ArtSake

Boston Handmade, a group of Boston-area artists, artisans, and craftspeople who (totally apropos of their name) handmake their stuff, have been invited to open up shop in an empty storefront in Downtown Crossing! Well done, Boston Redevelopment Authority, well done indeed.

Magnum Photos blog has advice for emerging photographers, from like a stadium-full of established photographers. (Seriously, a ton of photographers offer advice - there’s gotta be something useful in there somewhere, right?)

Not sure how I feel about the cutting up of books (even so artfully), but this site featuring book sculptures is pretty cool. Makes me think of Sherrill Hunnibell’s (Drawing Fellow ‘04) altered books (such as the one above) and Mag Harries’ (Sculpture/Installation Fellow ‘03) book chairs.

On his blog The Writing Life x3, Massachusetts playwright and writer Patrick Gabridge shares impressions of a recent theater symposium in Boston. “I was struck over and over again how much we all want to work together better,” he writes, positing that a theater scene could greatly benefit from more reflection on just-concluded projects, learning from the successes and mistakes of the collaborative process.

Mirror Up to Nature has a perceptive post on how the current economic climate could (let’s choose to emphasize the word could) be a rife environment for attacks on government arts funding.

Fair use and copyright issues for artists are trickier than ever, what with this age of hyper-connected doo-daddery (also known as the Internet). Gallery owner Edward Winkleman goes over some recent fair use and copyrights cases concerning artists.

The LA Times book blog Jacket Copy covers Concord, Mass. author-turned-philanthropic-publisher Stona Fitch and his decision to give away his book Give and Take – with the caveat that the receiver then gives to charity (and in a whole ‘nother layer of meta, the plot of the book involves a modern Robin Hood type).

An interesting craft question posed at Practicing Writing: in historical fiction, should the words be spelled as we spell them now, or should the spelling reflect the period?

In The Art Newspaper, Roland Augustine has an opinion piece stating that artists should be able to deduct a fair market value in their taxes when they donate works of art. Currently, art collectors can, but artists can only deduct cost of materials. (Incidentally, this very change is part of President-elect Barack Obama’s arts policy, so there is reason to hope.)

Speaking of… Best American Poetry is sponsoring a contest for the best Inaugural ode.

And finally, GalleyCat covers last night’s National Book Awards ceremony. Sadly, neither Salvatore Scibona (Fiction/Creative Nonfiction Fellow ‘06) nor Joan Wickersham (Fiction/Creative Nonfiction Fellow ‘08), finalists both, walked away with shiny new awards (I’m assuming they’re shiny), but the blog quotes Salvatore’s publisher at Greywolf, Fiona McRae, as being sure that Salvatore will have many more award nights ahead of him. I still wish he and Joan had won, but, as David Mehegan says in the Globe’s Off the Shelf blog, “You’re all champs in our book.”

Incidentally, check out this video interview with Salvatore on GalleyCat (Salvatore speaks about halfway in, after Candace Bushnell and the awards director). Asked how he as an artist, already to some extent resigned to a not-rich life, reacts to the Wall Street crisis, he says that when “everybody who’s rich suddenly gets poor, we feel like we’ve come up in the world!”

See, ask an artist, and everybody wins.

Image: Sherrill Hunnibell, COMING FIRST (2001), mixed media altered book, 7 in x 9 in x 1 in

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.”

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.

An handful of past MCC fellows/finalists recently got some nice (and free) publicity: Globe art critic Cate McQuaid had very good things to say about Sally Moore’s (Sculpture/Installation Finalist ‘07) exhibition Edge and Jane Marsching (Photography Finalist ‘03), Deb Todd Wheeler (Sculpture/Installation Fellow ‘03), and Tanit Sakakini’s exhibition Figment’s Imagination.

Greg Cook pointed out this Chicago Tribune story of a local artist abroad. Boston’s Bren Bataclan spent October in the City of the Big Shoulders to trade paintings for the pledge that the recipient will “smile at strangers more often.” (The Trib, clearly an anti-smile establishment, punished him by calling him “Bret.”)

Speaking of giving away your work for free, literary agent Nathan Bransford asks: does it pay?

And does it pay for a city in revival to offer artist space for free? Fall River is about to test the theory. Artists can apply to take over empty storefronts, rent-free (they do pay utilities), in return for staying open to the public at designated times. The Herald News has the story.

As we approach election day, CultureGrrl makes a heartfelt plea to the next administration: end this long national nightmare and revive of National Endowment for the Arts Artist Fellowships for all disciplines!

Speaking of NEA, it’s rolling out a new program to support new plays, and the first group of selections and finalists have been announced. Congrats to Massachusetts artists Lydia Diamond and Anne Gottlieb - both created works named as finalists.

The literary blog The Millions probes how a settlement between Google, the Authors Guild, and the Association of American Publishers could pave the way for major changes in book publishing. Most notably, out-of-print or impossible-to-find literature could be made available in digital versions or through print-on-demand technology.

Anyone out there know a William Young, formerly (and maybe still?) of Winchester? Authorities are trying to find him: they’ve found the George Benjamin Luks painting somebody pinched from him 37 years ago!

At HubArts, Joel Brown explores how an abandoned state mental hospital in Danvers has inspired hyperbolically creepy pastels by a Massachusetts artist.

Artists in the Berkshires can pick up marketing and business strategies in small business seminar for artists in Pittsfield.

Image: Jane Marsching, MCCALL GLACIER (2006), large-scale lightjet print. Jane’s digital prints are exhibited in Figment’s Imagination at Miller Block Gallery, through December 12.

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.

With all the grim talk about the economic environment here in Massachusetts and throughout the US, coupled with the reality that we’re about to select a new president and potentially, a new direction for the country, it only stands to reason that artists and other creative types would be curious about what it all means for the future of their field.

The Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC Radio (which broadcasts out of New York City but can be streamed live anywhere), will be discussing arts and culture funding this Friday, and they want you to help steer the conversation.

The show is part of the 30 Issues in 30 Days series exploring issues pertinent to the 2008 presidential election. Six of those “days” are being produced wiki-style, i.e. by collaborating with interested listeners.

Because it can be heard nationally, the program is reaching out to artists outside NYC. So join the wiki and help craft the content, offering questions, suggesting guests, and giving your take on what either presidential candidate would mean for the arts.

The show airs Friday, October 24, 10 AM ET.

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.

Choreographers, are you looking for a fellowship to provide uninterrupted rehearsal time to focus on the development of your work? Did you know about the Boston Dance Alliance Rehearsal and Retreat Fellowship? If you are interested in applying, you’ll need to get your running shoes on to meet the fast approaching application deadline of October 24th.

“The best things in life are free
But you can keep ‘em for the birds and bees
Now give me money (that’s what I want)
That’s what I want (that’s what I want)
That’s what I want (that’s what I want), yeah
That’s what I want”

from the song Money (That’s What I Want), writtten by Berry Gordy Jr./Janie Bradford, originally performed by Barrett Strong.

Are you a visual artist interested in improving your business skills (translation: how do I make money selling my work)?  If yes, the Arts & Business Council of Greater Boston and the Volunteer Lawyers for the Arts of Massachusetts might have just what you are looking for. They have developed an 8 month long business course designed to address areas involving negotiation, marketing strategies, legal issues, and financial planning.

If 8 months seems like too long of a comittment, there’s a two-day event at the Boston Public Library called the Second Annual Massachusetts Artists Leadership & Entrepreneurship Conference. It’s free and 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 this magnificent public building established in 1848. And by the way, it was the first U.S. public library to lend books!