ArtSake

Sitting in our dark rooms, snowed in.

As you may know, this blog is hand-cranked by the folks at the Massachusetts Cultural Council, a state agency. On Friday, the day of the first snow storm (and the day I meant to write this post), Governor Patrick instructed non-emergency state workers not to come in. So I was home Friday, and the post got a snow day.

Anyway, we’re back in the office, so… to the art! There’s a fascinating interview with 2008 ICA Foster Finalist Rania Matar (Photography Fellow ‘07) in the most recent Big RED and Shiny, where she discusses her photographs in war-torn Lebanon and why she was drawn to go back.

Via Practicing Writing: good news, web writers - you can now be the Best Americans. (In that writers who’ve been published in web-based literary journals are eligible for inclusion in the Best American Short Stories anthology. I’m not saying you can necessarily be better than the best Americans overall, such as the American Ninja or National Arts Council member Lee Greenwood. But you know, of writers.)

Check out Lloyd Schwartz’s NPR review of the CD of Scott Wheeler’s (Music Composition Fellow ‘05) opera The Construction of Boston. Schwartz calls the recording of Boston Cecilia’s 2002 performance “close to an ideal realization.” The work uses the text of Kenneth Koch’s poem of the same name, an ode to the building of Boston. “I think anyone who loves cities will be charmed by this inventive and moving work,” says Schwartz.

In the ’60s, David Wheeler’s Theatre Company of Boston included Robert DeNiro, Dustin Hoffman, and Al Pacino in its acting troupe. But the standout was Paul Benedict, who recently passed away in Martha’s Vineyard. The Globe has an excellent obituary (and check out the tributes in the comments section, too). And the Playgoer, the eponymous blogger shares his personal memories of Mr. Benedict.

In The Public Humanist, filmmaker Larry Hott argues that, along with visual skills, film & video artists ought to be able to string a few words together, to get ahead in their field.

Via the NY Times: according to an NEA report, supply of non-musical plays is outstripping demand. But is this on an aggregate demand curve or a marginal utility curve? And have all exogenous variables been considered? Or could it be, as the UK’s Guardian Theatre Blog suggests, that “demand” for art can be helped along, as with the NEA’s Big Read program for literature. A Big See, anyone?

Via Publishers Weekly, Dennis Lehane, scribe of such iconic Boston tales as Mystic River and Gone Baby Gone, will edit Akashic’s forthcoming Boston Noir anthology of mystery stories.

The roster of artists for President-elect Obama’s inauguration is shaping up. Elizabeth Alexander will be inaugural poet (Mass. connection: she studied with Derek Walcott at BU), and Cambridge master cellist Yo-Yo Ma is among the musical performers. (Based on the musicians and the instruments they play, Alex Ross takes a stab at guessing the musical selection.)

A handful of calls to artists…
Wellfleet Harbor Actor’s Theatre is accepting submissions of features, shorts, documentaries and student films that have some connection to Cape Cod for a juried festival called the 2009 Cape Cod Filmmaker Takeover. Chosen films are screened at WHAT’s Julie Harris Stage, the audience votes, and the grand prize winner participates in the Provincetown International Film Festival. Submission must be postmarked by January 23, 2009; guidelines and submission criteria here.

Central Productions has an open call for submissions for the 8th Annual Boston Cinema Census, showcasing innovative works by emerging New England filmmakers. The BCC is hosted by the Brattle Theatre. Deadline Feb. 10, 2009. Check here for details.

Visionary drawings conveying a dwelling/structure/architectural concept can be submitted to Kidspace @ MASS MoCA’s March 2009 Exhibition Cribs to Cribbage and the publication Visionary Architecture. Interested artists should procure a submission form (find out how here), then use the form to create your drawing and submit by January 15, 2009. Selected drawings will be compiled in Visionary Architecture.

And finally…
In case you missed the excellent traditional arts performances in conjunction with the Keepers of Tradition exhibition at the National Heritage Museum, you can check some of them out at the MCC YouTube Channel. (Perhaps during the next snow storm?)

Image: Timothy Horn (Sculpture/Installation Fellow ‘05), WATERSPORTS (Installation, 2002), mixed media, variable dimensions. Timothy’s works are currently on exhibit in In Pursuit of Beauty at the Montserrat Gallery at the Montserrat College of Art in Beverly, through January 24. Read the Boston Globe’s review.

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Otis B. Driftwood: “You’re willing to pay him a thousand dollars a night just for singing? Why, you can get a phonograph record of Minnie the Moocher for 75 cents. And for a buck and a quarter, you can get Minnie.”- Groucho Marx from A Night at the Opera, 1935

Apparently it is all the rage. It being a program called The Met: Live in HD, which started in 2006 and has grown into a worldwide phenomenon.

Thanks to the modern technological invention of high-definition broadcast, there’s no need to go to Lincoln Center anymore to see the Metropolitan Opera. All you have to do is go to your local movie theater or playhouse and experience what has become known as a virtual opera house experience, well, kind of, sort of.

After having seen my very first opera in HD performance at a movie theater in Braintree a short time ago, I couldn’t help but think this is the music equivalent of watching sports on ESPN, particularly seeing interviews with the perspiring singers just after they have exited the stage. There’s nothing like the HD quality projected on the silver screen emphasizing the physicality of the performers work. It’s also great to hear the artists speak about the conductor, the set design, and the composer’s work they are performing.

There are numerous cities and towns in the Commonwealth that participate in The Met: Live in HD program, including Boston, Braintree, Burlington, Foxboro, Framingham, Hadley, Lowell, Marlborough, Millbury, Randolph, Revere, Swansea, and West Springfield, as well as the Cape Cinema in Dennis, the Mahaiwe Performing Arts Center in Great Barrington, and the Wellfleet Harbor Actor’s Theater.

So goodbye Logan Airport, bye-bye Amtrak train, see ya later Fung Wah bus; it’s off to Braintree. And who really cares if the parking lot at the cinema has an architectural quality that is somewhat different from the stunning design of the plaza at Lincoln Center? Witnessing world-class opera in a local theater is a great use of these venues, as well as a boon for the local economy. And you can buy M&Ms from the concession stand. Did I say that?

And let’s not forget that Boston is home to not one but two incredible opera companies: the Boston Lyric Opera and Opera Boston. Seeing the real thing live and in person is always superior to the HD experience. So be sure to check out our homegrown talent. And here’s a good tip: the ArtsBoston ticket booth sells half-price tickets on the day of the performance for many local cultural events. Here’s a list of participating cultural organizations.

Postscript: Since I never purchase soda at the movies, I was shocked to discover how large a large has really become. It really is a supersize generation, I’m sad to say. The drink that I ordered during the intermission of La Damnation de Faust was so big that I had to use two hands to lift it. But I digress.

Image Credit: Photograph of the facade of the Metropolitan Opera House at Lincoln Center, New York, New York. Taken on 12 March 2004 by Paul Masck and released with a Creative Commons license on 30 July 2005 by the photographer.

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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

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Updated 11/14: responding to my request for Massachusetts Obama art to add to this post, artist and calligrapher Emily Gallardo sent the above cross-stitched Obama portrait. More of her original pins are posted on her blog. Thank, Emily!

Whatever your politics, if you’re an artist or otherwise art-centric individual, you’ll be glad to hear that President-Elect Barack Obama has a vigorous arts policy.

In an October Bloomberg article, Americans for the Arts president Robert L. Lynch said that no candidate in recent history has crafted such a detailed arts platform. Obama’s arts ambitions include creating an Artist Corps to work with low-income schools and communities, increased funding to the National Endowment for the Arts, focus on healthcare for artists, and tax fairness (allowing artists to “deduct the fair market value of their work, rather than just the costs of the materials, when they make charitable contributions”).

He’s publicly made the case for arts education. And it bodes well that by the day after the election, he’d already named a leader for the transition team overseeing cultural agencies: Bill Ivey, who has led the NEA and the American Folklore Society. (I should note that he named all his transition teams on that Wednesday. But at least he didn’t leave the arts for day two!)

Many artists have reacted to Obama’s arts support with a right-back-atcha. There were countless artistic efforts in support of Obama’s candidacy, from street art to literary and visual art auctions to benefit concerts. There is an Arts and Creative Industries for Obama website. Artists made YouTube videos.

Perhaps most encouraging is knowing that arts luminaries like novelist Michael Chabon, a member of the policy committee, has Obama’s ear when he says things like:

America’s artists are the guardians of the spirit of questioning, of innovation, of reaching across the barriers that fence us off from our neighbors, from our allies and adversaries, from the six billion other people with whom we share this dark and dazzling world. Art increases the sense of our common humanity. The imagination of the artist is, therefore, a profoundly moral imagination: the easier it is for you to imagine walking in someone else’s shoes, the more difficult it then becomes to do that person harm.

(Quoted from the Obama Arts Committee statement)

Now that’s good policy.

Image: Emily Gallardo, Barack Obama portrait pin (2008), cross-stitch embroidery. Emily describes how she created the pin on her blog.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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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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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.

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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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Writers are like magic
“I do like tricks. I like trap doors, and framed narratives, authorial interjections, unreliable narrators, complications, reversals, and ambiguity, as long as the characters in a story and their experiences still compel, still have a certain emotional complexity and power.” So says Northampton author Kelly Link, who’s been a reviewer for our Artist Fellowships Program, in a bubbling magic potion of an interview in the New England online literary magazine Meeting House.

But if writers have magic powers, a literary agent points out their counterspell: impatience.

Bailout Art
In Harpers, Charles Bernstein quells our fears with news of a massive poetry bailout. The poem-economy will be saved!

Art dealer Edward Winkleman discusses how the economic downturn turns down art prices:

(Consider) what raising prices too quickly for younger artists is likely to do to their markets now. I talked with an artist at an openly recently who said he was glad his dealer had kept his prices reasonable. I got the sense that this was a recent epiphany for him, that had we talked a year ago, he might have expressed frustration that his prices were not as high as those of some of his contemporaries.

Poet Country
The Word Up book blog at the Boston Phoenix talks to Michael Ansara about the upcoming Massachusetts Poetry Festival in Lowell. It’s the first time there’s been a Massachusetts Poetry Festival - here or in any state!

Speaking of poetry-fests: Best American Poetry blog covers this weekend’s Chinese poetry festival at Simmons College in Boston.

Art trips
A prominent arts journalist makes the jazz education pilgrimage to Berklee.

DIY Days, a two day workshop that asks how filmmakers distribute, monetize, and otherwise “do” their work without major studio backing, travels to the Massachusetts College of Art and Design today (Friday, October 3) and tomorrow.

New England Film goes behind the scenes on “Don McKay,” an indie feature being shot in North Andover.

And just to come full circle. Ish.
Remember that interview with Kelly Link I told you about way up at the start of this roundup? It ends with these great words – purportedly for 16-year-olds but useful (I say) for artists twice or three times as old: “Hang on. Life mostly gets better. One day you will discover your superpower. Don’t be ashamed of the things that you love.”

Especially if that’s art.

Image: Jack O’Hearn, THE STOREHOUSE (2007), oil and paper on canvas, 30 in. x 36 in.

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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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