It’s a sleepy August morning, and you are, hopefully, supine in a hammock or in crystalline sand on some manner of cape (Cod, Ann, Canaveral, etc.). In case you brought your laptop, here’s a round-up of useful, edifying, interesting, or otherwise nifty art-related web destinations.
I brake for blogs that find unique uses for the format. Like Good Ear Review, which publishes dramatic monologues by varied writers, including some Mass. playwrights. Though its editor-in-chief is listed as Tristram Stjohn Bexindale-Webb (editor for the past 147 years), one suspects Northampton playwright KD Halpin may be more than the “Adjuncty Staff” the site claims her to be. Find out how to submit your own monologues.
Another fun one is the His Room as He Left It project blog by Ariel Kotker, where she posts additions to her ongoing, handmade installation, as she makes them. Recently, this meant sharing the Mosspocket Spittle Tabs.
The Technology in the Arts blog covers different methods to crowdfund your art. You’ve probably heard of the site Kickstarter, in which creative rewards are used as incentives to donate to projects, such as the successfully-funded Big Hammock (pictured above), a public art project in Boston’s Rose Kennedy Greenway. The post also delves into IndieGoGo and RocketHub.
A U-Mass Amherst theatre student shares the rules of comedy directing he gleaned from participating in rehearsals for The Hound of the Baskervilles at the Central Square Theatre in Cambridge, such as “If You Can’t Hide It, Feature It” and “Simplify (Unless You Shouldn’t).”
Comic virtuosity, rock star-ness, and individualized pencil sharpening convene in a bookstore you can’t find. On August 20, Brookline’s native son John Hodgman (of The Daily Show and The Areas of My Expertise), David Rees (of Get Your War On), and musical performer John Roderick are joining for an event at the Montague Bookmill in Western Mass. Among the evening’s offerings are this curiosity: Rees will present a rare, live artisanal pencil sharpening demonstration. What is artisanal pencil sharpening, you ask? My guess is it resides somewhere between satire, conceptual art, and hand-sanding, but seek out the bookshop (whose slogan is “Books you don’t need in a place you can’t find”) and find out for yourself. (The Bookmill can’t be too hard to find; according to this Globe article, Hodgman wrote most of his first book there.)
Apply to our Artist Fellowships Program, and you, too, might someday model for Vogue and Time Magazine! Further reading to support the previous sentence: 1. A profile of Jonathan Franzen in Time, which includes his visage on the cover (incidentally, the last time an author graced the Time cover was Stephen King, in March 2000). 2. A story about Franzen in Vogue, which includes a Vogue-ish photo portrait. 3. Our list of notable past Massachusetts state fellows, which includes Mr. Franzen (he received the award in 1986, two years before his first novel The Twenty Seventh City was published.)
When selecting honorary chairs for your theater company, it never hurts to aim high.
Stuck in traffic on the Mass Pike? Stay alert for talking felt, in case some Massachusetts artists decide to emulate Superclogger, a puppet show for gridlocked L.A. drivers.
When writing, do you suffer from the Yoda Effect? Chatty Cathy-ness? The Old Spice Guy Effect? A San Fran literary agent breaks down common writing maladies.
A painter accepts commissions to paint people’s ideal bookshelf, a row of their most treasured or meaningful books.
Provocative filmmaker John Waters is interviewed in the Paris Review, where he talks about his longtime tradition of summering in Provincetown. In particular, his happy days working for local booksellers:
It was a magical time in my life. I worked in the bookshop. First I worked in the East End Bookshop that was run by Molly Malone Cook and her girlfriend, Mary Oliver, the poet, who was not famous yet. And then I worked at the Provincetown Bookshop for many, many years. And it’s still there. Elloyd Hansen, one of the owners, was the guy who really gave me my complete education about books. I didn’t go to school, so he’s the one who told me about Ronald Firbank, Jane Bowles; I learned everything working there.
Image: Digital prototype of THE BIG HAMMOCK, a public art project by Hansy Better. Image courtesy of The Big Hammock Project. The Big Hammock has its grand opening party on August 20th, 1:30 PM, in the Rose Kennedy Greenway in Boston.
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