webdzine.com

There is a great story to be told about the value of Art to society. It does not fit in a sound byte. Art’s great story spans freedom of expression, cultural exchange, meaning, truth, beauty, voice, jobs, urban renewal and economic development. Sometimes, its plot line gets confused with entertainment and hobby. Art’s great story can seem to stray off to myth: an advisory condemning Art to being a trivial pursuit and rejection of Art as a major economic driver.

Imagine: you are one of more than one thousand people from the entire US of A (acknowledging new friends of the Alaska contingent) to gather for the Americans for the Arts 50^th Annual Summit: Building A Vibrant Future For The Arts in America to discover, cheer and further plan to TELL the great story of Art. The place is Baltimore, Maryland on the Chesapeake Bay. 

You arrive at 6am Baltimore time, 3am your Seattle time. It is already 90 degrees to your Seattle 55. Delirious, and happy, you proceed to discover the Baltimore Inner Harbor and downtown on your free day. You notice many vacant stalls at Lexington Market and people loitering around there even at 9am. You keep on walking and sit on a bench in the shade in a greenbelt with sprinklers on to eat your cubed Lexington Market watermelon and read something delicious from Milton Crane’s 50 Great Short Stories. You move on to air-conditioned Caribou Coffee and listen to two old veterans telling their Vietnam War stories while East Coast corporate lackeys come and go. You see that these East Coast people have a particular ease with each other. People are cordial. In the afternoon, you venture out on the number 11 bus up Charles Street to see the Baltimore Museum of Art. Most notable for this blog, you explore works on exhibit by the Sondheim Artscape Prize: 2010 Finalists. You mentally elaborate on the idea of innovation, seeing that everyday life or bizarre creations are as good a subject of Art as any.

That evening, you join your Americans for the Arts (AFTA) tribe in the nick of time to get some curried ravioli from the buffet and get on the bus for John Waters: This Filthy World. John is a good talker, an individual Artist - boy of Baltimore - who’s made it beyond all expectations. The Pearlstone Theater is a bus ride away, and you borrow a pen to write in the dark of the theater. “Art meant dirty when I was young and we should keep it that way.” “Stealing was politically correct in the ‘60’s.”  Unfortunately the rest of your notes are mostly illegible, but in John’s world, that is part of the story, too.

The following days are a wonderfully warm whirlwind where you wear sleeveless clothes and never suffer any chill. Big names: Robert Redford, Arianna Huffington, Rocco Landesman, the new cowboy boot-wearing, Broadway theater tycoon (aka master storyteller) Chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) serenade you with their assurances and examples that ART IS IMPORTANT. Robert Redford applauds YOU for being grassroots, the driver of change. You and your colleagues stand in ovation for the Golden Boy of Film who went on to create Sundance, a forum for independent filmmaking and who testified to Congress, garnering significant funds for the NEA to be distributed in really miniscule amounts in the scheme of Federal spending that make a big difference to arts organizations: millions into grants of tens of thousands. You ponder on Rocco’s story about his insisting on interfacing with departments outside his own at the Federal level, and realize that he is doing exactly what needs to be done to bring Art into every realm it belongs and out of its isolation as Art. You feel real genuine hope that Art will live out its great story.

The highlight is traveling to the opening reception at the American Visionary Art Museum. Water Taxi seems good, but what is this other option… no ordinary walking tour as advertised. It is a parade with Dixieland band, tall iconic streamer bodies, stilt walkers and a chic enthusiastic parade master. Walking through the waterfront as a parade, we Arts Administrators are the focus of the Public. We see, they love it. Children jump. Adolescent boys leap into the parade and dance along. Families point and laugh together. Old julep drinkers put down their glass and pay attention. That is the power of Art: participation, sharing and social cohesion.

You and your colleagues finally come to a confusing realization that the very term “The Arts” pulls it out of its synergy as freedom of expression, cultural exchange, meaning, truth, beauty, voice, jobs, urban renewal and economic development. “The Arts” as a moniker places Art on its own when in fact Art truly exists within every facet of life, learning, and pursuit of happiness.  The great story of Art is really a huge tome of anthologies, perfect material for the one-minute plays of the The New York Neo-Futurists, artists in residence at Summit 2010.

I am intrigued these days by improvisational theater. It is fun, scary and challenging, providing good doses of play and therapeutic laughter.  Learning by doing narrative structures influenced my last series of paintings. Still need to post those. The paintings have already had the priviledge of being refused for the CoCA Annual 2009. My visual art all seems to belong in the salon des refuses. Van Gogh’s failures give me comfort. Of course, he worked a lot harder at painting than I do. Then again, I have an income and he did not, ie a job that requires my time in return for a certain sense of financial stability. He was driven to know color and improve his drawing. I cave to retail therapy. Currently working on my self portrait for the Gage Academy of Art self portrait show. They won’t refuse it but it might not win a prize. This self portrait is quite ambitious - 36″x36″ is pretty large, and it goes beyond the cropped headshots I’ve usually done, bringing in the landscape of my childhood memories at Corona del  Mar. It was the first place and time I ever seriously wiped out in surf, and I distinctly remember eating skittles there as well as Big Hunk bars and fried burritos. Mom also had a formula for excellent refreshment: freeze lemonade in tupperware cups (with their lids you know) over night and take them to the beach frozen solid. Shake hard around noon and you have a slush!   

Coming up on February 20 - Artist Trust Benefit Art Auction 2010 - all art collectors encouraged to attend and purchase something fabulous!  I have my eye on one - watch for the art preview. When you buy your ticket you can ask to sit at my table :^)  http://www.artisttrust.org

http://artisttrust.blogspot.com/2009_09_01_archive.html

For all the new art stuff I try, and pull from for my writing and drawing/painting as much as I write and draw/paint between trying the new art stuff and working FT which includes a certain tedium to degrees of distraction like inexorable commuting, today I met my personal limitation: the point I say no-can-do, sit down on a sideline and feel rather close to tears over everything I haven’t managed to swing in life, all tumbling down on me in one fell swoop as a tremendous sadness. Yet, I was surrounded by joy and people going out on their own personal limbs, so I smiled albeit a small one. It was Gretchen Spiro’s Superhero class at Seattle Festival of Dance Improvisation (SFDI). We were falling into and rolling on each other (contact improvising?) We leapt at and over each other. The handstand and fall into a group was my first indication of deep water. I have never even in youth done a handstand, headstand or cartwheel. I don’t get airborne. I can float, given a certain structure of music to use as support.

Music even occurred to me as a crutch to lean on, as yet another institution I depend on instead of developing my own creative-self reliance after taking Susan Schell’s Bigger than the Body on Thursday where as partners we danced with our eyes closed or witnessed our partner do so, without music. On Friday, Benoit Lachambre’s Space, Influence and Senses was exactly that, but who knew before the experience of him and his secret code of feeling space: around the head, inside the shoulder, around the tongue, in the pelvis; swallowing saliva, I don’t remember what all, but was glad for NIA and yes, learning anew only months ago, how to walk  heel to ball of foot. Benoit finally elaborated on this all being a technique for being compressed and keeping space to move into. “When you are like this (crunch) in a show 100 times, you have to save your body.” Naturally, this application is not one I’ll likely use, but the models I draw/paint could use that info. And taking Benoit’s class made me feel the art of movement - not the dance of responding to music. I peer into the question of what is it to be a “movement artist?”

After Superhero, I encountered Louis walking up Pine Street. I had rolled over Louis and had Louis roll over me for a while already knowing my alignment, timing and sense of weight were not informed in the least. He assured me that was all “advanced” and I got good closure for the afternoon. Yes, I could go there and learn it. It is a possibility. Like neighborly nudity in a Turkish bath, we could all use more occasion for contact and movement. Two exquisite corpse collages from Robert Yoder’s studio residency workshop earlier in the day at Howard House, my home mural project on the deck, and Unexpected Productions‘ improv theater experience last night convince me that my perception is expanding. All in all SFDI enlightened my senses and helped me get to know my friend Art rather intimately.

poetry, essay, play and prose

activity / inactivity

words come to mind relentlessly

Please get rid of all the words:

interpretation and noise,

memories and obsession.

I’m blind with an option to see

right toe touches flesh

space: consume or explore

space: assemble or master

Within

I am I move I think

smaller after a brush with another

A brush against

limitations. proclivities. need. hurry. harm.

need for

structure, permission, approval, steps and direction

the format of dance

is it dance without music or beat?

external cues / internal musing

is impulse possible?

seeking a means, any way to find

ways of being

BIGGER

Sheila (August 8, 2009)

 
p.s. I learned the grande dimension of moving dance-wise laying on the floor

Celebrate Hedy Lamarr

Frequency hopping uses concepts from piano playing!

Next time you use your cell phone, WiFi or Bluetooth, or any other frequency hopping device you can thank Hedy Lamarr and her unique take on conceptualizing music and the piano.

Hedy Lamarr invented a new idea for frequency hopping using low tech player piano technology. Her motive was secure wartime communications for radio-guided missiles. But apparently the Navy laughed her and co-inventor composer George Antheil out of the office. They took out a patent in 1942 that was later used by corporations mining innovating technologies in the 1950s and 1960s. The beauty of this invention was the use of the piano, its notes and scales to arrive at a model Hedy and George implemented using the player piano roll of music. Completely out of context, the Navy could not understand its use, and the electronics that made the idea practical and feasible did not come along for decades.

Hedy Lamarr was a beautiful movie star during the golden age of Hollywood. Hedy is reported to have said “Any girl can be glamorous. All she has to do is stand still and look stupid.”

• http://www.inventions.org/culture/female/lamarr.html
• http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/news/2008/08/dayintech_0811
• Hedy on IMDB http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0001443/
• Ada Lovelace Day  http://findingada.com/

I love this story because practicing art frequently leads to seemingly unrelated ideas, and Hedy’s invention winds up being the core of all we take for granted in mobile communications. Plus, who would have expected such a wild smart idea from a movie star? She had a lot of nerve to take her idea so far. So many surprises!

Arts Leadership Lab at Benham Gallery on 1st Avenue in downtown Seattle was the place to be last night. Lots of art and artists. Put on in co-production with La Sala, Latino artists of Seattle are featured in the current show.

I meet many artists along the way, and last night I got to see some of Wanda Benvenutti’s photographs. Poignant and action-packed, they are. Juan Alonso was there but he left before I could meet him. It would have been nice to make his acquaintance because I bought a visit to his studio in Pioneer Square in May at the Artist Trust Benefit Art Auction on Saturday 2/7. There are still spaces, so you could join me for $100. Do you know how once you hear someone’s name they keep popping up? That is how it is with Wendy Call. Haven’t met her yet, but now I own her book Telling True Stories. She has been working with Nirmala Singh-Brinkman, Artist Trust’s EDGE Coordinator, on EDGE Professional Development for literary artists, which starts next weekend. I did meet Victoria, a student at UW who showed me the Peruvian prints she loves at Benham Gallery. We looked at a scene in a courtyard picturing three generations of folks around a game where you throw coins in a frog’s mouth. They are gathered under a vine with huge casavas hanging from it, some men drinking a beverage traditionally made from corn by women, Victoria explained. It is a print from 1931. I met Bob Flor, a poet looking forward to becoming a playwright in his retirement, and writing about the Filipino/a experience. His working life involved writing grants for Metro transit. He put together the first program for domestic violence victims to use King County transit for free. Writer Catalina Cantu, Bob’s fiancée, pointed me toward several wonderful prints of Frida Kahlo. It was lovely to see Hugo Ludena, publisher of Latino Cultural. Hugo has a great story about having a lifetime of photographs in boxes, receiving a GAP to catalog the work, transforming his self-image as an artist, and getting representation by Greg Kucera Gallery!

Is it the beauty of a blog that I don’t have to have documented all of the details to share this rich experience?

~Sheila