"The minute I saw those two photographs, I said, 'Oh, my lord, that's fabulous. How can I make that happen?'" says Lucinda Bunnen, recalling when she discovered two damaged slides while winnowing her archives of 60 years.

While some people might have been dismayed, even though only two slides out of thousands were ruined, Atlanta's first lady of photography envisioned a new direction for her work.

So at age 85, Bunnen, a collector, philanthropist, and regular fixture on the art circuit, is creating her most experimental work to date -- trippy, psychedelic images that constitute a re-imagining of her own oeuvre.


Lucinda Bunnen, Wish You Were Here, 2015, pigment inkjet print, 26 x 40 in, photo courtesy Marcia Wood Gallery


In this new body of work, called "weathered chromes," Bunnen collaborates with Mother Nature, putting vintage slides on her deck to be destroyed by the elements. Water, heat and time wash out part of the emulsion. The results can be surreal and dazzling, altering colors and enhancing composition.


Lucinda Bunnen, Steeple Chase in the Rain, 2015, pigment inkjet print, 26 x 40 in, photo courtesy Marcia Wood Gallery

One of the two images found damaged was a typical family picture transformed into something more complex. A seated toddler (the artist's son Robb, now 61) reaches for a red-and-white striped Christmas stocking hung before a hearth. Blurring and blotches obscure much of the room, prompting open-ended speculation about reality and memory.



Lucinda Bunnen, Robb Six Months, 2015, 26 x 40 in, photo courtesy Marcia Wood Gallery

Loving the distortions and saturated colors in the Kodachrome, Bunnen began pulling slides from boxes and carousels and experimenting, aided by her then assistant Matthew Terrell.

"We tried lots of things, figuring out how to destroy the images in an interesting way," says Terrell. "We went through her entire cleaning closet and applied solvents with a Q-tip. We put some in the oven too, but all those just turned brown and red."

Then Bunnen put hundreds of slides on her deck and forgot about them. Three weeks later, when her gutters were being cleaned, she found the images transformed.

In "Shriner," a man with an outstretched arm appears engulfed in fiery patterns that evoke a state of psychological intensity. Eroded white patches that are nearly symmetrical focus attention on his otherworldly facial expression and iconic red fez.


Lucinda Bunnen, Shriner, 2015, pigment inkjet print, 26 x 40 in, photo courtesy Marcia Wood Gallery

Some of the images are entirely abstract, such as "Owl," in which the only recognizable part of the photo is the white border left by the cardboard frame.


Lucinda Bunnen, Owl, 2015, pigment inkjet print, 40 x 60 in, courtesy Marcia Wood Gallery

The pigment ink jet prints recently were on view at Marcia Wood Gallery in Atlanta in an exhibit titled "Lucinda's World Part III: Weathered Chromes" (May 21-June 20, 2015), the last of a trio of solo shows illuminating the artist's life and work. From October 2 to November 10, select "weathered chromes" will be in a group show at Mason Fine Art, as part of Atlanta Celebrates Photography, a citywide festival held every October.

Bunnen, who grew up on a farm in Katonah, NY, without much of an art background, discovered her passion for photography in 1970 after taking a 40th birthday trip to Peru. "No party. I just want to go somewhere," she had told her family. She bought a Super 8 movie camera to record the trip and took a photography course when she got home. Her classmates went crazy when seeing an incredible shot on her first roll of film ("Nuns on the Beach," now in the collection of the Museum of Contemporary Art of Georgia).

Six years later Bunnen was traversing thousands of miles of Georgia roads with co-author Frankie Cox for her first book, Movers & Shakers in Georgia, published by Simon & Schuster in 1978. The book, conceived as President Jimmy Carter thrust Georgia in the spotlight, intended to show that the state was more than "sharecroppers and 'good ol' boys.'" Bunnen shot black-and-white photos of media mogul Ted Turner, Coca-Cola president Robert Woodruff, Atlanta Mayor Maynard Jackson, singer Gladys Knight, and other celebrities, leaders and socialites with a not always flattering documentary style.


Dr. Otis Hammonds (second from right) and luncheon guests at his Atlanta home. Photo by Lucinda Bunnen from her 1970s "Movers & Shakers series. The physician's restored Victorian home is now Hammonds House Museum.

Immersed in Atlanta's budding photography scene in the 70s, she also began amassing work by renowned living international and regional artists. She helped launch the photography collection at the High Museum of Art, where the Bunnen Collection today includes 650 works. Last year she endowed the museum's first dedicated photography gallery, which bears her name.



Lucinda Bunnen (left) with Atlanta photographer Whitney Stansell and her daughter at the opening of "Lucinda Bunnen: Georgia Portraits," an exhibit at the Atlanta Preservation Center in 2013. Stansell says of Bunnen, "I was finishing up my MFA at SCAD Atlanta, and she played a part in introducing me to the greater Atlanta community as well as supporting my work financially." Photo credit: John Ramspott

Representing experiences from foxhunting in rural Georgia to visiting an AIDS patient in Burkina Faso, Bunnen's work speaks to a life open to diversity.

As explained to South by Southeast photomagazine, Bunnen maintains an openness because life "just unfolds."

"I don't go looking for specific things. I think I just find things," she told SXSE's Barbara Griffin. "Things just drop out of the sky...maybe if you're open enough to see it, to feel it, to hear it, to know that's what you're looking for, you get it."

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The irony of the 12th Habana Biennial lies in the fact that although it drew locals closer to art, it did so in a rather literal way. I am saying this because some people ends up 'vandalising' the artworks during the time of the exhibition using them as sources for building materials such as plastic and wooden panels. This raises a series of questions whether conceptual art can be exhibited on the streets in societies where most of the people do not have their basic needs satisfied.




Vandalising bronze sculptures has become pandemic in cities like Buenos Aires or Sao Paolo, mostly, after the price of that metal soared. The Cuban problem, however, not only has to do with the material needs of the audience but also with the biennial's artistic criteria. I am saying this because the condition for (un-beautiful) 'ready mades' to be considered as art depends on the fact that the performance of viewing it happens inside the artistic institution and in front of an art audience able and willing to recognise the object exhibited as art. In other words, while a brick in a museum might possibly be a seminal minimalist piece by Carl Andre, the same kind of brick left on the street might be the building material that those in need require to improve their living conditions.




Although art's function lies in its lack of functionality, Cuban viewers might think otherwise. In fact, after a month-long exhibition, the streets ended up covered with debris instead of art works because at some point the 'audience' decided to stop considering it as art. Jose Sierra, a curator of part of the exhibition at the city's Malecón said:

'At first, people looked at the art. Some of them even ventured to touch it, especially the kids. A considerable number of police officers initially kept an eye on the art works but as the days went by the situation deteriorated (...) mainly due to the copious rain and, most importantly, to those who identified the art as a source of cheap materials. They took whatever they thought they could re-use in their homes such as nails, wood planks and aluminium. At a point, the pillage was such that the police were left with no choice bu looking at the vandals in disbelief without doing anything. In fact, a couple of days ago I saw two men working on disassembling Lina Leal's Secreter as if they were in their own garage'.



A guard called Moraima Cobas, said: 'I heard a man, yesterday, saying that people stole fragments from an art work that represents a massive birthday cake made of layers of polychrome plastic materials only to cut those fragments into smaller pieces to make their own jewellery. The 150 pesos (6 dollars) a month we are paid to keep the place safe does not compensate for all the effort we have had to put into preventing people from pillaging the art. Everybody wants to steal. We need to be so vigilant in our daily lives. It is part of our culture'.

For days, those who visited the biennial could overhear some viewers referring to the art works as an eventual source for materials once the exhibition was over on June 22nd. That is why it did not come as a surprise when during the 21st queues of people emerged with carts and boxes waiting to pick up what otherwise would have been thrown away. J A T

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The Philadelphia Orchestra concluded their regular season in Philly, with what proved to be a triumphal sold out performances of Leonard Bernstein's Mass, a pet project of musical director Yannick Nezet Seguin. Then the orchestra headed for a 14 city European tour, their first since Yannick became musical director. By June the Fab Phils were back on their home turf for their summer series concert at the open air Mann Center in Fairmount Park, with associate conductor Christian Macelaru on the podium.

The kick off at the Mann was Tchaikovsky with Fireworks program, but the concert was upstaged by a fierce storm that ripped through the region two hours before with causing downed trees and power outages. The concert started a little late in a shortened performance ( with Swan Lake dropped from the play list) because of ongoing repair work. But hardly distracted the power these musicians possess in any weather as they ignited Romeo and Juliet, Cello concerto on a rococo theme and the triumphal 1812 Overture.

The following night with more rain threatening, The Mann Center filled nonetheless because the Fab Phils gave audiences a musical offer they couldn't refuse by performing the score to Francis Ford Coppola's The Godfather while the movie was screened. More than 4,500 hundred people showed up for the beloved Mafia drama.

How perfect is a serene bucolic setting, with a spectacular sunset in the hills of Fairmount Park the Philly skyline in the distance and the Philadelphia Orchestra playing A Night of Gershwin. Maestro Macelaru pumped as ever for a 3rd different program in a week, showing so much musical range and authority. launching right into the Overture to Girl Crazy, with so many familiar tunes, with its theatrical luster and irresistible musicality.

Next was vocalist baritone Norman Garrett singing the Embraceable You, with the song lead lyrics that are usually left out of the standardized popular version made most famous by jazz greats Ella Fitzgerald, Nat King Cole, Frank Sinatra, Sarah Vaughan and many others.

Garret meticulous technique actually brought little to the song in comparison to his rendition. Later, he was much less studied and more artistically rich on the selections from Porgy and Bess. Taylor Johnson Broadway belter and microchoreo vamp on I Got Rhythm then just soprano silvery on with Summertime. Johnson is one of the finest Gershwin interpreters around, her vocal artistry inside the music. Her brilliant reading of 'My Man's Gone Now' rightly got a standing ovation. The singers came together for a sumptuous rendition of 'Bess, You Is My Woman Now' but Johnson Soprano Taylor Johnson and Baritone Norman Garrett entrance with Gershwin classics ( photo Derek Brad)

Juilliard virtuoso Terrence Wilson accenting the contrasting dizzying, thrilling, intimate, sensual and clamorous jazz-classical progressions of Rhapsody in Blue. His instant energy with the orchestral interlocks, so crucial to the dynamics of this piece were first rate. Then his virtuosity inside Gershwin's seminal American sound. Adjustments were made because the show was miked & amped because of the size of the Mann, but Wilson is so skilled that he sacrificed none of Gershwin's intimate voicings.

The heavy rains cued by the first note of An American in Paris, and sound didn't dampen the sparkling imagery of Gershwin sealing this as an indelible Philly musical night to remember. Gene Kelly where are you to dance us out into the deluge.

The Philadelphia Orchestra continues their summer concert series at the Mann Center in July with concerts featuring The Fellowship of the Ring Live, Diana Krall Wallflower Tour and an all Beethoven concert, check www.MannCenter.org/crescendo. An the orchestra also has summer tour dates in in Vail and Saratoga, go to www.philorch.org for more information.

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When Johnny Depp raises a wry eyebrow on screen, it's an "existential performance." When Donald Rumsfeld spoke of "unknown unknowns," it was existential poetry. Though many politicians and entertainers welcome the label, now applied so loosely, Camus certainly did not. Even so, many journalists and commentators have inaccurately identified him as an existentialist. What in the name of Nietzsche is going on?

In 1945 Camus said point-blank: "I am not an existentialist... Sartre and I are always surprised to see our names linked." In fact, he went so far as to claim that The Myth of Sisyphus was "directed against" the movement. He compared it to "philosophical suicide" - causing followers to "deify what crushes them," in effect turning negation into a religion.

Camus in turn had a religion of his own: a quasi-pagan, Greek reverence for nature itself. Case in point: Sisyphus, his hero of the absurd. Condemned to push a heavy rock up a hill for eternity, only to watch it roll down each time into the valley below, Sisyphus achieves a serene unity with the physical world: "The cheek tight against the stone, the shoulder bracing the clay-covered mass, the foot wedging it, the fresh start with arms outstretched, the wholly human security of two earth-clotted hands." In Camus' version of the myth, Sisyphus is happy.

If Jean-Paul Sartre had written this essay, Sisyphus would have experienced "nausea" as he contemplated the puzzling substantiality (the "being-in-itself") of the rock.

Though Camus is invariably linked with Sartre, whose name is synonymous with existentialism, they were an odd couple who clashed like Voltaire and Rousseau or Verlaine and Rimbaud. Sartre was tiny, plump and ugly; Camus tall, elegant and handsome. Sartre played Quasimodo to Camus' Humphrey Bogart. Sartre famously described man as a useless passion; Camus described himself as a man of passion. Sartre felt most at home in the dark cafés of Paris; Camus in the blazing sunlight of the Algeria of his childhood. Sartre wrote at Mozart speed; Camus at Beethoven's tortured pace.

So what is existentialism, and why does Camus not qualify? In simple terms, Sartre believed that existence precedes essence; Camus that essence precedes existence. In Sartre's bleak cosmos, man first becomes conscious of his existence as a free agent, condemned to forge his own identity -- his essence -- in a world unprotected by god. Camus, on the other hand, was willing to posit principles as absolute "essences," among them a belief that almost all violence is immoral. Therein lies the foul: Preconceived dogma, no matter how well intentioned, is not "existential."

The political differences of the two philosophers spilled into public view in 1952 in the pages of Sartre's newspaper, Les Temps Modernes. Camus regarded existentialism as the harsh extension of a Teutonic tradition stretching from Hegel to Marx, reaching a perverse conclusion in Stalin's labor camps. He decried dialectical materialism, and its use to "authorize any excess" in the quest for a classless society generations hence. In his view, there were no privileged executioners.

In his fashion, Sartre also opposed Stalin's methods -- while at the same time claiming that mass imprisonment in the Soviet Union was not as bad as one lynching in the United States. He objected, however, to the exploitation of the camps by the "bourgeois press" to fuel their anti-communist propaganda.

After Camus's taunt that Sartre was a detached intellectual who merely pointed his armchair at history, Sartre stabbed back: "My dear Camus: our friendship was not easy, but I will miss it... I don't dare advise you to go back to Being and Nothingness, since reading it would be needlessly difficult for you... You are only half-alive among us." Privately, Sartre characterized Camus as "a kind of schoolteacher, worthless in philosophy."

Whew. I sum it up this way: Camus was a poet who wished he could be an influential thinker; Sartre a deep thinker who wished he could attain the eloquence of a poet. Camus stumbled with logic, and Sartre with words, as anyone who has tried to read either closely will quickly discover. Yet only one of them was an existentialist.

Sources:

"I am not an existentialist": Interview in Les Nouvelles Littéraires, November 15, 1945.

Albert Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus. 1983. New York: Vintage, pp. 41, 32, 120.

"Bourgeois Press": Olivier Todd, Albert Camus: A Life. 1997. New York: Knopf. p. 309.

"My Dear Camus" and "kind of schoolteacher": Todd, pp. 308 - 310.

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Mirza Davitaia has always shared an unwavering connection with his art. At just thirty-nine years old, he has held prominent positions in diverse fields, yet his art has remained a constant throughout his life. Raised in Georgia (situated at the crossroads of Western Asia and Eastern Europe), Davitaia served as a member of Parliament, Chairman of Parliamentary Committee, Deputy Minister of Culture and Monument Protection, as well as the State Minister of Diaspora Issues.


Photo courtesy of Mirza Davitaia, artist at group show, Ningbo Museum of Modern Art-China


From 1994 through 2013, Davitaia was also a busy TV/film producer traveling between Germany, Georgia, and the United States (NY and LA). Starting with music videos and commercials, he went on to produce a documentary Misha vs Moscow with NY based director John Philp. He is best known for producing 5 Days of War, directed by Renny Harlin and starring Val Kilmer and Andy Garcia. He was also the executive producer of Jacky in the Kingdom of Women. All the while, he yearned to get back to creating art. Today, he devotes all his time to art. He owns an art gallery located in Hollywood (M.D. Art Studio Gallery, 7952 West 3rd Street, L.A., 90048), which offers art instruction in addition to hosting gallery exhibitions. http://www.mdartstudio.com/

The son of an established artist, he was raised surrounded by creativity. Davitaia spent countless hours tooling around his father's art studio...watching, learning, and creating his own art with help from several studio assistants. At ten years of age, his parents sent him to an art school for a classical art education. He went on to apprentice with various well known artists and attended Tbilisi State Academy of Art. Sculpture was the first type of media to catch his eye. Later, painting became his main focus. He continues to work in oil, acrylic, watercolor, ink, and collage.

Davitaia said he creates on a daily basis. Sometimes it's painting; other times it's sketching, taking photos, or working on new ideas. "I have periods when I work in one or two mediums simultaneously," explained Davitaia. "After a while...when I exhaust one particular idea, I move to another series or medium." He went on to say that he does not wait for inspiration, but often it occurs unintentionally.


Photo courtesy of Mirza Davitaia, Snakes in Rain, oil on canvas, 2014, 30 x 40 inches


His recent Rain series was unconsciously inspired by his childhood memories of summer weekends at his grandmother's house in a small village in the western part of Georgia. Davitaia recounts the story beautifully in his blog.

"In the room where I slept next to the bed on the wall - hung an old rug. It was beautiful. It had some strange shapes and colors of the ornaments that kidnaps a child's imagination and, takes him somewhere far away, to some fairy worlds." He continued (per his blog), "Years passed and one day my grandmother sat me to her side and told me the story of how she had purchased the rug. It turns out that, in fact, it was in Tbilisi during the Second World War period. She said that it was very expensive, but she liked it so much that she had to spend all the savings she had to acquire it. Anyway she did it. 'I want to gift this rug to you, and if you need money for some good purpose, only in this case you can sell it and use the money,' she said." (end of blog)

Later, he found out the true value of this seemingly ordinary Shirvan rug, which was much more than anticipated. It afforded him the opportunity to attend the prestigious Academy of Fine Art in Nuremberg,Germany. He said he knew his grandmother would have approved. It was years later that he would realize his grandmother gave him a two-fold gift...one of her most prized possessions and also the inspiration to create his Rain series. To read more about the rug story, see Davitaia's blog. http://mirzadavitaia.blogspot.com/2015/04/eternal-east.html

The artist is currently working on a new series, which he has dubbed Social Netism. He explained..."Once post modernism has ended, social netism should begin. As we all know, social media is penetrating all aspects of human life: from private and business to politics...it enables each of us to be more actively involved in the processes and influence them. We spend multiple hours of our everyday life in social media."


Photo courtesy of Mirza Davitaia, SN2, collage and acrylic on wooden panel, 2015, 20 x 24 inches


Davitaia had the chance to witness first hand the power of social media during his time serving with the Georgian government. "I have closely observed and studied the phenomena of Arab Spring and Kiev's Maidan and the decisive role of social media on those events and many others. Thus, I have decided to make social media a main topic of my new art series." Social Netism is an interactive series, allowing the viewers and their comments (via social media) to become an integral part of the artistic process.

Become an interactive part of Davitaia's new series by posting on his FB page here - https://www.facebook.com/mirzadavitaia.art

His art has been exhibited at the National Museum of Georgia, the Museum of Visual Art in Russia, as well as a solo show in Nuremberg Germany. His most recent museum exhibition was a group show in 2014 at the Ningbo Museum of Art in China. The museum acquired one of his paintings (the only work chosen from the group show), titled Spirit Rain, for its permanent collection.


Photo courtesy of Mirza Davitaia, Spirit Rain, oil on canvas, 2014, 30 x 40 inches, (currently in the permanent collection of Ningbo Museum of Modern Art-China)


Davitaia continues to create and be inspired by the world around him. When asked if he misses his political career, he answered, "No, I don't. I think it is not necessary to be in politics in order to deliver political statement. I still am and will in the future deliver my political ideas through my art and movies."

To find out more about the art of Mirza Davitaia or to read his blog, visit www.mirza-art.com

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Today young collectors are as important to emerging artists as Gerturde Stein was in championing the likes of Pablo Picasso and Henri Matisse. While some wealthy young collectors like to make splashy purchases to be mounted proudly over their aubergine chaise lounge, there are some young collectors who are invested is supporting true artists. Not only are these collectors interested in acquiring interesting and notable art, they are equally invested in the success and nurturing of the artist they choose to lend their support.


Collector: Alexander Soros / Artist: Harif Guzman

Alexander Soros

While Alexander Soros may be known in certain circles as the son of billionaire George Soros, this young philanthropist and political activist is slowly becoming quite respected and revered in his own right by the international art world.

Besides his recent art world cred, Alexander currently sits on the boards of Bend the Arc, which supports grassroots efforts to strengthen lower-income neighborhoods across the United States; Global Witness, which exposes and breaks the links between natural resources, conflict and corruption; and the Open Society Foundations, which work to build vibrant and tolerant democracies.

While little is known about most of the stealth blue-chip purchases made by the young Soros heir, his reputation as being one of the young, hip and knowledgeable collectors precedes him. He is very rarely seen at random art openings and gatherings, but is known to quietly visit artists studios while building personal relationship as well as introducing unique business opportunities for fledging artists. Mr. Soros' support of the creative community at large is both admirable and inspiring.


Collector: Mashonda Tifrere / Artist: Sandra Chevrier

Mashonda Tifrere

Recording artists and author, Mashonda Tifrere has over the past few years not only upped her social profile, she has upped the ante on her support for young artists as well as built a formidable pop-art collection which includes pieces by Keith Haring, Andy Warhol and Sam Francis. While the beautiful Mashonda is a red carpet and charity auction favorite, don't let her pretty face fool you - she is a serious art connoisseur and a highly sought after collector.

What inspired you to begin collecting art and supporting emerging artists?

I've always been an art lover. As I child I enjoyed visiting local galleries and watching as street artist designed wall murals. As soon as I was able to afford the art that I always wanted to collect, I went for it!

As a woman, it's so important to invest your money in things that bring culture and meaning to your life. Buying expensive bags and shoes don't equate to buying a beautiful piece of art.

Who are some of your favorites artists you currently collect and why?

Right now my favorite artist is Sandra Chevrier. I see myself in all of her pieces. She creates super women. They have so much soul and pain in their eyes. Yet, they are colorful, beautiful and resilient.

I also love Ryan Hewett. I recently saw his work in London. He takes iconic figures and distorts their image. His pieces are very powerful and full of mystery.

How important is it for a collector/patron to have a real relationship with the artists they collect and support?

For me it's very important. I love to meet the artist and look into their eyes- see their joy, pain-listen to their voice. I always look at their hands. I love when they still have paint in their nails. Their life story really tells you all you need to know about their work.


Collector: Erkko Etula / Artist: Laura Mylott Manning

Erkko Etula

Erkko Etula is a Vice President at Goldman Sachs and a tremendous supporter of young artists. It appears Mr. Etula became a fixture on the international art scene just a little over two years ago. However, he seems to have been quite active in building his art portfolio while simultaneously flying under the radar. Unlike many young collectors who spend more time in galleries and utilizing the services of art advisors and consultants, Mr. Etula likes to personally visit and become acquainted with the artists he collects and supports.

While Mr. Etula holds a Ph.D. from Harvard University and formerly served as an Economist at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, once he passes the threshold of an artist's studio, he leaves the academia and world of finance at the door and uses his eyes and heart when selecting an artist's work. While the work he collects seems to run the modern and contemporary gamut, he is particularly invested in collecting the work of women artists along with upcoming street artists. It is also believed he has recently made several blue chips acquisitions. With this in mind, we can only hope he continues to lend his support to emerging artists as well as forging a new path from the cliché "finance-guy" collector.

In addition to collecting, Mr. Etula is involved in a variety of non-profit activities focused on arts, education and emerging markets. He serves on the advisory boards of the Rue de Fleurus Foundation, the Time In Children's Arts Initiative as well as the Africa 2.0 Foundation.

photos courtesy of @alexandersorosfoundation.com, @lifestyleher.com, @erkkoetula.com

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The most difficult part of owning a collection is acquiring it. You may inherently know what genre, medium or period you like, but transitioning from art appreciator to property owner is not without its challenges. From determining which pieces will maintain value over time to tackling the mere logistics of display and maintenance within your home, you'll have some decisions to make. Here, a primer on the best art forms to ease you into ownership.


If you like...ASIAN ART
Snuff bottles provide an ideal point of entry into today's booming Asian art market. Diminutive and readily portable, this traditional art form is easy to display whether your collection consists of one piece or 70. "Snuff bottles are for many the entry point of collecting, as they are the perfect, portable vehicle for object appreciation--they are comprehensive in their scope of design, craftsmanship techniques, and materials," says Phyllis Kao, Asian Art Specialist at auction house Auctionata.

From a stylistic standpoint, the pieces often incorporate those same popular motifs consistent across other subsets of Asian art, allowing for wonderful visual impact with little spatial commitment. Jade, lacquer, porcelain, and enamel work are common in this highly decorative category, with each piece's accessibility ranging accordingly, typically from the hundreds to tens of thousands. However, their appeal isn't limited to the neophytes among us: "Sophisticated collectors are still always on the hunt for them and their history never ceases to educate even the most seasoned among us," points out Kao, whose upcoming auction is entirely dedicated to the art form.


If you like...FINE ART
Allow your aesthetic sensibilities to guide you if the primary concern is décor, but if you're at all market-minded, there are a few considerations to keep in mind. Deborah Ripley, Director of Contemporary Art & Prints at Auctionata, recommends approaching art acquisition the same way you would go about buying a car: with lots of research and plenty of second opinions. "Ask first whether this artist has a secondary market [at auction houses or through art dealers]," she says. "If they do, make sure it's a successful secondary market--just because an artist sells well through a particular gallery doesn't guarantee their work maintains that value."


If you like...JEWELRY
Too often people dismiss this secondary market as all vintage, when in fact some of its great finds are thoroughly contemporary. "Designer jewelry--including styles currently being sold on the primary market--can be found at auction for up to 50 percent less," says Katherine Palmiter, G.G., Auctionata's Jewelry Specialist. Branded baubles by Tiffany & Co., Van Cleef & Arpels, Cartier, Georg Jensen and more often make their way to auction houses and dealers, presenting prospective buyers with the opportunity for great savings--and, if desired, lucrative resale. Rather than seek out unusual pieces--of which there are many beautiful examples--entry-level collectors may want to opt for more classic styles. Palmiter highly recommends gold and diamond pieces as investments for their consistent market appeal, but also notes that colored stones have never been more popular.

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This post originally appeared at The Atlantic.

"This is our moment!" said Tony Marx, the President and CEO of the New York Public Library (NYPL), as he was winding his comments about the present and future of libraries up to a crescendo: "Libraries are the central institution of civil society with the largest reach for everyone." He continued with his carpe diem challenge that now is the time to work in a bigger way than ever before to scale up his library's reach and to both preserve its long-held traditions and transform its offerings to suit the 21st century.

Marx, formerly the President of Amherst College, was on stage in conversation about libraries with Arianna Huffington at the Aspen Ideas Festival.

The NYPL, like many other libraries around the country, has already begun to seize the day in an effort to answer the needs and wants of its community.

Marx listed a number of the efforts underway in the NYPL system: free classes for English as a foreign language and citizenship preparation, after-school (10,000 strong) and pre-school programs, basic computer skills and even coding instruction, and a program to lend 10,000 wifi hotspot modems to New Yorkers needing internet access. He described a dream to build a two-block long educational space to showcase some of the library's unique treasures (long stored in protected vaults) so school kids can come to see an original copy of the Bill of Rights, a copy of the Declaration of Independence with Jefferson's own handwritten edits, and a letter from Christopher Columbus to King Ferdinand declaring, as Marx paraphrased, "I think I found something."

The NYPL is famous as a working space for writers and academics, a "sacred space" Marx calls it, where people come to be together and to be inspired. But the real enthusiasm in his remarks, I thought, was for a less celebrated cohort of his library system's population, those who reside in the poorer areas of New York.


Research room at New York Public Library (photographer Leonard G via Wikimedia Commons)


New York has the largest public library system in the world with over 90 locations. In poorer neighborhoods, Marx said, the library is the place for people to go, where people find essentials that may be missing at home: quiet, air conditioning, books, and computer access. Part of his mission is to bring those branch libraries "up to snuff," as he puts it.

Marx talked about visiting a library in the South Bronx and finding a young boy sitting outside on the library steps, after hours, doing homework on his aged laptop because it was the only place where he could get internet access. "Holy Moly," he said with incredulity, citing as well the fact that there are close to 3 million New Yorkers who can't afford internet service.

Mott Haven branch, South Bronx (NYPL)

I wrote about a similar story from Charleston, West Virginia, here:

...Some 41 percent of West Virginia households do not have broadband internet connections (trailed by New Mexico and Mississippi). Furthermore, more Internet users without computers at home report going to the public libraries for access than anyplace else.

If you need more convincing that these services are necessary, listen to this human story: One early morning before the library opened, a man was spotted settled in outside over behind the dumpsters--the dumpsters!--working on his laptop. He had found a strong library wifi signal right there, and was getting some work done while the library was still closed.

And Marx could probably have added other stories, like the one I heard in Columbus, Ohio, about library services for job-seekers:

Education efforts in Columbus libraries are a continuum from the kids on through "life skills" for adults. This means adult literacy programs, career and technology literacy, and financial literacy. Here is a true story that gives a sense of the realities: A young man comes into the library seeking help with a job search and filing his application for work. A librarian helps him load the application onto the screen. They agree he'll fill it out and she'll return to look it over. The librarian returns to discover the man has completed the application, not by keying in the responses, but with a marking pen on the screen.

The successful libraries I've seen on our American Futures adventure, in tiny towns like Winters, California, and Columbus, Mississippi, or medium-sized ones like Redlands, California, and Bend, Oregon, or larger cities like Columbus, Ohio, all share at least one trait: a deep, keen sense of the communities they serve. Here are some examples of how libraries are already seizing the moment to change:

Expanding Their Reach

In Winters, the Friends of the Library scout the town parks for new moms pushing strollers, and present them with a baby box including bibs, books (in a choice of Spanish or English), and an application for a library card. In Columbus, Ohio, library staff hit the laundromats, churches, shelters, and shops looking for moms with preschool-age children to entice to the library.

Preserving Traditions

In Columbus, Mississippi, the library holds the archives of handwritten journals chronicling Civil War battles and slave sales and purchases. In tiny Eastport, Maine, there is a special display featuring a newly-completed 1200-page dictionary of nearby Native American Indian language, Passamaquoddy-Maliseet.

Transforming the Mission

In Columbus, Ohio, the new spaces in the libraries provide quiet, comfortable reading space for older "guests," as they are called, as well as tech-enabled classroom space, and bright, colorful pre-school areas. In Redlands, California, there are story hours in Mandarin. In Fayetteville, New York, there are maker-spaces. In libraries all over, there are young entrepreneurs who are making the library their start-up business office. In Duluth, Minnesota, there is a seed lending project within the library for the busy community of gardening enthusiasts.

The lists go on and on.

For Marx, it is about making libraries the vehicle for delivering an equality of opportunity. He says, speaking to his Aspen audience, that he wants "a world in which opportunities we all have in Aspen, at home, are shared by everyone--access to ideas and information, not constrained by economic ability or physical proximity. I want everyone in the game."

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Anyone that knows me well would probably tell you that I am a pretty happy, easily excitable, energetic and young-spirited dude, for the most part. The truth is, I am. But if I were being honest, there was a lot of sacrifice, struggle, and discipline that went into getting to and maintaining that sort of state of being... a lot.

As I'm sure, like most of you, my 20's were all over the place and exceptionally tough. An array of extremes of almost every emotion one could possibly experience. I think it's due to the fact that I have always had this innately curious little kid/artist living inside of me as far as I can remember. But the truth is, by choosing to live a life led by passion, excitement, wonder, and a constant search for adventure is basically a blessing and a curse. On one hand, it's caused me a lot of pain, disappointment, heartbreak, jadedness, isolation, and depression at times. But on the other hand, I have experienced extremely high levels of achievement, adventure, joy, peace, fulfillment, magic, soulfulness and love too. All that considered, I am humbled and so thankful that I have no regrets and wouldn't change a thing. I am who I am today because of every experience my journey has provided me - a loving, open, humble, excited, talented, and dedicated man. Now, in the heart of pursuing my dreams like I never thought could be possible.

Here are some specific feats and milestones that happened throughout the past 10 years that I think are pretty rad:

• Graduated from college


• Lived and studied out of the country for a year (Australia)


• Started my own company


• Rescued my first dog


• Made my first album


• Became an Uncle


• Moved to Los Angeles


• Toured in the UK


• I got engaged! :)

So from my crazy journey up to this point in time, here are some of the most important lessons I have learned. I hope you find them helpful in one way or another. I've attempted to place them in a sort of sequential order, at least in the way I've experienced it anyways. Take it for what it's worth.

1. Follow the energy - this is very important initial , and often times overlooked. It isn't to be confused with some sort of "hippy jargon" either. I mean it in the most basic sense - don't just pursue who and what might appear to be the safest or most secure. Instead strive to really stay connected and rooted in all that gives you the most excitement and joy. Watch a little child freely play and explore what their imagination has to offer them, and then you'll get a better picture of what I mean.

2. Hone your craft - with an elevated awareness of what energizes you the most, it will then reveal the thing(s) you can achieve at the highest level. Invite yourself on a quest to discover what might be "the one thing" you can be the best in the world at. It probably sounds daunting it impossible at first, but before you discredit yourself, sit with it for a while and just watch what happens. Which brings me to my next idea....

3. Trust & surrender to the process - when I was younger I didn't quite get this. Being very "goal" oriented, I found myself focused more on striving to accomplish or achieve greatness, but at the expense of relationships, peace, and noticing the big picture. It's all about the journey

4. Prayer and meditation - I happen to be a very spiritually sensitive person, who holds my faith in God. I believe that God hears you, He loves you, and has a master-crafted purpose for your life. Even if you don't share a similar belief, I still highly recommend pursuing a discipline of pausing and remaining mindful. Allot time out of each day to concentrate and listen carefully to the voice within.

5. Actively seek out mentors and advisers - I am very humbled and grateful to be able to have such incredible leaders, mentors, and colleagues in my life - most of whom are all older than me. In the words from my most treasured mentor, the 91-year-old living legend Dr. Carroll Rinehart, he pretty much nails it with these words I will never forget and will forever do my best to put into action:


"Be as authentic as you can in the moment given, where others will freely receive what you'll freely give." -DCR

Are you kidding me? Just take a few minutes (or years in my case) and enjoy the process of really wrapping your head and heart around that one! And trust me, there's A LOT more where that came from. But furthering my point; no matter how smart you think you are, there's always someone older & wiser in your sphere of influence who will speak into your life and challenge you to be the best version of yourself, if you allow them to of course.

I hope this finds you well and that you read this feeling inspired, encouraged, and motivated in some way. If you want to hear more, I touch on some of these ideas more depth in the keynote I gave for TEDx back in winter 2014. feel free to check it out here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HqNgzpdbjVs

Thank you so much for reading. Please feel free to share your comments below or send me an email.

Love and light,
-Corey

Corey Ferrugia
Los Angeles, CA
hi@coreyferrugia.com

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Digital collage by Photofunia.com based on a photo by David Michael Slonim

"Every act of creation is first of all an act of destruction." ― Pablo Picasso

During my last year of graduate school one of my art professors came by my studio one evening to lead a group critique session. "Someday," he told me, "you will have a storage problem."

Those were wise words. I took most of my graduate school work to the dump two years later.



The author's post grad school dump run


Being an artist means making things, and those things can pile up fast. Only lucky works of art survive -- or deserve to survive -- while numerous other works are slashed, smashed, burned or trucked to the dump.

When I recently asked artist friends on my Facebook page to tell me stories about art and destruction I found that I had opened up a nerve-hitting topic. Artists destroy works both during and after their making, and they both savor and sometimes later regret their destructive impulses.

Here, in edited form, are some of the many anecdotes, comments and bits of wisdom that artists and others had to offer on the topic of art and destruction.

***

‪Stacy Rosende Bykuc‬‬‪

"Every piece has several destroyed compositions beneath. I call it 'process.' If a piece sucks, it's just not done.‬‬‬"

‪April Zanne Johnson‬‬‪

If, as an artist, you love everything you make all the time and are never self-critical, it is impossible to grow and evolve‬‬‬.

‪Maria Teicher‬‬‪

"Shredded by hand with a razor (or ripped if paper)... the sound is intoxicating and freeing. Never had a single regret. I took photos before so I had it archived but have never looked back. I do a purge of work every 3-4 years and it's great. Not everything goes but those I am not proud of or works that have lost their meaning in my life.‬‬‬"

Kate Shepherd

Just today. Etchings.



Nathan Lewis

"I destroyed a 52 ft. wide painting. Tired of storing. Tired of hanging onto it. Some things are better in memory."

Lauren Levato Coyne

"In an essay I just posted I detail throwing a six foot drawing out the window. No regrets."

‪Joe Fay‬‬‪

"When I left LA I threw out a few really old paintings in the dumpster at my studio. Before I left I saw a homeless person had made a shelter out of them. I was happy. More recently I've been cutting up and recycling old paper pieces and using them on my painted wall reliefs."

‪Kenn Raaf‬‬‪

"75% of the finished work I do is deconstructed. Cut, torn, burned, sanded and then reassembled and recomposed into something radically different. As for paper used in sketch work I oftentimes cut into strips and weave to use as texture in my abstract work, and filler in my sculpture.‬‬‬"

‪Carol M Dupre‬‬‪

"A large, favorite, painting -- leading work in a series -- slashed with a razor blade because of a comment (from an intimate). The act still generates feelings of triumph following anguish, after many years (and a relatively easy divorce). Another 'purge' of some twenty canvases stacked in a city alley: sweet thanks that someone came with a trolley to carry them off with grace."

Mimi Jensen

"To me, the perfect answer to 'What's your best painting?" is 'The next one.' That answer, which is not original to me, speaks to the realization that rarely does a finished work live up to the original vision in the artist's mind's eye. A few times I've finished a painting that was so off the mark that destroying it was my eventual response, one time even vigorously slashing a failed painting with my x-acto knife, providing high drama and great relief. That was years ago and I never regretted it."

Leslie Brown

"While working on one large piece, I tore several of my own prints to collage into it. Throughout the process I kept saying to myself 'Nothing's sacred. Nothing's sacred'. Oddly enough it was a sort of homage to De la Tour's Mary Magdalens. When the piece was finished I spray painted across the top the word Sanctified! My mentor Herb Olds used to say that in order to feel the true breadth of the artmaking process you must both create and destroy simultaneously. I think my best works employ this."

Jason McPhillips

"A few days after meeting the woman who was to become my wife, I asked her to sit for a portrait drawing. I was focused on landscape at the time and a little rusty, but was still able to convey a lot of feeling in the drawing. A few years later, in gathering work together for a show of portrait drawings, I decided to rework (shakes head ruefully) one of the eyes from memory, as I just wasn't happy with it. Six hours later, though a symmetry issue was improved, the drawing had lost something vital.

The 'corrected' eye now looked glued on, and that mysterious feeling of young love initially present in this time piece from our first few days together had left. I trashed it, painfully, and it didn't make the final cut for the show. Though I regret lacking the foresight to allow a piece it's integral imperfections, taking the piece to the point of collapse was still valuable. It taught me an invaluable lesson about how to rework things, which is to once again to readdress the whole."

‪Walt Morton‬‬‪

"I have two strategies, the most common one is to just paint over the older work and make a new painting. But if the work is 'too good" to paint over', I have been leaving my work at thrift stores, the good will, or the Salvation Army since 1990. Often with cryptic messages inscribed on the back of the canvas. This is more fun because I have gotten phone calls and emails decades later from new owners asking for explanations. Bizarrely, some of these 'collectors' later bought work from me directly.‬‬‬"

Domenic Cretara

"About a year after I got my MFA I was teaching painting at a private art school in Boston. I had just finished a painting of a seated petite female model holding on to a hobby horse. I thought it was pretty good so I invited one of my colleagues, a respected painter and teacher to visit my studio and look at the painting. He took one look at it and started in on one of the most devastating critiques I had ever received.

He must have talked for 30 minutes dissecting every fault real and imagined he could find. Not only was the color bad but the image was sentimental and the composition awkward. I was so devastated that after he left I took my palette knife and slashed the painting to ribbons in a fit of rage. About two months later the same colleague and I were talking at school and he said, "Hey, Domenic, where's that beautiful painting of the girl with the hobby horse you did recently?"

‪Heidi Wastweet‬‬‪

"Some things don't stand the test of time. No regrets for anything I've destroyed (purged). There are a few remaining that I would like to destroy but don't have the strength to yet because I have so much invested in them. A body of work is like evolution in that one leads to the next and the next. Sometimes that evolution branches out in multiple directions. To destroy a piece takes it out of the gene pool and alters the direction moving forward.‬‬‬"

‪Steven DaLuz‬‬‪

"I was working on a medium-large commission, about 4' x 5'. I really was ambivalent about taking this commission...my heart was never fully in it. No matter what I did, I felt like I was engaged in battle with the piece. I turned it upside down, painted over it, altered the composition...but could not change the color scheme (client had specific requirements on that aspect). I let it "simmer" for a while, thinking I could get some kind of epiphany to help me salvage the work. I took it home and lived with it for about a week. Feeling particularly frustrated, I realized there was no hope for the work, so I tossed it into my backyard, stomped on it, squirted lighter fluid on it and torched it. (This piece had to die). Man, that felt good! I started fresh, changed my direction and produced a piece that was only marginally better and shipped it off to my gallery. The client was pleased, but I still felt I had delivered something I would not have hung in a gallery. That was the moment I reevaluated how I would accept commissions in the future. I take precious few to this day.‬‬‬"

‪Britta Erickson‬‬‪

"A very important Chinese art group, Xiamen Dada, held an exhibition in the mid-80s and then burned the works.‬‬‬"

Danielle Fafchamps

"I rushed to fire a 26" figure (interpretation of a Modigliani drawing) and it blew up in the kiln. But I loved it so decided to redo it even though the initial spark was gone. It took me forever to finish it. The second version (bottom right) was not quite right, the torsion at the waist was weak without the energy of the first one. The face seemed heavy. The hallali sounded when a friend said the right hand seemed to uncork the head. Off to the dumpster it went. That was a mistake I could have kept in in my backyard."



‪Lauri Lynnxe Murphy‬‬‪

"I usually destroy my work by accident or carelessness when I do, rarely deliberately, although sometimes I repurpose things. However, when I was recently going through a divorce and cleaning out my house of fifteen years I found a painting I had done about a tragedy in my life, as catharsis -- I forgot all about it. Since I didn't really want it to be seen and I didn't want to take it with me, I burned it in the back yard, which was it's own cathartic moment. Even though I'd forgotten about the painting (and honestly, it wasn't very good), it was completely freeing to have that smoke bathe over me and be released to the sky.‬‬‬"

Joseph Bravo

"Artists may destroy works because they are depressed or are in a creative slump, or simply because their tastes and aesthetic priorities have changed. I have spent the last few weeks mounting several retrospective exhibits of the artworks of the late Mel Casas. The curator of these exhibits has been frustrated by the fact that the artist destroyed many of the most important works from the beginning of his Humanscape series. These paintings were powerful pieces that demonstrated the formative ideas for a body of work that was to include over two hundred paintings produced over three decades. Yet for personal/sentimental reasons, he kept several of the lesser early works intact. Now his posthumous retrospective exhibit tells a perplexing and incomplete story in which from a few relatively unimpressive works another body of exceptional works seem to arise ex nihilo. Historians and ordinary viewers have been denied the evolutionary context for this important body of work.

Sometimes it takes decades for the significance of a group of paintings to become evident. Oft times, the artist is the poorest and least reliable judge of which of their artworks deserves to be recognized by history. This is why it is not generally desirable for artists to curate exhibits of their own work, they are too close to it, too subjective, too psychologically engaged with it to perceive it objectively.

But we are not the best judge of what constitutes our failures or our successes and the totalities of our legacies are legitimately as much the product of our failures as our proudest achievements, perhaps even more so."

Farrell Brickhouse

Sometimes one has to let go of the old to truly make room for the new. Like shedding skin. Sometimes a dumpster is needed.




‪Virginia Bryant‬‬‪

"I left the first van full of my art (at least 500 paintings) with coke addicts when I left San Francisco in the late 80's‬‬‬."

‪Kurt Kauper‬‬‪

"I've destroyed a few of my own paintings. I really wish I could destroy several that are out there, but I don't have easy access to. Might be worth a shot.‬‬‬"

‪Colin Darke‬‬‪

"I've painted over a lot of work because I thought I could create something better. About 17 years ago someone in one of my art classes stopped me from painting over a large painting, and now that painting is still hanging in my living room and gets probably the most compliments of all my work‬‬‬."

‪Cesar Santander‬‬‪

"A legendary Canadian art dealer named Walter Moos told me a story about visiting George Roualt. As Walter drove up to his house, Roualt was burning some of his paintings in his yard. I commented that I never liked Roualt's work and Walter replied that Roualt obviously didn't like his own work either.‬‬‬"

‪Michelle Waldele-Dick‬‬‪

"I was once given the advice 'Save your kids the heartache of trashing the bad paintings after you die. Do it yourself now!' So I do!‬‬‬"

‪F Scott Hess‬‬‪

"I burned all the erotic drawings I did as a kid. From the age of seven through high school I did thousands of drawings, and kept them in a padlocked foot-locker in my bedroom. I lived in a small Wisconsin town, where such things were considered a little odd! Before going to college I went into the backyard woods and burned them all. I was going to turn over a new leaf as I embarked on my university adventure, and not a single image survived my thorough cleansing. I regret deeply not having even a lone sample of these twisted little drawings that taught me to be an artist.‬‬‬"

‪Ron Anteroinen‬‬‪

"I've had 5 years worth of my art destroyed by fraudulent storage providers who threw it out in an alley in freezing rain after letting a rock band play in the space and vandalize it. A few years ago, I had to destroy all the stretchers for my paintings because I couldn't afford storage space anymore and had to put the work on rolls. So most of my work that was destroyed was destroyed because of circumstances beyond my control. I'm curious how often this is the reason for artists losing work more than self-editing and such.‬‬‬"

‪Elin Pendleton‬‬‪

"I destroyed 323 paintings in a bonfire over two days after realizing that the works held no merit for me other than being a learning moment (as in, 'I'll never make THAT mistake again.'). It was prefaced by the destruction of my marriage, and many of those marginal (to me) works represented that relationship and the connection through the art to it. It was freeing. My remaining works are of intrinsic value to me and fully represent my growth and artistic journey. 'Cleaning house' carries more meaning to artists, I think.‬‬‬"

‪Vincent Desiderio‬‬‪

‪I once spent 6 months on a large triptych. It was a totally depressing experience and the painting looked it. Nonetheless, I sent it to the gallery. ‬‬‬‪It bothered me that people would see such an overworked, muddled piece of shit so I asked for it back. I intended to salvage it. Work on it some more but never got around to it. ‬‬‬

‪One day, I got a call from Marlbough. A collector was interested in purchasing the painting and asked 'Did I still have it? Was it finished?' ‬‬‬

‪I told them that I still had a few more things to do with it. ‬‬‬‪I unwrapped the painting and immediately took a knife to it. Quality control. I was out $50,000 but I never felt better in my life!‬‬‬"

Jim Wilsterman

"When I was an undergraduate student in the 1970's, most of my instructors were from UC Berkeley and were there during the golden era of the1950's and 1960's. As a student, I made it a point to try to work for most of them in their studios because I saw my education as an artist as two tracks for my training. One was academic and in the classroom, but the second was based upon gaining as much real world art world experience as possible.

After working for several other artists in the department, I was approached by the department chair Marjorie Hyde, who said that she had heard that I was becoming quite a good studio assistant among her colleagues. She asked if I was available to assist her on an ongoing basis. I was very pleased because she was a legendary artist and a very influential educator.She asked me to her home studio where I was to do various tasks to support her production.

The very first job I was assigned was to cut up and destroy just under a hundred paintings representing 5 years of her work. I was visibly shaken and upset by this as I loved and respected her paintings. When she saw my discomfort, she gently explained that a lot of these works were primarily experimental, and she considered them as exercises resulting from her working out her ideas and compositional direction. She wanted them destroyed as they were not up to her personal standards, and she did not want them out in the world representing her incomplete and unresolved ideas. Apparently she held herself to the same standards she demanded from her students.

Since she was due to retire for our school soon, and was clearing out the older work for the big push for her upcoming retirement exhibition.As painful as it was for me -- I cut up all of the paintings, saved the frames and stretcher bars and burned the canvases in her backyard fire pit. As I prepared to head home, she told me that in addition to my pay -- I could select any painting from her retrospective and take it home! That was an amazing and inspiring gift considering she completely sold-out the show in less than an hour after the gallery opened. It taught me a lesion about professional practices in my own work, and set me on my path as an instructor as well as an art collector. That painting is a painting I still own, and I treasure to this day!"

‪Regina Jacobson‬‬‪

"I asked an elderly man if he would consider modeling for me; his face seemed to express an interesting history. He agreed, we did the photo shoot and he brought a selection of coats, hats and even a pipe that he wanted me to paint. I worked on the painting, a large scale portrait, for several months. I saw this person at the gym a couple of times a week and I would give him updates on the progress. One day he approached me with a letter from an attorney demanding that I destroy the painting. This person came to my studio, watched me cut the painting into little pieces and then I put it in a trash bag for him to take with him. I had to destroy all my photos that I had taken as well. I never saw him again; he never came to the gym again and I understood that he moved from the area.‬‬‬"

‪Evan Woodruffe‬‬‪

"The sound of tightly stretched canvas popping under the knife is delightful but terrifies anyone else witnessing it there's enough art out there without adding mediocre attempts to it and sometimes it must be done. Preferably in front of an unsuspecting audience, just for effect!‬‬‬"

‪Gord MacDonald‬‬‪

"Art Students League 1985/86 = 8100 drawings. I kept 40.‬‬‬"

‪Aron Kylene Rook‬‬‪

"Ahhh! John . ... art + whiskey -- Smear, drip, wipe, glob ... And then comes morning ..... 'Ohhh Faaaahhhhk' .....‬‬‬"

‪Mark Mellon‬‬‪

"I destroyed every piece i created from the years 1998 - 2002. Certain things ended. Certain things began. I decided the work i was doing was not work, but just nonsense. It was a method of starting over. i did not paint again until 2006. Then again, a few pieces stay with me even now, but for the most part I destroyed them, until 2011, when I finally began what i consider my real work now.‬‬‬"

‪Julyan Davis‬‪

"A piece of advice I have given over the years is this: when you reach that point where a painting is clearly unremarkable, and that no effort will raise it past that, do not lose your temper. Do not punch the canvas -- canvas will chafe your knuckles. Do not kick it across the room. Canvases do not fly well -- it might strike something of value in its trajectory. Kicking it will also destroy a reusable stretcher. Be calm. Reverse the brush in your hand. In a Sicilian fashion, lean into the work and whisper the point of the handle through the center of your canvas. Set aside to dry. Re-stretch at leisure to some cheery music..."

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Chicago artist, Nancy Lu Rosenheim, was in Cambodia, drifting in and out of the inevitable vortex of travel and timelessness, enervated by Equatorial heat, and frequently ruminating on a site-specific exhibition about swallows that she was planning for the Hyde Park Art Center,
when she set eyes on the Ta Prohm temple at Angkor Wat.

"I was overwhelmed by the way nature both adhered to and inhabited the architecture," Rosenheim said, of the eerily stunning ruins built by an ancient king, abandoned in the 15th century, rediscovered in the 20th, and made famous in Angelina Jolie's Tomb Raider. "The seeds of the trees had planted themselves inside and outside the walls and stones of the monastery walls, and had become woven into the architecture. They were inextricably linked and any attempt to detach them would have meant the collapse of the temple." To her, it was evidence writ large that nature, if not trimmed, pruned, and cut back, co-opts and claims everything around it, and devours architecture.

Back in her studio, Rosenheim began Swallow City, her voracious, aggressive, ominous interpretation of nature. The exhibit focuses on nature's power and ability to rapidly overtake manmade structures, specifically architecture, if left to its own devices. "The swallow is the proletariat of fowl, an industrious homemaker and a survivor in hard times," she said. "I have tried to remove the remains of abandoned nests in a barn, their spit is like superglue."

Human sprawl and migration have made the swallow ubiquitous on four continents. They make their nests from human and other forms of waste, usurping architecture. As highly communal creatures, the cities they build can seem invasive.

Swallow City has political and symbolic intent. It points to human excess, waste, and a damaged world economy of poverty and struggle. But it ultimately speaks to the unquashable spirit and ingenuity of both humans and nature, that creates beautiful and functional solutions out of rubbish, bred of need.

Though the subject matter of the exhibition is about the organic and natural, the colors in the exhibit look synthetic, acrid, flamboyant, and playful. There is a nod to Dr. Seuss in the exhibition. "I explore the small details from nature, not in order to resemble it, realism isn't the
goal, but to echo its cumulative processes. I want to show intention in artifice," she said.

There is a juxtaposition of varied materials in the exhibit. Though imitating the textures of nature, where materiality is smooth, sinewy, rough, feathery or veined, the materials in Swallow City are pointedly manmade, naked as is, without painterly touches, to reveal their own identity.

Rosenheim fancies retro-centric, by her own definition, "cartoonish constructs," along with their dollops, pokes and other anthropomorphisms. She references 1960s-style analogue cartoons that dole out humor and hazard in equal measure, she says, "for the whimsy of their contours."

In Hutments, and other detail-intensive renderings, Rosenheim merges Disney-esque lines with Medieval references to the Grotesque, allowing every hair follicle to become a geyser, every opening an orifice. In her sculpture Sweating Thitpok, an inverted droplet is at once a squirting excretion and an ice cream splash.

Rosenheim took her cue from swallows when it came to using repurposed materials in the exhibit. "They make their nests from whatever is at hand. If they build in a barn, they'll construct them from dirt, horsehair, and horseshit," she said. "Swallow saliva is highly adhesive and the unifying mortar. While constructing the pods, the section of the installation that adheres to the underside of a gallery stairwell, she challenged herself not to buy art supplies. "I wanted to use detritus in the spirit of the swallows, as well as acknowledge the zeitgeist in contemporary cultural production of transforming waste toward creative ends," she said.

Rosenheim's respect for nature's power and ferocity does not permit romanticized interpretations. This is not landscape art, but plant life examined, bristling life seen through a microscope in which seemingly inanimate forms crawl and squirm.

Swallow City is currently at Hyde Park Art Center www.hydeparkart.org
with future exhibit schedule at www.nancylurosenheim.com

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What follows is an unadulterated rave for the Encores! Off-Center presentation, at City Center, of the beloved Howard-Ashman-Alan Menken Little Shop of Horrors, as adapted from the 1960 Roger Corman movie. But if I were you, I'd stop reading right now and hustle to the theater to grab whatever tickets are available. That's because only two performances remain--this afternoon and this evening (July 2).

For those still with me, what you immediately need to know is that Ellen Greene--who originated the role of poor, put-upon Audrey off-Broadway in 1982 and then played it in England and elsewhere before appearing in the movie (with Rick Moranis)--has these 33 years on decided she's happy to reprise her hilarious performance.

You'd think she'd know exactly what to do vocally and physically, and you'd be right. Her squeaky-voiced Audrey remains perfection and, lithe and nubile, she's still as malleable as a rag doll. When she sings "Somewhere That's Green" in beautifully controlled and modulated, not to say hushed, tones, she may be deliberately breathy, but for an entire audience she takes the breath away. The applause that greets her final hushed notes is like nothing heard recently in a theater, unless it's the applause she received on entering. It goes on throughout what turns into an unabashed love fest.

That unceasing appreciation continues when at the curtain call Jake Gyllenhaal, who's played shlumpy Audrey II botanist Seymour chooses to leave Greene alone on stage for a final solo bow. This is after the classy Gyllenhaal has proved a revelation in his role. Seeming to have spent time watching Woody Allen doing his deferential shtick, the versatile actor (why no Oscar nomination for last year's Nightcrawler?) sings as if a musical comedy veteran.

Shuffling round-shouldered with hands often jammed in his pockets, he's giving as effective an audition for future singing roles as can be. (He's also giving a persuasive audition to be the next Allen stand-in in an Allen flick.) When Green and he face off for the "Suddenly Seymour" dueling duet, it's tunerdom at its most sublime. Of course, gratitude must also be expressed to Menken and the (still lamented) late Ashman for their melodious and riotous score, conducted for all its pop popping by Chris Fenwick.

Not diminished a whit by the passing of time (and the so-so, because bloated, 2003 revival), Little Shop of Horrors tells what happens when Skid Row flower establishment, run by hapless but likable proprietor Mr. Mushnik (Joe Grifasi), attains nation-wide notoriety as Seymour raises Venus-Fly-Trap-like Audrey II (Eddie Cooper, adorable Anwar Kareem as young Audrey II), which is a new species requiring blood and blood alone as its grow food.

The pleasantly garish show--here a Skid Row backdrop and some sticks of furniture are the only set Donyale Werle, supplies--is narrated by back-up-singer-threesome Chiffon (Tracy Nicole Chapman), Crystal (Marva Hicks) and Ronnette (Ramona Keller) and further populated by Audrey's sadistic dentist boyfriend Orin (Saturday Night Live's Taran Killam, playing all other nicely exaggerated parts as well). They're all gussied up in Clint Ramos's costumes.

Because the Encores! series, winter season as well as summer, technically remains a concert reading, some cast members--Gyllenhaal chief among them--are on book, but that hardly matters as Audrey II's mounting dominance over Seymour, Audrey and the others barrels on. Only picky spectators would be bothered by what flaws there are in as a flawless recreation of one of the musical annal's most delightful entries as you'd wish for.

Its unlikely that the welcome production, directed with care by Dick Scanlan, will be moved, like, say, Violet, was in a past City Center's summer season. Were it to be, that many more audiences would be enraptured and roused to one of the few truly deserving standing ovations instantly accorded it.

By the way, the finale is framed as a tribute to Ashman, and that, too, is unquestionably deserved.

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Melissa Ross' new play, Of Good Stock, a Manhattan Theater Club production, directed by Lynne Meadow, belongs to the genre of literature that illuminates family misery as unique, and universal. Three sisters, the Stocktons, daughters of a famous novelist who has had at least one book that changed readers' lives, converge on a Cape Cod beach house where all three summered growing up. Literary legacy aside, the dead father's philandering had an impact on his girls. The eldest and most grounded, Jess (Jennifer Mudge), now lives in the cedar shingled house with her husband, Fred (Kelly AuCoin), a food writer; Jess wants to celebrate her birthday with family.

The sisters arrive one by one: first the youngest, Celia (Heather Lind), with a new beau, Hunter (Nate Miller), on the way, and the middle, Amy (Alicia Silverstone), with her fiancé Josh (Greg Keller). They are to be married in Tahiti; the musical invitation says it all about her obsession with the details of the perfect wedding. As if in homage to another play about three sisters, the property is an issue, as Stockton has left the house to Jess. Fueled by Freudian complexities, the sisters exit in clouds of hurt on Santo Loquasto's rotating stage, revealing the house and grounds in different settings. Declaring, "This will be my life," one character never returns. By the second act, each sister gets a rant of her own, about wounds harbored since birth, and other longings for love.

As she accomplished in Nice Girl at the Labyrinth last month, Melissa Ross brings home the emotional weight of loss, of the dread of loss to come. The Stocktons carry on, and the men react, to life-threatening illness, to fear of change. Fred and Josh share a man moment in the dunes, smoking cigars, and Hunter, the youngest of the guys, mans up to chores, exuding a healthy "I'd eat roadkill if it's prepared the right way." Perhaps hoping to shed her Clueless persona as the ultimately sweet, generous JAP Cher Horowitz, Alicia Silverstone's credits exclude this role. As Amy she whines shrill, pitiful and spoiled, an unforgettable sound that could be Cher's in a drama with siblings. In the end, Fred makes bacon, and the aroma wafts through the theater. The last time I smelled the bacon, it was at a Barrow Street production of Our Town, and it was evidence of life going on. Here too it is a reminder of love's infinite capacity for renewal -- or in family terms, things happen, and then you eat.

A version of this post also appears on Gossip Central.

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Through his intriguing and poignant pictures, Congolese artist and photographer Sammy Baloji confronts the Western portrayal of his country by linking old photographs from Belgian colonial times with contemporary ones. The result is captivating.

Because it is a rich mining region, mining was and is key in the Katanga province, where Baloji grew up, and its past is heavy with slavery and exploitative hierarchies. Baloji discovered that he did not recognize the reality that the colonial photographs from his hometown represented. He therefore decided to make pictures of the new post-colonial industrial or abandoned landscapes, using these as a way of confronting the archived pictures. By this, he was able to challenge not only the past but also the present: "Africa is a European concept."

Baloji, who started his career as a cartoonist, is interested in how an image can be used in society and how he can use these images semantically to communicate and to create a sort of fiction from reality: "It's like creating my own story with different stories." Time seems to go in circles in his pictures, always pointing to the beginning. There's a presence, which the viewer is faced with, but at the same time this presence belongs to the past: "Reality has a complex relationship with past, present, now, yesterday or today."

Sammy Baloji (b. 1978) is an artist from the Democratic Republic of Congo. After his graduation from the University of Lubumbashi, he worked as a cartoonist and later specialized in video art and photography. Recurrent themes in his work are ethnographic exploitation, architecture and urbanism, and he uses photography to explore the histories, present-day realities and contradictions inherent in the formation of his homeland. Baloji has exhibited in international venues such as Tate Modern in London, Axis Gallery in New York, Musee du Quai in Paris, Bamako Biennale in Mali and Cup Biennale in South Africa. In 2007 he was twice awarded the African Prize in Design (Prix Afrique en Creation) and the Image Prize (Prix pour l'image). In 2009 he was honored with a Prince Claus Award from the Netherlands. He lives and works in Lubumbashi.

Sammy Baloji was interviewed by Matthias Ussing Seeberg in Copenhagen in 2015.

Camera: Nikolaj Jungersen
Edited by Sonja Strange
Produced by Marc-Christoph Wagner
Copyright: Louisiana Channel, Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, 2015

Supported by Nordea-fonden

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Damián Ortega, Moby Dick, 2004. Courtesy Fondazione HangarBicocca, Milan. Photo: Agostino Osio.

Stepping into Damián Ortega's solo exhibition Casino (curated by Vicente Todolí) at Milan's HangarBicocca, viewers may feel that they have entered into a dark and unusual four-dimensional universe, dotted with bright frozen explosions. The atmosphere inside the "Shed" of the Milanese art venue -- founded by renowned Italian tire company Pirelli in 2004 -- is at first glance inscrutable and overwhelming. The space appears as the theater of a few cosmic conflagrations, suspended in the midst of their explosive course. Yet there's no trace of actual stars, galaxies and planetary collisions here; rather gears, tools and mechanical elements dominate the room, as the two main installations in the exhibition - Cosmic Thing (2002) and Controller of the Universe (2007) - reveal.

Damián Ortega, Cosmic Thing, 2002. Courtesy Fondazione HangarBicocca, Milan. Photo: Agostino Osio.

Cosmic Thing, first shown at the 2003 Venice Biennale, comprises a dissected 1989 Volkswagen Beetle. Like something halfway between a post-autopsy mechanical corpse and a motorcar supernova, the installation presents an exploded view of the individual components of the original car, each part hung from the ceiling and suspended at regular intervals. The Beetle is an iconic object, and very connected to the history of Mexico, the country where Ortega was born and still lives. One of the first economical cars available on the Mexican market (the artist himself has owned one for years), the Beetle inspired a lucrative black market for replacement parts (the installation, indeed, might also resemble the showcase of a Mexico City garage for the illegal trading of spare parts). Ortega made the work in 2002, the year when the car went out of production: the piece reflects on the relationship between icons, obsolescence and popular culture.

Damián Ortega, Escarabajo, 2005. Courtesy the artist and kurimanzutto, Mexico City.

The entire "Beetle Trilogy", of which Cosmic Thing constitutes the first "act," is on view at HangarBicocca. The center of the gallery is occupied by a Beetle with grease-smeared wheels, and a few ropes and musical equipment -- the remains of Ortega's well-known performance Moby Dick (2004). The action, which took place the day of the opening of the show, saw the artist involved in a physical battle against the machine, while a band played the song of the same name by Led Zeppelin. The car roared across a layer of grease as Ortega, making use of ropes and pulleys, tried to tame it: the reference to the huge white whale from Melville's novel is clear. A 16-minute film (Escarabajo, 2005) is the last installment of the trilogy. The protagonist of the video is, again, the Beetle, taking an epic voyage to return to its place of origin: Puebla, one of the last locations where that automobile model was still produced. The final scene shows the artist, aided by a few people, burying the Beetle upside-down, like an undefended insect. If Cosmic Thing, in a sense, evokes the birth of the Volkswagen car, with its single mechanical fragments exposed like in an instruction sheet for assembling it, Escarabajo conjures up its death -- the end of the engaging lifecycle of an iconic product.

Damián Ortega, "Casino," installation view, 2015. Courtesy Fondazione HangarBicocca, Milan. Photo: Agostino Osio.

Controller of the Universe (2007), displayed next to the dissected Beetle, emphasizes the sense of arrested cosmic explosion that pervades the exhibition. The installation appears as a deflagration of a load of old-fashioned work tools -- saws, pickaxes and hammers -- suspended in mid-air through wires. Viewers can enter this eerie galaxy of objects from four different entrance points. Inspired by the mural that Diego Rivera painted for the Palacio de Bellas Artes in Mexico City (a depiction of a utopian technocratic society, ruled by skillful and capable men), the title provocatively overturns the humanistic meaning that it would seem to suggest. If one looks at the threatening tools that compose the installation, it's hard to think of man as Measure-of-All-Things or Master-of-the-World; instead, these technological prosthesis, crafted by human beings in order to better control nature, would seem to oppress and crush against them. Suspension, or the interruption of gravity, is a trick dear to Ortega: not only does it allow him to turn things into menacing entities, but also to give the ordinary an extraordinary allure. Just think of one of his most recent gravity-defying installations, Cosmogonía Doméstica, presented at Museo Jumex in 2013, where an array of domestic objects -- chairs, utensils, teapots and a table -- spun, suspended in the air, around five concentric circles on the floor: it resembled a house-hold solar system. Ortega's art possesses a strong imaginative power: as props from an Alice in Wonderland-like movie set, his works plunge the viewer into a fantastic, dreamlike microcosm.

Damián Ortega, Hollow/Stuffed: market law, 2012. Courtesy Fondazione HangarBicocca, Milan. Photo: Agostino Osio.

This fairy-tale trait in Ortega's art is tempered and counterbalanced by an irreverent political vein. That is evident in Hollow/Stuffed: market law (2012), exhibited here in the Milan art space. Consisting of a suspended small-scale submarine made of plastic sacks and filled with salt, this majestic installation hints at the fecund cocaine trade managed by Mexican Narcos. A constant flow of salt pours out of the rear section of the sculpture, creating a cone-shaped heap on the floor. Destined to empty out, the depletion process stands as a metaphor for the moral "emptying" of contemporary man. A subtle political satire informs a few other works in the show: Prometeo (1992), a light bulb containing a candle, alludes to the energy crisis that hit Mexico during the 1990s, while the more recent Incidental Configuration (2013), a white plinth casting a shadow on the floor over small cubes of cement, reproduces the contrast between polished new buildings and dirty, degraded slums in South-American megalopolises. The combination of socio-political issues and dark humor originates from Ortega's former activity as a satirical cartoonist: between the late 1980s and early 1990s he satirized corrupt Mexican politicians in the pages of national newspapers.

Damián Ortega, Prometeo (Prometheus), 1992. Courtesy the artist and kurimanzutto, Mexico City.

Finally, a dedicated section in the exhibition brings together a number of small sculptures and objects featuring a deep conceptual strength. Informed by a Duchampian readymade aesthetic, works such as Pico Consado (1997) -- an anthropomorphized pickaxe fixed to the wall -- and Elote Clasificado (2005) -- a dry ear of corn on which the artist has enumerated every single kernel -- can be seen as a response to a certain European conceptual tradition. At the beginning of his career, Ortega, between 1987 and 1992, was a regular participant in the "Friday Workshops," a series of informal meetings organized once a week in the Tlalpan studio of Gabriel Orozco. There he discovered the most innovative artistic practices overseas and encountered Pierre Cabanne's Dialogues with Marcel Duchamp, a book that would shape his work to come. That was a turning point for Ortega's art: the era of cartoons and vignettes was over, and his installation art -- for which today he is internationally renowned -- was on the horizon.

Damián Ortega, "Casino," installation view, 2015. Courtesy Fondazione HangarBicocca, Milan. Photo: Agostino Osio.

-Federico Florian

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"I wish there was a way to know that you're in 'The Good Old days' before you've actually left them." -- Andy Bernard, The Office

That quote from the last episode of the beloved comedy always gets me because each day I feel that way. Case in point: anytime I hear music from the early-to-mid 1990s - I'm transported to an era of alt-rock and grunge. It's almost too hard to take sometimes because it means/meant so much, and I just want to Marty McFly back to that time in which beloved friends were still here, and the real world was somewhere off in the distance.

During this time, my "golden age" of music, I was going to a different show - from Green Day to Stone Temple Pilots to Pearl Jam (of course) - with my best bud Steve and hitting Tower Records to get the next breaking band weekly. It was an amazing time to listen, sing, and mosh. We were almost always in the pit, but somehow a singer/songwriter broke through the rock, slams, and sweat. Somehow in a world rich in grunge and angst rock (mainstream radio back then was all about alt-rock - from Hole to The Cranberries to Dishwalla), Melissa Etheridge broke through and became my generation's Janis Joplin. In New York City, it was common to hear a song from The Offspring one minute, and Etheridge the next. This "eclectricity" helped propel this era of rock even further, and helped this blogger, who was often dressed in an opened long-sleeve plaid shirt, expand his musical taste further. Rock is rock. Love is love.

Like so many, I began listening regularly to Etheridge following her breakthrough Yes I Am album. Yet, while "I'm the Only One" and "Come to My Window" were played on overdrive, I went back to her back catalog and was mesmerized. My two-hour commute to school was very often switching sides of her self-titled debut album (or, um, cassette), which included personal favorites "Similar Features," "Chrome Plated Heart," and the eventual re-released explosive "Like I Do."

Listening to the tunes set off a light bulb back then in that I had always wondered who sang all those moving songs from the little seen, indie flick Where the Day Takes You with Sean Astin and Will Smith.

More albums came out, more hit singles came out, more moved I became, and I caught the rocker in concert several times in-between mosh stops at the Roseland Ballroom. So where am I going with all of this? Seriously, it's the longest lead to a story ever. Well, last month, Etheridge sat down for an A-Sides interview before she took the stage at the Tarrytown Music Hall.

As a fan of the Grammy/Oscar winner's music as well as her "groundbreakingness", and advocacy for equal rights for all, it was a lovely "pinch me" moment not to mention another chapter in my proverbial nostalgic trip folder. As authentic as her music, she and I discussed that 1990s music scene, rock music relevance today, and her recently released album I Am M.E.. She also discussed a new concert DVD A Little Bit Of Me: Live In L.A., which was recorded December 12, 2014 at the historic Orpheum Theater in LA, which features hits, deep cuts, and new songs plus a special appearance by the always amazing Delta Rae.

Etheridge will be on the road all summer, making stops in over 50 cities nationwide. She'll also co-headline some dates with fellow rock icons Blondie and Joan Jett. Watch the interview below, and pray rock and roll comes roaring back into the mainstream like it did when Dave Grohl was just getting his Foo on, and Billie Joe Armstrong preferred green dye over mascara.



About A-Sides With Jon Chattman:
Jon Chattman's music series features celebrities and artists (established or not) from all genres of music performing a track and discussing what it means to them. This informal series focuses on the artist making art in a low threatening, extremely informal (sometimes humorous) way. No bells, no whistles, just the music performed in a random, low-key setting followed by an unrehearsed chat. In an industry where everything often gets overblown and over-manufactured, Jon strives for a refreshing change. Artists have included fun., Charli XCX, Imagine Dragons, James Bay, X-Ambassadors, Joe Perry, Gary Clark Jr., STP, American Authors and many, many more!




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"If you succeed in passing through this line without leaving a single enemy alive (...), I proclaim: these women, these houses, this wine, all that you find there is yours, for your pleasure and your will." The same promise could have been made in ancient biblical times, or uttered by Agamemnon facing Troy, but in this historical case it was made in World War II. In 1944, a French general goaded Moroccan soldiers to break the German lines in Monte Cassino, Italy, in a battle that allowed the Allies to advance toward Rome and ultimate victory. The spoils of war: some 7,000 Italian women were marocchinate or "morrocaned"-- raped in the days following the battle.



This is the background for Marco Tutino's new opera Two Women (La Ciociara), based on Alberto Moravia's 1958 novel of the same name that led to the filmed version by Vittorio de Sica, starring Sophia Loren as the Roman shopkeeper Cesira, a young widow and mother of a teenage girl. (The film can be watched free on the internet.)

Commissioned by David Gockley, the adventurous director of San Francisco Opera (seven new operas commissioned during his tenure), Tutino co-wrote the libretto and composed the work for star soprano Anna Caterina Antonacci, the perfect operatic incarnation of the down-to-earth, clever, resourceful and sexy heroine. Antonacci is a beauty who has created sensations with the roles of Carmen (Bizet) and Cassandra (Berlioz). She managed seemingly effortlessly to step into Sophia Loren's shoes in this story of a refugee mother trying in vain to protect her innocent daughter and herself from the dangers of war.


Gockley gathered a remarkable team around Tutino (a renowned composer in Italy, but barely known in the States) and Antonacci: director Francesca Zambello whose latest coup at San Francisco Opera was her "all-American" Ring Cycle; set designer Peter J. Davison who created spectacular town and village scenes of war using historical footage and video collages by S. Katy Tucker; and Company Music Director and conductor Nicola Luisotti.



A provocative concept

Tutino has written a 21st century opera that looks back at two traditions: the style of Italian verismo opera (like I Pagliacci or Cavalleria Rusticana, both performed at the Met last season) and post-War neo-realism in Italian cinema, creating an excitingly modern blend of these traditional styles. The new opera (Tutino's fifteenth) has been poorly received by the American press, mocked as Puccini-light, as not neo-verismo (as director Zambello called it) but hyper-verismo. It has also been belittled as relentlessly melodramatic film music. These critical voices sound much like the critics who attacked Puccini some hundred years ago and still love to attack him today.

"Musical modernism being so chic -- let's turn our back on that!" Gockley proposed at a press conference for the opera, "Be heroic: go against the grain!" My modernism-tired ears pricked up with relief, thinking: it's about time. Look at Philip Glass who already stepped out some 30 years ago... With Tutino (and two years ago Mark Adamo's The Gospel of Mary Magdalen), Gockley hopes to "ignite a new tradition." Tutino is a neo-romantic composer who dares to show that music has its richest roots in the past. His work honors and celebrates tradition instead of exhausting his energy in trying to annihilate it. Of course, this makes his music a provocation to the modernist party-line.



A new tradition

Two Women walks a satisfying line between harmony and dissonance, high drama and lyrical sensitivity. The composer's particular talent lies in the way he writes for the singing voice, the area where most modernist composers tend to fail most painfully. He gives them melodic lines and phrases that are fully integrated into the orchestral composition. There are no arias in the classical sense, but a style of writing between aria and recitative: in an interview Antonacci compared them to arioso recitatives by Mozart.

One could argue that every now and then the drama is laid on a bit thick, as when the return of mother and daughter to Cesira's native village is announced by a long, bombastic "homeland" surge of the orchestra. But most of the time Tutino's dramatic urgency keeps the dread of war present and acute, conveying that, like it or not, being at the edge of life and death is relentless.

By comparison with the novel and film version of Two Women, Tutino exaggerates the role of the villain, Giovanni (powerfully sung by baritone Mark Delavan), a macho rapist par excellence who hounds Cesira throughout the story. One has to remember, however, that opera aims at the archetypal. (Just open the newspaper any day to find that macho rapists have a timeless presence.) Tutino maintains the importance of Michele, the pacifist school teacher with communist leanings (sung with good voice but without much charisma by young, debuting tenor Dimitri Pittas). Michele befriends Cesira, becomes her new love interest and is promptly executed by the fascist Giovanni.



Mother-daughter drama

Toward the end, as the dramatic story of Cesira and her daughter Rosetta's survival tenses up, Tutino becomes more lyrical, balancing the brutality of rape and murder with the melancholy of popular songs ("Unlucky is he who hopes and dreams..."), a wartime pop hit and village waltzes -- musical themes that in fact are woven throughout the composition.

One of the most heart-wrenching scenes reunites mother and daughter after they have been raped (offstage) by a bunch of Moroccan soldiers. Rosetta, sung with girlish purity by a brilliant young singer-actress, Sarah Shafer, has turned into a lump, stunned with childlike disbelief and devastating adult realization. Cesira tries to approach her, and under Zambello's subtle psychological direction, Antonacci is torn with guilt and shame, aware there are only wrong approaches, wrong moves, and yet irresistibly drawn by the pain and pity of a mother. Rosetta rejects her, and Cesira sings a tender, desperate lullaby, telling her child to sleep and forget: tomorrow there will be no pain, hoping against hope to still comfort her daughter.



This scene would have made a daringly ambivalent, modern ending. But Tutino pulls off another finale, a village scene with a post-war crooner (charming real-life pop singer Pasquale Esposito) leading the dance. The repercussions of the girl's rape are present in the way Rosetta dances with a disturbing mixture of innocence and self-abnegation, yielding to every man in the square, while her mother helplessly looks on.

If this kind of highly realistic storytelling disturbs critics who scorn it as hyper-verismo, I suspect they prefer not to feel what this opera offers them to feel. (Making me wonder if modernism in music, being an early 20th century and post-War creation, chose as its mission precisely this avoidance of feeling.)

The final scene provides traditional operatic story "closure" with the triumph of the Allied Forces, the unmasking of the collaborator Giovanni and the revelation of his crime of killing Michele. This denouement leads to a somewhat happier ending when mother and daughter are able to share their tears in each other's arms.

Clear and present danger

The audience was thrilled the day I saw the performance, celebrating the heros and going after the villains with rigorous boos, while outside, at Civic Plaza, hundreds of thousands of Gay Pride revelers danced and shouted their now legal liberation from arcane patriarchal lore.



The clear and present danger for women in a war zone is reflected in another oeuvre San Francisco Opera presents right now, featuring Antonacci again, this time in the five-hour epic Les Troyens, The Trojans, by Berlioz. Here, as the visionary of Troy's downfall and doom, she convinces the women of Troy to commit collective suicide rather than submit to the victors, the murdering, raping, enslaving hordes of Greek men.

In this exciting summer season of SF Opera, turning back to the past, in history as well as in musical traditions, is perfectly relevant for our time.

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Art world celebrity/performance artist Marina Abramovic (who by the way is now art directing for Givenchy) indirectly provided this subliminal setting to a music video you're about to witness -- if not already -- from her "The Art Is Present" show in 2010 at the MoMA. Back then, her live art performance consisted of spending one minute of silence, sitting just across from a complete stranger, with the goal of triggering whatever emotions each subject, including herself, would bring. Several strangers took part, but it's her response to one in particular that you're about to hold back tears or reach for the tissue paper.



Fast-forward or should I say, refresh to today, against the backdrop of music by Nashville musicians How I Became The Bomb, who capture on their song, "Ulay, Oh" the emotional story of former lovers Marina Abramovic and a surprise stranger -- in this case her ex Ulay's -- first encounter after the two separated more than 30 years ago. You'll know which stranger he is just by the emotional outpour from Marina, but watch closely at the 1:30 minute mark.



News Flash: love is still our strongest emotion! Currently racking up over 19 million youtube views, and that's only within one month, this video is indeed touching. But it shouldn't be surprising, even though some won't get it. Those who do, the majority of us who've been loved, loved someone, been in love or just are longing, know that these emotions aren't necessarily just reserved for romantic relationships either. In fact, Ulay in this case, could've well been a runaway child now found, a once absent biological father, the list goes on. As a result, the song took off totally organically and reached Billboard's Top 100 (#58) last week. Like many videos out there, nothing was manipulated to make this go viral. Uploaded last October and just sitting there waiting for people to find it, the song was created by the band after the lead singer and main composer, Jon Burr accidentally wandered into MoMA during "The Artist Is Present" and saw the footage later, wrote the song, then contacted Marina for permission to use the footage for the band's video.


Could it soon be the anti-"Gangnam Style" viral video of the summer? Most don't bring this level of catharsis to viewers, unless of course we're talking about practice, or it comes to those skillful cats. Who knows, maybe it boils down to 'Love vs Cats'! Then again, there could always be another dress gone viral that causes us all to go blind.

Photo, video stills and video used by permission from Decibel Collective Records.

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Take a good look at Carol Burnett's expression in this photo. Would you think, for even a minute, that the character she was playing was severely depressed? Of course not! Anyone can tell that she's spoofing Shirley Temple.



That picture is from 1964's Fade-Out, Fade-In, a box office failure as a result of the back injury Burnett suffered during the show's run. In the above scene, she teamed up with Tiger Haynes as two out-of-work Hollywood actors struggling to make some money by handing out leaflets. Haynes was imitating Bill "Bojangles" Robinson and Burnett was mimicking one of America's most beloved child actors. You can hear them on the original cast recording singing "You Mustn't Be Discouraged."



No one is immune to depression. How severely depression can pull the rug out from beneath someone's feet depends, to a large degree, on their emotional and psychological strength. Just listen to Ethel Merman singing "Down in the Depths on the Ninetieth Floor" from Cole Porter's 1936 hit musical, Red, Hot and Blue.



How well a person manages to cope with depression may also be a function of their personal philosophy. One of the best credos for survival can be found in the Jerome Kern/Dorothy Fields song entitled "Pick Yourself Up" that was introduced by Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers in 1936's Swing Time.



Two recent stage productions introduced Bay area audiences to protagonists whose spiritual core was taken away from them by circumstances they could never have anticipated (much less mitigated). Whether it be spiritual, emotional or professional, once people have been stripped of the core motivation that has propelled them through most of their adult lives, what chance do they have of a full recovery?

* * * * * * * * * *

Fans of bel canto opera are accustomed to sopranos delivering intensely dramatic (and often heavily ornamented) mad scenes in which a betrayed (and often betrothed) virgin loses her wits and bites the dust. Occasionally they may be treated to longer and more sober operas written for a solo soprano, such as Arnold Schoenberg's 30-minute Erwartung or Francis Poulenc's 40-minute La Voix Humaine.

Without a full orchestra, however, spoken monologues place exceptional demands of stamina, memorization, pacing and nuance on an actor. When performed within the safety of a proscenium arch, the actor can concentrate his efforts in one direction. However, when performed in a three-quarter-round style of seating, a constant sense of motion and multidirectionality is required to establish and maintain communication with the audience.

Adapted by Gary Graves from a short story by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, The Yellow Wallpaper is recently received its world premiere production from CentralWorks. In his program note, Graves (who states that, in the process of crafting his adaptation, he hardly changed a word of Gilman's writing) explains that:

At the age of 21, Charlotte Perkins Gilman married. A child soon followed and the young mother suffered a bout of what was then called 'neurasthenia, nervousness, or hysteria' (today, we would call it 'postpartum psychosis').

A renowned physician of the day, Dr. Weir Mitchell treated Charlotte and prescribed for her a regimen he termed as 'the rest cure.' Mitchell instructed the patient to 'Live as domestic a life as possible.

Have your child with you all the time...Lie down an hour after each meal. Have but two hours' intellectual life a day. And never touch pen, brush, or pencil as long as you live.' She was forbidden to write.

Eight years later, in 1892, Charlotte published The Yellow Wallpaper, a short story of some 6,000 words, a cautionary tale about the risks of Dr. Mitchell's 'cure.' The work was destined to become a landmark in American feminist literature, as well as a terrifying psychological drama in the vein of Gothic horror.

Elena Wright stars in The Yellow Wallpaper
(Photo by: Jim Norrena)

Directed by Jan Zvaifler, The Yellow Wallpaper stars Elena Wright as Jane, a woman whose physician husband (John) has prescribed an extended "rest cure" in a dilapidated old mansion. Left to her own devices, Jane eventually stops writing in her journal, starts hallucinating, and descends into madness as the room's yellow wallpaper continues to haunt her.


Elena Wright in The Yellow Wallpaper (Photo by: Jim Norrena)

The Yellow Wallpaper marks the 47th play to receive its world premiere from CentralWorks. As is so often the case, the production is beautifully framed with meticulous care by Gregory Scharpen's superb sound design. Working with violinist Cybèle D'Ambrosio (who composed and performed music appropriate to Jane's mental deterioration during the performance), Scharpen managed to create subtle annoyances (the sound of a baby crying in another room) as well as constant reminders of the sounds a mentally unstable person might be hearing in her head. The results were forcefully dramatic and occasionally quite creepy.


Elena Wright and Cybèle D'Ambrosio in
The Yellow Wallpaper (Photo by: Jim Norrena)

Wright's carefully paced, beautifully layered and deeply compelling performance started as a model of innocence before accelerating into a dramatic tour de force which showed a desperately lonely woman trapped by fear and isolated against her will by the common wisdom that "father knows best." An added treat was the chance to be so close to the beautiful period costumes that Tammy Berlin designed for the two women.


Elena Wright in the final moments of
The Yellow Wallpaper (Photo by: Jim Norrena)

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In the process of converting a stage play to a screenplay, some changes can vastly improve the process of storytelling. Consider the case of 1999's Compleat Female Stage Beauty, which was written by Jeffrey Hatcher (who subsequently wrote the screenplay for its 2004 film adaptation, Stage Beauty, starring Billy Crudup and Claire Danes).



Hatcher's play was inspired by the story of Edward Kynaston, a 17th-century English actor whose strong suit was performing in drag (most notably as Desdemona in Shakespeare's tragedy, Othello). Kynaston rose to fame during a period when the Puritans, led by Oliver Cromwell, had made sure that women were not allowed to act on an English stage. In his director's note, Ed Decker writes:

I've wanted to produce and direct Jeffrey Hatcher's Compleat Female Stage Beauty for years. It is a wonderful play within a play about the theatre, featuring characters based upon many real people who lived in Restoration England circa 1660.

We join the action just after the strict Puritan rule of Oliver Cromwell, at a time when the people of Britain were more than happy to embrace the reign of King Charles II and his love of pleasurable things.

Stephen McFarland stars as actor Edward Kynaston in
Compleat Female Stage Beauty (Photo by: Lois Tema)

In planning for our production of the play, we chose an unembellished scenic design in order to create an acting space that keeps the focus on the characters, their relationships, and the fluid ageless situations they are navigating.

We also wanted to reflect that, with the sudden re-opening of theatres at the onset of the Restoration, there was quite a scramble to get performance spaces up and running. Resources were scant. Mechanized stagecraft and advanced scenic painting techniques that would later be imported from France and Italy were not yet available or affordable.

Theatre companies had to rely widely on their imagination and that of the audience's in the rebirth of the art form in England. To that end, choosing just the right costume, prop, or sound effect was crucial in persuading the audience to suspend their disbelief.

These elements had to likely do double, triple, or quadruple duty on stage as part of the company's repertory of plays."

Edward Kynaston (Stephen McFarland) is helped
by his dresser, Maria (Sam Jackson) in
Compleat Female Stage Beauty (Photo by: Lois Tema)

In addition to being able to open up his story to include period splendor, realistic settings, lavish lighting, and powerful close-ups for the 2004 film, Hatcher combined the characters of Kynaston's dresser, Maria, with Margaret Hughes from his original stage play -- a move that helped to tighten the screenplay, strengthen dramatic motivations, and bring a new economy to a crucial part of his story.

On the surface, Compleat Female Stage Beauty would seem like a perfect fit for NCTC's audience.

• Its main character is a talented drag personality who is also involved in a long-term relationship with a noble (George Villiers, the Second Duke of Birmingham).


• The play includes a scene in which Kynaston is eager to experience the psychological differences in experiencing male and female sexuality depending on gender roles, gender identity, and sexual positions.


• After losing his professional career to a "real woman," Kynaston finds himself without his romantic partner, his highly marketable skills, as well as the fame and loyal audience he had grown to cherish.


• When forced to coach his rival (the so-called Margaret Hughes) in how to perform Desdemona's death scene for a command performance before King Charles II, he is essentially being forced to train his replacement at no charge.


• When the King's mistress, Nell Gwynne, shows Kynaston the trick that will allow him to return to the stage, an effeminate gay man (whose sexual identity was heavily invested in being a bottom) finds renewed success after being forced to "butch it up."

Edward Kynaston (Stephen McFarland) meets his rival, Margaret
Hughes (Elissa Beth Stebbins) in Compleat Female Stage Beauty
(Photo by: Lois Tema)

Unfortunately, the New Conservatory Theatre Center's opening night performance of Hatcher's play lacked a great deal of electricity until late in Act II, when Kynaston coaches his dresser, Maria (who has stepped into the role of Desdemona), and then performs the final scene of Othello before King Charles II. Up until that point, much of the evening had seemed quite labored. Some of the causative factors might have included the following:

• Although Charles II was known as "The Merrie Monarch" (not to be confused with Hawaii's King Kalakaua), Decker chose to portray him as a rather silly twit, which seemed a bit unnecessary.


• While I understand Decker's desire for a stripped down playing space, it made Giulio Cesare Perrone's unit set look like a cheap high school production.


• Although several of the actors in supporting roles did creditable work -- most notably Ali Haas as Nell Gwynne; Sam Jackson as Maria, Justin Liszanckie as Kynaston's lover, and Patrick Ross as the journalist, Samuel Pepys -- there was never any doubt that Stephen McFarland was a much stronger performer than anyone else in the cast. Some of the other actors almost seemed amateurish by comparison.

Maria (Sam Jackson) tends to the degraded and humiliated
Kynaston (Stephen McFarland) in a scene from
Compleat Female State Beauty (Photo by: Lois Tema)

Others in the cast included Colleen Egan as Lady Meresvale, Chris Morrell as Ms. Fayne, and Elissa Beth Stebbins as Margaret Hughes. Jeffrey Hoffman did double duty as the lisping Sedley and Ms. Revels while Matt Weimer took turns appearing as King Charles II and Betterton (the actor/theatre manager who is Kynaston's boss).


Colleen Egan (Lady Meresvale), Chris Morrell (Ms. Fayne),
and Elissa Beth Stebbins (Margaret Hughes) in a scene from
Compleat Female Stage Beauty (Photo by: Lois Tema)


To read more of George Heymont go to My Cultural Landscape

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Every year in July, Americans wearing their washed-out flag shirts from 2000 that they've kept because they only wear them once per year (unless they recently painted their living room) gather together on an open field with picnic blankets and folding chairs to partake in the Sisyphean task of capturing the best moments of a fireworks show on camera. In a poll conducted by the United States Wasting Time Foundation (USWTF), when presented with a list of most patriotic pastimes, 73% of respondents chose "trying to take good pictures at a fireworks show on the 4th of July" over "listening to Bob Dylan," "attending a baseball game and actually staying until the ninth inning," and "proudly singing the chorus to 'American Pie,' but mumbling through every other verse."

Human beings have a long history of being interested in capturing these temporal bursts of color in a format they can keep forever, but ironically never look at these photos after July 5th of the year the photo was taken. So dire was this need to immortalize fireworks on our memory cards and overcrowded photo libraries on our phones that camera manufacturers had to have an important meeting.

Leading Camera Manufacturer: "The people want to be able to take pictures of fireworks."

More Expensive Leading Camera Manufacturer: "But a dark sky combined with a colorful explosive that's at it's most photogenic for about two seconds? For the amateur photographer, it's impossible to get a good shot!"

Leading Camera Manufacturer: "You're right..."

Shady Camera Manufacturer Conglomerate That Also Sells Appliances and Frozen Foods: "Well, why don't we try to develop a fireworks setting to match the snow and pet settings we rolled out..."

More Expensive Leading Camera Manufacturer: "That's a great idea!"

Shady Camera Manufacturer Conglomerate That Also Sells Appliances and Frozen Foods: "Only let's make sure it doesn't work so all the fireworks just look like the outtakes from an acid trip at an EDM festival."

And so the camera setting became standard on many point and shoot digital cameras.



I'm no better than any of you. There are a number of fireworks pictures buried in my Facebook photo albums. Every July I promise myself that this will be the year I'll give up the pursuit of taking one Great fireworks picture, but I keep trying anyway, with marginal success.








But I can see the Great Picture in my mind. The photo is clear and crisp and worthy of a special edition stamp! I would catch one of those huge red, white, and blue asterisks at its fullest in the sky--the kind you can tell by the nnneeeeeeeeeeoow BOOOOM that you're going to have to crane your neck back to see just how far it stretches into the atmosphere. This sublime could-be photo is the Moby Dick of my summer every year, but the true paradox of my quest is that I am literally the only person in the entire world who cares about taking, seeing, or sharing this picture.

This may be hard for some people to hear, but it needs to be said before we all miss out on reveling in the swell of pride only Kate Perry's "Firework" can summon at a fireworks display: No one is looking at your fireworks pictures. Maybe your boring family members will, and maybe a few of the people you're trying to impress with your existence on social media will idly glance at them, but at the end of the day, no one lives for fireworks pictures. People don't even really like them. They just exist, and we keep adding to the library of useless fireworks pictures every year.

Fireworks pictures are all about the chase. You're on the ground getting eaten alive by mosquitos sitting between some guy telling his grandson about a war he served in and a nauseating couple watching the entire show in each other's eyes, and the music picks up and the explosives start firing off faster, and a tiny thought wiggles its way out of a pocket of your brain saying, "Capture this!!!! You need to get this!!! Look at how cool this is!! Don't you want to keep this to look at this in November???" So you spend the entire fireworks display waiting for the best shot after too many misfires, and by the time its over, you've got 37 shaky-handed pictures that look like they could easily be a streetlight captured by a photographer with epilepsy.

Unlike your very best selfies or your enviable vacation pictures, no one is interested in revisiting fireworks photos. When it comes to holidays whose pictures you're most likely to look at again later in the year, Fourth of July comes last, and it's not because fireworks are lame; it's because fireworks are at their best when you see them live. I'm not one to admonish people for wanting to keep a memento of life's sweetest moments (#picsoritdidnthappen), but in the case of fireworks, it's really best to put the camera down and just enjoy the show.

A random picture of fireworks won't conjure memories of that awful Murphy's Law feeling when you unwittingly sit behind a tree that blocks your view. It also can't portray the surprise you feel when some tough guy sitting next to you wells up in tears staring at the sky. A misfired picture can't trap the solemn magic of celebrating something with friends, family, and strangers, all with their eyes lit up in wonder over something so simple.

There's a time and a place for fireworks pictures, but unless you're at Disney World getting Cinderella's castle in the background, know that fireworks pictures -- much like photos of food and your open laptop -- are the kind of thing people will see once and never look at again. Don't let getting the perfect fireworks pictures make you feel like a plastic bag drifting through the wind, because no one's looking at your fireworks pictures anyway.

Originally published on Sass & Balderdash.

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