Hey everybody!
Sane Artworks is undergoing a metamorphsis into something super great... keep up with what I've been up to in the meantime at my active e-zine LOCAL TROLLEY
This message was long over do... I fully intended to stay regular, ahem current with my art blog portion of my schitzo schism that took place all the way back in February... Essentially, I wanted to separate the things I was enjoying and reviewing of others from the my own creative endeavors my own... I've been delaying my updated art site for too many dumb reasons to list.
Who ever has taken the time to check out the Sane Artworks Blog I really appreciate your curiosity about the Sane world!! Keep Your Eyes Peeled because this site is not going away and it will have all the new info you need to keep up with my antics!!!
Big Big Thanks!!
Wednesday, October 19, 2011
Wednesday, March 23, 2011
SXSW tears down, scene for next year
The rapid growth of SXSW media expo is pushing its limits as cutting edge experience. Like all great perennial events there comes a point of cliche and possible sell out. I came across an interesting piece by tech industry entreprenuer Mark Suster questioning reasons to go to SXSW, as if SXSW is an abomination of a former experience. I'm willing to bet it is.
Without question there is fun to be had and quality performances. Local Trolley e-pub[lication] looks at unsung West Coast rapper Aceyalone.
Without question there is fun to be had and quality performances. Local Trolley e-pub[lication] looks at unsung West Coast rapper Aceyalone.
Tuesday, March 15, 2011
Leah Smithson, splashing in the Bay Area
Clearly not new to art Leah Smithson's work is getting notice and praise. Later this month Smithson's will exhibit her art in Hotel Des Arts in San Francisco, CA.
From the sidewalk to the stage, Riverwest: A Rhapsody!
What happens when you stop thinking in terms of good and evil, and deal with what is... Riverwest is a neighborhood in Milwaukee, and now there is a play about it... Riverwest: A Rhapsody!
Thursday, March 10, 2011
Keeping it local, Riverwest Currents Benefit
Riverwest Currents is the neighborhood monthly paper in Riverwest. The 6th annual Riverwest Follies supported its continued circulation. You can always count on some craziness in Riverwest, but mellow works fine too.
Friday, March 4, 2011
August Wilson production brings more than the Blues
August Wilson published 10 plays during his heralded writing career. One of them, Ma Rainey's Black Bottom currently being produced by the Milwaukee Repertory Theater.
Monday, February 28, 2011
MIlwaukee's Downtown is Dark but not Drab...
To be a class A city, Milwaukee's Downtown completely fills Sunday nights with silence. This past weekend I tried to capture the stillness. Milwaukee streets softly illuminated by gentle street lanterns.
Picture Milwaukee, Downtown City Scapes on Local Trolley
Picture Milwaukee, Downtown City Scapes on Local Trolley
Friday, February 25, 2011
People's Books Co-op Home to Creative Conservation
Plastic shopping bags can be put to work... The hosts of the People's Books Co-op "Do It Together" showed me how.
Thursday, February 17, 2011
Local Trolley Goes Material
New York artist Chakaia Booker defies waste through On Site: Chakai Booker at the Milwaukee Art Museum. On to Local Trolley Blog now...
Sunday, February 13, 2011
Latest From Local Trolley: Funk Baby
Local Trolley is the new home of Sane Artworks adventure related posts.
Check it out: Funk, e'Lectrick Warbabies do it, to it
Check it out: Funk, e'Lectrick Warbabies do it, to it
Wednesday, January 26, 2011
Gallery Night Milwaukee: Green Gallery, Patricia Terry, Berkeley and other splashes
The winter edition of Gallery Night in Milwaukee took place Friday and Saturday this past weekend. I took the A.V. Club's lead on a couple of art exploits seen on Friday night, but ended up off the the trod path and left one destination on my to do list.
The Green Gallery is somewhere I've wanted to check out for a while. I heard of this space a couple of years ago, recognizing the name of creative mind Michelle Grabner in a promotional piece for the Green Gallery's second installation Silverpoint Drawings with Guest Mobile. Keeping with Milwaukee's good fortune, several classes of privileged but angsty local teenagers (myself included, more angsty than privileged), among others I'm sure, felt edified by her instruction and her work.
A Person of Color: a mostly orange exhibition is currently on display at the Green Gallery. It features a host of artists, mostly spry, hip, and trained with their works of mixed mediums staking out floor space and wall art hung low to make you exert some effort to take a gander. Aggressively, which I guess reflects the color swatches of orange employed here, several of the current pieces take deliberate stabs at your sensibilities in overtly self-indulgent to fast approaching borderline cliche ways (making it quite possible that cliche is the new cool this spring).
At Cuvee Black Art made a seldom witnessed mainstream appearance in Milwaukee, expressed through several collages, paintings, and illustrations authored by Evelyn Patricia Terry, a founder of Milwaukee's art presence. Best known for her paintings and printmaking, Terry's Gallery Night work included a series of illustrations carrying wisdom laden captions. Words offered ranged from the philosophical "Opposites attract, but likes stay together" to the practical "I have much work to do". The didactic intent of the Black Arts legacy resonated the gathering.
Art showed up in musical form at Bayview's Sugar Maple as the cooperative Milwaukee Area Composers and Artists (MAC&A) filled the sound stage with a couple Master's thesis jazz compositions featuring brass favorites tenor and baritone saxophone, trumpet, and lesser seen instrument the marimba. Instigated by local musician Steve Gallum, the set featured work by composition peers Blake Manning, and Mike Neumeyer. Ears out for these guys. Their scoring of original works with pen on parchment tinted paper and impromptu is well done; neither often shared with the public in an informal setting, both suitably hosted by Sugar Maple's indy jazz inspired confines.
Speaking of jazz, a free benefit (donations accepted) for the legendary Berkeley Fudge will take place at 7:30p this Friday January 28, 2011, at The Wisconsin Conservatory of Music. Berkeley recently suffered a health setback and the arts community is doing their part to recognize his contributions to the Milwaukee scene. Berkeley resident musician at the Jazz Estate, he was on the bill in the summer 2009 and I missed him unfortunately.
I missed out on Studio 420b exhibitions that featured artists Leslie Peckham, Lindsey Marx, Steven Ruiz, Fred Kames and several others. Judging from previous work, this camp of artist should also be added to your watch list.
Gallery Night in Milwaukee comes around again with spring this time, April 15 and 16th 2011.
The Green Gallery is somewhere I've wanted to check out for a while. I heard of this space a couple of years ago, recognizing the name of creative mind Michelle Grabner in a promotional piece for the Green Gallery's second installation Silverpoint Drawings with Guest Mobile. Keeping with Milwaukee's good fortune, several classes of privileged but angsty local teenagers (myself included, more angsty than privileged), among others I'm sure, felt edified by her instruction and her work.
A Person of Color: a mostly orange exhibition is currently on display at the Green Gallery. It features a host of artists, mostly spry, hip, and trained with their works of mixed mediums staking out floor space and wall art hung low to make you exert some effort to take a gander. Aggressively, which I guess reflects the color swatches of orange employed here, several of the current pieces take deliberate stabs at your sensibilities in overtly self-indulgent to fast approaching borderline cliche ways (making it quite possible that cliche is the new cool this spring).
At Cuvee Black Art made a seldom witnessed mainstream appearance in Milwaukee, expressed through several collages, paintings, and illustrations authored by Evelyn Patricia Terry, a founder of Milwaukee's art presence. Best known for her paintings and printmaking, Terry's Gallery Night work included a series of illustrations carrying wisdom laden captions. Words offered ranged from the philosophical "Opposites attract, but likes stay together" to the practical "I have much work to do". The didactic intent of the Black Arts legacy resonated the gathering.
Art showed up in musical form at Bayview's Sugar Maple as the cooperative Milwaukee Area Composers and Artists (MAC&A) filled the sound stage with a couple Master's thesis jazz compositions featuring brass favorites tenor and baritone saxophone, trumpet, and lesser seen instrument the marimba. Instigated by local musician Steve Gallum, the set featured work by composition peers Blake Manning, and Mike Neumeyer. Ears out for these guys. Their scoring of original works with pen on parchment tinted paper and impromptu is well done; neither often shared with the public in an informal setting, both suitably hosted by Sugar Maple's indy jazz inspired confines.
Speaking of jazz, a free benefit (donations accepted) for the legendary Berkeley Fudge will take place at 7:30p this Friday January 28, 2011, at The Wisconsin Conservatory of Music. Berkeley recently suffered a health setback and the arts community is doing their part to recognize his contributions to the Milwaukee scene. Berkeley resident musician at the Jazz Estate, he was on the bill in the summer 2009 and I missed him unfortunately.
I missed out on Studio 420b exhibitions that featured artists Leslie Peckham, Lindsey Marx, Steven Ruiz, Fred Kames and several others. Judging from previous work, this camp of artist should also be added to your watch list.
Gallery Night in Milwaukee comes around again with spring this time, April 15 and 16th 2011.
Monday, January 10, 2011
Borgs and Ugly Sweaters
"So there was this cool cat with an autotunes guitar who went to the bar to tune his guitar... the bar tender asks if he wants a tune-a-sandwich..." If you walked in at this moment of the performance with a blindfold on you might have thought a stand up comedian voiced a futile introduction to a terrible joke. If, hypothetically, you were thinking that, with a blind fold on, you would have been wrong.
I stay tuned to 'MSE no matter the play format, and I keep hearing about this band Sleeping in the Aviary. A friend of mine during the same time period keeps hounding me about this show at the Borg Ward, for over a month she's been raving. Well, yesterday I happened to be at this place and these cool cats are tuning their guitars, and you probably can't guess who they are.
Drawing a crowd of anti-scenesters, bad sweater-wearers, beat up chucks, broken-in skull caps, some onlookers that could have been extras in Deliverance, and good old average southsiders of with their customary above average good sportsmanship, Sleeping in the Aviary mid-lined a small independent show of deadpan spaz rock brute force.
Tuning done a riff breaks out: a chorus of drum, guitar, bass, and accordion reminiscent of a 50's sock hop ditty ode, but that damn accordion is making the music so randomly today that the toe tapping of the spectators soon turns knee bopping. Next song, a little less 50's with a little more DIY alternative, and torsos start getting in the action. Before the set starts my girlfriend sees a friend of hers and his friend claims he has nothing bad to say about this band. A first time listener, I can't say that I do either. Even luckier for me my first time is live.
Midway through the show the moppy haired band member stalls by picking up where he left off earlier, "So this guy at the bar, wanted to tune his autotune guitar, was going to get something from the guy at the bar, uh... what did he get?... [pause]... [pause]... he got nothing...[crowd laughter]." His punch-line delivery, an effort to disguise a bubble machine controversy from going public, didn't keep the slow-train-wreck-like "story" of spending too much on the bubble machine that doesn't work from happening anyway. Meanwhile, the accordion player managed a wardrobe change into a 1992 Shaq Diesel Orlando Magic jersey and suddenly brandishes a saw to be chorded with a cello bow.
Bubbles spraying lightly into the crowd initially provide ambiance for a crowd member who counts the band back in for the next song. Since lightly spraying bubbles at the wall is no fun, bubbles are cranked up and aimed into the center of the light mass of town folk. The majority of said bubbles are landing on a fairly large fellow you would not expect at show of this sort on a prime Magic: The Gathering card game night. Heads on loose necks are now joining the rest of their bodies on most of the Borg clan. Even the those of southside-patented least affect are noticeably enjoying the show, although still lacking movement or affect.
Fun is contagious. This axiom proves true for Sleeping in the Aviary: a bright and motley clothed bunch who are barely mumbling one minute and screaming manically the next; a pretty sick musical ensemble (in the previous metaphorical way, which is far less sold out than in the old school snow boarder slang sense). You have to be entertaining if you get bored enough to think up a band name like Sleeping in the Aviary. I heard they might be playing in Mini-soda soon. Go see, they really don't suck that bad.
I stay tuned to 'MSE no matter the play format, and I keep hearing about this band Sleeping in the Aviary. A friend of mine during the same time period keeps hounding me about this show at the Borg Ward, for over a month she's been raving. Well, yesterday I happened to be at this place and these cool cats are tuning their guitars, and you probably can't guess who they are.
Drawing a crowd of anti-scenesters, bad sweater-wearers, beat up chucks, broken-in skull caps, some onlookers that could have been extras in Deliverance, and good old average southsiders of with their customary above average good sportsmanship, Sleeping in the Aviary mid-lined a small independent show of deadpan spaz rock brute force.
Tuning done a riff breaks out: a chorus of drum, guitar, bass, and accordion reminiscent of a 50's sock hop ditty ode, but that damn accordion is making the music so randomly today that the toe tapping of the spectators soon turns knee bopping. Next song, a little less 50's with a little more DIY alternative, and torsos start getting in the action. Before the set starts my girlfriend sees a friend of hers and his friend claims he has nothing bad to say about this band. A first time listener, I can't say that I do either. Even luckier for me my first time is live.
Midway through the show the moppy haired band member stalls by picking up where he left off earlier, "So this guy at the bar, wanted to tune his autotune guitar, was going to get something from the guy at the bar, uh... what did he get?... [pause]... [pause]... he got nothing...[crowd laughter]." His punch-line delivery, an effort to disguise a bubble machine controversy from going public, didn't keep the slow-train-wreck-like "story" of spending too much on the bubble machine that doesn't work from happening anyway. Meanwhile, the accordion player managed a wardrobe change into a 1992 Shaq Diesel Orlando Magic jersey and suddenly brandishes a saw to be chorded with a cello bow.
Bubbles spraying lightly into the crowd initially provide ambiance for a crowd member who counts the band back in for the next song. Since lightly spraying bubbles at the wall is no fun, bubbles are cranked up and aimed into the center of the light mass of town folk. The majority of said bubbles are landing on a fairly large fellow you would not expect at show of this sort on a prime Magic: The Gathering card game night. Heads on loose necks are now joining the rest of their bodies on most of the Borg clan. Even the those of southside-patented least affect are noticeably enjoying the show, although still lacking movement or affect.
Fun is contagious. This axiom proves true for Sleeping in the Aviary: a bright and motley clothed bunch who are barely mumbling one minute and screaming manically the next; a pretty sick musical ensemble (in the previous metaphorical way, which is far less sold out than in the old school snow boarder slang sense). You have to be entertaining if you get bored enough to think up a band name like Sleeping in the Aviary. I heard they might be playing in Mini-soda soon. Go see, they really don't suck that bad.
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