ArtistsBillofRights.org reviews competitions and appeals seeking creative content, listing those that respect your copyrights and highlighting those that don't. Art Matters! publishes calls to artists, and not all of them may be compliant with ABoR's standards. Visit their site to learn more.
Although the plots of many musicals have been built around love stories and comic devices, a growing number can be identified as “message” musicals. Whether commenting on religious persecution, racism, controversial medical issues, interfaith, interracial, and same-sex relationships, the creative teams for many shows have given their audiences new opportunities to discuss the political issues of the day. Here’s Rose Marie Jun (known primarily for her role as Sally Rogers on The Dick Van Dyke Show) performing Harold Rome’s “Sing Me A Song With Social Significance” from 1937’s Pins and Needles, a musical revue performed by members of the International Ladies’ Garment Workers’ Union (ILGWU).
On August 1, 2001, the DREAM Act was introduced by Senators Dick Durbin and Orrin Hatch. Since then, immigration reform has faced a rough and rocky uphill battle.
Less than six weeks after the bill’s introduction, the September 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and The Pentagon sent the nation into a tailspin of paranoia, xenophobia, and most particularly, Islamophobia.
As the United States launched wars against Iraq and Afghanistan, the United States Armed Forces offered many immigrants a path to citizenship (according to Wikipedia, in 2009 an estimated 29,000 members of the military were foreign-born immigrants who were not yet American citizens).
On April 23, 2010, Governor Jan Brewer signed Arizona’s controversial SB1070 into law, making it a state misdemeanor for an alien to be in Arizona without carrying the necessary identification documents on his person.
Although the House of Representatives passed the DREAM Act on December 8, 2010, it failed in the Senate.
In July of 2011, the California DREAM Act provided access to private college scholarships for state schools to students who were illegal immigrants.
In August of 2011, the state of Illinois authorized a similar plan for legal as well as illegal children of immigrants.
During a Republican Presidential primary debate on January 23, 2012, Mitt Romney concisely described his plan for dealing with illegal immigration using the politically loaded term “self deportation.”
During 2012, Glenn Beck tried to stoke conservative outrage with frequent references to the phenomenon of anchor babies.
On June 15, 2012, President Obama made the following statement about immigration reform.
Barely six weeks into 2013, Bay area audiences witnessed the world premiere of a fascinating new musical that deals with immigration reform. How did the project come about?
Following passage of the California DREAM Act, the Marsh Youth Theatre in San Francisco embarked on creating a new piece of musical theatre which focused on undocumented students living in the Bay area who lived under the constant threat of deportation. Using the methodology and techniques of the Voice of Witness Education Program, members of MYT’s Teen Troupe gathered oral histories for In and Out of Shadows from people in their own social circles as well as those referred to them through community organizations such as:
AB540 Clubs at City College of San Francisco
SOMCAN (South of Market Community Action Network)
Leadership Public Schools in Richmond
ASPIRE (Asian Students Promoting Immigration Reform and Education)
J. Adan Ruiz as Juan in the Marsh Youth Theatre’s production
of In and Out of Shadows (Photo by: Katia Fuentes)
Backed by additional funding from NALAC (National Association of Latino Arts and Culture) and the Creative Work Fund, the show’s musical score (composed by MYT Director Emily Klion and George Brooks) was inspired by the sounds of jazz, hip hop, and Mexican mariachi music. As director Cliff Mayotte notes: “For many of the performers in this production, these stories are not disembodied tales, but accurate reflections of their day-to-day experiences. There is real power in being able to tell your own story and real power in bearing witness to the person telling it.”
Bianca Catalan and Angelina Orrelanos are two of the
teenagers in In and Out of Shadows (Photo by: Katia Fuentes)
Playwright/poet Gary Soto was tasked with transforming the oral histories collected by the students into a piece of theatre about the experiences of undocumented teens living in the East Bay communities of Richmond and Pinole. As he recalls:
“As a Mexican-American author of 40-plus books, I have a large readership among Latino youth (arguably the largest in the country) and have visited more than 400 schools during the last 20 years. Elementary through college, students know something about my writing. The focus of my visits has been schools in the San Joaquin Valley (which houses a large undocumented workforce in rural labor). I’ve also visited lots of schools in the Los Angeles basin and am aware of the struggles among urban youth. For several years I was a board member of the CHA House, an educational program that brings youth from their small hometowns (Coalinga, Huron, and Avenal) to study at UC Berkeley. I have never asked, but I suspect that about half of the parents of these children are undocumented.
In and Out of Shadows is not dumbed-down theatre; it’s really clever theatre. There’s music, there’s dance, we have a squirt gun incident, and we’ll be throwing candy into the audience. It was worrisome to me that some groups weren’t represented because they wouldn’t come forward (not one Chinese student was interviewed). There may be risk, but we don’t think La Migra (the border patrol) would show up to gather up some of the kids and parents in the audience.”
Playwright, poet, and author Gary Soto
In and Out of Shadows is filled with stories about kids who didn’t want to change their name when they snuck across the border, teens who went on vacation in Mexico and were stopped by immigration authorities when they tried to reenter the United States, and those whose families consist of documented and undocumented immigrants. From the hard-working Filipino-American mother who is arrested and threatened with deportation after her employer is investigated for failure to pay his taxes to the affable jock from British Columbia, the evening is peppered with Tagalog, Spanish, Spanglish and other languages commonly heard in the Bay area.
Louel Senores and Deanna Palaganas (Photo by: Katia Fuentes)
Whether one focuses on the young man with no skills (other than his abundant charm) or the girl who wants to become a doctor; whether one looks at the pair of boys who want to become DJs or the Indonesian girl who tells her friends about her native country, as the students struggle to prepare their personal statements for an AB 540 conference at UC Berkeley, they share what it was like to have to be sedated with cough syrup or crawl through sewers in order to enter the United States.
And what do these children look like when they become adults? Here’s the founder of Define American, Jose Antonio Vargas (who, in 2008, was part of the Washington Post’s team of Pulitzer prize-winning journalists who covered the shootings at Virginia Tech), as he recently testified before the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee.
In an op-ed piece published in The New York Times, Vargas stressed that:
“There are no words to describe just how much stress and heartbreak my immigration status, and my choice to go public with it, has caused my grandmother. Because of her I almost did not speak out about being undocumented. But it was also because of her — and my grandfather, who died in 2007, and my mother, whom I have not seen in almost 20 years — because of all their sacrifices, that I will be able to speak in Congress. I am here because of them.”
In “The Bells of Saint John” prequel written by series showrunner Steven Moffat, the Doctor is still searching for Clara, the new companion he met in the Christmas special. However, it’s not going very well and the despondent Doctor takes a break on Earth. While there, he chats with a young girl about destiny and his search for Clara. His lost friend might be closer than he thinks.
Fans shouldn’t fret, because the Doctor will succeed — eventually — and reunite with Clara for a new series of “Doctor Who” adventures beginning Saturday, March 30 at 8 p.m. ET on BBC America with “The Bells of Saint John.”
Editor’s Note: Apparently the issue of the ownership of “Old Flo” and the prospect of its sale has been a topic of controversy for some time. Learn more about the background of this situation by reading some of the posts in this page of search results.
Draped Seated Woman, affectionately known as “Old Flo,” by Henry Moore. Image Credit: The Art Fund
LONDON — The massive bronze sculpture is formally known as “Draped Seated Woman,” a Henry Moore creation that evoked Londoners huddled in air raid shelters during the Blitz.
To the East Enders who lived nearby, the artwork was known as “Old Flo,” a stalwart symbol of people facing oppression with dignity and grace.
But now, Old Flo may have to go.
The cash-strapped London borough of Tower Hamlets, one of the poorest communities in Britain, plans to sell the statue – estimated to be worth as much as 20 million pounds ($30 million).
Art lovers fear the sale of such a famous sculpture would set a worrisome precedent, triggering the sell-off of hundreds of lesser works housed in parks, public buildings and little local museums as communities throughout Britain struggle to balance their budgets amid the longest and deepest economic slowdown since the Great Depression.
“If the sale of Old Flo goes through, it can open the flood gates,” said Sally Wrampling, head of policy at the Art Fund, the national fundraising charity for art and one of the groups campaigning to block the sale.
The proposal embodies a dilemma faced by many struggling households: Do you sell the family silver to get through tough times?
Tower Hamlets, where a recent study found that 42 percent of children live in poverty, is 100 million pounds in the red.
The sculpture hasn’t even been in the borough for 15 years. It was moved to a sculpture park in the north of England when authorities tore down the housing project where it had been placed. The council says just the insurance alone for the massive bronze would be a burden to taxpayers.
“We make this decision with a heavy heart,” said Rania Khan, a local councilor who focuses on culture issues. “We have to make tough decisions.”
Local authorities throughout the country are being hit by funding cuts as the central government seeks to balance the budget and reduce borrowing. Funding for local government will fall 33 percent in real terms between April 2011 and March 2015, according to the Local Government Association. The Institute for Fiscal Studies says the cuts tend to hit poor, urban areas like Tower Hamlets hardest, because their spending was higher to begin with.
Some 2,000 museums in Britain are local affairs. Bury Council sold a painting by L.S. Lowry in 2006, and Southampton City Council backed down from plans to sell an Auguste Rodin bronze in the face of public protest. The Museums Association has advised the Northampton council to hold off on the sale of an Egyptian funerary monument estimated to be worth 2 million pounds until more consultation can be done.
The depth of the recession and the lack of hope that things will improve soon are fueling the debate.
The latest figures from the Office for Budget Responsibility, an independent agency created in 2010 to advise the government, show the economy is growing more slowly than previously forecast, reducing tax revenue and prolonging the government’s austerity program.
One thing is certain: Tower Hamlets, a community of 254,000 people, desperately needs the money.
Khan says she believes Moore, the son of a coal miner and lifelong socialist who died in 1986, would be moved by the plight of her constituents. She knows women who will be hard hit by proposed limits on benefit payments – people for whom as little as five pounds can make a huge difference – and families living in housing with mold growing on the walls.
“If he thought the sale of the sculpture would benefit the lives of thousands in Tower Hamlets … I think he would be in favor,” Khan said.
Moore attended art school on a scholarship for ex-servicemen. He became fascinated with the human form, creating works with undulating curves that reflect rolling hills and other features of nature. His most beloved motif was the reclining female figure, like that of Old Flo.
The statue features the graceful draping that Moore traced to his observation of people huddled in the Underground during the Blitz. In a 1966 interview with the BBC, Moore talked about the fear and exhilaration of Londoners sheltering against the Nazi barrage. He had concern for those he was drawing: He never sat sketching but waited until the following day and drew from memory – rather than capturing people in their makeshift bedrooms.
Alan Wilkinson, one of the foremost Moore scholars, said the artist would have been sympathetic about the hard times in Tower Hamlets, but would want his sculptures seen the way they were intended to be seen – in public spaces.
“Public sculpture was incredibly important for him,” Wilkinson said. “He was very fussy about where it was placed.”
Moore sold Old Flo at discount to the London County Council, a forerunner of the city’s current administration, in 1962 on condition the statue would be displayed publicly. It was placed at a public housing project.
The East End was one of the areas hardest hit by Nazi bombs, and its residents were directly connected to the work.
Now war memories have faded. The median age of people in Tower Hamlets is 29, the lowest in London, and 43 percent of the population was born outside the U.K., according to the latest census figures.
Old Flo’s story hasn’t been told to the current generation, said Patrick Brill, an artist who uses the pseudonym Bob and Roberta Smith.
“If we don’t cherish these things, we lose a bit of our history,” he said. “If you lose your history, you lose a bit of yourself, really.”
Still, Old Flo has a fan club. Danny Boyle, director of films such as “Slumdog Millionaire” and “Trainspotting,” signed an open letter asking the council to reverse its decision. A flash mob of people dressed as Old Flo appeared at the Tower Hamlets offices in November to protest the sale. Another London borough has laid claim to the statue.
Critics believe money raised by the sale would quickly vanish_ and Old Flo would disappear into the private collection of a foreign hedge fund owner or Russian oligarch, taking Moore’s message into hiding
Rushanara Ali, a member of Parliament who represents part of Tower Hamlets, raised the issue during a December debate, suggesting the proposal was more the result of “profligacy and extraordinary waste,” than tough economic times.
“This bonfire of public art is not the answer,” Ali said. “One has to ask, where does this end? What precedents will be set for other areas that may wish to make such sales to deal with financial challenges?”
Noting Moore’s interest in the work of Pablo Picasso, Brill said Old Flo was influenced by “Guernica,” the 1937 painting that shows the suffering inflicted by war. As such, she still has resonance for the people of Tower Hamlets, an area that has been home to generations of immigrants, including the Bangladeshis who today account for 32 percent of the population.
“Old Flo … is a very British `keep calm carry on’ image of the same thing as `Guernica,'” he said. “Old Flo is East London’s monument to people seeking sanctuary. She is our `Guernica.'”
The Huffington Post interviewed Pete Dyer about his cover art design for Charles Fernyhough’s book Pieces of Light for our ongoing series Under the Covers.
In your own words, what is this book about?
Pieces of Light is a fascinating guide around human memory, blending beautifully told stories and case studies with findings from the new science of memory. Charles Fernyhough shines light on how we reconstruct our memories like a collage, each time we recall them – and how easily they can be contaminated by the present. He makes the point that memory is made up of sounds, smells, images, colours, and describes how any one of these things can trigger a vivid memory or bring the past into the present. It made me rethink the way in which I remember.
What was the mood, theme or specific moment from the text you depicted with this cover?
The title made me think of light and how it fragments, and how that relates really well to the abstract idea of memory.
The author talks about memory as a collage, coming from lots of different places in the brain. I liked the idea of using silver foil to illuminate some of the dots on the cover design – it gets across the idea that some memories burn really bright in our heads, while others are more blurred. As the book catches the light, the dots either shine or fall back – just like memories at certain points in our lives.
What inspires your design?
I find most of my inspiration comes from contemporary art.
The vibrant area of London where I live is in walking distance of the Tate Modern and other major galleries which are a constant source of visual stimulation.
If I was asked to name designers that have inspired me – two of my favorites are Alvin Lustig and Paul Rand. Both worked in the 1950s and 60s. Their work looks as fresh and relevant now as it was then.
What is your previous design experience, with books and otherwise?
I’ve been designing book covers for over 20 years as Art Director of various literary publishing houses. I was in a design partnership called React that undertook publishing and other art based projects including film, opera, theatre and dance. I now work as art director of Profile Books which includes the imprints, Serpent’s Tail and Clerkenwell Press.
What was the biggest challenge in designing this cover?
Depicting memory is almost impossible because the subject is so wide and subjective. Photographic approaches could have started to look clichéd or give a wrong message about the content. We didn’t want it to look like a book about regret or bereavement. It was also important that it didn’t start to look like a novel.
Did you consider different ideas or directions for this cover? IF SO: Why were these rejected? Do you have a favorite amongst them? Are you happy with the final decisions as it ran?
Initially I explored many photographic approaches – nostalgic pictures of childhood, people slightly blurred by bright sunlight, family photograph albums. I drew some inspiration from David Hockney’s polaroid compositions. I liked the idea of photographs being pieced together like memory. We rejected this idea because it felt too specific to reflect the range of the book.
I was very happy with the impact of the final cover and the response to it. I don’t think there is necessarily any one particular element that makes a successful cover, rather than how all the elements hang together – the composition and the balance. It needs to draw you in. That can be as simple as some hand-drawn lettering. I tend to believe less is more.
Of course, as a book cover designer it would be a bit crazy if I didn’t judge a book by its cover. It’s the designer’s responsibility to entice/intrigue you to pick the book up amongst what can be a sea of books all fighting for your attention. After that it’s all down to the writing. Because of the challenge of e-books it’s more important than ever that book cover designers keep exploring new ways to make the physical book a desirable, collectable object you want to own.
Though Fort Myers, Florida, is a hub for neither creativity — on an art world map it would like sit beneath the words “Here Be Watercolors” — nor athletics, the newest museum in town pays tribute to both and, it certainly could be argued, neither. It may be both America’s strangest museum and, at the same time, the most American museum imaginable. It is a damn confusing place.
The Art of the Olympians sits at the end of a yacht basin pier near where endless sedans with tinted windows and outdated campaign stickers climb the Calloosahatchee Bridge toward Cape Coral. The building is bland yet inviting in the way that so many Floridian buildings are bland but inviting, all stucco and whitewash. What sits inside is harder to describe because the museum isn’t devoted to Olympic posters or paintings or even uniforms for that matter — though it has all those things. Instead, the museum is designed as a tribute to the artistic endeavors of former Olympians.
If that seems arbitrary it is precisely because it is incredibly arbitrary. There exists no museum expressly devoted to the artistic endeavors of any other group of people whose shared characteristic was prior employment outside the arts. There is no Art of the Plumbers nor Art of the Relief Pitchers nor Art of the Pool Cleaners nor Art of the Hairdressers. This is not because employment in any one of these professions indicates a lack of artistic ability — Gauguin sold tarpaulins — but because there is no apparent correlation betweens these careers and more avant garde endeavors.
The hypothesis offered by the museum’s mere existence is that Olympians are simply better at everything. Unfortunately, the evidence inside the museum doesn’t support this conclusion.
To describe the collection as uneven would be charitable. There are sculptures and paintings, a smidge of graphic design and even engravings. The vast majority of the work is abstract, presumably because the athletes-cum-artists couldn’t achieve verisimilitude, and the common preoccupation is the human form, which makes a great deal of sense.
Unfortunately, there are really only two artists on display worth much consideration. One, Marco Pantani, has contributed a self portrait that seems to capture the spirit of competition. The other, Bob Beamon, has hung simple but engaging graphic work. Beamon, who won gold in the long jump at the 1968 Olympics in Mexico City, runs the museum. He inherited the idea from the great discus thrower and lesser-known abstract painter Al Oerter, who is depicted in a video installation combining his two talents by throwing a paint-dipped disc at a canvas.
This is all very silly, but also very interesting when one listens to the voiceover in the video installation explaining that what is great about Olympians is that they give whatever they’re doing their all; regardless of whether they are racing or sculpting, they leave it on the field.
Here’s the thing: Sports and the Arts aren’t actually about trying hard, at least not at a high level. They are both about actual excellence. The striving part — think about savants like Pablo Picasso or Usain Bolt — is hardly mandatory.
Which means that Art of the Olympians is probably the only art museum in America, perhaps the world, that is devoted to a group of artists less notable for their art than for giving it their all. It is both a tribute to the way we lionize our athletes and an actual incarnation of the fictional, effort-based meritocracy we like to describe to children. Like every other museum, Art of the Olympians shows the work of people who have achieved great things. Unlike other museums, it doesn’t show great things. It is basically just a random cross-section of art by a group of people that isn’t particularly artistically talented.
And that is why everyone should go see Art of the Olympians — everyone in this part of Florida, anyway. This is the museum by which all other museums should be measured. It is so perfectly average that it ought to be used as a unit of measurement for better collections. The Metropolitan Museum of Art: 10 AOTOs. The National Portrait Gallery: 8 AOTOs. So on and so forth.
Though it doesn’t achieve kitsch, Art of the Olympians does achieve something unique: uniqueness. There is no other place like it, no other athlete running in this particular race.
A rare first edition of “Where The Wild Things Are,” signed and inscribed with a drawing by Maurice Sendak, heads to auction later this month. “20th Century Illustration: Original Art/Books, Featuring Maurice Sendak” will take place at Swann Auction Galleries on January 24 in New York.
The Sendak mementos came from the library of book collector Reed Orenstein, who once owned an early edition so rare that Sendak himself asked to buy it back. Orenstein gave Sendak the book and the author returned the favor by offering the collector drawings and personal items.
Sendak’s drawings will be auctioned alongside other childhood illustrators including Dr. Seuss, Beatrix Potter, Edward Gorey and Charles Schulz. Check out a preview of the auction below, and prepare for your heart to be warmed!
If you want to immediately fall head over heels in love with Mr. Sendak, listen to his heartbreaking interview with NPR’s Terri Gross below.
Today, Richard Blanco was announced as the 2013 Inaugural poet. He will recite a poem at President Obama’s swearing-in ceremony on Monday, January 21.
Not only is Blanco the youngest person chosen to to be the Inaugural poet, but he is also the first Hispanic or LGBT person to receive this honor. He is the fifth poet ever to read an official inauguration poem.
“I’m beside myself, bestowed with this great honor, brimming over with excitement, awe, and gratitude,” Blanco said today in the Presidential Inaugural Committee’s press release. “In many ways, this is the very ‘stuff’ of the American Dream, which underlies so much of my work and my life’s story—America’s story, really. I am thrilled by the thought of coming together during this great occasion to celebrate our country and its people through the power of poetry.”
Blanco has won several awards for his poetry. His first collection, City of a Hundred Fires, won the Agnes Lynch Starrett Poetry Prize from the University of Pittsburgh. He also won the PEN American Center Beyond Margins Award for his second collection, Directions to The Beach of the Dead. His last collection, Looking for The Gulf Motel, came out in 2012.
President Obama stated, “I’m honored that Richard Blanco will join me and Vice President Biden at our second Inaugural. His contributions to the fields of poetry and the arts have already paved a path forward for future generations of writers. Richard’s writing will be wonderfully fitting for an Inaugural that will celebrate the strength of the American people and our nation’s great diversity.”
Blanco’s parents are Cuban exiles who moved from Cuba to Madrid, where Blanco was born. The family finally settled in Miami, where Blanco was raised and educated. He currently lives with his partner in Bethel, Maine.
When Eli Broad holds a public event, he seldom does it without the company of local politicians, cultural leaders and throngs of media professionals to underscore the influence that the Los Angeles billionaire and philanthropist exerts on the city’s arts landscape.
Broad presided over just such a ceremony Tuesday to mark a milestone in the construction of his namesake contemporary art museum, to be called the Broad, that is being built on Grand Avenue. It will feature works from the Broads’ private art collection and will serve as headquarters of the Broad Art Foundation.
Art. A word that has sat on a gleaming plinth and peered down at us mere mortals for centuries. In the past, the study of art was reserved for the wealthy and educated. Even today, galleries have become an elitist haven for the middle-classes.
Understandably many people go through life purposefully avoiding this terrifying creature, perhaps annoyed by its pretentiousness, or scared off by the people who appear to understand its cryptic language. Whether it’s rich aristocrats lounging in gilt frames, or abstract canvases sitting mutely on white washed walls, art can leave us baffled, bemused and squirming under its superior gaze.
“The artist really should be lost to history, and certainly these drawings should,” said curator Tom Parker of his upcoming exhibition. The works in question are by Edward Deeds, a mental patient at Missouri State Hospital for almost 40 years. The show, entitled, “Talisman of the Ward: The Album of Drawings by Edward Deeds,” presents 30 works by the outsider artist.
Deeds, who was diagnosed with dementia praecox and schizophrenia, was committed to a mental institution in 1936. Beyond this fact we know little about his condition, personality or life, although the curator sees all he needs to in Deeds’ artwork. “The images have one fabulous clue on every page,” Parker explained to the Huffington Post. “State Lunatic Asylum, written on the paper by the hospital. One poetic detail which encapsulates everything you need to know about the artist and his circumstance.”
The artist’s drawings, crafted on the official hospital stationary, radiate a remarkable innocence given the circumstances of their creation. Whimsical lions, wide-eyed characters and vintage vehicles comprise a pictorial land far beyond the mental facility walls. The only reminder of Deeds’ dark reality is recurrence of the letters “ECT,” a likely acronym for the controversial shock treatment known as electroconvulsive therapy.
At the time of Deeds’ death he gave his collection of drawings to his mother, who then passed them to her other son, who stored them in his attic. Years later, the drawings were tossed out to a curbside junk pile and were discovered by a 14-year-old boy who became fascinated with them. He kept the works safe for 36 years.
The precious drawings, both unpretentious and cryptic, present an idyllic vision from a mysterious perspective. The story of their creation and survival is as magnetic as the raw emotion in his innocent crayon strokes.
“Talisman of the Ward: The Album of Drawings by Edward Deeds” will show from January 10 until February 9, 2013 at Hirschl & Adler Modern.
