Tuesday, August 18, 2015

36 Hours in the Arts in Maine with NEA Chairman Jane Chu


From The Telling Room to Spindleworks and the Bowdoin International Music Festival in 3 Short Days


NEA Chairman Jane Chu greets members of the Somali
Bantu Community Association, recipients of NEA funds
via the Maine Arts Commission's grant programs
In less than 36 hours you can get a grand picture of the vitality and breadth of the arts in Maine. Here's a quick tour courtesy of last week's visit by National Endowment for the Arts chairman Jane Chu

I had the great pleasure of accompanying chairman Jane Chu and Maine Arts Commission Director Julie Richard to Brunswick on day 3 of the chairman's junket here. Hopefully many of you were able to attend the packed Town Hall meeting she conducted Monday night in Portland.

Thanks to the office of Congresswoman Chellie Pingree, the Chairman visited NEA grant award winners in Portland on Monday, August 10; in Waterville and Lewiston on Tuesday; and Brunswick Wednesday. Details of that day below, but in the meantime here are the great organizations that Chairman Chu visited -- and you can, too!

Day 1, August 10, Portland: The Telling Room, Terra Motto/Veterans Story Exchange, Portland Museum of Art
Day 2, August 11, Waterville: Maine Film Center
Day 2 continued, Lewiston: Bates Dance Festival, Bates College Museum of Art, Somali Bantu Community Association


Julie Richard, Executive Director, Maine Arts Commission;
Jane Chu, Chairman, National Endowment for the Arts;
Liz McGhee, Program Director, Spindleworks;
Spindleworks artist, seated, and teaching artist.
We started Day 3: Brunswick at the ever-amazing Spindleworksa non profit art center for adults with disabilities, where one of the most famous lines ever written or spoken is “HANDICAP, I HEARD ABOUT IT BUT I AIN’T GOT IT NOW," by participating artist Rita Langlois. As intrepid Program Director Liz McGhee walked us through the full and busy artist studios, they showed us their excellent work and described their inspiring days of art making at Spindleworks. We reluctantly tore ourselves away from the Spindleworks Gallery without buying armloads of art. You can purchase Spindleworks art online or at their new Spin Off Studio in Gardiner, but I truly recommend visiting and perhaps getting a chance to meet one of the 40+ artists who use these studios every week. 


We hiked up Maine Street and were lucky enough to greet briefly Bowdoin College's incoming president, Clayton Rose, who showed off Nathaniel Hawthorne's desk.
Then off to greet Peter Simmons and the staff of the Bowdoin International Music Festival whose violin instructor, Frank Huang, was recently named concert master for the New York Philharmonic--a testament to the amazing quality of work and student experiences offered by the festival. A quick tour of one of the Festival's musical homes, the beautiful Studzinski Recital Hall (where I swam as a Bowdoin student, as it was formerly Curtis Pool) and off we swept to see, last but not least, the renovated and re-energized Bowdoin College Museum of Art, now under the guidance of curators Anne and Frank Goodyear. If you didn't see my previous posts re the unexpected Night Vision exhibit, or the innovative new work now on display there from photographer Abelardo Morrell, check them out here.
Whew. You CAN do this, too--and I highly recommend it. Maine arts and artists in all areas -- whether folk or traditional artists, or those who hang in museums -- are of international quality. And they are right here in our very own, very beautiful backyard.
A final quick note re NEA Chairman Chu. This fall she is poised to announce her signature leadership initiative, Creativity Connects. Earlier this year she launched the Tell Us Your Story to celebrate this year's 50th anniversary of the NEA and said,
"We have an opportunity to start a new dialogue on the ways in which the arts—and the ways the NEA supports the arts—are an essential component of our everyday lives," says Chu. "Although many may not realize it, the arts actively intersect with areas such as the economy, human development, and community vitality. The arts and artists who are funded and supported by the NEA are an integral part of the solution to the challenges we face in all parts of our society."
We say YES.

Sunday, August 16, 2015

The Lincoln Festival Chorus 35th Season Performance

Soprano Suzanne Nance soloed with the Lincoln Festival Chorus in Boothbay Harbor and Newcastle, Maine this weekend in an all-Mozart concert including the Solemn Vespers.
This is a story about how great it is to get out of your own head/hood and into the world to see what others are doing: a kind of wake-up call for the way we need to break and cross boundaries in Maine arts.

There is a lot of beautiful, high quality performance work happening by and in Maine communities, and a great example of this is the Lincoln Arts Festival in the Boothbay region. The Lincoln Festival Chorus and the Mozart Mentors Orchestra conducted by maestro Anthony Antolini (disclaimer: yes, another fellow Bowdoin grad as well as member of the Bowdoin faculty) gave a fabulous, all-Mozart concert in Newcastle tonight of the Ave verum corpus, written in 1791, less than six months before the composer's death; and Vesparae solemnes de confessore from 1780. Both pieces featured soprano soloist Suzanne Nance, whom followers of this blog have seen frequently at Opera House Arts.

We rarely have truly hot days and evenings in Maine, and today was one of these. The beautiful St. Patrick's hall in Newcastle, where tonight's concert was held, had no AC and both audience and performers were swabbing our sweat from our faces. The maestro shed his white tie to reveal strong green John Deere suspenders over his soaked shirt.

Antolini mentioned to me after the performance that he was extremely grateful for the Maine Arts Commission's support of a world premiere commission he conducted in May, Elizabeth Brown's To Walk Humbly for theremin, piano, and chorus. Brown is composer in residence at Monclair State University in New Jersey. Her music, which has been heard around the world, is informed by her performances on flute, shakuhachi, theremin, and dan bau (Vietnamese monochord). It is always a thrill for the Arts Commission to support the world premieres of original performances, especially of contemporary classical works, right here in Maine.


Monday, January 21, 2013

Faith Becoming Flesh: Martin Luther King Day 2013


What does it mean to take our faith into the world? To not simply proclaim it, but to follow the examples of the world’s great spiritual leaders—Christ, Buddha, Mohammed—and give flesh to our beliefs?
In the U.S. of modern history, few have exemplified such “faith in action” better than Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. I continue to find the national holiday in honor of King the most moving and inspiring day of the year.
And right now, on this Martin Luther King Day 2013, I’m thinking of One Billion Rising on February 14, and the National March on Washington for Gun Control next Saturday, January 26.
King’s message, like the great spiritual leaders’ before him, was “simple:” love thy neighbor, and pay particular attention to those who are poor, afflicted, and oppressed. The making of these words flesh continues to be complicated, and King’s execution of his faith was no less complex than those who came before--or than ours must be each day.
While best remembered for his civil rights victories, it is King’s much broader battle that demands our current attention. His great 1963 March on Washington, forever memorialized in his “I Have A Dream” speech, dramatized the plight of America’s poor and catalyzed President Lyndon Johnson’s War on Poverty legislation. King supported the rights of low-wage garbage workers in Memphis; he actively protested the Vietnam War.
Johnson proposed The War on Poverty (we have this legislation to thank for federal programs such as Head Start) in response to a national poverty rate, in 1960, of just under 19%. During President Clinton’s tenure, the poverty rate reached a low of 11.3%, but by the time of the 2010 census it had climbed back to 15.1%.
In 50 years, we’ve shaved less than 4% off our national number of people living in poverty. This is 15.1% of individual U.S. citizens living on less than $11,344.
Whether or not you support the Occupy Wall Street movement (or for that matter the Arab Spring revolutions), with 1% of our population accounting for 24% of all income, we have not, as a nation, solved the problem of how to equitably distribute resources so that everyone, including children and the elderly, has enough to eat nutritiously and live warmly, safely, and healthily.
So when President Obama, in his inaugural address, connected King’s actions at Selma to those of women struggling for equality at Seneca Falls and gay people fighting for our rights and lives at Stonewall, he’s reminding us that for any of us to be free, there must be equity for all—and equity, despite our religious beliefs and faith, does not come easily. It requires action. It demands that faith be made flesh.
Just days before his assassination, King was planning a second March on Washington, and said that to create real change for America, “We are coming to demand that the government addresses itself to the problem of poverty. It is our experience that the nation doesn’t move around questions of genuine equality for the poor and for black people until it is confronted massively, dramatically in terms of direct action.”
Poverty and oppression come in many shapes and sizes, and so there are nearly limitless opportunities to join together and put our faith to work. One billion women—mothers, daughters, sisters, partners, and friends, one of every three people on our planet of seven billion—will be raped or beaten in her lifetime. One Billion Rising, the largest day of action in the history of Eve Ensler’s V-Day movement, is a promise that we will rise up with women and men worldwide to say the violence ends now. Join us at the Opera House this Valentine’s Day, Thursday, February 14, and put your faith to work on behalf of ending violence against women. Or take yourself to Washington, D.C., next Saturday, January 26, to work towards lessening gun violence in the U.S. by demanding legislation to better protect all of us from the “overkill” of a culture in which a strident insistence on individual rights often works to the detriment of our communities and the most disenfranchised among us.
Can we truly call ourselves a nation of faith when so much of our legislative and economic time is spent struggling only for our own individual well being? Not in my book. Together, we can make change, but to do so requires action in addition to belief. It requires, as all the great religions of our world proclaim, faith made flesh.
For Zion’s sake I will not keep silent,
    and for Jerusalem’s sake I will not rest,
until her vindication shines out like the dawn,
    and her salvation like a burning torch. – Isaiah 62:1

Sunday, February 12, 2012

The Power of Black

OK. Yeah. Art matters.

For most of you reading this, this is a pretty obvious statement of fact.

For me, living on Deer Isle, ME for most of the year, I've access to art (thanks to our excellent population of artists and the galleries that show them) but not museums.

Today I was reminded of how great museums are, when Judith and I spent two hours at the National Portrait Gallery here in Washington, D.C. Especially the Smithsonians --supported by our tax payer dollars, free admission. Government service to the lives of its citizens minds, hearts, and spirits at its finest.

We saw multiple great exhibits, including Annie Liebovitz's new "Pilgrimage," but the one that grabbed me by the throat was "The Black List" by African-American photographer Timothy Greenfield-Sanders. Above you can see his portrait of Angela Davis, one of the many large format, finely detailed photographs that made us stop, stare, and tear up with emotion.

The concept for "The Black List" is important. The term "black list" has of course been used pejoratively: if you're on the black list, you're being punished. You're in deep shit.

In this exhibit, Greenfield-Sanders turns this meaning on its head. The 50 photos here are a gallery of black stars: this is a list one WANTS to be on. The individuals captured in Greenfield-Sanders portraits are some of the most accomplished, educated, respected members of American society and represent a wide variety of influence, from Toni Morrison to Kareem Abdul-Jabbar to Vernon Jordan.

The impact of these portraits, putting the viewer up close and personal in very intimate ways with these powerful people, is breathtaking. A range of emotions washed through me as I stood before each one, from awe to pride to a kind of homesickness for living as I once did in a community rich with African-American people and others. A kind of heart sickness for this had been tugging on me since last night, with the news of singer Whitney Houston's death.

We all need opportunities to put ourselves in the company of others, and in the company of such powerful imagery. I found myself wishing I could transport our entire tiny high school of 125 students into the center of this gallery to see this show.

And you know I'm headed to more museums during my stay here this week!

Thursday, December 15, 2011

The American Prospect

Judith’s and my choice to spend our sabbatical in San Francisco, where we have family and a free place to stay in the SoMa district, has stirred up quite the economic tornado in my psyche.

For those of you familiar with San Fran, you already know that Market, which cuts a northeast to southwest diagonal through the city, was known as “The Slot” for being the location of the first underground metal cable trough in which constantly whirred the cables pulling trolleys up from the waterfront and into the city. North of The Slot is where the rich folk lived and worked and remains home to Union Square, Nob Hill, etc. South of The Slot was where the immigrant communities, the docks, the warehouses, tenement buildings, saloons and gambling halls were to be found (as well as Jack London’s birthplace). That is until the 1960 and ‘70s, when the national phenomenon of “urban renewal” grabbed San Francisco by the throat, shook it a few times, and succeeded in ripping its working class guts out of its downtown area.

Today South of The Slot is known as SoMa or South of Market, mirroring the trendy SoHo (South of Houston) neighborhood in New York City, another converted warehouse district. But what you’ll find in SoMa, instead of the gorgeous and historic cast iron warehouses-cum-expensive lofts and shops of SoHo, are newly built condo-scrapers; the blocks long Moscone Convention Center; and a large mall-like development known as the Yerba Buena Center. And mostly you’ll find high tech conventioneers (lots of ‘em); tourists; and, well, the 1% who can afford to live here.

And for a month, me and Judith.

We’re just up Folsom Street (which for you may conjure up images of Folsom Prison; for me, a gay person from the 1970s, Folsom Street was known as the leather district or, er, the “meat district”) from a fine restaurant named Prospect, a second restaurant launched in 2003 by award-winning chef Nancy Oakes of Boulevard fame. San Francisco today is a foodie’s food town as many fruits, fresh produce, wines, etc. all hail from the surrounding region, and Oakes and her restaurants sit near the zenith of foodie heaven.

The trick with all of this foodie-ness (in which we of course happily partake) is, well, the amount of hunger and homelessness that immediately surrounds it. You can literally cross one block, at 5th Street on Market, and go from fancy-dressed shoppers bustling in and out of the Apple Store, Abercrombie and Fitch, Macy’s and Saks Fifth Avenue to sidewalks empty of any other than men in sleeping bags, blankets, and cardboard on the street.

This is not even to mention that the leather bars and baths anchoring the west end of SoMa were closed by the City in the early 1980s thanks to the AIDS epidemic. That same epidemic considerably weakened the gay component of SoMa’s working class and artist communities, eliminating some of the strongest community resistance that originally existed to the gentrification of this neighborhood.

In light of all of this, the name Prospect captured my imagination.

“Prospect” as a noun means “a. an apparent probability of advancement, success, profit, etc. b. the outlook for the future: good business prospects.” Or how about “something in view as a source of profit,” or “a potential or likely customer, client, etc.”

And then there’s the verb form of the word, also highly appropriate both historically and currently in this neighborhood: “to search or explore (a region), as for gold; to work (a mine or claim) experimentally in order to test its value.”

In other words: to be a gold digger! An optimistic gold digger: a prospector with prospects!

And that’s pretty much who surrounds us now, South of the Slot in SoMa: a lot of people with enough money to make them believe they can and will always have more. Surrounded on all sides by folks who have nothing: not homes, or warm coats, or food to eat. Soup kitchens underfunded by federal budget cuts at the same time they are being overwhelmed by the working poor: people who work full-time but at jobs that don’t pay enough for them to feed their families.

We’re on an island of prosperity kept afloat by the surrounding sea of despair. And I have to tell you, much of the time I feel I'm drowning.

Interestingly, the Latin root of “prospect” is “prospectus” which meant to foresee, to see far off, to watch for / provide for / look out for. What if an “American Prospect” on life could shift from self to other; if we could really look ahead, see the future, and want to provide and look out for each other?

The challenge is crossing The Slot.

It doesn’t sound difficult, but it is filled with whirring machinery which seem to separate these two worlds as widely as if they were on separate continents. Instead of pulling us together, the ceaseless motion of the Slot’s cable divides us--until we trip, stumble, fall into it.

Take for instance how we best know the term “prospectus” today: as “the formal legal document required by the Securities and Exchange Commission about an investment offering for sale to the public.”

So much for the long view.

Might we define an era as “The American Prospect?” Can we cross The Slot?