Art Move Issue 11

ISSUE ELEVEN

GREAT PLAINS JAMES BRYON HARTLEY BADGER’S BOOKSHOP KONG & OLIVE AJ OETMAN’S THE WOLF’S ROBE

FALL 2017 PRICELESS

ISSUE ELEVEN

OWNER

BRYON HARTLEY

Sara Kovanda

The Poetry of Pause

EDITOR-AT-LARGE & SOCIAL MEDIA J. Fatima Martins

BADGER’S BOOKSHOP

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For the Love of Literature

COPYEDITOR Brennan Hallock ART DIRECTOR Lindsey Auten CONTACT Email, text, or call Sara: artmovemagazine@gmail.com (402) 630-0945

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We are one voice working together to support our community arts scene.

GREAT PLAINS JAMES

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Moments of Light

KONG & OLIVE

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Sontheimer’s Digital Duo

THE WOLF’S ROBE A Farce on the Prairie

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BRYON HARTLEY: PAUSE j . fat i m a m a r t i n s

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B

ryon Hartley approaches his art with a poetic and patient sensibility.

He builds up sculptures with the lexicon of glass, wood, and metal, commanding the unpredictable forces of the four elements, allowing fire, water, earth, and air to lead him in the making of beauty. Hartley purposefully destroys materials, slowly transforming them into new compositions in the manner of Loki, the misunderstood trickster Norse god who had power over fire and water and created chaos to fashion new life.

Within Hartley’s sculptures is the energy and tension of the universe, and his private history and personal experiences. In his hands, what was once broken is rebuilt.

While in Lincoln completing a Master of Fine Arts degree at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, Hartley presented exhibitions that attracted critical attention, sales, and private commissions. At LUX Center for the Arts in 2016 he exhibited work from the Ridged Fluidity series. Three of those works can be viewed here. In these elegant sculptures, fluid bluegreen industrial glass, which was melted and reformed into a water-like material, is attached to weather-beaten and vintage wood in a manner suggesting a symbiotic relationship between materials. The aesthetic is sophisticated and primitive, projecting a Zen-like natural quality as if the form created itself organically. The designs are a perfect marriage of grace and pugnacity, blending hard and soft.

Hartley’s mixture of smooth-clean and rough-dirty styles is inspired directly by his formative years. Instead of finishing high school, he went to work in industrial metal, eventually owning his own company and progressing to become a skilled designer. After many years of stability, an accident forced him to slow down and rethink his life. Hartley considered what to do next. He still needed to work, but he wanted a soul-fulfilling and creative life. So, at age 40 he returned to school. He explained, “I was a mature student; I went back to school to work not to play, and I’ve spent most of my time in the studio making art.”

Hartley’s grandparents had a grounding influence on his life. He shared details of his grandmother’s approach to teaching the importance of art.

“My grandmother took us kids to the art museum. She didn’t know much

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Ridged Fluidity series, glass and wood, 2016

quality is seen in all of Hartley’s sculptures and is the key to his success: a toughness that is also fragile and sensitive. “It looks strong,” he explained, referring to the glass, “but it will break into a million pieces if it falls.”

In May 2017 Hartley completed his MFA with a thesis exhibition called Pause at the

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about art, but she told us to pause in front of works of art and she’d try to explain them.

While his grandmother provided culture and academics, his grandfather instructed the kids in a firm work ethic. “My grandfather worked outside the home every day to provide for us. He worked with his hands and he was solid. I worked with him first.”

Hartley’s grandparents gave him the gift of compassionate structure, a blend of softheartedness with adamantine focus. This

a beautiful and clear artist statement for the exhibition which deserves to be printed here in full:

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PAUSE Creating art honors the traditions of making by hand and presents an arena where I am the designer and the maker. When I make, I hunt myself down; I pursue that moment when a piece is finished and I can pause.

The making process totally consumes me, hours are spent planning, sketching, fabricating, jig building and mold making.

I reach the point of exhaustion trying to figure out positive and negative space, perfectUniversity of Nebraska-Lincoln. Some of ing a line, curve, or form. Sleep is longed the works from Pause were also exhibited for, but I drive on. I am chasing perfection at Turbine Flats in the Outlook Project Gal- and once it is reached, I am at peace. It is a lery in June. The sculptures in this series euphoric high. continue the designs from Ridged Fluidity Inspiration comes from my rock. It is a further exploring flow, weight, texture, magnificent place where I can stay all day. and space.

The melody of the wind plays through the One of the most heartfelt and en­chant- valley and over the hills, swaying sawgrass ing sculptures from the Pause series is a to the rhythm. Each Phrom like a fine lady’s multi-component hanging form called fan, grasp by soft fingers, waving away the “Swing” featuring textured yellow glass with summer’s oppressive heat. In its mass it black flecks in the interior, as the swing seat, is woven together and holds strong, as a that hangs gently chorus line moving down from strong WHEN I MAKE, I HUNT MYSELF DOWN; in unison refusing silver arm-like proto give up the stage.

I PURSUE THAT MOMENT WHEN A jections attached to Light dances and the wall. Hartley PIECE IS FINISHED AND I CAN PAUSE. wild flowers sing said that “Swing” along. The sea is represents the musical cords of a lullaby the bass line that drives the song, waves sung to him by his grandmother. The glide and flow in graceful expression. sculpture evokes a deeply emotive feeling Water cascades freely down the cliff, givof foggy, sleepy innocence, and of swaying ing in to gravity, not following any prein golden light while being directed safely determined path. The falls leave traces by protective hands. of minerals, painting the cliff like a canvas, Hartley also wrote, with some assistance, requiring centuries to complete. As fresh

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Bryon Hartley has a Master of Fine Arts degree in sculpture from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and earned his Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from Southern Illinois University at Edwardsville in 2012. He has presented his work in countless group exhibitions

(opposite) Ridged Fluidity series, glass and wood, 2016 (top, this page) “Swing,” Pause series (detail), glass and metal, 2017 (above) Bryon Hartley at Turbine Flats, Lincoln, Neb., June 2017

and has several public art pieces on display across the country, including Lincoln Land Community College and Southern Illinois University-Edwardsville. Along with being a visual artist, Hartley is also a musician who can play several instruments including the piano and bagpipes. You can follow him on his website: Bryonhartleystudio.com and on his social media pages. He grew up and lives in Illinois.

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water enters salt water, patterned sand is rippled and mounded, a record of what has come before, redrawn over and over by water and wind.

As evening approaches I notice the sky, it has faded from its vibrant blue of midday.

Softer blues and yellows emerge which slip into amber and slowly turn crimson. Shadows grow long and the day’s end is near...its last breath is amazing. The imminent darkness ushers me back and I return to studio life. With sketchbook in hand I set to work.

The materials that I have chosen to work with are glass, wood and metal. Glass is like no other material. Nothing else looks like glass, feels like glass or has the presence like glass. Wood also has its own unique qualities. No two pieces of wood are the same. They can be cut to the same dimensions but having once been a living, growing tree, no one piece can be duplicated. Wood also has the ability to take on differing surfaces. It can be finely sanded and polished to an ultra smooth finish or it can be left with the rough edges. Steel, known for its strength and toughness, starts to take on light when manipulated and can bring into mind questions of its durability. Rust on the surface can show signs that even steel strength can be compromised. I combine glass, wood and metal in a way that I control the outcome. I present art with room for the viewer to bring to it what they will and invite them to pause.

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FOR THE LOVE OF LITERATURE AND MESSING ABOUT IN BOATS b r e n n a n h a l lo c k

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ill Lock, owner of Badger’s Bookshop, has enjoyed reading and collecting books all of his life.

“My mother was very big on educating her three boys. She didn’t have a lot of money to spend on books but she made sure we had library cards when we were 7 or 8 years old,” said Lock. “She would take us in to the town of Central City, Nebraska, which had a good library, and I wound up reading almost everything they had in their library.

For whatever reason, libraries get things like the ten best plays on Broadway. The librarian would tell me ‘you’re the only one who reads that.’” Having read somewhere

between 2,500 and 3,000 books in his lifetime, Lock has read more books than some libraries stock.

After 35 years of reading and collecting books, Lock decided to turn his passion into a bookstore, and the love of literature is evident. Badger’s Bookshop is a recent addition to Lincoln, but it is a must visit because of both the broad assortment of books and the individual ambiance. Tucked into the College View neighborhood just off 48th Street, Badger’s Bookshop can introduce you to new books and authors or rekindle your love of those you have already read.

With 6,000 books in his store and 6,000

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Children’s books are fairly inexpensive and a good value and I try to keep it that way,” says Lock. “I want kids to be able to come in and find a book their parents can afford and start the habit of reading like I did. Basically I just want people to feel like they can come here and find something. If I don’t have it, I’m certainly happy to help them find it. But I’m also happy to point out what Novel Idea or Blue Stem might have.”

Lock says the name of his shop also has a story. “I named the shop for a particular reason. I usually tell customers when they make their first visit to the shop. When people walk in and ask me why it’s called Badger’s Bookshop, I try to give them hints and let them work it through. In the summertime I keep a pair of potted willows out front, and that may be a clue for people who want to guess how the shop is named. The second clue is ‘I enjoy messing about in boats. Nothing is more enjoyable.’” If you would like the rest of the story behind the name, you will have to visit Badger’s Bookshop and meet Will Lock. You may even discover new worlds of books waiting to be read.

Badger’s Bookshop is located at 4730 Cooper Avenue and parking is on 48th street. It is open Tuesday–Saturday. More information can be found at facebook.com/Badgers-Bookshop-432720110249701 or by emailing badgers bookshoplnk@gmail.com. (opposite) Inside Badger’s Bookshop (left) Storefront of Badger’s Bookshop

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more in storage, Lock has books to offer most any lover of good writing. “I have customers who come in and want to find classic works of fiction,” said Lock, “and they can find them here. And then I have customers who come in and want to find something they hadn’t thought about reading, and they can find that here too. It’s kind of an eclectic mix of books.”

Badger’s Bookshop has many local and lesser-known books as well. The Nebraska Literary Heritage Association published a list of the best 150 books by Nebraskan authors or about Nebraska, and Lock says he has 75-80 of the books on the list displayed in his shop. “People are pleasantly surprised to find books that are about the history of the Great Plains, writings by Native Americans and indigenous people, and writings by Nebraskans.”

Lock says he wants people to be able to find what they need at his shop, whether they are an avid reader looking for something unique or a young mind yet to discover the beauty of good writing. “Getting people started on reading is important.

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l i n d s e y au t e n

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t’s dusk in rural Nebraska. Nature paints a perfect gradient wash of midnight blue, cerulean, gold, and orange. Photographer James Dean (i.e., Great Plains James) soaks up the moment with his camera: A frame that will tell the story of a Nebraska day making way for the radiance of the night. He drove to this spot to photograph one of his favorite things: a Nebraska sunset.

Nebraska sunsets are often photographed. Their beauty is hard to miss on the great plains. What’s masterful about Dean’s photographs is the layers he captures that our eyes can’t. Ask him to explain a sunset or the Milky Way in pixels, and you’ll not only learn about his fascination with nature, meteorology, and color but also how much attention and wisdom is involved in capturing just a tiny part of the universe.

Dean has had a camera in his hands for 18 years. His parents bought him a camera when he was 12, and he began learning the technical aspects of photography as a teenager. For a while, all he had were film cameras before he could afford a digital camera, but he found shooting on film taught him a great deal about the mechanics of photography.

He notes that he started out with “Your normal teenage angst art… sepia and black and white edits…[you] look back at [them] as an adult and you’re like ‘what the hell is that?’”

Originally from Auburn, Neb., Dean lived in Iowa and Florida for a time but returned to Lincoln in 2008, when he met Andrew Norman from Hear Nebraska, now the music-centric journalism engine’s executive director. Dean enjoyed going to music shows, and worked with Norman and Hear Nebraska’s equipment to hone his skills. He found a love for concert photography and started to grow a network of friends in the Lincoln music scene. He notes—as seen in his photograph of The Faint that begins his collection in this issue—that concert photography

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his skills are essential to capturing creepy mammatus clouds lurking above the capitol during one of the summer’s most spectacular storms in June 2017 (see page 15).

Photography is mostly a creative outlet for Dean, who continuously tackles the challenging setup and complexity of shooting in low-light situations. He’s drawn to the dynamic nature of concerts, where one second in the midst of constant movement can have a perfect light situation, and the next second it’s gone. An expert in absorbing the light, color, and energy of people and sky, Dean offers an alluring window to the world. While the act of creation is mostly cathartic for him, it’s also an essential way to contribute to Nebraska’s vibrant art scene: unique photographs of a Plack Blague performance, some of the best sunset gradients, and the deeper space between the stars. “There is stuff and culture and things to do in Nebraska,” he says. “I want to show that off in my own way.”

See more of Dean’s work at greatplainsjames. com or find him on Facebook.

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is a large part of his passion. One of his favorite experiences includes photographing The Decemberists (possibly his favorite band ever) at 80/35 Festival in Des Moines, Iowa, in 2016.

Not long after planting himself in concert photography, Dean began driving to rural areas, sometimes with friends who shared the experience, to capture settings “as they are.” Some people want to capture completely “wild” places, but Dean values the relationship between the realism of the natural sky and the human existence that surrounds it, much like a rural scene in Iowa: a car streaking across the frame, painting a bright red stripe between the blue night, and its reflection in the marshy foreground (see page 12).

Another muse of Dean’s is the Milky Way. Much of what we see of our home galaxy is a mixture of darker blues and purples, but Dean, with his interest in astronomy and meteorology, becomes delightfully nerdy about capturing a little more of the golden, dusty light between stars near the brightest part of the galaxy, unseen by the naked eye in Nebraska (see page 16). Similarly,

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Dean started in concert photography. Here, he captures a few of his friends performing in the indie rock band The Faint.

An abstracted Nebraska sunset, one of Dean’s favorite things to photograph.

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A dusk scene in rural Iowa. The deep blues of dusk are some the most beautiful colors in the world, says Dean.

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An autumn sunset in Nebraska.

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Mammatus clouds lurk above the capitol in June 2017.

The Milky Way Galaxy as seen from Dean’s camera in rural Nebraska.

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MYRA SONTHEIMER’S KONG & OLIVE ANSWER PROUST’S QUESTIONNAIRE Kong: Forgive me my nonsense, as I also forgive the nonsense of those that think they talk sense.

—Demi Lovato

Myra’s personality. Via the website “Kong & Olive: BFF Cat & Kong Lifestyle Bloggers/ Kong & Olive: Lifestyle Bloggers & Social Commentary Artists,” which can be viewed at emredacted.com and on Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube, Myra shares her opinions of popular culture and current events while copying with comic seriousness the trend of lifestyle/wellness blogging, which is typically targeted towards women.

Kong is a digital two-dimensional image

Kong & Olive are fictional characters created by Myra Sontheimer. They are caricatures of opposite intertwined aspects of

(above) “Kong & Olive with Proust, French McDonald’s,” computer image, 2017.

Courtesy of Myra Sontheimer.

—Robert Frost Olive: Never be ashamed of what you feel. You have the right to feel any emotion that you want, and to do what makes you happy. That’s my life motto.

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j . fat i m a m a r t i n s

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who exists only as a picture. Her personae is that of a self-conscious and introspective gorilla, who may or may not be a writer.

In physical appearance, she resembles the iconic King Kong giant ape from the 1933 film. On her social media Facebook page, Myra’s early debut of Kong featured Kong responding to situations with the exclamation “Not Kong’s Fault,” which became her underlining motto, suggesting her confusion and embarrassed condition at finding herself in situations not of her own making.

Olive is a three-dimensional doll, the largest of several such dolls that Myra has constructed, who can be held like a pet or child. She is a white faceless and androgynous stuffed animal that Myra says is a cat creature made of cloth and roughly stitched together.

Unlike shy Kong, Olive is confident, relaxed, sometimes silly, and willing to express herself without constraint, often in interpretative dance or pantomime format.

In describing Olive, Myra referenced Frankenstein because of the raw and imperfect aesthetics as well as her complex innocence, and Myra as her creator. Readers of Olive’s personality will not always know if she’s as childlike as she seems. She is, after all, a practitioner of mime, or “clowning,” which is a sophisticated type of performance art.

“Stuffing will sometimes fall out of her when the stitches open as I’m positioning her,” explained Myra. Is the ‘“stuffing falling out” a metaphor for flowing feelings? We don’t know.

Through the theatrical roles of Kong & Olive, Myra is able to explore her own non-linear psychology using comic formats, playfulness, parody, sarcasm, and sometimes a gentle hostility. The key to understanding Myra’s art is appreciating the imperfection of direct feelings. She’ll react, expand

upon, and comment on situations from an emotional, honest, and pure place, pulling together images straight off, working sincerely and expressively, allowing oscillation and spontaneity to be her defining aesthetic voice. She said, “The ideas come quickly, I have to make it [the art] immediately; most of it is done on my phone.”

The condition of silence is also fundamental. What is not said—or implied through body language, physical positioning, and pauses—is extremely important.

This method is best explored with Olive’s mime vignettes, which are inspired directly by the work of Marcel Marceau. In June, Olive unexpectedly revealed in the blog a possible romance with the famed Marceau.

As of this writing, one of the most recent videos starring Olive is “Olive Performs an Internal Mime to Democracy by Legend, Leonard Cohen,” posted on June 4, 2017 that also includes a dialogue between the characters. Here’s a snippet of their conversation: Kong: Another glorious mime that gives one pause. What was your inspiration?

Olive: The current political situation.

In an earlier video, “One-Piece Season is Here—Get Ready with Love the Body You Have with Olive,” posted on May 24, 2017 Olive performs different body toning exercises on her bed in hope of achieving a beach perfect body.

Kong: Will we see you modeling that one-piece very soon?

Olive: Absolutely.

Because Kong & Olive are multifaceted, evolving characters who evoke their creator’s self-effacing temperament, Myra agreed to have them answer Proust’s famous

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Proust’s Questionnaire: Kong & Olive 1. What is your idea of perfect happiness?

Kong: To live free without being afraid of being taken from the ecological environment that is your home and abandoned.

Olive: I want to be in an ecological environment that is soft and has AC and can expose my interpretive mime to a greater audience.

2. What is your greatest fear?

Kong: Being lost in a world that does not understand me.

Olive: That only a few people will get to see my interpretive mime abilities and softness. Also AC, I need AC. 3. What is the trait you most deplore in yourself?

Kong: Vanity. I look at magazines and wonder what it would be like to have a poem published in The New

Yorker and…my size 19 shoes… embarrassed.

Olive: Often, I wonder if I am as soft as I look. I wish I had more confidence.

4. What is the trait you most deplore in others?

Kong: Intolerance. And if I can add one more, hypocrisy.

Olive: Bigotry, especially against seemingly eyeless cats and mimes.

5. Which living person do you most admire?

Kong: Ruth Bader Ginsberg.

Olive: Kong.

6. What is your greatest extravagance?

Kong: Art, especially conceptual art.

Olive: Softness and movement classes.

7. What is your current state of mind?

Kong: Ennui. The election has given me a new state of being.

Olive: Fuzzy and soft with a split end because of the election.

8. What do you consider the most overrated virtue?

Kong: Temperance. I have it in spades and it does me very little good.

Olive: I was told to say anything else but humility. So…fuzzy.

9. On what occasion do you lie?

Kong: When a small omission will keep someone from pain.

Olive: On the “So You Think You Can Dance” application. They did not have a mime option.

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Questionnaire as the characters themselves to reveal their life philosophy. Through Kong & Olive, Myra exposes parts of herself and gives voice to feelings universal and relatable to us all.

Proust’s Questionnaire was developed by the French writer Marcel Proust (1871-1922), inspired by the confession album popular in the nineteenth century as a way to record a person’s lifestyle preferences: likes, dislikes, tastes, and aspirations.

Today’s lifestyle blogging trend—as well as social media platforms—share many features to the confession album in that they expose details of a person’s most personal moments and peculiarities that would normally be kept private.

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10. What do you most dislike about your appearance?

Kong: I have come to a certain peace with my image, but the vanity in me would love to see green eyes.

Olive: I not only have peace with my image, I love it! It is part of my ongoing “Love The Body You Have with Olive” blog. Admittedly, I do hate it when my seams separate on camera.

11. Which living person do you most despise?

Kong: Trump.

Olive: Trump.

12. What is the quality you most like in a man?

Kong: The ability to listen without solving.

Olive: An ability to see a wall where there is not a wall and make it known.

13. What is the quality you most like in a woman?

Kong: The ability to listen without taking on responsibility.

Olive: Again, show me a wall where there is only air.

14. Which words or phrases do you most overuse?

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Kong: “My friend,” because I believe everyone gets a chance to be my friend.

Olive: Kong said I should say mime, but I think it has to be something else.

15. What or who is the greatest love of your life?

Kong: Olive.

Olive: Kong is number one of course, but also Marcel Marceau, who gave me mime.

16. When and where were you happiest?

Kong: Before, when I was in my natural ecological environment: home.

Olive: Sharing my softness and performing interpretive mime in front of cameras.

17. Which talent would you most like to have?

Kong: To cook a perfect omelet.

Olive: I would like to lay easily on my tummy.

18. If you could change one thing about yourself, what would it be?

Kong: That I be less self isolating.

Olive: That my interpretive mime be a more accepted and lucrative art form.

19. What do you consider your greatest achievement?

Kong: Just living a measured life after the trauma in my past.

Olive: Being soft.

20. If you were to die and come back as a person or a thing, what would it be?

Kong: Oh, that is hard. The physical and mental don’t line up for me. A mashup of Natalie Wood and Da Vinci, perhaps?

Olive: Karl Lagerfeld’s world-famous cat, Choupette.

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Kong: Once it was a tropical island forest. Now I like Nebraska.

Olive: In a soft place with fantastic AC and cable.

22. What is your most treasured possession?

Kong: My friendships and a kind response on our blog.

Olive: My signed photograph of Shields and Yarnell.

23. What do you regard as the lowest depth of misery?

Kong: Trump.

Olive: Trump.

24. What is your favorite occupation?

Kong: I love being a lifestyle blogger, but I would have been a good psychologist.

Olive: I was made to be a lifestyle blogger and mime artists. But “they” say I could have been a weather girl. Doppler!

25. What is your most marked characteristic?

Kong: My smile.

Olive: Apparently I have a small head.

NEWS! 26. What do you most value in your friends?

Kong: Humor, kindness, and honesty.

Olive: If they are soft, that is my favorite.

27. Who are your favorite writers?

Kong: Rilke, Harper Lee, Danielle Steel, Joyce, Tolkien, Wollstonecraft, Daphne du Maurier, and so many more.

Olive: Sam Kashner, Nancy Schoenberger who authored my favorite book: Furious Love, Elizabeth Taylor, Richard Burton, and the Marriage of the Century.

28. Who is your hero of fiction?

Kong: Atticus Finch.

Olive: Piewacket.

29. Which historical figure do you most identify with?

Kong: Sisyphus, at times.

Olive: Cat in Breakfast at Tiffany.

30. Who are your heroes in real life?

Kong: Ruth Bader Ginsberg.

Olive: Richard Fucking Simmons—A God in the mime world.

31. What are your favorite names?

Kong: Boo Radley and Elpitine Luckett.

Olive: Oliver, Olivia, Oscar, and Ophelia.

32. What is it that you most dislike?

Kong: Bigotry, intolerance, and hypocrisy.

Olive: A surface without a soft space.

33. What is your greatest regret?

Kong: Not being in my ecological space of origin, where I would have been accepted and would have excelled.

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21. Where would you most like to live?

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Olive: That my mime art has not been taken seriously over the interwebs.

34. How would you like to die?

Kong: Alone, without pain.

Olive: What?

In Lincoln, Myra Sontheimer is best known for her deep appreciation and knowledge of film, literature, and poetry, as well as her work with Out of the Box, the upscale vintage furniture store that hosts exhibitions for the Lincoln Artists’ Guild. She is also a frequent companion of University of Nebraska-Lincoln art professor Matthew Sontheimer, her husband, who happens to physically resemble one of her favorite actors—Peter Sellers.

Her blog is continually evolving. In July 2017, a new fashion blogger was introduced: MimiSting. MimiSting is an amalgamation of the singer Sting and a fashionable middled-aged woman named Mimi, who is, according to her Facebook profile, “a distant cousin to blogger EmRedacted’s grandmother.”

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Follow Kong & Olive, and MimiSting, at emredacted.com.

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THE WOLF’S ROBE : A FARCE ON THE PRAIRIE b r e n n a n h a l lo c k

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“He sees how he can exploit religion to advance his selfish needs, and through that exploitation he sees himself becoming a monster that he reviles,” says Oetman. “We see the tension between a religion that holds a community together and celebrates people through love, and a religion (above) Maybelle Engel (Erin Howard) lives vicariously through her alter ego as she searches for a criminal.

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imeless stories transcend more than just time, they persevere in spite of cultural, religious, and philosophical changes. Aj Oetman, director of The Wolf ’s Robe, believes the plot within his recently released feature length film is of a timeless nature. This film, which was shot in and around Lincoln, Neb., tells the story of cultural and ideological conflicts that exist in and out of the Midwest, and the change that can happen in spite of them. “When you look at history, it’s constantly a story of growth and evolution. Humans are forced to grow,” says Oetman. “The challenge comes in when not everyone in your community is ready for change, and therefore there is backlash.”

The Wolf ’s Robe is a farce, or ludicrously exaggerated comic work. It is a humorous burlesque depicting growth and resistance and the conflict between progressivism and fundamentalism. Victor, an atheist illusionist on his run from authorities, chooses a rural Midwestern town with few people and fewer ambitions as his hideout. He accomplishes this by posing as their newest minister. He leaves the actual minister tied up in the woods outside of town.

As the new minister, Victor is quickly sucked into the town’s culture and ideology, both positive and negative.

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that is utterly obsessed with telling people what to do. I would consider it a criticism of fundamentalism, but also a celebration of people both inside that community and outside of it.”

The Wolf ’s Robe is Oetman’s first feature length film, but he says he has anticipated creating film since he was a child. “I’ve wanted to create stories since I can remember. Film has always been the medium that has compelled me the most, though. What I love about film is you take almost every element of art—you take set design, you take writing, you take acting, you take filming—and you put them all together.”

Oetman says he also learned a great deal about writing and directing by creating his first film. But he says the most important thing he learned was neither technical nor artistic. “I learned that joy and excitement over a project can literally carry you through anything. If you are in love with something, you will make it work.

I have seen couples who really love each other destroy their entire lives to be with

each other. The same thing is true for an art form, if you are absolutely in love with it, you will make it happen.”

Oetman is not finished filming in Nebraska. His next project, YouMurder, is a murder mystery spotlighting the rivetingly vibrant culture of drag queens. “In the age where my transgender friends are continually in the headlines, it upsets me they are used as bowling pins for debate when they are humans, not issues. I’m excited to have a project that will employ more LGBT+ people than any in the state. YouMurder will be the first content where audience members will vote on who dies at the end of each episode.” This fusion of reality television and narrative-driven television will be a play and web series inspired by Oetman’s love of both genres. *You can rent The Wolf ’s Robe on Amazon .com for $2.99 or on the website thewolfsrobe movie.com, where you can also purchase The Wolf ’s Robe DVD or the soundtrack created by local musician Garrett Evan Hope.

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(opposite) Victor (Will Griffey) menaces.

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(clockwise from top left, this page) Director Aj Oetman; Little Victor (Colin McMahon); A movie poster for The Wolf ’s Robe.

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