This episode: “You”

Event Date: Tuesday, February 21, from 7 to 9 pm

Admission is free. Tell your friends.

This roundtable conversation series happens at Vermillion, an art gallery, bar, and neighborhood gathering place at 1508 11th Ave, Seattle (http://www.vermillionseattle.com/). For more information on the series, call John Boylan at 206-601-9848. If you want to link to this announcement, you can do so at http://boylanconversation.wordpress.com/

This time, you set the agenda. Read on below.

The Story

Let’s make this one about you.

The other night I attended the tenth anniversary celebration of a monthly series of salons put on Anne Focke and Carolyn Law. Each month, the two women invite two guests who in turn are encouraged to talk about whatever is on their mind, to a roomful of people. Then there’s a potluck meal. The venue is sweet; the presentations are often powerful and always edifying.

In part to honor that style—and to a small part because I could not bring together a theme and guests this month—I would like to offer something similar, with a twist. I would like you to come and engage in conversation about whatever is on your mind. What have you been thinking about? It can be anything: painting the great American painting, the latest turn in the political circus, your writer’s block or your big project, a brush with death, tremendous loss, or the delight of unexpected adventure.

To prime the pump, I’ll throw out a few things that have been on my mind lately. Cars and transport have been pretty much at the forefront, since my old Toyota died and I haven’t yet bought a replacement (18 years old; 275,000 miles; I owned the machine for 12 years, and we took a lot of trips). Busing can be a challenge, especially when one lives in Ballard and works in Redmond and functions all over the city. Having to walk a mile or so to catch the bus to work in the morning is a hassle, but I’m enjoying the idea of getting outside first thing, rather than getting into a car. And my reading time if definitely up. Reading has been driving my thinking lately.

I just finished Orhan Pamuk’s “My Name is Red,” an account of Ottoman miniaturists in Istanbul in 1587, amid encroaching European ideas of perspective, individual style, and portraiture. Istanbul is vividly rendered, and the novel is filled with ruminations as to individual style, authenticity, what an artist is. Pamuk weaves into a story of murder and betrayal an account of the history of painting in south Asia, from Herat to Istanbul.

In response to the “Imaginary Cities” conversation, guest Barbara Leucke had lent me Barbara Ehrenreich’s “Dancing in the Streets: A History of Collective Joy;” I also finished that recently. Ehrenreich traces the history of passionate, ecstatic celebration, dancing in the streets. She also explores the countervailing urge to repress such celebration or to co-opt it into political spectacle, and charts what happens—mass depression and neurosis—when we are deprived of a chance for ecstasy, especially communal ecstasy.

Right now I’m reading the 90th anniversary issue of Foreign Affairs. It’s not one of my favorite magazines; it’s very foreign policy establishment. But this issue contains excerpts from a century of writings about world affairs. It is fascinating to look at intellectuals in the 20s, 30s, 40s, and so on, coming to terms with the failure of capitalism and classic liberalism, and the rise of demagogues pulling in herds of the disenfranchised.

And I’m reading C. S. Lewis’s “The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe,” pieces of Turkish delight in hand.

All of this reminds me a great grad school course where the students were given large amounts of very disparate readings each week, with the assignment to figure out how to synthesize them into an essay at week’s end. Little Lucy and dancing in the streets and miniaturist painting and the rise of fascism. There’s a theme running through there somewhere. But that’s more than enough about me. The focis is you. What’s on your mind? What are you thinking about? I’m guessing that the group at Vermillion will be small, so if you’re in the mood for intimate conversation, do come.

Next Up

In March (Tuesday, March 20), we’ll be back with a topic and guests. The topic is fabric; the power and beauty to be found in cloth. I’m not expecting a reprise of last year’s style conversation, though there may be a bit of that. Instead I want to go directly for fabric and the roles it plays in our lives. Current guests are costume and clothing designer Anna Rose Telcs and fiber artist Cameron Mason. I’m working on getting two more.

This episode: “Arts Education”

Event Date: Tuesday, January 24, from 7 to 9 pm

I’ve been going back and forth as to whether or not to postpone Tuesday’s Arts Education conversation. “Snow’s coming, but the really big snow won’t be here until Wednesday. So maybe….”

Well, prudence wins out. We’re postponing exactly one week, same place, same time: Tuesday, January 24, at 7 pm, at Vermillion. I hope you can come.

Admission is free. Tell your friends.

This roundtable conversation series happens at Vermillion, an art gallery, bar, and neighborhood gathering place at 1508 11th Ave, Seattle (http://www.vermillionseattle.com/). For more information on the series, call John Boylan at 206-601-9848. If you want to link to this announcement, you can do so at http://boylanconversation.wordpress.com/

We’re back! We hope you all had excellent holidays, and now we’re ready to fill a long winter evening with fascinating conversation. This time, we’re talking about arts education, about a kind of learning that needs to be at the core of how we educate our children and how we think of ourselves as a people. Read on below.

The Guests (see below for bios)

Robert Eyerman, dancer and teaching artist

Julie Trout, teacher and artist

Lara Davis, musician, teacher, and activist

Daemond Arrindell, teacher, organizer, and poet

The Story

For January’s conversation, we’ll return to the topic of arts education. In this series, we last explored the subject four years ago, and it’s high time to get back to it.

As some of you may know, I’m a member of the board of directors of Arts Corps, and arts education is one of my fascinations. Arts Corps is the largest nonprofit arts educator in the Seattle area, putting professional teaching artists in schools, community centers, housing projects, and other venues across King County. The majority of students come from low-income backgrounds, and for a large number the students, this is their only access to art classes.

One thing that strikes me about the teachers and staffs of Arts Corps and their sister organizations (Coyote Central, The Nature Consortium, Richard Hugo House, among others) is their passion for the teaching they do. Another thing I see is an understanding that teaching art to children is not so much about trying to turn out massive numbers of painters and dancers (though that’s not a bad goal). It’s more about the realization that learning art is about learning how to be a full human being, learning how to reflect, how to take risks and fail, how to work on a team, how to imagine something completely new.

If we’re ever to create a vibrant, mature, confident civilization, how can we afford to not have those things at the core of each generation’s education?

For me, I have mixed memories of arts education. I can dimly recall art classes from childhood, sessions with cut paper or clay. As I recall, they were sweetly meaningless classes, more like unstructured play. Later, though, I recall a group of smart parents getting together and with their adolescent offspring and doing readings of plays. I can still remember the night we all read the parts in “The Madwoman of Chaillot.” The girl who read the mad Countess was superb, and for all of us it was an evening of pleasure and possibilities.

Come and bring your ideas of arts education.

The Guests in Detail

Robert Eyerman started dancing in February 2005 under the mentorship of Jerome Aparis in an after-school program with Arts Corps. In 2008, Robert co-founded Vicious Puppies Crew with classmates Binh, Dan, Sammy, and Quan. He now works as a teaching artist twice a week at Aki Kurose Middle School and assists Jerome at Denny Middle School along with weekly classes Youngstown Cultural Arts Center. http://vpc.weebly.com/

Julie Trout (like a fish) was born and raised in a holler located in rural West Virginia. Since her escape, she has been a dedicated and passionate arts educator in both traditional and alternative settings. In these settings she has been able to use various art forms to teach core subjects with a focus on social justice.

She is also a mixed media artist who has dabbled in dance and performance in recent past lives. She often tells her students to listen to their hearts and that art is not a luxury! Currently she has a fire in her belly to bring more equality in quality arts programming in Seattle Public Schools, where she teaches visual arts to nearly 500 students a week, in a portable without water.

Julie has also been involved in creating community partnerships with arts education outside of the classroom. Her work bringing Arts Corps to several schools inspired her to branch out and lead community art projects with the youth boxers at Cappy’s gym, collaborating with Jen Dixon on a community art project at Roots Shelter, and partnering with Windermere Reality to create scholarship opportunities for students and schools. She was recently chosen to be one of Washington State’s Regional Teachers of the Year for 2012.  She is honored to be one of eight teachers across the state to be selected for this.

Lara Davis oversees program development and community partnerships for Arts Corps, and co-leads the organization’s outreach and advancement work, which is dedicated to stewarding Arts Corps’s anti-oppression/racial justice agenda. Over the past 15 years of her professional career, Lara has been active in youth development, arts and arts education and social justice work with such groups as Seattle Young People’s Project, Queer Youth Rights, Communities Against Rape and Abuse, Seattle AFSC, the Seattle Arts Commission, and more. As a musician, sound artist, collaborator, and activist, she knows firsthand the power of creativity as a key component for community building and engaging in justice work. Lara’s passion for the belief that art inspires possibility reinforces Arts Corps’ mission and goals.

Daemond Arrindell is a workshop facilitator, counselor, community organizer, advocate and wants to be a poet when he grows up. Slam Master of Seattle and curator of the longest running weekly show in Seattle – the Seattle Poetry Slam; 8-time coach of the renowned Seattle National Poetry Slam Team; faculty member of Freehold Theatre and co-facilitating (for the 5th year) a poetry and theater residency at Monroe Correctional Complex for men; and is the Writer-In-Residence at Garfield High School and Washington Middle School through Seattle Arts & Lectures’ Writers in the Schools Program.

He has performed in numerous venues throughout Washington State and across the country including the Boston Poetry Slam, Nuyorican Poets Cafe, NYC’s Louder Arts Project, both the Seattle and Bellevue Arts Museums and recently in “Up (When I Grow)” – a collaboration of film, music and spoken word, addressing the themes of dreams and growing up that played to sold out crowds in both Seattle and Portland.

Daemond feels that it is the challenge of the artist to continue to push him/herself to grow within it. His love for the craft of poetry and the art of spoken word and their ability to alter the emotional state of a listener knows no bounds.

This Episode: In Search of the Fifth Estate

Event date: Tuesday, November 15, from 7 to 9 pm

Admission is free. Tell your friends.

This roundtable conversation series happens at Vermillion, an art gallery, bar, and neighborhood gathering place at 1508 11th Ave, Seattle (http://www.vermillionseattle.com/). For more information on the series, call John Boylan at 206-601-9848.

If you want to link to this announcement, you can do so at http://boylanconversation.wordpress.com/

This month, I want to talk about us, about civil society. About We the People, about engagement in our future, and the burgeoning possibility of the rise of the Fifth Estate. Read on below.

The Guests

I’m still thinking about having official guests, but it’s getting late, and I may not. Do you have ideas? In any case, I’m really interested in hearing what you have to say.

The Story

Like many people lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about us as a citizenry. I’ve been thinking about “We the People,” about what’s called civil society. I’m wondering how civil society works and how much of it we can hope to muster in a world of billions of flickering, sedating glass teats. It’s an especially important question now, given the politics we have and the future we face.

With millions of voices on the Internet, with the surprising magic of Tahrir Square, and with the success of Occupy Wall Street in getting America’s deepening inequality into the national discourse, an old idea is coming back to the fore.

It’s the wonderful notion that civil society can be not just a brake on the machinations of those in power, but can actually be a foundation for building something new, a just, sustainable, and maybe most important, exciting future. It’s the idea that with today’s connectivity, decentralized media, imagination, and the force of numbers, we can create a fifth estate.

The idea of a fifth estate is an extension of the old fourth estate, a popular name for the press. (In the United States, the first three estates are the three branches of the federal government; historically in Europe, they were the clergy, the nobility, and the commoners, as in the House of Commons.) The fourth estate is often envisioned as a check on the power of the other three, but we know how that goes. Enter the fifth estate, seen as an engaged, aroused, interconnected, and organized and vocal citizenry.

So what does that effective civil society, that fifth estate, look like? Is it people camped along the fringes of the SCCC campus? Or is it something more? I’ve long had ambivalence about the value of taking to the streets. Maybe it’s latent American puritanism, but street actions just seem too easy: you just show up, and maybe you carry a cardboard sign. Where’s the work, the hours spent on telephone trees, the canvassing, the substance of social organizing? Politics, the affairs of the people, takes hard work. Doesn’t it?

And of course, there’s the perennial question in this series: what role does art play in this world of a dynamic, engaged civil society? I love street theater and giant puppets, but the question nags: are they about something more than entertaining and cheering on the already committed? What role do they have in building a vital fifth estate?

Come. I think this one will be a rousing discussion.

Plug

Café Nordo is back. “Aboard Pan Am Flight 892, bound for the 1962 Seattle World’s Fair, Chef Nordo Lefeszcki, Mojo Spirits, and six of Seattle’s hottest performers team up to create an evening of retro-inspired cuisine, gorgeous cocktails, and international intrigue.” It’s a great show, with excellent food, madcap entertainment, excellent drinks, and a dollop of agitprop thrown in for good measure. Details and tickets at http://www.cafenordo.com/index.html. If you want to go, move fast. It is selling out. Review at http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/thearts/2016673058_nordo06.html

This Episode: “Imaginary Cities, Temporary Cities”

Event Date: Tuesday, October 18, from 7 to 9 pm

Admission is free. Tell your friends.

This roundtable conversation series happens at Vermillion, an art gallery, bar, and neighborhood gathering place at 1508 11th Ave, Seattle (http://www.vermillionseattle.com/). For more information on the series, call John Boylan at 206-601-9848.

This month, we’re talking about imaginary cities. Maybe like the Invisible Cities of Italo Calvino, or maybe not. These are the imaginary cities that we actually build, if only for a day or a week. These are cities in the desert and cities in the woods, cities made with tents, cities created from the subtle transformation of an urban street. Cities for festivals, cities for passion.

The Guests (see below for bios)

Klara Glosovo, artist, curator

Corey Scherrer, multi-disciplinary artist

Mark “Buphalo” Tomkiewicz, artist, environmentalist

Barbara Leucke, arts program manager, arts organizer

The Story

In the woods of Oregon, somewhere west of Eugene, there lies a village. It has streets, small shops and restaurants, as well as a little hospital, a beautiful public bath, and even workshops and garages. And like most of the cities I’m thinking about here, it only comes to life for a few days each year. The village is the site for the Oregon Country Fair, and it is marked by a truism of many imaginary cities: the visitors people who come as customers have a great time, but that’s nothing compared to the great time that the volunteers, vendors, and staff have. And that in turn is nothing compared to the experience of actually getting the city ready each year.

Something similar happens in Burning Man’s Black Rock City. Anyone who has worked on some part, no matter how small, of getting the city ready, bringing it up from the dust, then watching it grow, will know what I’m talking about.

That’s what I want to discuss this time: the experience of, and passion for, creating temporary cities. Of course, such places don’t need to be in the woods or the desert; we build imaginary cities, temporary cities, all the time. (A friend remarked this evening that she sees Seattle as an imaginary city.) It can happen when people erect tents in a public park, either from everyday necessity or as a tactic for protest. I saw it last summer, when Seattle’s somnambulant Broadway came into its own with the Gay Pride Festival, completely transformed as a new place, a city from another life, but only for a day. And then there are the ubiquitous farmer’s markets, village squares for a village that only exists as dream, also for a day.

These are the places that we love, but we make them for such small stretches of time. Wouldn’t it make more sense to make cities that are like this all the time? Or would we go mad living in such places, the mental equivalent of eating too much birthday cake? What can we learn from our temporary cities and the way we create them?

I’ve assembled an excellent crew of guests: Corey Scherrer among many other activities has worked on the pre-fair crew for the Oregon Country Fair. Klara Glosova in September turned a huge swath of Seattle into a massive art gallery. Mark “Buphalo” Tomkiewicz is a longtime member of Black Rock City’s Department of Public Works, or DPW, the crew that erects that city’s infrastructure. And Barbara Luecke, who as co-founder of the Fremont Solstice Parade helps to transform a part of Seattle each year into another world, and as Art Program Manager for Sound Transit, has worked with artists Christian French, Dan Corson, and D.k. Pan to turn the Sound Transit construction site on Broadway into a set of art installations, a sculpture park, and most recently, a huge outdoor art gallery.

This will be good. Come.

Plugs

Wonderful theater maker Curtis Taylor is back with “White Days.” The play features Erika Mayfield, Pol Rosenthal, Paul Budraitis, and Richard Lefebvre and runs through October 22 at New City Theater. http://www.newcitytheater.org/whitedays.php

Ticktock, my favorite aerial dance troupe, is raising funds to get to the New Orleans Fringe Festival.  Details and a video are at http://www.vimeo.com/29536412 Help these folks out!

Café Nordo is back. “Aboard Pan Am Flight 892, bound for the 1962 Seattle World’s Fair, Chef Nordo Lefeszcki, Mojo Spirits, and six of Seattle’s hottest performers team up to create an evening of retro-inspired cuisine, gorgeous cocktails, and international intrigue.” Details and tickets at http://www.cafenordo.com/index.html

And Kelly Lyles writes: “I’m still looking for a housemate…. yes, I’m being picky, because they remain friends of mine for years to come. But I have a GREAT, very fun one-of-a-kind furnished houseshare here in West Seattle, on a greenbelt, near the bridge & freeways. $600 a month includes everything. Please e-mail kelly at kellyspot dot com.

The house has been featured in magazines & on tv, so I can send u video links. Please help me spread the word!”

The Guests in Detail

Corey Scherrer is a multi-disciplinary artist living in the Pacific Northwest of the United States of America. His medium of choice is primarily photography, and he has been photographing natural and urban environments for the last 17 years. Corey’s influences and inspiration come from his constant exploration of his environment, usually in some type of wheeled vehicle, working with mentors, elders and friends, and experimenting with many different artistic mediums.

Corey is also very active in the arts community as a contributing member in the City Pulse Visual Arts Collective in Santiago Chile, member of the Artist Trust in Seattle, and continued involvement with the Oregon Country Fair, the Punk Rock Flea Market, Moisture Festival, and Burning Man.

Klara Glosova is the founder and curator of NEPO House, an experimental project space/gallery she opened in her home on Beacon Hill. NEPO house, by its very nature, is an investigation into the personal. It opens up questions of how we interact with one another and what boundaries we set.

Klara’s approach to curating and art making stems from her desire to learn, to better understand and to shed light on objects and subjects that seem obscure to her. As the outcome is often unexpected, she is continuously reminded to stay open and to work consciously with her fear of being vulnerable and exposed. Similarly she strives to create art that infiltrates life without being protected from the elements (most recently she curated NEPO 5k DON’T RUN – a 5 kilometer artwalk studded with site-specific art and performances). She likes art to be an integral part of life, to be accessible and receptive. So perhaps it is the practice of openness, both external and internal, that connects her larger curatorial NEPO House projects with more intimate forms of art making.

Mark “Buphalo” Tomkiewicz earned a degree in Environmental Science from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. He has taught math, science, art, and English in traditional and alternative settings across the U.S. and abroad. He has worked as the Assistant Director of Education at the Cuyahoga Valley Environmental Education Center in Peninsula Ohio, The Restoration Project Coordinator for Western Washington University’s Huxley College of the Environment and has served several years as the Restoration Project Director for The Nature Consortium in Seattle Washington. He is a Washington Native Plant Steward, a Green Seattle Partnership Forest Steward and regularly attends trainings and seminars focused on ecological restoration.

Buphalo is also a mixed-media artist whose work varies from sound and kinetic sculpture to large-scale collaborative public art with themes focused on the human relationship with the natural world.

A co-founder of the Fremont Solstice Parade and Art Program Manager for Sound Transit in Seattle, Washington, Barbara Luecke has worked and collaborated with artists for over 20 years. By producing and directing projects, she brings art experiences to the public realm through permanent and temporary installations, and through community-involving celebrations. Luecke oversees a $40 million public art program that integrates the work and thinking of artists into transit facilities across three counties in the greater Seattle area. She has also produced many community art projects in Seattle, including “The Fremont Troll.”

This episode: “Making Sense?”

Event Date: Tuesday, September 20, from 7 to 9 pm

Admission is free. Tell your friends.

This roundtable conversation series happens at Vermillion, an art gallery, bar, and neighborhood gathering place at 1508 11th Ave, Seattle (http://www.vermillionseattle.com/). For more information on the series, call John Boylan at 206-601-9848.

If you want to link to this announcement, you can do so at http://boylanconversation.wordpress.com/

This month, we’re talking about making sense. The summer has seemed exceptionally strange, as the political right flexes its muscle, the new normal drags drearily on, and a world of difficult weather suggests that something out there really is changing. Where do we turn to make sense of it all? Politics? Religion? Economic theory? Science? Art? Or is any attempt to make sense of it all doomed? Are we better off if we stop making sense and embrace the nonsense?

The Guests

This time, you’re the guests.

The Story:

Here’s the pitch: I want to have a conversation about making sense, or maybe better, about not making sense. I had originally envisioned this discussion in terms of an urge to make sense of the apparently increasing craziness around us. I wondered if we might find new ways to get a handle on strange politics and crazy weather and a bunch of apparently new normals. And I wondered if art had a role in that process of making sense.

But a trip to Vancouver to see the Surrealism exhibit at the Vancouver Art Gallery was a forceful reminder that most of the best art of the past century or so has been about not making sense at all, or at the very least about redefining what sense means. The art of the surrealists, along with the aboriginal art that the surrealists embraced, was (and is) about going beyond conventional ideas of making sense, going into worlds of dreams and the irrational, into the unconscious, randomness, and the power of imagination and inspiration.

Much of what came out of surrealism (and its predecessor Dada) proved so powerful that it came to embody popular culture, from song lyrics to television news montages to the way in which most movies are made. Business saw that power as well, to the extent that much of advertising and product design has long embraced the language, if not the spirit and the thinking, of surrealism.

One of the many dangers of our times is that the mass commercial embrace of the language of the irrational, a sort of “surrealism light,” has tended to sow confusion, doubt, and a false excitement rather than a liberation of the imagination. Despite that, however, the power of this deep embrace of dreams and the irrational remains.

So the question is: Is it necessary to make some sense of what’s going on? Or can we better function amid the craziness without making sense of it? If one goes to bed hungry, or doesn’t have a bed at all, is the embrace of the irrational a bourgeois luxury? Or is an embrace of the irrational perhaps the best way to deal with this world?

And why no guests? I thought about having a group of guests, maybe an art historian, an artist, a theologian, but I couldn’t bring myself to pull them together. After all, who knows the most about sense and nonsense, about the irrational and the surreal? We do. Come and converse.

PLUGS

On September 29 at 6 pm, ticktock dance, the aerial dance group, is performing scenes from Domestic Variations, the show they staged at Fred Wildlife Refuge early in the summer. The venue is the Alley-Up performance event in the alleys of Pioneer Square, as part of the Alley Network Project. http://ticktockdance.wordpress.com/ (scroll down for a video from Domestic Variations)

Wonderful theater maker Curtis Taylor is back with “White Days.” The play features Erika Mayfield, Pol Rosenthal, Paul Budraitis, and Richard Lefebvre. The show runs from September 30 through October 22 and happens at New City Theater, just a couple of doors away from the storefront where Taylor staged the legendary Vodvil productions for so many years. http://www.newcitytheater.org/whitedays.php

Monday evening I’ll be moderating a discussion for Space.City at Fred Wildlife Refuge. It’s part of the “Beyond Boundaries” project, focusing on architect/artist partnerships, including Seattle’s Lead Pencil Studio. One of the pairs, Jay Atherton and Cy Keener, open an exhibit at Suyama Space this weekend. Details: http://space-city.net/

And of course there’s the SuttonBeresCuller reinterpretation of On the Boards this weekend. Go. http://www.ontheboards.org/special-events/be-determined

John Boylan’s Conversations: What’s Coming

After this fragmentary but glorious summer, autumn is coming, and that means we’ll be starting up the conversations at Vermillion again. We’ve put together a good set of topics, and we’re looking forward to some very stimulating discussion this fall. We haven’t yet settled on the guests, but you’ll be the first to know once we have those in place. Suggestions are always welcome.

Note that the dates are fixed, but the topics may shift as we get closer to show time.

If you want to link to this announcement, you can do so at http://boylanconversation.wordpress.com/

The List

Making Sense—Tuesday, September 20

This one is the latest in a long series (Death, Making Sense of the Handbasket…) about the urge to make sense of the craziness that surrounds us, and what role art can play in that, if any. This summer has seemed exceptionally strange, as the right flexes its muscle, the new normal drags drearily on, and a world of difficult weather suggests that something out there really is changing. Where do we turn to make sense of it all? Politics? Religion? Economic theory? Science? Art? Or is any attempt to make sense of it all doomed? Are we better off if we stop making sense and embrace the nonsense?

Temporary Cities, Imaginary Cities—Tuesday, October 18

More and more I notice the urge to build cities that only last for a day or a weekend. Burning Man’s Black Rock City is a prime case, rising from the dust of an old lakebed and then disappearing again, not long after. Then there’s the Oregon Country Fair, where a beautiful village exists year round, but only comes to life for few days in July. Closer to home, Seattle’s somnambulant Broadway comes into its own with the Gay Pride Festival, completely transformed as a new place, a city from another life, but only for a day. And then there are the ubiquitous farmer’s markets, village squares for a village that only exists as dream, also for a day. These are the places that we love, but we make them for such small stretches of time. Wouldn’t it make more sense to make cities that are like this all the time? Or would we go mad living in such places, the mental equivalent of eating too much birthday cake? What can we learn from our temporary cities and the way we create them?

Installation—Tuesday, November 15

A conversation about installation art: places transformed, objects juxtaposed and repurposed, art installed. Theater sets for plays that don’t exist. Miniature worlds that both envelope and challenge. Installations made with craft, and those made for some all-encompassing effect. Installation art.

Museums or Food—Tuesday, December 13

I still can’t make up my mind whether I want to do a conversation on museums, how they’re faring, what roles they play in this digital age, and what sort of secular cathedrals they can be. Or do I want to do another discussion of food, to celebrate again the season of gluttony? Last December’s food conversation was very good. We will see.

This roundtable conversation series happens at Vermillion, an art gallery, bar, and neighborhood gathering place at 1508 11th Ave, Seattle (http://www.vermillionseattle.com/). For more information on the series, call John Boylan at 206-601-9848.

John Boylan’s Next Conversation: “On Becoming an Artist in Strange Times”

Event Date: Tuesday, April 12, from 7 to 9 pm

Admission is free. Tell your friends.

This roundtable conversation series happens at Vermillion, an art gallery, bar, and neighborhood gathering place at 1508 11th Ave, Seattle (http://www.vermillionseattle.com/). For more information on the series, call John Boylan at 206-601-9848.

If you want to link to this announcement, you can do so at http://boylanconversation.wordpress.com/

This month, we’re talking with several of the student artists from the University of Washington’s Strange Coupling project, which brings together working artists with current UW students.

The Guests (see bios below)

Stephen Sewell (UW PhotoMedia MFA student)

Rodrigo Valenzuela (UW PhotoMedia MFA student)

Leanne Grimes (UW painting MFA student)

Christopher McElroy (UW sculpture MFA student)

The Story

This Thursday at Vermillion (4/14) is the opening or this year’s installment of Strange Coupling. Since 2002, the annual Strange Coupling project has brought together current UW students coupled with working artists from the Seattle area to cooperate on art projects (http://strangecoupling.blogspot.com/). This year, jurying help came from Scott Lawrimore of the Lawrimore Project, and Michael Van Horn, curator of The Joseph and Elaine Monsen Photography Collection at the UW.

Last week a few of the students were hanging the show at Vermillion, and we got to talking. They had some very interesting things to say about art and about being students in these strange times, and it seemed to me that this would be a good conversation to broaden out to you all.

The idea is to talk about the experience of being young artists, about being students in this strange time; about the art that the artists are making and about the Strange Coupling project; about how the budget cuts are changing art education at the university level; about how many of the students in the project are working with photography, and what that’s like as the world of photography undergoes revolutionary change.

There are nine student artists and eight working artists in the show. I set this up too late to invite them all, but I hope they all come. And I hope you come as well. This should be a most excellent conversation.

The Guests in Detail

Stephen Sewell was born in Richland Center, WI. He received his Bachelor of Fine Arts Degree in Photography from Northern Michigan University in 2009. Afterward he moved to Syracuse, NY where he taught courses as well as assisted with the Artist in Residence program at Light Work/Community Darkrooms. Currently he is a graduate student in the School of Art at the University of Washington and an employee at the Frye Art Museum. (http://www.stephensewell.com)

Leanne Grimes was born in Philadelphia in 1983. She moved to the suburbs after a few years in the city and then to NYC at the age of 18. She left after a year and a half to pursue traditional painting at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in Philly, while also pursuing her bachelor’s at University of Pennsylvania. She lived and worked in Philadelphia until she moved to Seattle in 2009.

She is graduating this June from the UW MFA program. She currently uses landscape imagery to explore the illusion of nature that we have constructed over the past century of urban development and suburban sprawl. The current body of work is called Plastic Nature. She will be showing it at the UW Sandpoint Gallery in Magnuson Park on May 16th and at the Henry Art Gallery May 28th. Upon graduation she plans to stay in Seattle. She would like to find a space to operate as a group studio with community art workshops and exhibition space. “I do miss the sun, though,” she writes.

Rodrigo Valenzuela is a Chilean visual artist, He studied photography at the University of Chile and philosophy at the Evergreen State College. He is currently a first-year MFA student at the University of Washington.

Christopher McElroy received his BFA from Virginia Commonwealth University.  He has exhibited his art extensively across the United States, including a recent show at the Missoula Art Museum in Montana.  He has taught glass workshops at Red Deer College, Kyoto University of Art & Design, the Penland School of Crafts, & the Bezalel Academy of Art and Design.  He is currently an MFA candidate in sculpture at the University of Washington. He creates sculptural forms, environments, video, and photographs that combine ideas of domesticity and wilderness. An investigation of bodily function and awareness in relation to degrees of psychological comfort and sanctuary; and human engagement with food sources greatly inform his ouevre.

 

This Episode: “Art Revisited”

John Boylan’s Next Conversation

Event Date: Tuesday, March 15, from 7 to 9 pm

Admission is free. Tell your friends.

This roundtable conversation series happens at Vermillion, an art gallery, bar, and neighborhood gathering place at 1508 11th Ave, Seattle (http://www.vermillionseattle.com/). For more information on the series, call John Boylan at 206-601-9848.

If you want to link to this announcement, you can do so at http://boylanconversation.wordpress.com/

This month, we’re experimenting with another no-guest conversation. Occasionally we do that; the last time was a very spirited conversation about honor, last November. For that one, the group was relatively small, maybe 20 people. It was a very good conversation.

I love the conversations where 90 people show up. They’re big and boisterous and full of energy. “Style” was like that; it’s a very popular topic, with some amazingly popular guests. But the small conversations are valuable in different ways. They’re slower, and of course more intimate, and often just easier. And the no-guest conversations tend to end up as smaller, intimate events.

For this conversation, I want to talk about art. Essentially, this series always talks about art, but usually through a filter: art and technology; art and death, food as art, art in politics, art as a way of expressing science. Or we’ve tried to carve art into subdomains: sculpture, painting, public art, drawing, conceptual art.

This time, we’ll go in without filters and subdomains, to just talk about art. Things we’ve seen that are amazing. Things we’ve made that are amazing. Art that we can’t stand. Why we make what we make. Why we hate what we make, or why we love it. Where art is going, or not. How important is art in our lives.

I’m defining art broadly here, from painting to performance, spoken word to sand paintings. And I know that there’s a danger in unfiltered conversation. When people get together to talk without filters about art, the conversation can easily veer toward two easy topics: “Seattle sucks as an art town,” and “there’s no support for the arts.” Valid topics both, but I think that we can do better than that. I’m looking for a passionate, wide-ranging look at art.

So come and talk, come and vent, come and rhapsodize. But do come.

PLUG

Peter Clothier is a veteran critic, writer, and scholar based in and around Los Angeles. He has specialized in writing about art and artists for many years. He’ll be coming to town; Greg Kucera Gallery is hosting a morning coffee event, with what looks to be a fascinating discussion.

Details: Peter Clothier, Saturday, March 19, at 11 am, at Greg Kucera Gallery, 212 Third Ave. South.

Peter will talk about creativity and art and persistence, themes he discusses in his new book, “Persist: In Praise of the Creative Spirit in a World Gone Mad with Commerce” (http://paramipress.com/books/persist).

His blog is The Buddha Diaries, http://www.peterclothier.com/.

You can learn more about Peter and his work at http://www.peterclothier.com/about-peter.html

I’ll be there.

This Episode: “Style”

Event Date: Tuesday, February 15 from 7 to 9 pm

Admission is free. Tell your friends.

 

This roundtable conversation series happens at Vermillion, an art gallery, bar, and neighborhood gathering place at 1508 11th Ave, Seattle (http://www.vermillionseattle.com/). For more information on the series, call John Boylan at 206-601-9848.

If you want to link to this announcement, you can do so at http://boylanconversation.wordpress.com/

 

The Quick Summary: This time we’ll be talking about style, how we create and re-create ourselves as individuals, as presences in the crowd. And how we make our mark on the world around us, whether through art or in the simple everyday.

 

The Guests (see guest bios below)

Adria Garcia, artist, clothing merchant

Robin Held, Deputy Director, Exhibitions and Collections, the Frye Art Museum

Laura Cassidy, Style Editor, Seattle Metropolitan magazine

Maikoiyo Alley-Barnes, Refuse Alchemist, Maker, Facilitator

Kelly Lyles, artist

 

The Story

I want to talk about style. Not necessarily fashion; fashion can be a part of style, but only a part. Fashion can be as ephemeral as last year’s runway designs, but style stays for life. Fashion is often all about money, with dresses that cost more than a mortgage payment, while style is something that everyone has, at some level. Style can be a gorgeous high-fashion dress, but it can also be the favorite scarf that a woman hastily throws on while she rounds up her children to catch the last relief truck out of the village, before the killers come. Style can be the ancient, sweat-encrusted John Deere cap that for a farmer is the last reminder of his father. Style can be an old pair of jeans or a beautiful teddy bear who has been handed down through generations. Style can live in a man’s walk or the way a woman dances.

And then of course there’s style as art, wearable art, costume, art and fabric. And the whole notion of style in art. We’ll have a lot to talk about. Do come.

 

A Bunch of Plugs

You may have read the Jen Graves account of a project by NKO and conversation alums No Touching Ground and Dan Hawkins (http://www.thestranger.com/seattle/death-and-graffiti/Content?oid=3899212). The project, “New Mystics – “tomb” revisited,” was indeed exquisite, and now the three artists are preparing for an April exhibit at Gallery 4Culture, building on that project. They’re trying to raise some $1,111 (http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1519270301/new-mystics-tomb-revisited) to cover part of the costs needed to put on the show. The fundraising venue is Kickstarter, and as with any Kickstarter project, donors get something back, beyond the pleasure of funding something wonderful. Watch the video, take a look at the cool things you will get for your money, and put something in. It will be more than worth your while.

Meanwhile, artist, musician and conversation alum Paul Rucker performs with Hans Teuber at Vito’s on February 15, the same night as this conversation. Paul is excellent, so if you come to Vermillion, think about heading to Vito’s later that night to catch the second set (http://paulrucker.com/).

Amazing conversation alum Amy O’Neal’s AmyO/tinyrage performs at the Moore in “The Lowdown: An Unexpected Night Of Seattle Dance Performance” on Friday, February 11 (http://www.stgpresents.org/artists/?artist=1480)

Amazing conversation alum Catherine Cabeen performs at ChopShop at Maydenbauer Center in Bellevue on Saturday and Sunday, February 12 and 13 (http://www.chopshopdance.org/)

Amazing conversation alum Crispin Spaeth is producing (and choreographing for) Ten Tiny Dances at Velocity on February 11-13 (http://velocitydancecenter.org/events/tentiny/).

And Michael Cepress, a wonderful designer (he would have been a guest at this conversation, but for a conflict that night), is running a two-day “Wearable Art and the Body” workshop at Inscape Arts on February 19 and 20. For more information, contact Michael at 206-334-7602.

 

A few plugs for myself: This Friday evening, February 4, from 7 to 8 pm, I’ll be moderating a discussion at the Henry Art Gallery on “Panoptos Revisited: A Panel on Art and Technology.” The discussion features John Sutton, Ben Beres, Zac Culler, Joseph Gray, and Matt Westervelt part of the SBC project Panoptos. For more information: http://www.henryart.org/events/show/332 and http://www.suttonberesculler.com/.

On February 27 and 28, I’ll be performing a monologue at 12 Minutes Max at On the Boards. For more information: http://www.ontheboards.org/12-minutes-max-0

On Sunday evening, February 13, I’ll be hosting the regular Storytelling Night at the fabulous Canoe Social Club. If you want to hear more about Canoe, guest passes, Canoe events, and the new trial memberships, let me know.

And finally, my long-running weekly space opera adventure serial continues at http://jcpboylan.wordpress.com. Check it out.

 

A word about parking: if you come to the conversation and you come by car, it’s usually easier to find parking the earlier you come to the neighborhood. So come a little early, sit down for a drink and get something to eat at Vermillion before the conversation begins. You’ll be glad you did.

 

The Guests

Adria Garcia is an artist and the co-owner and curator of Indian Summer, a woman’s clothing store (http://www.facebook.com/pages/Indian-Summer/148083728541522).

 

Robin Held: As Deputy Director, Exhibitions and Collections, at the Frye Art Museum, and as former Associate Curator of the Henry Art Gallery, University of Washington, Robin Held has established herself as one of Seattle’s leading curators of contemporary art. Among the important exhibitions of visual art, performance, and film she has curated since 2002 are: Nathalie Djurberg (2009), Empire (2008), It is Not a Question of Knowing Whether This Interests You but Rather of Whether You Yourself Could Become More Interesting Under New Conditions of Cultural Creation (2007-2008), Hug: Recent Art by Patricia Piccinini (2007), Tracy and the Plastics 101 (2006), Swallow Harder (2006), Oliver Herring: Taking and Making (2006), The Retrofuturistic Universe of NSK (2005), Hershmanlandia: The Art and Films of Lynn Hershman Leeson, 1965-2005 (2005), and Gene(sis): Contemporary Art Explores Human Genomics (2002). The latter was the first art museum exhibition to be registered with the National Institutes of Health, providing a new museum model for the safe exhibition of life forms created by artists.

Held commissioned renowned American artist Dario Robleto to curate an exhibition and create new art based on the Founding Collection of the Frye Art Museum in 2008, resulting in the 2008 exhibition Dario Robleto: Heaven is Being a Memory to Others.  Also in 2008 Held was responsible for the residency and performance Oliver Herring: TASK Seattle, in collaboration with the Seattle Public Library, On the Boards, and the Tacoma Art Museum. Recent and upcoming exhibitions at the Frye Art Museum include Implied Violence: Yes and More and Yes and Yes and Why (2010) as well as Degenerate Art Ensemble (2011).

Held has published and lectured extensively on contemporary art and performance. In 2009 she was a Center for Curatorial Leadership Fellow; in 2006 a Goethe-Institute Visiting Scholar, Munich, Germany; and in 2003 a Getty Grant Program Curatorial Research Fellow for Hershmanlandia (2003). See: http://fryemuseum.org/

 

Laura Cassidy writes: “My career in city media began when I moved back to the Northwest after spending the ‘90s in New York City. Not long after my return, the Seattle Weekly paid me to stand in rock clubs (I was a music writer), and then they paid me to eat in restaurants (I was a food columnist, and then the food editor). They didn’t pay me very much though. In May of 2006, not longer after it launched, I joined Seattle Metropolitan. I’ve spent the last five years essentially shopping for a living; as the style editor I cover the retail scene, fashion, style, stylish people, and other “lifestyle” elements. I also produce quarterly fashion spreads, and I blog, and I oversee a newsletter that almost 10,000 are subscribed to. As the editor of our twice-yearly wedding magazine, I produce and direct photo-shoots that show off gorgeous local dahlias and brilliant catering ideas, and I help make sense of conflict-free diamonds, two- versus three-button suit jackets, and a dizzying array of dress shapes.” See: http://www.seattlemet.com/blogs/wear-what-when/

 

Born in the Enchanted Emerald Isle known as Seattle, Maikoiyo Alley-Barnes began honing his craft as a Maker actively at an early age. Since his late teens, he has spent his time as a “finder of rare items.” With countless hours spent in thrift stores and garage and estate sales, he has been a resource for those who have found themselves in need and want of clothing, furniture, and affects that have stood the test of time.

Alley-Barnes’s professional life has been multi-faceted. He has written copy, produced editorial cartoons, been a wardrobe consultant, and dispatched cabs. He has also worked extensively as an artist and curator. To date he has curated, participated in, soloed in, and/or conceptualized to fruition no less than 50 exhibitions both in gallery and independent settings. He has consulted widely in arts education as an artist in residence, master teaching artist, and a curriculum development specialist.

At present he is the Creative Director at Pun(c)tuation, a mixed-use space on Capitol Hill.

He also works as an art director and production designer for What Matter’s Most Productions and as Creative Consultant for Sub Pop recording artists Shabazz Palaces. Recently he has partnered with Matt Noren in Tarboo, a local clothing company focusing on the small-batch production of men’s and women’s shirts.

He also happens to be the father of the coolest eleven year old on the planet. See: http://www.punctuatedlife.com/

 

Kelly Lyles writes: “I’m a full-time visual artist (painter) but started out with a commercial art degree and grand designs of being a fashion illustrator (which I’ve tried a few times, but the industry was just switching to photography when I graduated). Here in Seattle I’m equally known for my paintings, my artcars, my Arts listserve; the 4th piece of the pie is my rather flamboyant style (which sticks out far more in Seattle than other places I’ve lived). Even as a child I had strong opinions on clothing; every passport shows me in a different costume: tennis outfit in December, tutus at home (with ever-present fake cigarette and gold heels), PJ Night-shirt worn to grade school, etc. More than my grades was the honor of being voted “Miss Mod” in High- school (must have been the 70′s gauchos & hot pants that swayed the vote).

“Now I drive the EXCESSORIES ODD-YSSEY. It’s covered in purses, shoes, belts, sunglasses and jewelry, with a magnetic paper-doll on the front for dressing up (the magnets are reproductions of my actual clothes). See: http://www.kellyspot.com/

“Personally, I wish style factored more into the Seattle conscious! All the uniformity of Goretex, sneakers and Birkenstocks are a Visual blight, & don’t we need more color & creativity in this grey town? People forget to have FUN with their clothes! It’s another expression of who we are….

“PS, Notice next time you’re at a meeting, a party, a lecture: one of my theories is that at any gathering people group by color, based on what they’re wearing.”

This episode: “Circus! Part Three”

Event Date: Wednesday, January 5 from 7 to 9 pm

Admission is free. Tell your friends.

This roundtable conversation series happens at Vermillion, an art gallery, bar, and neighborhood gathering place at 1508 11th Ave, Seattle (http://www.vermillionseattle.com/). For more information on the series, call John Boylan at 206-601-9848.

If you want to link to this announcement, you can do so at http://boylanconversation.wordpress.com/

The quick summary: We’re back with a third foray into the world of circus. It’s a world filled with larger-than-life people, people who defy gravity, people who deeply understand the absurdity of everyday life, people who do their work on an edge between sadness and laughter. But maybe more than that, it’s a way of living.

A scheduling note: these conversations usually fall on Tuesdays and happen in the middle of a month. Note that this time, we’re on a Wednesday in the first week of the month.

The Guests (see guest bios below)

Cathleen O’Malley, actor and clown

Elizabeth Rose, dancer and aerialist

Erin Brindley, director and producer

Terry Crane, circus artist

The Story

As longtime readers of these announcements know, we love circus, and we love its cousin, variety. We love it so much that we’re revisiting the topic a third time, and we’re guessing this won’t be the last. The first time, five years ago, featured members from four local companies, Circus Contraption, Cirque de Flambé, Umo Ensemble, and Teatro ZinZanni. (The first two are now gone.) The second was mostly a bunch of clowns sitting around talking, featuring some of the great physical comedians who are regulars at Seattle’s Moisture Festival.

This time we’ll be looking at new directions for circus. Circus has been seeing a resurgence in recent years in a variety of forms, with a proliferation of new circus groups around the world and new circus schools such as Seattle’s School of Acrobatics and New Circus Arts. But what may be more interesting is a blending of the acrobatics, aerial performance, and physical comedy into the disciplines of theater, dance, and film. Such blending may not be new—actor Bill Irwin has been doing it for years—but there seems to be a lot of new energy involved, and that what I’m curious about.

Plug: That same night, Honey Castro is making their monthly appearance at Vito’s (9th and Madison). The act features the sweet voices of Sari Breznau, Sara Edwards, and Erin Jorgensen. Sari was a long-time member of Circus Contraption. They usually don’t get started until 9 or so, so you can think about going to both.

And a word about parking: if you do come to the conversation and you come by car, it’s usually easier to find parking the earlier you come. So come a little early, sit down for a drink and get something to eat at Vermillion before the conversation begins. You’ll be glad you did.

And Next Up: in February (2/15), we’ll be talking about style. We have Robin Held and Adria Xuala Garcia as guests. I’m rounding up a couple of others.

The Guests in Detail

Elizabeth Rose is the co-founder and co-artistic director of ticktock, the aerial dance company that has been making waves in the Seattle scene with their unique hybrid aerial/modern dance style. She has been a professional aerialist since 2002, a dancer since 1999, and has enjoyed studying aerial and working with Elie Venezky, Elise Smith and Serenity Smith-Forcion, Jukka Juntti, Eric Newton, Max Torandell, Jacques Heim, and others. She is currently based in Seattle where, in addition to ticktock, she performs with the Aerialistas, Seattle’s original aerial girl gang. Elizabeth is passionately committed to advancing the art of aerial movement beyond the realm of tricks and feats to a place that demands the most exquisite use and fullest awareness of the body in performance. See: http://ticktockdance.wordpress.com/, http://lizaroseaerial.com/, and http://artanayoga.com/

Cathleen O’Malley is an actor, improviser, clown—and former resident of Seattle’s Capitol Hill neighborhood—who recently relocated to the old steel town of Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, where she is an Artistic Associate and the Education Director of Touchstone Theatre. She trained in Lecoq-based physical theatre at the London International School of Performing Arts (LISPA) and holds an MFA from Naropa University.

Cathleen first encountered the work of Jacques Lecoq and other European physical theatre traditions as a student of Freehold Studio’s George Lewis, who later assisted in the creation of her solo clown performance, Loose Ends. In the eight years since, Cathleen has performed original solo and ensemble-created theatre at venues internationally, including London, Budapest, Silkeborg (Denmark), the Grotowski Workspace (Poland), Washington, DC, and at theaters, barns, fields, and fairs in and around Seattle. Cathleen is a co-founder of the grotesque comedy troupe, Relax Your Face (UK), and in 2010 joined Pittsburgh-based Zany Umbrella Circus on tour to Amman, Jordan, where she co-created the show CAKE and taught physical theatre/clown to 150 Jordanian youth.

Cathleen is visiting Seattle following her debut at Avner the Eccentric’s annual vaudeville festival, Phyzgig!, where she performed a two-person adaptation of CAKE. See: http://www.cathleenomalley.com.

After graduating from NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts, Erin Brindley directed plays off and off-off Broadway in New York, and founded Ripple Productions, a non-profit theater company committed to integrating the performing and culinary arts. While producing and directing theater she was also cutting her teeth in non-profit management, eventually becoming Managing Director of Storahtelling, a Jewish ritual theater that toured nationally. After 11 years in New York, Erin decided to return to her native Seattle. In the interim, she happened to see Circus Contraption in New York, and was blown away by the artistry and ingenuity of the group. Almost immediately upon returning to Seattle she was hired as Circus Contraption’s Managing Director, and also directed their final show, “The SHOW to End All SHOWS” as well as the show they toured Portugal with. When Circus Contraption decided to shut their doors after eleven years, Erin and Terry Podgorski, the Production Manager for Circus Contraption, moved Ripple Productions to Seattle and founded Cafe Nordo, a theatrical dining experience. Their first show, The Modern American Chicken, won a Footlight Award, and they just finished a sold-out run of their third show, Sauced. Cafe Nordo is now looking for a permanent venue. See: http://cafenordo.com/

Terry Crane is a born circus artist, having climbed and performed from his earliest years. After completing a bachelor’s degree with a minor in contemporary dance, Terry was accepted at the selective National Circus School of Montreal. In the years since finishing NCS, Terry has wowed audiences, critics, and circus afficionados alike with his fearless, original aerial rope technique. He has performed in 10 countries on three continents, with multiple television appearances, and in front of such prestigious persons as the king of Norway and the prime minister of Thailand. He is a longtime student and practitioner of capoeira, contact improvisation, hip hop dance, and physical comedy, and infuses his work with these influences as well as his own fiercely unique style. Terry loves the sublime experience of circus performance, and daring to reach across the fourth wall to share with all his audiences. See: http://www.cordelisse.com/