ArtSake

Set off some dazzling fireworks (naturally, I mean safely and legally) – it’s time to celebrate July’s news and notes from past MCC fellows/finalists.

Shakedown, an exhibition at DODGE Gallery in NYC, includes work by Taylor Davis (Sculpture/Installation Fellow ’99), Sheila Gallagher (Drawing Finalist ’10), and Laurel Sparks (Painting Fellow ’04). The show also features Massachusetts artists Robert de Saint Phalle, Jane Fox Hipple, and Douglas Weathersby, among others.

Rebecca Doughty (Painting Finalist ’10), Eric Gottesman (Photography Fellow ’09), Frances Hamilton (Drawing Fellow ’98), and Dawn Southworth (Drawing/Printmaking/Artist Books Finalist ’04) are all exhibiting work in Picture Books, featuring art in all media that pictures, or, references a book within the composition, or, is a book of some kind. The show runs at Clark Gallery in Lincoln through August 6, 2011.

Chuck Holtzman (Drawing Fellow ’06), Joel Janowitz (Painting Fellow ’08) and Harold Reddicliffe (Painting Fellow ’10) join Mary Armstrong, Carol Gove, Conley Harris, and Anne Lilly for an exhibition at Victoria Munroe Fine Art in Boston. The show of drawings, paintings, and sculpture runs through August 20, 2011.

Camilo Ramirez (Photography Fellow ’09) and Irina Rozovsky (Photography Finalist ’09) are exhibiting in a dual show of their recent photography, called Details at a Distance. The show runs at Fountain Studios in Brooklyn, NY, July 9-30, 2011, with an opening reception July 9, 7-10 PM.

An installation of the work of Karen Aqua (Film & Video Fellow ’11), called Animal, Vegetable, Mineral, will be on exhibit at the Brickbottom Gallery in Somerville, through July 10, 2011. The exhibition features pastel drawings, sounds, and video from Karen’s final film, Taxonomy, which was completed one month before her untimely passing on May 30, 2011. There will be a memorial tribute to Karen’s life and work on July 10, 2011, 2 PM, at the Center for Arts at the Armory in Somerville.

Sweetgrass, a film by Ilisa Barbash and Lucien Castaing-Taylor (Film & Video Fellows ’11), will be broadcast on PBS as part of the POV series starting July 5, 2011.

Congratulations to Michele Caniato (Music Composition Fellow ’07) for receiving a Fulbright award. He will be in Helsinki, Finland for four months starting in September, hosted by Metropolia University and will be composing, conducting, and lecturing.

On her blog, Cheryl Clark (Poetry Finalist ’10) added an audio recording of her reading from the Commonwealth Reading Series this past March 2011.

Patrick Donnelly (Poetry Fellow ’08) has a great interview on the Mass Poetry Festival blog, where he discusses opportunities available at The Frost Place, a poetry education center where he is Director of the Advanced Seminar.

Janet Echelman (Crafts & Sculpture/Installation Fellow ’09) was recently interviewed by CNN!

Samantha Fields (Sculpture/Installation Fellow ’11) has a solo show, Ecstasy and Common Sense, at NK Gallery in Boston. The show will run July 6-29, 2011, with an opening reception July 8, 6-8 PM.

Laura Harrington‘s (Playwriting Fellow ’05, ’97) novel Alice Bliss is a People Pick, receiving four out of four stars in the July 4th issue of People Magazine. Laura will join JoeAnn Hart for a reading on Wednesday, July 6, 2011, 7:30 PM, at Gloucester Writer’s Center (call for start time). Laura will also have a joint reading with fellow debut author Rebecca Makkai at the Boston Public Library (Tues, July 12, 2011, 6 PM). And, she’ll have a talk, Q&A, and signing at Stellina’s Restaurant in Watertown, on Wednesday, July 13, 6-7:30 PM.

Gregory Hischak‘s (Playwriting Finalist ’11) new full-length play Volcanic in Origin had its world premiere at the Source Festival in Washington D.C. and runs through July 3, 2011. Read an essay about the play by its dramaturg LaRonika Thomas.

Congratulations to Rania Matar (Photography Fellow ’11, ’07), whose A Girl and Her Room series is featured in a same-titled exhibition at The Mosaic Rooms in London, UK (through July 23, 2011). Also, Umbrage Editions will print a book of photos from the A Girl and Her Room series, scheduled for release Spring 2012. Rania’s exceptional work has recently been awarded the Legacy Award by Debra Klomp Ching in conjunction with the 17th Juried Exhibition at the Griffin Museum of Photography (through August 29); First Place at the Off the Wall Exhibit at the Danforth Museum of Art (through August 7, 2011); First Prize at The Julia M. Cameron Awards: Category Portrait, People and Figure; and Winner in the PDN Magazine Photo Annual 2011 in the Personal Category (featured in the June 2011 edition). Rania’s work is included in a number of group shows: University of Maine Museum of Art Photo National 2011 Exhibition (through September 24, 2011); Photographic Resource Center Exposure 2011 Exhibit (opening reception: July 21, 6:30PM, exhibit through August 21); Beirut Exhibition Center, Rebirth: Lebanon 21st Century Contemporary Art (through July 24, 2011).

Rachel Mello (Painting Finalist ’10) has a solo show of works from her Cities and Shadows Series at Soapbox Gallery in Brooklyn, NY, July 8 through July 20, 2011. There will be an opening reception on Saturday, July 9 5-7 PM. Rachel’s monoprint School of Pliers in Peril is featured in Crest Hardware Art Show in Brooklyn, NY, a show that features art inspired by and/or involving hardware. The show runs through July 30. Also, Rachel’s work was recently featured in Multiple/Unique at the Washington Street Art Center in Somerville.

Congratulations to Nathalie Miebach (Sculpture/Installation Fellow ’09), who received a TED Global Fellowship! As part of the Fellowship, she’ll participate in the TED Global Conference, which will be held in Edinburgh (UK), July 11-15, 2011.

Caleb Neelon (Sculpture/Installation Fellow ’07) was one of the innovative thinkers invited to speak at the June 2011 TEDxBoston! Read a recent interview with Caleb on the Converse blog.

Liz Nofziger (Sculpture/Installation Fellow ’05) is among the artists in Shifting Terrain: Landscape Video at the Currier Museum of Art in Manchester, NH. The exhibition runs July 2-September 18, 2011, with an opening reception July 7, 5:30-7:30 PM.

Masha Obolensky‘s (Playwriting Finalist ’11) ten-minute Girls Play has been selected to participate in The Samuel French Off-Off Broadway Short Play Festival. The festival, now in its 36th year, takes place at The Lion Theatre on Theatre Row in NYC on July 19-24. Read an interview with the playwright on the Festival’s blog.

Monica Raymond‘s (Playwriting Finalist ’07, Poetry Finalist ’08) story Ludd and the Perkadoodles was a runner up for the contestoria contest at HERE ARTS CENTER. Read it online.

Alison Safford (Sculpture/Installation Fellow ’03) just completed a solo show at Gallery 303 at the New England Institute of Art.

Katy Schneider (Painting Fellow ’00) is featured in Inside/Out, a dual show with David Gloman of expressive landscapes and interiors, at studio21south in North Adams, through July 10, 2011.

Congratulations to Tracy Heather Strain and Randall MacLowry (Film & Video Fellows ’07), whose Lorraine Hansberry Documentary Project won a $30,000 grant from the National Endowment for the Arts!

Naoe Suzuki (Drawing Fellow ’06) is collaborating with the theatre company Dramahound Productions for a fascinating multi-media installation. Mi Tigre, My Lover at the Open Source Gallery in Brooklyn, NY features a play based on Naoe’s paintings, which are inspired by early 20th century female tiger trainer Mabel Stark. The paintings serve as the backdrop for a play by Anne Phelan. The play runs June 25-July 9, 2011, at 306 17th Street, between 5th and 6th Ave, South Slope, Brooklyn.

Rachel Perry Welty‘s (Sculpture/Installation Fellow ’09, Drawing Fellow ’04) Rachel Perry Welty 24/7 at the DeCordova Sculpture Park and Musueum was very favorably reviewed in Art in America Magazine.

Nine Houses: nine matted archival pigment prints by Maxine Yalovitz-Blankenship (Drawing Fellow ’83, Painting Finalist ’82, ’83), has just been published by Tahawus Press. The prints are in a clothbound boxed folio, limited to an edition of fifty, and are accompanied by text and poetry, written in response to the images, by Alan Lightman, Maxine Kumin, Florence Ladd, John Baeder, Elizabeth McKim, and her fellow Guggenheim Fellows: Morris Halle, Philip Levine, Ann Patchett, and Richard Wendorf.

Kevin Young (Poetry Fellow ’10) will present an afternoon of poetry at The Mount, the historic home of Edith Wharton in Lenox, MA. The reading, presented in partnership with the Amy Clampitt Fund, is on July 9, 2011, at 4 PM. Tickets are $12 and are available online.

Evan Ziporyn (Music Composition Fellow ’11) will present in The Music of Evan Ziporyn on Thursday, July 7, 2011, 8 PM, at the Shalin Liu Performance Center as part of the Rockport Music Festival. The composer will perform along with musicians including “friends from Bang on a Can.” Speaking of: from July 13 through July 31, the tenth annual Bang on a Can Summer Music Festival takes place at MASS MoCA in North Adams. Evan Ziporyn, who has been actively involved in the festival since its inception, will pariticpate in the Festival, which is dedicated to programming today’s most innovative new music and includes public performances, recitals, and lectures, plus workshops for participants in everything from Balinese music to improvisation, master classes, music business seminars, and more.

Past Fellows Notes
June 2011
May 2011
Apr. 2011
Mar. 2011
Feb. 2011
Jan. 2011

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.

Images: production photo from Masha Obolensky’s GIRLS PLAY, featuring scenic design by Caitlin Fergus; Samantha Fields, Detail of SHE SPEAKS FOLLY IN A THOUSAND HOLY WAYS; Liz Nofziger, PORE; Evan Ziporyn, photo by Kevin Yatarola.

Powered by Bookmarkify™

As you may know, this is a blog of the Massachusetts Cultural Council, and our budget is primarily determined through an appropriation by the state legislature. There’s a whole process to this, including budget recommendations released by the governor and later on the House and the Senate.

Today, the Senate Ways & Means Committee released a proposed state budget for the coming fiscal year that would significantly cut state support for the arts, humanities, and sciences through the MCC.

The Senate Ways & Means Committee recommends $7.45 million for MCC for fiscal year 2012. That would cut $1.65 million, or 18 percent, from the agency’s current budget and would represent a cumulative cut of 41 percent to arts and cultural funding since 2009. Read the full press release.

The good news is that Senator Eileen Donoghue of Lowell will file an amendment to restore MCC funding to this year’s levels.

Here’s what you can do now: Contact your Massachusetts Senator. Urge her/him to support the Donoghue amendment.

Then, follow the continuing process by visiting our Advocacy Action Center, where you can also find tips for making the case for arts and culture.

Powered by Bookmarkify™

Here’s the latest installment of Fellows Notes, the current news of past fellows/finalists from our Artist Fellowships Program.

The April 1, 2011 weather may be a Fool’s Day snow-prise, but the following list of April awards, honors, news, and announcements is pure sunshine.

We’re thrilled to share that Rosanna Yamagiwa Alfaro‘s (Playwriting Fellow ’11) play Before I Leave You, a portion of which the playwright submitted for her Artist Fellowship, will be produced by Boston’s Huntington Theatre in the 2011/2012 season! Read a Boston Globe article about Rosanna and the production.

Hannah Barrett (Painting Fellow ’04) has collages in the show Family Portraits, which explores the “complexities and possibilities of family structures, relationships, and interactions, both real and constructed.” The show runs through April 22, 2011 at the Foster Gallery in Dedham, with an opening reception Friday, April 8, 6-8 PM. Along with Hannah, the show features Christine Rogers, Cobi Moules, Megan & Murray McMillan, Dustin Williams, and Tanit Sakakini – and was curated by Evelyn Rydz (Drawing Fellow ’10)!

Claire Beckett‘s (Photography Fellow ’07) recent show at Carroll and Sons, Simulating Iraq, was reviewed in Art New England.

Jamie Cat Callan (Fiction/Creative Nonfiction Fellow ’10) will be at the French Cultural Center in Boston on Tuesday, April 19 to present her recent book Bonjour, Happiness! Read a recent interview with Jamie on ArtSake.

Alicia Casilio, Sara Casilio, Kelly Casilio, and Cary Wolinsky, aka TRIIIBE Sculpture/Installation Fellows ’09) were reviewed in Art in America Magazine for their recent solo show at Dodge Gallery in New York. Also, check out a terrific series of short films by Yari Wolinsky about TRIIIBE’s creation of their recent In Search of Eden show at Boston University.

Watercolor paintings by Betsy Damian are on exhibit at the Harding House bed and breakfast in Cambridge. Read Betsy’s recent Three Stages post about her children’s book Rèv Abnè a: Abner’s Vision.

Joshua Fineberg‘s (Music Composition Fellow ’11) piece for flute and electronics, The Texture of Time, will receive its Boston premiere on Saturday April 30 at Brandeis University’s Slosberg Music Center. This performance will be part of the 2011 BEAMS Electronic Music Marathon and the Boston Cyber Arts Festival.

Regie Gibson (Poetry Fellow ’10) will perform spoken word poetry at Munroe Center for the Arts in Lexington, MA on Saturday, April 9, 8-10 PM, a task to which he’s uniquely suited: he’s a former National Poetry Slam Champion and performer on HBO’s Def Poetry Jam. Incidentally, the 4/9 performance is on the heels of Regie’s participation in the final event in MCC’s Commonwealth Reading Series at Newtonville Books in Newton on Tuesday, April 5.

James Haug‘s (Poetry Fellow ’98) new chapbook, Why I Like Chapbooks, has been published by Factory Hollow Press.

Gregory Hischak‘s (Playwriting Finalist ’11) short play Hygiene is included in this year’s Humana Festival of New American Works in April (Louisville KY). Later this year, his new play Clueless & Lark (& Other Geologic Variations) will be staged as part of the 2011 Source Festival (Washington DC) in June, 2011.

Ariel Kotker‘s (Sculpture/Installation Fellow ’07) fascinating His Room As He Left It installation will be part of the School of the Museum of Fine Arts Traveling Scholars Show, at the SMFA March 30-April 30. There will be an opening reception Wednesday, March 30, 5-7 PM.

Niho Kozuru (Sculpture/Installation Fellow ’09) was commissioned to create a sculpture for the permanent collection of the Sheldon Museum of Art in Lincoln, Nebraska. Read an article in the Lincoln JournalStar about Niho and the unique commission.

Yanick Lapuh (Painting Fellow ’10) currently has a solo show, Yanick Lapuh: Your Ladder is on Fire, at the Fuller Craft Museum in Brockton, through July 10, 2011. He’s also among the artists selected by juror Jen Mergel, Curator of Contemporary Art at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, for the show Massachusetts Artists 2011 at The Brush Art Gallery and Studios in Lowell. The show runs through April 30, 2011, with an opening reception on April 3, 2-4 PM.

Rania Matar (Photography Fellow ’07) has a solo photography show, A Girl and Her Room at the De Santos Gallery in Houston, TX, running April-May, 2011. There is an opening reception April 2, 5:30-8:30 PM.

We heard good news from Nathalie Miebach (Sculpture/Installation Fellow ’09) recently: she won a Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant! Where can you see her work this month? First, a detail of her installation Changing Waters, on view at the Fuller Craft Museum through September 2011, is on the cover of the March/April 2011 issue of Art New England. She’s in the exhibition The New Materiality: Digital Dialogues at the Boundaries of Contemporary Craft, on display through June 12 at the Milwaukee Art Museum in Milwaukee, WI. As part of this exhibit, a trio called Nineteen Thirteen will perform one of Nathalie’s scores, called “Hurricane Noel” at the Milwaukee Art Museum on April 15, 8:30 PM. Furthermore, she’s participating in Craft Meets Technology at the Kentucky Museum of Art and Craft, April 2-July 16, and the Appearances: Provincetown Green Arts Festival, at Art Current in Provincetown, MA, April 15-24.

Caleb Neelon (Sculpture/Installation Fellow ’07) is the co-author of the book The History of American Graffiti, published this month by Harper Design. The book features over 1,000 never-before-published photographs and interviews with hundreds of graffiti artists from throughout the country.

Congratulations to Nancy K. Pearson (Poetry Finalist ’10), who won the Sycamore Review Poetry Prize.

Jendi Reiter (Poetry Fellow ’10) won the 2010 Anderbo Poetry Prize for her poem “Bullies in Love” (watch the clip embedded above to hear her reading the poem). Bravo!

Matthew Rich (Painting Fellow ’10) is among the artists exhibiting in The Thingness of Color at Dodge Gallery in New York. The show runs April 2-May 1, with an opening reception April 2. Read a Studio Views with Matthew Rich on ArtSake.

Irina Rozovsky (Photography Finalist ’09) has a solo show of photography, This Russia, at the Garner Center of Photography at the New England School of Photography in Boston. The show runs April 18-June 3, 2011, with an opening reception Wednesday, April 20, 6:30-8 PM and an artist talk Monday, May 9, 6 PM. Fraction Magazine has a sneak peak of Irina’s soon-to-be-published monograph One to Nothing. The monograph will be published by Kehrer Verlag in Fall 2011; see a preview. Also, Irina is among the artists featured in The Collector’s Guide to New Art Photography Vol.2, a biennial sourcebook with new work by 100 contemporary photographers, from the Humble Arts Foundation.

Eric Henry Sanders‘s (Playwriting Fellow ’09) play Reservoir, on the heels of a successful ’10/’11 run at the Drilling CompaNY in New York, will return for a three week run (Apr. 1 -17, 2011) at the theatre. Read a terrific review of the play in the New York Times, and read about the process behind the play, as well as hear a scene performed by Company One, on ArtSake. Also, Eric’s short play Don’t Push the Red Button was performed as part of Elephant in the Room, performed at Raconteur Theatre in Ohio in March 2011.

Vaughn Sills (Photography Fellow ’09) has a solo exhibition of photographs at the Trustman Gallery at Simmons College in Boston. The show, which runs March 21 – April 22, is in conjunction with Vaughn’s new book of photography Places For The Spirit: Traditional African American Gardens. Read a review in the Boston Globe.

Jeff Daniel Silva‘s (Film & Video Finalist ’09) feature-length documentary Ivan & Ivana will have its world premiere in the International competition at Visions de Réel in Nyon, Switzerland on Friday, April 8 at 8 PM. The film chronicles the lives of Ivan and Ivana, a couple who emigrated from Kosovo to California to start anew after the last Balkan war. It’s an unorthodox depiction of the American immigrant experience, revealing the couple’s successes, trials, and tribulations over five years of turbulent economic, political and personal tides. Local audiences will have the chance to see the film when it screens in the Independent Film Festival Boston, on April 30 and May 1.

Peter Snoad (Playwriting Fellow ’09) is among the playwrights whose ten-minute plays were selected for the 2011 Boston Playwrights’ Theatre Boston Theatre Marathon. Read Peter’s terrific ArtSake guest post about the terrain for new plays – nationally and locally.

Rachel Perry Welty (Sculpture/Installation Fellow ’09, Drawing Fellow ’04) will join deCordova Sculpture Park and Museum Director for Curatorial Affairs Nick Capasso for a talk and tour of Rachel’s current exhibition: Rachel Perry Welty 24/7. The events takes place on Saturday, April 2, at 3 PM, at deCordova Sculpture Park and Museum in Lincoln.

Tracy Winn (Fiction/Creative Nonfiction Fellow ’08) reads from her novel Mrs. Somebody Somebody at the Blacksmith House in Cambridge on Monday, April 25, 2011, 8:00 PM.

Past Fellows Notes
Mar. 2011
Feb. 2011
Jan. 2011

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.

Images and media: Matthew Rich, DOUBLE AMPERSAND (2010), latex and spray paint on cut paper and linen tape, 41×57 in; cover art for WHY I LIKE CHAPBOOKS by James Haug (Factory Hollow Press, 2011); Jendi Reiter reads “Bullies in Love” at the Green Street Café in Northampton, recorded by Adam Cohen, from the WinningWriters Youtube Channel; Cover for PLACES FOR THE SPIRIT: PHOTOGRAPHS BY VAUGHN SILLS (Trinity University Press, 2010).

Powered by Bookmarkify™

In January, we shared the first half of a conversation between Lise Haines and Elizabeth Searle, where they talked about recent projects, like Lise’s novel Girl in the Arena and Elizabeth’s rock opera Tonya and Nancy, and otherwise explored the writing life and their life as writers.

In this second part of the two-part conversation, they discuss new trajectories in their careers, the things you don’t talk about in polite society (but you write about in interesting fiction), and the fun kind of suffering that is a writer’s work.

Elizabeth: I’ve noticed that we’re both going on a new trajectory, in our careers. You could say that our earlier works would be classified as literary, capital L, which is sort of like the word liberal, people don’t say it anymore. And with Girl in the Arena, not that it’s not still the high quality literary writing, but it’s definitely got the page-turner, plot element that’s very clear and strong. And I also feel that Girl Held in Home will be a plot-driven book. It was based on an actual incident in our neighborhood, where a girl – in real life, it was a grown woman – was being held in a wealthy home as an unpaid servant, and her visa was under the family’s control. They had frightened her somehow into believing that she had to do this. In my version of it, a teenage boy discovers this situation and gets a crush on the girl. In his All-American way he wants to help her but in a way he’s exploiting her. What set this book in motion was that some of the boys who lived in the real-life house where the woman was being held did a very strange thing on Halloween of 2001 – right after 9/11. They came from a family that claimed to be related to the Saudi royal family, and they went Trick or Treating in the neighborhood dressed as, in their own words, a terrorist and a dead American. In my fictional version, they have a reason: in their own misguided way, they think they’re protecting their family. I have no idea why, in real life, they did what they did. But it was one of those incidents that I wanted to explain to myself, to delve into.

Lise: It sounds like we’ve both found ourselves wandering into a very political area. Why do you think that is, for you?

Elizabeth: I come from a very political family. You mentioned 9/11. Girl Held in Home is very much a post-9/11 book. And Girl in the Arena strikes me as a post-9/11 book.

Lise: I still write mainly about families, triangulated relationships, how we move on from loss. But suddenly, I found I couldn’t hold back about something larger. It feels as if all of the stakes are higher, now.

Elizabeth: Have you ever written scripts?

Lise: No, I haven’t.

Elizabeth: You’re the one writer in America who’s held out and not written a film script!

Lise: I’m giving serious consideration to the screenplay, and maybe a graphic novel at some point.

Elizabeth: You should do a graphic novel of Girl in the Arena – do the sequel! I love that form, and you’re such a visual person.

Lise: I’m finishing up a novel as we speak, and then it will be time to clear the board again. I like this concept of transmedia overall, where one creative product can take many forms: a novella becomes a libretto becomes a film becomes a rock opera. And can’t you just see Tonya and Nancy The Game? It’s such a playful concept, that we can invent and reinvent and completely torque things around. And maybe in some ways this keeps us ahead of some of the unending anxieties with bookstores closing, lower profits on e-versions, the closing of libraries, less people reading in a traditional way. It would be very easy to simply get depressed and derail. But I think we have to fall back on that adage about the mother of invention and get re-energized. And that gives us the steam to do the fundraisers and other events to help the libraries and bookstores, and so on.

Elizabeth: The direction I’ve moved in is mixing writing and music. I’m a huge music fan, so putting words to music is such a joy to me. I got to do this for the musical and for the rock opera, and now I’m working on a new full-length opera with a terrific locally based composer, Pasquale Tassone. It is based on a play by an Italian playwright, and I am translating it into a libretto.

Lise: Do you sleep?

Elizabeth: I don’t. I don’t sleep. My son goes down around nine, and the hours between nine and one AM are very key for me.

Lise: That sounds like my schedule, though my daughter stays up late too. I usually get about four and a half hours of sleep.

Elizabeth: But nighttime is a great time to write, because everything shuts down. I get a lot of work done during those times. And I enjoy it.

Lise: Another thing about graphic novels and musicals and the themes of celebrity: it’s an interesting blend of high art and low art.

Elizabeth: I love that blend. It’s a very current thing.

Lise: We have that impulse to turn everything upside down and re-examine it, make sure we haven’t boxed ourselves into a corner with art that nobody can relate to.

Elizabeth: I think the current generation – even including us – is so steeped in pop. Pop culture and popular entertainment are about the only things America does well. That’s why the words “Celebrities in Disgrace” mean so much to me. (Ed. note: “Celebrities in Disgrace” is the title of Searle’s novella, short film, and blog.) That’s a title that came to me with the Tonya and Nancy incident, back in ’94, but to me, it just becomes more and more what our culture is all about. I feel like that part of a writer’s job is to engage your times, whatever they are, and our times are certainly tabloid times. These are our stories, our folk tales. And that is in a way what my blog is all about. Not only do we just dish on celebrities in disgrace and indulge in it, but especially in the guest posts, people talk about the weird deep emotions they feel about some of these people. One of the impetuses of the blog was a conversation I had with Steve Almond. At the time, he was worried, he said, about Tom Cruise. Tom Cruise was having his jumping on the couch moment, and not many people were sympathetic to him. But Steve was reading all sorts of mid-life crises things into whatever was happening with Tom Cruise. And I know that feeling. Again, I think people can identify heavily with something from a tabloid story. Maybe they don’t want to talk about it. But those are the most interesting things in writing, these weird feelings you wouldn’t talk about in polite society. But you would on my blog.

Lise: Okay, to switch tracks for a second. Here we are in an organization that supports and funds artists. What do you think it takes to feel really supported in this culture? Do you think we’ll see a point in time where people can no longer create art because they simply cannot afford to produce it?

Elizabeth: I feel the thing that writers, and artists in general, can do, that can save us, is to band together in groups and support each other. I feel, for instance, that self-publishing can work, but it’s often not a good model. It’s one person doing everything. If only these people would band together, form a collective – there are models for that in poetry publishing, like Alice James Press. People are constantly bemoaning how many people are studying to be writers. Why can’t that work for us? We could support each other, buy each other’s books, support our local small presses.

Lise: So what’s going to happen when we see the day, as with music, when you can download literature for free? And suddenly, all of those years of the writer crafting an individual property, a novel…

Elizabeth: With e-books, I think there will be, as a literary agent acquaintance of mine told me, a period of chaos. And then things will start sorting out.

Lise: Although, the difference between the writing world and, say, the music world is that the musicians are living off their performances, right? We don’t have that track.

Elizabeth: But I feel like we’ll come up with things. It’s not like we’ve been making a mint the old way. Just to come back to Literary Death Match (Ed. note: discussed in part one.), which was packed with people: if you make it – whatever it is – a fun, interactive experience, you give people a reason to get off their couches and come out for an event or off their computers and into your book.

Lise: That brings up the idea of how much art is here to entertain, and how much we’re afraid of that idea, that it’s somehow too commercial if we actually entertain someone through our art. But look at the classics. Dickens, that’s pure entertainment, with those really deep notes in it.

Elizabeth: He would have won the Literary Death Match! People would pack the halls to see him read. The global economy has had a terrible affect on fiction publishing, but I think the smart, small presses are going to find ways to make it work for them – like e-books, like events.

Lise: I think as life gets more sketchy on the financial end, my characters go more and more into survival. The novel I’m working on now certainly echoes that.

Elizabeth: Writers tap into the zeitgeist.

Lise: Where does your sense of humor come from?

Elizabeth: Well, I think a dark place. (Laughs) I often find things funny that I don’t know if everyone does. The various plots I’ve mentioned are terrible things, really scary in real life. But they have a dark humor to them that’s appealing and interesting to me. It’s just where I’m drawn. You are not on the bubbly bright side of humor, either!

Lise: No, it’s a very dark humor. I think mine comes primarily from my stepfather, whom I call my dad. He just has a certain sensibility. Kind of wry and dark. I see my daughter has it now.

Elizabeth: The kids these days!

Lise: Humor is, in another way, a survival skill.

Elizabeth: I remember something you said once at a reading, Lise, “I dedicate this reading to my daughter, who will never be old enough to read this book!” (Laughs) That, I totally relate to. I told my son that. He’s starting to get all-too-curious.

Lise: Yes, that was my first book, In My Sister’s Country. Another story I tell is that when Sienna was a baby, I was very focused on her as a stay-at-home mom. So when she napped was just about the only time I would write. Sometimes if I was right at the end of a scene, I’d turn up the heat a bit in the house. So she’d keep sleeping.

Elizabeth: I can remember doing that in my car. If we were driving along; I’d turn up the heat so he would fall asleep, and I could sit up in the front seat and get some writing done. Every writing mom knows those feelings.

Lise: And you can also change the type of project you’re writing. When my daughter was little, I wrote in small sections – prose poems or flash fiction that I eventually strung together.

Elizabeth: I’m glad you mentioned that, because one of the factors in me getting involved in theatre and film writing was that it much better suited having a young kid. I hadn’t had a book published in a while, partly because I tried a couple of times to write a novel with a young child, and I just could not get that continuous trance that you need. But I got the opportunity to write for the theatre, and I found I could do that in short bursts.

Lise: So when you actually sit to write… for me, I’m probably the happiest when I write. The actual act of writing-

Elizabeth: Is always fun.

Lise: Is such an absolute high.

Elizabeth: And if you lose touch with that, you’re in trouble. I’ve never lost touch with that. If I’m not happy with what I’m working on, I switch to something different. That’s the advantage to having all of these different projects.

Lise: But there have been well-known artists and writers who really suffer all the way through-

Elizabeth: You do suffer, but it’s a fun kind of suffering!

Girl in the Arena by Lise Haines was recently nominated for a South Carolina Book Award.

Elizabeth Searle is among the authors participating in Books in Bloom at the Robbins Library in Arlington, MA, on Friday, March 4 at 6 PM. Watch for another production of TONYA AND NANCY: THE ROCK OPERA in Summer 2011.

Lise Haines is the author of three novels: Girl in the Arena, a CYBILS nominee in 2009, was published in the US (Bloomsbury) with foreign rights sold in Turkey (Alfa-Artemis Yayinevi) and Brazil (Editora Underworld); Small Acts of Sex and Electricity (Unbridled Books), a Book Sense Pick in 2006 and one of ten “Best Book Picks for 2006″ by the NPR station in San Diego; and In My Sister’s Country (Penguin/Putnam), a finalist for the 2003 Paterson Fiction Prize. Her short stories and essays have appeared in a number of literary journals, and she was a finalist for the PEN Nelson Algren Award. Haines has been Writer in Residence at Emerson College since 2002. She has been Briggs-Copeland Lecturer at Harvard, and her other teaching credits include UCLA, UCSB, and Stonecoast at the University of Southern Maine. She holds a B.A. from Syracuse University and an MFA from the Bennington Writing Seminars. She grew up in Chicago, lived in Southern California for many years, and now resides with her daughter in the Boston area.

Elizabeth Searle‘s new novel, Girl Held in Home, will be published in Fall, 2011. Her previous books are: Celebrities in Disgrace, a novella that the New York Times called “a miniature masterpiece”; A Four-Sided Bed, a novel, and My Body to You, winner of the Iowa Short Fiction Prize. Celebrities in Disgrace was produced as a short film in 2010 by Bravo Sierra. Elizabeth’s theater works have been featured in stories on Good Morning America, CBS, CNN, NPR, the AP and more. Her Tonya & Nancy: The Rock Opera was reviewed as “brilliant and touching.”

Images: cover art for GIRL HELD IN HOME by Elizabeth Searle (New Rivers Press, Fall 2011); praise by author Tom Robbins, from the back cover of GIRL IN THE ARENA by Lise Haines (Bloomsbury, 2009); Elizabeth Searle with the cast and creative team of TONYA AND NANCY, performed at Club Oberon 1/31-2/2 (photo by Barry Weiss); cover art for IN MY SISTERS COUNTRY by Lise Haines (Blue Hen, 2002).

Powered by Bookmarkify™

Meals and theater spring from, reinforce and invigorate community. Food is sustenance, a necessity that can be elevated to an art and is most special when delivered with love. Theater is sustenance, necessary to souls and intellect. Both are repositories of history and hope and visions for the future.
From Heart, Head & Hands: Food/Theater/Community Part 1 by Candelaria Silva-Collins, on the Boston Theatre Conference blog

On Sunday, February 27 and Monday, February 28, 2011, the performing arts service organization StageSource presents Home Grown: The Boston Theatre Conference at the Paramount Theatre in Boston. It’s a two-day conference to discuss how the Boston theatre scene has taken root, grown and flourished, and what needs to happen to keep it growing.

The conference draws inspiration from the themes of the slow food movement, drawing parallels between the focus on local, fresh, and sustainable food to the focus on locally-driven, innovative, and sustainable practices in theatre. The keynote speaker is Barbara Lynch, James Beard Award-winning chef, restaurateur, and founder of The Barbara Lynch Gruppo. Acclaimed local playwright Melinda Lopez (Playwriting Fellow ’03) will be among the artists discussing what theatre can learn from Slow Food USA.

There will be breakout sessions on Boston theatre history, social media, new work by local writers, audience and community building, work in film, and more. See a full schedule and register here.

AND, while you’ve got your theatre career in mind, take a few minutes to fill out Theatre Communications Group State of the Artists Survey. The survey focuses on individual artists who are or are aspiring to be employed primarily in the not-for-profit theatre sector. From the announcement:

We want to know how artists feel about their careers, and ways they would like to see the field change to better meet their needs. The information gathered in this important pilot survey will inform TCG as we review our current programs and services and develop new ones that address artists’ concerns. The results of the survey will be incorporated into the Field Conversations report which will be circulated throughout the field, and the accompanying Field Conversations article to be published in the July/August issue of American Theatre.

The deadline to complete the survey is February 24, 2011.

Image: photo from SlowFoodUSA.org.

Powered by Bookmarkify™

How does our seemingly endless access to information, as a culture, affect contemporary art practice? How does it change the way curators research and advance their work?

These questions and more will be at the heart of the Curatorial Panel on Contemporary Art Research, a discussion organized by the national arts service organization Artadia. The panel discussion, hosted by the Art Libraries Society of New England and the Simmons College Graduate School of Library and Information Science, takes place tomorrow, Tuesday, February 15, 2011, 6:30-8:30 PM at the Simmons Conference Room at Simmons College in Boston. From the announcement:

This panel gathers curators from both coasts to share their perspectives on contemporary art research. They will consider how the global menu of information resources available these days influences their work, how they access (and preserve) what they need and what role libraries play in their research.

Panelists:
Pieranna Cavalchini, Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum
Mary Ellyn Johnson, Walter and McBean Galleries, San Francisco Art Institute
Jen Mergel, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
João Ribas, MIT List Visual Arts Center
Mary Schneider Enriquez, Harvard Art Museum
Lisa Tung, Massachusetts College of Art and Design
Moderator: Amanda Bowen, Harvard Fine Arts Library

Curatorial Panel on Contemporary Art Research
Tuesday, February 15, 2011, 6:30-8:30 PM
Simmons Conference Room, Simmons College
300 The Fenway, Boston, MA 02115
Free and open to the public.

Image: Evelyn Rydz, DRIFTING ISLAND #5 (2009), photo by Clements/ Howcroft. Evelyn was one of the Artist Fellows selected by Curatorial Panel participant João Ribas when he served as an MCC Drawing Artist Fellowships panelist in 2010.

Powered by Bookmarkify™

This is what happens when interesting ideas get together and make interesting idea babies.

In the past, we’ve talked about The DocYard; it’s a documentary film screening/networking series based at the Brattle Theatre in Harvard Square, designed to foster the Boston-area filmmaking community. Among the films screened in DocYard’s first season was Today the Hawk Takes One Chick, a moving documentary by past MCC Fellow Jane Gillooly.

And we’ve discussed Kickstarter, a crowd-funding website that allows projects to offer creative rewards to reach fundraising goals.

Sensing the model was a good fit with their project, the founders of DocYard – Sara Archambault of the LEF Foundation, Sean Flynn of Principle Pictures, and Ben Fowlie of the Camden International Film Festival – are using Kickstarter to support the DocYard’s second season.

In the Kickstarter model, if a project falls short of its fundraising goal, none of the donations are collected. Will this one reach its mark? (The suspense! This is like a movie unto itself.)

For more info, check out the project’s Kickstarter page, or The DocYard website.

Powered by Bookmarkify™

If you’ve ridden the T, you’ve probably experienced the work of Frank Oglesby, voice artist for the MBTA. Blue Line riders in particular are in luck; Oglesby considers those stops some of his best work.

Check out this fun profile of the voice of the T.

Powered by Bookmarkify™

Don’t forget to do your citizen-artists’ duty and vote today. Polls close at 8 PM. Find your polling place.

When you vote, keep in mind the cultural sectors’ stake in the results of Question 3.

Images: official portraits of past Massachusetts governors: Michael Dukakis by artist Garner Cox; Mitt Romney by artist Richard Whitney.

Powered by Bookmarkify™

The Massachusetts Artists Coalition has organized two free events for artists of all disciplines:
Live-Art-Speak at the Boston Public Library, Saturday, November, 6, 2010 (1-4:30pm) includes a tour of the Kirstein Business Library geared for artists as well as information sessions on Cultural Districts, Fair Trade, Artists Spaces, and networking opportunities. Contact malc@artistsunderthedome.org.

The 4th Annual Artists Under the Dome Event at the Massachusetts State House, Nurses Hall, Thursday, November 18, 2010 (10:00am-3:30pm) is an opportunity for artists to meet with their elected officials and to hear legislators discuss issues around the arts in Massachusetts. There will also be networking opportunities, information sharing for artists in communities and for teaching artists. You are strongly encouraged to RSVP for this event.

Women Playwrights - Northampton Academy of Music Theatre will present a special evening dedicated to women playwrights on Thursday, October 21, 2010 (7pm). The evening will begin with short presentations by Martha Richards, the Executive Director of WomenArts and one of the “founding mothers” of the Women’s Fund of Western Massachusetts; Magdalena Gomez, an award-winning Latina playwright; and Dr. Terry Jenoure, a performer, educator, writer and the director of the Augusta Savage Gallery at University of Massachusetts Amherst. Their presentations will be followed by a staged reading of Mixed Relief, a one-act play especially commissioned by WomenArts to celebrate the 75th anniversary of the Works Progress Administration (WPA) and the Federal Theater Project. This event is supported in part by the Northampton Arts Council and The Women’s Times, Inc. Admission is free with a $5 suggested donation. No reservations are needed.

Media Artists - Making Media Now 2010 Conference on Saturday, November 6, 2010 at Boston University School of Management, 595 Commonwealth Ave, Boston. This all day conference provides information on Social Media, Typography & Film, Managing your Production in a Digital World, and Distribution Models.

Artists – TransCultural Exchange’s Conference on International Opportunities in the Arts: Are you looking to tap into the International Art Market? Would you like to find ways to show overseas? Are you a writer interested in finding out what it takes to publish your first book? Are you a musician or composer who is looking for an amazing residency overseas? Have you always wanted to live overseas for a year and do research for a creative project but just didn’t know how to fund your trip? Meet key international curators, critics, editors, published writers and program directors at this conference. Boston Omni Parker House Hotel, April 7-10, 2011. Scholarships applications are due November 15, 2010.

Powered by Bookmarkify™