ArtSake

For anyone who…

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

BEN BERMAN STEPHEN DIRADO JANE GILLOOLY CHUCK HOLTZMAN ARIEL KOTKER JULIE LEVESQUE JANE MARSCHING ANDREW NEUMANN MONICA RAYMOND SALVATORE SCIBONA DEB TODD WHEELER JOAN WICKERSHAM

… are coming soon to a reading, exhibition, screening, award ceremony, or publication near you.

(I.e. they’re all featured in our November 2008 Fellows Notes, which we just posted).

At Kino-Eye are nifty photos from the Berwick Research Institute’s recent Artist Encampment on Bumpkin Island. Ten groups of artists embarked to the Boston Harbor island with only the art supplies on their backs to “homestead” and adapt their creative ideas over five days. Berwick’s website called the project “part residency, part survivalist experiment, and fully impressionable, malleable, speculative and reflective.”

Recently, the Mellon Foundation announced it has awarded $10 million in organizational grants to support new plays. I’m amused by Culture Monster’s take on the announcement: “(With) state arts budgets being slashed as though they were screaming victims in a horror movie, every donated dollar helps.” Alas, no Massachusetts institutions were granted, but Massachusetts playwrights have been supported by some of the funded orgs – recently, Sundance Institute named Kirsten Greenidge a Time Warner Storytelling Fellow, the Playwrights Center is currently hosting Monica Raymond as one of its Jerome Fellows, and Steppenwolf Theater Company produced Melinda Lopez’s play Sonya Flew in the 2006/07 season.

The theater world being an opinionated sort of place, it shouldn’t surprise you that not everyone was thrilled by Mellon’s move.

It appears that the worlds of Massachusetts photographer Sage Sohier are nearly perfect in the eyes of the We Can’t Paint photography blog.

Sly as ever, Alex Ross riffs on the intersection between contemporary composers and presidential politics, at The Rest Is Noise. (Don’t miss the YouTube clip; strictly on aesthetic, nonpartisan terms, the original jazz score accompanying Sarah Palin’s interview is too brilliant to miss.) Speaking of politics, the Globe’s Off the Shelf book blog shares how three publishers (including two from Massachusetts) are getting directly involved in campaign donations.

Good job, The Healing Arts: New Pathways to Health! The 2006 documentary was honored with a “Best of the Festival” award from the Focus Film Festival. And also, good job to director Benjamin Mayer, and also to Vermont Arts Exchange, who produced. Oh, and good job to us (MCC). Cuz we co-produced. So, an inclusive good job.

Rejoicing in fifth anniversary-hood, Chicks Make Flicks screens The Axe in the Attic, which takes documentary filmmakers Lucia Small and Ed Pincus on a 60-day road trip from New England to New Orleans in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. Thursday, October 30, 7 PM at MIT (77 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge Room 6-120).

Exploring the indie film experience a little further… a California cinematographer discusses creative shooting and lighting decisions for an ultra-cheap indie shoot. (Props to the Filmmaker Magazine blog for linking to this first.)

Any arts administrators out there? Andrew Taylor has composed your theme song.

The old writing workshop chestnut “that’s dated” fails to hold up under poet and editor Elisa Gabbert’s scrutiny, at the Ploughshares blog.

(Did you catch the acrostic? Yipeee!!)

Image: Andrew Neumann, HAL (VERTICAL CONVERSATION) (2001), wood, motor, micro-processor, camera, LCD screen, 36 in x 12 in x 8 in. Andrew, a 2003 Sculpture/Installation finalist, exhibits kinetic sculptures in “The Last Picture Show” at AXIOM Center for New and Experimental Media in Boston, October 24-December 13. Opening reception Friday, October 24, 6 PM, artist talk Saturday, December 13, 3:30 PM.

I noticed this image by Claire Beckett (Photography Fellow ‘07) on the Photographic Resource Center’s blog and was happy to see it’s among the works being auctioned to raise funds for the PRC. The organization, an independent photography nonprofit on the Boston University campus, is holding a ticketed event this Saturday, October 25 and a silent online auction.

A legion of prominent artists is involved, including MCC-awarded photographers Karl Baden (Fellow ‘99), Bremner Benedict (Finalist ‘99), David J. Bookbinder (Fellow ‘07), Lisa Kessler (Finalist ‘05), Adam Lampton (Finalist ‘07), Rania Matar (Fellow ‘07), Mari Seder (Fellow ‘03), Stephen Tourlentes (Fellow ‘05), and Joshua Winer (Finalist ‘07). Also included are Deb Todd Wheeler (Sculpture/Installation Fellow ‘03) and Jessica Burko, who was featured in a Studio Views on this blog.

Another intriguing event that caught our bloggy eye: the Boston Asian American Film Festival (BAAFF), which started this past weekend and continues with a number of upcoming events in the Boston area. On Friday, October 24 is an evening of short films called “Good Things Come in Short Packages.” Julie Mallozzi’s (Film & Video Finalist ‘07) short film 25th & Mission is on the card.

The festival is sponsored by the Asian American Resource Workshop and features Asian American films and filmmakers, and a spirited engagement of the Boston community.

Images (top to bottom): Claire Beckett, PVT DAN FLOYD (2007), c-print, 30 in x 40 in; Still from 25TH AND MISSION, a film by Julie Mallozzi

Exhortations
I thought I’d start with a couple of posts exhorting art action (or action art). The always resourceful Practicing Writing blog drew attention to this intriguing call to nominate your favorite blog posts (by you or other people) to appear in the publication The Best Creative Nonfiction, Volume 3.

NaPlWriMo challenges playwrights to write a play - a completely new script (no cheatery revisions of old drafts, playwrights!) - in the month of November, and to share the experience using its online forums.

Examiners
We work with really top-notch reviewers for our Artist Fellowships Program, so it should be no surprise when they do good things. Still, the good things are surprisingly copious this week. Company One has begun rehearsing for its upcoming production of Voyeurs de Venus by Lydia Diamond (who reviewed for our Playwriting Artist Fellowships), and between rehearsal calls, pratfalls, and fourth walls, they’re blogging about it.

We yell “super great job!” to Rigoberto Gonzalez (also a past Poetry reviewer for us), just named the next resident poet at Frost Place in New Hampshire.

If you’re going to do an email interview, author Tayari Jones (past reviewer for Fiction/Creative Nonfiction) wants you to do it right and has some ideas to that effect.

Go see Kevin Prufer at the Blacksmith House in Harvard Square next Mon, Oct 27. Why? He’s reviewed for our Poetry Artist Fellowships. But more importantly, he’s a much-admired poet. Those prone to martial arts analogies might say that if his poetry were a ninja, it would be nigh impossible to elude its creeping death. Luckily, his poetry is poetry, and neither I nor anyone I know is so prone. He reads with Jill McDonough, a poet who, like Kevin, has received an NEA fellowship for her troubles.

Excitements
The week is filled with online art happenings to make a Bay Stater glow with pride. First, at a site whose name I’m assuming is a mash up of the words “books” and “LUT” (acronym for “lookup table” in computer science lingo I guess?), Massachusetts publisher Gavin Grant (Small Beer Press) interviews Massachusetts young adult author MT Anderson (The Octavian Nothing books).

Greg Cook discusses Boston graphic designer Chaz Maviyane-Davies, and his poster project to influence the upcoming presidential election.

CinemaTech shares video from the “Tech @ the Movies” panel in Cambridge about our state’s role in the technological development of the film industry.

At the Mass Humanities Public Humanist blog, Mass Center for the Book director Sharon Shaloo combats ambivalence toward Massachusetts literary landmarks. Here’s a quote:

Our commonwealth, indeed our country, was founded on enlightened principles that recognized the vital importance of activity beyond the quotidian. We seem, however, over the course of time and under the burdens of tight budgets to have devolved into a utilitarianism that may have us worry about diffusing a “knowledge”–the use-value of which can be measured easily– but that leads us to a systemic wariness about activity in service of achieving those other ideals–of wisdom and of virtue–which are, to use the coin of our achievement realm, “less testable.”

Well said. And with that…
Exeunt

Image: Mary O’Malley, UNTITLED #4 (2005), ink on paper, 19 in x 25 1/2 in. Mary is exhibiting in Overflow at Laconia Gallery through November 22.

News about our past fellows and finalists just keeps materializing, like florescent jellyfish in seawater (and didn’t florescent jellyfish just win somebody a Nobel Prize? So there’s gotta be some good karma in those critters.)

Here are a few of the recent updates to the October Fellows Notes:

Director Juan Mandelbaum (Film & Video Finalist ‘07) has five screenings of his stirring documentary Nuestros Desaparecidos (Our Disappeared) at the Museum of Fine Arts, October 16-November 1. Our Disappeared is a highly personal investigation of the military kidnapping and torture of Argentinian women between 1976 and 1983. Juan will be present at each screening, along with a number of special guests.

Elizabeth Hughey (Poetry Fellow ‘08) and Michael Teig (Poetry Fellow ‘08) will read as part of the jubilat/Jones Reading Series. They’ll read Sunday, October 19, 3 PM, at the Jones Library in Amherst. A Q&A will follow the free reading.

Masako Kamiya (Painting Fellow ‘06) is among the artists exhibiting in the 2008 Dorchester Open Studios, Saturday October 25 and Sunday October 26.

Andrew Mowbray’s (Sculpture/Installation Finalist ‘05) solo show Tempest Prognosticator just closed at Miami’s Gallery Diet.

Deb Todd Wheeler’s (Sculpture/Installation Fellow ‘03) latest project, The Launch, is part of the exhibit Body Prop at the University of Northern Iowa, through Sunday, October 26. Curator Erica Duffy explains that the four participating artists “present objects that negotiate the relationship between the body and its environment.” Also, Deb is showing drawings and models in Figment’s Imagination at Miller Block Gallery, along with work by Tanit Sakakini and Jane D. Marsching (Photography Finalist ‘03). October 17-November 29, opening reception Oct. 17, 6 PM.

Read the full Fellows Notes.

Image: Installation view of THE LAUNCH, Deb Todd Wheeler (work in progress)

Make your voices typed
There’s a great discussion underway in the comments section of our post about Martha Mason and the end of Snappy Dance Theater, ranging from tributes to Snappy to the future of Boston’s dance scene to the virtues of dance as an art form. Check it out and join in.

Leslie K. Brown invites you to guess that photographic image.

Mirror up to Nature wants you to send in your pictures of theatre artists at work.

A Minnesota playwright asks for your definition of success as an artist.

West Coast literary agent Nathan Bransford wants writers to share the worst writing advice you’ve ever received.

Reports from the field
At Best American Poetry, Eleanor Goodman shares her experiences at the Simmons College Chinese Poetry Festival, starting here and continuing here.

At the local indie film blog Kino-Eye, David Tames offers a perceptive, two-part response to the DIY Days Boston conference: part 1 and part 2. The conference was designed to help filmmakers finds ways “to have a say in how their films were reaching audiences.”

A tech reporter for the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel has high praise for Act/React at the Milwaukee Art Museum, which was curated by Boston Cyberarts Festival founder/director George Fifield and features Brian Knep (Sculpture/Installation Finalist ‘07).

Do stuff
Film-makers and -appreciators in Central and Western Mass. have two upcoming festivals to hit: the Williamstown Film Festival October 17-26, and the Northampton Film Festival October 24-26.

This month in the Berkshires, a consortium of excellent arts groups presents two events in the Tricks of the Trade professional development series for individual artists. Events offer advice on selling handmade work online (October 14 in North Adams) and pricing artwork (October 15 in Pittsfield). Series flyer.

Big tubs of Gatorade poured on the heads of (i.e. congratulations to):
Massachusetts playwright Kirsten Greenidge, recently named a 2008 Time Warner Storytelling Fellow by the Sundance Institute. The fellowship “provides substantial support over four years to help fund the development and celebration of independent artists across the Sundance Institute’s Feature Film and Theatre Programs,” according to a press release quoted on the Filmmaker Magazine blog.

Massachusetts novelist Sue Miller, this year’s winner of the Kate Chopin Award, according to the Word Up blog from the Phoenix.

Americans for the Arts, who actually did what the debate moderators have yet to do: ask about the presidential candidates’ positions on the arts.

A parting question
In an ideas piece, Marjorie Garber asks: should universities become the ultimate patrons of the arts?

Art today is often collaborative, costly, and ambitious. Whether for an installation, a film, a theater or dance production, or some combination of these, art requires large and flexible spaces, and large and flexible budgets. There is more need than ever for connections, global and local, and for expensive, delicate, and complicated tools and equipment…

… Universities would create open spaces for art-making, with natural light, high ceilings, flexible flooring (for dance and other performance activities), and acoustic sophistication, furnished with state-of-the-art technology, staffed by skilled technicians, and providing spaces for encounters and improvisation across art practices. With augmented funding and a new vision of art’s centrality, universities might set up endowed centers that bring together international practitioners, begin directing major donations toward art centers, and recruit major working artists and give them a home during the prime of their careers.

Read the full piece.

Image: Still from String Beings. Premiered at the Virginia Wimberly Theater, June 2007. Image by MIT scientist and New Media artist, Jonathan Bachrach. Photo by Allison Evans.

Click to see a video of HIS ROOM AS HE LEFT IT, an ongoing installation by Ariel Kotker (Sculpture/Installation Fellow ‘07)

And, we’re in business.

We’ve posted guidelines and the online application for the Massachusetts Cultural Council’s 2009 Artist Fellowships Program.

This year, the fellowships offer grants of $10,000 (and finalist awards of $1000) as direct support to individual artists in recognition of artistic excellence.

The current eligible categories are Crafts, Film & Video, Music Composition, Photography, Playwriting, and Sculpture/Installation. Deadline is December 5, 2008.

You may be interested to know that the program has been around, almost continuously and in one form or another, since 1974. Hundreds of artists, many of local and national prominence, have received direct support.

Recent fellows include Rania Matar (Photography Fellow ‘07) one of four finalists for the ICA Boston 2008 Foster Prize; Jane Gillooly (Film & Video Fellow ‘07) whose documentary Today the Hawk Takes One Chick has shown at ICA, MFA, and numerous film festivals nationally and internationally; and Shirish Korde (Music Composition Fellow ‘79, ‘01, ‘07) who has received commissions from Boston Musica Viva, Boston Modern Orchestra Project, and the National Polish Symphony Orchestra, among others.

Check out these and other past awardees at our Gallery@MCC.

More about the Artist Fellowships Program.

Image: Still from a video of Ariel Kotker’s ongoing installation HIS ROOM AS HE LEFT IT.