Tag Archive - News

Art On the Radar : Gwarlingo’s Don’t-Miss List for September

September 14, 2012 in Events, Images, News, Performance, Sounds with 2 Comments

 

British Street artist Slinkachu left this miniature “Hanging On” in the streets of Hong Kong. It’s one of the many images on view in his New York and London show, Global Model Village. (Photo © Slinkachu courtesy the artist)


 
The invitations, event notices, emails, and review copies are pouring in. The fall arts season has officially arrived. If only I could clone myself, then perhaps, I’d have a chance of catching even a handful of these concerts, openings, and shows.

I wish I could attend everything listed here, but since I can’t, I hope you’ll venture out in the coming weeks and report back on what you loved (and what you didn’t).

Here is my completely biased Don’t-Miss List for the coming month (in no particular order).

If I’ve overlooked an event you think Gwarlingo readers would enjoy, feel free to add your event to the Comments section below or to the Gwarlingo Facebook page.

 
 

Slinkachu in London and New York

British street artist Slinkachu (a favorite here at Gwarlingo) is celebrating the launch of his new book with two solo shows in London and New York. Global Model Village opens to the public September 27th at Andipa Gallery in London and runs until October 27th. There will also be a pop-up show in New York City from October 3rd through the 7th. Both shows will feature new work shot in different cities around the world.

 

 
Also be sure to check out Slinkachu‘s new book Global Model Village: The International Street Art of Slinkachu, which collects together images of installations the street artist has left in cities around the world, including New York, Moscow, Cape Town, Beijing, Berlin, Hong Kong and, of course, his hometown of London. The books is available in UK, US, and German editions. There will also be a Japanese version released in the new year by Sogensha (図書出版 創元社), along with a Japanese version of Slinkachu’s original book. 驚くべき.

 

 

 

John Kelly in 1993 as Cocteau in Light Shall Lift Them (Photo by Rick Gillette courtesy John Kelly)

John Kelly at Joe’s Pub in New York City

When performance artist-actor-writer-video artist-singer-dancer John Kelly is scheduled to perform, count me in. Kelly has the reputation as an artist’s artist. Over the years, he has worked with everyone from Nan Goldin to Antony and the Johnsons and James Franco. His work is so daring and original it can be difficult to boil down to a bite-sized blurb. He has received numerous awards, including Obies, Bessies, and The Rome Prize (a testament to how diverse his work is). If you don’t know Kelly’s work yet, keep him on your radar. I’m building an entire New York trip around his upcoming cabaret performances at Joe’s Pub. Seeing Kelly perform is always revelatory.
 

John Kelly (Photo by Billy Erb courtesy John Kelly)


John Kelly makes his solo Joe’s Pub debut performing songs by Kurt Weill, Charles Aznavour, Holcombe Waller, Richard Einhorn, The Incredible String Band and Richard Thompson, among others. Tickets are $20. Performances are October 14th, October 28th, and November 4th. Visit the Joe’s Pub website for more information or to purchase tickets. You can also read more about the show on John Kelly’s Facebook event page.

 

 

 

OPERAtion Brooklyn 2012. Back Row: Zach Redler, Sidney Marquez Boquiren, Daniel Neer, Kayleigh Butcher, Daniel Felsenfeld. Front Row: Sara Cooper, Noah Himmelstein. (Photo by Meghan Hickey courtesy of American Opera Projects)

OPERAtion Brooklyn Brings Opera to The BEAT Festival

American Opera Projects and Opera on Tap’s acclaimed series returns for a new showcase of operatic works from and inspired by Brooklyn.

Composer Daniel Felsenfeld will premiere A Genuine Willingness to Help (Book I), the first installment in the composer’s “Author Project,” which features music and multi-media performance based on texts by living writers and songwriters, such as Rick Moody, Jonathan Lethem, Stephen Elliott, and Fiona Maazel. Felsenfeld’s Raw Footage: Composer’s Cut, based on Robert Coover’s novel The Adventures of Lucky Pierre: Director’s Cut, is also on the program, along with Stop and Frisk by composer Sidney Marquez Boquiren and librettist Daniel Neer and Male Identity by composer Zach Redler and librettist Sara Cooper.
 

Topping off the program are four songs drawn from One Ring Zero’s album As Smart As We Are (The Author Project). Viggo Mortensen (yes, that Viggo Mortensen) calls these “mysterious pop songs,” arranged for piano and chamber ensemble by Michael Hearst and Joshua Camp,  “…a well-orchestrated booby trap for music lovers everywhere…“ The works feature texts by Margaret Atwood, Neil Gaiman, Isa Chandra Moskowitz, and David Wondrich.

OPERAtion Brooklyn is part of the first annual BEAT Festival. BEAT creates a platform to celebrate Brooklyn’s finest performing artists, ”extraordinary world-class performers who stand as the greatest innovators of the performing arts,” says festival artistic director Stephen Shelley. From September 12-23, artists will perform in venues throughout the borough. For complete information and festival passes visit www.beatbrooklyn.com.

Individual tickets for OPERAtion Brooklyn are $20 (passes to the entire BEAT Festival are also available). There will be three opportunities to see this special OPERAtion Brooklyn performance:
 

Thursday, Sept. 13 – 7:30 PM
Flatbush Reformed Church
890 Flatbush Avenue, Flatbush

 

Wednesday, Sept. 19 – 7:30 PM
Brooklyn Conservatory of Music
58 7th Avenue, Park Slope

 

Saturday, Sept. 22 – 7:30 PM
The Irondale Center
85 S. Oxford Street, Ft Greene

 

 

 

Andrew Ohanesian’s The House Party under construction at Pierogi’s The Boiler (Photo by Will Femia courtesy ny.curbed.com)

Andrew Ohanesian’s The House Party at Pierogi’s The Boiler in Williamsburg

Artist Andrew Ohanesian is fascinated with art that imitates reality. He’s built a confessional-booth-sized bar for one (with beer on tap), a row house  and a fully stocked, walk-in, refrigerated cooler (installed at English Kills Art Gallery). For his latest work, The House Party, Ohanesian has constructed a full-sized suburban home inside Pierogi’s satellite gallery, The Boiler, a former factory boiler room with 40 foot ceilings located at 191 N. 14th St. in Willisamburg.

Ohanesian’s house will be opened up to the public for a house party on September 14th, the opening night of the exhibition. In this at once creative and destructive act, the artist enlists the audience to provide the final element of the work itself, giving each viewer the unique opportunity to physically leave his or her own scar on the House, by partying within it throughout the evening. You can see an animation of the house in this video:
 


 
As Stephen Truax reported on Hyperallergic, “depending on New York Fire Department’s ruling on the certificate of occupancy, visitors may or may not have to sign a waiver to enter the space. However, if you do get in, you will enjoy a functional bathroom and kitchen with plumbing (as well as, thankfully, ventilation), a working stove (including an oven hood), dishwasher, fridge (complete with water dispenser), garbage disposal, 94,000 BTUs of AC cooling power, dish cable, and wifi.”

There will be a lot of openings to choose from the night of the 14th, but be sure to put this one on the must-see list.

Andrew Ohanesian’s The House Party is on view at Pierogi’s The Boiler at 191 North 14th Street in Brooklyn September 14th-November 18th.

 

 

 

Fred Hersch Trio at the Village Vanguard and On Tour

Composer and pianist Fred Hersch’s return to jazz after several months in an AIDS-related coma was nothing short of miraculous. (You can hear Hersch discuss his illness and recovery with Fresh Air’s Terry Gross here). Hersch is back with a new tour, a new album, and is better than ever.

The Grammy-nominated performer is currently performing at the Village Vanguard with his trio, John Hébert on bass and Eric McPherson on drums, to celebrate the release of his new two-disk CD, Alive at the Vanguard. Recorded in February 2012, the new album contains seven new Hersch compositions, as well as music by Coleman, Kern, Porter and Monk.

I’ve seen Hersch perform over seven times now, and he never disappoints. If you can’t catch The Fred Hersch Trio for their six-night performance at the Village Vanguard in New York, you can also see them on tour this September in Boston, Chicago, D.C., Baltimore, and Cincinnati. Tour dates and venues are listed below. You can listen to tracks off the new album right here:

 


 

You can purchase a copy of the Fred Hersch Trio’s new album Alive at the Vanguard from Amazon or iTunes. (A portion of your purchase will benefit Gwarlingo).

 

The Fred Hersch Trio’s U.S. Tour Dates:
 
Tuesday-Sunday Sept 11th-16th: Village Vanguard, NYC
Wednesday September 19th: Scullers, Boston, MA
Thursday-Sunday September 20th-23rd: Jazz Showcase, Chicago IL
Monday-Tuesday September 24th-25th: Blue Wisp, Cincinnati OH
Thursday, September 27th: Blues Alley, Washington, DC
Friday September 28th: An Die Musik Live, Baltimore, MD

 

 

 

Tatzu Nishi’s Discovering Columbus in New York City

Thanks to the Public Art Fund, Japanese artist Tatzu Nishi has created a different kind of “house party” at Columbus Circle in Manhattan. Discovering Columbus places the 13-foot-tall statue of Columbus in the center of an American living room six stories above the city streets, temporarily transforming it into a contemporary artwork. According to the Public Art Fund website, the room will feature many of the trappings of a domestic living room—lamps, a couch, a coffee table, a television, and more—as well as custom wallpaper by the artist. Through large, loft-style windows, visitors will have dramatic views of Central Park and Midtown Manhattan that will be seen from Columbus’s perspective for the first time.

Tatzu Nishi’s Discovering Columbus (Photo courtesy of the artist and the Public Art Fund, NY)

In a stroke of genius, the Public Art Fund is simultaneously overseeing the conservation of the 1892 Columbus Monument in cooperation with the New York City Department of Parks & Recreation. The scaffolding supporting Nishi’s living room is allowing conservators to access the column and figure at its top. The restoration is expected to be completed by January of 2013. (Why can’t all government bureaucracies be this creative with their resources?)

Over 100,000 people are expected to visit the installation, which is on view from September 20th through November 18th.

Tickets to climb six stories to this home-away-from-home are free, but must be booked in advance. (Elevator access is available for those who require special assistance.) Register for free tickets at the Public Art website.

 

 

 

Norman Mooney, Series 4 No. 1, 2007. Carbon on aluminum panel, 72 x 144 inches. (Photo courtesy the artist and Causey Contemporary)

Norman Mooney’s Close Your Eyes at Causey Contemporary in Williamsburg

If you’re in Williamsburg Friday night to catch the opening of Andrew Ohanesian’s The House Party, stop by Causey Contemporary for Norman Mooney’s solo show of monumental carbon smoke drawings, Close Your Eyes. The Irish artist’s carbon drawings are created with layers of billowing smoke preserved on aluminum panel and have both a physical and metaphysical presence.

Causey Contemporary is located at 92 Wythe Avenue in Brooklyn. The gallery will be participating in the Williamsburg Gallery Association‘s Every Second Friday on September 14, 2012 from 6-10 p.m. along with Art101, Figureworks, Front Room, Gitana Rosa, Parker’s Box, Pierogi, P339, Skink Ink Editions, T.A.P.S. Gallery, The Boiler, Ventana 244 and Williamsburg Art and Historical Society. Galleries will be open late and the wine and cheese will be in heavy supply. More information is available at the Causey Contemporary website.

 
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Being André Gregory : Before and After Dinner

August 8, 2012 in Events, Images, News, Performance, Process, Words with 3 Comments

 

Self-portraits by actor and theatre director André Gregory (Photo courtesy Atlas Theatre Company)

 

We gathered around André Gregory like children eagerly assembling around the librarian for story hour. André perched in a picture window inside Winsome Brown and Claude Arpels’ fashionable Tribeca apartment. Behind him, the sun was setting over the Hudson River. On the wall hung a series of striking self-portraits by Gregory.

We were gathered in Tribeca with some of André’s closest friends and supporters to hear the legendary raconteur tell stories. The event was also a party for Before and After Dinner, a new documentary about Gregory directed by his wife, filmmaker Cindy Kleine. The genuine affection the guests felts for André was palpable as he moved around the room embracing old friends and asking questions of acquaintances and strangers. The passion, empathy, and sincerity Gregory radiates on screen also comes through in person, a fact that is quite remarkable when you consider André’s personal history.

“How many of you have seen the film The Shining?” he asked. “That’s a documentary about my childhood,” André said with a laugh. And he wasn’t kidding.

On May 18, 2009, the opening day of Wally Shawn’s Grasses of a Thousand Colors in London, which was directed by Gregory, André received a disturbing phone call from his brother, who informed him of a document implicating their prominent Jewish father as an economic spy for Hitler. The next day, André came down with a severe case of shingles.

As André told us that evening in Tribeca, most people would have balked at receiving word that their father was potentially a Nazi collaborator, but in his case, the disturbing revelation, while unexpected, was not unbelievable. The quest to confirm or disprove this shocking story would become the centerpiece of Kleine’s film. The filmmaker’s marriage to André placed her in a unique position to capture intimate stories about Gregory’s dysfunctional childhood—stories that took on new meaning in light of his brother’s discovery.

 

As André told us that evening in Tribeca, most people would have balked at receiving word that their father was potentially a Nazi collaborator, but in his case, the disturbing revelation, while unexpected, was not unbelievable. (Still from Before and After Dinner courtesy Cindy Kleine and Atlas Theatre Company)

 

 

André Gregory and his father (Photo courtesy Cindy Kleine and Atlas Theatre Company)

 

As Klein’s documentary reveals, André’s parents were “Jews who forgot to tell their kids they were Jews.” Fugitives from Stalinist Russia and Nazi Germany, the family was on the last ship to leave England before the war began. Looking back, André’s family was often one step ahead of the Nazis, a fact that raises further questions about his father’s connections with Hitler. The fact that Hitler’s foreign minister also visited his parents’ home was another worrying piece of the family puzzle.

During our evening together, André described his father as “non-human”—a manic depressive with “no empathy.” His parents would leave André and his brother in the care of a babysitter, then disappear. Instead of returning home as scheduled or sending home news of their whereabouts or travel plans, they would send money. Once, when André’s mother was passing a woman and child in the street, she declared, “What a beautiful baby!” The woman answered, “But Madam, he’s yours.” ”My Nanny saved me,” Gregory told us.

His happiest times were in Beverly Hills in the 1940s, where the family lived in a lavish house with a plastic driveway lit from below. André remembers Charlie Chaplin visiting regularly. One afternoon Marlene Dietrich and Greta Garbo played tennis in his backyard, a doubles match against Thomas Mann and Errol Flynn. According to rumors, his mother had an affair with Errol Flynn.

“I know when I die, you’ll dance on my grave,” André’s mother once chided the family. “It was so true,” Gregory explained, “no one knew what to say.”

Gregory grew up in an overly formal household where people said horrible things about the people they loved most. As a child, André was never touched, hugged, or shown any sort of physical affection. An attractive girl once kissed the teenage Gregory in a graveyard and he fainted in shock.

 

André riding an alligator (Photo courtesy Cindy Kleine and Atlas Theatre Company)


 

It was his desire to heal his parent’s unhappiness and dysfunction that honed his role as the family caretaker, a role he has also assumed within his theatre company. “If you go into the theater,” his mother once told him, “your father will have a heart attack. He’s already had one.” As a boy, Gregory longed to have a magic wand to fix his father. “I wanted to persuade him that his life was really beautiful,” Gregory reveals in an intimate moment in Before and After Dinner. “You have such a nice life…wonderful friends…you’re so well off.”

Most people know André Gregory through his critically acclaimed film My Dinner with André (or, from the other end of the film spectrum, as the warden who has his eye gouged out by Wesley Snipes in Demolition Man). Gregory has had numerous film acting roles. He played John the Baptist in Scorsese’s Last Temptation of Christ and appeared in Woody Allen’s Celebrity and Peter Weir’s The Mosquito Coast. Louis Malle, Wallace Shawn, and Gregory also collaborated on the film Vanya on 42nd Street with Julianne Moore. Kleine told me that Gregory is frequently recognized on the streets of New York, but his celebrity is of a peculiar sort. Those who recognize him from My Dinner with André often approach Gregory “with gracious awe, the way one approaches a great rabbi or teacher.”
 

Andre Gregory in 1965  (Photo courtesy Cindy Kleine and Atlas Theatre Company)

 

 

Performing is really about “the art of being,” says André. To inhabit such a place as an actor, writer, or director requires both space and a sense of safety, an atmosphere Gregory is clearly skilled at creating within his company. (Photos courtesy Cindy Kleine and Atlas Theatre Company)


 
But Gregory’s impact on the art world extends far beyond these high-profile acting roles. In the theatre world, André Gregory is revered as a master storyteller, an influential teacher, and as a visionary director who believes that the role of theatre is to awaken the audience and make them question themselves and the world around them (no small goal). For Gregory, this means keeping audiences small and venues intimate. “What happens in these small spaces because of their intimacy,” Kleine explained, ”is that audience members become active participants in the ritual being performed.” In the same way that chamber music loses its impact in an oversized concert hall, live theatre can also lose its effectiveness if a venue is too large.

From the very beginning of his career, Gregory had a fresh and personal approach to theatre. Deeply influenced by both Brecht and Tarkovsky, he is one of the original creators of the regional and off-Broadway theatre movements. His legendary, Obie-winning production of Alice in Wonderland played in New York for seven years. “People screamed during the play like a roller coaster,” Shawn told Noah Baumbach in an interview. It was “thrilling.” Alice toured the U.S., Middle East, and Europe and was eventually made into a book in collaboration with photographer Richard Avedon.

Gregory often says that Alice in Wonderland is a “portrait of his own childhood.” Alice is born into this terrifying, insane world and is simply traveling around trying to make sense of things, but she never gets a direct answer to her questions.
 

Richard Avedon’s 1973 book Alice in Wonderland: The Forming of a Company and the Making of a Play (Photo © Richard Avedon courtesy the Richard Avedon Foundation. Click to Enlarge)

 

 

Deeply influenced by both Brecht and Tarkovsky, Gregory is one of the original creators of the regional and off-Broadway theatre movements. (Photo courtesy grotowski.net)


 
Kleine’s film gives us a rare look at how a childhood can shape the creative life of an artist. But be forewarned, this is not a traditional documentary. To better understand Kleine’s approach, it’s useful to revisit My Dinner with André, for Before and After Dinner is really a companion piece to the much-discussed, art-house hit from 1981. If My Dinner with Andre gives its audience a glimpse of “André the Character,” Before and After Dinner addresses the gap between fiction and reality by giving us a taste of “André Gregory the Man.” Both films ask versions of the same question: “Who exactly is André Gregory?”

Directed by French filmmaker Louis Malle, My Dinner with André was a radical concept in 1981 and remains so today. The entire 110-minute movie depicts a conversation between André Gregory and his friend Wally Shawn during dinner in a chic Manhattan restaurant. The two friends talk about experimental theater, love, work, money, spirituality, and the nature of life itself. There are no flashbacks depicted on screen, only verbal exchanges like these between André and Wally:

André: What does it do to us, Wally, living in an environment where something as massive as the seasons or winter or cold, don’t in any way affect us? I mean, were animals after all. I mean… what does that mean? I think that means that instead of living under the sun and the moon and the sky and the stars, we’re living in a fantasy world of our own making.

Wally: Yeah, but I mean, I would never give up my electric blanket, Andre. I mean, because New York is cold in the winter. I mean, our apartment is cold! It’s a difficult environment. I mean, our life is tough enough as it is. I’m not looking for ways to get rid of a few things that provide relief and comfort. I mean, on the contrary, I’m looking for more comfort because the world is very abrasive. I mean, I’m trying to protect myself because, really, there’s these abrasive beatings to be avoided everywhere you look!

André: But, Wally, don’t you see that comfort can be dangerous? I mean, you like to be comfortable and I like to be comfortable too, but comfort can lull you into a dangerous tranquility.

 

My Dinner with André “is about men, because men tend to be so hidden,” says Gregory. “And Wally is hiding behind silence. I’m hiding behind words. The progress of the movie is that Wally is able to come out and start revealing and I’m able to to listen…These were radical actions as characters.”

 

 

(Photos courtesy Cindy Kleine and Atlas Theatre Company)


 
For six months Shawn and Gregory met in a room at NYU to work on the project. Each session began with André telling Wally a story. By the time they ended these regular meetings, the typed transcript from their conversations was over 1500 single-spaced pages. Shawn spent more than a year wading through the transcript identifying central themes that could be used in the screenplay. From these themes, he crafted a three-hour script comprised entirely of fragments from his real conversations with Gregory. Malle, Shawn, and Gregory then edited the script down to a two hour film. Malle was able to trim My Dinner with André down to 110 minutes in the editing room.

They shot the film in the then-abandoned Jefferson Hotel in Richmond, Virginia. Because heating the immense building was too expensive, the crew ran heaters in between takes. Gregory says he wore long-johns and kept an electric blanket on his lap during the shoot (a funny irony in light of the above dialogue).

If it’s been a while since you’ve seen My Dinner with André, I encourage you to watch it again, for it’s one of those classic pieces of cinema that only improves and expands with time. It’s one of the few films I know that investigates the cinematic potential of language. Gregory discusses this idea further with Noah Baumbach in a DVD interview for Criterion. In the late 70s and early 80s, we were living in a time “when no one was talking…in depth. It was all…very superficial. If I had one goal with this movie, it was to hopefully activate people to talk again.”

For Gregory, My Dinner with André “is as big as Lawrence of Arabia or Cleopatra” because the film takes the viewer to Tibet and the Polish forest, but each viewer sees his own Tibet, his own Polish forest.” My Dinner with André is a radical piece of cinema because it isn’t doing everything for you as a viewer. Instead, it’s activating your imagination. “If you like the movie,” Gregory explains to Baumbach, “it’s waking you up, which was one of the intentions of the movie.”

“The film is about men, because men tend to be so hidden,” Gregory adds. “And Wally is hiding behind silence. I’m hiding behind words. The progress of the movie is that Wally is able to come out and start revealing and I’m able to to listen…These were radical actions as characters.”

 

 

In Baumbach’s interview with Wally Shawn, the playwright agrees with his friend’s description. ”The film is about being asleep and waking up. Are you just crawling through your life like a mole…? Are you not observing what’s going on in your own life and not letting your consciousness speak to you?” Shawn is also quick to point out what is NOT overtly stated in the film: political consciousness. My Dinner with André depicts “two upper-class guys spending hours talking about life, while others are working and suffering,” says Shawn. “I wanted to kill that side of myself by making the film because that guy is totally motivated by fear and he’s defending himself and he is the bourgeois human being.”

In his conversation with Baumbach, Gregory says that there was one question that initially vexed him during the making of the film: Who exactly am I? In My Dinner with André he is playing a character based on himself. But even in real life the André that his doctor sees is completely different from the André his wife knows. Gregory’s breakthrough came when he got the idea for using four different voices in the film:

1. André the Peter Brook theatre guru

2. André the off-the-wall, spacey, dilettante rich kid

3. André the spiritual used car salesman

4. And André  when he is being sincere, as seen in the last part of the film

If Malle’s movie gives us these four sides of André Gregory the character, Cindy Kleine’s documentary Before and After Dinner fills in the gaps with intimate glimpses of André the loving husband, the loyal friend, the searching son, the patient director, the encouraging father figure. In many ways the films are two sides of one coin, or of one man in this case.

 

(Still from Before and After Dinner courtesy Cindy Kleine and Atlas Theatre Company)

 

Kleine’s dual role as wife and director gives us a unique perspective on André. We see him in some of his most intimate moments—making breakfast, bending over a steam inhaler, frolicking naked in a hot tub with a puffy shower cap on his head. It’s hard to imagine that such moments could have been captured by anyone other than his wife. To see a public figure letting relaxing and letting his guard down is a scarce thing in documentary film. Watching such scenes only confirms the impression I had upon meeting André in person: this is a man who has a passion for living, someone who appreciates life’s fragility. “He is a man who is not afraid to step into his own life,” says Kleine, “and is, therefore a rare and precious bird.”

Before and After Dinner is really a love story of sorts, for it captures something exceedingly uncommon in the movies: a happy marriage. “The only two films I can think of that depict happy marriages are Mrs. Miniver from 1942 and Mike Leigh’s Another Year,” Kleine told me over the phone this week. “But unhappy marriages…There are plenty of films about miserable relationships.”

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Why Kitty Wells Matters

July 17, 2012 in News, Sounds with 3 Comments

 

 

Country music legend Kitty Wells died Monday at her home in Madison, Tennessee, after suffering complications from a stroke. She was 92.

The music of Kitty Wells and other country artists played frequently on the turntable in our Georgia house. My grandmother, who grew up on a farm in the North Georgia mountains as one of twelve children, was raised on the sounds of Mother Maybelle and The Carter Family. Music was an integral part of the church services she attended, and my grandmother (who is still living) always loved to belt out hymns on Sunday mornings in an off-key whine reminiscent of both Mother Maybelle and Wells. When I hear the gospel-tinged moan of Kitty Wells today, it still feels like home to me.

 

Without Wells, it’s possible that a young Loretta Webb born into poverty in Butcher Hollow, Kentucky, and married at the ripe age of 15, never would have found the courage to teach herself to play a $17 Harmony Guitar or to write songs like “Coal Miner’s Daughter,” “The Pill,” “One’s on the Way,” or “Rated X.”  (Photo courtesy the Associated Press)

From where we sit today, it’s easy to forget how important Wells was to country music. Before Mother Maybelle and Kitty Wells, country music was very much a man’s world. Singers like Hank Williams, Merle Haggard, George Jones, Hank Thompson, and Ernest Tubb emerged from a conservative, working class life obsessed with both sin and salvation. There was poverty, drinking, hard living, followed by the usual Sunday morning repentance. The female characters who inhabit these country music songs were often portrayed as either “angels” or “whores.”

Take Hank Thompson’s number one hit “The Wild Side of Life” (see video below), which tells the story of a woman shirking her domestic duties in pursuit of a wild, night life. “Wild Side” co-writer William Warren based the song on a young woman he once met — a honky tonk angel, as it were — who “found the glitter of the gay night life too hard to resist.” In his book The Grand Ole Opry History of Country Music Paul Kingsbury writes that the song appealed to people who “thought the world was going to hell and that faithless women deserved a good deal of the blame.”

Until Mother Maybelle and Kitty Wells, the female perspective was notably absent from commercial country music. One has to look to Appalachian, Scotch-Irish, and New England folk tunes to find female singers and writers “telling it like it is.” (One of my favorite examples is this Vermont folk tune “Single Again,” which was collected and recorded by legendary song catcher Margaret MacArthur and recently re-recorded by Margaret MacArthur’s granddaughter Robin and her husband Tyler Gibbons.)

 

 

Kitty Wells’ “It Wasn’t God Who Made Honky Tonk Angels” was the perfect comeback song to Hank Thompson’s “Wild Side.” It should be noted that the tune wasn’t written by Wells herself, but by J.D. “Jay” Miller, but it was Wells who made it a success. It became the first number one Billboard country hit for a solo female artist, which was in and of itself, a major breakthrough. Here is Bill Friskics-Warren writing in The New York Times:

Ms. Wells was an unlikely and unassuming pioneer. When she recorded “It Wasn’t God Who Made Honky Tonk Angels,” she was a 33-year-old wife and mother intending to retire from the business to devote herself to her family full time. The only reason she made the record, she told the weekly newspaper Nashville Scene in 1999, was to collect the union-scale wage ($125) that the session would bring.

“I wasn’t expecting it to make a hit,” she said. “I just thought it was another song.”

But Ms. Wells’s record proved to be much more than just “another song.” It was a rejoinder to Hank Thompson’s No. 1 hit “Wild Side of Life,” a brooding lament in which the singer blames a woman he picks up in a bar for breaking up his marriage, and it became her signature song.

“Honky Tonk Angels” resonated with women who had been outraged by Mr. Thompson’s record, which called into question their morals and their increasing social and sexual freedom. At a time when divorce rates were rising and sexual mores changing in postwar America, the song, with lyrics by J. D. Miller, resounded like a protofeminist anthem.

“As I sit here tonight, the jukebox playin’/The tune about the wild side of life,” Ms. Wells sings, she reflects on married men pretending to be single and causing “many a good girl to go wrong.” She continues:

It’s a shame that all the blame is on us women

It’s not true that only you men feel the same

From the start most every heart that’s ever broken

Was because there always was a man to blame.

The NBC radio network banned Ms. Wells’s record, deeming it “suggestive,” and officials at the Grand Ole Opry would not at first let her perform it on their show. The Opry eventually relented, in part because of the song’s popularity and Ms. Wells’s nonthreatening image.

 

It was the remarkable Kitty Wells who paved the way for singers like Loretta Lynn, Dolly Parton, Patsy Cline, and Tammy Wynette, whose popular songs defied the typical stereotype of being submissive to men and putting up with their philandering ways.

Without Wells, it’s possible that a young Loretta Webb, born into poverty in Butcher Hollow, Kentucky, and married at the ripe age of 15, never would have found the courage to teach herself to play a $17 Harmony Guitar or to write songs like “Coal Miner’s Daughter,” “The Pill,” “One’s on the Way,” or “Rated X.” Like Wells, the conservative country music community was slow to embrace Loretta Lynn’s frank songs about sexuality, and often refused to play them on the radio, but both Lynn and Wells found widespread commercial success — a testament to the fact that their voices were appreciated by listeners, if not by the male dominated music business.

Here’s Kitty Wells performing her #1 hit at the Grand Ole Opry. I love this video for the way it captures commercial country music at this moment in history. Everything about the set, band, and television production plays it safe — it’s conservative, white, and non-threatening. The real innovation here is Kitty Wells herself, the woman who voiced an alternative point of view and made it possible for the groundbreaking female voices that followed in her footsteps.
Continue Reading…

The Art of Taking Risks : 13 Years, 3500 Artists, 7 Memorable Lessons

May 6, 2012 in Found, Images, News, Process with 16 Comments

 

Image from the vernacular photography collection of Mark Glovsky

When I was a girl, I was fearless. I was always falling out of trees, off of speeding bicycles, into muddy creeks. Once, I was bitten by an angry goose. I was knocked on the head accidentally with a baseball. A rock. And a basketball. On one hot summer evening, the rope of the tire swing broke and sent me and my best friend, Michael, hurling through the yard like a hockey puck. And then there was the morning I tumbled into my neighbor’s cactus garden. (Who knew that cacti spines came in so many size and color variations? Ouch.)

But somewhere on the way to adulthood, the youthful spirit of risk took its leave. Like so many other “responsible” adults, I succumbed to the tyranny of the regular paycheck. Although I never lived extravagantly, I traded my time for money, and money for things. Once on that spinning wheel, it’s hard to get off. Often we forget that it’s even possible to stop, reevaluate, and make radical changes to our lives. It feels too scary. Too hard and overwhelming.

This past year has forced me to stop and reconsider my options. Ten months ago, when I launched Gwarlingo, I never could have anticipated how quickly the site would grow and how enthusiastically it would be received. Some incredible opportunities have come my way as a result–I’ve made new friends, had fabulous conversations with readers (in person and online), traveled, flexed my writing, tech, and photography skills, been on the radio, been hired for new, challenging projects, and more. And every minute has been pure pleasure for me. For the first time in ages, I have no idea what surprises the day will bring when I get out of bed, and that excites me.
 

Image from the vernacular photography collection of Mark Glovsky

After thirteen remarkable years working at The MacDowell Colony, I’ve decided it’s time to take the leap into full-time self employment. The decision wasn’t easy, but I know it’s the right thing to do. Letting go of my 9-5 job (with a regular paycheck and benefits) will allow me to expand Gwarlingo and tackle some new creative projects. Is it a risk? Of course. But it’s a risk that takes me back to those free-wheeling, tree-climbing days.

While I’ll miss all of my friends at the Colony terribly, I can still be part of a creative community through Gwarlingo and through some new collaborative projects that are on the horizon.

Over 3500 artists have passed through the doors of MacDowell during my tenure there. That’s a lot of creative energy in one place. In the past few days a number of people have asked me about the experience of working at the Colony for over a decade. Here are a few of the lessons I’ve learned in my thirteen years at the nation’s oldest artist retreat…

  • If you are open, receptive, and generous with others, the majority of people will be open, receptive, and generous in return.

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  • Reserve judgment. Forget rumors. Listen and be patient. Most people will surprise you.

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  • The most successful artists don’t have some mysterious gift that allows them to excel in their field. They simply work hard, work consistently, take creative risks, and don’t worry about what other people think. This is the real formula for creative success.

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  • It is artists who have the best bird’s eye view of our culture today–they can tell us where we’ve been and where we’re going. They have the special ability to imagine alternatives to the present.

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  • Artists can also view the world from a micro level. They can help us appreciate the unseen.

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  • Solitude is an art. Unplugging and learning to be alone with yourself is essential if you want to do your best creative work. Technology is a tool. We should control it, not the other way around. Turn off your phone, Twitter, email, etc. Do it. The withdrawal symptoms will subside, eventually.

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  • Being an artist is challenging in our society. It’s hard mentally, physically, and financially. It takes a village–a community of friends, fellow artists, and supporters who understand why you do the work you do and believe that it’s valuable. If you have the means, support artists and organizations, like MacDowell, who are helping artists realize their full potential. And if you’re an artist, don’t forget to leave your apartment or studio every now and then. Find a residency program, go to a reading, concert, or opening, or have fun with friends. Play and connection are just as important as hard work.

These are just a few of the lessons I’ll take with me when I go.

 

Image from the vernacular photography collection of Mark Glovsky

I have a lot of exciting ideas for growing Gwarlingo. I’m looking forward to organizing live events, providing more resources for artists on the site, and digging into much-discussed topics like money, fear, and technology and how these dovetail with the creative life.
 
And then there is my own creative work that’s been languishing–I have a novel to sell, stories to finish, and photographs to print.

Of course, I will also need to piece together the funding to make all of this happen. Traffic on the site continues to grow. Last month I had over 25,000 unique visitors to Gwarlingo. I expect this number to climb as I have more time to devote to the project. This opens up some new opportunities for sponsorships, which I’ll be exploring.

I’ll also be available for freelance and consulting projects. I have a large project with a nonprofit that will take part of the year, but I also look forward to working with artists who need help with grant writing, project proposals, social media, and artist statements. I have a few artists penciled into my calendar already.

 

Image from the vernacular photography collection of Mark Glovsky

My last day at The MacDowell Colony will be April 27th. Life is going to be very full until then, so please forgive me if I’m not able to post as regularly in the coming weeks. You will have more of my time and attention very soon.
 
Thanks to all of the staff, friends, and artists who have made my job at the Colony so memorable through the years. I also want to thank the friends, old and new, who have participated in the evolution of Gwarlingo.

We’re just getting started.
 

Image from the vernacular photography collection of Mark Glovsky


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A special thank you to Mark Glovsky for sharing these beautiful images from his found photography collection. Thanks Mark!

 
 

News: Sinatra, The Strokes, Salman & More

March 22, 2011 in News with Comments Off

A NEW SINATRA BIO: James Kaplan has just published a new biography on Frank Sinatra called Frank: The Voice. Geoffrey O’Brien has written a long review, “Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man,” in The New York Review of Books. Kaplan focuses on Sinatra’s early days and tries to understand how this talented, but solitary singer captivated millions. If O’Brien’s article makes you long for a little Sinatra on your stereo, I highly recommend these recordings: Come Fly with Me (a concept album that contains songs about traveling), Francis Albert Sinatra and Antonio Carlos Jobim, and In the Wee Small Hours (arguably the best album Sinatra made).

SALMAN RUSHDIE WORKING WITH SHOWTIME: Deadline reports that writer Salman Rushdie is writing a script for a Showtime drama called Next People, which explores contemporary American life.

A NEW ALBUM BY THE STROKES: The Strokes’ greatly anticipated fourth album, Angles, comes out today. Melena Ryzik recently published a long profile of The Strokes in The New York Times.

A NEW VENUE FOR CREATIVE NON-FICTION: Amazon is now offering novella-length, creative non-fiction for the Kindle. Kindle Singles, as the new micropublishing venture is called, will sell for $2-$3 each. Each article will run between 5,000 and 30,000 words. You can read more about the venture in Wired or in Virginia Heffernan’s final column in the New York Times Magazine. This could be a good development freelance, investigative journalists, who are finding it harder and harder to make a living through traditional media outlets. Is it possible that e-books and micropublishing will revive long-form journalism, as well as short fiction? These forms seem to be a perfect fit for e-readers, mobile phones, and the iPad. I can’t think of a better way to spend time waiting at the airport or on that long subway ride to work.

FRENCH CINEMA: The Guardian is offering its readers “A Short History of French Cinema.” The article includes complete footage of Georges Méliès’ landmark film, A Trip to the Moon. This important work has influenced everyone from The Smashing Pumpkins to Caldecott Medal winner Brian Selznick.

THE BELIEVER AWARDS: The Believer has just announced their picks for The Believer Book Award and The Believer Poetry Award. The winners will be announced in the next issue of the magazine, along with readers’ picks for the best books and poetry of 2010.