Daniel Hand, Wilbur Cross high-school students collaborate
William Boughton. Image courtesy of Harold Shapiro.
In a press release issued in February by the New Haven Symphony Orchestra, Jeffrey A. Klaus, a regional president at Webster Bank, was quoted as saying, “Webster Bank is pleased to sponsor this unique and creative connection through the international language of music.”
In addition to working with Theofanidis, New Haven Symphony Orchestra Music Director William Boughton, and members of the orchestra, “a new real-time video technology called MOVI, developed by Yale University, allows real-time link-up capabilities that enable students to participate in sectionals, coachings and rehearsals virtually,” according to the orchestra’s press release.
Laura Adam, the New Haven Symphony Orchestra’s education director, was quoted in the press release as saying, “This program utilizes technology to connect students from different neighborhoods, the incredible talents of NHSO musicians to inform students, and the experience of working with a living, local composer and conductor.”
Students from Daniel Hand High School and Wilbur Cross High School will perform Christopher Theofanidis’ Rainbow Body at Woolsey Hall on April 12 at 6:45 p.m. For more information, contact New Haven Symphony Orchestra Education Director Laura Adam by telephone at (203) 865-0831 x. 13 or by e-mail at ladam@NewHavenSymphony.org.
A version of this story was published in February in the New Haven Independent.
The Arts Council sounds off on … Online Presentations
TED Talk with Shea Hembrey
Reviewed by Cindy Clair
I adore TED Talks (www.Ted.com). These online presentations have introduced me to brilliant artists, teachers, and thinkers. When a friend forwarded a link to a TED presentation by Shea Hembrey, I was intrigued by the title, How I Created 100 Artists. Hembrey, whose folksy speech hints at his Arkansas roots, was frustrated by much of the art he was seeing at blockbuster contemporary art exhibitions and found himself longing for art that is more accessible to a broader audience. In response, he decided to create his own biennial and launched into an ambitious, two-year project. Hembrey went beyond curating an exhibition to actually concocting 100 artists from around the world who created installations, sculptures, and films of the biennial. Crazy.
His imagination ran wild. Hembrey created a name and bio for each artist, carefully conjuring up each artist’s interests and the nature of his or her work. Among the featured artists are a Japanese art collective that creates “scratch-off” masterpieces and an artist who works “in residence,” showing up at people’s homes to live with them before creating assemblages from objects found within their home. The pieces he shared were surprising, funny, quirky, and not that far off from some things I’ve seen in museums and galleries.
Although I work in the arts and regularly see exhibits, I confess that some contemporary art eludes me. I appreciate that art pushes boundaries, that artists are drawn to experimentation. I’m not someone who needs to find meaning in every piece, but occasionally I encounter work that leaves me cold, almost devoid of response. I wonder if the artist is toying with the viewer, seeing what he or she can get away with. So I’m rather amused by Hembrey’s spoof on the art world. I don’t believe art should be made for the viewer, but I do like his criteria that he must be able to explain to his grandmother each piece in his biennial, in five minutes or less. And like him, I am drawn to art that provokes my thinking or touches my heart.
It wasn’t until I read a related profile, “One Hundred Artists Rolled Into One Man,” in The New York Times Magazine a few weeks later that I learned Hembrey has a pedigree. I’m not sure why I was somewhat surprised to learn that he attended art school at Cornell University. Maybe I assumed or even wanted him to be a true outsider. He also has a patron, which gave him the luxury of the two years to work on his imaginary biennial. Elizabeth Gilbert, the author of Eat, Pray, Love, gives him cheap rent and a stipend. Now he’s getting some flak as the newly introduced biennial catalog has a whopping $1,000 price tag. Maybe if he came off as an arrogant art snob, I’d feel differently, but his plain-talking, storytelling style made his escapade that much more appealing to me. I admire his genius in creating this wild scheme of an art project and his fortitude in taking on the art world, which can take itself too seriously.
Knowing when to fold them
Rotholz creates cardboard furniture at Chairigami
Zachary Rotholz relaxes on a cardboard sofa he designed, in his York Street store, Chairigami. Image courtesy of Mr. Rotholz.
By Hank Hoffman
Where most of us might see cardboard in prosaic terms — the material equivalent of instructions on how to assemble cheap shelving — Zachary Rotholz sees poetry.
“It’s a raw, simple thing,” Rotholz declares. “People played with cardboard boxes when they were kids. It kind of reminds you of that — growing up and using your imagination.”
Rotholz opened Chairigami, which specializes in making and selling cardboard furniture, in September. In an interview at his York Street store, Rotholz — who graduated from Yale University last spring with a degree in mechanical engineering — tells me he has sold an estimated 200-250 pieces of furniture: tables, chairs, desks, sofas, shelving, and stands for iPads and iPhones. Prices range from $15 for a smartphone “lounge” to $180 for a chaise lounge. At the time of our interview, Rotholz was working on his first cardboard bed.
“Cardboard’s everywhere. You can find it in recycling, office spaces, houses. Because I’ve learned to work with and gotten into the material — because I can paint with cardboard — it’s an unbelievable way of sharing ideas with people, a medium of expression I can take with me anywhere I go,” says Rotholz.
The concept for Chairigami unfolded in the summer between Rotholz’s junior and senior years at Yale. Rotholz worked for the Adaptive Design Association, a New York-based nonprofit that makes equipment for disabled children out of the same Triple Wall cardboard he uses. According to Rotholz, it is more economical to use the cardboard for custom equipment than to pay for expensive manufactured equipment. During his “summer of cardboard carpentry,” Rotholz learned how to design and work with the material. In his senior year, Rotholz made cardboard furniture for his roommates — “they loved it,” he says — and based his senior project on the material.
The other inspiration, of course, came from the Japanese paper folding art of origami. (Rotholz has several books on origami set out on one of his coffee tables.) Origami is an example in aesthetics of “the idea that folding a structure adds incredible strength and form,” says Rotholz.
As a demonstration, Rotholz takes a small piece of paper and tries to stand it on its edge. It falls over. But when he folds the same piece of paper in half, it stands up. Folding it further, Rotholz asserts, the piece of paper can become a column and start bearing loads.
“The idea that you can find structure in folding is a beautiful concept,” says Rotholz. “Folding is a fantastic manufacturing process because it doesn’t leave dust or waste. It takes out the sharp objects and is relatively safe and low energy but adds incredible strength.”
As far as the stylish modernist design of his furniture, Rotholz cites designers Charles and Ray Eames as his biggest inspirations.
“They approached design with a childlike mentality — excitement and iteration and the desire to play, and also a desire to design for the common man, not elite design,” he says.
Cardboard, Rotholz exults, has the virtues of being recyclable, sustainable, and readily available. Unlike steel or wood, cardboard isn’t super strong. It presents a design challenge, says Rotholz, to “get the necessary strength to make functional pieces out of it. You could say it’s just strong enough to hold you up or to make pieces.”
Rotholz describes his furniture as “temporary yet durable.” By temporary, he means perhaps a couple of semesters, “enough to hang out, set up shop, and then move out.” Because his pieces are made from a single material — Triple Wall is composed of 70 percent recycled cardboard and 30 percent virgin fiber — they are easy to recycle.
A cardboard recliner designed by Rotholz. Image courtesy of Mr. Rotholz.
The durability of his furniture is demonstrated by a love seat on his display floor. Covered with writing by customers — Rotholz encourages his customers to customize their Chairigami furniture — the love seat was made last September.
Referring to the two rounded indentations worn by the weight of countless rear ends, Rotholz says, “It’s the most comfortable piece in here. It conforms to your body and distributes stress.”
Rotholz likens his chairs to a new pair of shoes that need to be broken in.
“When you first wear them, they’re not comfortable, but the more you wear them, the more the shoe changes and evolves to your foot,” Rotholz says.
The seats of his chairs or sofas bend to relieve high concentrations of stress and conform with repeated use to their owner’s contours. Chairigami also offers a couple of different coating options for spill-resistant tabletops — organic shellac or an industrial coating used on food boxes. While the latter is recyclable, the shellacked surface is not — it needs to be stripped away before recycling the furniture.
While his initial design work consisted of small prototypes — “working with an X-Acto knife and sketching with cardboard” – Rotholz now uses a SolidWorks CAD, or computer-assisted design, program. He’s worked so much with the designs that they have become second nature to him.
“Once you have a design language it’s easy to iterate on that and change and tweak it so you can get all the pieces you need,” Rotholz says. “But initially it took so long to figure out. There are all these decision trees you have to make when you design something.
“People laugh when they come in here, but that moment of humor is also a moment of conversion,” says Rotholz. “It forces people to think about it and that’s an important step, to get people to dwell on the idea of cardboard, how things assemble.”
That’s thinking outside the box.
More information is available at chairigami.com.
The power of a brushstroke
Katro Storm’s inclusive passion for art
A portrait by Katro Storm. Image courtesy of the artist.
Katro Storm has drawn all his life. But two memories from his youth — one negative and one positive — propelled his desire to be an artist. When he was just starting school in New Haven, Storm, who is African American, was bused to Highland Elementary School in Cheshire as part of a desegregation program.
“I did a drawing on a piece of paper of a dragon — because my older brother used to draw — and entered it into a contest they were having,” Storm tells me in an interview.
Storm recalls being called into the principal’s office “like I was in trouble. They told me they didn’t believe I drew the picture. They gave me some crayons and put me on the spot and had me draw it again. When I was a little kid, that was a big deal — ‘You didn’t believe I drew it?’ Because I knew I drew it.”
But Storm also remembers getting encouragement. His father, who was a janitor at Yale University, would bring his son to work with him on snow days because the family didn’t have a sitter. Storm says his father praised his drawing skills to coworkers and some students.
“He would give me paper and sit me in front of the windows, partially so I wouldn’t bother him while he was working,” remembers Storm.
Students walking by would comment on his drawings and some would offer him money to try and draw the ornate windows.
“They would give me a dollar, which was a lot of money back then. It was a point in my life where I thought, wow, people were giving me money for my art,” Storm says.
Storm got accepted into the ACES Educational Center for the Arts visual-arts program in high school, spurred on by artist Anna Bresnick, who, according to Storm, “made me fill out the application form and made me go to portfolio day. She convinced me that was what I needed to do for myself.”
The support he got at ECA, along with receiving a scholarship to study art in college in Massachusetts, bolstered his confidence in making art a career.
Artist Paul Goodnight invited Storm to show work in a Howard University art event after seeing seven large paintings by Storm exhibited in a student show at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. Where Storm had been selling paintings for $100 before that, afterward a Boston-area collector offered him a $1,500 commission to paint a portrait of reggae star Bob Marley. Rather than continue to struggle to pay tuition, Storm left college and moved to New York City to make a living as an artist.
Storm’s paintings are notable for the way they meld figurative representational imagery with the abstract use of color and spattered paint. He is influenced by the wealth of art he sees and incorporates techniques he enjoys in other artists’ works into his own. Among the artists he cites as inspirations are LeRoy Neiman, Robert Rauschenberg, Alberto Giacometti, and Jackson Pollock.
“I don’t have a good grip on doing abstract art, but I’m fascinated by it, so I try and do something I can recognize but in an abstract way,” explains Storm. “I take things I don’t understand” — offering as examples the characteristic elements of paintings by Rauschenberg or Pollock — “and try and educate myself by weaving that into whatever I’m doing. I like to have little kids recognize it and someone with a more mature understanding of art also appreciate it.”
His process plays on the tension between loose and tight approaches to realizing imagery. He starts with a canvas on the floor, dripping and splashing paint on it to rough out the shape or features of the person he is painting “because you put this energy into the painting when it’s on the floor.” Once he is satisfied with the basic shapes, he fine tunes the features with his paintbrush.
“When it starts getting too tight,” Storm says, “I put it back on the floor and start dripping and splashing paint until I get that feeling I’m looking for.
“I like you to understand that I’m doing something abstract, but I like you to understand that I can draw as well. I look at a lot of art, so I like to create the kind of art I like to look at,” says Storm.
Storm lived in New York City for 10 years, selling paintings and designing album covers. He says his time in the city “opened me up to a whole other culture because there were so many people pursuing their dreams in New York.” He moved back to New Haven in 2000 to help his family when his father, who has since passed away, became sick.
His environment determines the paints he uses, Storm says. If he has a large open space, he prefers to paint with oils. But currently, he has a small space with limited ventilation and paints with acrylics because they dry quickly and are non-toxic. Environment influences his works in other ways, as well.
“If I have certain colors around me, I notice my paintings reflect that,” he says.
If he’s painting in an industrial space, he says, “My work takes on the characteristics of that industrial space.”
The subject matter of his work is also subject to change.
“There was a period where I felt like when I went into museums I didn’t see enough faces that looked like me, so I painted a lot of things I wanted to see. I wanted to see Frederick Douglass or Malcolm X,” says Storm.
But Storm is not one to be constrained by stereotypes or others’ expectations. At one point, partly in tongue-in-cheek response to some who complained that he “didn’t paint white people” and partly because of his own fascination, Storm produced portraits of serial killers — white folks, all. Invited to be part of a show — on the expectation, Storm believes, that he would produce “ethnic” work — he instead painted portraits of Marilyn Monroe, Charles Manson, and Marilyn Manson and called the series, which was influenced by the “six degrees of separation” concept, Connect the Dots. He tells me that he has also painted portraits of white musicians he admires like John Lennon and Kurt Cobain, as well as family portraits regardless of nationality.
“I’m a Black artist and I’m proud of it. But at the same time, if I was a chef, I don’t want to only cook fried chicken. I want to be able to cook fried chicken because I like fried chicken, but I also wouldn’t mind knowing how to make sushi. I’m interested in a lot of things,” Storm says.
Art is his full-time passion. He channels that passion not only into creating his own work but also into mentoring young artists, particularly in New Haven’s low-income neighborhoods, and curating group shows.
“I was always trying to find a curator that would take my work and say, ‘Hey, I’m going to put your work in an exhibit,’” Storm says. “Instead of just trying to put myself out there, the Arts Council (of Greater New Haven) gave me the opportunity to curate and I loved it.”
Storm recently curated back-to-back Sound Influence shows — which explored the impact of sound or music on artists’ work — at the Arts Council’s Sumner McKnight Crosby Jr. Gallery.
“I didn’t want to give strict guidelines,” Storm says. “I wanted to leave it up to the artist to interpret sound in his or her way.
“I’m making studio visits just by the nature of being an artist. It gives me the opportunity to say I can pull these artists together and have a great show with interesting people,” he says.
His inclusive sensibility extends to the community and informs his work with young people. Storm offers the positivity of art as an alternative to the negativity of the violence that plagues New Haven.
“I was riding the bus and I overheard some high school kids. I was listening to the things they were idolizing and one of those things was a kid who made the newspaper for a crime. A light went off. I understand — they want to be recognized. If they can make the newspaper, they’re somebody,” Storm says. “If I can inspire kids to make the newspaper doing art,maybe they can be equally inspired doing something constructive.
Katro Storm. Photo By Allen Appel.
“I think they’re all looking for identity and approval and want to be someone. The role models they have are so slim in those low-income neighborhoods. I try to make my presence known and give them the opportunity to help out on projects,” explains Storm.
“When I was a child, I always wanted to meet a strong, diverse Black artist. I didn’t know anyone like that at the time and didn’t know where to find any. Unless it was Black History Month, you didn’t get to see Black art,” declares Storm. “I want people to know that talent doesn’t come to just European artists. I don’t think talent passes judgment. It comes if you’re wealthy or poor, whatever your nationality is, whether you’re short, tall, or fat. Talent is the one thing that doesn’t discriminate.”
Storm has directed several mural projects, involving young people in the creation of public art with positive messages. In 2009, Storm was the lead muralist for the “READ” mural painted on the outside of the New Haven Free Public Library Willis K. Stetson Branch in the Dixwell community. Storm put some 500 hours into the project, assisted by students from Hillhouse High School. Within the four letters that spell “read” are painted portraits of successful people from the Dixwell community, along with some national figures.
“Once you start learning that your community has a rich history, it plants a more positive seed. A lot of people think you can only make the newspaper when doing crime. If you can make the newspaper telling a story about the beautiful history of your community, I thought that was a win-win situation,” says Storm. “I don’t own a newspaper but I do own paintbrushes and some canvases. I can paint images that hopefully can inspire someone to pick up a paintbrush instead of a weapon. Maybe the weapon can be a paintbrush, like the old saying, ‘The pen is mightier than the sword.’”
Storm can point to one specific positive outcome of the “READ” mural project. According to Storm, one of his student assistants, Marquis, was about to graduate from Hillhouse but didn’t know what he was going to do with his life. After the school year ended, Marquis and his sister continued to help Storm with the mural. The Stetson Branch librarians took notice. They helped Marquis get into Gateway Community College and gave him a job at the library.
“The idea that this kid is able to get into a college and now has employment at the library — surrounded by books and people who have high expectations for him — is incredible,” Storm says. “And it all came from a brushstroke.”
AC Sound Off On… Clams Casino
Reviewed by Ben Redmond
The New Jersey-based Clams Casino is one of the most notable producers in the hip-hop scene today, rising from the underground to the “new school” of hip-hop. I downloaded his most recent five-track EP of instrumentals, Rainforest, and was instantly blown away.
“Clammyclams” (his Twitter handle) is making sounds unlike most music out there, especially in hip-hop. The drums are thick. The bass is heavy, full bodied. The whole atmosphere of the EP is built of expertly altered samples and synths that whoosh around mystically. The combination is genuinely an emotional experience – something in Clams Casino’s music hits differently than a beat by world-renowned producers like DJ Khaled or Lex Luger. It’s hard to fully describe Clams Casino’s sound, although he’s already collaborated with a number of well-known musicians.
Even if you’re not a hip-hop head, I highly recommend giving Rainforest a few listens.
AC Sounds Off On… “The Parking Lot”
Reviewed by David Brensilver
Harper Hellems, a longtime attendant at Chris Farina’s Corner Parking Lot in Charlottesville, Virginia, says, “No one’s parents look down at the crib of their newborn child and (say), ‘God, I wish my son or daughter grows up to be a parking-lot attendant.’”
Meghan Eckman’s 2010 documentary film The Parking Lot Movie examines that kind of societal judgment by introducing viewers to past and present Corner Parking Lot attendants, an educated, intellectual bunch who are anything but the aimless slackers their customers – and our status-obsessed society – would assume them to be.
Dan Moseley moved on from the Corner Parking Lot to become a philosophy professor at University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill. John Lindaman now works as a librarian at New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art. James McNew plays bass in the rock band Yo La Tengo.
And those in the film who remain part of the so-called service industry – Hellems is still part of the Corner Parking Lot team and former attendant Matt Datesman works at a local bagel shop – are no-less cerebral. Intellectualism is job a requirement at the Corner Parking Lot, whose owner, Farina, is more interested in his employees’ satisfaction than his customers.’ The Corner Parking Lot, in many ways, is a utopian society unto itself, one in which hilarity and hijinks balance idealism and introspection. “It’s more than a parking lot,” Lindaman says in the film. “The way it’s set up … you’re not just taking money … you’re in some sort of battle with humanity.”
“Usually the customer’s always right,” former attendant Scott Meiggs points out in the film. “At the parking lot, the customer’s only sometimes right, and even then it’s still a judgment call.”
“It’s about the social contract,” Lindaman explains. “And especially if you are talking to someone who’s in a $50,000 Eddie Bauer Explorer and they’re getting in your grill about 50 cents. To you, that 50 cents is worth more than that $50,000 Eddie Bauer Explorer and you just want to take it out of them any way you can.”
In one scene, McNew describes a squabble he had with a high-school acquaintance over 40 cents. McNew recalls the girl saying, “I hope you’re proud of yourself … you’re a parking lot attendant.” Reflecting on that interaction, McNew answers the girl, by way of Eckman’s film, “I hope you’re proud of yourself, driving your father’s car and trying to beat out a 40-cent parking fee. Who’s come further?”
Perhaps the most romantic remembrance of the Corner Parking Lot comes from Meiggs, who says, “In the parking lot we were dynamos, whirlwinds. We were rulers. We had complete autonomy. We had it all in a world that had nothing to offer us.” For all the amusement it provides, The Parking Lot Movie celebrates, without irony, the higher-minded among us and exposes society’s pecking order for the vicious circle that it is.
Attention to Detail
Ronnie Rysz’s mixed-media paintings and block prints have graphic impact
Written by Hank Hoffman
Ronnie Rysz. Photo courtesy of the artist.
For Ronnie Rysz, developing as an artist sometimes involves un-learning as well as learning.
Rysz got a very traditional art education at the School of Visual Arts in Manhattan and the Lyme Academy College of Fine Arts. At his Shelton Avenue studio during City-Wide Open Studios in 2010, he showed mea figure painting of a nude, heavyset woman – made in 2005, while he was still at college – along with examples of his current work. He told me the painting was done in a “progressive realist style.” It was accomplished but not striking. His work over the past few years, on the other hand, is notable for its personality, style, and graphic energy.
Rysz exhibits regularly and has a solo show slated for later this year at Real Art Ways in Hartford.
In an interview at his studio, I ask him how the evolution occurred. “I started to trust my hand a lot more and my beliefs in what art could be for me and what my natural tendencies were,” says Rysz. To do so, Rysz had to rebel to some extent against the conditioning of his traditional training. “I wouldn’t be doing what I’m doing now if it wasn’t for that confidence and kind of rebellion,” he says.
He started drawing in elementary school but began taking art seriously in high school. Like many artists I speak with, Rysz “had a couple of good instructors who pushed me harder.” As a sophomore or junior in high school, he decided to make it a lifetime pursuit. “I kept reading about artists who did it their entire lives up till the day they died. I figured I wouldn’t get bored after I ‘retired,’” Rysz says, making the “quotes” gesture.
During his high school years, Rysz ventured as often as possible from his home in Stamford to New York City to spend days sketching and copying at the Frick Collection and Metropolitan Museum of Art. Although his tastes have changed dramatically since then, he says, early on his biggest influences were Baroque and Renaissance painters. “Rembrandt was huge to me when I was first getting serious about art,” recalls Rysz.
In recent years, Rysz’s primary focus has been on mixed-media paintings, which lean heavily on collage techniques, and prints. His work synthesizes a wide range of influences: WPA muralists like Thomas Hart Benton, German Expressionism, Frank Stella’s works on paper and bas-relief paintings, Pop Art master Roy Lichtenstein, graphic novelist Charles Burns, and others. Rysz concentrates his printmaking efforts on block prints – linoleum and wood. It’s partly a question of materials and access: He has “tons of paper and tons of linoleum and people keep giving me blocks of wood.” But his pleasure in the process plays a big part, also. “I enjoy the actual image-making and carving into things as a way of making marks,” he says.
Printmaking informs his other work. “How much I slow down and see and understand form when carving definitely helped me in all other aspects of my drawing and decisions about composition,” notes Rysz. In fact, working with block prints after he graduated from college in 2006 – he had a residency at the Vermont Studio Center – played a large role in birthing his personal style.
The printmaking is a “subtractive” process. Rysz is working on “a very dark surface where all the marks already exist and subtracting surface from it” until he has the image he wants. His collage and painting work is mostly “additive,” although he often goes back and re-cuts things in the collages. Rysz describes his style as “very graphic, very obsessive compulsive.”
His mixed-media collages are particularly demanding; he estimates that a particular 8½”x11” work he shows me could take about 15 hours of work. They generally start with a pencil drawing, usually referencing photographic imagery of random models drawn from video or fi lm stills, advertising, and other sources. From the pencil sketches, Rysz develops black and white drawings. He builds up layers with cutouts, adding color palettes, embossing. Along with canvas and paper, his mixed-media paintings often incorporate wrapping paper, wallpaper, enamel and acrylic paints, industrial screening (which achieves a Lichtenstein-esque halftone effect), rhinestones, jewelry he’s found, and other found objects.
I ask him how he started incorporating the diverse materials into his imagery. Rysz says it was “a combination of just wanting to experiment with different papers. I’ve always been a collector of things, a collector of objects and materials. In the past, in my studio practice I always tried to keep things separate from my personal life as much as I could. I started incorporating my personal tendencies and obsessions into the studio. It made it easier not only to make the work I’m making now but also to have all my habits carry over into the studio.”
There are rolls of wrapping paper and wallpaper stored in his flat file. He hoards a collection of plastic toy guns and a bandolier of toy bullets that serve as references for his linocuts and woodcuts. Folders with images of subjects he might pursue fill a bookshelf in his studio. Rysz shows me one folder with iconic images of eagles that he collected for possible use in a series on war. There are also strong formal reasons for using patterned papers. According to Rysz, “It’s a lot easier to take care of patterns with materials that are already made. Even though I do render patterns myself, sometimes there’s no way to replicate an embossed, foiled paper with brilliant green color that’s iridescent. “I’m focusing in on little details all the time. My line work is very time consuming. I’m very physically close to the work as I’m doing it,” says Rysz. “There is a part of the process that’s very loose and gestural and I’ve tried to incorporate that more into the mark-making,” Rysz adds. When he refers to “mark-making,” he is speaking not just of his graphic brushwork but also the cutting away along modeling lines to reveal layers of color paper beneath the surface.
Rysz has been experimenting recently with ink drawings that, while consistent with his recent style, incorporate “more accidents, more washes. I’m moving away from the black line and the very opaqueness of that ink, using walnut ink, using some colored inks – a red ink I tried to match the color of my blood with, and got pretty close.” Rysz pricked his finger and dripped blood on a piece of white paper, then worked to match the color with red ink before the blood oxidized and turned brown. His experiment with blood-colored ink was inspired in part by the work of sculptor Marc Quinn, who incorporates his own blood into frozen cast sculptures of his head. “Lots of the images I was thinking about around the same time were images of war, images of decimated houses, destroyed communities. It’s a very literal reference but I wanted to experiment a little,” explains Rysz. Rysz characterizes these new drawings as “still very graphic looking but a little more playful, a little more honest. You can see the entire process, especially in the drawings on paper. I’m not trying to hide the marks I’m making and the different tools I’m using.”
His interest in image-making related to war is prompted, in part, by his full-time work as a prosthetics artist, a job he has held since mid-2009. Rysz meets with patients, sculpting in wax mirror images of their existing limbs. He matches skin tones and textures. He describes his work as “very hyper-realistic sculpture and assembly.” He sees about 30 to 40 patients a month, about one-third of whom have lost a limb or limbs in war. “We usually make the patient comfortable enough to discuss stories that are very in-depth, sometimes about the trauma they received to have the amputation, or amputations,” he tells me.
Rysz says he is hoping to glean some type of perspective from these conversations on “how to approach doing images about war and not have them be illustrations, not have them preach to the public about things they have already heard about – present images or sculptures in a way that may be gruesome but also be accessible for a broad audience.” One example is on his studio work table – a mannequin torso that Rysz has been painting. “I was thinking about the Belvedere Torso – the classical Greek sculpture that’s missing the head and both arms,” says Rysz. The Belvedere Torso also has legs truncated at each knee. Of his mannequin, Rysz says, “It’s supposed to represent one of those amputees from the military but even more so, someone who didn’t make it because of the decapitation.” The mannequin has an earth-tone red geometric camouflage pattern spreading out from the neck and arm cuts – blood – interspersed with rectangles of metallic gray and blue – shrapnel lodged in the flesh. “I wanted to apply the graphicness of the camouflage they have now – especially its digital looks – and particularly pick spots on the form and make these shapes. They could look like cuts or gashes or amputations,” says Rysz.
Rysz likes for his work to transcend mere illustration. His series Losing All Touch, exhibited a couple of years ago, dealt with the way digital media and social networking alienates individuals from the physical proximity of direct communication. His stylish, upscale figurative portraits depicted aloof and distracted individuals. Prints and collages of car crashes and sharks are metaphors for the economic crisis – stand-ins, respectively, for the market crash and the corporate titans who made out like bandits while millions of others were hurting. In one of the shark collages, a shark’s head breaks the water surface, mouth open and threatening. A swirl of thick lines on blue paper defi nes the water, cut in places to reveal green paper beneath. Rysz applied glitter nail polish to the shark’s teeth and stippling detail with a Micronpen. Drips of blue enamel polish comprise bubbles in the water and the shark’s eye is a rhinestone. “I debated long and hard about that,” Rysz says. “I wanted the shark’s eye to be completely dead but the shark fell back too much in the image.” The work’s title is “Thrusting Executive.” Rysz says, with a laugh, “I’m still very cynical, at least in the studio. I’ve gotten a lot better in my personal life.”
The Making of a Musicial World Premiere
Long Wharf stages Kahane’s February House
Written by Lisa Mikulski
Gabriel Kahane. Photo by Josh Goleman.
I have always been fascinated with the artistic process. It is a creative mystery that can seemingly transform a blank canvas into something colorful and bright, create a muscled man from stone, and, in the case of composer Gabriel Kahane, create life from a book.
This February, Long Wharf Theatre is joining with New York City’s Public Theater to bring the story of February House to Connecticut audiences. This world premiere features the musical magic of composer Gabriel Kahane and tells the story of how editor George Davis creates a utopian home in Brooklyn Heights during 1940s wartime America. Personalities such as W.H. Auden, Carson McCullers, Jane and Paul Bowles, Benjamin Britten, and Gypsy Rose Lee gather under one roof to explore ideas of love, war, friendship, and their own artistic voices and creative processes. Directed by Davis McCallum, February House features music and lyrics by up-and-coming composer Gabriel Kahane and a book by Seth Bockley.
The production is based on Sherill Tippins’ literary biography February House: The Story of W. H. Auden, Carson McCullers, Jane and Paul Bowles, and Gypsy Rose Lee Under One Roof in Wartime America, a title that refers to the February birthdays of many of the famous artists who lived there. According to Long Wharf Theatre Artistic Director Gordon Edelstein, “this musical is about breaking out. It is a celebration of eccentricity, artistry, and a kind of failed utopian dream. They are dreaming about making a better world. If they can make the better world in their home, maybe they can make one in the outside world.”
What goes into the making of a new musical? The creative process is arduous. “It’s incredibly challenging … unending imagination, resources, and intelligence is required. Musicals are made collaboratively and February House is a deeply collaborative effort,” Edelstein explained. “There are a million challenges and there is no harder task.” For Edelstein, the success of the production depends on how the story is told. In this case, Kahane’s music and lyrics are a key component of that effort. How does one communicate a message through song? What is the right piece for a particular moment? Both Edelstein and Kahane described the rewrites that were necessary in achieving the desired effect. According to Kahane, “the rules of the written book (are) different than keeping someone compelled in theater. I’ve written twice as much music as will appear in the production.”
Kahane, a Brooklynite, describes himself as a tactile musician who likes to explore ideas using piano, voice, and guitar to find the right fi t. In composing the music for this production, Kahane was not just interested in what was going on inside February House, but also the backdrop of wartime America in New York. “I was interested in using the poetry to reflect what was going on outside the house … the looming sense of disaster,” he said. According to Kahane’s website, “Gabriel’s relationship to geography is never far from the surface in his songwriting. He writes about place with a passion often reserved for a lover, the resulting songs offering a unique path toward emotional catharsis.”
Kahane not only creates music for operas and theater productions, but also performs pop songs. While working on February House, Kahane originally thought the score would offer a quasi-operatic feel, “but that felt forced. And then one day with the banjo, suddenly something became clear. My hope is that the different sounds and music will help people understand the different situations and emotions in the play.” Indeed, diverse characters require diverse music. Kahane’s exciting score mixes elements of operetta, jazz, and musical comedy with modern folk-pop. Kahane’s style helps convey the complexity of the story’s characters. “There is a story we all want to tell,” Kahane said, “and we all want to tell it as beautifully as possible.”
Kahane’s most recent recording as a singer-songwriter is Where are the Arms, which was released in 2011. It is his second CD release. As a composer of concert works, he has received commissions from Carnegie Hall, the Los Angeles Philharmonic, Kronos Quartet, American Composers Orchestra, Caramoor International Music Festival, and Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, for which he’s serving as composer-in-residence. In October 2012, he’ll make his Carnegie Hall debut in a concert devoted to his music. Inspired by true events, the powerful and funny February House marks the first commission of the Public Theater’s Musical Theater Initiative in collaboration with Long Wharf Theatre, which presents the work through March 18.
The cast of February House includes Stanley Bahorek (Benjamin Britten), Ken Barnett (Peter Pears), Ken Clark (Reeves McCullers), Julian Fleisher (George Davis), Stephanie Hayes (Erika Mann), Erik Lochtefeld (W.H. Auden), Kacie Sheik (Gypsy Rose Lee), A.J. Shively (Chester Kallman), and Kristen Sieh (Carson McCullers). The creative team is made up of Riccardo Hernandez (sets), Jess Goldstein (costumes), Mark Barton (lights), Leon Rothenberg (sound), Andy Boroson (musical director), and Cole Bonenberger (production stage manager).
Visit longwharf.org for tickets. The Public Theater will stage February House May 8–June 10. Visit publictheater.org for details. Learn more about Gabriel Kahane at gabrielkahane.com.
In the Steps of the ‘New Artmakers’
Wesleyan presents DanceMasters Weekend
Written by Lucile Bruce
Camille A. Brown & Dancers. Photo by Matt Karas.
“We’ve never not sold out a performance, even with all the ups and downs of the economy.”
That’s Pamela Tatge – director of Wesleyan University’s Center for the Arts, in Middletown – speaking about the DanceMasters Showcase Performance, the highlight of the center’s annual DanceMasters Weekend. Now in its 13th year, DanceMasters Weekend offers something for everyone – students and teachers of dance, experienced dancegoers, and the uninitiated.
This year’s program on March 10 features master companies Garth Fagan Dance and Pilobolus along with Camille A. Brown and Dancers. Brown is the winner of the 2012 Mariam McGlone Emerging Choreographer Award, granted annually by the DanceMasters program to a young artist who shows outstanding promise. In addition to the Showcase Performance, DanceMasters Weekend offers 13 90-minute master classes designed for students with intermediate to advanced dance experience. Barbara Ally, associate director of Wesleyan’s Center for the Arts, produces the weekend.
Artists appreciate the deliberate, thoughtful approach of DanceMasters. Matt Kent, associate artistic director of Pilobolus, says Ally “is curating like you would a gallery show – combining older artists who were setting the course with new artists who are, or will be, setting the course.”
Garth Fagan Dance, now in its 40th year, has long been hailed by audiences and critics for its originality and the virtuosic skill of its dancers. Jamaica-born founder and choreographer Garth Fagan employs an ever-evolving dance language drawn from many sources: sense of weight in modern dance, torso-centered movement and energy of Afro-Caribbean, speed and precision of ballet, and the rule-breaking experimentation of the post-moderns.
DanceMasters Weekend was founded by the late Mariam McGlone, a professional dancer, critic, and educator. McGlone moved to Guilford in 1983, and, noting a lack of learning opportunities for young dancers and choreographers, she set out to bring professional dance to Connecticut. Wesleyan University has hosted DanceMasters since 2000. McGlone died in 2008, but her vision lives on. “We don’t often have the chance to do something close to home,” says Kent. Founded in 1971 and based in Washington Depot, Connecticut, Pilobolus is famous for its imaginative and athletic exploration of creative collaboration. Longtime company members Kent and Renée Jaworski will perform in the Showcase Performance and co-teach a master class.
At press time, Jaworski and Kent were still deliberating about their DanceMasters performance. Says Jaworski, “We’re looking at performing older repertory, classics that will show where the company comes from.” In their workshop, they’ll teach participants about Pilobolus’ approach to collaboration. Collaboration is a hallmark of the company; in 2010 it was the first collective to receive the Dance Magazine Award, given to artists who have made a lasting impact on the field. In the workshop, says Kent, “We’ll learn how to deal with things together, how to motivate each other, what to do when you don’t get along. “We aren’t teaching people how to dance,” he adds. “We’re teaching them how to make cool stuff with movement.”
“We gear our class toward the community and teach about the philosophy and physicality of our work,” notes Jaworski. “Our philosophy is that everybody is a creator and an artist.”
Camille A. Brown, who describes her work as “highly theatrical, very earthbound movement,” says she was “very encouraged and inspired” to win the Mariam McGlone Emerging Choreographer Award. She has admired past award-winners – including Robert Battle, newly appointed artistic director of the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater – and believes the McGlone Award lights the way for young dance artists to continue developing their unique voices. “It encourages you to keep moving forward and lets you know people are listening,” says the exuberant Brown.
Camille A. Brown. Photo by Matt Karas.
In the Showcase Performance, Brown will perform the solo pieces Evolution of a Secured Feminine and The Real Cool. A third piece, City of Rain, features dancers from her company. Brown’s work draws on many influences including African, ballet, tap, jazz, and modern. Following DanceMasters tradition, each company that performs in the Showcase Performance offers a master class. In addition, artists from the Martha Graham Dance Company, José Limón Dance, Urban Bush Women, and others will teach.
David Dorfman, chair of the dance department at Connecticut College, returns to lead a master class. New this year, Carolyn Kirsch teaches “Never Stop Moving: A Fosse-style Workshop for Older Dancers.” For Tatge, the recognition of an emerging choreographer is part of what keeps DanceMasters feeling new, year after year. “The award makes us very aware of who the new art-makers are. We see their work live. We always have our ear to the ground,” says Tatge. “We also feel people should see the masters.”
We Have A Winner!
Ms. Devlin with her winning design
Congratulations to Jacquelin Devlin of North Haven, CT for her winning Tag-A-Bag design! Ms. Devlin’s design, which highlights the cityscape of New Haven and the city’s local sustainability efforts, will be featured on over 500 reusable bags for purchase at Elm City Market. Proceeds raised from the sale of the reusable bags will go to support The Arts Council of Greater New Haven. For her design, Ms. Devlin received a $100 prize from the Arts Council, as well as $100 gift certificate from Elm City Market.
Ms. Devlin, a member of the Society of Children’s Writers and Illustrators, is a published author, having been published in House Beautiful, Thoughts of Home, Eclectic Literary Forum and several other publications. Her Tag-A-Bag design was one of her first endeavors into visual arts creation. “I always thought my sister had all the artist talent in the family,” says Devlin. “I think the issues of sustainability are vital to this country’s future success, and I wanted to lend my support to New Haven’s efforts.”
The Tag-A-Bag Competition is a reusable bag design competition organized by The Arts Council of Greater New Haven and Elm City Market. The competition seeks to capture a variety of sustainability and environmentally conscious elements from the New Haven community.
