brushes application. All in all, the new painting tool reminds me of a souped up version of Etch A Sketch, only with a smaller screen, the ability to save and go backwards if you make a mistake, a choice of line thickness, density, and color. One thing is for sure, I know a few rabbits that are happy about this invention.

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The Sturgis Library has exhibition space available. Please visit their website for exhibits and displays and for an application form. The Sturgis Library is located at 3090 Main Street in Barnstable. For more information call 508-362-8448 or visit www.sturgislibrary.org

Utrecht Art Supplies is hosting a 60th Anniversary Contest in honor of six decades of artists patronage and creativity. They will be awarding over $12,000 in total prizes including a $3,000 cash award to the Grand Prize winner. Artists are invited to submit works created in oil, acrylic, watercolor or mixed media. For more information, contact Kathryn Alcorn at kalcorn@utrecht.com

The Gallery at the University of Maine at Farmington (UMF) is planning After Poe: Works of Mystery and Imagination, a juried exhibition of works conceptually in keeping with the mood and spirit of Edgar Allan Poe, to open in October 2009. All media welcome. Please submit entries in the form of a URL link or send DVDs to: Elizabeth Olbert, The Gallery at UMF, 246 Main St., Farmington, ME (Please format still images as jpgs @ 150 dti; time-based media on Quicktime.) For more information contact elizabeth.olbert@maine.edu Deadline: August 15, 2009

Boston will be host to the 2009 Conference of the National Alliance for Media Arts and Culture (NAMAC) from August 26 to 29. Media artists will be coming from all over the country to see what Boston has to offer and to collaborate with Boston artists. See the schedule and register online at http://namac.org/conference.

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Imagine YouTube seen throught the eyes of an anthropologist. Well thanks to our colleague Maggie Holtzberg (the MCC’s Folklorist) she turned ArtSake onto the work of Michael Wesch, a cultural anthropologist at Kansas State University working on issues (including methodology) in the digital realm. His hour long presentation The Machine is Us/ing Us was presented last June at the Library of Congress. It’s a fascinating look at how YouTube influences mediating human relationships and participatory culture.

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Get ready to strike at the artist knuckeballs heading your way:

First up at bat is an opportunity from the US Mint (as in money, not the plant that makes mint juleps). There will soon be a call out to artists to design money. Be on the lookout for their next upcoming nationwide call for artists.

Here batter, batter, here’s a call for submissions from Gallery 51 in North Adams for an exhibition titled “Here.” Artists are being asked to submit recent works that demonstrate the concept of HERE – Content could include a direct or indirect reference to North Adams, The Berkshires, the moment in time “2009.” Submissions accepted in any media. Deadline: August 4, 2009.

Rounding first base is ASPECT: The Chronicle of New Media Art, which is currently seeking works for Volume 15: Influence and Reference. Deadline: August 1, 2009

Heading into second base is CRAFTBOSTON. They are now accepting applications for two events: the annual spring event at the Seaport World Trade Center and the holiday event at the Cyclorama at the Boston Center for the Arts. Deadline: September 25, 2009. Email show@craftboston.org for more information.

Rounding third base is En Focos New Works Photography Awards Fellowship. This annual program selects three or more U.S. photographers of Latino, African, or Asian heritage and Native Peoples of the Americas and the Pacific. Three photographers will be selected from an open and national call for entries to receive a $1,000 honorarium, photo-related supplies, technical assistance, a photographers page on enfoco.org, an article in Nueva Luz, an En Foco membership, and a culminating group exhibition in New York. Deadline: July 31, 2009.

And sliding safe into home for the winning run is the Experimental Art Gallery & Studio in Salem. They are accepting all media for the show SEE-Scapes. For a prospectus and entry form, please email: ex.art42@gmail.com Deadline: July 31, 2009

Image credit: Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, FSA-OWI Collection, [reproduction number, LC-USF33-005212-M4 DLC] Edwin Rosskam photographer. Baseball game, Huntingdon, Pennsylvania.

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We’re interested in Massachusetts arts organizations that have identified a specific need for artists, then created programs to directly meet that need in essence, matched the right horse with the right course. We’re calling this type of post – you guessed it – Horses for Courses.

Our first subject is the Boston nonprofit GLOVEBOX. We asked Jodie McMenamin, co-founder and co-director of the group GLOVEBOX with Liz Comperchio (and, incidentally, our fabulous MCC Artist Department intern for Spring 2009), about what need they identified, what they do, and what’s next.

The course: “We saw emerging artists with talent and energy but lacking a community to help foster growth and professional experiences,” Jodie said. “We knew there are so many opportunities for these artists to share their work with the community. What was missing was the link.”

The horse: GLOVEBOX, a grassroots nonprofit artist organization that creates a community for emerging artists and enables them to exhibit art in nontraditional spaces in the Boston area.

What we offer artists: “We locate non-gallery spaces around the city, like pubs and vintage clothing stores, and turn them into a creative space for artists to exhibit,” Jodie said. “The local businesses that donate their space often get exposure through the press. GLOVEBOX and our artists maintain relationships with the businesses, supporting and advocating Boston’s local scene.

“GLOVEBOX provides a community where artists can begin to discover how to exhibit their work or where more established artists can take risks with their work–and where all artists can bounce ideas off each other. Our artists get involved in the entire process, and we often give them opportunities to volunteer, promote and curate.”

What we’ve done: “GLOVEBOX has hosted a variety of events including art shows at Goody Glover’s and Ned Devine’s (two Boston restaurants), an art auction to benefit orphaned girls in Kenya (in collaboration with One Home Many Hopes), and our most recent event, SPIN, an exhibition themed around cassette tapes and vinyl records (check out Studio Views: Kevin Hebb to read more about it). Rescue, Allston’s local vintage apparel and accessory store, teamed up with us to host SPIN, which was a huge success and was covered by the Allston-Brighton Tab, The Metro and the Weekly Dig.”

Up next: JUNKO REVIVAL, a group art show themed around environmental consciousness, using found materials, recycled goods or just plain old junk!

The art from JUNKO REVIVAL can be viewed and purchased at the opening reception on Sunday, July 12 from 7-10 PM at Rescue (252 Brighton Avenue, Allston). The show will be ongoing from July 12 to August 9.

Artists interested in learning more about GLOVEBOX and/or submitting work to future calls to artists should visit gloveboxboston.com and their blog, gloveboxboston.blogspot.com.

Images: Liz Comperchio and Jodie McMenamin, co-directors of GLOVEBOX; Jacklyn Boyland, WEEDING (2009), paintings on paint samples for JUNKO REVIVAL; Christopher Schuch, LOOKING NORTH-NORTHEAST FROM THE MAIN GATE (2008), C-print, 20 x 24 in; In-progress sculpture by Vic Yambao for JUNKO REVIVAL; Amanda Atkins, WILD BIRD GUEST (2009), book painting for JUNKO REVIVAL; Gary Duehr, APPLE, glass sculpture for JUNKO REVIVAL.

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ArtSake caught up briefly with FY08 Choreography fellow Alisia Waller. She is a member of Mobius, a co-founder of The And So No Sin Performance Troupe, as well as a fight and dance choreographer, physical comedian, dancer, drag performer, stage fighter, video and performance artist and sometime sculptor and comix artist. Well bust my buttons, let’s see what else she’s been up to.

The first piece I completed and presented in formal performance after receiving my fellowship is entitled “(do not) go gentle”

Our latest completed work w/ the mellifluous title “Control Efforts:
Ongoing (variable: candy)”. This piece takes inspiration from dog bite preventing techniques and various (often conflicting) techniques for training (ie: communicating with) dogs.

Control Efforts: Ongoing (variable: candy) from MobiusArtistsGroup on Vimeo.

Minimalist Update: I will be going to Beijing in August to perform as part of the OPEN Arts Festival there and we’re hoping for our next full evening show (the first since the fellowship) to happen in December, pending various presentation space complications. Here’s a sample of some images from the OPEN Arts festival in 2008.

And the animal friendly people here at ArtSake want to give a shout out Alisia’s cat Miss Kitka who told us in a separate interview that she is waiting for her human companion to create a piece about cats!

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