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 grew up in the home town of Vans. Now I find out they are still the trend. In those days Vans were the cheap shoe. We went every year to the corner of Pine and Palm with Mom to accommodate our growing feet. Then they came out with cool fabrics: zig zags, orange, patterns we could not believe, my sister and I.

“Those will never go with anything!”

Mom put the kabosh on any Vans besides black or blue.

I coulda been a trendsetter, mom.

Last Sunday, I walked to the beach on my Carkeek Park (Shell Creek on steroids) walk/hike and coming home I heard firecrackers from the neighborhood. Then I realized it was not firecrackers. I looked for the falling tree to ID my location in relation to it, and witnessed a 30 ft alder fall 10 paces in front of me across the path. It happens very fast. Crack crack snap crack shift snap shift fall whoosh - maybe 1 minute. I climbed over it once I regained composure and a little boy came along with his father going the other way, still wondering if it was bringing any more deadly timber branches and trees with it. I climbed over it and its live branches and got moss and lichen on my pants from its trunk. It was decades old. I left the park still thinking it could have repercussions. So I know life happens fast.

So, I took up swimming at a gym about a year ago and thanks to the therapy of a women’s Turkish bath, I thought I’d overcome the fear and trepidation of being naked in the locker room.

The other day I was early on my routine of changing back to street clothes after a swim when I looked up and saw the president of our Board standing next to me.

“Uh, hi D-.” I said. (motions of skimpy towel to get covered) There I was as nature intended. D- cordially insisted on having a civil conversation for several minutes…

(motion,motion) Me: “yes, how about that strategic plan…” (motion,motion)

–

Thoughts Herold gave me later…

Warm ups:

Freeze Tag (via Ahsan)

Passing Focus

Superhero

Timed static walk (4 min.): everyone states 3 things others said

La fragrance
Oriental Floral. Attachant, émouvant, envoûtant. En tête, la fragrance nous emporte dans la fraîcheur de la bergamote et l’audace de la note anisée. En cœur, l’accord œillet et le néroli nous grisent ; un peu de piquant, un peu de fraîcheur et beaucoup de sensualité. Le fond, oriental et poudré, est le plus troublant et donne à L’Heure Bleue ses effluves suaves : note poudrée d’iris et de violette, note gourmande de vanille, de benjoin et de fève tonka. Le parfum, enveloppé d’une chaleur veloutée, prend une texture si douce et si envoûtante que l’on sentirait comme un voile de soie sur la peau d’une femme.

I also like insolence: une violette triomphante

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

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

No one knows me from an art or drama class at VPHS - why not? I wasn’t in any! (woulda coulda shoulda) I was working at Sears Roebuck at the Orange Mall to make money to keep up with the Joneses of the OC. Of course I love my European trips I paid for myself at the age of 17 and 18 (hey that was paid vacation), and they formed me wonderfully. Now at the age of 40 -something I am doing what I would have done had I been in tune with moi - painting and taking improv. Using my business skills from 10 years in hotel mgmt, MBA at MIIS, 10 years in Internet/hi tech for fundraising for artists! Julia Cameron might raise her eyebrows and I do too sometimes but its up to me to keep my own art practice alive, and I do. Yes I’d like to meet “the one” and maybe I will. Maybe he looks like Russell Brand and has his smart wit… And I live bilangue thanks to BA French at SFSU and Institut pour les Etrangers Aix-Marseilles. Yeah that was me roaming around the art department in awe, not getting a clue yet… And I still have my green thumb from the Sears years.