ArtSake

Laurie Anderson recently wrote and performed Music For Dogs, a 20-minute piece specifically composed for dogs which premiered at the Sydney Opera House in Australia.  My dog Lady would have loved to attend, but alas she has no passport. Could something like this ever occur somewhere in MA?

Read more about Laurie Anderson.

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Wendy Jehlen’s (FY04 MCC Choreography Finalist) latest choreographic work FOREST combines elements from Brazilian Capoeira, South Indian martial arts, West African dance and Contemporary dance. Her company ANIKAI Dance will present FOREST this weekend. If these images are any indication, this performance promises to evoke the unpredictable nature of a forest and its abundance, vitality, sensuality and life-giving source.

FOREST has been created, in part, during a Dance Residency at the Boston Center for the Arts.

FOREST
Friday, June 18 at 8pm
Saturday, June 19 at 3pm & 8pm
BU Dance Theater on Buick Street
at 915 Commonwealth Avenue, Boston, MA. Tickets: $25, $20 Student/Senior/BDA, $10 Children under 12 available at 617-358-2500 and www.akhra.org/tix.html

ANIKAI Dance Company
Artistic Director/Choreographer: Wendy Jehlen. Dancers include Amelia Beard, Danielle DiVito, Wendy Jehlen, Pradhuman Nayak, DeAnna Pellecchia, Mila Thigpen, Terra Weaver.

Image credit: All photographs of FOREST by by Charles Daniels.

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Susan Post received her undergraduate degree in studio art and cultural anthropology from Princeton University, and thirty years later was awarded a Master’s of Fine Arts degree from Massachusetts College of Art and Design, where she was a member of their inaugural class in residence at The Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown.

In recent years her paintings have been exhibited in New York at the OK Harris Gallery, The Painting Center, and at the Woman’s Museum in Dallas, TX, during the College Art Association’s Annual Conferences. For the past three years she has participated in the Annual AIDS Benefit Everything But Paper Prayers at the Barbara Krakow Gallery in Boston. Her work was featured as the cover art of the February, 2008 concert Playbill at Carnegie Hall in New York City. She is currently represented by The Schoolhouse Gallery in Provincetown. 

Susan lives and works in the suburbs of Boston. ArtSake asked Susan if we could take a peek into her studio and have her tell us a bit about her work process.

I try to find ways for paint to ‘behave’ rather than depict, with a sense of space resulting from neither dissemblance nor resemblance, but instead from a small number of pivotal decisions – mostly about edge and color – that emerge from the process rather than being motivated by illusionistic device.

Marking a surface with seven lines lends it an amount of complexity just beyond the easily discernible. At the same time, it affords a binary pattern that begins and ends with opposing elements, without setting any criterion as to which (the surface or the mark) is figure and which ground.

Further dividing one set of seven lines perpendicularly, with alternating wide and narrow bands of contrasting values achieves a wide range of kinds of line and creates multiple incidences of simultaneous contrast.

To see more of Susan’s work, check out her Web site or one of these upcoming exhibitions:

Free Association @ The Kingston Gallery, Boston
August 4-29, 2010. Reception, Friday August 6, 5:30 – 8:00pm.

Six Gallery Artists @ The Schoolhouse Gallery, Provincetown
June 25-July 14, 2010. Reception Friday June 25, 7-10pm.

Abstraction Now @ Eclipse Mill Gallery, North Adams
June 25 – July 18, 2010

Waltham Art Windows @ Moody Street, Waltham
June 10 – July 29, 2010. Reception Saturday June 12, 4:00 – 5:15pm at Center for Digital Imaging Arts, 274 Moody Street, Waltham.

Image credit: All images courtesy of Susan Post.

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Show Boston how you get your hands dirty: Are you an artist who would like to participate in the Boston Arts Festival by giving a public demonstration of your work? Get more information from the Mayor’s Office of Arts, Tourism and Special Events. The Boston Arts Festival is September 10-12, 2010.

Call for Book Artists: The National Museum of Women in the Arts is currently accepting submissions for its Library Fellows Artist’s Book Award. Designed to encourage and promote the creation of artists’ books and to support NMWA’s Library and Research Center and book art programs, the Library Fellows Program provides up to $12,000 biannually for the production of an artist book in an edition of 125, with an additional $1,000 provided for the artist to create 500 copies of a promotional brochure for the book, as well as $1,000 for the artist to travel to the Library Fellows’ annual meeting to present her book upon completion. The artist who is responsible for the overall creation, design, and realization of the book must be a woman. Only new books will be considered; previously published books or books that are versions of books previously published or planned for publication will not be considered. Full guidelines and application procedures.
Deadline: June 30, 2010

Call for Independant Documentaries: POV, public television’s longest running showcase for independent documentaries from all perspectives, premieres 14-16 of the best, boldest, and most innovative programs every year on PBS. POV is now seeking entries for broadcast on PBS for the 2011 season. All subjects, aesthetic approaches, and lengths are welcomed. Completion funding may be available for unfinished films. All filmmakers must complete the online form to submit their films.
Deadline: June 30, 2010

Call to Artists & Poets: Are you a Boston-area artist and/or poet looking to gain exposure for your work? Are you interested in collaborating with the vibrant Boston theatre community? Then participate in Bad Habit Productions‘ art and poetry exhibition, with the theme of Saints, Sinners, and Censorship. Bad Habit Productions is now accepting original art and poetry for its July-August 2010 production of Quills by Doug Wright. Art and poetry will be displayed in an exhibition at the Durrell Theatre at the Cambridge YMCA in Cambridge, MA. For more information, submission guidelines, and to submit your work, please check out badhabitproductions.org/art or e-mail the company.
Deadline: July 9, 2010

Call for Visual Artists: The Arts Program at Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center is currently accepting applications from visual artists who are interested in being considered for its artists’ registry. This registry will be used as a resource for future projects commissioned for Inside&Out: A Public Art Project. Inside&Out, funded in part by the New England Foundation for the Arts, is a comprehensive art plan for DHMC in Lebanon, NH. Art projects included in this project will be collaborative works intended to engage the entire medical community- patients, staff, and visitors. More information.
Deadline: August 1, 2010

Employment Opportunity: The Maine Arts Commission is looking for an Arts & Humanities Associate (Technology Associate). Applications are being accepted until June 25, 2010. They seek someone to develop and maintain their agency’s web site using dot.net, Pearl and Oracle databases. Full details are available on the Division of Financial & Personnel Services’ web page.

Image credit: Photograph by sx413.

Learn more about the history of the original Boston Celtics logo design and the artist who created it.

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Last month, Elizabeth Streb, Artistic Director of the Streb Laboratory for Action Mechanics (S.L.A.M.) had an inspiring public dialogue in Boston with Diane Paulus, Artistic Director of the American Repertory Theatre, about innovative ways of engaging audiences. We’ll share the video of this conversation as soon as it’s available – can’t wait!

Watch the above clip of the Brooklyn-based Streb Extreme Action Company and you can see why Elizabeth Streb is a natural to discuss engagement. Her groundbreaking work weaves action sports, acrobatics, and wild contraptions into mesmerizing dance. She recently engaged us with a nano-interview. Enjoy!

What artist do you most admire but work nothing like? Philippe Petit, Trisha Brown

What’s the best/worst day job you’ve ever had? I’ve never not-liked working- so I would restate the question to what was the ‘most arduous’ job I’ve ever held, and the answer to that would be cooking in NYC restaurants from 1975-1988-from age 25yrs to 38yrs.

If forced to choose, would you be a magic marker, a crayon, or a #2 pencil? I would be a #2 pencil because I like the smell and it reminds me of solving (or not) for hours on end Mathematical Problems.

How do you know when your work is done? I run out of time or money or get bored or all. Nothing else would act as the impetus for cessation of making a choreographic event.

What do you listen to while you create? I don’t listen to anything. Music is the true enemy of dance.

Spring, Summer, Winter or Fall? I don’t care which as long as all still contain time space and motion.

What films have influenced you as an artist? Das Boot, Stan Brakhage’s The Act of Seeing With One’s Own Eyes, The Way Things Go by Peter Fischli and David Weiss.

What are you currently reading? The Snowball: Warren Buffett and the Business of Life by Alice Schroeder/ Stones into Schools: Promoting Peace with Books, Not Bombs in Afghanstan by Greg Mortenson/ Warped Passages by Lisa Randall/ Notes on the Cinematographer by Robert Bresson

Have you ever revised your work on the spot, during a performance (intentionally, I mean)? Yes.

What’s the most embarrassing line of an artist’s statement you’ve ever written? “I’m searching for movement, its out there somewhere, I’ve got to find it” In a Dance Magazine article by Iris Fanger in the late 80s (even though its true).

Do you secretly dream of being a) a pop icon, b) an algebra teacher, and/or c) a crime-solver/writer a la Jessica Fletcher? No, I ardently dream of being who I am.

What’s the most surprising response to your art you’ve ever received? In 1985 in Basel, Switzerland-at the Kunsthause, Basel, when 195 audience members of 200, walked out on my show.

Like, what does your work MEAN? ‘Feeling the Move’ through ‘changing the ground.’

What’s next? The invention and staging of the first ever: ‘Moveical.’

Media: video promo from Elizabeth Streb’s STREB VS. GRAVITY tour, 2008.

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A new Scott Wheeler composition in a new performance center; local artists go Threadbare

Last night (Thursday, June 11), Rockport Music celebrated the launch of its Shalin Liu Performance Center with a stirring concert that included the world premiere of Piano Trio No. 4 Granite Coast by Scott Wheeler (Music Composition Fellow ’05), specially commissioned by Rockport Music to celebrate the new performance space.

Anytime a Massachusetts composer premieres a new piece or a vibrant new performance space has its inaugural tones, it is, in our humble opinion, a prime occasion to high five. But the evening is notable, too, because it was part of the Rockport Chamber Music Festival, which runs through July 18 and will also include performances by contemporary Massachusetts composers Michael Gandolfi (Music Composition Fellow ’03) and Gunther Schuller.

Rockport Music received a grant from MCC’s Cultural Facilities Fund for the construction of the Shalin Liu Performance Center. No doubt this new performance space (which you can learn the origins of in a YouTube clip) will host many a note, rest, and crescendo care of contemporary composers in future flutters of the baton. So welcome to the world, Shalin Liu Performance Center! We’re pleased to meetcha.

Threadbare

Three fiber artists and a photographer, all with local ties, present a show called Threadbare, about the history and process of fiber art. The show runs at the A.P.E. Gallery in Northampton through June 26, with an opening reception on Friday, June 11 from 5-8pm.

Among the creators is Northampton fiber artist Kathryn G. Swanson, who co-curated the show and contributed the installation “Coat of Many Colors” (pictured above). The show, which is funded in part by the Northampton Arts Council, takes crafts traditionally considered “women’s work” and explores their boundaries.

Later in the month, Threadbare welcomes the enigmatic theatre company The Missoula Oblongata, another boundary-exploring group that visits for a performance of their new play The Daughter of the Father of Time Motion Study, on Saturday, June 26, at 8 PM.

The Rockport Chamber Music Festival runs through July 18, 2010 at the Shalin Liu Performance Center in Rockport, MA. Threadbare runs at A.P.E. in Northampton, MA through June 26, 2010.

Images: Scott Wheeler, photo by Susan Wilson; Installation view of COAT OF MANY COLORS by Kathryn G. Swanson, part of THREADBARE.

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Anna Myer is one of the recently named MCC FY10 Choreography Fellowship finalists. The excerpt above is from her piece Street Talk Suite Talk. It is a remarkable example of her artistic vision and commitment to experimentation and collaboration. She definitely walks the walk, and talks the talk.

If you are among the many dancers, cultural enthusiasts, arts administrators, community organizers, social activists, social scientists (you get the picture) who agree that dance has vastly untapped potential as a powerful force to shape communities, then join in on this first of a series of free discussions called Talk About Dance, a program of Dance for World Community on Sunday, June 13.

Barbara Schaffer Bacon, co-director of Animating Democracy, a program of Americans for the Arts, will moderate this afternoon of learning, conversation, and social interaction – all around dance and the expanded role it can play in galvanizing communities to meet civic, social, and environmental challenges.

Panelists include: De Ama Battle, Founder/Director, Art of Black Dance and Music; Isabel Fine, Director of Programs, Springstep; Eddie Gonzalez-Novoa, Executive Director, Public Allies; Louisa McCall, Co-Director, Artists in Context; and Jason Weeks, Executive Director, Cambridge Arts Council.

Bring your voice to the table and be an active participant in these uniquely intimate conversations that can help shape the future role of dance in the Greater Boston Area and beyond. See old friends and meet new people. Contribute to the list of issues, concerns, ideas and perspectives that will be shared at this event.

Sunday June 13, 2010, 2:00-6:00pm
José Mateo Ballet Theatre 400 Harvard Street. Harvard Square, Cambridge, MA

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This is the Last Night of the Fair and the Grease in the Hair
Call for Berkshire artists to participate in the 9th Berkshire Arts Festival.
Deadline: June 10, 2010

Get Your Motor Runnin’, Head Out on the Highway
There is a call to artists in all media who live and work in states touched by Interstate 95 to particpate in a group show in New York City’s East Village at Umbrella Arts, 317 East 9th Street.
Deadline: June 10, 2010

He Comes for Conversation
The Alliance of Artist Communities and the Newport Art Museum are joining forces to present a free event about artists-in-residence programs called Be Our Guest :: finding creative time + space. Learn about the hundreds of artists’ residency opportunities available for artists of all kinds and every career stage, in your backyard and across the globe. Find out what distinguishes them, the best way to apply, and how to maximize your experience. Newport Art Museum, 76 Bellevue Avenue, Newport, RI.
June 10 2010,  6 – 7:30 pm

You Leave in the Morning with Everything You Own in a Little Black Case
Artist-in-Residence wanted for Gallery 263. Starting July 2010, Gallery 263 (263 Pearl Street, Cambridge, MA) is introducing an Artist-in-Residence program that includes two months of studio time followed by one month of exhibit. Contact curator@gallery263.com.

I Found Her Diary Underneath a Tree and Started Reading About Me
Public art opportunity for artists/designers in Greater Boston only (due to funding restrictions) to enhance the landscape environment of the Brighton Public Library. Go here to download the RFQ. Be sure to click on ‘Opportunities.’ Contact Ricardo Barreto, Urban Arts Institute at Massachusetts College of Art and Design at 617.879.7970 or Ricardo.barreto@massart.edu.
Deadline: 5:00 pm on June 21, 2010

Name all of the songs referenced above (without searching online for the answers) and win an imaginary priceless ArtSake prize.

Image credit: All images from the Lester S. Levy Collection of Sheet Music, Special Collections, Sheridan Library, John Hopkins University.

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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, Eric Henry Sanders (Playwriting Fellow ’09) discusses the evolution of his play Reservoir.

Listen to a scene from Reservoir, performed by Company One Theatre. Directed by Shawn LaCount, with Fedna Jacquet as Psychiatrist and Brett Marks as Hasek:

INSPIRATION

My inspiration for Reservoir grew out of the chance confluence of several sources: media coverage of the on-going wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, Georg Büchner’s 1837 expressionistic masterpiece Woyzeck, and scholarly texts that fused readings of classic Greek theatre with the psychological impact of war on returning veterans, including Bob Meagher’s Herakles Gone Mad (2006) and Jonathan Shay’s Odysseus in America (2002).

Büchner’s play is the story of a soldier abused and dominated by authority figures – Captain, Doctor, Drum Major – as he strives to support Marie, the mother of his child. At its heart the plot is a classic tale of jealous love; when Woyzeck correctly suspects that Marie is having an affair, his tenuous grasp on reality severs and he drifts into murderous madness.

In its treatment of Woyzeck as a soldier, the plot bears sad and striking resemblance to several reports of veterans returning from Afghanistan. In July 2002, in four separate instances, veterans murdered their spouses at Fort Bragg. Those murders are emblematic of a rise in domestic violence by returning veterans, and as subsequent scandals over the care at Walter Reed Army Medical Center have made clear, the military is woefully unprepared to deal with the thousands of personnel returning from Iraq and Afghanistan with physical and psychological wounds. It is a tragic irony that with the latest advances in battlefield medicine a wounded US soldier has a better chance of surviving a physical injury than ever before, only to suffer a greater likelihood of psychological trauma, such as Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), when returning to civilian life. Symptoms of PTSD such as hypervigilance, rage, and restlessness – which can be useful as survival adaptations – can under conditions of extreme or prolonged stress change the chemical make-up of the brain, making the adjustment to coming home unbearable.

My initial thought, then, was to write a contemporary adaptation of Woyzeck which would acknowledge these struggles by depicting the eponymous protagonist as a soldier suffering from the psychological strains of active duty in a foreign war.

CREATION

As I began to write, however, I found myself moving further and further away from a strict adaptation of the original text.

Considering Woyzeck, I was struck by the parallels in Büchner’s portrayal of his soldier protagonist with descriptions of PTSD in returning veterans. In this light, the tormenting secondary characters in the original play may be read as the malevolent and possessive manifestations of an injured mind. The carnival-mirror world which Büchner creates is, if read in these terms, starkly recognizable.

Were I a director, I would have chosen to take that idea and direct the original play as if all its actions were being viewed through the distorted lens of Woyzeck’s interior vision. But as a writer, I did not see the need to retread the same ground as Büchner.

Instead of following an experimental rendering of Woyzeck’s first-person narrative, I wanted to discover both how Woyzeck (since renamed Frank Hasek in my play) came to the condition he was in, and, by shifting to a traditional third-person point-of-view, to fully render the motivations and humanity of the secondary characters. This inclination became particularly acute as I began a correspondence with several veterans – a doctor who served in Baghdad, a young air force pilot waiting to be deployed to Afghanistan, and an infantry soldier who served in Vietnam – to get a sense of their actual wartime experiences and the difficulty they faced (where applicable) of returning home. This research, in particular, was vital to creating all the characters as fully dimensional and understandable (if not, for dramatic purposes, always sympathetic).

With this new challenge in mind, the key then was to contemplate and depict the circumstances leading to the play’s inevitable conclusion. While the broad outline of the plot is still in place, I found it necessary to rewrite and reconceptualize the entire story, giving life to the desires, motivations, and obstacles facing each of the five characters on stage. Here, Hasek is trying to get well in order to provide for Marisa and their baby, but as he struggles through the symptoms of his condition, his ability to stay focused on his work and maintain a healthy relationship is increasingly strained. In turn, Marisa’s affair is motivated by the stability and normality of the Sergeant. And the doctor, rather than being a malevolent presence bent on experimenting on Woyzeck, developed into a therapist treating Hasek for PTSD, while struggling with her own burden of having far too many patients and far too little time to treat them all properly.

In the end, I hope that the play remains engaging on a dramatic level. And though the tragedy of the story remains, I hope that by focusing on these issues I can expose the relevance of problems faced by returning veterans in today’s world, and in so doing gesture towards a hopeful future.

REALIZATION

After completing a first “final” draft of the play I decided to do something I’d never done with any of my seven previous full-length plays. Rather than sending the script out immediately, I waited several months so that I could reread it with fresh eyes, thinking that I would make changes and then it would be perfect without the need for a huge development process. So I put it aside, waited, and after three months I was delighted to see that I knew exactly what it needed. Great. Perfect. I made the changes, and then arranged a table reading with Ian Morgan at the New Group in New York.

I shouldn’t have been surprised, but after hearing it aloud for the first time, I was shocked to realize how much work the play still needed. My sympathies for the secondary characters had clouded my eyes to the necessity of keeping the drama as tense as possible. In short, there was no antagonist. Deepening the dramatic conflict formed the basis of my next revision.

Two subsequent readings – with the Astoria Performing Arts Center (NY), directed by Tom Wojtunik, and at the Drilling Company (NY), directed by Joe Clancy – and several subsequent revisions later, I was fortunate enough to work with Company One on an audio recording for the Massachusetts Cultural Council blog.

That recording – directed by Shawn LaCount (Artistic Director, Company One), starring Fedna Jacquet (Psychiatrist) and Brett Marks (Hasek), and organized by Anne Morgan (Literary Manager, Company One) – was a pleasure to work on and one of the most satisfying expressions of the play thus far. Though we were only recording one scene, it is a testament to the skill and talent of all who participated that Shawn was able to coax the abundant gifts of the two actors into characterizations that were immediately believable and nuanced.

Finally, with this draft completed and a production scheduled at the Drilling Company November 4th – 24th, 2010, I hope that I have accomplished what I set out to achieve with the script. Of course, anything can – and probably will – change in rehearsals.

Special thanks to Company One Theatre. Don’t miss Company One’s next play, GRIMM, a world premiere evening of short plays that re-imagine classic fairy tales. July 16-August 14, 2010, at the Roberts Theatre, Calderwood Pavilion, in Boston.

Images: Eric Henry Sanders; Georg Büchner; promotional image from early version of RESERVIOR (then known as WOYZECK: HOMECOMING); Company One Theatre reads RESERVOIR; Company One Artistic Director Shawn LaCount offers direction to actress Fedna Jacquet.

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Liza Bingham (MCC ’10 Painting Finalist) is wild about hedges and geometry and architechture. We asked her to take a moment to answer a few quick questions about what makes the garden of her mind grow highly manicured.

What artists’ work do you admire most but create nothing like? Clyfford Still.

How do you know when your work is done? I’ve noticed that good paintings seem to “float” or “levitate” away from the wall. It has something to do with having enough light and air in them. On the otherhand, if there’s something in the painting that doesn’t support or follow the logic of the rest of the piece, then there’s still work to be done.

What do you listen to while you create? I find music too distracting to paint to regularly, however I almost always tune into Terry Gross on Fresh Air (WBUR) at midday.

What are you currently reading? Robert Sullivan’s new biography of Henry David Thoreau (The Thoreau You Don’t Know).

Spring, Summer, Winter or Fall? This past Winter I was painting a lot of Summer, Spring and Fall imagery, so it’s hard to pick a favorite–they all factor into my work.

 What has the MCC Artist Fellowship meant to you? It’s been a great form of validation.

For more on Liza Bingham check out her Web site.

Also, coming in July at the Cultural Center of Cape Cod is a small works invitiational which will feature painters from this year’s MCC Artist Fellowship Program including Liza. Stay tuned for more on this show as we head closer towards summer.

Image credit: All paintings by Liza Bingham. From top to bottom:
Tickle; (2009); Oil on panel; 12″ x 16″ (photo credit: Steward Woodward)

Corner Lot; 2009); Oil on panel; 12″ x 16″ (photo credit: Freddie Wys)

Corner Piece ll; (2009); Oil on linen on panel; 10″ x 19″ (photo credit: Steward Woodward)

Cool, Sweet Suburban Midnight; (2009); Oil on panel; 12″ x 16″ (photo credit: Freddie Wys)

Corner Piece l; (2009); Oil on panels; 5″ x 9″ (photo credit: Steward Woodward)

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