ArtSake

We’ve begun the 2009 Commonwealth Awards process, and there are two things for which we humbly ask: nominations for 2009 recipients and proposals to create the art object given to award winners (such as the above image, the 2005 Commonwealth Award Art Object, designed by Deb Todd Wheeler).

But if you find yourself asking, What are these Commonwealth Awards you speak of? then read the next sentence: They are the state’s highest honor in the arts, humanities, and sciences, presented every two years to individuals and organizations that have made extraordinary contributions to the cultural life of Massachusetts. Such cultural luminaries as Yo-Yo Ma, David McCullough, Stanely Kunitz, Robert Brustein, Stephen Jay Gould, and Doris Kearns Goodwin have received them since their inception in 1993. The awards are sponsored by Bank of America.

Nominations are now being accepted for outstanding individuals and organizations in the categories of: Creative Economy Catalyst, Leadership, Creative Community, Individual Achievement, Creative Learning, and Cultural Philanthropy (read more about the category descriptions and past winners). The nomination form has been simplified and streamlined this year, so you should be able to ace the Monday, December 8, 2008 deadline for nominations.

We’re also announcing an open call for proposals to create the 2009 Commonwealth Award Art Object. The MCC will commission an artist to create nine art objects; eight for the award winners and one distinctive piece to be presented to the Keynote Speaker at the awards ceremony.

There’s no time to lose, as the deadline for proposals is Monday, December 8, 2008. All nine art award objects will need to be completed and delivered by January 9, 2009. The total budget may not exceed $5,850 (approximately $650 per object).

Find more information and the submission form.

Image: Deb Todd Wheeler, 2005 Commonwealth Award Art Object, etched and shaped copper, from computer-generated patterns of an unfolded acorn. More information about the process to create this object, and all of the Commonwealth Award Art Objects, can be found on our website.

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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.

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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).

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If only the walls could talk.  Well apparently they will at the Worcester Art Museum starting this Thursday.

The provocative artist-activist collaborative THINK AGAIN (David John Attyah and S.A. Bachman) are at it again. Working in the longstanding tradition of agitprop artists, they have created a new work called Actions Speak. Upon receiveing their comission, THINK AGAIN rolled up their collective sleeves and completed a 67′ long mural at the Worcester Art Museum(WAM) as part of the Wall at WAM series. Action Speaks is the 7th project in the WAM series.

Debuting the week before the presidential election, THINK AGAIN’s Actions Speak aims to promote dialogue between art and public response as well as between global reality and local action. The project combines text, photography, drawing, etching, sculpture, and digital design. And apparently it is also the first Wall at WAM project to utilize both the museum’s interior wall and exterior façade (where a projection will be on view after dark during public evening hours on the 3rd Thursday of each month).

Image:  Wall at Worcester Art Museum: “Actions Speak, detail” by THINK AGAIN (David John Attyah and S.A. Bachman) 2008, inkjet on paper, 17 x 67 feet. (FY99 MCC Photography Fellows)

Photo Credits: Images courtesy of The Worcester Art Museum

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You can catch a glimpse of the Drive-By Press at Montserrat College of Art tomorrow and Friday before they speed off to another town. The Drive-By Press artists created a mobile printmaking studio (a van with printmaking equipment) in order to bring the craft of printmaking out of the private studio and into the public sphere.

PRINTOFF: Thurs Oct 23
8 - 10 pm, front patio
23 Essex Street, Beverly, MA
Help Drive-By-Press create t-shirts for purchase with their original designs

PRINT DEMO: Fri Oct 24
3:30 - 5 pm, front patio
23 Essex Street, Beverly, MA

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The fall open studios season is here. Be sure to pick you own, locally grown art. Here’s a sampling of the upcoming bounty:

The Fort Point Arts Community
North Adams Open Studios
Dorchester Open Studios
Brickbottom Artists Association
South Boston Open Studios
Waltham Mills Artists Association
Arlington Center for the Arts
Acton Open Studios
Artwalk Easthampton

Image: Towards the Shadow, 2005, oil, 30″ x 35″, by Janet Rickus

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The Salem News writer Alan Burke has penned an article about the artist Marshall Harris, a former New England Patriot defensive end who once wore the proud red, white and blue logo on his helmet.

“Squish the fish!” Actually I don’t really advocate squishing any fish at all. And by the way, dolphins aren’t fish either, so it’s clear that creative license abounds in sports chants. Score one for the arts!

Tackling the arts: Former football player lands on Cultural Council
By Alan Burke
Staff writer, The Salem News

MARBLEHEAD — He might have the body of a defensive end — but even in his playing days, under all those pads, beneath that battered helmet, Marshall Harris carried the soul of an artist. The fact is, he’s been both. Harris, 52, was a sought-after defensive end who honed his football skills under the Friday Night Lights of East Texas, specifically a high school in Fort Worth. Later, he excelled in the game at Texas Christian University and then in the early ’80s for the Cleveland Browns, New England Patriots and New Jersey Generals of the now-defunct U.S. Football League.

Yet, even during all the time he spent knocking heads, Harris wanted to be an artist. When he could, he studied art and created art.

“I’ve always drawn and painted,” he says. “Somewhere between two-a-days.”

Currently, he’s devoted himself to unusual sculptures. “You look at my work and say, ‘What the hell is it trying to say?’ But if you know the subtext, it’s kind of neat.” He hopes to mount a show soon, but concedes that some of his efforts are so large that space is a problem.

Just as he once felt “wired” to play football, now he is addicted to art.

“It’s just something I cannot not do,” he says. This creativity speaks to something deep within. “Take my life. Turn it upside down and give it a good shake. That’s my art.”

This devotion to art explains how the 13-year Marblehead resident got named recently by the selectmen to the Marblehead Cultural Council. Even at that, the board couldn’t help asking about his past on the gridiron. Harris stressed his single season — 1983 — with the Pats.

He played with Steve Grogan, John Hannah, Andre Tippett and Steve Nelson. “The classic Patriots,” he says. He doesn’t follow the game closely anymore, “I’ve got a job. I’ve got kids. I don’t have 41’Ñ2 hours to take out of my life.”

Yet, he still speaks about it with passion.

“Football is a game unlike any other in the world,” he says. “It’s structured like no other game that exists.” Eleven men take the field, but then something remarkable happens for those few moments after the ball is snapped. “For 2.3 seconds, you have 11 people coming together.” They respond as one. They move as one. “To defeat the play.”

He dismisses the notion that European soccer, for example, is somehow superior because it appears less violent. “The violence there is in the stands.”

Harris’ big season was in Cleveland, 1980 to ‘81, when the Browns’ Kardiac Kids clawed their way into the playoffs by winning a succession of games with last second victories. Also in the closing seconds, they lost a memorable playoff game to the Oakland Raiders. Harris recalled, “The temperature was 22 degrees below zero.”

The USFL might have seemed like a minor league, but Harris believes his New Jersey Generals could have played in the NFL. “I actually sat in (owner) Donald Trump’s office. I met the Donald.”

At least on the surface, a lot of Harris’ past seems far behind him. He’s still very fit, a robust 6 feet tall, 6 inches. But he’s lost much of his Texas accent. “I see my sister,” he laughs, “and she says, ‘You talk funny.’ And I say to her, ‘Listen to you.’”

The more time he spends in Texas, Harris says, the more that twang comes back. He’s committed himself to Marblehead, however, as director of Marshall Harris Studios, a visual communications company. In addition, he runs a business that does odd jobs called My Handy Hubby.

Art, more than football, dominates Harris’ life today — though he notes that the tenacity and energy he brought to the game has helped propel his sculpting.

“A lot of people dismiss (the arts),” he says. It’s often the first thing school systems cut when they want to save money.” But again and again, art is the signature that past generations have left behind, have been remembered for.

“As early as when we could scratch a piece of charcoal on the wall of a cave we have had art,” he says.

It probably predates even football.

Go here to learn more about Marshall Harris

Article courtesy of The Salem News
Photo credit: Image of Marshall Harris by Deborah Parker

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Jeanne Williamson is a mixed media artist whose work combines printmaking, painting, collage, and sewing. We asked her what she was working on now, and she passed along these intriguing “studio views”:

I really like the plastic orange fences that are used as a barrier to keep people out of danger, by blocking off a construction site. The fences come in many shapes and sizes, and I have been collecting different shapes of them for many years.

To create my work, I monoprint the textures of fences on one large piece of fabric. Then I paint over the printed fabric, to add color or more detail. Often I’ll also add hand stamped shapes, using hand cut rubber erasers. When I am satisfied with the design, I stitch lines using my sewing machine, following the horizontal and vertical grid of the fence.

I’ve been very interested in the grids of buildings under construction, and I have been working to translate different projects in my work. The piece in process in the photo is of a condo project in Natick, MA. Also shown is the actual fence I used to print, which happens to be a green fence, not orange. After I monoprint the fence on the fabric, I hang it to dry in my bathroom shower, before I start painting or hand stamping.

Recently, I’ve taken some larger older work, and cut it up, added more paint, and reassembled it to create new, smaller pieces. The photo with my sewing machine shows a few piles of work, as well as some felted pieces I’ve been creating, one per week.

For more information on Jeanne Williamson, check out her website, blog, and book.

Photo Credits: All images courtesy of Jeanne Williamson

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For the past year Jessica Burko has been creating sewn paper quilts. She uses her own photographs, vintage photos, and collected paper ephemera found at yard sales, flea markets, and in trash bins. Let’s take a look-see into her studio.

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