ArtSake

For writers who long to be heard: A new literary magazine, The Drum, has been launched by Henriette Lazaridis Power (a 2006 Artist Fellow in Fiction/Creative Nonfiction). The Drum publishes, in audio form, short fiction, essays, and the occasional author interview. The inaugural issue comes out in May. Says Henriette, “We’re looking for work that pays close attention to language while never losing sight of the narrative drive. We want stories that really do tell a story. And essays that engage in the complexity of an idea. The Drum is a home for emerging and established writers who value the power of writing out loud.”

For filmmakers seeking composers (& vice versa): the Learning Center and the Film Scoring Department at Berklee College of Music will host the 5th Annual Music for Film networking event on Saturday, April 10, 2010 from 1:30–7 p.m. The event, free and open to the public, includes a speakers’ panel about the filmmaker/composer relationship, a presentation by film composer Mason Daring (Lone Star), a film scoring contest, and an exposition where students and professionals will have booths, exchange demos and business cards, and talk about their work. Register and find more info.

For emerging playwrights: The Princess Grace Awards Playwright Fellowship is given annually to a young American playwright, consists of a $7,500 grant and a ten-week residence, including paid travel, at New Dramatists, a playwright service organization, in New York City. The award is based primarily on the artistic quality of a submitted play and the potential of the fellowship to assist in the writer’s growth. Read the guidelines at www.pgfusa.org and apply by March 31, 2010.

For artists with disabilities: VSA, the International Organization on Arts and Disability, has announced the VSA Teaching Artist Fellowship Program, seeking to identify, engage, and support artists with disabilities through teaching artist fellowships in the visual and performing arts. This competitive fellowship offers a professional development retreat in Washington D.C., subscriptions/memberships within VSA’s teaching artist network, networking and teaching opportunities, enrollment in VSA Community of Practice, and the opportunity to serve as facilitators for VSA’s education programs. Fellows will also be profiled in VSA publications. Submission deadline: April 23, 2010. Find guidelines, application forms, and more information.

AND you can continue your opportunities search at these great sites for finding artist grants, residencies, calls-to-artists, etc:

• Mira’s List (a labor-of-love blog just teeming with artist opportunities listings)
• ArtSource (an online resource of the School of the Museum of Fine Arts)
• NYFA Source (a search engine for artist opportunities, hosted by the New York Foundation for the Arts but with a national scope)

Image: TOWNSEND’S PATENT FOLDING GLOBE, created by Dennis Townsend (1869). From the Boston Public Library Norman B. Leventhal Map Center.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/boston_public_library/ / CC BY 2.0

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We compile a monthly list of presentations, honors, publications, and events featuring past and present MCC Artist Fellows & Finalists. As you’ll see, the news is good - not just about these award-winning artists, but also about the breadth and vitality of contemporary arts throughout the Commonwealth.

SIX past and current MCC Artist Fellows were selected to be among nine finalists for the 2010 James and Audrey Foster Prize, the Institute of Contemporary Art/Boston’s biennial award and exhibition program for Boston-area artists. Eirik Johnson (Photography Fellow ‘09), Fred H. C. Liang (Painting Fellow ‘04, ‘08), Rebecca Meyers (Film & Video Fellow ‘09), Matt Rich (Painting Fellow ‘10), Evelyn Rydz (Drawing Fellow ‘10), and Steve Tourlentes (Photography Fellow ‘05), along with Robert de Saint Phalle, Daniela Rivera, and Amie Siegel, will participate in an exhibition at the ICA that opens Sept. 22, 2010, and continues through Jan. 30, 2011. The winner of the prize will be announced in January 2011.

Three MCC Fellows are featured in the show 1X1 at Gallery Kayafas in Boston. The show, curated by Gregory Mencoff (Sculpture/Installation Fellow ‘05, ‘09), includes work by Evelyn Rydz (Drawing Fellow ‘10) and Pat Shannon (Sculpture/Installation Fellow ‘09) along with Nancy Cusack and John Schulz. It runs March 4-April 10, 2010, with receptions on First Fridays: March 5 and April 2, 5:30-8 PM.

Three MCC Fellows/Finalists are featured in an exhibition of Artadia Boston’s recent awardees, at the Mills Gallery in the Boston Center for the Arts. Work by Claire Beckett (Photography Fellow ‘07), Ambreen Butt (Drawing Finalist ‘10), and Eric Gottesman (Photography Fellow ‘09), along with that of Caleb Cole, Raúl González, Amie Siegel and Joe Zane, will on exhibit March 26 - April 25, 2010, opening reception, Friday, March 26, 6-8 PM.

Speaking of Claire Beckett… kudos to Claire and Irina Rozovsky (Photography Finalist ‘09): both are included in the Humble Arts Foundation’s 31 Women in Art Photography, which is on exhibit at Affirmation Arts in NYC, March 6-April 10, 2010, opening reception: Saturday, March 6, 6–9 PM.

This month, Steve Almond (Fiction/Creative Nonfiction Fellow ‘08) has a number of Boston-area readings and appearances in advance of the April release his new book Rock and Roll Will Save Your Life. On Friday, March 12, he’ll be the host of Grub Street’s Grub Gone… Blue, a night of reading from writers’ “blue” periods. On Thursday, March 18, he’ll join Steven Beeber at the Art Institute of Boston (check back at Steve’s website for details). On Tuesday, March 23, he’ll join Keith Morris at Porter Square Books in Cambridge. Then on April 16, his voice by now limbered up and the mic cleared of sibilance, he’ll visit the Brattle Theatre (hosted by Harvard Bookstore) for a musical celebration of his new book, an ode/confessional for the musical superfan in all of us. Tickets on sale now. In other auspicious Almond news: his story “Donkey Greedy, Donkey Gets Punched” has been selected by Richard Russo to appear in The Best American Short Stories 2010. Can I humbly request a “Woo hoo?”

Alissa Cardone (Choreography Finalist ‘02, ‘06, ‘08) and Kinodance will perform their new work “Fuse” on March 5 as part of the 12th biennial Arts and Technology Symposium at Connecticut College.

Ralf Yusuf Gawlick (Music Composition Fellow ‘09) let us know that on March 17 at 8 pm in Gasson Hall, Boston College, the Hawthorne String Quartet will perform his Berlin Suite. The piece, performed here as a concert suite, was commissioned by the German Embassy and Boston College for the film documentary “Writing on the Wall: Remembering the Berlin Wall” celebrating the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. Admission is free. At 7 PM, there is a reception to celebrate the release of Solo and Chamber Works, Ralf Yusuf Gawlick, from Musica Omnia. Also, don’t miss the premiere of Kinderkreuzzug, Ralf’s dramatic cantata for children’s voices and small chamber ensemble, on Saturday, April 10, 7:30 PM, at St. Ignatius, Chestnut Hill and again on Sunday, April 11, 3:00 PM Trinity Episcopal, Concord. The cantata, which adapts Bertolt Brecht’s extraordinary and grim anti-war poetry, will be performed by two New England choirs and a German boys choir sponsored to fly to the region specifically for this piece. The choirs will record the cantata for the label Musica Omnia.

Masako Kamiya (Painting Fellow ‘06, ‘10) has a solo exhibition, Outspoken: Masako Kamiya, 2002-2010 at the Danforth Museum of Art in Framingham, March 17 - May 16 2010. Artist’s Reception: Saturday, March 20, 6-8PM. Artist’s Talk: Wednesday, March 17, noon & Sunday, April 11, 3PM. (The talks are free for museum members or with paid admission to the museum.) Read more about the show (and about Masako) on ArtSake.

Adam Lampton (Photography Finalist ‘07) has a solo show at Carroll and Sons Gallery in Boston, Nothing Serious Can Happen Here: Photographs from Macao by Adam Lampton. The show runs through March 27, 2010.

Todd McKie (Painting Finalist ‘08) has been awarded a Residency Fellowship to Instituto Sacatar in Bahia, Brazil. Twenty-five artists were selected from among more than 500 candidates from 19 different countries. Todd will be there for two months in 2011. You can see recent work by Todd at Gallery NAGA in Boston this May 2010. A book about a collaborative project done with David Caras is to be published to coincide with the exhibition.

This month, work by Nathalie Miebach (Sculpture/Installation Fellow ‘09) can be experienced both locally and in NYC, and through numerous senses. Her sculptural art, recently featured at the Sarah Doyle Gallery at Brown University, is now on exhibit in 185th Annual Invitational Exhibition of Contemporary American Art, National Academy Museum, New York, NY, through June 8, 2010. Furthermore, she’s in a group show called Transformations in the Jewett Gallery at Wellesley College, March 3-April 4, with an opening reception March 4, 5-6 PM. Then on March 14, at 3 PM, the Axis Ensemble will perform her sculptures (not a typo) at the Lily Pad in Inman Square, Cambridge. Nathalie creates her fascinating sculptures using weather data; for this project, she’s translating the weather data into musical scores, then using the score as a starting point for her sculpture. MEANWHILE, the score itself goes to musicians (enter the Axis Ensemble), and voila, you have “Hurricane Noel,” a performance and sculpture interpreting the same weather. We have it on good authority that the sculpture will be in attendance at the concert.

Stephen Mishol (Painting Fellow ‘08) has three paintings and four drawings in Tek’tanik at the Aferro Gallery in Newark, NJ. The show runs from March 13 - April 24.

Eric Henry Sanders (Playwriting Fellow ‘09) will have a workshop reading of his play Woyzeck: Homecoming at The Drilling Company in NYC in March. Then in April, his short play Dead Duck will be part of the Back to Back Director’s Project, starting April 21, 2010 at Available Potential Enterprises.

Past Fellows Notes
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.

Image: Eirik Johnson, THE ROAD TO FORKS, WASHINGTON (2006), archival pigment print, 24×30 in; Cover art for SOLO AND CHAMBER WORKS, RALF YUSUF GAWLICK (Musica Omnia 2010); Stephen Mishol, PUSH (2007) Vinyl paint on paper, 20×25 3/4 in.

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In Three Stages, we ask Massachusetts artists to shed light on their art-making process by focusing on three stages in the creative life of one work of art.

Here, writer and editor Tara L. Masih takes us through the writing process that produced the upcoming story collection Where the Dog Star Never Glows (Press 53, 2010).

Tara will read from the collection at Brookline Booksmith on February 23.

INSPIRATION

Inspiration for the stories in my debut collection came from many places: snippets of conversation shared and overheard; newspaper stories; and personal experiences, especially during travel. I look for stories in landscapes, in unusual facts, in the absurd, in research. But there are those special, all-too-rare stories that find me. I wish I could control that process, that sudden, electric realization that I have a story to write, a character to listen to, and something of import to translate from nebulous stirrings into coherent language. Louisa May Alcott had a Glory Cloak that she would wear, sewn by her mother, to inspire her to finish writing her books. I don’t have props, just drive. But I love that image of the writer cloaked in “glory” as she created one of our most enduring classics.

In the end, necessity is the most important part of inspiration for me. What made each story good enough to appear in this book was a feeling that it was necessary in some way that I start writing it, finish it, polish it as best I could, and then send it out into the world.

CHALLENGE

Sylvia Plath said that the worst enemy to creativity is self-doubt. Inspiration is the fun step, the addictive step I keep looking for. The challenge, once I start writing, is to keep self-doubt from interfering. It can be depressing when the brilliant passage I wrote in my half-sleep the night before turns out to be clichéd garbage the next morning. It can be a challenge to not get distracted with life to the point where inspiration turns into heavy responsibility or duty. The goal is to keep writing and finish the story even though it does now feel like duty and the early adrenaline rush is gone. Only in a few rare occurrences has inspiration carried me all the way through an instant first draft, even in the briefer flash form. More often than not, work intervenes, child and family interrupts, and I have to look to those obligations I’d rather ignore, like food and water and sleep!

I meet the challenge when I ignore self-doubt and give birth to that first complete draft, which in some cases is within hours, in other cases, years. But the challenge continues as I rework the draft, looking for all the ways I can show that “glint of light on broken glass,” as Chekhov advises.

COMPLETION

I know when a story is complete when I simply cannot think of a way to improve it anymore, or know I’m incapable of taking it to any other place than where it ends. Feedback is crucial, because it’s hard to be objective about your own work, particularly fiction. I find trust is the final step in completion - trusting you’ve learned to separate the bad advice from the good, trusting your publisher to make insightful edits, trusting your decision to make it public, and then trusting readers with your creation. It’s not an easy thing, putting your work out there. It’s a very naked feeling, in fact. In retrospect, I suppose challenge appears at every stage. It can’t be compartmentalized into one area of the creative process. It continues, on to the next project that inspires.

Read about Where the Dog Star Never Glows in NewPages, where it is listed as a new & noteworthy fiction book.

On Feb. 23, 6:30 PM, there will be a launch party for the collection at Brookline Booksmith. This will be a party to celebrate the book’s launch and the local writers/mentors/teachers who helped it come to fruition. Come for champagne, wine, juice, chocolate-covered strawberries, and more. Reading and Q&A, with a prize for best question. 279 Harvard St., Brookline, MA.

Tara L. Masih grew up in the small harbor town of Northport, situated along the Long Island Sound. Much of her time was spent on the beaches and in the woods, and as a result her writing is often set within the framework of nature and place. Her fiction, poetry, and essays have been published in numerous literary magazines, including Confrontation, Hayden’s Ferry Review, Natural Bridge, New Millennium Writings, Red River Review, Night Train, and The Caribbean Writer, as well as in many anthologies. Several limited edition, illustrated chapbooks featuring her flash fiction have been published by The Feral Press. Awards for her work include first place in The Ledge Magazine’s fiction contest, a finalist fiction grant from the Massachusetts Cultural Council, and Pushcart Prize, Best New American Voices, and Best of the Web nominations. Tara judges the intercultural essay prize for the annual Soul-Making Literary Contest, and is editor of the acclaimed Rose Metal Press Field Guide to Writing Flash Fiction (2009). C. W. Post College presented her with the Lou P. Bunce Creative Writing Award upon graduation, and Emerson College, where she received her MA in Writing and Publishing, awarded her with a Bookbuilders of Boston Scholarship. Tara now works as a freelance book editor in Andover, Massachusetts.

Images (top to bottom): author photo, Tara L. Masih; quote from the story “The Burnings;” quote from the story “Delight;” quote from the story “The Guide, the Tourist, and the Animal Doctor;” quote from the story “Bird Man;” cover image from Tara L. Masih’s story collection WHERE THE DOG STAR NEVER GLOWS (Press 53, 2010).

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On the Huffington Post’s book page, author Elizabeth Benedict has written a thoughtful and probing review of Michael Downing’s (Fiction/Creative Nonfiction Finalist ‘08) memoir Life with Sudden Death (as you may recall, we interviewed Michael about the book on ArtSake). I enjoyed how the review deeply engages the book on its own terms.

From the review:

… it’s a compelling story, but it’s Downing’s intelligence, his bone-dry wit, his carefully measured sorrow, carefully controlled rage, and beautifully wrought prose that make this memoir such a standout. His writing has the cerebral precision and focus of Joan Didion’s, but it’s got other kinds of fullness and heart too.

…

Downing describes a series of harrowing journeys through a pre-eminent Boston hospital, in which a less vigilant patient than himself would surely have fared less well - never mind what would have become of someone uninsured or completely uninformed.

Yet it isn’t social commentary or critique that makes Life with Sudden Death so memorable. It’s the unsentimental way Downing writes about wonder, gratitude, love, art, and even religion. It’s passages like this: “My mother and I both lived long enough to understand that we had loved other people better and had been better loved by others, too. What we had was the singular authority to say, I know you.”

And lines like this: “If you are about to die, I have a hotel to recommend with wrought-iron balconies hanging above the Arno and coffee service from friendly guys in tuxedos. Compared with the hospital, they’re giving the rooms away.”

Read the full review.

Listen to Michael reading an excerpt from Life with Sudden Death.

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Among the recent grants awarded by the National Endowment for the Arts were Literature Fellowships for five Massachusetts writers! Not that we’re counting, but that’s upwards of 11.9%, or a tad under 1/8 of the total number of awardees (5 of 42, if anybody wants to check my math).

With bloggery prescience, ArtSake has featured a number of the winning writers in its virtual pages: short story writer Anne Sanow, nonfiction writer and Harvard Review editor Christina Thompson, and 2008 Fiction/Creative Nonfiction Fellow Joan Wickersham. Congratulations, too, to writers Douglas Bauer, of Boston, and Jasmine Beach-Ferrara, of Jamaica Plain, who joined Anne, Christina, and Joan in receiving the prestigious $25,000 awards for literary excellence.

While we’re talking about overlaps in the Venn diagram of the NEA, MCC, and individual artists:

• The NEA granted $10,000 to support Boston Musica Viva for its efforts, including a commission of Richard Cornell (Music Composition Fellow ‘07).
• $20,000 went to the Huntington Theatre for its Huntington Playwriting Fellows program and the Breaking Ground Festival, featured on ArtSake in our interview with playwright Joyce Van Dyke.
• $5,000 went to Rose Metal Press, featured in a Horses for Courses post on ArtSake.

Read the full list of Massachusetts grants from the NEA. Also, read the current news of past fellows/finalists from MCC’s Artist Fellowships Program in our Fellows Notes.

Images: cover art from paperback edition of THE SUICIDE INDEX by Joan Wickersham (Mariner Books 2009); cover art for TRIPLE TIME by Anne Sanow (University of Pittsburgh Press 2009).

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Applications are now available for Artist Fellowships in Choreography, Fiction/Creative Nonfiction, and Poetry from the Massachusetts Cultural Council. Deadline: January 25, 2010.

The fellowships are unrestricted, anonymously judged, competitive grants in recognition of artistic excellence, for Massachusetts artists.

Read full program guidelines, eligibility requirements, and application instructions.

Images: Cover art from books by recent fellows Tracy Winn (Fiction/Creative Nonfiction Fellow ‘08), Patrick Donnelly (Poetry Fellow ‘08), and Xujun Eberlein (Fiction/Creative Nonfiction Fellow ‘08); Alisia Waller (Choreography Fellow ‘08); and Ariel Cohen and Kellie Ann Lynch (Choreography Fellows ‘08).

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This is the second in a series of posts about Art and Philanthropy, looking at those projects that merge artistic with philanthropic vision. Interestingly, they often invent unconventional, innovative work models in the process.

In 2008, novelist, former rocker, and community activist Stona Fitch founded Concord Free Press, an outfit that blends his literary, DIY, and charitable inclinations. The press publishes two books a year using a ground-breaking, generosity-based model: authors (and the publishers, incidentally) donate their work, and the press gives away the books for free through its website and a network of independent bookstores. In lieu of payment, the press asks readers who receive the books to make a donation - in any amount - to a charitable organization. According to Stona, donations from Concord Free Press readers recently surpassed $100,000.

We asked Stona (recently named one of the 2010 Literary Lights by the Boston Public Library) about writers and giving, nontraditional publishing, and his revolutionary charitable model.

ArtSake: Your most recently published author was Gregory Maguire, author of Wicked and other bestsellers. Have you found a strong response among writers to your press’s philanthropic model?

Stona: At the Concord Free Press, we’re writers and artists first, publishers second. So our generosity-based publishing concept is designed for and by writers. They get to be part of an intriguing experiment that connects with readers in new ways, and that inspires incredible generosity. And their books can go on to second lives as commercial editions. We’ve been besieged by bad news about our industry. The Concord Free Press sends a new, positive message - one that definitely resonates with writers. And with readers. In our first year, we’ve been flooded with book requests, encouragement, and overwhelming interest from around the world.

ArtSake: The first book the press published, your novel Give + Take, was orphaned at a previous publisher after its editor departed. One could assume this kind of setback will arise more and more as the economic turmoil continues to affect publishers. Do you think more authors will seek alternate publishing routes?

Stona: It’s simple. Writers want their work to reach readers. For the first time in history, writers can publish their own work, quickly and inexpensively. While traditional publishing remains the best avenue to reach the most readers, alternative channels - small online presses, self-publishing, e-books, Twitter novels, and whatever’s next - serve as a vital complement to the mainstream. As traditional publishing continues to contract, more writers will pursue creative ways to reach readers. The inmates have the keys to the asylum now. Whether they choose to use them is another question.

ArtSake: Give + Take involves a Robin Hood-like figure who gives to the poor. Did your book’s plot inspire the press’s philanthropic model? Or was it more a matter of philanthropy as a core interest of yours to begin with?

Stona: Give + Take definitely inspired the press. My novels tend to wrestle with consumerism, and Give + Take is no exception. I’ve also been part of the leadership of a local farm, Gaining Ground, which grows organic produce and gives it away to people in need. So I’m definitely grounded in non-profit work, social philanthropy, the DIY approach, and rethinking traditional/accepted models. The Concord Free Press has been called a grand experiment in subversive altruism - a mouthful, but accurate.

No matter who published them or how good they are, most books go on a familiar trajectory—new, used, shelved permanently, dusty. Ours keep going from hand to hand, generating donations along the way.

- From the Concord Free Press website

ArtSake: I noticed that Give + Take will be published by Thomas Dunne/St. Martin’s Press in 2010 – congratulations! Do you have any thoughts on the way nontraditional ways of presenting art – self-publishing, giving away selected work for free, Creative Commons licenses, etc. - can benefit an artist’s career?

Stona: Giving something singular and beautiful away has incredible power - particularly when you expect nothing in return. Whether you’re Banksy or a band on MySpace, giving away your art can revalue it and create new energy that comes back to the artist in one form or another, often in unexpected ways. But giving away work with the specific intent of furthering a career seems opportunistic and kind of venal.

With the Concord Free Press, we’ve created a gift economy for publishing. But it definitely connects to (and co-exists with) a more commercial world, as described so presciently in Lewis Hyde’s brilliant book, The Gift. A free work can go on to a second, commercial life. For example, Thomas Dunne/St. Martin’s is publishing Give + Take and Harper Collins is publishing The Next Queen of Heaven - both in spring of 2010, coincidentally. We certainly didn’t go into the project with the intent of attracting commercial publishers, though we certainly appreciate their interest and enthusiasm.

Kevin C. of St. John’s, Nova Scotia gave $240 to United Way
Ying C. of Concord, MA gave $55 to Open Table/Concord
Mike D. of Monroe, GA gave $40 to the Lottie Moon Christmas Offering
Robyn F. of San Francisco, CA gave $50 to Choose What You Read NY
Alia W. of North York, ON gave $90 to a friend for bus fare to see his daughter
- Donations inspired by Concord Free Press, from the press’s website

ArtSake: It’s interesting that you chose to include Concord in your press’s name. Does the press being in Concord, Massachusetts, with that town’s legacy of individualism, have a particular significance to you?

Stona: Concord has always nurtured and inspired renegades - from Minutemen to Transcendentalists. I’d like to think that Concord Free Press fits cleanly in that lineage. It’s also important for a project to be grounded in a place. So while we have supporters and readers around the world, Concord is our base - from our office over a local bakery to a great local bookstore and library to the hundreds of committed readers and diverse authors who live here.

ArtSake: What do writers interested in submitting work to Concord Free Press need to know?

Stona: We only publish two books a year, generally solicited directly from established authors. We’re not an ideal option for a first novel, since first novelists deserve the broadest audience possible and tend to require more editing than our all-volunteer staff can offer. And though our books are free, the quality of the work has to be exceptional.

Right now, we’re putting together a new book, IOU: New Writing on Money, a multi-genre collection of essays, short stories, and poems edited by renowned poet (and CFP Poetry Editor) Ron Slate. Writers interested in being part of this inherently more inclusive project can find details on our website, and on Facebook. And anyone with questions, comments, insights - or financial donations, we’re a non-profit foundation, after all - can feel free to email us at hello@concordfreepress.com.

Stona Fitch’s novels, including Senseless, Printer’s Devil, and Give + Take have been widely praised by critics and readers or their originality, intensity, and prescience. Stona lives with his family in Concord, Massachusetts, where he is also a committed community activist. He and his family work with Gaining Ground, a non-profit farm that grows 30,000 pounds of organic produce each growing season and distributes it for free to Boston-area homeless shelters, food pantries, and meal programs. He founded Concord Free Press in 2008 and was recently named one of the 2010 Literary Lights by the Boston Public Library.

Image: Stona Fitch in New Town, Edinburgh, 2008, Photo by Laura Hynd;cover art for THE NEXT QUEEN OF HEAVEN by Gregory Maguire (Concord Free Press 2009).

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It’s December in New England. So put on your hat and gloves and get ready to shovel through some winter artist opportunites.

Call for Artists: Downtown Crossing Holiday Market through December 30. The Holiday Market at Downtown Crossing 2009 is a fully tented, bazaar-style, seasonal market for the public to enjoy access to artists, artisans and specialty food retailers during the busy holiday shopping season. Applications will be juried on a rolling basis as they are received. The number of artists in each media category will be limited. 28 spaces in total will be available for each week.
Deadline: December 11, 2009

Call to Photographers: The New Orleans Photo Alliance is seeking contemporary photographs that explore questions about the American Dream. The juror is Dr. Deborah Willis, chair of the Department of Photography and Imaging at New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts and one of the nation’s leading historians of African American photography.
Deadline: December 14, 2009

The Writers’ Room of Boston, Inc., a nonprofit organization that provides affordable, quiet, and secure workspace in downtown Boston for area writers, is now accepting applications for four fellowships for 2010. The fellowships award use of the Writers’ Room to Boston Area residents at no cost for one year. Residencies will begin in February 2010.
Deadline: Submissions due December 31, 2009.

LA GALERÍA at Villa Victoria Center for the Arts in Boston’s South End and Essex Art Center in Lawrence, MA have a call to artists for their collaborative juried exhibition project Exchange, to be mounted simultaneously in each art center in the Fall of 2010. Designed to unite diverse communities of artists and audiences, Exchange encourages visual artists working in innumerable mediums to approach the concept of Exchange in just as many ways. The Call to Artists is open to artists at any stage of their career. Go here for detailed application instructions.
Deadline: March 15, 2010

Image Credit: Photograph of Stone stairs at Ward’s Pond in Jamaica Plain, MA by Leon H. Abdalian, Feb. 21, 1931. 6.5×8.5 glass negative. From the collection of the Boston Public Library.

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It’s the Friday after Thanksgiving. Shopping malls are abuzz. And so are the arts! (In a much different way but, still.) Here are some interesting links from around the art-o-webs.

For artists of all disciplines
Last week, the National Endowment for the Arts held the Cultural Workforce Forum, a daylong discussion of how art works as part of the real economy. An archive version of the event, with video and slideshows, is now online.

At North Shore Art Throb (which, by the way, you should read if you make, enjoy, or are in any way curious about the art scene in the North Shore region), Dinah Cardin has a thoughtful post on online arts writing and where it’s headed.

Film
The documentary film The Way We Get By, featured on our blog here, received an IFP and Fledgling Fund Grant for Outreach and Community Engagement. Up top, TWWGB!

At the Bunker Hill Community College Art Gallery in Charlestown, a group of Massachusetts filmmakers will screen film & video works as part of Art Gone Green, an arts program exploring environmental issues. On Tuesday, December 1, 2009, at 6:30 PM in the A300 Lounge, there will be a screening of short films by eight filmmakers, including Kristin Alexander, Tim Geers, and Michael Sheridan. On Friday, December 4, 6:00 PM, is a screening of Talking to the Wall: The Story of an American Bargain. The film, by Western Mass. filmmaker Steve Alves, takes a critical look at the effects of chain stores on communities. Both events are free.

Writing
In the Porter Square Books blog, Cambridge author Matthew Pearl discusses why his book reading events include surprisingly little reading from his books. (And he shares details, some historical, some imagined, of Charles Dickens’s reading at the Tremont Temple in Boston).

Sadly, bidding is closed, but check out the original postcards from Grub Street’s Postcard Auction. The Boston-based writers’ service organization sent 29 blank postcards to writers and auctioned off the resulting creations. I especially like the slogan on Pagan Kennedy’s card: “Drink the Kool-Aid of your own invention. Write.”

On the Valley Poetry blog, Allegra Mira looks at seven female poets who light her way as she considers her future on poetry (one is recent MCC Fiction/Creative Nonfiction Fellow D.M. Gordon!).

In the WomenArts blog, Northampton novelist Susan Stinson writes movingly about the ways the arts have sustained her in hard times.

Twenty-five years ago, when I was in college, my father warned me that a livelihood as an artist would be hard to come by, especially for a woman. I spent the next couple of decades throwing everything I had into making the strongest art I could, working around practical constraints – like jobs—as necessary. Now, four published books and one wandering manuscript later, during a year in which individual, national and global economies are all shaky, I’m facing the unpleasantly specific realities of being close to fifty and far from financial stability. My father was right.

He was right, but so was I.

Read the full post.

Performing arts
The Explore Boston Theatre blog features a host of voices from the theater community with its lively Proust Questionnaire. Example question/answer… Q: “Which historical figure do you most identify with?”
A: “Scheherazade and Bugs Bunny.” (from writer/performer John Kuntz).

Berkshire Creative notes that the American Airlines in-flight magazine profiles playwright Julianne Hiam as a way to highlight the creative heritage of her region: the bucolic (and artistically prolific) Berkshire Hills.

Visual arts
In the Boston Globe, there’s a great description of photographer Cary Wolinsky’s solo show Fiber of Life, at the South Shore Art Center in Cohasset. MCC connections: Cary is a member of the artists collective TRIIIBE along with Alicia, Kelly, and Sara Casilio; TRIIIBE received an Artist Fellowship in Sculpture/Installation in 2009. Also, the article is written by Robert Knox, a past finalist in Fiction/Creative Nonfiction. (For other fellows/finalists news, read our monthly Fellows Notes).

Finally, Boston Handmade opens its Downtown Gallery in Boston’s Downtown Crossing today. The gallery features handmade work of artists and artisans - a great way to de-Black Friday your artistic consciousness.

Image: Matthew Rich, WALL (2006), mdf, latex paint 25×34x1.5 in.

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Remember when we told you about Harvard Bookstore in Cambridge and its new book machine, which prints paperback books while you wait, including books by self-publishing authors?

Steve Almond (Fiction/Creative Nonfiction Fellow ‘08) is about to give a working demonstration.

On Wednesday, December 2, 7 PM at Harvard Square Bookstore in Cambridge, he’s going to do something he’s pretty sure has never been done before (and we’re pretty sure he’s right). He’ll read from a book you can then have published before your very eyes (via the bookstore’s book machine). You can even have editorial control over the cover (he says there will be several designs to choose from), and possibly even the size of the trim.

The book is called This Won’t Take But a Minute, Honey. Read one way, it includes 30 short short stories. Flipped over and read the opposite way, you can read Steve’s brief essays on writing.

Also, Steve (along with Harvard’s print-on-demand manager Bronwen Blaney) will discuss the changing landscape of publishing and why Steve chose to make a book this way.

In other words, the event should be interesting in about a dozen ways (if you’ve ever experienced a Steve Almond reading, you know his singular humor accounts for at least 11).

To see what other past MCC Fellows and Finalists are up to, check out our Fellows Notes.

Images: cover art (front and back) for Steve Almond’s THIS WON’T TAKE BUT A MINUTE, HONEY. Illustrations by artist Brian Stauffer.

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