ArtSake

The Rhode Island State Council on the Arts has a call for artists to paint the official state portrait of Governor Donald L. Carcieri. For curious minds, there’s a Wayback machine Web site chronicling the official portraits of past Rhode Island governors. Artists interested in being considered for the commission should visit the the Rhode Island State Council on the Arts Web site for an application form. Artists will be asked to submit a resume and no less than five and no more than ten digital images of previously commissioned work. Mr. Peabody, did the artists of yesteryear enjoy painting those beautiful locks of hair?
Deadline: Thursday, October 1, 2009

The American Antiquarian Society in Worcester, MA will award at least three fellowships to creative and performing artists and writers to explore pre-20th century American history at the organization’s independent research library. The fellowships will provide monthlong residencies, which include $1,100 and housing on the campus (or $1,600 without housing), to “multiply and improve the ways in which an understanding of history is communicated to the American people.” Fellowship projects include historical novels, nonfiction, plays, poetry, documentary film, screenplays, articles, costume and set designs, sculpture, painting, and other creative endeavors with a basis in history.
Deadline: October 5, 2009, to apply.

The Open Society Institute invites photographers to submit a body of work for consideration in the Moving Walls 17 group exhibition. For more information contact Quito Ziegler, qziegler@sorosny.org, 212-547-6909.
Deadline: Friday, October 23, 2009

Image credit: Portraits of Rhode Island governors depicted above from Rhode Island Secretary of State Web site.

ArtSake wants you to know that there are fabulous scultptures and paintings of past Massachusetts governors, senators, and citizens on display at our very own golden-domed state house. Tours are available daily.

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FREEBIES:
Here’s something of interest to filmmakers: A free tax credits workshop for Massachusetts filmmakers, including how to prepare for them and what’s required for the mandatory audit, with a Q & A session to follow on Wednesday
September 9, 2009 at 6:30 pm at the FC office, 397 Moody St., 2nd floor, Waltham, MA. CPA Irene Wachsler from Tobolsky and Wachsler will be presenting information about what expenses qualify and how to ensure that you receive as much money as you are entitled.
Deadline: RSVP to jen@filmmakerscollab.org by noon Monday September 7.

Interested in public art? Come hear from field experts and peers, network with other artists, and participate in the discussion at the New England Foundation for the Arts. The first in their series will be a session featuring Lynn Basa, public artist, faculty member at the Art Institute of Chicago, and author of The Artists Guide to Public Art. This session is appropriate for artists with limited public art experience or those with experience who would like a refresher. Lynn will lead us through her “tricks of the trade” for finding, applying for, and winning public art commissions. Staff from NEFA, the Boston Art Commission, and the Cambridge Arts Council will also be available to share information about their public art programs.

Other topics in the works include temporary public art, transitioning from gallery work to the public realm, and public art in private development. For the subsequent session dates and times, visit www.nefa.org/calendar and check your email for future announcements from NEFA.
When: September 22, 2009, 12 – 3 PM. Bring a lunch!
Where: NEFA, 145 Tremont St., Seventh Floor, Boston, MA 02111
RSVP and questions about this event: Lauren Johnston, Public Art Coordinator, at ljohnston@nefa.org or 617.951.0010 x528.

PAY TO PLAY:
Americans for the Arts 2008 National Arts Marketing Project Conference
in Rhode Island has a one-day preconference for marketing issues for artists.

The Artist’s Professional Toolbox Program: A career development program that empowers practicing visual artists. The Arts & Business Council of Greater Boston (A&BC/Boston) works toward building a vibrant arts community in Greater Boston by providing support services to artists and arts organizations including training, capacity building, legal services, and technical assistance.
Deadline: Monday, October 19, 2009

Image credit: Wood Tortoise from Webster’s New International Dictionary of the English Language, 1911, G & C Miriam Co. Springfield, MA.

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Some people have no trouble threading a needle, making use of the materials at hand, and stitching fabric swatches together to create spectacular quilts. By the way, guess when the invention of the needle and thread took place? (See answer below).

And so visitors to the upcoming exhibition of The New England Quilt Museum are in for a treat. The show MASTER PIECES: Haberdashery Textiles in Antique Quilts is heading to Lowell.

There will be more than 40 works made from simple utilitarian fabrics long overlooked in the study of antique quilts.

The antique quilts on exhibit are made of menswear fabrics recycled from suits and shirts, neckties, pajamas, military uniforms, work clothes, and socks. Some resulted from the artful salvage of menswear swatch sample books and fabric mill remnants.

In addition to the quilts themselves, the exhibit will feature historic advertisements, swatch books, and catalogs from menswear companies, dating from the 1900s through the 1950s, including several items from the vaults of Brooks Brothers, the chief sponsor of the exhibition.

The tradition of making unique, often very personal quilts from repurposed menswear textiles gained popularity around 1850, and lasted through the 1950s. Today, the tradition revives in memory quilts made from old T-shirts and clothing that has personal sentiment. The exhibition once again proves that the art of recycling clothing into items of beauty and practicality has a long and important history in the US (see Etsy or Boston Handmade for example).

Guest curator Laure Fischer will be speaking about the exhibition on September 26. On Sunday, September 27, the museum will host a demonstration on making quilts from recycled T-shirts. The public is invited to come learn how to turn T-shirts into a quilt using basic sewing skills. In addition, historic textiles expert Pam Weeks will deliver a lecture about the history of textile production in New England on October 17.

The exhibition runs from September 24 through November 15.

Image credit: All images courtesy of the New England Quilt Museum. Portrait quilt, made from neckties, with painted center panel, maker unknown, mid 20th century. Photo by Fletcher Boland. Two of the quilts above are made from suiting materials, and another is made from military uniforms. All are late 19th -early 20th century.

The answer according to Wiki is that handsewing as artform began some 20,000 years ago.

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Strike a pose, there’s nothing to it, vogue, vogue …

Call for Entries from the Photographic Resource Center for their members’ PhotoSLAM. The PhotoSLAM is a digital slide show of ALL submitted photographsa showcase of the talent within the PRC membership. Deadline: September 15, 2009

She’s crafty. Located on the lovely shores of Porter’s pond in Brockton, the Fuller Craft Museum has a call out to artists for their biennial members exhibition. Artists may submit up to 3 objects.
Deadline: August 21, 2009

Funds for Indigenous Film Productions: The National Geographic All Roads Seed Grant Program supports film projects by and about indigenous and underrepresented minority-culture filmmakers worldwide. This program supports filmmakers who bring their lives and communities to light through first-person storytelling. Indigenous and underrepresented minority culture filmmakers, as well as filmmakers who can demonstrate that they have been designated by indigenous or minority communities to tell their stories, are eligible to apply. These grants of $1,000 to $10,000 should be used toward the development and production of a feature film, long documentary, short documentary, shorts, animation, or music video.
Deadline: September 15, 2009.

Image credit: Daguerreotype of Emily Everett Abbot and Mary Susan Everett Abbot, [ca. 1852], Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, [reproduction number, LC-USZC4-12730 DLC (color film copy transparency post-conservation)]

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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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Fabulous
Pronunciation: \’fa-by?-l?s\
Function: adjective
Etymology: Middle English, from Latin fabulosus, from fabula
Date: 15th century
Definition: 1: Georgia Mae Harp’s cowgirl yodeling. 2: Georgia Mae Harp’s outfit. 3: Georgia Mae Harp’s white guitar.

You can find out more about the fabulousness of Carver, Massachusetts’ very own Georgia Mae Harp, as well as other homegrown talent who sing and play New England Country and Western music, on the Keepers of Tradition blog.

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Image above not to be confused with any Damian Hurst sculptures. No living animal was used or co-opted as actual sculptural material.

Once upon a time, when Warren G. Harding was president, there living in the White House among the hordes of press photographers, visiting dignitaries, and well-heeled lobbyists, was a celebrity born with four legs, two ears, and a permanent fur coat. This celebrity had a specially designed hand-carved chair in order to attend all cabinet meetings. This celebrity held interviews with the press. This celebrity was none other than Laddie Boy, the very first White House celebrity canine, who freely roamed the grounds of the Rose Garden to do what dogs do best. So beloved was Laddie Boy by the American public that, in honor of Harding’s death, a life-sized sculpture of Laddie Boy was created thanks to more than 19,000 donated pennies from members of the Roosevelt Newsboys’ Association (apparently girls were not permitted to deliver papers at the time). The woman who created the piece from the melted down pennies was a Boston sculptor named Bashka Paeff. At the time, she was also known as the “subway sculptor” for her work at the Park Street T station. You can see one of her lovely bronze works Boy and Bird Fountain in the Frederick Law Olmsted designed Public Garden.

Paeff, who attended the Museum School (it is rumored she spent very little time hanging out in the Atrium), also created a World War I memorial that ticked off the governor of Maine. In fact, he found it so repugnant for its overt pacifist tendencies, that he refused to allow public funds to complete the sculpture. See for yourself the offending work called Sacrifices of War, 1925.

By the way, if you are an artist considering entering the field of public art, you should know about the magnificent local resource, the UrbanArts Institute at Massachusetts College of Art and Design.

Photo credit: Image of Laddie Boy by Bashka Paeff, from the National Museum of American History, Smithsonian Institution

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The trend toward non-communal film viewing continues.

YouTube (owned by Google, Inc) has created a virtual screening room specifically for short, independent films. The idea is to bring indie shorts to a wider, global viewing audience via desktop computers and portable devises. The films are curated by YouTube and indie filmmakers are encouraged to submit work. Click here for more info on the YouTube Screening Room and contact information for submission requirements. To read more: Washington Post article

“I am big. It’s the picture’s that got small.” Gloria Swanson as Norma Desmond, from Sunset Boulevard (1950), written by Charles Brackett and Billy Wilder.

And Norma Desmond was right. The pictures did get small. So small that movies can now be viewed on a 2″ iPod Video screen. If the thought of viewing 2″ videos makes your head spin, well the techno geeks have solved that problem by creating special eyeglasses called the i-Theater. Apparently if you wear the glasses, it changes the viewing experience to replicate a 50″ inch video screen seen from a distance of 8.5 feet. Call me old fashioned, but there’s nothing like going out into the real world, to an actual, independent movie theater, buying some lightly salted, non-genetically modified popcorn, and watching a projected moving image with other primates. Shh! Down in front! Please shut off your cellphone!

For a trip back in time, check out the Lost Theatres Project. Lost Theatres of Somerville commissioned seven photographers to document 14 theatre locations as they are today. Beam me up Lieutenant Ohura.

Image of The Capitol Theater, Somerville, MA from The Lost Theatres Project.

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The Dickson Experimental Sound Film is believed to be the first film recorded with live sound. At about 1:05 into the film, the sound begins. I wonder what William Kennedy Laurie Dickson, the man who created this film, would think of YouTube.

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At Home in Utopia, directed by Michal Goldman (MCC Film/Video fellow ’07) is a new documentary film showing at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts in June and July. It tells the story of immigrant Jewish garment workers who created four cooperatively owned housing developments in the Bronx in the 1920′s. Think of all the thimbles! And luckily for the tenants, George Steinbrenner never owned the deed to this housing development, otherwise Goldman would have had to make a very different film. Let’s see what she has to say about the film:

“When the architect Andrew Hazelton and Ellen Brodsky came to me with an idea for a film about the Bronx Jewish labor housing cooperatives, I was immediately fascinated. The story of these visionary workers communities was completely new to me. Somehow, immigrant garment workers had managed to build big, beautiful, cooperatively owned apartment complexes in the 1920s. How did they pull it off? What inspired them? I wanted to know partly for personal reasons. I had grown up hearing tales of the labor movement from my father, a union lawyer. My immigrant Jewish grandparents had been socialists at heart.”

(more…)

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