THE WORD ON COLUMBIA ARTS MAR // APR 2013 VOL. 002
NO. 004
Join Columbia City Ballet for its
Photo by Ashley Concannon
A ballet that will take you into the mind bending magical fantasy of the fairytale classic
Art by Sara Schneckloth Photo by Alexis Schwalier
A Message from Jasper editor cindi boiter
006
Jasper Fancies
014
Dear Jasper
016
Jasper watches Cynthia Gilliam – Busy as Ever by August Krickel
020
Jasper Screens A Taste of Indie Grits by Giesela Lubecke
024
Jasper DANCES Former Joffrey Ballet Star – Patricia Miller by Bonnie Boiter-Jolley
026
jasper WATCHES
C E N T E R F O L D // m i c h a e l a p i l a r b r o w n
005
. Curtain Up! with August Krickel . The Magic of Kimi Maeda by Andy Bell 030
036
CENTERFOLD
JASPER IS
Defying Labels – The Work and Woman, Michaela Pilar
Cynthia Boiter // editor
Brown by Kara Gunter
W. Heyward Sims // design editor Kristine Hartvigsen // associate editor
JASPER GAZES
August Krickel // theatre editor
. Contemporaries’ Artist of the Year Jasper 2012 State-of-the-Art
Ed Madden // literary editor
Award – Douglas McAbee by Cynthia Boiter
Kyle Petersen // music editor
. What matters in Columbia’s visual art and the world
Forrest Clonts // photography editor
today? by Chris Robinson
042
046
Shane Slattery-Quintanilla // film editor Chris Robinson // visual arts editor
JASPER SCREENS
Lenza Jolley // media manager
Shane Slattery-Quintanilla Talks with Documentary
Annie Boiter-Jolley // operations manager
Filmmaker Laura Kissel
Susan Levi Wallach // staff writer Bonnie Boiter-Jolley // staff writer
Jasper Watches Leading Ladies of Columbia 2013 by August Krickel
Alex Smith // staff writer
ON THE COVER Sara Schneckloth
050
Jasper listens
Thomas Hammond // staff photographer Jonathan Sharpe // staff photographer
CONTRIBUTORS
. Columbia’s Riot Grrrl Inheritors by Kyle Petersen . Local Record Reviews by Kyle Petersen
Alexis Schwalier Andy Bell
057
Jasper reads
Giesela Lubecke
. Poetry by Nathalie FitzSimons Anderson, Diana Pinckney,
Shambhavi Kaul Alisha Hime
and Libby Swope Wiersem
Kara Gunter Mikelle Street Brandi Ballard
Reviews
. Seeking by Stephanie Mitchem . Into the Flatland by Jonathan Sharpe . I’ll Call It like I See It: A Lesbian Speaks Out by Brandi Ballard
Natalie Fitzsimons Anderson Diana Pinkney
050 JASPER LISTENS Kyle Petersen on Columbia’s own
063
GUEST EDITORIAL by Sara Schneckloth
Libby Swope Wiersema Sara Schneckloth Doug McAbee
Riot Grrrl Inheritors
JASPER ON THE WEB
jaspercolumbia.com facebook.com/jaspercolumbia twitter.com/jasperadvises jaspercolumbia.net/blog
A ME S S A G E F R O M J A S P E R
Dear Friends, elcome to Jasper’s second annual Women’s issue, honoring the artists of Columbia who happen to be women—and I choose these words carefully. Language matters. Social scientists have long debated the question of whether language creates culture or culture creates language. Most admit that, to some degree, both theories are correct. Language and culture work intimately to play important roles in the creation of the world in which we live. But it is our use of language—oftentimes our proactive use—that can most easily be traced to empirical results. When children, for example, are asked to help “illustrate” a book by choosing from photos of women and men to depict firemen, policemen, and stewardesses, they almost always choose gendered photos. However, when asked to choose photos for firefighters, police officers, and flight attendants, girls tend to choose photos of women and boys of men; they like to imagine themselves in these important and exciting roles. Using the generic male in language limits both the hypothetical and, it can successfully be argued, the actual access of both girls and boys to roads to success and fulfillment. Another way language works to genderlimit humanity is when we add qualifiers and suffixes to perfectly inclusive nouns
when discussing anyone in a position or role who is not a male. Lady artist, poetess, woman writer, for example, nominally call attention to an assumed reality which says that because these individuals are women, and not men, they are therefore exceptions. Simone de Beauvoir would have called this practice “Othering.” The artists who happen to be women in this issue of Jasper are exceptional not because of their gender, but because of their talent and the unique visions they bring to their art forms. Artists like Michaela Pilar Brown, Kimi Maeda, and Laura Kissel create work that burns through the fog of axiomatic assumptions and forces viewers to confront realities that are both difficult and beautiful. Ballet artist Patricia Miller, who once virtually owned the stage of the Joffrey Ballet, is a gift to our dance community as she continues to teach, choreograph, and coach as ballet mistress for Columbia City Ballet. All the women, whether in punk rock, indie film, theatre, or the literary arts, embrace their mediums with levels of competence and dedication that refuse to be marginalized. In her guest editorial in this issue of Jasper, visual artist Sara Schneckloth, whose highly innovative work is also on the cover of the magazine, recounts being told, in so many words, that her work as a graduate student was as good as a man’s. Twen-
tieth century abstract expressionist Lee Krasner was similarly told by her teacher Hans Hofmann that her work, too, was “so good you wouldn’t know it was done by a woman.” In 1723, Dutch painter Margareta Haverman was ousted from the Académie Royale when it was thought that no mere woman could have produced a painting as beautiful as the work she created. This issue of Jasper is dedicated to Sara and Lee and Margareta, and to every woman in the arts who was ever made to feel that she had something to prove because she was a woman; whose work was ever compared to the generic male standard and its arbitrary level of quality; and who was ever shackled with a nominative qualifier because of her gender. We are not women artists, female musicians, poetesses, or lady writers; we are artists—nothing more, nothing less.
Take care,
The following information should have appeared along with the images in Jasper 002 003. Jasper regrets the error. F. Tobias Morriss, NM 31000, No. 7, 2003, © Mike and Andrea Morriss, 2012 F. Tobias Morriss, Limen 12:11gmt (Pensacola #7), 2004, © Mike and Andrea Morriss, 2012 F. Tobias Morriss, Self Portrait: Ahead, 2005, © Mike and Andrea Morriss, 2012 Toby Morriss, November 2009, © Eric Plaag, 2012 The photo on page 21 in Jasper 002 003 should be credited to Chris Aluka Berry.
Jasper // as in Johns, the abstract expressionist, neo-Dadaist artist as in Sergeant, the Revolutionary War hero as in Mineral, the spotted or speckled stone as in Magazine, the Word on Columbia Arts
Jasper Magazine – www.jaspercolumbia.com – is dedicated to the promotion and support of Columbia, SC artists and arts lovers. Jasper Magazine is copyrighted and may not be reproduced in any manner without the publisher’s written consent. Jasper Magazine is a division of Muddy Ford Press, 1009 Muddy Ford Road, Chapin, SC 29036.
J A S PER F A N C I E S
Photo by Thomas Hammond
Agoras for Art Two years ago Marty Fort came up with an idea for creating a multi-discipline art event at the Art Bar that would involve both music and the visual arts. Having worked with local musician/visual artist Thomas Crouch for years, he approached Crouch— a natural for the job—about putting something together. “He pretty much gave me the reins and I went wild with it,” Crouch says. Drawing on his European arts training, Crouch titled the event “Art Bar Agora” and organized two events in 2011 before moving it to an annual event in 2012. The next Art Bar Agora—or ABAIV—will take place on Saturday, April 6th. “The agora in ancient Greece was a place where landowners went to buy, sell, and trade goods and ideas,” Crouch says, noting that agora technically means “open” as in “open market.” He continues, “Our whole system of government, as well as the architecture that houses it, is derived from the ancient Greek philosophers and thinkers. This was a society that heralded and nurtured art and thought and prospered greatly from it. In our society, the stigma that an artist must be starving to be creative makes no sense to me. ABA gives artists a platform to showcase their ideas and share them with the public and other thinking types,” he says. “And they don’t even have to own the land!” Crouch is particularly committed to the artists themselves being in “total control of their sales and pricing. Added percentages oftentimes lowers the artist’s take home,” he says. Artists typically absorb the price of commissions and added fees rather than passing them on to the buyer. “It’s hard to sell art these days. And if you need to sell you lower the price and subsequently the artist pays the commission. The agora ensures that the deemed value of a piece 006
translates 100% to the artists. The best way to support the arts is to buy directly from the artist,” Crouch says. The other sides of ABAIV are the music and the food, provided by long-time Columbia Chef Joe Turkaly.. The bands were not yet booked yet at print time. About 25 artists and 8 bands participated in the 2012 event, which was held on a hot and humid day in May. This year’s agora will take place earlier in the year and will feature even more bands, with the organizers adding an outdoor acoustic stage. Crouch encourages artists interested in participating to contact him personally at tcrouch13@yahoo.com. The Art Bar is located at 1211 Park Street in Columbia. Art Bar Agora IV runs from 5 PM until 2 AM rain or shine on Saturday, April 6th. Admission to the Artists’ Outdoor Open Market, food vendor area, and acoustic stage are free, while entrance to the Art Bar and the indoor electric stage is $5 and only for those 21 and up. //CB
The Cult of Nana You purchase one and you belong to it, you’re one of them. Before you know it you have 17 of the bags, a cover for your Kindle, a few headbands, a bib for your newborn, and you haven’t looked back. You’re one of them: you’ve become part of the cult of Nana. “I love it when I’m out shopping or dining and am asked ‘Is that a Nana?’” says Marlena Crovatt-Bagwell, a proud owner of four of Sally Peek’s Nana by Sally creations. “I’m always excited when this happens since I am so proud to have an opportunity to promote Sally’s work!” It’s that sort of pride that owners of the eclectically printed bags with the four dots on the tag share. “My main reason for choosing Nana by Sally is the quality and
uniqueness of each product,” says Melanie Matthews, an owner of four purses and a wallet by the Columbia based designer. “I love the one-of-a-kind aspect of each purse as I won’t see it every time I turn a corner and they create conversation every time I carry one of mine. My purses have gone with me to the Bahamas, Mexico, Texas, Dominican Republic, Boson and New York City, and I have had someone ask about them each place!” That quality, which may be partially attributed to the fact that Peek uses mostly upholstery weight fabric that she sources from Charlotte, has seen Matthews through airports, sightseeing and even mission trips. And all of this spurred from a sewing class at the Columbia Museum of Art, which Peek took to make new curtains for her oldest daughter’s nursery. “I went to the class for the sole purpose of learning how to use a machine but after spending all day making my first handbag, I was hooked!” says Peek. “I carried my little bag around and people started asking me where I got it. Within a couple of weeks, I started drafting my own patterns and filled my first orders.” From those patterns, Peek’s business grew from simply out of her home studio, to selling online via sites like Etsy, in local boutiques like Bohemian and KD’s Treehouse as well as at markets and craft fairs like Soda City and Crafty Feast. It’s been a steady growth spanning headbands, wallets and a variety of purse sizes with the option of custom pieces like the diaper bag she made for Mary Catherine Newman. “Sally is an artist – she is able to see unique mixes of color and pattern, therefore making each purse a special and functional [piece of art],” says Newman. And as of recently, that art isn’t only for women. After 14 years of focusing on the women, Peek turned her discerning eye to the men in her life, namely her husband. Neckties and bowties have begun to edge their way onto the table between headbands and the “Allison” style bag. It certainly wasn’t an easy thing for Peek, who confessed that on her first try it took her hours to create a “horrendous” necktie. But with a little encouragement by way of notes left around the studio from her daughter Sophie – for which one style of Nana bags is named – after a few weeks, Peek made a necktie with which she felt at peace. “The bow ties came after I swore up and down I would never make them,” said Sally. “I didn’t know how to make them fit in with my aesthetic.” Both pieces, like their predecessors, are fairly recognizable as Peek creations with their fabric pairings: bowties come two sided, and neckties with funky linings and even added personality by way of an unexpected trim.
until Tuesday, April 9th when the show will end with a closing reception from 5 until 8 pm at the tapas restaurant and wine bar, Gervais and Vine. For more information contact Anastasia Chernoff at 803-6656902 or reach her online at stasia1825@aol. com. //CB
Healthy Celebrations of the Body—Figure Out! Photo by Forrest Clonts
An owner of five bags herself, Michel Affronte-McCausland found herself giving away the first bag she purchased for herself. After seeing her friend with a bag, AffronteMcCausland went to Peek’s studio to have her very own bag made. “The day I picked up that bag, one of my friends fell so in love with [it] that I had to give it to her and go have another one made,” says McClausland. And just like that, another one added to the cult of Nana. // Mikelle Street
Painted Violins + Guitars If you’ve strolled down the 1500 block of Main Street lately you may have seen some unusual looking musical instruments hanging on the walls and possibly crawling across the floors of the Anastasia & Friends
Gallery in the front of the Free Times Building. That’s because, once again, local artist and gallery owner Anastasia Chernoff is curating and exhibiting the art for the South Carolina Philharmonic Orchestra’s Painted Violins fundraiser. Twenty-three artists were chosen to transform, deconstruct, reconstruct, and embellish 15 violins and 6 guitars and, from their efforts, create new works of visual art. Among the artists participating are Bohumila Augustinova, Jafe Lyfe Brown, Robin Gadient, Roe Young, and Lindsay Wiggins. First begun in 2006, the Painted Violins fundraiser has raised approximately $30 thousand to benefit the orchestra’s educational programs and stage concerts. While the opening reception for the exhibition took place earlier this month, the art created from the musical instruments will be on display, and up for silent auction,
Jasper is a proud fan of progressive politics. So when we heard that local art was being utilized to help spread the word about Planned Parenthood, one of our favorite purveyors of the healthy perception of the human body, we were all atwitter. After several years of celebrating a similar event in Charleston, Will Bigger, associate director of development for Planned Parenthood Health Systems, Inc. in Columbia, says it was time to replicate the low country’s highly successful marriage of art show and fund raiser here in Columbia. Having titled the Columbia show, “Figure Out!” Bigger and a committee of volunteers including Leslie Pierce, Tori Moore, Billy Guess, Christy Buchanan, and Molly Harrell, who chairs the committee, put out a call for nude and figurative art in February. According to Bigger, the committee was looking for “Art that embodies the mission of Planned Parenthood, focusing on comprehensive sexual education and quality reproductive health care services. We want to celebrate the human body and, at the same time, introduce Planned Parenthood to a new generation of supporters.” Harrell, who participated in the first show in Charleston, titled “Re-Nude,” three years ago, was instrumental in bringing the event to Columbia. According to Har-
Artist Roe Young
007
Courtesy of Olga Ivashkevich and the Women’s Well Being Initiative
rell, “Figure Out!” gives local artists the opportunity to exhibit nude work in a group show for a good cause with artists donating 50% of their proceeds to Planned Parenthood. “Shows that accept nude art can be hard to find,” Harrell says. “Being able to exhibit nude art alongside other nude works is a unique opportunity” allowing both artists and patrons a venue in which they can contrast and compare artists’ work. Christy Buchanan, who co-chairs the event with Harrell, says she is “excited to celebrate the figure as an art form because it gives the viewer a more personal view of what the artist sees.” “Figure Out!” opens with a cocktail reception on Wednesday, April 3rd at 6 pm at the Tapp’s Center for the Arts on Main Street. Tickets are $20, but if you can’t make it for the opening, stop by throughout April—the show will be up all month. //CB
008
Girls Talking Back On the third floor of the McKissick Museum at the University of South Carolina, there’s a little show with a big punch, UnLayered: Girls Talking Back, a display of visual and media art by middle and high school girls from West Columbia. And they are talking back—to the peer pressure they feel at school, to the issues they face at home, to the media images that define and constrain them, to anyone who would abuse them or make them feel small, and to all voices that would label and stigmatize them as bad girls. Since 2009, faculty and students from the University of South Carolina have been meeting with West Columbia girls in a series of art workshops intended to help them talk about the issues in their lives,
such as drug abuse, violence, body image, peer pressure, family issues. The girls who participate are mostly first-time offenders about to enter the juvenile justice system for charges ranging from drug use or shoplifting to trespassing and fighting in school. They participate in community service and a variety of probationary workshops—anger management, drug and alcohol education, gang education, and for some, art intervention workshops offered by the Women’s Well Being Initiative (WWBI), a program of the USC Women’s and Gender Studies Program. The primary goal for those who organize the program is to give students a second chance, to intervene with behavioral rehabilitation so that students don’t offend again. According to Dr. Lynn Weber, a USC professor of psychology and gender studies and one of the organizers of the WWBI,
art and history come to life See
with more than 200 events throughout the Capital City in April.
Visit our comprehensive arts and history calendar at onecolumbia.com
recent analysis showed that students who participated in the arts workshops “had the lowest recidivism of the various programs,” with only 15 percent of the arts students having repeat offenses. The workshops have been facilitated by Olga Ivashkevich, an assistant professor of art education, who says the goal of these workshops is to give the girls a voice. She says they always begin by telling the participants “we are not here to judge you or fix you. Everybody gets in trouble.” Instead, she says, they ask the students, “What are the roadblocks in your life,” or “What are the things that make you feel small, that make you feel stuck?” After talking about the issues the girls face, they map them out and then imagine projects to address those issues. “We use art as a tool for thinking and for re-thinking,” she says, “even for shaping your own identity.” The projects represented in the exhibit include collages of media imagery (illustrated here), many of them transferred to t-shirts; public service announcements addressing peer pressure, body image, and drug and alcohol use; “bad girl” stopmotion animation films; and filmed performances of original poetry written by the girls. Among the PSAs is a stunning antidrug video set to the familiar “Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy,” in which a girl pulls off a blindfold and pushes away drugs in the
same gesture, a moment of empowerment that is surprising and effective. The blindfold is critical, as the girls have to remain anonymous, but the filmmakers and the girls themselves imagine creative ways of finding expression despite that limitation. The “Barbie Fights Back” films are based on scripts the girls wrote about the stigma of being labeled “bad girls,” and they use Barbie and Bratz dolls (addressing cultural images of female beauty and behavior). Ivashkevich points out the girls’ creative strategies in these videos as well— they were “unhappy at how Barbie is always smiling,” so for some scenes they cropped her smile out. For the performances of poetry, the girls adopt a variety of playful disguises: ball gowns, wigs, sunglasses, and a hilarious repetition of big moustaches. Addressing abuse and violence as well as other issues of identity and empowerment, the poems are eloquent and moving. “I’m the girl that silently cries out ‘help me,’” reads one, “But nobody sees.” Another sassy poem talks back to those who would ridicule her size: “I’m big ‘cause I’m me. / Never will I be a size 2. / So get over it and do what you do.” She laughs, “Skinny don’t rule the world.” The McKissick exhibit, insists Ivashkevich, presents the girls “not as girls in trouble, but as artists.” This is feminist art with a purpose—and with an impact, not just the
emotional punch of the show, but the recidivism statistics Weber cites. This is art that changes lives. “They have to have a voice,” says Ivashkevich. “How do we give them more voice?” The student evaluations attest to the power of that project. “It felt good to talk about things I normally don’t talk about,” said a 2011 participant. “I liked the discussions because they helped us realize how similar we are,” said another. Ivaskevich has been assisted in the workshops by art education faculty Courtnie Wolfgang, filmmaker Rebecca Boyd, and student volunteers Cortney Piper, Heather Eaddy, Ruzanna Carter, Michelle McDonald, Katherine Chandler, Kathleen Hall, and Olivia Keyes. Established in 2000-2001 by faculty of the USC Women’s and Gender Studies Program, the Women’s Well-Being Initiative focuses on improving the well-being of South Carolina women and girls, focusing on interdisciplinary and communitybased programs of research, education, and social action, and by engaging in projects in which researchers and community members are equal partners. The Girls Talking Back exhibit runs through April 30 in the third floor gallery of the McKissick Museum on the Horseshoe at USC. //EM
009
J A S PER F A N C I E S - G R E E N F A S H I O N “Runaway Runway brings a fun, high energy, design-intensive event to the Columbia Design League that fits perfectly with the original vision and mission of the League. The best part is that it is so inclusive and accessible to folks who might otherwise go a lifetime without designing anything. So it provides a great personal connection to the world of design for the designers, models and everyone who comes to see the amazing work their friends and neighbors have done.�
// Adrienne Montare and Tom Savory, Columbia Design League Founders
Model, Laura Lunde; Designers, Annie Boiter-Jolley, Bonnie Boiter-Jolley, and Lenza Jolley for Jasper Magazine, Runaway Runway 2012 Photo by Thomas Hammond
010
The men liked to put me down as the best woman painter. I think I’m one of the best painters. —Georgia O’Keeffe
MARCH / April 2013
Master
Apprentice
artist peer
Wade Sellers coralee harris Cindy patterson
Russ & Jeannie Eidson Nancy Pope & John Watkins Marcia Watkins Laurie & Duncan McIntosh William Starrett Sheila Morris Charles H. Lesser Joseph Counts Tracie Broom Alvin Neal Trace Ballou Janna McMahan Dick Moons Easter Antiques Margey Bolen
Nancy Kauffman
Journeyman Jennifer Phelps william fick Katie Fox Diane Hare Toni Elkins Lauren & Robert Michalski Doni Jordan Manita & Charles Craft William Schmidt
012
Todd Mathis Giselle Woods Elena Martinez-Vidal Erin Bolshakov Anna Shaw Legare Cindy Roddey Sean “That Godzilla Guy� McGuiness B. A. Hohman Joe Morales Raia Jane Hirsch Grace Aguila
you’re invited to bec ome a memb er of
The Jasper Guild is a group of artists and arts patrons who share Jasper’s mission of bringing artists from different disciplines together for inspiration and community growth; making artists more visible to one another and the community at large; and making art a more integral part of the lives of people in the Columbia Midlands. We’d like to offer you the opportunity to become even more involved — the chance to open up the next issue of Jasper and be able to say out loud,
// Apprentice 1 year delivery of Jasper Magazine to your home & your name listed in Jasper Magazine for 1 year $50
// Journeyman All the above + your name in print in LARGE LETTERS & a copy of Jasper Reads: Download, a book of slightly naughty poetry edited by Ed Madden & a signed copy of Cindi Boiter’s new book, Buttered Biscuits: Short Stories from the South $100
// Master All the above + a non-transferable laminated Econobar PASS good for 1 year $250
// Centerfold* Sponsorship All the above + your name or dedication printed on the centerfold (6 available per year) $500 *Centerfolds chosen by Jasper Magazine editorial staff
// Artist Peer Practicing artists in dance, theatre, music, visual arts, film, & literary arts are invited to join The Jasper Guild at a reduced rate & see your name in Jasper Magazine for 1 year $25
DEAR J A S P E R
Dear Jasper,
Dear Mr. Curtis,
The content of my letter is truly not meant to be mean spirited, rather, question the status quo. I have been in Columbia for almost 6 years this summer. I came to Columbia [to] complete my graduate studies in music, but since that time I have blossomed into an actor, director, and playwright, having my own work commissioned by Winthrop University and even having my work read at the National Black Theatre Festival. In my tenure here, I have seen and performed in some great performances, both large and small. I guess my real question is why is no real attention brought to the work of local African American playwrights and production companies here in the Midlands. For example, Tangie Beaty, founder and director of WOW productions has sold out shows at the Harbison Theatre on several occasions, but, no notice of her has ever been written in any issue of Jasper. I’ve even reached out personally to this staff about coming to review one of my productions, and I’ve never seen or heard from anyone, ever. To be perfectly honest, it’s disheartening to see that emerging artists, or production companies are not given the same amount of respect, clout, or coverage as USC and the big 3 (Trustus, Town, Workshop). It is sad to see that as hard as we work, “The Word on Columbia Arts” has no room for us.
Thank you for your letter. You raise two issues that are of great importance to the editorial staff at Jasper. Social diversity and basic demographics are discussed at every editorial meeting Jasper has. We are keenly aware when our editorial content skews white, male, or over or under 35, for example, and we have debated at length how to handle this matter. Our solution has been to focus first and foremost on quality and longevity and to continue in our diligence to find excellent art representatives of these characteristics in as many demographic categories as possible. Jasper keeps a revolving story bank that we dip into every issue. You’ll notice that while some of our stories are seasonal or topical, others could be published at any time of the year. Just because an artist or an arts organization has not been featured yet—particularly if they are new on the scene—does not mean they aren’t being watched. There are several organizations and artists on our radar at present that we are cheering for and look forward to celebrating their successes in the pages of Jasper. To you and to all other artists and arts organizations out there—we want to hear from you. Nothing makes us happier than discovering new (to us) talent no matter what your demographics are. Write to us at editor@JasperColumbia.com and please put “story idea” in your email subject heading. We look forward to learning all about you.
Charles Curtis
Sincerely, Cindi
014
The Limelight A Compendium of Contemporary Columbia Artists Volume 1 Edited by Cynthia Boiter
Philip Mullen
The first volume in a serialized collection of first-person narrative essays written by Columbia, South Carolina writers and artists about Columbia, South Carolina writers and artists, The Limelight: A Compendium of Contemporary Columbia Artists is both a celebration and a declaration that Columbia is a dynamic and multi-dimensional arts center, producing artists who excel on the local, national, and international levels.
Now Available At
MuddyFordPress.com Amazon.com BN.com
J A S PER W AT C H E S
BY AUGUST KRICKEL t the forefront of local theatre for decades, any discussion with Cynthia Gilliam quickly becomes a tour through the history of Columbia’s performing arts. Though recently retired from a successful career in advertising, Gilliam is by no means resting on her laurels. As she always has been, Gilliam is as busy as ever. Born in the tiny town of Whitmire, SC where her father served as mayor, Gilliam moved to Columbia when her father bought a store on Forest Drive. She grew up on Laurens Street, attending Hand and Dreher High School. Her mother, a voice major in college, noticed that Gilliam was developing a slight stutter and lisp, and promptly signed her up for acting classes with Mary Lou Kramer. Kramer, who taught at Columbia College and directed children’s shows at Town Theatre, also gave private lessons in her home, where she had a small playhouse theatre. Students were encouraged to become involved at Town Theatre, and Gilliam dived in gleefully. She describes how friend and fellow Kramer student Christian Thee (who quickly discovered an affinity for set painting and design) created a wonderful entrance effect for her as the Wicked Witch of the West, “full of fire and brimstone.” Another favorite early role was Helen in The Miracle Worker, and she recalls rehearsing multiple shows simultaneously, leaving Town Theatre to hurry across the street for another show at Drayton Hall, while she attended USC. Gilliam did two seasons of summer stock in college, but had her sights set on a career in journalism.
She describes her first job after graduation, at The State newspaper, as lasting “for all of perhaps 10 days,” her main memory being that every one of her peers spent the day chain-smoking. A friend from theatre offered Gilliam a job as a copywriter at WOIC radio, developing public service announcements. The friend owned several radio stations throughout the southeast, and as her career progressed, she spent a number of years traveling through Florida and Georgia in a red convertible provided by the company. From there, she moved into advertising, and soon felt that the time was right to strike out on her own; with colleagues Mary Arnold Garvin and Elinor Pettit she opened an office in a tiny white house on Santee Avenue, bedecked with the flags that gave the fledgling agency its name: Semaphore. A longtime supporter of local theatre who was also familiar with her professional work gave Semaphore its first major client, C&S Bank (now Bank of America.) Bigger assignments and referrals from other agencies followed, as affiliation with a visible name-brand afforded immediate exposure and credibility. Each creative and commercial success led to another, and soon Semaphore was everywhere in national media. Gilliam protests “I did nothing to deserve any of this - it just happened,” but clearly her reputation preceded her in the business world. Many women of the era were struggling to break into the professional work force, but Gilliam never encountered any significant obstacles or hassles, adding that her colleagues were Photo by Jonathan Sharpe
016
017
Gilliam in “A Streetcar Named Desire”
well-known artists, and their work spoke for them. There were no bank loans or start-up expenditures; all she needed was her typewriter, which she notes she had won in a copywriting competition. While taking great pride in her work, Gilliam does laugh that “commercials don’t necessarily have to be good, as long as they are played over and over.” Meanwhile, Gilliam was still a prolific actress at Town Theatre, where shows were always directed by the resident director. Gilliam and friend Jim E. Quick wanted the chance to branch out and do different plays. Gilliam clarifies one common misconception: it wasn’t so much dissatisfaction with Town, which was doing serious dramas along with popular musicals and comedies, but simply the chance to do more shows, and for her and Quick to be able to direct. “We were young,” she recalls, with great ambitions and boundless energy. Initially, there was no name or formal organization, just young friends performing wherever they could. “We were gypsies back in those days, but we managed to stage credible productions, get decent reviews, draw good crowds, pay our bills, share what was left over, and do exactly as we pleased.” First there was dinner theatre at the old Laurel Hill Supper Club near the Governor’s Mansion, then performances everywhere from Safran’s Antique Gallery on Gervais Street, to Fort Jackson, to the former Eau Claire Post Office building. Productions included works by Albee, Williams, and even A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, with Quick as Pseudolus. Forum was the first play produced locally with a racially diverse cast; Gilliam happily recalls no backlash whatsoever. Audiences began to realize there were alternate options to enjoy live theatre, and the momentum to create Workshop Theatre was born. Columbia Museum director “Jack Craft really ignited it,” and was instrumental in arranging for the new group to relocate to the museum property where Workshop still performs. Gilliam appreciates how Craft provided her “first lesson as an entrepreneur,” with a clicker used to count planetarium attendance. Each person who
Paul Cézanne (French, 1839 – 1906), Trees and Rocks near the Château Noir, ca. 1900-06, Oil on canvas, 24 3/8 x 20 ¼ inches, Framed: 31 ½ x 27 ¼ x 2 ¼ inches, Collection of The Dixon Gallery and Gardens; Museum Purchase from Cornelia Ritchie and Ritchie Trust No. 4, 1996.2.20
January 25 - April 21
1515 Main Street, Columbia, SC 803.799.2810 | columbiamuseum.org Organized by the Dixon Gallery and Gardens, Memphis
Presented by:
Supporting Sponsors:
entered was counted once; if someone stepped outside to smoke and later came back, a second head was counted, teaching her that “everything is based on numbers” in business. Favorite roles as an actor include Shaw’s St. Joan, Cecily in The Importance of Being Earnest, Annie in The Miracle Worker, and Stella in A Streetcar Named Desire, which has also been one of her favorites to direct. Often she has played a role, and then returned to direct the show, or vice-versa. “It’s interesting to do that,” she observes. “You know a side to the character that the director doesn’t.” Gilliam feels directing is also a way to teach, just as Kramer once taught her. “Mary Lou would have two actors do the balcony scene from Romeo and Juliet, and then have them switch roles, and repeat the scene over and over,” exploring new interpretations and subtleties within the text. “I love directing,” she says. “You can get things out of people they don’t know they have.” Directing “isn’t always something you enjoy,” she jokes, but she had a good time, or “a better than decent time,” she clarifies, directing The Dixie Swim Club, with five veteran performers. “There were no slackers. Everyone worked to the top of their ability,” and the comedy’s title is now their team name when Gilliam, her partner, and their friends compete at trivia. Aspects from the 130-plus shows she has acted in
Helen & John Hill
or directed are depicted in a trompe-l’œil work by Thee that is displayed in her living room, and incorporates books with titles of favorite plays among foliage and architectural motifs. Kramer’s initials are displayed, as are a pair of ballet slippers, signifying Gilliam’s role as a founding member and the first board President of the Columbia City Ballet. As a master of words, Gilliam has always been amazed by the language of movement that dancers display on the stage to convey meaning and emotion. Gilliam believes that “theatre gives people a way to see other levels of society, other cultures, to go back in a time capsule.” Classics like Shakespeare are “hard as hell to play, but not hard at all to watch and listen to.” She remembers driving overnight with friends to New York to see Geraldine Page in Long Day’s Journey Into Night, and she realizes that due to the economics of theatre seasons, “no one who lives here will ever get to see it” done live locally. “They will pay obeisance to Shakespeare, but there are scripts that will never see the light of day here, and that makes me very sad.” Gilliam’s eyes sparkle as she recounts how live theatre in Columbia was once not just a cultural event, but the premiere civic and social event. “They paid attention to the best scripts available.” She describes lavish sets and costumes, when men wore tuxedos and women were dressed in formal gowns on opening nights, even for
Dr. Suzan D. Boyd & Mr. M. Edward Sellers
a children’s play, and how thrilling that was for a younger performer. “There was a buffet supper for the cast, with lace tablecloths, cloth napkins, and silver candelabra.” She concedes that “entertainment is so readily available now,” with technology to download almost anything conveniently at home, “but I’m not knocking it.” Retired since the end of 2012, Gilliam is becoming more active in theatre again, especially now that her teen daughter “has been bitten by the bug.” On the agenda is a trip to London to see Judi Dench perform, after which Gilliam will direct Mama Won’t Fly at the Harbison Theatre in June. Pointing to a church across from her home that has changed hands several times, she wishes it might someday be a theatre. Discussing the Arcade Mall, Gilliam’s first question is whether there is a space to do plays. She longs to bring Long Day’s Journey to local audiences, and hopes also to direct The Importance of Being Earnest, already envisioning a number of capable performers. In many ways, Gilliam has come full circle, from road trip adventures to see plays, to scouting for new venues in which to perform classics of the stage in a relevant way for modern audiences. There seems to be no question that local audiences will benefit from her vision and creativity for many years to come.
019
J A S PER S C R E E N S
By Giesela Lubecke
“I’m interested in using found materials that contribute their authentic voices and bodies to the works,” said Kristin Reeves about her short film The White Coat Phenomenon. Reeves’ The White Coat Phenomenon and Shambhavi Kaul’s 21 Chitrakoot are two short films that will be featured at the upcoming Indie Grits Festival in April. Both filmmakers, through the manipulation of archival footage, create original works that express their own ideas about technology, culture, nostalgia, and identity. The White Coat Phenomenon is a 3-minute video complication of medical training materials, VHS tapes, and audio from the 1972 vinyl LP Sexual I.Q Test, by David Gordon and Arnold Maxin. According to Reeves, her film explores society’s collective understanding of the individual
as that understanding becomes directed and misconstrued by “expert voices.” “I have a rare genetic mutation that led to my use as a pediatric research subject, something that I had not identified as a part of my life until my mid-twenties,” said Reeves. “I randomly heard a broadcast on NPR debating the approval of two controversial medical procedures for children, and I had been a part of the research a decade earlier. This led to me asking larger questions regarding how our understanding of ourselves is generated through the clinic, the subjectivity of the clinic itself and how its identity influences our own.” Reeves previously exhibited her 16mm film Threadbare at the 2011 Indie Grits Festival, but was unable to attend due to scheduling conflicts. “I’m not sure if I will be able to make it this year for the same reason,” said Reeves, “but would love to be able to enjoy all the work in the festival. I also get excited to talk to audience members and experience how my work performs in the screening environment.” Kaul’s 21 Chitrakoot, a 9-minute experimental film, is a picture narrative of compiled, intercut images from a popular 1970s Indian television show. In some shots, the show’s characters, superimposed on the background using blue screens, were removed by Kaul in order to create an entirely different narrative. “I am trying to re-stage these images for a response,” said Kaul. “To my mind, certain places, India, the East, but even the moon for that matter, are mythologized in a way so they always appear unfamiliar in cinema. My interest is to recirculate these unfamiliar aspects of the cinematic image outside the typical frames, allowing new responses to be formed and perhaps recirculated.” This will be Kaul’s third time presenting her work at Indie Grits. A Place for Landing, filmed using mirror reflections, was featured at the 2011 Indie Grits Festival, and Kaul’s Scene 32, a short film examining the salt fields of Central Kutch in India, was shown at the Festival in 2010.
Stills from Shambhavi Kaul’s film 21 Chitrakoot
020
Artists featured in Jasper’s first annual women’s issue celebrate the magazine release in March 2012 | Photo by Alisha Hime
“This is so good you wouldn’t know it was done by a woman.” Artist-instructor Hans Hofmann’s “compliment” to Lee Krasner
MEET BEST-SELLING AUTHORS, BUY BOOKS & MORE
17TH ANNUAL
MAY 17-19, 2013 Columbia Metropolitan Convention Center
1101 Lincoln Street, Columbia SC
In 1723, Dutch painter Margareta Haverman was expelled from the Académie Royale when the painting she submitted was judged too good to have been done by a woman.
FREE ADMISSION SATURDAY 10AM – 5PM SUNDAY 12PM – 4PM
Autographing & Presentations by National & Local Authors Antiquarian Book Fair Exhibitors, Book Sales & Appraisals Children’s Pavilion with Performances & Storytelling Summer Reading Station for Kids Book Signings & Book Sales
SPECIAL TICKETED EVENTS REGISTER ONLINE FRIDAY, MAY 17
Writing Classes + Opening Night Reception SATURDAY, MAY 18
The Literary Vine @ Friends of Richland Library richlandlibrary.com/events/literary-vine
Promoting literary excellence since 1997 PRESENTED BY
scbookfestival.org
JASPER DANCES
Former Joffrey Ballet Star
Patricia Miller By BONNIE BOITER-JOLLEY Photo courtesy Patricia Miller
atricia Miller’s story is a fairytale, at least to every child who ever dreamt of becoming a ballerina. Miller’s rise to success follows her from small town girl to becoming the muse of the great choreographer Gerald Arpino and Ballerina of the Joffrey Ballet, to acting as an integral part of Oregon Ballet Theatre’s success as a company, to serving as an inspiration to the likes of New York City Ballet Principal Dancer, Maria Kowroski. Now Pat Miller Baker, the petite and charmingly Southern ballet mistress for the Columbia City Ballet, she floats unassumingly amongst us, having lived a fairytale life the story of which too few people know. Born and raised in Florence, SC, Miller studied dance there until the age of fifteen. It was then that she attended a two week summer course at Mary Day’s Washington Ballet School in Washington, DC. Though she knew next to nothing about the art form at the time, her naturally lithe and graceful frame led Mary Day herself to invite the budding talent to enroll in the school year round. It was soon apparent that Miller was a natural when it came to the movement quality and grace of a ballerina and she excelled in her classes. After
graduating from the Washington Ballet School, Miller was given a position in the Washington Ballet’s professional company. It was there that she first partnered with male dancer Kevin McKenzie, now long-time and well-known Artistic Director of the American Ballet Theatre in New York City. During her time in Washington, Miller took advantage of her proximity to the Kennedy Center. It was there that she was exposed to the inspiration that was Natalia Makarova. Miller’s role model and Prima Ballerina with the Kirov Ballet, American Ballet Theatre, and Royal Ballet, Makarova was considered the epitome of lyrical and musical dance and was in Miller’s words, “one of a kind.” Miller obsessed over the legend, studying her every movement, seeking to follow in her footsteps. Even now as a teacher, Makarova’s influence is easy to spot in Miller’s luxuriously slinky movement quality. A year or so after joining the Washington Ballet, Miller was attending a festival at the Southeast Regional Ballet Association (SERBA) when she was spotted by Robert Joffrey, founder and director of New York City’s Joffrey Ballet. Joffrey acted quickly, inviting Miller to accompany him to Varna, Bulgaria to represent the United States and his company, touring at the time, at the International Ballet Competition that was being held there. Miller signed a contract with the Joffrey Ballet on the airplane during the international flight. This was the start of Miller›s ten year-long «wonderful ... and different relationship» with Mr. Joffrey. During the decade the young star spent with the Joffrey, Miller remembers working closely with associate director and famed choreographer Gerald Arpino. She describes the experience as «very intense,» alluding to the necessity for a strong backbone and thick skin in order to work well with the man. Arpino created roles in nu-
merous ballets for Miller, including Epode and her personal favorite Round of Angels in 1983, which was featured on a 1985 cover of Dance Magazine. Arpino was also instrumental in the long lived partnership of Miller and male dancer James Canfield. Lewis Segal of the Los Angeles Times quoted Arpino as comparing the pair to famed partners Antoinette Sibley and Anthony Dowell of the Royal Ballet. Miller would ultimately leave the Joffrey with Canfield to join and help launch the Oregon Ballet Theatre in 1985. After successfully laying the groundwork for the now thriving company, Miller began to have thoughts of retirement. It was in 1991 that she met fellow South Carolina native David Baker. Miller went on to marry Baker, who she says has nothing to do with dance, and move back to South Carolina. Upon hearing of the star’s return to the Palmetto state, William Starrett, director of the Columbia City Ballet, offered Miller the position of Ballet Mistress with the company. Once back in the studio, Miller’s star quality proved irresistible and she found herself gracing the stage once 025
024
again, this time in Columbia, SC. Miller continued to dance with the company full time until the late 1990s when she returned to the northwest for a short time to help coach the Oregon Ballet Theatre. Meanwhile, the Ballet Master position in Columbia was capably occupied by former dancer with the Columbia City Ballet and the National Ballet of Canada, Serge Lavoie. After Lavoie’s untimely death in 2004 however, the post changed hands for short stints numerous times until Miller returned to resume the position. Over the course of her tenure with the company, Miller feels as though she and Starrett have developed a partnership in which he trusts her to help develop the style of the dancers. In their work together, the two have changed the look of the company as a whole. Miller enjoys the freedom of one-onone coaching, passing on her own knowledge and professional experiences. Crucial to being professional, she believes, is looking past the steps and delving into the emotion of the character or the movement. Not surprisingly, Miller’s favorite role is that of Juliet, which she performed in John Cranko’s Romeo and Juliet during her time with the Joffrey. A lyrical dancer, Miller was drawn to the dramatic musicality and its use in portraying the role. The role she originated in Arpino’s Round of Angels also tops her list of favorites. She describes dancing the ballet as something like having “an out of body experience.” That being said, Miller insists that being a dancer is not about the roles. “Enjoy the whole process of being a dancer … it’s over before you know it,” she urges. She advises dancers to “try to get what you can from every person you work with,” and to “never stop training.” She says she learned through her own mistakes that patience and a strong backbone are the keys to success in the world of dance. Photo by Thomas Hammond
025
J A S PER W AT C H E S
There’s still another week to catch the NiA Company’s production of The Whipping Man, presented in partnership with Trustus Theatre as part of its Off-Off-Lady series. Darion McCloud and Heather McCue codirect the Matthew Lopez play in the CMFA ArtSpace at 914 Pulaski Street, running through Friday March 22. Two ex-slaves (McCloud and Mario McClean) celebrate Passover, ironically a commemoration of deliverance from slavery, with a wounded Confederate soldier (Bobby Bloom), the son of their former master whose Jewish faith they adopted.
The Tony-Nominated Good People, written by David Lindsay-Abaire (past winner of the Trustus Playwrights’ Festival) and directed by USC’s Jim O’Conner then runs March 22 - April 6 on the Thigpen Main Stage at Trustus. Dewey Scott-Wiley plays a struggling single mom who reaches out to an old flame (Jason Stokes) from their “Southie” Boston neighborhood, leading to a battle of both the sexes and the classes. Scott-Wiley then takes the director’s chair for By the Way, Meet Vera Stark, Lynn Nottage’s irreverent take on screwball comedies and race relations in 1930’s Hollywood, which runs May 3-18. Jim Thigpen meanwhile returns to the Trustus Side Door Theatre April 12-27 to direct My First Time, as four actors bring to life true stories of, well, the title says it all. Info on all four shows can be found at 803-254-9732 or www.trustus.org.
w/ Au gust Krick el
One Month, One Columbia will turn the spotlight on the rich diversity of cultural events in the Midlands in April, and not surprisingly, theatre will be at the forefront. No less than eleven groups will mount spring shows over the next few weeks. Curtain Up! 026
Chapin Theatre Company, now performing in the Harbison Theatre at Midlands Technical College, presents Jeff Lovett’s Simply Divided, directed by Julie Painter. Chapin favorites Melinda Collins, David Reed, and Chad Forrister are featured in a tale of down-home Southern belles in Simply, AL, vying for the attention of the hunky new teacher in town. Romantic intrigue ensues at the Simply Delicious Diner; run dates are March 15 - 24. For information call 803-240-8544 or www. chapintheatre.org.
We all know the Spielberg version of Alice Walker’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, but Workshop Theatre presents the musical version of The Color Purple, nominated for 11 Tony Awards (it won for Best Actress.) Jocelyn Sanders directs Devin Anderson (Celie), Kanika Moore (Nettie), Shawn Logan (Mister), Katrina Blanding (Shug),
and Samuel McWhite (multiple roles.) Run dates are March 15 - 30. Then guest director Chad Henderson closes out the season with Songs for a New World, running May 10 - 25. For information call 803-799-4876 or visit www.workshoptheatre.com.
Theatre Rowe continues their popular series of murder mystery/dinner theatre shows, running most weekends, Thursday through Sunday, at Richland Mall. There’s another week to see Marriage Can Be Murder, running through March 24, after which audiences will be able to choose one of six different endings in Knock ‘Em Dead, running April 19 - May 4. Assorted show-biz wannabes are all suspects in the murder of a comedy club owner. For information call 803-728-1678 or visit www. theatrerowe.com.
Columbia Children’s Theatre will present Knuffle Bunny: A Cautionary Musical, running April 12 - 21, and based on the popular, award-winning children’s book. Director Chad Henderson reunites with his Avenue Q puppet designer Lyon Hill, teaming with musical director Paul Lindley II to recount the epic drama of a child’s beloved stuffed rabbit doll left behind at the laundromat. The cast includes Lindley, Kathy Sykes, Sara Jackson, and puppeteers Christina Whitehouse Suggs, Julian Deleon, Brandi Smith, and Kendrick Marion. For information call 803-691-4548 visit www. columbiachildrenstheatre.com.
SC Shakespeare Company dips into classic commedia dell’arte with Carlo Goldoni’s Servant of Two Masters, running April 17 - 27. Expect disguises, mistaken identity, and slapstick, all in the pursuit of true love. Performances are usually held outdoors in Finlay Park and at Saluda Shoals Park. For information dial 803-787-BARD or visit www.shakespearesc.org.
USC’s Theatre Department tackles the granddaddy of all Shakespearean tragedies, King Lear, running April 19 - 27 in Drayton Hall. “How sharper than a serpent’s tooth it is to have a thankless child,” as Lear divides his kingdom among three daughters, with devastating results for both family and realm. Then David Britt directs Becky Shaw, a contemporary dark comedy about a blind date that mixes “sharp wit and humor with the taut suspense of a psycho-
logical thriller.” The show runs four performances only, April 25 - 28, in the Lab Theatre at 1400 Wheat St. For information call 803-777-2551 or visit www.artsandsciences.sc.edu/ thea/2013/Season12-13.html.
Cats, shmats - what about dogs? Stage 5 Theatre, located just down from Williams-Brice at 947 S. Stadium Rd., answers the question with Bark! The Musical, directed by Michael Bailey, and running April 19 - 28. Six performers explore the challenges, triumphs and tragedies in the life of man’s best friend. Call 718-6144 or visit www.mbfproductions.net.
On Stage Productions, now performing at 680 Cherokee Lane in West Columbia, debuts A World of Wealth. Running April 26 - May 5, this original musical by Robert Harrelson and Gloria Van Dalen tells the story of a Southern family transplanted to New
York as “they journey to find love that seems to be lost.” For information visit www.onstagesc.com/.
Town Theatre takes a quantum leap forward with the vocally challenging, tech-heavy, maturelythemed Miss Saigon, which won or was nominated for just about every award in existence on Broadway. Updating and transplanting the plot of Madame Butterfly to Viet Nam in the 1970s, composer Claude-Michel Schönberg and lyricists Alain Boubil and Richard Maltby, Jr. recount the tragedy of Kim (Shelby Sessler) and her doomed love for an American Marine (Lanny Spires.) Will Moreau, Shirley McGuinness, and Scott Vaughn are also featured in a huge cast directed by Jamie Carr Harrington, with musical direction by Christopher McCroskey and choreography by Tracy Steele. Dates are May 10 - 26; for information call 803-799-2510 or visit www. towntheatre.com.
027
J A S PER S P E C I A L
the magic OF KIMI MAEDA BY ANDY BELL hen scenic designer, puppeteer, and theater artist Kimi Maeda took the stage at the Sporkin-Hand Puppet Slam last December at Trustus Theater, the audience had little indication of what to expect from her performance. The first half of the show had consisted mainly of puppet artists performing edgy musical acts and comedy skits using their own homemade, hand-operated puppets. To kick off the second half, Maeda brought onto the stage three giant sheets of paper filled with tiny, indiscernible cut-out patterns, spread out three-wide on woodenframed display boards. The lights went out, and she shone a handheld flashlight through the holes in the paper, casting large shadows on the back wall. With the aid of an audio track that included narration and sound effects, Maeda took the audience on a unique, unforgettable journey through four memory-fantasy stories in Japan. The piece, entitled The Homecoming, tells four stories that correspond with the four seasons, drawing on a combination of Maeda’s memories of her summers spent in Japan and old stories of Japan and America. The first story draws on Maeda’s nostalgia of summers in Japan. For the Fall story, the narrator inserts herself in a ver028
sion of the Rip Van Winkle story (a story similar to an old Japanese folktale, Urashima Tarō) in which she sleeps for one night in an underwater castle, only to find that 300 years have passed on the shore. The winter story finds the narrator trying to adapt to the abolition of the laws of gravity, while the spring story describes what happens when the narrator’s body disappears. With these nostalgic tales, Maeda deals with the problem of “creat[ing] a sense of the modern world,” when “home” seems to have lost the meaning which the narrator previously attributed to it. Can she still go home after 300 years? Can she go home when there’s nothing physically holding it together? When there’s nothing physically holding her body together? Although the piece took Maeda a little over a year to complete, it was a lifetime in the making. It serves as a current snapshot of an artist who, through a life-so-far of changing job titles and home cities, is looking to her youth to connect to her identity that was always pulled between two worlds. Maeda was born and raised in Concord, Massachusetts, according to Maeda, a “really white” New England town, famously home to transcendentalist writers Louisa May Alcott, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and Henry David Thoreau. Although she “love[s] Concord and ... definitely think[s] of it as home,” as a JapaneseAmerican she couldn’t help feeling somewhat out of place. “It was before origami cranes were very hip” is her tongue-incheek contextualization. Even so, Maeda was still able to preserve
a link to her heritage. Every other summer, Maeda and her family would go to Japan to visit her grandparents in their coastal hometown, Hamada. There, she would spend her time reading and visiting art museums with her family. The situation presented Maeda with a conflicted sense of identity and home as she was growing up. She didn’t look like anyone else in Concord, but she felt most at home in this familiar town. In Japan, she resembled the locals, yet this was all she had in common with them; no common language, few shared experiences. Despite this, Maeda’s work shows a nostalgia for these summers of her youth, having it serve as a backdrop for the fantastical stories of The Homecoming. Maeda had been an artist for as long as she can remember, scribbling on sketchpads that her mother bought for her when she was very young. She comes from an artistic family; her grandfather was a professional painter (who converted his entire home into an art studio), and her father is an art historian. Despite this, Maeda never planned to make a living in the arts. In her high school years, she “had every intention of becoming a marine biologist.” After picking up a copy of Among Whales, by Roger Payne, she contacted the author and secured a summer-long internship with his foundation, Ocean Alliance, where she spent her days on whale watching expeditions. She was also heavily involved in music, calling it a “big part of her identity.” She played the euphonium, continuing to perform with school ensembles through college. When
she entered college, her interest in pursuing the sciences began to wane. “I realized that I didn’t enjoy research. I didn’t enjoy collecting data ... I realized I didn’t enjoy the process of doing science.” (Although, she concedes that her work as an artist ended up being quite similar to her work in science). Maeda did not plan to work in the theater, either. In her freshman year at Williams College, she volunteered with Cap and Bells, a student theater organization that has been active at the school since 1898. She then began to work for the theater department, leading to experience in stage managing for productions during her junior year abroad at Oxford. Upon her return, she was given the opportunity to provide scenic design for two of the theater department’s productions. She also completed internships at a theater festival in Amherst and two different opera productions. While she never previously envisioned her career happening in this manner, she felt better about her prospects in her new field. In contrast with the art department, theater provided “a much clearer pathway” for employment. “There was always a next step,” Maeda says. After spending a few years working at theaters and theater festivals, Maeda began graduate work at the Central St. Martins College of Art and Design in London. The curriculum put more emphasis on writing, building, designing, and performing original work, allowing the young woman to explore an artistic path that was more appealing to her. Coming to Columbia was another unplanned step in Maeda’s life. While at the theater festival in Amherst, she met Nic Ularu, a theater professor at the University of South Carolina. When she returned to America right after the 9/11 attacks, theater work was difficult to find. Ularu managed to recruit her for the University of South Carolina’s MFA program in scenic design. While in graduate school at USC, Maeda became friends with local puppet master and puppet creator, Lyon Hill, who worked at the Columbia Marionette theater at the time, while attending figure-drawing sessions with the artist group About Face. A year after receiving her MFA, she ended up taking a job with Hill at the Columbia Marionette Theater and returned to Columbia, allowing her to continue her exploration of solo performance that she had begun in graduate school. Alongside her local professional projects, which include scenic and costume design for theater productions throughout both South Carolina and the United States, Maeda recently embarked on a trilogy of projects of personal significance, which includes The Homecoming as the second part. Part one is a piece entitled The Crane Wife, in which Maeda combines shadow puppetry, scenic design, and performance
art to explore her identity and nostalgia for her youth in New England. Maeda’s introspective, hand-crafted brand of live performance will be gaining more visibility in the coming months. Her production company formed in partnership with Lyon Hill, Belle et Bête, will showcase another Spork-in-Hand Puppet Slam at the Indie Grits festival on April 13th, featuring music by the local band Those
Lavender Whales. She is also working on a puppet musical for children with local kindie-rock sensation Lunch Money, as well as her third piece in the Homecoming trilogy. As she continues to use her art to explore her personal history, decipher its significance, and long for her childhood home, Columbia audiences can be thankful that Maeda’s current home is here, where she can share it with us all. Photo by Jonathan Sharpe
029
CE N T ER F O LD M I C H A E L A P I L A R B R O W N
Defying Labels The Work and Woman, Michaela Pilar Brown By KARA GUNTER
030
Photo Courtesy of Michaela Pilar Brown
ver coffee one Sunday morning, Michaela Pilar Brown and I sat down for what was going to be a little chat about her and her work. The cups refilled, and morning became afternoon. When we were done, I had close to 20 pages of notes and a much deeper understanding of the artist and her work. We talked about art, feminism, history, sex, race, and family, just to name a few of the main topics; but first and foremost, the primary impression I walked away with from my conversation with Brown was her strong nonconform-
ist streak, and her desire to remain free of categorization. Brown doesn’t play by the rules, follow expectations, or care for labels. In fact, when I asked how she identified herself (a black artist, a feminist artist, or a black feminist artist?) she was insulted. I was hoping she would be. I know women artists are often relegated to the fringes of art, or to those parallel but very different universes in which regular artists reside. I couldn’t imagine throwing race into the mix, too, along with the further categories and subcategories the work and the artist get shoved into. Brown feels she “walks a razor’s edge” between being a black artist and wanting to talk about black empowerment and women’s issues, while also wanting to be accepted on a larger scale as an artist devoid of these restrictive labels. “I just want to make the work, and let someone else talk about it,” she says. For all artists, there are occasional opportunities to be found in labels (grant money, exhibitions, etc.), but on the whole, there is a fear that labels will serve to diminish the work or, at the very least, segregate it, by making it appear that it has been specifically created about or for a subculture, and isn’t relevant to the wider human experience. Her recent exhibition at Columbia College, Whither Goes My Heart, was labeled somewhat generically as a body of work about the African American experience in
this country, but to Brown it was a documentation of her own personal family history, and the importance of a place: her family’s land and her father’s ancestral home in Fairfield County. Through the form of a simple house structure, through drawings, paintings and sculpture, with branches as roots and family artifacts, she explores her family’s home as a repository of memories. Brown grew up in Colorado, and later attended college and worked in Washington, DC. But like her parents before her, she returned to the family home place in South Carolina’s Fairfield County. She remembers spending summers there as a child with her grandparents and cousins. She imagines all the memories the old place held for and of her father before his death in 2007. This is the place where her father was raised, where he was nursed by his wife and family after his initial diagnosis of cancer, and then later Alzheimer’s. Home is a heavy place sometimes, but light, too, like “…when someone slips from your grasp,” Brown says. Whither Goes My Heart is a very personal body of work for Brown, and while there may be parallels, she wasn’t necessarily trying to speak to a wider African American history. This isn’t to say that Brown isn’t intensely proud of her blackness and the place her story has in the bigger picture about race in America. It’s just as Brown notes, “There is no one black experience. It is myriad.”
Photo by Forrest Clonts 031
C E N T E R F O L D / / MICHAELA PILAR BR O W N / / V O L . 0 0 2 N O . 0 0 4
Photo by Forrest Clonts
That being said, Brown is acutely interested in telling the truth as she sees it; confronting bigotry and challenging stereotypes and rigid belief systems. She is interested in human rights as a whole, and people “moving forward and traversing lines, operating outside of boxes.” Of course, being a black woman, she still operates from a place of black, female pride and is deeply concerned with women’s issues in general, challenging patriarchy, and violence against women. Often the images in her photography are in-your-face depictions of the human figure. They are raw, 034
confrontational, dark, sexual, grotesque, vulnerable, and beautiful all at the same time. Does she consider her work edgy? She laughs lightly and shakes her head, as if she could not begin to perceive herself as being the least bit controversial. There are some who might disagree. Whither Goes My Heart almost didn’t occur in its entirety because of one image that included nudity. An exhibition last year at South Carolina State University included a warning label outside of the gallery that the work was for adult audiences only, and another piece was removed from
a showing at The Harvey B. Gantt Center in Charlotte—again, because of nudity. On one hand, these moments make Brown doubt herself, but at the same time, she has a difficult time wrapping her mind around why these images are so difficult for some to process—especially on a college campus where she believes there should be a freeflowing exchange of ideas and concepts, and where exposure to the nude body in art shouldn’t be a novel experience. The nude in Brown’s work is sexually charged, but it also points to vulnerability. Utilizing the nude body may be a way of
Photo Courtesy of Michaela Pilar Brown
stripping down to the very basic humanness of her subject: an archetype. The subject is her—but not her. She considers these images of herself to be stills from performances in which she’s playing a character. When she photographs herself during a performance, she works alone, in the privacy of her home. In the beginning, showing these photographs publically was tough for her. The distance she was able to gain during the making of the work sometimes disappears when she sees herself on a gallery wall. In fact, the very first time she showed an image from her Fuck Tinkerbell series, a viewer sought her out to compliment her breasts. That created a moment of doubt in Brown, but her message is too important to compromise. The work is about what it’s like to walk through this life, in her body, at this time in history. She’s stripping off not only her clothes, but stereotypes and ex-
pectations, “I am not Mammie, and I am not Jezebel. I am sexually empowered. I am not anything you label me… I can make choices in how you see me”. Does Brown feel pressure to make pretty, less controversial art? Yes, she does, but as she says, “All art isn’t meant for everyone.” She realizes that some would rather she create only welllit, shiny, positive images of middle-class blackness, but Brown doesn’t feel that tells the whole story, or at least that’s not the story she’s interested in telling. Brown has plenty of stories yet to impart, and at the moment, she’s looking forward to starting two new separate bodies of work. One deals with the history and the evolution of the labor of the women in her family, going back to emancipation—from the field workers, to the domestics, to the millworkers, the teachers and beyond. (One great aunt, who started a modeling agency for stout black women in Harlem, was so powerful that her third husband adopted her last name when they married.) A second body of work, which Brown calls the Superhero series, will continue to explore the stereotypes of black women including different personas such as the Jezebel, the Mammie, and the Sapphire. Brown is also ready for a new way of working. She’s ready to move away from private in-studio photographed performances to performances in front of an audience. Though still a bit daunting, she has no doubt that she’ll do it. She’s no shrinking violet, recognizing the importance of challenging herself. Brown had thought she was going to make this leap during her 2012 residency at the Vermont Studio Center. It didn’t materialize, but following advice from artist Tyrone Mitchell, Brown took away the deadlines she’d set for herself, and began to work more patiently, sequentially, and evolutionarily. She’s finding freedom and poetry in a process of drawing first, followed by photography, and object-making. I broached the subject of labels again, asking if she considered herself more of a photographer, object-maker, or installation artist, and again, she’s not too keen on pigeonholing herself, noting that she will employ whatever medium is necessary to get her point across. Brown is dedicated to her work and will transform her living space to make art, if need be. She will often dismantle her house to make room to work, sleeping on the floor on occasion when the bed gets in the way. For two years, during her father’s illness, Brown had a roomy, store-front studio in downtown Winnsboro, but was unable to use it because of family obligations. Eventually, she had to let go of the space, and since then she’s been left without a studio, which sometimes dictates the way she works. The sculptural aspects of Brown’s work are often done outside at her family’s home in Fairfield County. Would her work would be different had she all the studio space she wanted? Probably not. With work that is already so expansive, it doesn’t feel truncated or compromised in any way. The honesty is palpable. The work is no-frills, but at the same time rich in its intensity, and persistent in its message. Brown doesn’t hide in her work, even despite some of her misgivings about full exposure. She has toyed with the idea of leaving the state again. Sometimes she’s frustrated at being one of a very few black faces in the crowd during arts events in Columbia. And like the rest of us in the arts community, she wishes the arts were more widely supported in the state without contention. She sees a lot of potential, though, and is excited by the growth of the arts community in Columbia. Brown’s work relays a message not often seen here. It’s powerful, elemental, and strong. If we are, in fact, building something here, we need her voice as part of our foundation. 035
J A S PER G A Z E S
Contemporaries’ Artist of the Year
Jasper 2012 State-of-the-Art Award // Douglas McAbee B y Cy nt h i a Bo ite r
he Columbia Museum of Art Contemporaries affiliate organization has built a reputation for being excellent at throwing parties, purchasing expensive and controversial art, and engaging local aesthetes (and wannabes—not that there’s anything wrong with that) in recognizing the best of the best in emerging art. Case in point—the Contemporaries’ Artist of the Year Soirée and Silent Auction. The party line, according to their website, is that the event “is designed to increase awareness of and support for emerging artists in South Carolina 036
and to promote the Contemporaries’ membership,” while at the same time providing “a venue for emerging artists across the state of South Carolina to gain exposure and promote their artwork.” And the artwork is for sale via a silent and sometimes stressful auction. (This writer still wears with pride the scars she earned beating out SC Arts Commission director Ken May in 2010 for a painting by emerging artist Yisha Wang.) While Jon Goebel and his piece Wolf Attire was selected as the 2012 Contemporaries’ Artist of the Year, Jasper was also delighted to offer our first CAY prize last year, the Contemporaries’ Artist of the Year Jasper 2012 State-of-the-Art Award, and the award was given to sculptor and painter Douglas McAbee. Along with local arts writer Jeffrey Day and myself, artist and USC professor, Chris Robinson, (who is also the new Jasper visual arts editor), chose McAbee’s sculpture, Clara, from over 100 pieces of work. “A few things in this work stand outright away,” Robinson says. “First one notes a sense of professionalism—clarity and consistency of idea, a clear understanding of the creative elements of design, and quality of craft and presentation, which is critical in a work of this sort. Also, in this case,” he continues, “the unique presence of quality work in the less pursued and more limited third dimension stands out. The artwork is uniform and consistent, well designed and crafted, effectively presented, and distinctively unique from the group. Finally, there is a sense of uniform magic, hard to describe, but broadly recognized, noted, and appreciated; one would be hard-pressed to reasonably criticize and/or find fault with this work.” We caught up with McAbee, who is as much of a character as is Clara herself, and asked him a few questions. Here are his responses: Jasper: There seems to be quite a bit of whimsy involved in your art—is your life as whimsical as your art? And, if so, does your art make your life more whimsical or is it the other way around? McAbee: My life is just like everyone else’s life, I guess. My kids run wild, my budget is shot and I eat an unhealthy amount of ice cream. Oh, and REM broke up, I still
haven’t recovered from that fully. But if you took all that stuff too seriously you’d never be able to leave the house. I grew up with parents who knew it was unhealthy to focus too much on the negative things in life. They pointed out the funny things instead. We laughed a lot then and I laugh a lot now. In that sense, I suppose my life might be described as whimsical. I mean, we’re not Monty Python over here, but we are a pretty silly bunch. My wife thinks I’m an idiot … that might be a more direct answer to the question. The way my head works, my life experiences inform my creative work. My drawings and sculptures can get into some pretty heavy content at times, but never without a bit of goofiness nearby. Perhaps in a way, I’m spreading the message my parents gave me about not focusing on the negative and choosing to laugh instead. Jasper : On your website, www.dougmcabee.com, you say that you live with your wife, son, a mermaid, and three dogs in an igloo in a remote location: how much of this is true? McAbee: OK, you got me. We don’t live in an igloo. Everything else is spot on. Actually, our daughter is named Ariel which makes most people say, “Oh like the Disney mermaid!” This drives my wife crazy. The dogs technically live outside and here in Laurens we are out in the middle of nowhere. Jasper : We chose Clara as the Jasper 2012 CAY State of the Art Award. What can you tell us about your inspiration for creating Clara and how you made her? McAbee: I love that you called her a “her.” I do that, but most people use “it.” Clara came out of a series of small sculptures I made based on a central image that transformed over time. The image began as a storm cloud, then became a tree and eventually morphed into a thought bubble. I am interested in working with images that resonate with a wide range of viewers and images that they will have some sort of
personal history with. During the process of abstraction I found that this image could be interpreted as any of those things and that viewers would often lock onto one interpretation based on some sort of narrative that happened to them. This interested me because it took the visual conversation that I started and handed it over to the viewer for completion. Their stories and their experiences became just as important to the work as mine. I use a hollow formed steel construction method to create my sculptures. I use thin sheets of steel to create the skin of the forms and I weld the steel together. Then I grind the welds down smooth and spend hours sanding and polishing the seams. At that point Clara got a coat of primer and then 5 – 8 coats of paint to give her that glossy green surface. Jasper : Clara is only 18” x 15” x 20” while many of your sculptures are much larger. What do you like best—large or small format, and why? McAbee: My students tell me I have ADHD or whatever they’re calling it these days. I change up the scale of my work to give myself a challenge and to keep me interested. I’ll work large for a while and when the challenge is gone I’ll switch and make smaller pieces for a while. It’s very difficult to make small work with this construction method but then there are different sets of problems to solve when making large scale outdoor pieces. The problem solving is what makes it fun for me so by switching the scale periodically, I keep myself from wandering off. I think that means I like both best, but in terms of storage and shipping, small is pretty great. Jasper : You’ve exhibited your work for almost 15 years now, certainly throughout SC but up the east coast, as well. Take a moment to brag a bit about your work—what accomplishments are you most proud of? McAbee: Well, there was this one time, at band camp … No, really I’ve had some great luck with exhibits and awards and I’m really grateful for it all. My goal is to share my work with viewers so any chance to exhibit is a great one. I was thrilled to be chosen for the Triennial 2004 exhibit and then the 20th Anniversary Juried exhibit at the SC State Museum. I was really excited when Carolinas Medical Center purchased two of my sculptures for their Levine Children’s Hospital in Charlotte, NC. One is placed in the maternity ward and the other is installed at an outdoor patio area. I was beyond excited when my work was awarded “Best in Show” at the North to South Juried Exhibit in Charlotte, NC in 2010. I was also pretty happy about getting an honorable mention award at the National Outdoor Sculpture Competition in North Charleston in 2011.
Photo courtesy Doug McAbee | Clara, 2012
And of course I’m most proud of these two adorable kids I made, but my wife shares the credit for that. I also swell with pride when my former students get good jobs, earn their MFAs and do other awesome things. As I said, I’m a lucky guy.
public sculptures for the Greenwood community and there’s a great deal of excitement around the art department in general. I know it sounds like a sales pitch, but take a day and come hang out with me and you’ll see it’s true.
Jasper: How long have you taught at Lander University and how much fun is it really?
Jasper: Wolves—were you really raised by them?
McAbee: This is my third year teaching at Lander and I’m seriously having the time of my life. My colleagues are unbelievably kind and funny. The administration has been very supportive of me and my desire to build up the sculpture area. They’ve given me grants and said yes to so many things and now we are starting to see the fruits of that labor. Just a couple of weeks ago one of my students won 2nd place for her steel sculpture in the 1st Annual Collegiate Invitational Art Exhibit at the Spartanburg Public Library, competing against 5 other colleges. I’m still a little proud of that as you can tell. My classes are creating
McAbee: Ok, whoever does my website is fired.
The 10th annual Contemporaries’ Artist of the Year Soirée and Silent Auction will be held this year on Friday, April 26th at the Columbia Museum of Art. Tickets can be purchased on the Columbia Museum of Art’s website or by calling the museum at 803.799.2810.
037
The One About Seeing You Later, 2012
038
Photos courtesy Doug McAbee Clockwise Starting at Top Left
The One About the Tree Rides, 2012 Ethel’s Daughter, 2009 The One About Scrimshaw, 2011
039
J A S PER G A Z E S
What matters in Columbia’s visual art and the world today? B y CHRIS ROBINSO N am delighted to join Jasper Magazine as the visual arts editor and to have the opportunity to share my thoughts about the discipline. Please bear with me as I sort out and better understand the parameters and responsibilities of this role. But first, I want to deal with the term gaze, as in “Jasper Gazes”—which would
040
not be my choice for a title for these comments. Is this a good descriptor for the visual or fine arts? To me it implies a lazy, possibly uninformed look. Why not “Jasper Sees”—which implies seeing both visually and intellectually? Which is most appropriate? (I do have to concede, however, that the dictionary definition of gaze says – “to fix the eyes in a steady and intent look and often with eagerness or studious attention”—which is not really bad.) Academics typically have more questions than answers—questions are a good first step in starting a dialogue and working toward understanding. What differentiates drawing from sculpture, or sculpture from painting, for example, perhaps is not as clearly defined as one might think. See Christo’s Running Fence (is it a sculpture or a drawing?) or Michael Heizer’s Complex One (is it a sculpture or a painting?) We live in very exciting, but complicated times and there is usually, if you are willing to listen, a good argument for every side of the argument. It is easier to simply dismiss those who disagree—or it certainly was easier to do so during my youth; right and wrong were pretty clearly defined, albeit most of it wrongly. Questions become much more complicated in a pluralistic, postmodern world and, while there have been tremendous advancements, the questions and curiosities don’t go away; they simply grow larger. We have a rich array of artists, exhibitions, and arts related events here in Columbia with plenty to do but, the question is, of these, what is important? What separates the distinctive from the common? Do women or other minorities still need a special forum to be properly recognized, or should they rightly succeed and be known in the broader mix of visual arts? What sustains museums and arts organizations? Is it quality activities and exhibits or alternative methods of fundraising and audience building? What do you look for in a work of art—investment potential, decoration, craft, manipulation of medium, affinity for the subject, content and meaning, or something else? How do we measure an artist’s consequence or success without the assistance and clarification of time? None of the questions are that simple or are their answers clearly defined. There is a wealth of goodness here in the Midlands, but it may be hard to sort out what is really good, why it is good, and who even gets to decide this. Philip Mullen has a beautiful show on at the Burroughs and Chapin Museum in Myrtle Beach; a rare opportunity to see a collective group of his new paintings in South Carolina. Is it worth the drive there for a look at the art versus
a swim at the beach? There was an aging but shrewdly insightful and aware crowd at the opening reception; what do they know? Some might say quite a lot. A few recent local exhibitions have taken captivatingly alternative forms. From the self-inspective explorations of Michaela Pilar Brown at the Goodall Gallery at Columbia College (covered in this issue of Jasper by Kara Gunter), to the sad legacy characterized by Stephen Hayes’ Cash Crop at the 701 Center for Contemporary Art, both deal with interesting and complicated subjects while recapitulating some of the enticing vigor of 1970’s installations—a time when both youth and, especially, innovation prospered. Here is a challenge—think about and identify the ten most significant and consequential images of the last one hundred years. I have been enjoying thinking about this myself; I’ve even asked colleagues and students to do so, and by considering this question, we are slowly refining what visual meaning is in 2013. Should these be works of art or simply images? Picasso’s Guernica or a photo of earth from the moon? And what, if anything, differentiates the two? Before you jump too quickly to, appropriately, self-biased conclusions, ask yourself this: do events or images best capture meaning? Do we complete the exercise visually or verbally? Intuitively or analytically? And, are your images biased and self or discipline referential or do they really embrace the broad sweeping notion of somehow being universally meaningful, appreciated, and understood? For that matter, does universal understanding still exist, or has it ever? Are the Mona Lisa and/or Michelangelo’s David universal or perhaps not-so-much in our ever-shrinking world? I ask you, the Jasper readers, to identify images that are significant and consequential—and to send them in. We can sort, refine, gaze at them, and see in what direction they may point our choices and future thinking about what is visually valuable today both in Columbia, SC and the world.
(Editor’s note: Send your nominations for the ten most significant images of the last one hundred years to CRobinson@JasperColumbia.com with the subject title, “Significant Images.” Also, let us know—do you think Jasper should “see” or “gaze” at the visual arts?)
041
J A S PER S C R E E N S
Photo by Forrest Clonts
Shane Slattery-Quintanilla Talks with Documentary Filmmaker Laura Kissel B y s h ane sl atte ry-q uintanill a owards the end of Laura Kissel’s celebrated documentary film Cabin Field (2005), a title card appears that reads, simply, “The Southern Girl.” What follows is one of the most powerful and mesmerizing uses of archival footage I have seen in any film. The three-minute sequence weaves together footage of rural and agricultural pageantry in Georgia from the 1930’s through the 1950’s.
042
Young women are shown parading slowly in summer dresses, moving their arms in a synchronized sway or twirling in front of the camera one after the other in an eerily mechanical fashion. They are shown cutting watermelons, holding up jars of preserves, and competing in beauty contests. In the footage these women never speak— they are only on display—and the people in the frame are always either all white or all African-American. Kissel lets these and other unsettling aspects of the footage rise organically to the surface of the viewer’s mind. Her lyrical, haunting arrangement of
these images speaks for itself—there is no narration necessary. The sequence is just one small moment among a decade’s worth of extremely varied and impressive documentary work, but it goes a long way towards conveying Kissel’s unique cinematic gift. Though many of her projects take on subjects and settings full of urgent social issues, Kissel made it clear in our conversation that she does not play the role of advocate in her films—she is always, above all, an artist and a storyteller, and her mission is primarily to show and not to tell. Kissel seems to
bring this artistry to her other major role as well, that of Professor and Director of the Film and Media Studies Program at USC. Although she is acutely aware of the challenges that women face in trying to break into many media fields (especially in Hollywood, where women are severely underrepresented), Kissel feels that the best she can do is to set an example for her students, and not necessarily preach or protest. Her current project, now in postproduction, is the highly ambitious feature documentary Cotton Road. The film examines the transnational cotton supply chain by following the manufacturing process of everyday cotton products. Kissel traces these products’ origins in the fields of rural South Carolina to their processing in Chinese textile cities and then to their eventual sale worldwide. In keeping with her artistic principles, Kissel has shot the film as a humanistic portrait rather than as a didactic expose. We begin our long conversation about her career, her pedagogy, and her views on the current state of women in film by discussing one of our favorite books: Erik Barnouw’s classic history of documentary film. Barnouw divides his book into chapters named after the various functions that documentary filmmakers have served since the invention of cinema: prophet, explorer, reporter, advocate, etc. Jasper: So if you don’t see yourself as an advocate when it comes to the social issues in your films, how would define yourself according to Barnouw’s categories? Kissel: I think honestly: Poet. Painter. Catalyst. Observer... I think a combination of those. Because as much as I think that there is a political leaning in my films, and that there’s always a sort of suggestion towards a new way seeing, it’s never very strong—it’s never an argument. It’s not that I think that some of the issues I’m interested in aren’t urgent. It’s just that the way that I want to approach them is more about an invitation to a conversation than it is an argument for a particular way of seeing or understanding. Jasper: What about as an educator? Given the special difficulties women face trying to break into the film industry, do you ever feel like you need to be an advocate in that regard? Do you ever find yourself coaching your female students differently? Kissel: I’ve never felt like I needed to say, “It’s going to be harder for you.” I always say “go for it.” Whatever path that leads to—whether it’s doing narrative films, and you’re accepting an Academy Award in a few years, or whether it’s commercial work or whatever it is. Be the best you can. And yeah you’re not going to find a lot of female role models out there but maybe you can be one for somebody coming up. But I never say that!
Do you ever look at that Glass Ceiling Report for women in the media industry? It’s just disgusting. There were more female filmmakers working in Hollywood in the 1920s and ‘30s than there are now! When teaching film and media history I think that’s really critical; it needs to be taught that there were a number of female directors, technology experts, and editors. We were better before and now the industry is worse in terms of its gender makeup. I see it in the classroom too. I feel like I had more female students than I have now.
ening. But I was so interested in the world that I thought, well, documentary is really my thing anyway. And I didn’t know at that time that there were women in documentary history. I had no idea. All I knew was David Attenborough nature movies that were shown to me in science class. But somehow it just seemed like a way to speak, and a way to organize information and a way to say something. And that felt good to be able to do.
Jasper. But we also always hear that the documentary field is more open to women. Do you find that to be true?
Kissel: When I went to college. My professor of documentary studies and then production, Patricia Zimmerman. She’s at Ithaca College. She’s still there, she’s still my mentor. I learn so much from her every day.
Kissel: Definitely. A lot of women find their place in documentary. Jasper: Why do you think that is? Kissel: It’s interesting. Maybe the reason in part is because the history [of documentary] is so liberal and open and all about questioning and exploring issues that maybe women tend to care more about—issues of representation or gender or social concerns. And so perhaps women are really compelled by the ways in which they see that documentary has played a role in advocating for progressive causes over the years, which it has. Every time I teach it I’m kind of like, wow, I bet the conservative students in my class, if there are any, might be really frustrated with this. But that’s the way the history is. It’s like people who are drawn to be documentary makers want to speak something that is not being addressed in a mainstream media context. And so that’s why they find their way there. Jasper: At what point were you aware that there might be particular challenges for you as a woman trying to get involved in film? Kissel: I remember being in high school actually and somehow learning or hearing or being told that the majority of film workers in Hollywood were male. I was really interested in movies and in how they were made so I would read lots of books and magazines about them. But I was also really interested in science and history and I was already kind of making documentaries as slide tape shows, back before video was really accessible. I was editing by hitting record on one VCR and sending the signal through another VCR—you know, just really crude stuff. So I was drawn to documentary early. But I remember learning that it was going to be difficult—that there weren’t any women in Hollywood. I remember learning that and thinking that’s really disheart-
Jasper: How soon did you find a mentor?
I was on a panel with her at NAMAC [National Alliance for Media Arts and Culture] and a couple other filmmakers in September. I’m always so honored whenever I can learn from her, which I still do. So I knew I could be a female documentary filmmaker when my professor was also a female documentary maker and historian and writer and theorist. She taught me everything I know about documentary. Jasper: So do you think you would have had the same connection if your first film professor had been a man? Kissel: That is a great question. I’ve actually never thought about that because it’s so natural to think of my documentary teachers as being female. In fact, in graduate school my documentary production teacher was also female: Laura Kipnis [cultural critic, video artist, and professor at Northwestern University]. So that’s a great question you’re asking. I mean I had male media professors; in fact most of them were male. So I learned film production from a male professor, I learned broadcast production from male professors. I learned most of the technical stuff from them. But I learned about the ideas and the history and the theory—and just the aesthetics and the ways that one could engage with the world through documentary film from female professors, from women. Jasper: If they hadn’t been there do you think things might have turned out differently for you? What’s your intuition about that? Kissel: Gosh my intuition is that I don’t know what I would be doing if she hadn’t been my teacher. I don’t know—it’s a great question. It almost makes me cry to think about it, because she gave me so much. I mean she just gave me my whole ca-
043
Photos from Cotton Road Courtesy of Laura Kissel
reer—and yes it’s a combination of people throughout your life obviously who nurture your abilities. But her way of teaching, and her way of opening me up to what’s possible—that really set me on a path. Jasper: And did she speak directly to any issues of being a woman in the field? Or did she also avoid doing that? Kissel: I don’t think there was direct coaching as much as there was an encouragement to be willing to speak about your personal experiences in your work, and maybe even letting your personal experiences guide you in the kind of work that you make. I remember at the time, I had already applied for an internship and I felt like the guy was trying to hit on me when he was interviewing me. And it was a really weird creepy thing and I never went back there. This was for a local small town internship. But you know, that then ended up fueling my ideas for something that I produced in her class. So I think that she encouraged me to see myself and my life as experience for storytelling in documentary. And so because of that how can you not ever bring your gender into it? Of course you do—whether it’s obviously the topic that you’re exploring it or whether it’s a bit more subtle. Like in my current film [Cotton Road], where I realize that all the people that are
044
producing the cotton crop are male and as soon as I get to China pretty much everybody is female in the factory. So there’s a way in which as a female I can see the gender differences, or because I’m feminist I can see the gender differences, and the way that gender breaks up along employment lines. Jasper: So although you might not speak directly to these issues with your female students, do you ever find yourself actually teaching women differently? Kissel: I’ll tell you what I see myself doing in the classroom. If I end up with a small group of women [in a class of mostly men], at some point in the semester I try to make them all work together. And not as a way of ghettoizing them, but as a way of hopefully enabling them to see that they have an opportunity as an all-female production group to maybe approach subject matter that they couldn’t or wouldn’t feel comfortable approaching with a male student in their mix. And so again I never tell them that, but I hope that it happens. And it almost always does. Not always, but often. Jasper: So if you find that encouraging female students to collaborate leads to good things, I wonder whether you, in your own career, ever find yourself wanting to collaborate with women for particular reasons?
Kissel: I do feel that way. For instance, right now I am looking for an editor to collaborate with on finishing my film [Cotton Road]. I want to find someone who is sensitive to my vision, and my initial impulse is that it has to be a female editor. I don’t know if that’s right or not. I’m certainly talking to women and I’m talking to men. But if I can find a woman to collaborate with I think that, everything else being equal in terms of experience, I would probably almost always choose the woman. Maybe because of a kind of unspoken or shared understanding of experience. Maybe because there are certain ways of looking at the world that might be marked by one’s experience as a woman in contemporary society. Jasper: That makes sense. It’s hard when you’re forced to articulate these sorts of things, isn’t it? Kissel: It is hard, because you don’t want to ghettoize yourself. And I don’t want to say there aren’t men who couldn’t also see those things because I think there are. Jasper: Can you tell us more about how you approach the social and women’s issues in your current project, Cotton Road? You mentioned that the cotton field workers were all men, and the factory workers were all women. When you see something like that as a filmmaker, how do you approach it or try to convey it to your audience?
Kissel: I hope that it’s obvious. I hope that people see it for themselves. I guess maybe that’s also the kind of filmmaking I like to do. I really want my audience to be engaged. I don’t want to just deliver everything to them or tell them what to think. I want them to come to the film and search for what it is that I am trying to say. I want there to be some give and take and some space in the film for people to kind of enter and try to figure it out—not only what I feel but also what they feel when they see, for instance, the cotton supply chain bifurcated like it is along gender lines. But again that maybe gets back to the question you asked about whether I want a male or female film editor. I think a female editor would be more sensitive to seeing that than a male editor and could help me find ways to pull that out of the story a little bit more. Again, who knows, maybe that’s not always the case. Jasper: How do you look at Columbia as a place for film and media right now? What are the possibilities and the difficulties? Kissel: It’s a small media market. It’s not that you can’t make a living here—I see my students striking out on their own, starting business and doing pretty well. In fact, I just saw one [former student] today at the restaurant. He started a film production company in Columbia doing corporate work. So it’s a small media market, but that offers a certain kind of opportunity for media producers and for students for internships, which is good. As an independent documentary maker it’s a little isolating insofar as there’s not a lot of us. But in perhaps some ways that’s a good thing because it means that you can, I suppose, be seen as someone who is
doing something unique in your community and able to contribute something that people will value, whereas if there are five hundred people making documentaries in Columbia it wouldn’t be seen as something unique and valuable. So perhaps there’s a benefit there. I think though that one of the things that surprises me is that there’s been a strong media community in Columbia for a really, really long time. It’s just not something that’s been totally cohesive. Do you know the animator Helen Hill, who grew up here? She unfortunately was murdered in New Orleans right after Katrina. Helen got interested in filmmaking because a filmmaker came to her class in middle school and did a workshop on stop-motion animation with Super 8 film. So Helen had local experiences in the schools around media literacy and media education that were available to her. And there’s the Nickelodeon and its presence, and the South Carolina Arts Commission for many years had a giant Southeastern Media Institute that they ran, but then it got defunded and was shut down. In fact all of the media arts work that used to be done by the South Carolina Arts Commission got obliterated. When I arrived it was still present, even though it was at that point I think already grossly defunded and scaled down. At least the first years I lived here, in 1999 and 2000, they still had the Southeastern Media Institute. In fact I think I taught a class on video editing there. And there’s ETV and there’s INPUT, which is run out of ETV. So there’s really kind of a lot going on. And I tell my students: you guys should feel incredibly lucky that there’s an art house cinema with a vibrant culture surrounding it in a town this size. And it’s been here since the late 70s? That’s astonishing.
So is there a vibrant media culture in Columbia, South Carolina? I think there’s media here and there always has been. And I think that as far as it becoming known as a place for media, and it being a place that has a cohesive sense to the media community, I don’t that that has ever really existed. But it’s not that there’s no stuff going on. Because there really is. Jasper: Do you look forward to a time when there might be more cohesion in the Columbia media community? Do you think that needs to happen or not? What do you think could keep more of your media students in Columbia, as opposed to going to LA or New York? Kissel: Again it depends on the career track of the student, but it’s probably still important to go to LA and New York to find your networks and build experience. I think maybe to be viable in the industry one still needs to look outside of Columbia, though I guess I’m only speaking as an independent filmmaker here. So I don’t think Columbia can be that, probably. But it can nurture people when they’re just starting out, like it did Marie Halliday who is now at HBO films, or like it did for Alyssa St. Vincent, who is now in New York as a really strong media producer doing really cool projects from broadcaster to broadcaster. I can think of other people too. There’s another woman named Lauren Heath in New York who is working as a production assistant. But Columbia launched all of them. You can nurture people here. You can really give them great experience starting out in their careers doing all kinds of stuff—real hands on experience that they can then take to a larger media market. I absolutely think Columbia offers that.
045
J A S PER W AT C H E S
leading ladies of columbia // 2013 here’s no shortage of talent in the Midlands. Last year Jasper profiled five of the many talented women who grace local theatre stages on a regular basis. As promised, we return this year with three more of our more talented theatre women. Laurel Posey and Robin Gottlieb have shined in lead and featured roles since the 1990s, while Giulia Marie Dalbec has joined their ranks within the last decade. Between them are credits in nearly 200 shows, and all have worked together repeatedly, yet never all three in the same play. Jasper is pleased to introduce you to the latest installment of our continuing series on the Leading Ladies of Columbia.
aurel Posey is a native South Carolinian from the upstate who spent her middle and high school years living in Germany, before returning for college at Millikin University in Illinois. Both of her parents are “musicians and music teachers,” she explains, “so the arts were always a part of my life. I took dance starting in kindergarten,” played “the mama rabbit in a church musical about Noah’s ark,” and was hooked on performing from fourth grade onward. Even in the audience, “I would imagine what role I’d want to play - Eponine in Les Mis, Christine in Phantom, etc. and what I would do with it. I still do that, actually!” Posey “entered college with every intention of pursuing a performance career, but about halfway through I realized I didn’t really want that. I hate auditioning enough as it is – even today I get incredibly nervous – and I knew I didn’t want my rent depending on it.” Although she “went to a few professional auditions just to see what would happen,” she never wanted to be forced to take a role. “As much as I’d love to do nothing but perform, ultimately I’d rather have ‘a day job’ and be able to work on only the artistic projects I really want to do, and get to choose where I live.” Nevertheless, she enjoyed Milliken, where she earned a BFA in musical theatre, and finds the experiences from a smaller, specialized program to have been invaluable.
Apart from the chance to play diverse parts that she might not be suited for in the real world of Broadway, Posey learned two important lessons from an influential professor, Maria Klott: sometimes you just get outsung (i.e. no matter how good your audition is, you may not get cast) and when in doubt, be classy (i.e. no one likes a diva). After graduation, “four Midwest winters was enough,” and a friend at USC drew Posey to Columbia, where she ended up at the SC Arts Commission, first as receptionist, then as assistant arts coordinator. She is now «the agency’s contact person for organizations and schools in four rural counties, and for artists and statewide organizations working in theatre or dance.» Posey “used to do four or five projects a season,” but now values her down time, and laughs that “it’s time for a break when I start to agree with the non-theatre people who say, ‘Good grief, you mean you work all day and then go rehearse all evening, for free? That’s crazy!’ ” She has appeared in “probably 70 or 80 shows, conservatively,”including productions at Town, Workshop, Trustus, Camden, Chapin, Lexington, and USC, plus special performances with the SC Philharmonic, Vibrations Dance, and the annual TORCH cabaret for PALSS. Favorite roles include the Witch in Into the Woods and Millie in Thoroughly Modern Millie. Recently she played one of the leads in [title of show] (with Gottlieb), and the title role(s) in Victor/ Victoria. She still has her sights set on Les Misérables, adding that “I’m definitely too old for Eponine now, but Fantine might still be in reach,” as well as Elphaba in Wicked. Her range is still wide, and she notes that “stage can be more forgiving than film. It’s easier to camouflage an actor’s age when there’s a bit of distance, and the theatre has more of a convention of suspension of disbelief.” Still, she sees “a whole new set of potential roles opening up as I get older,” and rattles off a dozen, including Rose in Gypsy, M’Lynn in Steel Magnolias, and Violet in August: Osage County. “I’m not going to run out of things to aspire to any time soon!” Posey believes that theatre “feeds the soul. It helps us know we’re not alone in what we think and feel, and also reminds us that there are other points of view, other worlds, other realities outside our own. And that’s just some of the inherent beauty of it,” apart from the economic and educational benefits to the community. She describes
B y a u g ust kri ckel
the Midlands theatre and arts community as “thriving, thriving, thriving. That is what made me decide to stay here 18 years ago ... the level of interest and activity in this small city is amazing. There are plenty of much larger cities that don’t have nearly the opportunities to see and do high quality work, to enjoy theatre so much in so many different styles. I’m constantly amazed by what people are doing here, and I feel so privileged to be part of it.”
heatre is in Robin Gottlieb’s blood. Her father was a board leader at Workshop, and her grandmother, Ruth Gottlieb Moore, was one of Columbia’s most prolific leading ladies from the 1950s onward, as well as “the Story Lady” on local radio. Gottlieb jokes that only now, at 94, does Moore concede that her granddaughter may have developed enough as an actress to share the stage with her someday. Gottlieb attended Heathwood Hall, and was involved in drama as one of many activities; piano was another passion, as was softball for which she notes she was named MVP. Her first role in community theatre was as an orphan in a Bette Herring production of Annie, alongside the young Kristin Davis. She considered studying visual art in Savannah, but instead attended the University of Alabama, then Brevard, and finally USC, graduating after eight and an half years of college with a degree in theatre. In many ways, though, she feels that she grew up and went to college at Workshop Theatre, followed by grad school at Trustus, plus she’s done her share of shows at Lexington and USC. Gottlieb taught theatre for seven years at Crayton Middle School, enjoying teaching and directing, but hating the structure of the system. She now works by day as a hair stylist - “a damn good one,” she emphasizes - at Bombshell Beauty Studio in Five Points, where she laughingly says her mission is to “get rid of bad Columbia hair.” She could never see enduring the stress of auditions in New York, or the weather, just to play “the second tree from the right,” or living in a big city, especially since she has been able to grow here in Columbia, where the opportunities afforded her have been “stupid cool.” “If I focused on one thing, I’d
Photo by Jonathan Sharpe | Left to Right: Laurel Posey, Robin Gottlieb, Giulia Dalbec 046
be great,” she says, but she prefers to be “a performer, rather than specifically a singer, dancer, actor, or artist.” Her favorite roles include Sally in Cabaret, Maureen in Rent, and the title character in Sylvia, all at Trustus, Roxie in Chicago and Rose in Gypsy at Workshop, as well as Bitsy Mae in Sordid Lives, a role in which director Greg Leevy cast her, after she lied that she could play the guitar. Gottlieb sees the quality of talent as “amazing and fantastic” in Columbia, perhaps more so than in Charlotte and Atlanta, and the local arts community is still small enough to collaborate. “The artists all support each other, but we need more sophisticated audiences” to be involved, as they are in some larger cities. Gottlieb grew up “worshipping” established performers like Cynthia Gilliam, Jim E. Quick, Tamra Stephenson, and Deirdre Daniels Mount, and “didn’t care for the first twelve years” if she had lines or not; in fact, her first real speaking role was not until her college years, when she played an especially bloodthirsty Red Riding Hood in Into the Woods. “Theatre is live, real, and it teaches people - it’s like a sport. It teaches you to work as a team, and to learn non-verbal communication.” Gottlieb is becoming more interested in direction at Trustus, after successes with Nunsense A-Men, The Great American Trailer Park Musical, and 5 Lesbians Eating a Quiche. “I’ll cast good people. I’ll make them work in ways they’re not used to working.” She would love to play the mother in Blood Brothers someday, to revisit Mama Rose as an older performer, and to be in a John Guare play. Yet she enjoys the freedom of not being in dance class every day, and having a life when she’s not on stage, since “you have to experience the real,” as opposed to doing shows “back-toback-to back.” “The older I get, the real-life character of myself is more important,” especially since it’s not “scripted by someone else.”
eeing Gottlieb giggle and tease with Giulia Marie Dalbec, one might think they are sisters, not teacher and student as they once were, or mother and daughter, as they played in Gypsy. Like Gottlieb, Dalbec grew up in Columbia and was always around rehearsals where her older sister Nyna was performing. She first recalls acting on stage as Lester the Jester in The Princess and the Pea at the Footlight Playhouse. Dance classes with Ann Brodie’s Carolina Ballet were a priority too for as long as she can remember, and she played Clara in The Nutcracker in 6th grade, while she was also in rehearsals to play the lead in The Best Christmas Pageant Ever at Town Theatre.
048
Gottlieb directed Dalbec first at Crayton Middle School in Fiddler on the Roof and in Guys and Dolls, where Dalbec was cast as Sarah, not the role she wanted, Adelaide. “I was the comedic, joking kid, and Robin knew I could do a lot more.” She considered residential programs for the arts, but “no one was doing musical theatre;” students had to focus on dance, voice, or straight acting, and Dalbec “wanted to be able to talk.” Instead she consciously chose A.C. Flora based on the reputation of the drama program. Students “did everything - we built sets; even if you’re the lead, you learn. I could build you a flight of stairs right now,” she declares. Donna McKennaCrook cast her as “Rose, the slutty tart” in Dancing at Lughnasa in high school, again not the role she wanted, telling her that “you are the only person who can play this part.” Although planning for college at a conservatory, Dalbec developed a “severe heart issue” in senior year, and dropped out of school, although she immediately adds that she still performed in the show she had been cast in. Health concerns led her to stop dancing, but absence from the stage only made her depressed, and when traditional medicine didn’t work, she turned to a “more holistic approach,” involving a chiropractor and an acupuncturist. A cluster of pinched nerves was diagnosed as the actual root of her physical problems, and performing was recommended as excellent therapy. “Just not seven shows a year, like before,” she laughs. By day Dalbec “be-bopped around the service industry for five years,” where she “enjoyed the chance to read people. It’s like a psychology class, plus you get to be a smart ass and you still get tipped for it.” Dalbec is now a manager at Cock-n-Bull Pub, and teaches ballet with Workshop Theatre’s youth program, Broadway Bound. Many of her students end up in musicals where she is the lead. “To me, that’s such a great way to learn, and to grow as a person: being in a show with someone you look up to, and respect. They will pick up so much more from watching” than simply being taught. It’s a chance for her to pass along the torch, just as Gottlieb did with her. This to her is the purpose of community theatre, and of civic ballet. “It’s not just to be on Broadway. These (skills) will help you in every aspect of your life, no matter what field you go into. You learn camaraderie, time management, and teamwork, just like in sports,” she says. Dalbec’s favorite roles include Lola in Damn Yankees, Martha in The Secret Garden, and Elle in Legally Blonde, to which she was drawn when she realized “that it was all about the girl,” a rarity in musicals. “There are about a thousand roles I’d like to play some day,” including Aida, Martha in Virginia Woolf , (she recently played Honey for Cynthia Gilliam at Workshop Theatre), and Roxie in Chicago. “Or Velma,” she clarifies. “Or Amos!” Still, she is most invested
in whatever role she is doing at the time. She marvels at the opportunities she has had “over the last seven years to play so many cool roles” that she dreamed of doing as she was growing up. “So many amazing women!” she says. Dalbec played Lola at 19 and Gypsy at 21, and would love the chance to reprise each at 30. “The parts I’ve fallen in love with, I haven’t said goodbye to yet,” she says. At age 19, Dalbec spent an extended weekend in New York, going on professional auditions for shows like Spider-Man, and getting lots of callbacks. She was a finalist for the cast of a touring production of Chicago, but was told that she was too tall for the ensemble, with too forceful a stage presence. The casting director confided that she would have been a contender for the lead role of Roxie, except she had too few professional credits; Dalbec just smiled, and thanked them all, admitting that this was her first audition ever in New York, then watching as their chins hit the floor. She’s happy where she is now, however, and for the present wants to stay close to family. She feels that Columbia has an underrated arts and theatre community, which the general public is just now starting to realize exists. She’s not ruling anything out in the future – teaching (although perhaps in a company setting, not at a school) or more roles in community or even regional theatre, but for now Dalbec is quite content to continue learning and growing in local theatre in her home town.
049
J A S PER L I S T E N S
“Bikini Kill is more than just a band or a zine or an idea, it’s part of a revolution. The revolution is about going to the playground with your best girlfriends. You are hanging upside down on the bars and all the blood is rushing to your head. It’s a euphoric feeling. The boys can see our underwear and we don’t really care. I’m so sure that lots of girls are also into revolution and we want to find them.” – “Revolution Girl Style Now!”, Bikini Kill #1: A Color and Activity Book, 1991 he male domination of rock and roll has always been one of those troubling things that is difficult to ignore, and the underlying sexism of both the music’s message and the culture that surrounds it even more so. From its Above and Page Right | Photos by Thomas Hammond
050
origins in the 1950s and 60s to today, from the national scene to the local, you find men outnumbering woman in a landslide. Even in alternative, indie, or punk scenes, this largely holds true. And while it’s easy to cherry pick names from throughout musical history that proved exceptions to the rule, that doesn’t really provide a rebuttal to the problem. Fortunately, in the late 80s and early 90s, a musical-political-cultural movement labeled “Riot Grrrl” emerged in the punk and indie scenes of DC and the Pacific Northwest. The movement was centered around punk rock and performance, but was also explicitly concerned with zine culture, DIY feminism, politics, organizing, and, above all, empowering women in any and every way possible. Bands like Bikini Kill, Bratmobile, and Sleater-Kinney were outspoken and brash, with an in-your-face desire to create a safe space for women in a punk rock—and rock and roll—culture which far too often victimized or cast them aside. What does this have to do with Columbia’s music scene circa 2013? Well, that’s what we here at Jasper are curious about. So we sat down with what are arguably the inheritors—or at least beneficiaries—of the riot grrrl movement in town to figure it out: Jessica Oliver (Can’t Kids, people person, falling off a building, Hauswerk), Ony Ratsimbaharison (Chemical Peel, Potty Mouth, Hauswerk), and Zoe Lollis (Burnt Books). The three women all know each other— Lollis and Ratsimbaharison went to Dreher High School together, and Oliver and Ratsimbaharison both play in Hauswerk—and share somewhat typical stories about how they got into music. Lollis got into the punk scene in high school along with Ratsimbaharison and later picked up the banjo while briefly inspired by the folk train-hopper tradition (“I ended up sounding nothing like that,” she says. “But I like what I do more than that stuff though—it’s more original, I think.”) Ratsimbaharison started playing guitar through her high school’s classical guitar program, although she quickly veered towards the punk scene and the elec-
051
tric guitar. Oliver picked up the guitar as an early teen, and ended up playing in a punkpop band while in high school in Lancaster. (“I got a phone call at my parent’s house— it was like 2 in the afternoon—and it was these three dudes from high school that I didn’t hang out with very much,” she recalls. “And they were three-way calling me and they were like ‘um, we need a singer for our band and we want you to audition.’”) After these initial beginnings, Ratsimbaharison would eventually start a band with drummer Victoria Mandelas called Chemical Peel, a punk rock band with distinct roots in No Wave punk and the riot grrrl scene, as well as playing in Potty Mouth and Haus Werk. Oliver would, in addition to working on her fuzz-laden singer/songwriter material in people person and performing in Haus Werk, bangs on the drums and serve as the vocal foil for Adam Cullum in the indie rock powerhouse Can’t Kids.
052
Lollis, in a somewhat dramatic fashion, debuted as a frontwoman for the explosive post-hardcore punk quintet Burnt Books this past year, along with former members of Tunguska, Thank God, and Guyana Punch Line. Off stage, the three make for an interesting spectrum of moods and personalities. Lollis is a mercurial presence, an odd mix of reserve and honesty that befits her rather unique position in Burnt Books, and with a withering sarcasm that she wears like a second skin. Ratsimbaharison is shy and introspective, and seems an unlikely candidate (like so many riot grrrls) for the kind of in-your-face punk rock she performs. It’s Oliver who most resembles her onstage persona, jumping into the conversation with the kind of enthusiasm, energy, and lack of pretense that characterizes her smart-but-fun approach to her various projects.
All three confess to something that might seem somewhat of a surprise—they never considered “being a woman” in a rock band a big deal until after the fact. “When I first started playing with Burnt Books, I didn’t really think about it,” Lollis says. “I just always wanted to scream in a band! And it was just a bunch of songs about a bad breakup. But when dudes would react like, ‘Wow, that’s crazy, I didn’t expect that, you are actually really good,’” I was like ‘Yeah, okay.’” Ratsimbaharison echoes Lollis’ sentiments. “I consider myself a feminist [now]. I didn’t when I first started playing, when I was just messing around,” she says. “You aren’t necessarily force into it, but you come face-to-face with it every time you play. I mean, I didn’t think of myself as a female musician, just a musician, until people would point it out to me, that [that was] interesting. You just hear things that should never be said, that you wouldn’t hear about men playing music.” Oliver provides a quick example of this phenomenon, recalling a joint tour that Can’t Kids, Chemical Peel, and Potty Mouth were on up the East Coast. “The sound guy just walked up to [Potty Mouth bassist] Ali’s amp and started turning all the knobs on the amp around,” she remembers. “I feel like he thought this girl didn’t know how to set up her stuff or whatever. He never would have done that Adam or Henry [of Can’t Kids].” All three, but particularly Lollis, are quick to also point out the power that comes from being on stage. “I always felt like I was the butt of every joke, just because I was a girl and I was younger than everyone else, and it still kind of pisses me off that [a lot of guys] are like, ‘wow, you’re my bro now because you are in a band with a bunch of old dudes and you can actually sing,’” she says. “But I like it, though, because I get to shout whatever I want to on stage, and they are pretty much forced to listen to me. A lot of the women that come to those shows are pretty much just the dudes’ coat rack, and they just stand in the back.” And although she confesses to being nervous on stage, Lollis has embraced its possibilities for confronting a punk rock audience that can often be less than enlightened. At Burnt Books’ Free Times Music Crawl show last year, Lollis appeared on stage shirtless, with nothing but a leather jacket for cover, to a variety of responses. And although she’s still not sure exactly how she feels about it, there’s a distinct pride in confronting the issue. “The whole point of that was that people wouldn’t look at me as a woman on stage anymore—I’m just performing.” She explains. “Yeah, I’m right here, half naked, but don’t look at me like I’m a sex object. I mean, my drummer gets almost completely naked for every performance. I don’t know, and maybe that was a little too blunt. But I think it did get the point across.
Above: Jessica Oliver, Zoe Lollis, Ony Ratsimbaharison | Above and Page Left | Photos by Thomas Hammond
Every dude who came up to me afterward was like, “Your stage presence was completely awesome, you were pushing people around and shit” –and usually I don’t do that. And it was kind of weird, because all of the dudes were about my stage presence, and all of the girls were like “Awww, you were so hot! Tits!” Whatever.” Lollis’ performance in many ways points out the difficulties of finding the right way to confront the issue of being treated differently on stage. Ratsimbaharison also reflects on this problem. “You feel like there’s a need [to be political]—or even just feel a need to be there, as woman, just playing on stage,” she says. “But you also kind of contradict yourself, because you don’t want to be the exception, but then you also kind of do.” She also admits that “I want to play with girlfriends [now]—I don’t want to exclude guys, but knowing what I know now, I don’t want to start a band with just anyone.” Oliver has similar sentiments about Haus Werk, an all-female, “sort of silly” punk band [“We wear aprons and stuff,” she explains. “It’s very tongue-in-cheek”] with the most explicitly feminist agenda of any of the trio’s musical projects. Inspired by her first day job in Columbia at Earth Fare and seeing so many moms and “housewives” come in, Oliver and friend Katherine Mc-
Cullough began having “these conversations about gender roles, and societal customs and expectations. Stuff that you’re fed as a little girl, this is what you do when you grow up, you get married, have babies, and you take care of a family,” she recalls. “So we’re really writing in response to that—not saying that all those ideas are wrong, that traditional, male/female gender roles are bad, those work for some people—but that’s not the way that people have to live their lives, and that shouldn’t be an expectation for people.” On the other hand, Oliver also doesn’t want to oversell the concept. “It’s just a bunch of girls playing punk rock together,” she says in summation. “But it’s really fun, and really important to me.” Haus Werk in many ways represents the sort of DIY, in-their-own-way approach each of the women have in their relationship to the riot grrrl movement, which Ratsimbaharison admits to not being aware of until Chemical Peel started getting compared to those bands [“I was inspired by groups like Bad Brains and the Dead Kennedys,” she says] and Oliver says she learned a lot about only last year, working at the Girls Rock Camp in Charleston (A Girls Rock Camp is in the works for Columbia this summer). They all agree, however,
that they are very much spiritually aligned with the ethos of Bikini Kill and company. Lollis, for example, is excited about the prospect of playing shows with more diverse listeners and reach an audience outside of the “old metal guys” who were fans of her bandmates’ former projects. “It would be kind of cool to get together with some feisty fucking ladies and just rock out,” she exclaims. “If we were to play some awesome feminist/queer space, I would love that—or even something more openminded, it doesn’t have to be feminist.” Oliver, inspired by experience at the Girls Rock Camp last summer in Charleston, is excited about growing that project in Columbia. “In a male-dominated field, it’s important to teach young girls that they can do this,” say says. “And sometimes when girls are that young, they are super-insecure, and when there are guys around, they get even more insecure. So it’s partly about creating a safe-space feel [and] environment.” Together, all three present, at the very least, a pointed, powerful counter narrative on a local scene far too often dominated by men, and a vibrant example of the kind of music and message young women rocking out on stage can give to the next generation.
053
local
record b y k y l e petersen
Dear Blanca // Talker “Moving to Texas,” the opening track of Dear Blanca’s new record, at one point literally asks the question every debut album posits: “Honestly, do you ever see him going anywhere?” The answer, is so many words, is “yes.” Although Dylan Dickerson has been bumming around the Columbia music scene for the last few years, we’ve never really gotten a full-flung artistic statement from him until now. A singer/songwriter and guitarist who cites both the eclectic 80s punk of the Minutemen and the philosophic folk of Townes Van Zandt as influences while performing with barebones lineups and his spellbinding, idiosyncratic lead guitar style, Dickerson is a musician, despite his ramshackle sound, with big aspirations. Recorded in Charlotte with Bo White (of the gloriously unfettered indie rock act Yardwork), Talker in some measure makes good on those intentions. White’s production experience shows up throughout, as the record manages to retain the loose feel of Dear Blanca live even as he piles on the extra instruments and more involved arrangements. While Dickerson’s electric guitar work and long-time partner-in-crime Marc Coty’s drumming is still front-and-center, the occasionallyboisterous horn arrangements, keyboard parts, and drunken background vocals are recorded with a kind of elegant wooziness that fits the proceedings. In other words, this is a ramshackle rock album that nonetheless requires you to take it seriously. 054
Of course, the center stage of any Dear Blanca record will always be Dickerson’s voice, a huge, wounded instrument that bleeds the blues as much as it touches on indie rock touchstones like Jeff Mangum or Conor Oberst. In short, this is the kind of vocal performance that almost inevitably must aspire to a gut-wrenchingly honest aesthetic, as the singer has to allow the flaws and trembles in his voice to all hang out in the name of self-expression. While it might not be everybody’s cup of tea, for those who allow themselves to soak up the power and poignancy of the human voice, there’s no turning back. Dickerson and company are heading to Austin for SXSW this year, along with a few fellow Post-Echo cohorts. With this album in hand, they just might have the right kind of luck to catch some buzz on the national stage.
Marshall Brown // Through Vivaldian Colored Glasses Marshall Brown is one of those musicians who is easy not to get on first listen—while his vocal talents and sense of melody are undeniable, his penchant for experimental recording techniques and hazy, extended segues and codas can often make his LPs seem like a labyrinth. Once you’re “in” his albums, though, it’s hard not to fall in love. This is perhaps most true on
his latest effort, Through Vivaldian Colored Glasses, released in early February. Again utilizing an eight track digital recorder (as he did on 2010’s New Moons and 2012’s High Noons) and recording all the instruments and vocals (save the drums) himself, Brown conjures up songs and melodies that evoke The Beatles and The Kinks filtered through Pink Floyd and the Elephant 6 collective, a rich psychedelic record ideally experienced through headphones. While New Moons was all about the Jeff Buckley-meets-Donovan songcraft and High Noons saw the introduction of lush keyboard arrangements, the innovation this time around is a refined sense of arrangement and sound (plus a genuine mastering of the record in a real studio, courtesy of Zac Thomas at the Jam Room), along with a more conceptual approach that sees Brown’s talents shining brightest. The opening four tunes exquisitely work through the four seasons (a riff on Vivaldi’s Four Seasons) in a Side 2 of Abbey Road fashion, with a tenderly picked acoustic guitar, lush keyboards and multitracked vocals creating a sound that is at once evocative and absorbing. From there, Brown strings together three mini-songs into an 8 minute medley that moves from the tender beauty of the first section of the album to a more epic, grandiose sound which captures Brown in pseudo-full band mode. The final section is a mixed bag collection of songs which are often tied together in spite of themselves, moving from the schizophrenic ‘60s rock fragments of “Art School Blues” to the psychedelic drone of “Spaghetti Eastern” with preternatural ease. While we here at Jasper have always been a fan of Brown’s music, both on record and live, this record raises the bar for both the songwriter and for local music in 2013 as a gorgeous, fully realized artistic statement that illustrates the broad eclecticism and stunning talent that Columbia’s music scene offers.
The Fishing JournaL // Ditch This second release from the Chris Powell-fronted project sharpens the edges of the debut self-titled 10”, which instantly evoked comparisons to Superchunk and Dinosaur Jr. with its high-voltage, blistering indie-punk sound and the heart-onsleeve songs and yelps from Powell. This time around the sound has actually deepened and solidified even more, whether the band is going full-tilt into an affectionate ode to the lead singer’s cat (the title cut) or tackling a half-ballad like “Moons.” Guitar parts still split the difference between linear melodies and hyper-active distortion, with outgoing bassists Reno Gooch (who plays on two cuts here) and new bassist Chuck Sligh (of Burnt Books fame) both providing a throttle-heavy low end and Josh Latham ably manning the skins. The collection closes with an obscure cover of Utah Package’s “Jagged Slide,” a tune which gives the band its most traditional punk framework from which to tilt and holler. Even not knowing the original, it’s a wonderful note to close on, going out in a fitting blaze of punk rock glory which never, truly, gets old.
A nascent indie pop-rock band that somehow defies expectations, The Mazloom Empire is a surprising blend of muscular rock arrangements and tight pop hooks. While the young front woman Lawdan Mazloom is a relative unknown with a knack for penning always-catchy, occasionally rocking tunes that seem easy to place the group squarely in the singer/songwriter-centered tradition, the cast of undeniably impressive characters that back her up —drummer Steve Sancho (Say Brother, Whiskey Tango Revue, others), bassist Brett Kent (Shallow Palace, Hollerin’ River Talkers), lead guitarist Zac Thomas (Jam Room engineer), and keyboard/ vocalist Marshall Brown (The Reverie)—ends up changing things considerably. From the sparkly reverb on the opening cut “Crystal Chandelier,” things seem amiss. The simple guitar chords that anchor the song are filtered through an effects pedal that gives them an echoing ghostliness and a resonance that leaves the listener offbalance, much like the subtle keyboard swells throughout the song do as well. The result is an uneasy tension not often found in such a hook-driven song. From there, songs like “On the Run” and “Burn In Hell” demonstrate a tightly-wound group determined to seek an identity as a band rather than merely fleshing out a singer’s original tunes, while “Allison” and “Take Me” really gives the group a chance to stretch out and get instrumentally loose and limber. But really, it’s the band’s ability to balance their adventurous and accessible tendencies that sets them apart, and makes them such an interesting addition to Columbia’s music scene. Keep your eyes (and ears) peeled for what’s likely to be a full-length follow-up later this year.
Eat Local, Eat Great, Eat With Us!
Columbia’s First
Wine Shop by Day, Wine Bar by Night! 2001 D Greene St. 803.343.3303 cellarongreene.com and right next door...
Voted Best Restaurant in Columbia by 2012 Free Times Poll!
The Mazloom EmpirE // Self-Titled
2001 A Greene St. 803.254.7828 mrfriendlys.com
Contact Us @ adteam@jaspercolumbia.com for advertising details
J A S PER R E A D S
Review // Seeking: Poetry and Prose Inspired by the Art of Jonathan Green, edited by Kwame Dawes and Marjory Wentworth B y S t e p h a n i e Y. Mitc hem ohn of the Cross, Teresa of Avila, and other western mystics used torturous acts to reach for the Divine (such as ground up glass in a shoe), and then used gloomy language to describe the resulting encounters (such as that “Dark Night of the Soul”). The same processes of reaching for the Divine happen in other cultures, but the spiritual depth often is not recognized, or worse, is misidentified by outsiders as superstition and ignorance. Seeking (University of South Carolina Press, 2013) is a Gullah mystical practice to encounter the Divine. African Americans from the coastal regions of Georgia, South Carolina, and Florida, the Gullah people have a distinctive culture with clear links to African forebears. South Carolina master artist Jonathan Green, who has roots in Gullah culture, describes the Gullah practice of seeking in his own words: “Traditionally, a person …‘seeking’ to become a Christian was required to go through a process of reflection…prior to actual baptism… This required an individual to go into the woods apart from others and seek the presence of God” (Seeking, xv). In the Gullah tradition, each person on the seeking-path has a mentor, an older member of the church, who serves as a guide, and the practice relies on fasting and an attention to dreams. Ultimately, though, the path through deprivation and dream must be taken alone. It is an encounter where the seeker discerns God’s voice and presence and the meaning for her or his own life, forming a relationship with the Divine through the ordinary and the unexpected. Seeking, in this sense, is a journey into mysticism and spirituality that goes beyond time and place.
ute to this volume, including many familiar South Carolina writers: Kwame Dawes, Nikky Finney, Charlene Spearen, Carol Ann Davis, Ed Madden, Ray McManus, Trish Dunaway, and Steven White. Poetry offers another language for the mysticism of seeking, as suggested by this excerpt from Paul Allen’s “What Is Required”:
Call it prayer, then, the moments where I’m not aware Green has turned this practice into a magnificent painting—a person, alone, in the wood, dwarfed by the surroundings, but peering intently to see beyond. In the new book, Seeking: Poetry and Prose Inspired by the Art of Jonathan Green, former USC poet Kwame Dawes and SC poet laureate Marjory Wentworth ask poets and writers from the region to respond to Green’s painting. Many responded not only to Green’s visual art, but also to the spiritual practice it portrays and the culture and history his work evokes. The book includes beautiful full-color images of the painting, as well as other paintings by Green that capture the day-to-day activities of the Gullah, figures standing before expanses of grass or sea. Green’s portraits of the rhythm of these lives show a constant seeking: in work, solitude, and prayer. Seeking is a beautiful book. In the preface, Wentworth explains how the painting began at Mepken Abbey, near Moncks Corner, land that was once a rice plantation and home to enslaved Africans. Visiting the Abbey, Jonathan Green went with Abbott Francis Kline to the unmarked graves of those former slaves. Thus began the idea of the painting, Seeking, which was unveiled at the Abbey in 2006. The poetry included in this collection gives voice to the journey into mysticism that many experience, but also tells the story of the individual, standing alone before self and eternity. Over thirty poets contrib-
even of how lovely the moment is— not liking, not disliking— not aware there is the moment until I’m back in the world” Seeking is a feast. The reader enters a place of holiness with no attempt to transcribe the experience into a dry abstraction. I recommend this book, not because it has important historical significance, but because it is one that will bring transcendent meanings into the reader’s life.
Stephanie Y. Mitchem is professor and chair of the Department of Religious Studies at the University of South Carolina. She has authored several books and many essays that explore the religious lives of black women.
057
review // into the flatland by kathleen robbins B y jon at h an s ha r p e
anging above Kathleen Robbins’ desk in USC’s McMaster College is one of the photographs from her Into the Flatland series. Just before a curve in the center of a dirt road stands a woman, her body turned toward a tilled field. Standing statuesque in a beige winter coat, she looks over her shoulder at either the first or last light of day. Above her, the sky is crossed with the blue and white of cirrus clouds. Shot on film with a wide angle Hasselblad, each rock of gravel in the sweeping foreground is in crisp focus. The woman is Robbins’ mother. Photographs from Into the Flatland, shown last February as part of the From Here to Mississippi exhibit at Tapp’s Arts Center on Main Street, explore the idea of familial obligation and a conflicted re-
058
lationship with home, specifically a rural home, and what it means when one decides to leave it. (The gallery series has been on tour since 2009; its next stop is at the University of Mississippi museum, from April through August 2013.) Robbins, an associate professor of photography at USC, was selected to participate in the New Orleans Photo Alliance’s PhotoNOLA show last fall, along with 64 other photographers. Her series Into the Flatland won the competition’s top award, which included a monetary prize and the printing of a limited edition hardcover book of her work. When Robbins finished graduate school in New Mexico in the fall of 2001, she and her brother, who finished a graduate program around the same time, decided to return home to Belle Chase, the family farm in the Mississippi delta. They felt drawn toward home and family after the events of September 11, Robbins says. For two years she and her brother took up residence in long dormant farm hous-
es once lived in by their kin. Robbins sets the scene in the book’s introduction: “I ate from my great-grandmother’s china and slept in her bed. At dusk I rocked on the porch and watched the blackbirds descend on the canebrake planted by my greatgrandfather.” Then, in 2003, Robbins was presented with an opportunity teach at the University of South Carolina. Leaving Belle Chase was a difficult decision. “I was aware of the fact that only [our] family would live in those houses, and once I left, no one would live there,” Robbins said. “When I got married in 2006 and bought a house here, there was this moment of realization; that my life in Mississippi was finished and I’ve left. And so I started taking photographs in a different way. When I returned home I was much more of an outsider.” Jasper had the opportunity to view one of the 50 copies of the limited edition, notfor-sale book, and talk with Robbins about the process of turning a gallery exhibit into a book. Robbins designed and edited the 98 page, 8 x 10 inch hardcover book, which includes a short story from Texas-based novelist Cynthia Shearer. “I showed her the [photo series] several years ago,” Robbins says of her collaboration with Shearer. “Her novel, The Celestial Jukebox, is based in Mississippi, and she’d written about the delta, so I knew she had an understanding about the landscape and the people there.” Robbins says when Shearer sent her the short story, “Still Life with Shotgun and Oranges,” she had goosebumps. “It fits the work perfectly,” she says. The 35 photographs she selected for Into the Flatland convey the tension she speaks of in the introduction; a sense of intimacy with, and distance from each subject. “I think a lot of photographers think of shooting in terms of a book. I do in particular, because my work is very much influenced by literature. I always think of it as an object you can hold in your hands and read.” Between the covers of a book, Into the Flatland “became a different manifestation of the work” Robbins said. “I think it finished it.” Robbins is in talks with publishers to release a more widely distributed printing of Into the Flatland this fall. A book based on her current series, In Cotton, is expected to be released in the fall of 2014.
Review // I’ll Call It like I See It: A Lesbian Speaks Out by Sheila Morris b y B r and i Ball ard ith two previous memoirs, Not Quite the Same and Deep in the Heart: A Memoir of Love and Longing, and a history of GLBT activism, author Sheila Morris is known for her willingness to tackle difficult social issues but always with a Southern sort of charm and humor. Her latest work, I’ll Call It like I See It: A Lesbian Speaks Out, is a loose collection of essays and personal stories ranging from the recurring thread of her mother’s battle with Alzheimer’s to jam making, tattoos, and travel between her homes in Columbia and Montgomery, Texas. Fans of Morris’ storytelling in her memoirs will find a similar tone, peppered with social commentary and detailed descriptions of both Southern and Southwestern foods. Themes common in Southern literature—home, lineage, and food—serve to ground the work early on. She writes, “I am surrounded by the ghosts of generations of family members who relied on their convictions about God during the difficulties they faced throughout their lives.” An understanding of Morris’ family history makes her own struggles with faith all the more poignant; struggles complicated by her sexuality and coming of age as a lesbian in the church in the 60s and 70s. Despite this grounding though, the themes are frontloaded and not always carried throughout the collection. Contrary to the title, the essays veered from directly confronting social issues early on to letting them simmer quietly in the background until very near the end. Again, her work features a very clear sense of place in her musings on her life that is spent split between South Carolina and Texas. From the rocker on her front porch, she sees “the olive leaves of the pecan trees two houses down. I see the emerald green color of the grass growing in my front yard. Verdant, lush hues of the Texas spring time.” Though there are some stunning descriptions throughout, at times the descriptions
of people and places verge on the pedestrian and the overly long descriptions of family members or the personal lives of neighbors who only make a brief appearance sometimes feel invasive. The focus on minutiae also distracts from more difficult issues. Moments where the reader doesn’t need to tarry, like having to “resort to” customer service at Brookshire Brothers when trying to find cheesecloth, become cumbersome and moments where
logues,” where she describes visiting her mother at a Memory Care Unit and talks about what it is like to watch her health decline. Humorous moments, including an almost slapstick-like comedy when Morris attempts to get rid of the ever multiplying plums from a tree in her yard, provide a necessary break. She describes picking and trying to distribute them one June in Texas: “I took plums to the women who lived in the houses across the street . . . I gave plums to the men who came to work on our air conditioner. I gave plums to the cable guy who adjusted kinks in our cable connection.” From this overabundance of plums comes Morris’ first foray into jam making, one that, despite certain misgivings—and a confused, from memory recipe—ends in success. It’s at moments like this that the book succeeds, her conversational voice pulling us along in the details of food, memory, and community that ground this varied collection.
the reader wishes to linger, like the brutal beating of her twenty-four-year-old son, are given only cursory attention and the reader is quickly whisked away. Though the book had many compelling moments, what will likely prove to be a frustration for readers is the lack of a table of contents. Most of the essays are brief, roughly two to three pages, and are not presented in any perceivable order, making the collection hard to categorize and conceptualize. Some of the highlights include the “Dementia Dia-
059
C rê che N at h a li e F itz S imons And erson
At my godfather’s house, the messenger unlatched his case, lifted the lid, unswaddled the perfect baby. Not cheap plastic, either, but firm-fleshed, blushing. Then he uncoddled the other small compartments: receiving blankets, rompers, hand-knit booties, cute chapeaux. If it were Barbie, you’d have said “trousseau.” I slunk outside, shoved hands in pockets, tried breathing.
How old was I? Too old for it, the raffle too dear – and if they won it for my sister all would be ruin: thorns in the flesh, hair pulled and draggled. In my bed that night I shut it out, though it kept knocking, baffled. Worshipped in my own way, mean dog in the manger.
Nathalie FitzSimons Anderson grew up in Columbia, South Carolina, and was educated at Agnes Scott College, Georgia State University, and Emory University. She teaches now at Swarthmore College in Pennsylvania, where she directs the Program in Creative Writing. Anderson’s first book, Following Fred Astaire, won the 1998 Washington Prize from The Word Works; her second, Crawlers, received the 2005 McGovern Prize from Ashland Poetry Press; and her third, Quiver, was published in 2011 by Penstroke Press.
060
After the Lost B aby Diana Pinckney
My mother young, her deep husky voice fading from the high bed as she turns her face from mine, the house shifting with prayers -- God forgive -- with whispers -no, a miscarriage. A word that chills. I picture a small carriage, an infant, a sister rolling downhill on wheels I run behind. For days my grandmother and aunt pass each other on the stairs -steam drifting from broth -- trays of warm milk-toast carried back down cold.
Diana Pinckney lives in Charlotte, N.C. She grew up in Columbia and attended USC. Her work has appeared in Green Mountains Review, Cave Wall, Tar River Poetry and other publications. She is the 2012 Winner of Atlanta Review’s International Poetry Prize. A five time Pushcart nominee, she has 4 collections of poetry: Fishing With Tall Women, White Linen, Alchemy, and Green Daughters.
061
S napshot BY LIBBY S W O PE WIER S EMA Six barefoot children line the porch, sneakers scattered on the grass like dance steps. Baby girl pulls a hank of her hair from its rubber band. Be still and look up! Daddy snaps, jerks the new camera off his eye. Mama leans against the plum tree, whistles a soft warning. Mona grabs little brother and pins him wiggling to her lap. Stillness won’t be his thing until the accident in three years. Randy rolls up his Wranglers — that was cool then, then it wasn’t, now it is again. Big Sissy dangles a pocketbook, though it will be 1964 before she goes anywhere. I clamp a book under one arm, and give Big Sissy an elbow with the other. What can’t be seen: There is a fence with four broken teeth. There are pansies in the flower bed the color of black eyes. Mama whistles through bones hollow as a flute. I aim to break free in about eight more years. If I’d known it would take 12, I wouldn’t have smiled.
Libby Swope Wiersema is a freelance editor and writer living in Florence, SC. She is earning her MFA in poetry from Queens University in Charlotte.
062
G UE S T E D I T O R I A L
A Personal Story //
Photo by Forrest Clonts
BEYOND THE MAN STANDARD BY sara schneckloth
An Impersonal Story // Women make up 51% of the creative workforce nationally. Women artists, on average, are responsible for 5% of artwork shown in US museums. Women earn over half of the Master of Fine Arts degrees in the US, but comprise less than a third of artists shown in commercial galleries. Women in the arts make an average of 72 cents on the male dollar, and their artwork brings significantly lower prices at auction.*
In my second year of graduate school, I was lauded by a small group of male colleagues for ‘working manstyle’ in my drawings. Both intrigued and appalled by what was clearly meant as a compliment, I had to know more about what lay behind this alleged seal of approval. Their list spoke to visual art that was ‘strong,’ ‘bold,’ ‘confident,’ ‘large scale,’ and ‘carrying a sense of weight.’ My art had met the Man Standard. Now what? All of this could be dismissed as an offkilter grad school moment, but these intelligent and talented young men have gone on to become respected studio artists, college instructors, and gallerists. Their opinion mattered to me, and my reaction to their assessment was telling. I felt like I had passed a test, even though I knew the test was rigged and wrong. A perverted sense of accomplishment quickly fused with the deep dismay that this conversation was happening in 2005, not 1955. When talking about issues of underrepresentation and bias in any field, there are two extremes – statistics that speak in stark percentages, often free of context, and anecdotes that may read as pityseeking complaints. Neither adequately captures the history and complexity of the challenges that confront women working in the creative sector. The last thirty years have seen advances in achieving gender equality in our art schools and university programs, in access to opportunities for emerging and mid-career artists, and at the administrative levels of major cultural institutions. Yet, when it comes down to dollars and top-tier recognition, women in the arts are still largely overlooked and underpaid. From a survey of who the most prominent urban galleries choose to place on their walls (in a typical snapshot, Gagosian represents 19 women and 101 men), to the raw numbers coming out of the world of auctions and museum acquisitions, it is clear that material investment in the work of women artists is not something the market encourages or rewards. While the bias in the fine art world is striking, it pervades literature (the rush to classify so much women’s fiction as ‘chick lit’), music (ask the next person you see to name a female composer of classical music), and film (and the Award for Best Director goes to… one of the four women who have been nominated for an Oscar in the past 85 years). Is making art just about making money or earning recognition? Of course not. Human creativity is driven by a need and desire to bring greater meaning to, and aesthetic resonance with, the world we live
in. But what about fairness in the marketplace? What about equal representation in the cultural institutions that claim the authority to tell us, and our children, what is important? Women creating profound and serious works of literature, poetry, visual art, music, film, theatre, and dance are often still labeled ‘women artists,’ narrowly interpreted, and placed as a class apart. ‘Strong,’ ‘bold,’ ‘confident.’ These aren’t qualities that define a male artist, they are the qualities of the dedicated artist, regardless of gender, who is firm in her conviction that creative work is of vital importance, and that her contribution to our enduring cultural narrative is meaningful and unique. Add to the list ‘idealistic,’ ‘thoughtful,’ ‘engaged,’ ‘courageous,’ and ‘visionary,’ and you have the description of a hero who imagines and acts for a better world. These are the qualities that the women in this issue of Jasper strive for, and achieve, in their artwork. Each of these artists, and countless more, face and surmount the challenges that pervade the still-skewed sense of women’s place and women’s work, by imagining and making with clarity, intelligence, and purpose. In Columbia, South Carolina, we witness daily how history moves, how change unfolds, and how inequality can be overcome by people who harness the courage of their convictions. As artists of any gender, race, class, ability or age, we create from our experience. As artists of any gender, we are architects of change and awareness. As artists, we strive for better. And if you’re still asking why we continue to need special issues like this one… Three days ago in my Advanced Drawing class at USC, students gave presentations on contemporary artists whose work they admire. One student presented the drawings of Z Behl, and extolled the virtues of his technical skill, his confident draftsmanship, and his remarkable dedication to craft. Despite being asked if Z may, in fact, be female, the discussion continued with ‘he’ and ‘him’ as the operative pronouns. Guess what? Z is short for Elizabeth.
* Find these and other troubling statistics at the website of the National Museum of Women in the Arts - www.nmwa.org/advocate/get-facts and the National Endowment for the Arts Research Note #96, Women Artists 1990-2005. Next, visit an art museum and start counting. Sara Schneckloth is a visual artist whose work explores the potential of contemporary drawing practice. She is an Assistant Professor at the University of South Carolina.
063