Issue #5 - The Buzz

from The Pool, Issue 5

by California Institute of the Arts

Issue #5 - Letters From You

Buzz

Pollinator, troubadour, and butterfly champion embarks on 2,000-mile bicycle journey

Milkweed and Monarchs and Alex

Last fall, Alex Wand (Music MFA 12) loaded up his bicycle with two panniers containing 5 pounds of milkweed seeds and set out on a magical 2,000-mile journey from his home in Los Angeles to Michoacán, Mexico. Wand, who is a composer and songwriter, was following the migratory path of the monarch butterfly, which starts in Canada, passes over Los Angeles, travels through Arizona, parts of New Mexico and Texas, and ends in Michoacán, to the west of Mexico City. He planned to plant milkweed—which monarchs depend on—along the way. His family, worried about his safety, had pleaded with him not to go. But he felt a kind of magnetism drawing him south, not unlike the biological magnetic compass that guides the insects to Michoacán. Wand’s interest in the monarch butterfly, which has been in massive decline in recent years, was piqued by Staying with the Trouble by Donna Haraway, a book that explores the ecological destruction of the earth and challenges the way we think about the future. Within the pages is a science fiction tale, “The Camille Stories: Children of Compost,” that inspired Wand’s trip. “The protagonist, Camille, lives a life that is entwined with the monarch butterfly by planting milkweed and working with people on the monarch’s migratory corridors to protect this threatened critter,” says Wand. “I was inspired by Camille and decided to live out my own real-life version of this fictional story.” His bike was a logical choice for transporting him on the odyssey, because it would allow him to closely follow the butterfly’s path at a

Sowing milkweed next to the LA River

Biking next to the I-5: “The bike path for some reason was closed at Camp Pendleton.”

“Somewhere in a quiet Phoenix suburb.”

Marathon, Texas: “A local gives me the phone number of a woman who might have a place for me to stay.”

“Rain to a monarch is like fog to a cyclist. They both impede safe travel.”

“On my way out of Monterrey, I find myself riding alongside hundreds of Monarch butterflies.”

Día de la Revolución in San Rafael.

“I’m a homo sapien, one out of 7 billion. You are a monarch butterfly, one of just a hundred million.”

After traveling 2,000 miles at the Monarch Butterfly Sanctuary. “Hemos llegado, mariposas.”

similar pace to the insect, traveling between 50 and 100 miles a day. “That was a big part of the trip, to experience with the monarch what migration might be like. To go through the whole time scale of a migration in similar ways,” says Wand, who blogged about his trip at caminodelasmonarcas.alexwand.com. Along the route, he had the opportunity to ride with the butterflies many times. A particular moment in Monterrey, Mexico, stands out. On Day 37, he was biking along an unmarked road along a highway. There were no cars or humans in sight, but there were hundreds of monarchs. “It was such a special thing to get to witness that and bike with them,” he says. “It was cool.”

“In the best of worlds, I like thinking of this trip as an anonymous art project for the monarchs who will be munching on the milkweed that I plant.”

— Alex Wand

The pinnacle of his journey happened at the end, on Day 51, when Wand arrived at the Monarch Butterfly Biosphere Reserve, about 100 miles west of Mexico City. After hiking for about a half hour, he looked up and saw thousands of monarchs flying above. There were so many he could actually hear the soft sound of their wings, which he recorded. “It’s like a quiet rain,” he says. “A very subtle sound, but it’s a magical sound.” Now, he plans to share the sound—and the journey—with the world. At the end of the trip, Wand had the opportunity to complete a residency at the Guapamacátaro Center for Art and Ecology in Michoacán, where he worked on assembling video he’d taken into a short film. He’s also incorporating the sounds he recorded, along with spoken word and instruments sampled during the trip, into a new album. Through his art, he hopes to awaken a passion in others to do something a little different in their lives, the way “The Camille Stories” lit a flame in him. “I hope people are inspired to plant milkweed for the monarchs, but also, I hope it can be an impetus for people to find their own way of creating a relationship with threatened critters that they care about,” says Wand. —Kate Silver

JAY L. CLENDELauren Halsey stands before her installation The Crenshaw District Hieroglyph Project (Prototype Architecture) at the Hammer Museum. With the Mohn Award money, she plans to build a permanent pavilion as temple, gathering space, and canvas for the South Central LA community.NIN, LOS ANGELES TIMES
JAY L. CLENDENIN, LOS ANGELES TIMES

Lauren Halsey’s hieroglyphic ode to South Central LA

When Lauren Halsey (BFA Art 12) thinks about her approach to art—and how she encourages others to approach theirs—she recalls the words of a beloved musician: “George Clinton says, ‘go fer yer funk.’ Go fer yer funk!” Going fer her funk has led Halsey to some incredible places. Most recently, she has won this year’s Frieze Art Award and debuted a new installation at the Frieze New York art fair in May. Halsey was also honored with the Mohn Award, a $100,000 prize given by LA’s Hammer Museum to one participant in the “Made in L.A.” biennial exhibition. Halsey says she was floored when she got the call: “I was like, ‘What? Thank you!’ It was really beautifully affirming.” South Central Los Angeles is home to Halsey. She grew up there, and the neighborhood has long inspired her art, which she refers to as “large-scale sculpture animated by architecture.” Her installation The Crenshaw District Hieroglyph Project (Prototype Architecture), which was included in the Hammer show, looks like an ancient Egyptian monument at first glance. Upon closer inspection, it’s clearly an ode to South Central LA and to all those who contributed in shaping it. Throughout the structure, Halsey carved graffiti-like

hieroglyphs amplified with words such as “my hood”; she etched elaborate hairstyles, palm trees, and a DJ in the walls. It’s the kind of art that one could lose oneself in for hours. But that’s just the beginning. The work at the Hammer is merely a prototype. Now, Halsey plans to use the Mohn Award money to build a permanent structure in South Central. In between talks with city government officials, she’s testing out specialty stuccos and concretes to find the best materials. “It’s a true construction project,” she says. The finished piece will be a pavilion that functions as a temple, a gathering space, and a canvas for local artists, musicians, and schools. It will be engraved by Halsey and by members of the neighborhood community to be a nod to both early and contemporary civilizations. “I was just thinking about the function of the hieroglyph as a record of ancient Egypt, specifically as this record of the pharaoh’s earthly reign and afterlife, and I wanted to appropriate that idea to describe and archive, permanently, the people and communities of downtown South Central LA,” says Halsey. The hieroglyph project is one of many that Halsey’s currently working on. As she’s preparing for a number of upcoming exhibitions—including a show at David Kordansky (MFA Art 02) Gallery in Los Angeles and another at Fondation Louis Vuitton—the words of George Clinton continue to drive her. In fact, Halsey’s dream is to one day build a stage for Clinton’s band, Parliament Funkadelic. She credits them for inspiring her. “They were the first sculptors I encountered that I actually remember in my childhood, via their funk operas and those wild stages they were doing for their tours.” And they continue to serve as a soundtrack for her artistry, reminding this gifted artist to go fer her funk.

A New Yorker

Kevin Young

Distinguished poet and editor, Kevin Young is the 2019 Katie Jacobson Writer in Residence at CalArts. On campus February 7–8, Young conducted workshops with CalArts students in the MFA Creative Writing Program and presented public readings. Young is the director of the New York Public Library’s Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture in Harlem and, since 2017, poetry editor at The New Yorker. “We were thrilled to have Kevin,” says Tisa Bryant, director of CalArts’s MFA Creative Writing Program. “The moves Kevin has made in the arts exemplify the kind of creative life we celebrate in our program, explored not on a single track, but through interrelated fields of inquiry, experimentation, and play. His work is inventive, incisive, and crucial to the conversation we’re always having about life, art, and how we create the culture we live in.” Young has published 13 collections of his own poetry and was described by Harper’s

magazine as “a relaxed lyricist, precise without being precious, [who] expresses enormous feeling with great economy. He’s a natural storyteller.” Brown, the most recent book of poetry, was called “a universal shout—political in the best, most visceral way—while remaining at the same time deeply and lovingly personal” by The New York Times. The Times also hailed Young’s Bunk: The Rise of Hoaxes, Humbug, Plagiarists, Phonies, Post-Facts and Fake News as “enthralling, essential history.” Published in 2017 to wide critical acclaim, Bunk received the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award in Nonfiction and was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award and the PEN/Jean Stein Book Award. Young treated those attending his on-campus reading to poems about the Death Valley landscape, painter Jean-Michel Basquiat, and athletic heroes from his childhood: his all-Black little league baseball team, on-field patter, the glory of the bunt (“the true test of a man”), Roberto Clemente (“Clemente means mercy”), the Harlem Globetrotters (“Meadowlark Lemon!”), and Arthur Ashe (“no more music like yours”). Named in memory of Creative Writing program MFA student Katie Jacobson, the Writer in Residence Program was established in 2013 through the generous support of her parents, Leslie Jacobson and Jeanine Caltagirone. Designed to bring a prestigious writer to campus, the program offers students the opportunity to gain access to leaders in their field, to discuss professional working methods, and to receive feedback on their own work.

Pandit Swapan Chaudhuri

India honors tabla virtuoso

Faculty member in The Herb Alpert School of Music at CalArts since 1991, Pandit Swapan Chaudhuri has won the Padma (lotus) Sri Award, one of the Government of India’s highest honors bestowed upon citizens. Recognized for his contribution to Indian classical music, Chaudhuri is known throughout the world for his “purity of sound, depth of knowledge, rhythmic creativity, and dedication to teaching.” He is one of the most accomplished musicians and tabla virtuosos of this or any other time. Quoted in an Indian newspaper, Chaudhuri said that he tells his students, “Thinking about the stage and recognition at an early age doesn’t help. Your quest for knowledge will take you in the right direction.”

Spinning Oscar Gold

Spider-Man wins for Animated Feature

Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse won the 2019 Oscar for Animated Feature Film. The film was directed by CalArts Character Animation alum Bob Persichetti (Film/Video BFA 96), as well as Peter Ramsey and Rodney Rothman. Backstage in the pressroom, Persichetti said, “Literally, we were just going to thank Stan Lee and Steve Ditko [Spider-Man’s creators] for really inspiring this whole thing … and for being a force of believing that all of us human beings have the potential and the capacity to be heroes.” Asked by a member of the press what they love about being storytellers, Persichetti replied, “It’s really just about connecting with your audience, whether it’s your little kid that you are putting to sleep or, apparently, millions of people who go see your movie. So, I think it’s just validation of being a human and sharing the experience of being a human … it’s kind of an amazing career.” Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse was one of three nominees up for the Animated Feature Oscar to be directed by a CalArtian. The other two were Disney/Pixar’s Incredibles 2, written and directed by Brad Bird (Film/Video BFA 76), and Disney’s Ralph Breaks the Internet, directed by Rich Moore (Film/Video BFA 87) and Phil Johnston.

CalArts alumnus Bob Persichetti (Film/Video BFA 96), second from left, is flanked on the Oscars stage by members of the Spider-Man Into the Spider-Verse team, after the film won the Oscar for Animated Feature at the Feb. 24 ceremony.

Qadriyyah “Q” Shamsid-Deen (Theater MFA 09, Film/Video MFA 10) has been selected by former President Barack Obama and Michelle Obama as a creative executive for their Netflix-based company, Higher Ground Productions. She joins Tonia Davis and Priya Swaminathan in a leadership role that will develop a wide range of programming over the next few years. Quoted in The Hollywood Reporter, the 44th president of the United States said, “With Higher Ground Productions, we hope to bring people together around common values and uncommon stories—and Priya, Tonia, and Q are precisely the people to bring that vision to life. They’re masterful storytellers. They’re veterans in the industry. And they not only bring their unique perspectives and life experiences to every project, but they’re committed to finding new voices who have their own stories to tell. Michelle and I couldn’t be more excited about the team we’re assembling.” Mrs. Obama added, “Our goal isn’t just to make people think—we want to make people feel and reach outside of their comfort zone. With their thoughtfulness, creativity, and empathy, we know that Priya, Tonia, and Q will find the common thread within every story to inspire us to be something more. I’m thrilled about this team as professionals—and as people. They’re wonderful.” In May 2018, Netflix announced that the Obamas had entered into a multiyear agreement for Higher Ground to produce a diverse mix of programming that may include scripted and unscripted series, docuseries, documentaries, and features. Shamsid-Deen is a former Fulbright Scholar and a graduate of Howard University’s directing program and CalArts’s Theater and Film/ Video programs. She has extensive experience in TV and film production. Prior to joining Higher Ground, she worked with Ryan Murphy’s Half Initiative, and on film and TV productions that include Carissa, The Mick, Murder in the First, Constantine, Table 19, and Criminal Minds, as well as Murphy’s American Horror Story, American Crime Story, Pose, and 911.

“Michelle and I couldn’t be more excited about the team we’re assembling.”CalArts alumna joins the Obamas’ Higher Ground Productions

— President Barack Obama

Singing for Bernie

**Laura Jean Anderson performs on stage in Grand Park, downtown Los Angeles.**

After a 10k run, Laura Jean Anderson still had the energy to fire up a crowd

For most people, running one’s first 10k would make for a pretty memorable day, but for Laura Jean Anderson (Music 13), that was just the beginning. The rising singer-songwriter—who’s garnered attention by delivering electrifying anthems around Los Angeles and the US at large—finished her race only to learn that she’d been invited to perform at the Bernie Sanders rally on that very same day. “It was a last-minute scramble!” enthuses Anderson, who describes the rally as “one of the most amazing experiences of my musical life.” This was the Vermont senator’s first stop in LA on his 2020 presidential campaign, and Anderson reports that she could feel hope in the air. “It was amazing to meet Bernie and to hear him speak,”

she says. “The energy was alive at the rally—I felt that people were in this fight together.” Anderson’s latest record, Lonesome No More, was released last October, and with tracks such as “Silence Won’t Help Me Now,” her pairing with Bernie couldn’t be more appropriate. “Having a big group of people gather like that for change,” she says, “gave the songs I play every day a new meaning.”

**Earlier that day, after the 10k race.**

“It was one of the most amazing experiences of my musical life.”

— Laura Jean Anderson

Charles Gaines Wins the 2019 MacDowell Medal

School of Art faculty Charles Gaines has won this year’s MacDowell Medal that was founded by composer Edward MacDowell who, with his wife Marian, established a retreat for artists, the MacDowell Colony, in 1907. The Medal has been presented since 1960, in recognition of one person, annually, for outstanding contribution to American culture and the arts. Artists in seven disciplines—architecture, visual arts, music composition, theater, writing, filmmaking, and interdisciplinary art—are considered. Past recipients in the visual arts have included Alexander Calder, Robert Motherwell, Willem de Kooning, Georgia O’Keefe, and Betye Saar. Gaines’s influential conceptual work includes drawings, photographic series, and video installations, engaging formulas and systems that often address relationships between subjectivity and objectivity. His past awards include a National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) Grant in 1977, a California Community Foundation (CCF) in 2011, a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2013, and the Roy and Edna Disney/CalArts Theater (REDCAT) Award in 2018.

Coveted by many, claimed by a lucky few

CalArts Hat delights alumni crowd

The proud winners from last issue’s Class Notes Contest sent selfies to The Pool showing off their new CalArts hats. You can read this issue’s Class Notes starting on page 78.