Maybe since I've been in a artsy mood things look different to me right now. Anyway, I'm in the UWM Student Union and on the landing of a stairwell is this guy sleeping extra hard. Understanding that this is the best rest he will get for the remainder of the night I can't knock him, because I'm sure he will be hustled out on to the streets as soon as the building closes. In this moment though, I could not help but think how cool of a public art sculpture he would be if he were wax, since he is not, he still manages to add interest to an otherwise drab stairwell, in actuality he is providing a public good by appearing as art, so his presumed indigence is not for naught... hmmm, ponder that thought.
Tuesday, February 24, 2009
Man or Wax Man?
I think camera phones are super obnoxious, but ultimately great for capturing unexpected moments. Too bad mine is super low resolution, damn old skool razor phone. I still managed to digi-click this one.
Maybe since I've been in a artsy mood things look different to me right now. Anyway, I'm in the UWM Student Union and on the landing of a stairwell is this guy sleeping extra hard. Understanding that this is the best rest he will get for the remainder of the night I can't knock him, because I'm sure he will be hustled out on to the streets as soon as the building closes. In this moment though, I could not help but think how cool of a public art sculpture he would be if he were wax, since he is not, he still manages to add interest to an otherwise drab stairwell, in actuality he is providing a public good by appearing as art, so his presumed indigence is not for naught... hmmm, ponder that thought.
Maybe since I've been in a artsy mood things look different to me right now. Anyway, I'm in the UWM Student Union and on the landing of a stairwell is this guy sleeping extra hard. Understanding that this is the best rest he will get for the remainder of the night I can't knock him, because I'm sure he will be hustled out on to the streets as soon as the building closes. In this moment though, I could not help but think how cool of a public art sculpture he would be if he were wax, since he is not, he still manages to add interest to an otherwise drab stairwell, in actuality he is providing a public good by appearing as art, so his presumed indigence is not for naught... hmmm, ponder that thought.
Saturday, February 21, 2009
Cool Eating: Rockabilly Chili Contest
College radio giant 91.7 WMSE is hosting a chili contest fundraiser in early March. I [heart] chilli and I [heart] WMSE enough to don two bumper stickers on my vehicular, so I guess I will have to attend. Plenty of local restaurants will compete including mainstays like Beans & Barely and Milwaukee Ale House, but also local favorites like the Bremen Cafe, and unknown to me's like Hotch-A-Do. The event has and admission of $6 and $1 charge for chili samples but it's for a good cause.
If you're from Milwaukee and over the age of 30, you know the only place on the FM airwaves you could get the illest in underground, above ground and unappreciated rap beats was 91.7 WMSE. First it was 'K-J the D-J' that used to come on once a week at about 12:30am (only original true masters know what night it was, I'm not giving all the gems away). I was a middle schooler back then and to catch the full broadcast I would have to set a cassette tape to record all night and position my boombox just-right next to the window to get reception. Then Mike J featuring Pitt and the Pendulum took over, they held down the time slot proper through the late 90's until, I stopped following them around the turn of the century. This fool Pitt had the only feature length "black" karate movie at the time, I wonder if you could still get it from somewhere. Now-a-days the Saturday Afternoon Boogie Bang carries the baton for hip-hop heads, with cameos by local legend Doc B.
Ninety-nine percent of the station's programming is non-urban music and worth supporting. You get seldom exposed glimpses of all genres from indie rock to instrumental to Lo-Fi slop rock (it's punk music with a bad show name). WMSE definitely keeps my music diet regular. Too much Daughtry and all that ganster-pop r&b mash that is served on the commercial stations can get you mentally constipated. Thanks to the internet you can tune in anytime and anywhere you can get a broadband signal. Rockabilly Chili Contest will take place Sunday March 9, 2009 from 11:00am to 4:00pm at the Milwaukee School of Engineering Kern Center, 1245 N. Broadway in downtown Milwaukee.
If you're from Milwaukee and over the age of 30, you know the only place on the FM airwaves you could get the illest in underground, above ground and unappreciated rap beats was 91.7 WMSE. First it was 'K-J the D-J' that used to come on once a week at about 12:30am (only original true masters know what night it was, I'm not giving all the gems away). I was a middle schooler back then and to catch the full broadcast I would have to set a cassette tape to record all night and position my boombox just-right next to the window to get reception. Then Mike J featuring Pitt and the Pendulum took over, they held down the time slot proper through the late 90's until, I stopped following them around the turn of the century. This fool Pitt had the only feature length "black" karate movie at the time, I wonder if you could still get it from somewhere. Now-a-days the Saturday Afternoon Boogie Bang carries the baton for hip-hop heads, with cameos by local legend Doc B.
Ninety-nine percent of the station's programming is non-urban music and worth supporting. You get seldom exposed glimpses of all genres from indie rock to instrumental to Lo-Fi slop rock (it's punk music with a bad show name). WMSE definitely keeps my music diet regular. Too much Daughtry and all that ganster-pop r&b mash that is served on the commercial stations can get you mentally constipated. Thanks to the internet you can tune in anytime and anywhere you can get a broadband signal. Rockabilly Chili Contest will take place Sunday March 9, 2009 from 11:00am to 4:00pm at the Milwaukee School of Engineering Kern Center, 1245 N. Broadway in downtown Milwaukee.
Friday, February 20, 2009
Bury the Machete: Have you ever been experienced, on Friday the 13th?
It's a week past Friday February the 13th, the opening of the re-release of the killassic horror flick Friday the 13th. I made it out on the first night, and the diehard horror fans made a respectable showing. The fact that it was actually Friday the 13th and Valentine's Day weekend made it marginally cool. It was a multicultural, inter-generational affair. Even a obnoxiously-Fergie-fabulous Indian from India babe (ooh I'm awful) made it out to the late show in her Beverly Feldman pumps (Big uppities to my fearless j-list leader for sniffing that one out, she couldn't go into the movie before accosting the woman about the origin of her cool peds). 
Part slasher part Weekend at Bernie's part Cheech and Chong softcore porn style, Jason's resurrection for the younger generation does little justice to the mysterious and distant half-dead psychopath' of the 80's. What a difference two decades makes. 2009 J-Voorheesy makes the original incarnation look like a grandpa or at least a great uncle. Old hockey face now-a-days is straight to the point, extra specially brutal, persistent, but yet is able to maintain his slightly ironic, mute, pop-out-of-now-where since of humor... when dispatching unwitting teens, just in less creative ways. The highlight of the show came when the infamous "Chih, chih, chih, hah, hah, hah" track finally played near the end of the flick, which prompted an eager studio audience member to interject into the movie-viewing silence "Out of breath azz n*gg*!" with the uncanny comedic timing of a high school class clown.
An astute friend of mine of the Catholic persuasion noticed that all the teens that got hacked to death were in commission of some carnal sin. I never thought of it that way before. Could Jason have a higher calling? As you can see, Jason here has the Ambercrombie archangel frat-boy look going, complete with heavenly aura! Now go ye forth and terrorize heathen youth... Maybe killing slacking phuck-ups is kind of like recycling... it takes some effort but is ultimately better for all of us in the end. You have about 4 days to see this movie in its full big-screen glory. Even though it's the "#1 movie in America" as of tonight, if it makes it to DVD before you decide to check it out, do yourself a favor and rent part III of the original series on VHS. The new Bayshore Mall does have an incognito new theatre (with no website), I didn't see it there though, but you can!
Part slasher part Weekend at Bernie's part Cheech and Chong softcore porn style, Jason's resurrection for the younger generation does little justice to the mysterious and distant half-dead psychopath' of the 80's. What a difference two decades makes. 2009 J-Voorheesy makes the original incarnation look like a grandpa or at least a great uncle. Old hockey face now-a-days is straight to the point, extra specially brutal, persistent, but yet is able to maintain his slightly ironic, mute, pop-out-of-now-where since of humor... when dispatching unwitting teens, just in less creative ways. The highlight of the show came when the infamous "Chih, chih, chih, hah, hah, hah" track finally played near the end of the flick, which prompted an eager studio audience member to interject into the movie-viewing silence "Out of breath azz n*gg*!" with the uncanny comedic timing of a high school class clown.
An astute friend of mine of the Catholic persuasion noticed that all the teens that got hacked to death were in commission of some carnal sin. I never thought of it that way before. Could Jason have a higher calling? As you can see, Jason here has the Ambercrombie archangel frat-boy look going, complete with heavenly aura! Now go ye forth and terrorize heathen youth... Maybe killing slacking phuck-ups is kind of like recycling... it takes some effort but is ultimately better for all of us in the end. You have about 4 days to see this movie in its full big-screen glory. Even though it's the "#1 movie in America" as of tonight, if it makes it to DVD before you decide to check it out, do yourself a favor and rent part III of the original series on VHS. The new Bayshore Mall does have an incognito new theatre (with no website), I didn't see it there though, but you can!
Tuesday, February 10, 2009
End the Weekend
There is a new comedy showcase in Milwaukee called Funny First Sundays, uh, at Comedy Sportz on 1st Street right south of downtown. You get a little taste of BET Comic View because its hosted by Damon Williams. What? You're supposed to know him. No not Damon Wayans, Williams. Okay lets be serious, you get a little taste of Comic View in Milwaukee. That means they could have used the pudgy referee with the glasses in real life. The funny part was that the first thing Williams said was, "I heard about y'all [in Milwaukee]." The show couldn't even get started before some fool, in the very first row cackling at himself, is yelling 'tomatoes' at a poet who was introducing the event with too many bitter rhythmic words about some pretty light-skinned girl he doesn't think is pretty since she was unreceptive to his advances, or should I say what she thought were his advances.
If you didn't figure it out by now, Blacks now have a reason to be late on Monday mornings, that's if you are working anyway. Straying from its improv roots, Comedy Sportz better retain some security and metal detectors. You got audience members that try to upstage the show by yelling slick comments like they're in MPS again and get mad when the comedian starts roasting phantom hecklers they can't see through the spotlights. That's the best part though, everyone in the room is fair game, even one of the servers got caught "looking like Jack Black". You might get lit-up for just getting up to go to the restroom with the wrong walk or too big of a booty, or especially if you are a raffle winner who has the nerve to come out the house and get on stage with a wrinkled shirt. It went something like this. Between acts Williams goes "...Congratulations man, you won a cd. You got a choice of India Arie, India Arie, ah India Arie. Oh, yeah that's right she got a new album coming out. That's the one you want?... okay good choice Chris, give it up for Chris y'all," (Chris steps of the stage, Williams under his breath) "Man, if you going to use the iron at least turn it on." Aaah, got him! You might even get a glimpse of a couple of, we'll just say, ladies wearing butt length silk napkins. Funny First Sundays is a good way to celebrate the end of the Sunday sabbath. You get to people watch, hear professional laugh artists and get a few chuckles off of both.
Wondering about the 'Aahk' in the title (oh yeah, I changed the title)? Williams let us know that is the sound you get when you do something in bed with your boo that she's not comfortable with (or to refer to you if you're that kind of dude). Funny First Sundays is First Sundays until you see different at 10 o'clock sharp on channel 6 news. I forgot to mention the comedy starts on the flier with 'show starts promptly at 9pm'. If you have 10 bucks and a little tolerance for a dab of tactlessness its worth checking out once.
If you didn't figure it out by now, Blacks now have a reason to be late on Monday mornings, that's if you are working anyway. Straying from its improv roots, Comedy Sportz better retain some security and metal detectors. You got audience members that try to upstage the show by yelling slick comments like they're in MPS again and get mad when the comedian starts roasting phantom hecklers they can't see through the spotlights. That's the best part though, everyone in the room is fair game, even one of the servers got caught "looking like Jack Black". You might get lit-up for just getting up to go to the restroom with the wrong walk or too big of a booty, or especially if you are a raffle winner who has the nerve to come out the house and get on stage with a wrinkled shirt. It went something like this. Between acts Williams goes "...Congratulations man, you won a cd. You got a choice of India Arie, India Arie, ah India Arie. Oh, yeah that's right she got a new album coming out. That's the one you want?... okay good choice Chris, give it up for Chris y'all," (Chris steps of the stage, Williams under his breath) "Man, if you going to use the iron at least turn it on." Aaah, got him! You might even get a glimpse of a couple of, we'll just say, ladies wearing butt length silk napkins. Funny First Sundays is a good way to celebrate the end of the Sunday sabbath. You get to people watch, hear professional laugh artists and get a few chuckles off of both.
Wondering about the 'Aahk' in the title (oh yeah, I changed the title)? Williams let us know that is the sound you get when you do something in bed with your boo that she's not comfortable with (or to refer to you if you're that kind of dude). Funny First Sundays is First Sundays until you see different at 10 o'clock sharp on channel 6 news. I forgot to mention the comedy starts on the flier with 'show starts promptly at 9pm'. If you have 10 bucks and a little tolerance for a dab of tactlessness its worth checking out once.
Sunday, February 8, 2009
Manifest Dexterity
Wanna stick it to the "the man"? What if I told you that you could do it in the comfort of your own home, on a park lawn, by yourself or with a crew of friends. What if I told you that you could and only reap the rewards of soul-inspiring fulfillment and not the affection of the INTERPOL. Sounding unreasonable? The United States premiere of the film Handmade Nation made believers out of a capacity crowd at the Oriental Theatre in Milwaukee.
Judging from the flock of movie-goers you would have thought the Dali Lama was in town. With the theatre's Buddha statues mounted on the balconies presiding, Handmade Nation written and directed by Faythe Levine and Courtney Heimerl took us on an easy ride through the winding open road of 'crafting'. HMN covers 19,000 miles worth of perspectives, traveling cross-country to interview crafters in all four corners of the continental US.
If your senses are easily overloaded this is not the film to see. HMN begins with a sentient needle scurrying across the screen, with beady friends and inky playmates, adding to the ever-morphing patchwork quilt and screen-printed background. They say you cant judge a book by its cover, but opening sequences definitely set the tone for great films in the 21st century and HMN's doesn't disappoint.
Know Thyself
What is crafting anyway? Any person engaging in this activity will be reluctant to tell you with any certainty; that would ruin the fun. In different pockets of the US, HMN documentarians asked partakers of the tactile fellowship their thoughts on crafting. Harvesting various answers, a few common threads still ran threw the craft-persons' responses each unique in the coloring and texture describing their ethics in relation to their preferred craft.
Without prompting, it became apparent that to a crafter our consumer culture is a bother and a bore. Consumerism is impersonal, mass produced, ruthless in its hoarding of resources, and most tragically mind-numbing. Fed up with corporate sales associates ringing-up cloned scarfs and greeting cards incubated on computer screens, the keepers of the crafting code urge you to stop and think before you brandish your magnetized plastic filled with money credits.
Here a distinction must be made. We're not talking about the crafting that will take you to Michael's after watching a couple of Martha Stewart episodes and cause you to break out the bedazzle gun. As HMN plays on, it's clear that transforming reality, by taking a stand against idle fingers and the capitalist big-box, requires commitment to an ethic.
On the most fundamental level the crafter, born through a series of realizations, possesses an intriguing awareness of the relationship between using your hands to interact with the materials around you and the sensation of connectedness to your habitat. This process departs from the traditional artist, likely more concerned with conveying an idea, evoking irony, or a portraying a particular aesthetic. Seeking confirmation of life's presence, the stimulation of senses provide crafters a motivating catalyst to create. The crafter removes the isolation of modern life by making things and sharing them.
The crafter locates self by eliminating the mysterious origin of objects both novel and utilitarian. Craft-culture rejects all-things paternal and challenges us to not hinder our personal maturation by standing in-line for things we want or need all the time. According to a certain social theorist, people are cooler in uptown Manhattan anyway.
Conservation Bandits
The need to conserve by recreating with the previously used is a renewable theme throughout the film. Rather than staging a workers rally, one with busy hands admits that she buys only pre-owned fabric to make her garments. Before tailoring a class piece of formal wear, another crafter contemplates the implications of cutting into a 50 year-old piece of fabric commenting, "what gives me the right to cut into this fabric?" Doing more than 'tree-hugging', a dedicated crafter uses recycled paper as the medium of choice for post cards and such, decreasing demand for felled trees. The principle is one less fiber purchased retail is one less environmentally inconsiderate product that needs to be re-stocked on the shelf.
It's not coincidental that 'Do-it-Yourself' has an activist application. Conservation is kind of like the crafters' Swiss army knife; it's a versatile instrument of change. Endearingly, crafters are willing to engage social problems on a level that departs from an annoying issue-mongers' tendency for screaming, guilt-tripping and proselytizing. Maybe we don't need another hero, we just need a bunch of tiny creative moments to make change.
The limits of conservation extend beyond physical materials to preservation of ancient methods. In one scene, a young woman teetering light-reflecting safety goggles from her nose, donning a tattered long sleeve sweater with strings dangling from the wrist and a payload of necklaces B.A. Baracas-style, ignites a blue-flamed torch a foot from her face that looks like it could melt a diamond. We soon learn that Tracy Bull of Happy Owl Glassworks is nonchalantly risking her eyebrows to preserve a 2,000 year-old glass-beading technique. Now that is hardcore.
Minute sized paper cutouts of cultural symbols and fauna are carefully whittled with an Xacto blade at the fingertips of Nikki McClure, her works are anthropological manuscripts translating bygone creative eras practiced by Chinese, African, and Middle Eastern cultures, connecting us to what our human ancestors were doing with their energy.
Expressing conservation comes not only with their chosen mediums and techniques, but also with diet. Working from the inside out, for some, tuning-in to the craft wavelength requires the compassion for all living beings expressed through vegan practices. That's how one participant entered the craft chamber, "just getting together with friends to craft and enjoy good food." That's the beauty of it. It's just that simple.
Causing a Commotion
If human interaction and conservation are not motivation enough, crafting also appeals to the inner renegade rebel in all of us. It was hippy-ness and punk rock for the younger Baby Boomers and grunge for the Gen X-ers. Now since both are well into their thirties, forties and fifties, according to the fist law of thermodynamics, that rebellious energy has to go somewhere, but where? (I'm a young Gen X-er pardon my sarcasm, it is well intended). The recent generations are not immune.
Some of my favorite parts of HMN depict deviant behavior that is decidedly anti-establishment. The proprietor of Anti - Factory stages a public contest to see who could knit the best bootleg of the Burberry pattern. Receiving many demonstrations she is able to construct hand bags that soon become popular. Take that posh name brand!
A posse of Texas knitters take the proverbial cake. With nicknames like Notorious N.I.T and J - Nitty, the group Nitta' takes crafting guerrilla. When night falls they pile into a compact economy car. Timing the precise opportunity-maximizing-moment they jump out, to stealth-bomb-knit a Technicolor muffler onto a street sign post and vanish into the night. Cleverly mocking municipal bureaucrats and graffiti artists simultaneously with a stab of the knitting needle, the least crafting can do for you is provide some amusement.
Thumping Pareto
There is a parallel story to this motion-picture look into an American subculture that adds instead of takes away from our collective wellbeing. One of the film's makers, Levine, also runs a local Milwaukee outlet called Paper Boat Boutique and Gallery, which as recently as January 30th was set to close, nearly unfathomable given the talent and drive of Levine. However, crafting economics defy the conventional wisdom of enterprise enough for an imminent shutdown to make sense.
Presenting an alternative model for business proves a little trickier than selecting the perfect place for a new hem. Shamelessly labor and input intensive, craft-based shops snub the profit-maximizing formula in favor of unconventional antics. If you see a six-foot-tall canvas cuboid resembling a vending machine inching toward you, wildly painted with small pictures on the front and a slot for stuffing in dollar bills, you might think you are on Japanese television, but know that a starving crafter just wants to make ends meet with some of his prints.
Efforts of magnitude replace economies of scale and sweat-equity won't cut it. Evidenced by a vendor's ordeal, who while embellishing one of her craft fair displays accidentally staples her index finger, badly, you have to be willing to sign your check in blood. Ensuing film frames capture a friendly neighbor arriving, without cue, to lend some clot-aiding pressure and moral support. The HMN viewer then understands that ink runs thicker than water.
The mend of the crafting community weaves together a closely packed network of individuals devoted to a common bond. HMN confirms that interaction with objects is secondary to the magic that happens when humans decide to appreciate what they agree on. The turnout to last Thursday's premiere gives an unequivocal testament to this fact. Levine and Heimerl have clearly dedicated their energies to the most deserving places. Smacking the smiles off the big yellow circle-faced end-caps that dominate our consumption habits, Levine's film makes a strong case for the premium warranted for crafter-made items.
Crafters are giving much of themselves physically and emotionally to carry alternatives to commercial-merchandise. A splurge in Handmade Nation is a tithe that sustains the availability of choices that American's crave. Their take is not so much gratitude, as just deserts. It's the only way they can stay afloat. A good amount of the film's craft fair footage takes place outside. That means you have plenty of time to plan an outing to a craft fair.
Riders of the Storm
Having a group 'collective unconscious' definitely does not preclude self-consciousness. Ironically, in the heat of the struggle to remain Indie and commercial-free, the Handmade Nation is aware that their experiment with creativity could turn on the doctor. There is a dark-side. Will the evil empire cunningly find a way to capture one of the last remaining reaches of uncharted market segments? High-end designers and retail executives need to stand down and mind their demographics. Although the odds are stacked against them, the craft guild and its admirers are a fortuitous bunch. It's up to free thinkers to bestow the social and economic capital that can keep the penny hoarders at bay.
Upcoming screenings of Handmade Nation include stops in New York's Museum of Art and Design next week, and venues in Toronto, Canada, Barcelona, Spain, Melbourne, Australia, returning to the area at Madison's Wisconsin Film Festival April 2 - 5, 2009 details TBA. Handmade Nation is also in print! Check here for the latest HMN news.
Judging from the flock of movie-goers you would have thought the Dali Lama was in town. With the theatre's Buddha statues mounted on the balconies presiding, Handmade Nation written and directed by Faythe Levine and Courtney Heimerl took us on an easy ride through the winding open road of 'crafting'. HMN covers 19,000 miles worth of perspectives, traveling cross-country to interview crafters in all four corners of the continental US.
If your senses are easily overloaded this is not the film to see. HMN begins with a sentient needle scurrying across the screen, with beady friends and inky playmates, adding to the ever-morphing patchwork quilt and screen-printed background. They say you cant judge a book by its cover, but opening sequences definitely set the tone for great films in the 21st century and HMN's doesn't disappoint.
Know Thyself
What is crafting anyway? Any person engaging in this activity will be reluctant to tell you with any certainty; that would ruin the fun. In different pockets of the US, HMN documentarians asked partakers of the tactile fellowship their thoughts on crafting. Harvesting various answers, a few common threads still ran threw the craft-persons' responses each unique in the coloring and texture describing their ethics in relation to their preferred craft.
Without prompting, it became apparent that to a crafter our consumer culture is a bother and a bore. Consumerism is impersonal, mass produced, ruthless in its hoarding of resources, and most tragically mind-numbing. Fed up with corporate sales associates ringing-up cloned scarfs and greeting cards incubated on computer screens, the keepers of the crafting code urge you to stop and think before you brandish your magnetized plastic filled with money credits.
Here a distinction must be made. We're not talking about the crafting that will take you to Michael's after watching a couple of Martha Stewart episodes and cause you to break out the bedazzle gun. As HMN plays on, it's clear that transforming reality, by taking a stand against idle fingers and the capitalist big-box, requires commitment to an ethic.
On the most fundamental level the crafter, born through a series of realizations, possesses an intriguing awareness of the relationship between using your hands to interact with the materials around you and the sensation of connectedness to your habitat. This process departs from the traditional artist, likely more concerned with conveying an idea, evoking irony, or a portraying a particular aesthetic. Seeking confirmation of life's presence, the stimulation of senses provide crafters a motivating catalyst to create. The crafter removes the isolation of modern life by making things and sharing them.
The crafter locates self by eliminating the mysterious origin of objects both novel and utilitarian. Craft-culture rejects all-things paternal and challenges us to not hinder our personal maturation by standing in-line for things we want or need all the time. According to a certain social theorist, people are cooler in uptown Manhattan anyway.
Conservation Bandits
The need to conserve by recreating with the previously used is a renewable theme throughout the film. Rather than staging a workers rally, one with busy hands admits that she buys only pre-owned fabric to make her garments. Before tailoring a class piece of formal wear, another crafter contemplates the implications of cutting into a 50 year-old piece of fabric commenting, "what gives me the right to cut into this fabric?" Doing more than 'tree-hugging', a dedicated crafter uses recycled paper as the medium of choice for post cards and such, decreasing demand for felled trees. The principle is one less fiber purchased retail is one less environmentally inconsiderate product that needs to be re-stocked on the shelf.
It's not coincidental that 'Do-it-Yourself' has an activist application. Conservation is kind of like the crafters' Swiss army knife; it's a versatile instrument of change. Endearingly, crafters are willing to engage social problems on a level that departs from an annoying issue-mongers' tendency for screaming, guilt-tripping and proselytizing. Maybe we don't need another hero, we just need a bunch of tiny creative moments to make change.
The limits of conservation extend beyond physical materials to preservation of ancient methods. In one scene, a young woman teetering light-reflecting safety goggles from her nose, donning a tattered long sleeve sweater with strings dangling from the wrist and a payload of necklaces B.A. Baracas-style, ignites a blue-flamed torch a foot from her face that looks like it could melt a diamond. We soon learn that Tracy Bull of Happy Owl Glassworks is nonchalantly risking her eyebrows to preserve a 2,000 year-old glass-beading technique. Now that is hardcore.
Minute sized paper cutouts of cultural symbols and fauna are carefully whittled with an Xacto blade at the fingertips of Nikki McClure, her works are anthropological manuscripts translating bygone creative eras practiced by Chinese, African, and Middle Eastern cultures, connecting us to what our human ancestors were doing with their energy.
Expressing conservation comes not only with their chosen mediums and techniques, but also with diet. Working from the inside out, for some, tuning-in to the craft wavelength requires the compassion for all living beings expressed through vegan practices. That's how one participant entered the craft chamber, "just getting together with friends to craft and enjoy good food." That's the beauty of it. It's just that simple.
Causing a Commotion
If human interaction and conservation are not motivation enough, crafting also appeals to the inner renegade rebel in all of us. It was hippy-ness and punk rock for the younger Baby Boomers and grunge for the Gen X-ers. Now since both are well into their thirties, forties and fifties, according to the fist law of thermodynamics, that rebellious energy has to go somewhere, but where? (I'm a young Gen X-er pardon my sarcasm, it is well intended). The recent generations are not immune.
Some of my favorite parts of HMN depict deviant behavior that is decidedly anti-establishment. The proprietor of Anti - Factory stages a public contest to see who could knit the best bootleg of the Burberry pattern. Receiving many demonstrations she is able to construct hand bags that soon become popular. Take that posh name brand!
A posse of Texas knitters take the proverbial cake. With nicknames like Notorious N.I.T and J - Nitty, the group Nitta' takes crafting guerrilla. When night falls they pile into a compact economy car. Timing the precise opportunity-maximizing-moment they jump out, to stealth-bomb-knit a Technicolor muffler onto a street sign post and vanish into the night. Cleverly mocking municipal bureaucrats and graffiti artists simultaneously with a stab of the knitting needle, the least crafting can do for you is provide some amusement.
Thumping Pareto
There is a parallel story to this motion-picture look into an American subculture that adds instead of takes away from our collective wellbeing. One of the film's makers, Levine, also runs a local Milwaukee outlet called Paper Boat Boutique and Gallery, which as recently as January 30th was set to close, nearly unfathomable given the talent and drive of Levine. However, crafting economics defy the conventional wisdom of enterprise enough for an imminent shutdown to make sense.
Presenting an alternative model for business proves a little trickier than selecting the perfect place for a new hem. Shamelessly labor and input intensive, craft-based shops snub the profit-maximizing formula in favor of unconventional antics. If you see a six-foot-tall canvas cuboid resembling a vending machine inching toward you, wildly painted with small pictures on the front and a slot for stuffing in dollar bills, you might think you are on Japanese television, but know that a starving crafter just wants to make ends meet with some of his prints.
Efforts of magnitude replace economies of scale and sweat-equity won't cut it. Evidenced by a vendor's ordeal, who while embellishing one of her craft fair displays accidentally staples her index finger, badly, you have to be willing to sign your check in blood. Ensuing film frames capture a friendly neighbor arriving, without cue, to lend some clot-aiding pressure and moral support. The HMN viewer then understands that ink runs thicker than water.
The mend of the crafting community weaves together a closely packed network of individuals devoted to a common bond. HMN confirms that interaction with objects is secondary to the magic that happens when humans decide to appreciate what they agree on. The turnout to last Thursday's premiere gives an unequivocal testament to this fact. Levine and Heimerl have clearly dedicated their energies to the most deserving places. Smacking the smiles off the big yellow circle-faced end-caps that dominate our consumption habits, Levine's film makes a strong case for the premium warranted for crafter-made items.
Crafters are giving much of themselves physically and emotionally to carry alternatives to commercial-merchandise. A splurge in Handmade Nation is a tithe that sustains the availability of choices that American's crave. Their take is not so much gratitude, as just deserts. It's the only way they can stay afloat. A good amount of the film's craft fair footage takes place outside. That means you have plenty of time to plan an outing to a craft fair.
Riders of the Storm
Having a group 'collective unconscious' definitely does not preclude self-consciousness. Ironically, in the heat of the struggle to remain Indie and commercial-free, the Handmade Nation is aware that their experiment with creativity could turn on the doctor. There is a dark-side. Will the evil empire cunningly find a way to capture one of the last remaining reaches of uncharted market segments? High-end designers and retail executives need to stand down and mind their demographics. Although the odds are stacked against them, the craft guild and its admirers are a fortuitous bunch. It's up to free thinkers to bestow the social and economic capital that can keep the penny hoarders at bay.
Upcoming screenings of Handmade Nation include stops in New York's Museum of Art and Design next week, and venues in Toronto, Canada, Barcelona, Spain, Melbourne, Australia, returning to the area at Madison's Wisconsin Film Festival April 2 - 5, 2009 details TBA. Handmade Nation is also in print! Check here for the latest HMN news.
Sunday, February 1, 2009
Non-Obvious takes on Big History through Little Eyes
In plain view under a curved lamppost with a conical fixture beaming down light, sits an endomorphic body-type mannequin postured upright on a wooden chair at the far end of a 20-foot table; it ominously presides over the diorama scenes intermittently placed over the balance of the wooden surface. The main action of Waldek Dynerman’s Train Project lives here. Curious on lookers begin to meander towards this area like cautious deer fawn at dusk, visibility is low. Me being one of them I decide to keep my distance, the diminutive artistic elements could be sensitive to clumsy eyes or just in case that mannequin decides to stand up I will have a clear path to the exit.
Not having read the description of this event, to my recollection, I am beginning to ask myself why I came. It's all so random, even creepy. I have seen it before, weird for weird's sake. I'm from the seminal days of Riddlin prescriptions: ahem, some of us wore mental disturbance like a badge not knowing you could get labeled for it.
A man comes forth subtly, gets the group's attention with a well placed 'auuh...' and reluctantly grants us permission to sit on the floor if we preferred, or otherwise make ourselves comfortable. The gentleman wears a conservative zip-neck sweater that covers an Oxford, and aside from a slightly disheveled bush of hair is markedly non-descriptive; maybe he is the host. Expecting Marilyn Manson incarnate to ascend from the concrete floor below, the gentleman, Dynerman to my chagrin, initiates his talk.
Days of Grace
Born 6 years after the end of WWII to a Polish-Jewish father and Christian mother, Dynerman begins recounting the time period of his childhood in post-war Poland and France. "A lot of what we saw on television and in movies was about the war," as if to understate a great preoccupation of the times, "we used the German words we heard when we played our games." Sometimes Dynerman was a German soldier exhorting a courageous Pole playmate that defied the order to 'halt'. Dynerman's father was a holocaust survivor, doing so with Dynerman's grandparents by living 18 months without leaving a family friend's 10 X 10 cellar room. When the ordeal ended, he recounts that his father found none remaining from his former life and his father eventually moved to Paris where he met his mother before moving to Israel.
The picture slowly comes together during Dynerman’s discussion. The installation features multiple sculptures and miscellaneous tangible elements amply spaced on the walls, floor and on hand-made pedestals. Scanning the installation, heads, malformed torsos and eerily dismembered doll limbs slowly come to focus in the midst of small wooden shelters and platforms. However, small human figurines of laymen, by standers, and soldiers are the stars of this exhibit.
One figurine stands roughly two inches tall and is dwarfed by two quarter pieces of cinder block fused together, to form what looks like a giant high modern building on a European street corner. The figurine lonesomely steps onto a mock curb illuminated by a scaled-down model street lamp. Half-way across the room in the shadow cast behind the large endomorphic mannequin , a crowd of peach colored figurines bunches up when approached by an on coming hoard of evergreen tinted army soldiers with ranks that reach around to the lateral side of the mannequin's wooden throne.
Is any one watching? Certainly not the mannequin who is content to glare forward, certainly not the fortunate peach figurines that are watching the small LCD displays flickering pretty colors in cozy wood enclosures. He reveals that this work's subject matter is the holocaust, among other genocides as they have occurred as recently as this year.
Artist in Our Minds
A painter by trade and training Dynerman decided to deviate from his master craft into sculpture, to satisfy his want to delve into a medium with which he was always fascinated. "I always found mannequins interesting," he utters. While reflecting on his decision not to incorporate several large paintings into to the piece, he wonders into a thought about how he preferred to have a stark white background for the exhibit so that the viewer could "wash their eyes" and refresh their minds before continuing to different parts of the gallery.
His philosophy is consistent and modest. Dynerman's father and his father before him were tin craftsmen. In ode to his memories, fashioned metal street lights in various scaled-states frequently dot the dusky hall punctuating the tiny dramatic scenes in perpetual suspense. His conversation trickles English with an endearing thick native Polish-speaking accent, "I grew up around a shop so I always liked building things... the things you see here, the pedestals, the table.... are all built by hand...and when I build them I craft them to the extent that they serve the purpose that they are built for and not more." He’s right staining the woodwork would look contrived.
There is quite a bit of irony here and the use of scale is apparent in the exhibition. Located on the table opposite the seat-perched mannequin is a 3-foot-tall tin model of the Eiffel tower flanked by miniature coniferous trees. Dynerman shares that his father retained his love for Paris, even while in Israel, and constructed the model of the famous structure as a gift to Dynerman. To use the iconic landmark often revered for its invocation of love and freedom as a backdrop for his mini-theatre, is a brilliant twist on reality. "I have no sensible response," he offers when I asked if there is a deeper meaning to the use of scale in his art. "I think that somehow the viewer may have more empathy [for small doll-like figures]," his tone is somewhat playful when making this remark as if he is omitting something from a secret recipe. I think he has discovered a way to mock human cognition into choosing its own adventure instead of spoon-feeding perceptions.
For Dynerman, by his own admission, simply "painting death" seemed inappropriate. Lucky for us we are able to see Dynerman's motion picture snap-shot of the human condition projected on the adjacent wall, from the point of view of a remote-camera-equipped model train scurrying on the table behind the omnipotent mannequin, alongside the madness of the evergreen aggressors converging on innocent peach crowds, turning with the track to a straight away with a small mirror positioned like a billboard, capturing the face of the mannequin in the reflection, then futilely hustling past a neon blue filament-lit carousel that upon closer examination is housing a series of severed doll feet and legs protruding from the inner cylinder of the amusement park favorite, only to endlessly repeat the circuit as if to take the spectator on a whimsical reoccurring nightmare. If you are paying attention, it is surreal. Train Project is on display at the University of Wisconsin - Milwaukee Union Gallery from January 26 - February 27, 2009.
Not having read the description of this event, to my recollection, I am beginning to ask myself why I came. It's all so random, even creepy. I have seen it before, weird for weird's sake. I'm from the seminal days of Riddlin prescriptions: ahem, some of us wore mental disturbance like a badge not knowing you could get labeled for it.
A man comes forth subtly, gets the group's attention with a well placed 'auuh...' and reluctantly grants us permission to sit on the floor if we preferred, or otherwise make ourselves comfortable. The gentleman wears a conservative zip-neck sweater that covers an Oxford, and aside from a slightly disheveled bush of hair is markedly non-descriptive; maybe he is the host. Expecting Marilyn Manson incarnate to ascend from the concrete floor below, the gentleman, Dynerman to my chagrin, initiates his talk.
Days of Grace
Born 6 years after the end of WWII to a Polish-Jewish father and Christian mother, Dynerman begins recounting the time period of his childhood in post-war Poland and France. "A lot of what we saw on television and in movies was about the war," as if to understate a great preoccupation of the times, "we used the German words we heard when we played our games." Sometimes Dynerman was a German soldier exhorting a courageous Pole playmate that defied the order to 'halt'. Dynerman's father was a holocaust survivor, doing so with Dynerman's grandparents by living 18 months without leaving a family friend's 10 X 10 cellar room. When the ordeal ended, he recounts that his father found none remaining from his former life and his father eventually moved to Paris where he met his mother before moving to Israel.
The picture slowly comes together during Dynerman’s discussion. The installation features multiple sculptures and miscellaneous tangible elements amply spaced on the walls, floor and on hand-made pedestals. Scanning the installation, heads, malformed torsos and eerily dismembered doll limbs slowly come to focus in the midst of small wooden shelters and platforms. However, small human figurines of laymen, by standers, and soldiers are the stars of this exhibit.
One figurine stands roughly two inches tall and is dwarfed by two quarter pieces of cinder block fused together, to form what looks like a giant high modern building on a European street corner. The figurine lonesomely steps onto a mock curb illuminated by a scaled-down model street lamp. Half-way across the room in the shadow cast behind the large endomorphic mannequin , a crowd of peach colored figurines bunches up when approached by an on coming hoard of evergreen tinted army soldiers with ranks that reach around to the lateral side of the mannequin's wooden throne.
Is any one watching? Certainly not the mannequin who is content to glare forward, certainly not the fortunate peach figurines that are watching the small LCD displays flickering pretty colors in cozy wood enclosures. He reveals that this work's subject matter is the holocaust, among other genocides as they have occurred as recently as this year.
Artist in Our Minds
A painter by trade and training Dynerman decided to deviate from his master craft into sculpture, to satisfy his want to delve into a medium with which he was always fascinated. "I always found mannequins interesting," he utters. While reflecting on his decision not to incorporate several large paintings into to the piece, he wonders into a thought about how he preferred to have a stark white background for the exhibit so that the viewer could "wash their eyes" and refresh their minds before continuing to different parts of the gallery.
His philosophy is consistent and modest. Dynerman's father and his father before him were tin craftsmen. In ode to his memories, fashioned metal street lights in various scaled-states frequently dot the dusky hall punctuating the tiny dramatic scenes in perpetual suspense. His conversation trickles English with an endearing thick native Polish-speaking accent, "I grew up around a shop so I always liked building things... the things you see here, the pedestals, the table.... are all built by hand...and when I build them I craft them to the extent that they serve the purpose that they are built for and not more." He’s right staining the woodwork would look contrived.
There is quite a bit of irony here and the use of scale is apparent in the exhibition. Located on the table opposite the seat-perched mannequin is a 3-foot-tall tin model of the Eiffel tower flanked by miniature coniferous trees. Dynerman shares that his father retained his love for Paris, even while in Israel, and constructed the model of the famous structure as a gift to Dynerman. To use the iconic landmark often revered for its invocation of love and freedom as a backdrop for his mini-theatre, is a brilliant twist on reality. "I have no sensible response," he offers when I asked if there is a deeper meaning to the use of scale in his art. "I think that somehow the viewer may have more empathy [for small doll-like figures]," his tone is somewhat playful when making this remark as if he is omitting something from a secret recipe. I think he has discovered a way to mock human cognition into choosing its own adventure instead of spoon-feeding perceptions.
For Dynerman, by his own admission, simply "painting death" seemed inappropriate. Lucky for us we are able to see Dynerman's motion picture snap-shot of the human condition projected on the adjacent wall, from the point of view of a remote-camera-equipped model train scurrying on the table behind the omnipotent mannequin, alongside the madness of the evergreen aggressors converging on innocent peach crowds, turning with the track to a straight away with a small mirror positioned like a billboard, capturing the face of the mannequin in the reflection, then futilely hustling past a neon blue filament-lit carousel that upon closer examination is housing a series of severed doll feet and legs protruding from the inner cylinder of the amusement park favorite, only to endlessly repeat the circuit as if to take the spectator on a whimsical reoccurring nightmare. If you are paying attention, it is surreal. Train Project is on display at the University of Wisconsin - Milwaukee Union Gallery from January 26 - February 27, 2009.
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