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Posts Tagged ‘arts’

Did a Ballerina Spark Occupy Wall Street?

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , on October 18, 2011| Leave a Comment »

ArtsJournal.com sent me to this article describing a ballerina posed on the Wall Street bull. The article suggests that one of the many tipping points that led to the Occupy movement was this image of a dancer. I like to think that the arts can spark a movement, although I think the Arab Spring played a bigger role in this case.

 

“When Vancouver-based Adbusters presented the idea to the world, it did so in the form of a poster that featured a dancer posed on the shoulders of the Wall Street bull statue, a foggy clamour of demonstrators behind her. The poster asked the question, ‘What is our one demand?’ Activist groups seized on it, as did the hacktivist group Anonymous, and a collective began to form. …

 

“To hear tell from [Vancouver-based] Adbusters founder and editor Kalle Lasn now, the question of that one demand still needs to be answered concisely and directly. But as the movement overspills Wall Street, he describes it as the most successful in the 22 years he and his magazine have been advocating ‘culture jamming.’ ” Read more. The Kalle Lasn interview is at Seattle’s Crosscuts.com  (“news of the the great nearby,” whatever that means).

 

As intrigued as I am that a ballerina poster could have been a tipping point for a movement, I think the question, “What is our one demand?” is even more intriguing. I would like to spin off from that and ask, “What is the one thing you want (in general, not public policies necessarily)?” Could you name the one thing? I think this is different from making a wish and blowing out candles. But maybe not. I will give it some thought myself.

 

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Volunteers at a Women’s Prison

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on October 3, 2011| Leave a Comment »

I believe that people must take responsibility for their actions, that crimes should have punishments, and that every effort should be made to protect society from danger. But I don’t think society is protected if the place of punishment makes a person who committed a crime more angry and hostile than when she did it.

That’s why I like to post about the many kinds of volunteers who work with inmates to turn their hearts to better purposes. It may not always work, but it seems worth trying.

A while back, I blogged about one friend who works with ex-offenders through an organization called OWLL (On With Living and Learning: Jobs Skills for the 21st Century).

Now another friend has written about being accepted into a volunteer program at a low-level women’s prison near her home. The way this friend writes about her orientation, I can see the whole thing.

“I had a letter telling me not to bring a cell phone, smoking paraphernalia, medications, or sharp objects, and not to wear tight clothing, open-toed shoes, dangly earrings, or anything green or orange. … About half the volunteers were people of color and half were white. About a quarter spoke to one another in Spanish. More than half were middle-aged or older. One woman was in a wheelchair. So, it was a pretty diverse group. … There was lots of impressive high-tech security. There are lots of things we’re not allowed to do, like buy things for the inmates, or bring them messages. Or–and the volunteer handbook says this explicitly–help them escape or cover up an escape attempt.” (!)

Are touchy-feely prison programs all too naïve? Well, a highly skeptical prison warden at a Florida prison where there is a dance program admits that he came to see the benefit of women inmates having more-positive ways of expressing themselves:

 

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Prison Arts

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on August 23, 2011| 2 Comments »

I wrote before about a program using the arts to help people in prisons get beyond the prisoner mindset. Here’s a similar story.

Michelle “Bankston, who has short, blond hair and a muscular build, has spent almost 20 years behind bars. She was incarcerated first at a medium-security facility here in Alabama, and then at a private prison in Louisiana (to relieve overcrowding, Alabama sends some inmates out of state), and finally here, at the Montgomery Women’s Facility, a sun-soused cluster of buildings on the outskirts of the capital city.

” ‘A while back I decided that I could either spend decades in the bunks, watching TV or playing cards,’ Bankston says, ‘or I could get out here and take the opportunity to write poetry and draw.’

“That she’s been given this opportunity to do her art is testament to the work of Kyes Stevens, an avuncular and outspoken educator, poet, and Alabama native. Since 2002, Ms. Stevens has headed The Alabama Prison Arts + Education Project (APAEP), which offers literature and art classes in a range of prisons across the state. The program is funded by Auburn University and an array of grants. The teaching staff consists of five Auburn-based instructors and a rotating cast of teaching fellows from the graduate creative-writing program at the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa. Classes run for 14 weeks and are rigorously structured, like college courses, demanding a full commitment from students.”

Read the article in the Christian Science Monitor.

On a related note, I met a woman in my playwriting class who founded a nonprofit called On With Living and Learning, Inc. Mary Driscoll lives in the Fort Point Channel area of Boston and works with people who have been through the prison system. She uses theater to generate the catharsis that can result from their telling their stories and also to help them develop “job skills for the 21st century.” Read about her here. A script that Mary was working on in my playwriting class is now going to be made into an opera, with all sorts of helpers, like the Harvard-trained opera composer, the cabaret singer, and the reggae performer.

I can’t help thinking that when these creative people use their talents to help others, they are getting something special in return.

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Dedalus the Sculptor

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , on August 5, 2011| Leave a Comment »

I met Dedalus Wainwright when he was collaborating with a colleague of mine on an exhibit about carbon fiber. He is an artist, a sculptor.

Dedalus is having an open house this weekend at the Allston studio he rents from Harvard University.

In the studio, three tables full of models trace the origin of the full-sized painted aluminum sculptures you see here. He created the canes, or strips, in his models by cutting up drawings he had done in the past. Then he painted the blank sides with bright colors. I was intrigued by that multilayered approach and by what I could see by bending down and looking through the strips. I liked one model with especially intricate and colorful drawings and another that from the back reminded me of an Edvard Munch forest of ominous skinny trees.

I learned that a bird planted the seed that grew into the sculpture project.

Dedalus had been listening to a bird singing outside all day long. It may have been a mockingbird because it had so many different songs. At night, counting 47 different calls without one repeat, he dozed off, and when he awoke he had an idea for a sculpture with upright pieces such as you see here. If you look behind him, you also can see his studies of his pillars. Some are rising from what might be destruction, others from something more luminous.

There is a short bio of Dedalus at the Kinodance site. Read it here.

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Creative Funding for the Arts

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , on July 31, 2011| 1 Comment »

A week or so ago, I wrote about CSA, community-supported arts, a concept that borrows from the community-supported agriculture movement. In case you missed it, here’s the post.

Another creative idea for supporting the arts is crowd funding. I learned about it from the Backstage blog by way of ArtsJournal.com.

” ‘I saw people believing in themselves enough to try and make money for their projects,’ said Monica Mirabile, a co-founder of the Copycat Theatre. Earlier this year, Mirabile was applying for grants for her Baltimore-based theater troupe when a friend suggested she look into Kickstarter, a ‘crowd-funding’ website that promotes artistic projects through social media and allows donors to
support fundraising campaigns with any amount of money they desire. Crowd-funding sites have grown in popularity over the last few years and continue to attract artists and benefactors. …

” ‘This is not the newest idea on the block. It’s very traditional. But we’ve become very used to the idea of someone in a boardroom giving us a check and we hand them a piece of art and cross our fingers. The longer history of art is actually one of patronage that involves the artist’s audience. …

” Users of crowd funding must summarize their projects and goals for potential donors, a process that can help artists sharpen the skills needed to pitch or develop those projects in the future. ‘I learned how to better articulate why I’m doing the project and my artwork and what we’re trying to gain,’ said Mirabile. ‘I made friends because, by promoting, I got to talk to different
people in my community and made connections.’ ”

Read more here. And if you try an approach like Kickstarter, would you let me know how it worked for you? Leave a comment.

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Using the Arts in Prisons

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on July 2, 2011| Leave a Comment »

Today’s NY Times has an article on the cutbacks in prison arts programs and on the many ways they help convicts prepare to lead a better life outside. Tim Robbins and the Actors Gang is trying to raise funds to keep this theater program in a California prison alive.

“Two years ago, arts in corrections programs were a mainstay of prisons across the country, embraced by administrators as a way to channel aggression, break down racial barriers, teach social skills and prepare inmates for the outside world. There was an arts coordinator in each of the 33 California state prisons, overseeing a rich variety of theater, painting and dance. But these programs have become a fading memory, casualties of the budget crises.”

Read more here.

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Among the Artists

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on June 5, 2011|

I met my friend Mary Ann at the famous management journal where I met Asakiyume. Like Asakiyume, Mary Ann has too big a spirit for business management articles and has for the last 10 years been in a more artistic field. From soup to nuts, she edits craft books for Quarry — that is, she finds the authors and designs and edits the books all the way through page proofs. She has been instrumental in moving the field from how-to manuals for specific projects to a broader and more intriguing perspective. Her approach can be summarized as “here are some ideas about how to do a creative project; take the ball and run with it.”
        Mary Ann was in the area last week to check in at Quarry headquarters. We arranged to meet yesterday in a suitable venue — an independent book store, with a nice coffee bar and extras like muffins and Vietnamese salad rolls.
        It sure is fun to talk to artistic friends. Mary Ann gave me some great leads on websites that I have already shared with friends. Here is a fun one belonging to Massachusetts-based artist agent Lilla Rogers. Another one, Urban Sketchers, contains wonderful sketches from all over the world. (Perhaps you would like to add your own.)
        Mary Ann’s latest craft book is Playing with Books, by Jason Thompson, and it looks wonderful. Check out the book on Jason’s website, Rag and Bone.
        Mary Ann and I were happy to see that the book store we chose to meet in had some Quarry books. But later in the day I checked out a craft store in Concord (MA) and was disappointed that their books were mostly from another company.
        In spite of my disappointment about the books they carry, I love this craft store. It has a great new concept. You can work on crafts there and just dabble, just try things out, while having a nice sandwich or George Howells coffee. Because the idea is to try out the equipment and materials and find out if you want to go deeper after some dabbling, the store is called Dabblers.
        This blog is a project of birthstone jewelry company Luna & Stella. I will post comments of readers who contact me at suzannesmom@lunaandstella.com.

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