Entries categorized as ‘Uncategorized’
So the project was approved.
More details: Coordinated by Dayton Visual Arts Center, eight area artists were commissioned to create art for the new emergency department renovation at Children’s Medical Center in Dayton, Ohio. My piece will be a diorama of three sock monkeys, called “The Triplets of Sanity Creek.” As many of you know, I make sock monkeys under the auspices of Sanity Creek Sock Monkeys.
More as the project evolves (pun intended) but meanwhile, please pardon my more frequent absence.
Categories: Uncategorized
Tom Waits’ mother died.
Can you imagine what it would be like to have Tom Waits as a son? What a woman she must have been. May she rest in peace.
Categories: Uncategorized
Tagged: Tom Waits
From a press release someone sent me the other day…I hear he’ll be reading in English, not French.
“Robert Freeman Wexler will read from his novel The Painting and the City, Tuesday, March 9, 7 pm, at the Yellow Springs Library, 415 Xenia Avenue, 937-352-4003. He will be accompanied by Brady Burkett of Stark Folk on electric guitar. The Painting and the City tells a story of art and its conflict with commerce, the way art can (literally) reshape the world, and the consequences of such a reshaping. Wexler’s surreal cityscapes combine with Burkett’s guitar improvisation to create a unique listening experience.”
Categories: Uncategorized
Tagged: Brady Burkett/Starkfolk, Interdisciplinary Aesthetics, readings, Robert Freeman Wexler, The Painting and the City
What do we think of Dr. Seuss’ The Lorax these days?
I recall the book from my past, though I don’t exactly remember it from my childhood. I’m not sure if I read it back then. Being someone who cares about the environment and loves Dr. Seuss on what feels like a cellular level, I bought a copy (printed on recycled paper) for my two-year-old daughter.
She discovered it last week.
Discovering a book, for her, usually means that she wants her parents or any other literate person who happens to be around to read the book several times per day. But the Lorax is long, and we didn’t make it to the end of the story for the first few days of its discovery.
But my husband and I both want to hide the book, and dread it being handed to us by the little waif who lives in our house. I think there are two reasons for this.
1) It’s really, really too long. I think it could be cut down by half, and would be a much stronger book. The number of clunky sentences in this book is astonishing, considering who wrote it. And I think this is because:
2) The genius of Dr. Seuss seems to be squelched, choked, or otherwise obscured by HAVING AN IMPORTANT MESSAGE. Sure, there are messages in plenty of his books, and even though I agree with most of the message in this one (rampant, irresponsible industry=bad, trees=pretty) his message seems to have bent the tree of his narrative over too far, so that in a way it resembles a dying version of one of the book’s skewed, leaning, tufted trees.
As a writer, this is a really good lesson to learn (over and over again, each time my little cherub brings me the dreaded book). If you have AN IMPORTANT MESSAGE (which is fine, and has its place) please make sure that the message doesn’t wilt the narrative.
And cut everything down by half. But not the trees.
Categories: Uncategorized
Tagged: books, reading to children, sentences, writing
I wrote my manifesto.
(Warning, hyperbole ahead.)
It was something I’d been thinking about for a long time, this writing a manifesto. Artists have artist statements, and musicians have anthems. Corporations and organizations have mission statements. They are everywhere. Plenty people, practicing living mindfully, talk about “intention.” I do, too. But without being too precious or writerly (please, please!) I wanted to proclaim my place in the world of words. Why I think it matters, what I do, what writers do. A manifesto seemed the thing to do.
It took a long time to write, because I kept thinking it would need to be perfect: like something that I would engrave on a plaque and hang on my wall. Fixed and permanent. But I finally realized that a manifesto will probably change, and probably should change, as I continue to learn about writing and what it means, to me, to be a writer. And you know what? That’s okay. It’s mine. I can change it. As many writers know and believe, any piece of writing is never really finished, you just stop working on it.
Still, it feels very strange to have written it (and now to be writing a blog post about it). The process was sort of like sitting in the passenger seat of a car going pretty fast on the highway, or maybe not that fast, maybe ambling on a more interesting road, maybe in the country, with trees that have lost their leaves, that stand like thin, silhouetted people, but at any rate, going fast enough in the car for there to be some wind when you open the window. And then the feeling of that burst of air–maybe you had to open the window because you were feeling carsick, or just too hot, or claustrophobic on a long road trip, canned in that weird car air, like you’ve been rolled into a can of sardines, without the oil and fishy smell.
Writing the manifesto was kind of like that. Posting this now is kind of like that. The exposure, which also sets you free.
Categories: Uncategorized
Eco*Mental (formerly known as Living Green) an environmental equipment shop in downtown Yellow Springs, has one of these groovy Shepard Fairey posters hanging on the board near their door. I walked by several times thinking, “I have to get one of those.” The image and message make brings back childhood in all the good, rose-colored, overly nostalgic ways. I went in recently to buy toothbrushes, and saw that they had the design on greeting cards, so I got one. I put it on my desk…the desk of my atelier.
About a day later, I got an email from someone working on a proposal for artifying a medical center. She wondered if I could do a diorama and story with some of my Sanity Creek Sock Monkeys. I said, “Sure!”
I’ve only ever made monkeys to be handled, and these three guys will be encased in plexiglass, to be regarded on the wall, 3-D but really 2-D. I am going to write a combined poem/story for them (I think) and I need to come up with a sketch and BIG PLAN in very short order, which means I need to put writing aside for a short time and do this.
But it’s cool.
Make art. Not war.
I will keep you posted.
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Very exciting news in our house:
Robert Freeman Wexler’s novel and story collection will be coming out in French from Zanzibar Editions.
I hope this means a trip to Paris!
Categories: Uncategorized
Tagged: books, Interdisciplinary Aesthetics, Robert Freeman Wexler, writing
I kept hearing about the phenomenon named Susan Boyle. I read articles about her, but only today watched the video of her singing on “Britain’s Got Talent.”
Caveat: Fantine’s song from “Les Miserables” works on me the way that Judy Garland singing “Somewhere Over the Rainbow,” and Tom Waits singing “Somewhere” from “West Side Story” does. That is, just a few notes into the song, nearly every time, I am crying.
So watching Susan Boyle’s rendition was no exception. Something in those songs about the bitterness of still having dreams, despite living in the real-ness of the world. Knowing that dreams are sometimes impossible to achieve, and yet still having hope that some day, some how, somewhere…there’s a place for us.
Watching Simon Cowell watch Susan Boyle sing was almost as interesting as her performance. (I haven’t seen him on TV that I can recall, but I know the snark of reality TV precludes judges from gushing. Still, the look on his face as he watched her sing was sweet.) I have no idea if it was true surprise–I don’t know (and don’t really care) whether he feigned his reaction, and had already seen the contestants perform before broadcast.
Okay, so now I understand all the frenzy about Susan Boyle. She has a beautiful voice, pouring from an unglamorous body. I hope she can enjoy her life after all this hoopla. And I hope that people stop judging others like books, by their clichéd covers.
Categories: Uncategorized
Tagged: Judy Garland, music, Susan Boyle, Tom Waits, West Side Story
“I hate a song that makes you think that you are not any good.
I hate a song that makes you think that you are just born to lose. Bound to lose. No good to nobody. No good for nothing. Because you are too old or too young or too fat or too slim too ugly or too this or too that. Songs that run you down or poke fun at you on account of your bad luck or hard traveling.
I am out to fight those songs to my very last breath of air and my last drop of blood. I am out to sing songs that will prove to you that this is your world and that if it has hit you pretty hard and knocked you for a dozen loops, no matter what color, what size you are, how you are built, I am out to sing the songs that make you take pride in yourself and in your work.
And the songs that I sing are made up for the most part by all sorts of folks just about like you.”–Woody Guthrie
Categories: Uncategorized
Tagged: Interdisciplinary Aesthetics, music, writing
Maybe I missed the memo, but from where I sat, December 2009 was the holiday season of less red and more purple. Everywhere I would have expected to see jolly people wearing red sweaters, they wore purple. Okay, not everywhere, but lots of places, even in Columbus, Ohio.
Purple makes me happy. I have nothing against red; I like red a lot. But there’s something intrinsically better about purple. It’s more moody, more saturated, more winey. Bacchus would probably agree, and who am I to disagree with Bacchus?
Yes, I am of Prince’s “Purple Rain” generation, so there’s that, too.
Categories: Uncategorized
