Quantum Art

Yesterday at Clayversity we were having an interesting discussion about Art. (Not "Ahhhhrrrrt" that the Spamalot French Taunters loved so.)

The question was about Clay Aiken's masterpiece, "Lover All Alone," and whether or not it was more moving now that he is out of the closet. Were the lyrics really about what he was experiencing, and is that what made it Art?

For all I know the feelings
And the picture that I
tried
So hard to find
Isn't mine.

I was frustrated because I was trying to say that the song is art not because it was a true and accurate description of Clay's feelings but because of the way it makes me feel. If all an artist does is tell us what he feels, I don't give a shit. If the art work makes me feel something, then that's why it is art. It communicated something to me.

I realize that isn't completely true. Unless the artist also felt something in the creation, then making the viewer or listener feel something is flat-out manipulation. Those old telephone commercials that had us all reaching out and touching someone - that wasn't art. That was commerce.

So I am revising my statements. It's art when the artist makes you feel what he feels.

A friend asked me about #11 on my Random list, why did "Starry Night Over the Rhone" make me cry? What it came down to was that being in the physical presence of that painting (not looking at a picture of it) took me to the time and place where Vincent was.

In a sense, this is time traveling, but in the quantum mechanics sense of entanglement (I think the New Age term is synchronicity.)

At Clayversity, I snarkily mentioned that I would be attending the Corcoran Gallery's Member's Preview tour of the Maya Lin installation, "Systematic Landscapes," and said maybe someone there knows what art is. Of course that would have been a stupid question, so I didn't interrupt the curator doing the hour-long tour of the five rooms of Maya's landscapes.

(I couldn't help asking one stupid question, though - how the wire-frame grid depicting the undulations of a mountain managed to stay up on the wall. The depiction of the Potomac River using nails as pixels was easy to figure out - NAILS - but I couldn't see anything holding the grid up. It turned out that the end pieces pierced through the wall, clutching it.)

Maya's art consisted of breaking apart the landscapes she experienced into component pieces and systematically reconstructing them. Her vision is so encompassing, it is hard to imagine how it can be broken apart. She brings landscapes indoors where people can look at them and experience them as objects. This changes the way we look at things.

On the way to work, I was looking at the systematic landscapes I pass every day - the stones in the low walls surrounding the property of an office complex, the patterns in the bricks in the sidewalks.

Art is communication and transportation. It's interactive. It makes you see and feel things you hadn't seen or felt in quite that way before. This time-travels you to the heart and soul of the artist and establishes that quantum connection, even for a brief moment.

Here are some photos I borrowed from the Internet. Just Google Image search Maya Lin:







This last one is from the Systematic Landscapes exhibition. The peak of the tallest mountain is probably about chest-high, and the viewer is invited to walk through the landscape.

Once again, I look at art and marvel at what human beings can do.

Love,
hosaa

Artist Unemployment News

The job news is not good for artists. A new report from the National Endowment for the Arts shows a higher rate of unemployment among artists compared with other professionals, and the rate would have been even higher if the discouraged artists had not left the labor force entirely.

Architects and designers, typically the professions with the highest employment rates among artists, have been hard-hit in this recession. Says the report:

As an example of how arts jobs intersect with the larger economy, consider the construction industry. Industry-wide declines, which began in 2006, have contributed to the shrinking job market for architects. While this group usually has the lowest unemployment rates among all artist occupations and all professionals, architect unemployment rates doubled, from 1.8 percent in fourth quarter 2007, to 3.8 percent in the fourth quarter of 2008.

But artists - with a labor force in the U.S. slightly smaller than the military - also have impacts on the economy, the NEA notes:

[A] National Governors Association report recognized that the arts directly benefit states and communities through job creation, tax revenues, attracting investments, invigorating local economies, and enhancing quality of life. There are 100,000 nonprofit arts organizations that support 5.7 million jobs and return nearly $30 billion in government revenue every year, according to a study by Americans for the Arts.

Why Music?

March 2009 is "Music In Our Schools" month, and the National Association for Music Education has posted a series of public-service announcements by quite a variety of musicians answering the question, "Why Music?" Give them a listen!

As Clay Aiken puts it, "Learning music opens up the mind like nothing else."

Art and Artists

There's some rejoicing going on in the Kingdom of Clay:

Clay Aiken Leaves RCA, as reported exclusively by People magazine.

Spin it any way you want (fired? quit? negotiations breakdown? artistic differences?) the truth is, RCA has never known how to handle Clay Aiken. Never. Did not know who he was as an artist, baffled by his versatility, did not know how to market someone completely original. That would have required creativity.

Even the Time magazine profile of Clay back in 2003 ("Building a Better Pop Star") noted the label's ignorance and even contempt for Clay Aiken. How could anyone expect to succeed without their boss's support? And yet Clay succeeded very well within these constraints.

From Time:

Ask the employees at Clay Aiken's record label, RCA, if they would listen to Aiken's debut album, Measure of a Man, by choice, and the response is almost uniform: a lengthy pause followed by laughter. RCA was the home of Elvis Presley, and its current roster includes critical favorites like the Strokes and the Foo Fighters. It's a rock label. Aiken, who came in second on the most recent installment of American Idol, is not only not a rocker, but, as he says in his aggressively self-deprecating way, "I'm not an artist. I'm just a guy who was on a reality show—and I didn't even win!" Humility aside, Aiken, 24, doesn't mind being doubted because he believes in his bones that his detractors are wrong. "There are many people at the record label who are afraid of me," he says. "They don't understand the reasons that someone as uncool as me is here. In a way—and this is a horrible word to say, and once I say it you're going to print it—it's a revolution."

Let the Revolution begin!

As Time also noted, Clay knew his audience instinctively and could communicate with them. That's art. And now, Clay's Fantasies can come true. He's on his way!



Flames of Paris


(credit: ABT, published in Washington Times)

Speaking of artists, I got to see this beautiful dancer perform with the American Ballet Theatre at the Kennedy Center on Thursday night (Feb. 19). Thanks to YouTube, I could find an earlier performance of the same program by this artist, Daniil Simkin. But this 2007 performance pales compared with what happened the other night. Two more years of maturity, athleticism, and - for lack of better word - chutzpah have turned this young colt into a magnificent thoroughbred.

Watch for Daniil's solo passes in this video of the Flames of Paris pas de deux. His variations now consist of leaping into the air and spinning, but then stretching those strong legs out into a full splits before landing the jumps. His performance on Thursday was "an honest-to-God, 'where did that guy come from,' star" moment.



Come on, Daniil! Now that I see you have your videographers following you all over the world, please please put up your latest variation of this pas!




ETA, update 2-23-09: Here is a review of the ABT's mixed rep program, including kudos for Daniil: "A Lithe and Lively ABT" (Washington Times)



This will be one of many unforgettable moments I've experienced in live theater - or in a gallery or a concert hall. That's why I wrote....


An Open Fan Letter to the Arts
(mailed after Valentine's Day to three dozen arts organizations in the U.S.)

If all the world's a stage, somebody's got to be the audience.

14 February 2009

Dear Artist,

This is a simple thank-you letter from a fan, to acknowledge all the support you have given me over the past few years.

In times of economic hardship, when belts are unwillingly tightened throughout our society, it is demoralizing to see so little public support for that which makes civilization worth saving: the arts.

Do not artists support society by inspiring us with their dreams, exciting us with their imaginations, transporting us to new worlds, and accelerating innovation through new perspectives and new ideas?

I cannot imagine a better model for economic and social success than an orchestra, a theatrical production, or a simple, magical pas de deux. The arts cultivate a spirit of pure cooperation that teaches responsibility for pursuing a shared goal. It should be part of the core curriculum for preparing students to build an enlightened future economy.

Art for art's sake is an underestimation of its value. Art is not for the artist, but for the audience it communicates to and inspires. I see a play whose author plays with words and characters, and I then dream and imagine in ways I had never before explored. I take a class in stone sculpture, and I feel the volume and form of geometry in my own hands; I see the many dimensions of the world from new perspectives.

I fall in love with a singer's voice and discover a community of others similarly inspired; from this community I learn about music, radio and recording, and even about photography, videography, and design. We travel, we explore, and we dream some more.

So this fan letter is for you, with love and gratitude. Thank you for my dreams, my visions, my soul.


Your audience,

[my name]

For identification purposes, I am managing editor of The Futurist magazine (World Future Society, Bethesda, MD). My opinions are my own.
Also: writer of one short play (performed in the Source Theater's 10-Minute Play Competition, 1993), one full-length play (publicly read but unproduced), one novel (unpublished), and two screenplays (unsold); a reader of Shakespeare; a Claymate; a perpetually beginning tap and ballroom dancer; and a lifelong dreamer, happy in the second-to-last row of the balcony.

Special thanks to the following artists and art facilitators, whether public, private, commercial, nonprofit, or informal:

Round House Theatre (Bethesda, MD)
John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts
American Ballet Theatre
Ford's Theatre (Washington, DC)
National Theatre (Washington, DC)
Warner Theatre (Washington, DC)
Bethesda Theatre
Shakespeare Theatre, Lansburgh Theater (Washington, DC)
Shakespeare Theatre, Sidney Harman Hall (Washington, DC)
Vienna Town Green (Vienna, VA)
Wolf Trap Foundation for the Performing Arts (Vienna, VA)
The Birchmere (Alexandria, VA)
Koka Booth Amphitheatre (Cary, NC)
Meyerhoff Symphony Hall (Baltimore)
Lyric Opera House (Baltimore)
Jacksonville Symphony Orchestra
Shubert Theater, Cast, crew, staff, producers of Spamalot
St. James Theater, Cast, crew, staff, producers of Gypsy
Golden Theater, Cast, crew, staff, producers of Avenue Q
Brady Theater (Tulsa)
Jesse H. Jones Hall for the Performing Arts (Houston)
Community Arts Center (Williamsport PA)
National Endowment for the Arts
Smithsonian Institution
National Gallery of Art
The Phillips Collection
Corcoran Gallery of Art
Museum of Modern Art
The Writer's Center
Bethesda Urban Partnership
Shakespeare Readers
Classical WETA-FM
Theater Communications Group / American Theatre
Playbill magazine
BroadwayWorld.com
Clayversity
Clay Aiken Official Fan Club, c/o Clique Services/Sparkart Group

CC: The Washington Post, op-ed

Love, hosaa
from the back row

Random

One of my best good Clay friends was inspired by a current (or now probably passe) Facebook fad of listing 25 random things about oneself, and suggested that we exchange our randomness with each other as Valentine's Day gifts.

The goal was to learn a little more about each other, which we did. As a side effect, I learned a little more about myself, including an inability to stop being random with a specified randomness count. (See # 40.)

One thing I learned is that my value for beauty is more outer-directed than inner-directed. I don't know what that means and don't really care. Another thing I learned is that I still keep a lot of things to myself. I wasn't intending to write a personal history here. There isn't anything about family or deep personal relationships in this list, whereas some of my other friends were much more divulging. That's okay, too. Their secrets are as safe with me as mine are.

1. Have lived in the same town for 38 out of 52 years (not all in a row). Have lived in the same apartment for 26 years.

2. Big wrinkly scar on my right knee from when I fell on the asphalt in seventh grade: Debbie J- stepped on the back of my shoe while we were running outside for gym class.

3. Have never dyed my hair - not even streaks.

4. I have read more novels written in the 19th century than any other century.

5. Zero debt (no mortgage, car payments, student loans, or overdue credit cards).

6. I considered majoring in psychology but changed my mind when a rat died during a lab experiment.

7. I live two miles from the hospital where I was born, and a half mile from my parents' first apartment.

8. If I won the lottery: I would buy the Baltimore Orioles. (It would need to be a BIG lottery - prices have gone up since I invented that wish when I was 15.)

9. My favorite movie: The Right Stuff (reasons - beautiful cinematography, inspiring soundtrack, Sam Shepard's cool, and Dennis Quaid's grin! I also like movies that explain men to me.)

10. I have more Michael Feinstein CDs than any other artist (excluding bootleg Clay).

11. I cried when I saw Van Gogh's "Starry Night Over the Rhone" (Museum of Modern Art, New York, January 2009).

12. I got straight A's on two out of four report cards in fourth grade, hence raising expectations of me among all subsequent teachers, dammit.

13. Listed in Who's Who in the World. One of the credits I added to my official bio was that I was a music reviewer for the Beavers On Idol fan Web site. They actually accepted that.

14. I will go to great lengths not to make a phone call to a business or a stranger. (Receiving calls is only slightly less unsettling.)

15. Was baptized a Presbyterian shortly after birth. I haven't participated in organized religion since junior high school.

16. Best TV show of all time: The Dick Van Dyke Show.

17. I collect single champagne glasses (but ran out of room to store them, so I don't buy them anymore).

18. I was born at 6:30 in the morning. That's still about the time I usually get up.

19. Had one manicure once and hated it; pedicure is inconceivable. Clip own nails on an as-needed basis.

20. I have an older half-sister somewhere out there.

21. Paralyzing self-doubt and fear of complexity have led me to assure myself that lack of ambition is completely acceptable. (Either that or I'm just very lazy.)

22. I own my own tap shoes. But since I live in an apartment with wooden floors, I can only "shuffle off to Buffalo" in bunny slippers.

23. I can needlepoint, but not knit or crochet.

24. Allergic to pet dander but love cats and dogs equally. Would probably have another cat if I lived in a bigger place.

25. Never even experimented with drugs in college (or since).

Leftover randomness:

26. Musical instruments attempted to learn: clarinet and guitar.

27. Shoe size: 8-1/2 B

28. I think these pants make my butt look big.

29. No piercings or tattoos, but have a great big mole where the sun don't shine.

30. I believe that kindness is more important than love, and actions are more important than feelings.

31. I have no full-length mirrors in my apartment. (See #28)

32. I only applied to one college.

33. My passport is currently expired.

34. My two main boyfriends from high school (Vic, tenth grade, and Jack, twelfth grade) both became pastors. (Vic was also considering politics at the time. He asked me, in all seriousness, "Would you rather be Mrs. Billy Graham or Mrs. Richard Nixon?")

35. One of my English teachers in junior high school described me as "a quiet revolutionary" and predicted I would become a civil rights worker.

36. Languages attempted to learn: Spanish (2 semesters in high school, 1 in college), French (1 semester in college)

37. I choose to believe all beliefs are choices. I am suspicious of people who express their opinions as though they are facts.

38. Favorite colors = green and pink. (Hence, favorite flower = tulip) Now that I think about it, my fondness for pink tulips may have determined my favorite colors.

39. Passed through my childbearing years without incident.

40. I apparently love thinking about myself more than I thought I did! :)

Love, hosaa
randomly

"I'm Not Going"

This is a tribute to the dedication of a certain group of very special fans and the object of their affection:



Music: Jennifer Hudson, "And I'm Telling You I'm Not Going" from Dreamgirls soundtrack.

Sure, there were lots of pictures being taken by Clay Aiken's fans during his last weekend of Spamalot. But I thought it was interesting to see the flashes going off from the windows of the Shubert Theater as Clay was taking his last parting farewell from the roof. Hee! Okay, cast and crew - where are your photos from that night!?











































love, hosaa
staying

Inspired Learning

Here's a quick pitch for my alma mater, Grinnell College. They've produced this great video to celebrate the opening of the new science center. I love seeing the students' enthusiasm for their own education, as well as their balanced approach to life.



About the video from Grinnell:

Grinnell science students describe their undergraduate research experiences. In order of appearance:

Ria Laureijs '10, Biological Chemistry (accompanied by Mike Weslander '09,Psychology)
Adhiti Kannan '10, Biology
Filippos Rotzer '10, Physics
Laura Simpson '09, Chemistry/Economics
Mikel Shybut '10, Biological Chemistry/Russian
Jingni Xie '10, Psychology
Sam Calisch '10, Mathematics/Physics
Katie Battani '09, Psychology

This video was produced for the October 4, 2008, dedication of Grinnell College's remarkable new science center, named after Grinnell graduate Robert Noyce, co-inventor of the integrated circuit and co-founder of Intel. The center is designed to reflect the college's active learning approach, in which individuals pursue knowledge as working scientists.

All Rights Reserved, Grinnell College, 2008.