ArtSake

African, Latino and Asian Women Filmmakers  African American Women in Cinema Film Festival is now accepting films and screenplays featuring the works of emerging and established African, Latino, and Asian women filmmakers from around the world. Learn more.
Deadline: October 18, 2011

Musicals New York Musical Theatre Festival Next Link Project is seeking musicals in a variety of styles and forms by new, distinct voices. Submitted works may not have had a commercial production in NYC. Learn more.
Deadline: October 31, 2011

Cambridge Artists A Call for Entries from the Massachusetts Convention Center Authority (MCAA) program at the Boston Convention & Exhibition Center. Cambridge artists are invited to become a part of the next Greater Boston Community Art Exhibition (Nov. 14, 2011- April 13, 2012). Showcase your art for four months of unsurpassed exposure to international, national, and local viewers. All pieces must be securely wired on the back and exhibition-ready. Send four jpegs plus your résumé and bio to Susan Merritt, MCAA Art Program Coordinator at artprogram@massconvention.com.
Deadline: November 1, 2011

Playwrights Julie Harris Playwright Awards seeks original, unproduced, unpublished full-length (minimum 75 minutes) plays. No musicals, children’s plays, translations, one-acts, or plays that have won any other competition. Only one entry per author. Plays must be written in English. Authors must be U.S. citizens. Learn more.
Deadline: November 1, 2011

Filmmakers The San Francisco International Film Festival (April 19-May 3, 2012, San Francisco, CA) is now accepting entries. Learn more. Questions: 415-561-5014 or gga@sffs.org
Deadline: November 7, 2011

Boston Poets The Boston Mayor’s Office of Arts, Tourism & Special Events will display poems and prose excerpts on the walls of City Hall. Poets and writers that reside or work in Boston are invited to send in their work to help celebrate the city in prose and poetry and to remind people what a culturally exciting city Boston is to live and work in. Read more.
Deadline: November 18, 2011

Free Conference  The Digital Public Library of America (DPLA) planning initiative will hold a public conference to showcase innovative ideas for the DPLA.  The first DPLA conference will bring together government leaders, librarians, technologists, makers, students, and others interested in building a national digital library to present the vision for the DPLA effort and to create multiple points of entry for public participation in the initiative’s work. The conference will be held at the National Archives in Washington, DC on October 21, 2011. Registration for the conference is free and open to the public, to support the DPLA’s goals of building a “big tent” coalition and including broad and diverse voices in the conversation. Register online.

Image credit: Photograph by Emilian Robert Vicol.

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Today’s glimpse from our gallery of past MCC fellows/finalists: collaborators Nell Breyer and Stefanie Nelson (Choreography Fellows ’06) expand the boundaries of dance with their fascinating blend of human movement and digital art.

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Here’s the latest installment of Fellows Notes, the current great news of past Fellows/Finalists from our Artist Fellowships Program.

November’s got some terrific stuff: Claire Beckett’s photos on DC buildings… TRIIIBE’s ongoing installation at Boston University… Eric Henry Sanders’s new play in New York. Read on.

On the Boston Area Small Press and Poetry Scene blog, Steve Almond is entertainingly interviewed by Cam Terwilliger, in advance of Steve’s participation in the Somerville News Writers’ Festival, November 13, 2010, at the Center for the Arts at the Armory in Somerville. (Both Steve and Cam are 2008 Fellows in Fiction/Creative Nonfiction.) Here’s a sample of Steve discussing his recent, DIY self-publishing projects: “Of course, there’s a lot of schlepping involved. And some low-level humiliation. But that’s the life of a writer anyway these days.”

Diane Arvanites-Noya and Tommy Neblett (Choreography Fellows ’08, ’04), aka Prometheus Dance, are part of Dance and back again! A 19th Birthday Faculty Concert in the Julie Ince Thompson Theatre at The Dance Complex. New and renewed pieces by Prometheus Dance, The Prometheus Elders, and numerous other groups will be performed on Saturday, November 13, 8 PM and Sunday, November 14, 7 PM.

Claire Beckett (Photography Fellow ’07) is one of the artists included in the 2010 Photolucida Critical Mass Top 50. Also, her work will be on display during FotoWeek DC in the show 100 Portraits – 100 Photographers: Selections from the FlakPhoto.com Archive, curated by Andy Adams of FlakPhoto.com. This exhibition is part of the NightGallery series of projections on display from November 6-13, 2010, with a launch party at the Corcoran Gallery of Art on Friday, November 5. The images will be projected on exteriors of significant buildings across Washington, DC, including: Corcoran Gallery of Art and College of Art + Design, Newseum, the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, American Red Cross, National Museum of the American Indian, Satellite Central (M Street – Georgetown) and the Human Rights Campaign buildings.

Liza Bingham (Painting Finalist ’10) is one of the over 80 artists exhibiting work in the 34th Annual Waltham Mills Open Studios, on Saturday, November 6 (12-6 PM) and Sunday, November 7 (12-5 PM).

Martha Jane Bradford (Drawing Fellow ’85) collaborated with Chantal Harvey to produce Acquarella: The Fable, digital/virtual art on view in the Air Tree Exhibit in the Madrid Pavilion of the World Expo in Shanghai, curated by Spanish curator and virtual arts leader Cristina García-Lasuén. Martha (Alizarin Goldflake in Second Life) produced, directed, and designed most of the virtual environment, while Chantal Harvey helmed the 3-D computer animation. Watch the clip with narration in English or Chinese. Also, Martha recently constructed Second Life sets for a real life play, The Winter Bear, which premiered in Anchorage October 29, 2010. Martha’s virtual, immersive art is integrated into the show’s the stage design (watch a video trailer). Find more information about the play The Winter Bear, a story of a troubled Athabascan teenager whose video game skills come in handy against a marauding Winter Bear. The play runs at Cyrano’s Off-Center Playhouse, Anchorage AK, Oct 29 – Nov 13. Read more about the project.

Sarah Braunstein (Fiction/Creative Nonfiction Fellow ’04) was named as one of the National Book Foundation’s 5 Under 35 selections, recognizing five young fiction writers chosen by National Book Award Winners and Finalists. She’ll be formally honored at a celebration at powerHouse Arena in NYC on Monday, November 15, hosted by musician and author Rosanne Cash with music journalist Rob Sheffield as DJ. Sarah’s novel The Sweet Relief of Lost Children will be published by W.W. Norton in 2011.

Congratulations to Peter Brown (Fiction/Creative Nonfiction Fellow ’06), whose short story collection A Bright Soothing Noise is published by University of North Texas Press this month. The book won the press’s Katherine Anne Porter Prize in Short Fiction.

Alicia Casilio, Sara Casilio, Kelly Casilio, and Cary Wolinsky (Sculpture/Installation Fellows ’09), aka TRIIIBE, are turning Boston University’s massive 808 Gallery space into a site-specific installation. In Search of Eden will evolve as creators and observers participate in developing a present day version of the Garden of Eden. The installation will encompass photography, sculpture, painting and daily performances by the artists.

Lorraine Chapman (Choreography Fellow ’04) and her dance company join Contrapose Dance for an afternoon of dancing and dynamic work by Gianni Di Marco, Courtney Peix, and Lorraine Chapman. The event is on Sunday, November 14, 2:30 PM, Green Street Studios in Cambridge, MA. Among the works by Lorraine Chapman, The Company are “Pulp Tango,” the gold section from “Displaced Here Persons There,” and a new solo danced by Lorraine Chapman.

Regie Gibson (Poetry Fellow ’10) will emcee the literary feast A Taste of Grub, a November 5 fundraiser for Grub Street, a writers’ service organization based in Boston. Regie has plenty of experience behind a microphone; he’s a former Poetry Slam National Champion.

Jane Gillooly (Film & Video Fellow ’07) will be a guest at EventWorks SIM (Studio for Interrelated Media at the Massachusetts College of Art and Design) on Thursday, November 4, 2010, at 7:30 PM when her documentary Today the Hawk Takes One Chick has a free screening.

Cathy Jacobowitz‘s (Fiction/Creative Nonfiction Finalist ’10) short story “You Made Me Leave My Happy Home” (drawn from her novel Melly Mockingbird) will be published in the Santa Monica Review spring or fall of 2011.

Congratulations to Liza Johnson (Film & Video Finalist ’07), who won the prestigious Rappaport Prize from the DeCordova Sculpture Park and Museum. The prize is a $25,000 award to an individual artist, “an investment in both an individual and the broader community.”

Dawn Lane (Choreography Fellow ’10) was recently invited by Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival to a Creative Development Residency to develop a new work, one potato, two potato. The work uses aspects of Irish culture and history as a metaphor for exploring excess, loss & insufficiency. Joined by dancers Lorimer Burns, Jane Goodrich, Susannah Millonzi and Leslie Nelson, Dawn spent a productive week in October in the Doris Duke Theatre that culminated in an informal showing of the work in progress on October 15.

Scott Listfield (Painting Finalist ’10) was selected as the creator of this year’s First Night Boston button. The design will be unveiled this month.

Tara L. Masih‘s (Fiction/Creative Nonfiction Finalist ’96) story collection, Where the Dog Star Never Glows, was announced as a finalist in the USA Book News Best Books 2010 Awards, short story category. Read Tara discussing Three Stages in the book’s development on ArtSake.

Rania Matar (Photography Fellow ’07) was selected for inclusion in the 2010 Photolucida Critical Mass Top 50.

Rachel Mello (Painting Finalist ’10) has a solo exhibition on paintings, prints, and collages at Club Passim in Cambridge. The exhibition runs November 15, 2010-January 3, 2011. Additionally, she has two pieces in the Nave Gallery’s Our Town exhibit, featuring works of and about Somerville, MA. Opening November 18, Rachel’s work will be included in Plenty at 13FOREST in Arlington. It’s the annual small works holiday show (gift ideas, anyone?).

Eric Henry Sanders’s (Playwriting Fellow ’09) play Reservoir will have its world premiere at The Drilling CompaNY Theatre in New York, running November 4 -24th, 2010. An earlier draft of the play helped Eric win an MCC fellowship, and you can read about its development (as well as hear an excerpt performed by Company One) on ArtSake.

Leslie Sills (Crafts Fellow ’95) created a sculptural teapot, called High Tea, that is among the works included in The Teapot Redefined. The exhibition of sculptural teapots ran at Mobilia Gallery in Cambridge through Oct. 31. High Tea was inspired by Leslie’s artist residency this past summer at Watershed Center for the Ceramic Arts, which borders a sheep farm in Newcastle, Maine.

Ron Spalletta (Poetry Finalist ’10) had a poem featured in Slate this summer, selected by poetry editor Robert Pinsky (hear Ron reading “Blank Villanelle”). Also, check out a great article about Ron in the Harvard Gazette, highlighting his dual careers as an award-winning poet and a Harvard Medical School manager.

Rachel Perry Welty (Sculpture/Installation Fellow ’09, Drawing Fellow ’04) has a solo photographic exhibition, Lost in My Life, at the Yancey Richardson Gallery in New York. The work is a series of photographs in which the artist herself is immersed in an environment of flattened cereal boxes, bread tags, twist ties, and other miscellaneous leftovers of modern consumption. Lost in My Life runs November 4-December 23, 2010, with an opening reception November 4, 6-8 PM.

Leslie Williams‘s (Poetry Fellow ’10) new poetry collection Success of the Seed Plants has been published by Bellday Books. The book won the 2010 Bellday Books Prize.

Kevin Young (Poetry Fellow ’10) has poetry featured in the Best American Poetry 2010 anthology.

Jeff Zimbalist’s (Film & Video Fellow ’05) documentary The Two Escobars is being released in San Francisco this month, is currently running in New York, and will have an LA release next week. The film recently received a glowing review by The Onion’s AV Club (and those discerning hipsters are tough to impress!). The highly lauded documentary will be released on DVD Blu Ray this month.

Past Fellows Notes
Oct. 2010
Sept. 2010
Aug. 2010
July 2010
June 2010
May 2010
Apr. 2010
Mar. 2010
Feb. 2010
Jan. 2010

Are you a past fellow or finalist with an event, honor, or other bit of news you’d like to share? Tell us about it.

Images: poster for RESERVOIR by Eric Henry Sanders, produced by The Drilling CompaNY; still from a trailer for THE WINTER BEAR, with virtual environments designed by Martha Jane Bradford; still from THE TRAVELERS CABARET by Lorraine Chapman; Scott Listfield, GRAND CANYON (2008), Oil on canvas, 24×48 in; Rachel Perry Welty, LOST IN MY LIFE (BOXES) (2010), Pigment Print, represented by Yancy Richardson Gallery.

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“Hey you two, you’re in the way! Can’t you see daddy is sketching. Now beat it.” -Quote from overzealous dog overheard on the banks of the Concord River. It’s true! I read it on the internets.

Photographers One Life International Photography Competition. The group Artists Wanted and the magazine PDN have partnered for One Life, an international open call for photography that delves into the lives of the global community.
Deadline: October 29, 2010

Networked Art Open Call for Networked Art to be commissioned for the exhibition Turbulence.org @ PaceDigitalGallery 2. Three commissions of $3,000 will be awarded. Works will premiere at Pace and on Turbulence in April 2011. Curators are seeking works that address the notion of “Levels/Hierarchies”, as in chains of command, levels of play, stages of life, degrees of comfort… Pace Digital Gallery is, itself, distributed across three floors of a building; within a broad stairwell to be precise. Practitioners are required to address the theme according to both the physical space and the distributed space of the Internet, where the works will permanently reside. Guidelines and proposal instructions.
Deadline: November 1, 2010

Call for Visual Artists Newton Free Library presents monthly exhibits by regional artists in the Gallery and Main Hall of the main library; a state-of-the-art facility which 13,000 people visit weekly. Learn more.
Deadline: November 12, 2010

Choreographers The BDA Rehearsal and Retreat Fellowship application is now available. It is a a three-day creative/rehearsal retreat for a choreographer and his/her dancers with additional funding to pay dancers during an extended rehearsal period. Two fellows will be selected for the third year of this project. The fellowships will take place between February and September 2011. The retreats will be held either at MASS MoCA in western Massachusetts or at a similar site. Selected artists will receive an honorarium up to $6,120 plus support for food and travel. Read more. Questions, email info@bostondancealliance.org.
Deadline: November 17, 2010

Playwrights: GAN-e-meed Theatre Project is inviting submissions of one-page plays on the theme of “Silence.” The top 15 entries will be displayed in the lobby of the theatre during the run of Silence by Moira Buffini (Dec. 2-18, 2010). Audience members will have the opportunity to view these entries and vote for their favorites based on visual, text, and content merit. The same 15 plays will also be presented as a free staged reading event on Sunday, December 12, 2010. Submission guidelines.
Deadline: November 20, 2010.

Image credit: Diaorama by Louise Stimson, located in the Wiggins Gallery at the Boston Public Library. Photograph by ArtSake.

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This post is a pictorial tour of some of the exceptional stuff past fellows/finalists from MCC’s Artist Fellowships Program are currently up to.

1. Reimagined tea pots. Leslie Sills (Crafts Fellow ’95) created the above work, called HIGH TEA. The sculptural teapot is among the works included in The Teapot Redefined, an exhibition of sculptural teapots at Mobilia Gallery in Cambridge (through Oct. 31). The work was inspired by Leslie’s artist residency this past summer at Watershed Center for the Ceramic Arts, which borders a sheep farm in Newcastle, Maine.

2. National film releases. Jeff Zimbalist’s (Film & Video Fellow ’05) documentary The Two Escobars is being released in San Francisco this month, is currently running in New York, and will have an LA release next week. The film recently received a glowing review by The Onion’s AV Club (and those discerning hipsters are tough to impress!).

3. Chinese World Expos. Martha Jane Bradford (Drawing Fellow ’85) collaborated with Chantal Harvey to produce Acquarella: The Fable, digital/virtual art on view in the Air Tree Exhibit in the Madrid Pavilion of the World Expo in Shanghai, curated by Spanish curator and virtual arts leader Cristina García-Lasuén. Martha (Alizarin Goldflake in Second Life) produced, directed, and designed most of the virtual environment, while Chantal Harvey helmed the 3-D computer animation. Watch the clip with narration in English or Chinese.

4. Literary/culinary benefit events. Former Poetry Slam National Champion Regie Gibson (Poetry Fellow ’10) will emcee the literary feast A Taste of Grub, a November 5 fundraiser for Grub Street, a writers’ service organization based in Boston.

5. Edens-in-progress. TRIIIBE (Sculpture/Installation Fellows ’09), the artists collective of Alicia, Kelly, and Sara Casilio and photographer Cary Wolinsky, is turning Boston University’s massive 808 Gallery space into a site-specific installation. In Search of Eden will evolve as creators and observers participate in developing a present day version of the Garden of Eden. If you’re in search of art that’s visually arresting, socially engaged, and possessed of a truly unique vision, then traveler, I think I know where to find your paradise.

6. Collaborative, two-part installations. Liz Nofziger (Sculpture/Installation Fellow ’05) and Linda Price-Sneddon (Sculpture/Installation Fellow ’01) have created a multi-media installation showing at two different art venues. Part one of That Which Changes That Which Stays the Same shows at the Villa Victoria in Boston through November 3, 2010. Part two shows at the Essex Art Center in Lawrence through December 8, with an Artists’ Talk Wednesday, November 17, 7-8 PM. The artists’ collaboration is itself the result of a collaboration (woah, meta) between Villa Victoria and Essex Art Center, called Exchange.

For more exceptional stuff, check out Fellows Notes.

Images: Leslie Sills, HIGH TEA (front and side view), ceramic; still from THE TWO ESCOBARS by Jeff and Michael Zimbalist; still from ACQUARELLA by Martha Jane Bradford and Chantal Harvey; Regie Gibson; promotional image for A Taste of Grub; TRIIIBE, FINE; installation view of THAT WHICH CHANGES THAT WHICH STAYS THE SAME by Liz Nofziger and Linda Price-Sneddon.

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Amid concrete and clay
And general decay
Nature must still find a way…
- The Smiths, Stretch Out and Wait

Site-Specific Dance: White Wave of Brooklyn, NY is proposing a series of site-specific dance works during the 2010 Dumbo Dance Festival. The seven sites are situated within two designated areas; the Brooklyn Bridge Park (near the entrance at Washington and Plymouth Streets), and along the Pier 1 waterfront (entrance at Old Fulton and Water Streets). There is no application fee to apply. Ideally they would like work to be collaborations between dancers, movement artists and multimedia artists of all kinds: musicians, composers, fashion/costume designers, video artists, photographers etc. You may apply as collaborators or as individual artists and they will will match you together. They are primarily a dance festival but are open to creative applications from artists in different media who can make a strong case for the way their work would fit in a dance context. The sites are presented raw.  Before submitting an application, they strongly suggest you visit the site–specific designated areas. Learn More
Deadline: Postmarked August 15, 2010

Call for Digital Art: Digital’2010: PLANET EARTH, an international digital print competition and exhibition organized by Art & Science Collaborations, Inc. (ASCI) is looking for artists and scientists to submit digital prints that reflect their perceptions of our planet. Jurors are Maddy Rosenberg, owner/director of Central Booking in DUMBO, Brooklyn; and Patrick Hamilton of the Science Museum of Minnesota. Selected works will be exhibited at the New York Hall of Science from October 3, 2010 through January 31, 2011. For more information, visit ASCI’s Web site.
Deadline: August 16, 2010

Funding for Media Artists: The National Endowment for the Humanities is offering Media Development & Media Production Grants.
Deadline: August 18, 2010

Call to Artists: Turners Falls RiverCulture is looking for artists to make art in downtown Turners Falls. Submit a proposal for the participatory/public art you want to make/do and if you’re selected, they will give you money to make that art happen. The criteria are inventiveness/beauty/aha-ness, use of location in a new/reimagined/creative way, likelihood you can pull it off, participatory nature/reach, use of the money, submitted by deadline. Questions, contact Lisa Davol.
Deadline: August 30, 2010

Call to Dorchester Area Artists: The Dorchester Arts Collaborative (DAC) is looking for artists to participate in their 2010 Open Studios October 23-24. For more, see DAC Web site or the DAC blog.

Business Development for Visual Artists: The Artist’s Professional Toolbox Program is a business development program specifically designed for visual artists. The Toolbox is an eight-month intensive course in which artists will learn marketing, networking and business skills with the additional benefits of peer group interaction, mentorship, and feedback. Apply to the program.
Deadline: September 24, 2010

Call for Public Art: Pittsfield’s Artscape invites artists to submit proposals for new work in the 2010-2011 exhibition season. Artists will receive a $1000 honorarium. For more information, call 413-499-9348.
Deadline: October, 31, 2010

Image Credit: Photograph of squirrel by ArtSake.

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In a ceremony at The Boston Foundation this past Tuesday night, eight artists (including six past fellows/finalists from the MCC Artist Fellowships Program) were announced as the inaugural Brother Thomas Fellows, receiving unrestricted awards of $15,000.

The awards are part of the legacy of Brother Thomas Bezanson, a Benedictine monk whose porcelain ceramics are world-renowned for their mastery and grace. The Boston Foundation worked with Bernie and Sue Pucker from the Pucker Gallery (longtime friends of Brother Thomas) to establish the Brother Thomas Fund, creating a means to support working contemporary artists through the sale of Brother Thomas’s work.

Artists are nominated for consideration for the award, which is planned for every two years. Sixty-two artists were nominated for the 2009 Brother Thomas Fellowships, representing a wide range of exceptional artists in many disciplines. The eight fellows are:

• John Oluwole ADEkoje, a filmmaker and playwright who teaches at the Boston Arts Academy
• Kati Agcs, a composer and member of the composition faculty at the New England Conservatory of Music in Boston
• Richard Hoffman (MCC Fiction/Creative Nonfiction ’02), a poet, prose writer, and writer in residence at Emerson College
• Barbara Helfgott Hyett (MCC Poetry Fellow ’98), a poet and founder of the Workshop for Publishing Poets
• Brian Knep (MCC Sculpture/Installation Finalist ’07), a new media artist who was the first artist-in-residence at Harvard Medical School
• Alla Kovgan (MCC Film & Video Fellow ’09), a filmmaker and co-founder of Kinodance Company and the Balagan Experimental Film Series
• Tracy Heather Strain (MCC Film & Video Fellow ’07), a filmmaker whose work-in-progress is a documentary on Lorraine Hansberry, author of Raisin in the Sun
• Heather White (MCC Crafts Finalist ’09), a jeweler, maker of wearable art, and Associate professor at the Massachusetts College of Art and Design

Congratulations to all nominees and fellows!

The panelists were: Nicholas Baume, former Chief Curator at the Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston; Emilya Cachapero, Director of Artistic Programs for the Theatre Communications Group; Michael Cain, a composer and pianist; Kwame Dawes, poet in residence at the University of South Carolina Arts Institute; Caridad Svich, playwright, translator and editor; Judith Tannenbaum, Curator of Contemporary Art at the Rhode Island School of Design Museum; and Joe Zina, former Executive Director of the Coolidge Corner Theatre.

Images: Brian Knep, FROG TIME (2007), non-repeating video installation, computer, video projector, custom software, 7×5 ft; Still from NORA, co-directed by Alla Kovgan and David Hinton; Heather White, MURMURING BROOCH (2006), cast sterling lips, gold, rubies, seed and cultured pearls, 4.75×4.75x.75 in.

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Photo above depicts two artists wondering whatever happened to their luggage.

On a happier note, The Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority has issued two Calls to Artists for upcoming projects at Washington Dulles International Airport and they have nothing to do with locating lost luggage.

The first call to artists involves the International Arrivals Building. The Airports Authority is looking for artists to make artwork for three permanent installations intended to welcome arriving international passengers to the United States and the National Capital Region, to enhance their travel experience and to promote the cultural diversity of the National Capital Region.

The second call involves the the Federal Inspection Services Area, Concourse C. One project artist will be selected to work with nine classroom/art teachers at schools in the National Capital Region to create student portraits for a public art project titled, HELLO AND WELCOME.

For more information contact Margaret Bishop, Community Relations Manager, Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority, 703-417-8383, or email Margaret.Bishop@MWAA.com

Deadline for both projects: October 15, 2009.

There are two upcoming free talks to note:
The first is the launch event of Artists In Context on Friday, October 9, 2009, from 1:00 – 4:00 p.m. at the Arthur M. Sackler Museum Lecture Hall, Harvard University, 485 Broadway, Cambridge. Seating is limited so reservation is recommended. Email RSVP@artistsincontext.org to attend.

ARTISTS IN CONTEXT is a flexible organizational framework designed to assemble artists and other creative thinkers across disciplines to conceptualize new ways of representing and acting upon the critical issues. The speakers include: Claudine Brown, Director of the Arts and Culture Program, Nathan Cummings Foundation; Mel Chin, Ann Hamilton, Dava Newman, Director, MIT Technology and Policy Program and Professor of Aeronautics and Astronautics and Engineering Systems; and an additional speaker TBA. The moderator is Carrie Lambert-Beatty, Assistant Professor of History of Art and Architecture and of Visual and Environmental Studies, Harvard University.

The second talk involves Ford Hall Forum at Suffolk University, in collaboration with the Massachusetts Poetry Festival presenting Massachusetts Poetry in Hard Times: What the Best of Bay State Bards Offer Us in Bad Times and Good. Poets include David Ferry, Suji Kwock Kim, Jill McDonough, Gail Mazur & Lloyd Schwartz, with moderator Christopher Lydon. For more information, call the Ford Hall Forum at 617-557-2007. Event takes place on Thursday, October 15 at 6:30-8:00 pm, at the Rabb Auditorium, Boston Public Library, 700 Boylston Street, Boston, MA.

Image credit: NASA Center: Headquarters, Image # wrightflyer-1904.

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The environment for media arts makers is, to put it mildly, in a state of change. So many ideas are in play, so many words abuzz – sustainability, monetization, community-building, to name a few – that this month’s NAMAC (the National Alliance for Media Arts & Culture) biennial conference at Boston’s Park Plaza Hotel (April 26-29) couldn’t come at a better time. It’s a chance for media arts groups, artists, and creative thinkers to share ideas and make connections. (Learn about it, register, and/or see a full schedule, here. Online registration ends Friday, Aug. 21.)

Organizers of the conference (called CommonWealth) are looking for volunteers to help keep its many gears in motion. By working ten hours, volunteers will get free registration to the entire conference. From conference assistant Mira Simon: “We will need volunteers starting on August 26 (Wednesday) and ending on August 29 (Saturday). Any interested individuals can contact me with a resume and a list of times that they will not want to volunteer.”

If you’re interested, be specific about times you can’t volunteer; organizers will assume you’re available anytime you don’t specify.

And if you do volunteer and/or participate in the conference, let us know your impressions!

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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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