ArtSake

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.

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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 Im 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. Heres 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 OMalley, UNTITLED #4 (2005), ink on paper, 19 in x 25 1/2 in. Mary is exhibiting in Overflow at Laconia Gallery through November 22.

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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.

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How does our work as artists relate to our national identity? Or should it, even? At Gasp!, Laura Axelrod explores the artist’s role in a troubled country.

(The) main question has to do with how we, as Americans perceive ourselves and how we, as artists see our country. It is larger than how we perceive our audience. It incorporates how we approach them. Do we declare war on them to “wake them up?” Do we comfort them and validate their status? Do we see ourselves as parasites, living off the scraps of mainstream society? Or have we quit on America entirely, turned our nose up and looked to other countries for “real culture?”

These are important questions that artists and writers must ask themselves. How we see each other, individually and as a whole, will determine our role in seeing this country through its troubles. Perhaps our work can even play a role in healing it.

Speaking of troubled countries… even though it appears tonight’s presidential debate WILL happen after all, LA Times art critic Christopher Knight doubts arts and culture will be among the topics presidentially debated (but feels they should be).

Martha Mason, Artistic Director of the late, great Snappy Dance Theater (recently featured on ArtSake here), seeks to spark a conversation about funding for small performing arts companies, at Geoff Edgers’ The Exhibitionist.

At the Best American Poetry blog, Julia Cohen gives an eyewitness account of a recent reading by Caroline Knox (Poetry Fellow ’96, ’06) at NYC’s infamous KGB Bar.

Boston Globe film critic Ty Burr tips his hat to departing MFA Head of Film and Video Bo Smith.

Image: Sandy Litchfield, DOWNPOUR (2005), oil, acrylic, ink on canvas, 42 in. x 48 in.

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There’s a fascinating discussion over at Parabasis about improving government funding for the arts. Should the NEA (or really, any of us arts funders) stop mandating programs through grants? (Happy to report our own Artist Fellowship Program does not artists can use the funds anyway they see fit.)

At the New England Journal of Aesthetic Research, Greg Cook tells the tale of last weekend’s Parade for the Future, in which nautically-dressed artists and activists stormed the Boston Common in a “global-warming-themed procession.”

At the Rose and Thorns Reviews blog, a panel of literary editors reveal what they look for in a writing submission. Steven Seighman of Monkeybicycle looks for “great writing that blows my hair back.” Timothy Green of RATTLE talks about how literature operates on three levels, the intellectual, emotional, and lyrical. “We tend to focus so much on the (intellectual),” he says, “but play a sport or fall in love, and you know how important the other two still are.”

But when you aren’t submitting to literary journals, you may need a day job. The blog of Haydens Ferry Review helps out with its A Cup of Ambition series, an exploration of jobs (other than teaching) that share skill sets with writing archivist, infomercial script writer, arts (ahem) administrator, literary agent, librarian, book production.

The Huntington Theatre blog asks whats the ideal level of collaboration between the producing theatre and the playwright.

In The Boston Globe, Chuck Leddy gives a glowing review of Joan Wickersham’s (Fiction/Creative Nonfiction Fellow ’08) The Suicide Index. “Joan Wickersham has journeyed into the dark underworld inside her father and herself, and has emerged with a powerful, gripping story.”

Over at The HubReview, Thomas Garvey offers his take on Damien Hirst’s wild financial success selling his art at auction. (Read our own post on the spectacle here.)

Our Daily Red (blog of Big RED & Shiny), points the way to the handblown glass pumpkin patch/sale at MIT’s Glass Lab.

At CinemaTech, Scott Kirsner announces a panel in Cambridge about “what’s next for visual effects, editing & post-production, and digital distribution of movies,” on September 25.

At New Music Box, an American composer grapples with the definition of American contemporary classical music.

And a reminder that the Ditson Festival of Contemporary Music is taking place through the weekend at the ICA in Boston. Curated by Boston Modern Orchestra Project Artistic Director Gil Rose, it’s an event where Boston’s “legendary ensembles and rising stars burst into the spotlight for four days of sonic splendor in an iconic 21st Century space.”

Image: Colleen Kiely, ON THE ROAD (REAR VIEW #135), Graphite on paper doily, 18 in. round, 2008. Works from Colleen’s “On the Road” series are in the The Fine Art of Drawing Invitational at the Museum of Fine Arts, Florida State University at Tallahassee, through September 28.

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Some potentially good news for playwrights: Huntington Theatre Co’s new Artistic Director Peter DuBois said in a recent Boston Globe article that he’s interested in upping their commitment to new play development and possibly collaborating with smaller theater companies. DuBois cited as an example of the Boston scene’s inter-connectedness Company One’s upcoming production of Voyeurs de Venus by Huntington Playwriting Fellow Lydia Diamond – who, in another bit of interconnectedness, was one of our playwriting panelists for the 2007 Artist Fellowship. (Thanks to Boston-area theatre blog Mirror up to Nature for calling attention to this article first.)

Speaking of the Huntington and new plays, the company’s outgoing Literary Manager and Dramaturg Ilana Brownstein was recently recognized with an Elliot Hayes Award.

At New England Film, filmmaker Marc Maurino offers tips on shooting a film in the Berkshires.

At the contemporary music blog Sequenza21, a composer muses about how notation software might affect the process of composing music.

We’re a little behind the times on this one, but in August, Peter Jay Shippy (Poetry Fellow ’02, Playwriting/New Theater Works Fellow ’07) guest-blogged at Open Letters Monthly about what’s on his nightstand.

HubArts points out that the ICA Foster Prize Finalists exhibition, which features Rania Matar (Photography Fellow ’07), has been set to open in November.

Are you a comics artist looking to self-publish your work? Xeric Foundation out of Northampton offers grants to comics artists for that very purpose. Next deadline is Sept. 30.

A literary agent eager for new writers offers tips for the unpublished (thanks to writer Tayari Jones, who pointed this one out on her blog).

Is your precious art-making time being WASTED spelling out the excessive letters of English words? You may be, like George Bernard Shaw, an advocate of spelling reform. And take heart: there are others.

Image: Nina Wishnok, STILL POINTS IN THE CHAOS OF TIME I (2005),
mixed media monoprint, 7 in. x 19 1/4 in. Nina’s work is currently showing in Field Report, a members’ exhibition of the Boston Printmakers at Brickbottom Gallery in Somerville, through October 18.

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At ecoTheater, a fascinating blog about environmentally sustainable approaches to theater, Mike Lawler worries about the carbon footprint of traveling throughout the country to work with different theater companies. He introduces the quagmire in a discussion with an often-traveling sound designer and continues the conversation here and here.

At the Public Humanist, blog of the Massachusetts Foundation for the Humanities, filmmaker Larry Hott discusses how the goals of funders can affect what documentaries get made.

Our sibling blog Keepers of Tradition calls our attention to Club Passim’s Iguana Fund, a professional and artistic development opportunity for musicians.

Want to tick off writer Erika Dreifus in a writing workshop? Do this.

At Soho the Dog, Boston composer, pianist, and conductor Matthew Guerrieri points out that the craters of the planet Mercury share names with great artists in history, including composers.

As a post-post-script to our Alternative Deliveries ramble and its post-ramble, here a couple of the discussions about presenting your own work that are flaring up around the web-o-sphere.

• Playwright Gary Garrison encourages playwrights to produce their own work
• Reb Livingston hilariously, irreverently writes about adventures in DIY poetry, such as publishing your own poetry book for $500 and how she made all her publishing dreams came true with her first collaborative chapbook and anthology
• Scott Kirsner argues that creative forms of distribution including making the film available on your own website should go hand in hand with its participation in film festivals

Image: Rob Dobson, BASKET #143 (2004), Salvaged materials, 13 in. x 15 3/4 in. x 15 in.

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At the blog of the venerable literary journal Ploughshares, 2006 Poetry Fellow Simeon Berry calls our attention to, in his own droll and idiosyncratic way, a spirited discussion within the online poetry community about one poet’s disastrous experience with a poetry contest.

So you want to build yourself a super-duper artist’s website, and you want to do it free, gratis, and for nothin’? Over at the Technology in the Arts blog, Brad Stephenson wants to help you. Because as he puts it, “You’re cheap, and I love you.”

Art critic Sebastian Smee, recent emigre from The Australian to the Boston Globe, shares his first impressions on first impressions (oh, and on Massachusetts art museums).

Perhaps instead of Artist Fellowships, we should award Olympic medals in the arts.

MacDowell Colony doesn’t oppose Divine Mercy. But the isolated artists retreat (which has welcomed many Massachusetts artists over the years) would prefer the new church not be built quite so close to MacDowell’s, you know, isolation.

Where do the presidential candidates stand on the arts? Here, a couple of bloggers offer opinions on the arts policies of Obama and McCain. You can also investigate on your own at ArtsVote, a program of Americans for the Arts Action Fund. The site links to current and former presidential candidates’ arts policies, including Clinton, Richardson, and Huckabee (Did you know Mike Huckabee is a big supporter of arts and music in education, calling them “Weapons of Mass Instruction?”).

Disclaimer (spoken in robot voice): No candidate or opinion of same candidate being advocated for by ArtSake blog. Just sharing Internet data. Affirmative. End transmission.

Image: Sarah Slavick, TRANSMIT (2005), oil on wood, 36 in. X 36 in.

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It’s true. They have feelings. Often of the colorful and interesting variety. Here are a few that are circulating the computer tubes.

What can I, the individual artist, do to improve my discipline (and world, such as it is)? At Parabasis, Isaac Butler ardently argues that Personal Virtue (a concept usually discussed in reference to global warming) can and should apply to individual artists. Butler talks about theater artists, specifically, but I think his conclusions are universal to all disciplines: be a better artist and an engaged advocate.

At Extra Criticum, a blog of commentary on the performing arts by “those who do” (as they put it), Rolando Teco has some colorful feelings about “bottom-feeders” – groups that trick eager artists into dropping cash for supposed career advancements.

In the San Francisco Chronicle, Kenneth Baker writes about fears that the boom in art fairs could threaten the future of art galleries as we know them.

Writer, professor, and arts enthusiast Jill Dolan passionately implores that university programs stoke, rather than dissipate, the excitement of being a “theater geek.”

Keepers of Tradition (blog of the state folklorist Maggie Holtzberg), shares one man’s heartfelt devotion to the traditional art of letterpress printing. Don’t miss the terrific video clip by builder, designer, and all-around maker-of-things Chuck Kraemer.

Feel like selling some art but don’t feel like making any? You could just stick some price tags to some things.

Image: Cynthia Consentino, SELF-PORTRAIT WITH GUN (2005), earthenware clay, oils, wax, 37 in. x 15 1/2 in. x 22 in.

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Art moves
Massachusetts art and artists are criss-crossing the proverbial map.

James Hull, of Green Street Gallery and Laconia Gallery, makes the move to the New England School of Art and Design, where he’ll take over as gallery director. Matthew Nash shared the story on Our Daily Red, blog of the funky online art concern Big RED & Shiny. Speaking of Mr. Nash, he has an interesting take on LEF Foundation’s shift to focusing on independent film and the impending end Contemporary Works Fund.

Surely the loss of this reliable source of funding will have broad impact, but any arts community that cannot survive the loss of a single funding source should be asking some tough questions of itself. We need to seek other avenues for generating revenue, create interest and support for the contemporary art throughout New England, and bring in outside investment. The end of the CWF will usher in a new era for arts funding in New England, that is certain. Are we up to the task?

Full article.

Salvatore Scibona (Fiction/Creative Nonfiction Fellow ’06) is on the move to share his new novel, The End. If you’ve been following this blog, you’ll remember his fascinating discussion of the book here, and he’s been touring to continue that discussion in such far-flung places as Ohio, New Mexico, and Washington. Martha’s Vineyard residents will have the chance to hear him read as he joins poet Justen Ahrens for an event at West Tisbury Free Public Library on Saturday, August 30, 5:30 PM.

Over in Boston-town, the Rose Kennedy Greenway Conservancy is closing in on its October 4 Inaugural Celebration. The Greenway and UrbanArts Institute currently have a call for entries to all Massachusetts artists for existing sculptures and installations to be exhibited in the Greenway October 1-November 2. Three to four works will be chosen based on quality, durability, and suitability. Selected artists will receive a $1000 stipend. Deadline is Friday, August 22. Official notice here.

Plays with New England or local themes are encouraged in the call for entries for Culture*Park’s 7th Annual Short Plays Marathon. The deadline isn’t until October 15, so you have plenty of time to cook up your 10-20 minute masterwork. Full details here. The Marathon (which will take place Saturday, November 22 in downtown New Bedford, MA, is sponsored in part by the New Bedford Cultural Council.

Fiction for President
Elsewhere on the map: a California bookstore asked young readers to weigh in on what fictional characters they’d like to run for president. Made me wonder what characters from Massachusetts-based authors might make good leaders of the free world. Commander-in-Chief Joey Pigza (from author Jack Gantos)? President Anastasia Krupnik (Lois Lowry)? Hail to the Chief… Octavian Nothing, Traitor to the Nation (MT Anderson)?

And then, there’s this: could a closer reading of Jay McInerney’s 20-yr-old Story of My Life have forecast the John Edwards affair?

See, it’s all in the art, people. Keys to the secrets of the presidency, the country, and the heart.

Image: Mary O’Malley, Imagined Landscape #2 (2004), ink on paper, 9 in. x 12 in. Mary is among the artists exhibiting in Drawn to Detail at the DeCordova Museum and Sculpture Park, August 30, 2008January 4, 2009.

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