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Exclusive Interview with
Mighty Mystic kerri McGill Portrait of an Artist
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Exclusive interview with Mighty Mystic reggae star Mighty Mystic talks with Mixture Magazine about his musical inspiration, what it is like to be a recording artist, and his new album, “Wake Up The World.�
Portrait of an Artist: Kerri McGill Local artist Kerri McGill writes about her inspirational journey as an artist and how she created the Floating Gallery.
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In The Mix...
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Big Polo Mixture gets the inside scoop from the creator of the exclusive fine furs of Dessalines John Clothing.
Babyface Babyface speaks (and sings) at Berklee.
The Antique Series A showcase of original photographs by Jaymes Leavitt.
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Amy Ross Artist Amy Ross tells Mixture about her Nature Morph paintings.
Mitch Glassman Exclusive interview with an inspirational artist.
James Mercer Mixture interviews with this truly unique artist.
Richard Stallman Find out what the man behind the copyleft symbol and the GNU Project has to say about life, freedom, and professional hacking.
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About Mixture Mixture Magazine is all about inspiration. Produced by Jaymes Leavitt, Mixture uncovers the inspiration of today’s leading artists. Mixture Magazine can be found online at www.mixturemagazine.com.
Credits A Magazine by Jaymes Leavitt Art Director/ Designer Sarah Rowlands Photographer Jaymes Leavitt
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Mighty Mystic Mixture Magazine does a Q & A session with the “rising reggae� star. Photography by Jaymes Leavitt.
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“Stand up for truth Stand up for rights Stand up for love Stand up for life” — Mighty Mystic, “Revolution,” dedicated to the legendary Bob Marley 9
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“Riding on the clouds, No one can stop him now” — Mighty Mystic, “Riding on the Clouds”
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Where were you born and when did you come to Boston? I was born in St. Elizabeth, Jamaica. I came to Boston in 1990. Did you have any musical training or lessons? I’ve been singing for over 15 years... so you learn how to push, or what not to push in a particular situation. I came from a family of musicians. My father was a singer and my mother was a church singer. What are some of the influences in your music? My main influence is Bob Marley. First time I heard Bob Marley, I was like “You know what? This is what I want to do.” Bob Marley is my biggest influence. I like other guys like Peter Tosh, Half Pint, and even some rock bands like Aerosmith.
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What’s the best thing about being a recording artist? i guess the best thing for me is that you get a high out of the fact that you can really create... something that’s special to you, something that’s inside of you, and be able to bring that across to the general public and then have the public really accept and relate to that. What has been your favorite show in the US? i’m most interested in performing for my hometown, for people who understand where you’re from... so i would have to say the Paradise [in Boston]. i’ve played twice at the Paradise and both times have been exciting. Is there a theme to your new album? This next album is called “Wake Up The World.” My real focus behind this album is how it feels. you turn on your TV... you’re guaranteed to get a different type of feel... you want something action, you want something romantic. That’s really what i wanted to portray with the album... a lot of different feels. it’s very diverse and its really mixed up.
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Mighty Mystic Jewels inc Studios Medford, MA
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From Left : Big Polo with Artist Ms Aquarius DJ Finesse Photography by Jaymes Leavitt 14
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Dessalines John Clothing
Polo, tell us a little about yourself. Well I was born out in Bergen County, New Jersey... I’ve been out there all my life you know, I’m around. I’m here just doing what I do. Came into a line of work, went to school, never graduated, never went to college, but what I did do was open my own business... I started with a car wash business first and then I had that for about three of four years... a friend of mine told me you why don’t you get into clothes because you see all the things you buy the are pretty much exclusive out of the store... a lot of people started asking me where I would get things... where my clothes were from... they were Ralph Lauren, polo and actually that is where I get my name from... Polo because I wore a lot of the Ralph Lauren design whatever he got socks pants shirts whatever I wore. And then from there I got into my own clothing line and then that is how it all began. What age where you when you first started to get into fashions? I was 10 when I first got into fashion... right around there ten years old is when I really started to get into fashion. And one thing led to another until I got older... until around 95’ or 96’ that is when I decided to start my own clothing line and pursue the fashion thing until the wheels fall off. That is when I first went into business. Where do you get your inspiration? Oh what I do from time to time is go to the mall and just look around for me to see what NOT to do. I don’t want to be the same so I look for inspiration in the mall. Sometimes I might watch TV and see people... what they are wearing... just to get an idea and to not fall into the same category as other clothing companies... not to do the same thing that they are doing. I try to be exclusive like my company. 15
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Is there anyone in the industry who you look up to or someone whose work you really like? Yea. I look at Puffy. I respect Puffy. He is what you call a well-rounded dresser. He can come in anywhere with fitted caps to truncheon caps. Applejack hats to button-ups; from jeans with boots to shoes with suits. He can go all around and he can wear jerseys and whatever and that’s why I consider myself to be a well-rounded dresser. I can do all of those things and make it look good in any category. What there someone before Puffy you liked? There was Ralph Lauren. Ralph Lauren turned me on, then another inspiration was my father. He was a very sharp dresser. My father wore button-ups with jeans. He wore penny-loafers; back in that time it was the thing. He liked to stay suited and booted. I like Kanye West. I like Common Sense, Jay-Z, Puffy, A-Z and Naz. I like people that have a combination of wonderful things all wrapped into one.
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Are you really into music as an artistic inspiration? Yeah I like a lot of different types of music. It is shocking. One thing people get to know about me when they get to know me is that I am a well-rounded person. I like hip-hop. I like disco. I like Jazz and so on. Around that I will elevate my design thorough this inspiration. The farther I go away, the more information I get on my clothes; like through each state I travel through; I put inspiration onto the clothes. Like when I go to Chicago. There is a little piece in the designs for Chicago. Or if I go to Hawaii There would be a design for Hawaii. So it all depends on where I am at the time to come up with these creative designs and ideas. At the same time I don’t write none of this down. People can’t believe I can do it like that. It actually has elevated my creativity. Do you have any other artistic passions? Yeah I do. I do but I don’t really put them into the forefront because I fell in love with fashion. I just love the clothing part of the game so much. Are any of the many varieties of things you are interested in making you creative? I like roller-skating, I like bowling I like shooting pool and I like automobiles. I am an old school cat. I like all the old cars. I like that I can get em’ for nothing and it’s like when I am designing clothes. I take the car. I know what I want to do to the car and I make designs. I find out all the details to the car and it’s a privilege to come down the road in a 1998 Jag and get the respect of having an $80,000 car. Like for me that is one of the most exciting things in the world is when someone will see the car and stop me and say “I don’t even know what year it is but I love it... it is beautiful, it is gorgeous”... people that are not haters. Those are people I respect. That is what I get excited about. Most important I 19
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just like to be with myself. I think about life and the fact that I am still here and it is a blessing to be here. It is a privilege that I have the ability to do these things on the level that I am doing it. Some people cannot do the things I do and I am grateful for that. Tell me about Ms. Aquarius and DJ Finesse. Ms Aquarius is under-rated in Boston because people from Boston do no support their artist but outside of Boston she is hit and people love her work. DJ Finesse. I know DJ finesse through Big Allen who is Finesses’ Manager. He’s also a CEO in the entertainment industry and he introduced me to Finesse. I feel the same way about Finesse. Outside of RI he could be the next kid Capri. If he stays on this grind and don’t let anyone slow him down. How do you inspire people? I inspire people by giving them positive energy. I tell people to keep their mind right, their grind right and their time right and everything else will come into place. Don’t worry what the world is thinking about you. Always come out with a smile on your face, enjoy your life and be thankful that you wake up to enjoy another day. I always tell people to be the best at whatever it is you do. At the end of the day you are the only person you have anything to prove to. Exclusive Fashion and Furs Myspace is myspace.com/exclusivefashon4real Polos’s manager Chasee Million can be reached at chasemillion@yahoo.com 1-860-777-6578 20
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“And every time I close my eyes I thank the lord that I’ve got you And you’ve got me too.” — Babyface, “Every Time I Close My Eyes”
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Written by Mark Donovan Photography by Jaymes Leavitt
Kenneth “Babyface” Edmonds has been influencing the music scene for over 30 years. He has worked with numerous artists, and has produced some of the most popular songs of our time. Recently, he held a guest lecture at the Berklee School of Music in Boston, along with Rob Lewis, in which he talked about his influences, his experiences while growing up, his first concert, his love of women, and how his passion and creativity allowed him to meet and interview the Jackson Five and other bands. Babyface reminisced about his first concert, The Jackson Five, and how watching Michael Jackson inspired him to become a musician. “It was just tears coming down, because I just, I couldn’t believe it. And I didn’t think that I was like that. I wasn’t like a crazy fan or anything like that, but it just touched me so much.” Shortly after that, Kenneth’s brother, Melvin, borrowed a friend’s guitar. Babyface learned to play the guitar by watching his brother, and then practicing in secret. Since his brother was right-handed, and he was left-handed, Babyface had to learn to play the guitar upside down, since he couldn’t switch the strings without his brother catching him. Though it wasn’t long before his brother caught him playing the guitar, and said to him, “I see what you doing. Okay. You know what? I don’t care how long you live, you will never, never be able to play that as good as me.” His brother was hoping to discourage him, but his words had the opposite effect. “It inspired me. It actually did the opposite thing. It made me like, ‘okay, I’m 23
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A small Berklee recital stage theater with a grand piano compliments two mics. The room is filled with senior music student’s anxious energy to hear one of music’s true legends and his producer arranger.....
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going to beat you out. Even though I’m doing it upside down, I’m going to watch.’ So when he would leave, I’d just keep practicing more.” This was a recurring theme in the lecture. The more Babyface was told he couldn’t do something, the more driven he was to succeed. Even though people told him he wouldn’t truly be able to play the guitar upside down, he managed to learn how to do it, and even demonstrated his skill for the audience. When he was an adolescent, Babyface used to be quiet and shy, but he used music as a means of communicating with people and he would write love songs to impress the girls in his class. “I wrote love songs, and wrote them from the beginning. My first love song was written in sixth grade. Here I go falling in Love Again. Throughout my high school years it was like I was always falling in love, but these girls wouldn’t necessarily know it, because I wouldn’t tell them, but I would still feel like I tried, and they didn’t like me so my heart would be broken. And when I had these broken hearts, so many songs came from these things.” Because he was writing songs at such a young age, he gained an insight into writing, and explains why he is so good at writing love songs.
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“How come, how long It’s not right, it’s so wrong Do we let it just go on Turn our backs and carry on Wake up, for it’s too late Right now, we can’t wait She won’t have a second try Open up your hearts As well as your eyes” — Babyface, “How Come, How Long”
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Another moment in his youth that had an impact on his life occurred in eighth grade. Kenny devised a way in which he could meet the Jackson Five. He called a promoter, Charles Williams, and pretended to be “Mr. Clayton”, his English teacher. “I would use Jimmy Stewart’s voice as my man voice. And I called Charles Williams, and I had a journalism teacher, that’s what I called him, he wasn’t really a journalism teacher, he taught English, but I called up Charles and I said my name was Mr. Clayton.” He managed to convince Charles Williams to let him interview the Jackson Five. Babyface used the same tactic to meet other artists that inspired him, like Earth, Wind & Fire. “The thing about being an artist, many times it goes beyond just music, your creativity, your ways of figuring out how to make things happen, and the people that you want to be around.”
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Babyface came off as a driven and passionate artist, and displayed the characteristics that made him one of the most prolific artists of our time. He recently released a new album, called Playlist, in which he covers songs from other artists that inspired him. James Taylor, one of the artists that Babyface covered on the album, actually wrote him a letter expressing his admiration. “I got a letter from James Taylor, and he told me that he was so, I forget the exact words, but, this is the best, one of the best versions of Fire and Rain that he’s ever heard. It touched him, totally. He even talked about the key changes, he’s like, ‘Three key changes, oh my god.’ The fact that he liked it, the creator of the song liked what I did to it, you can’t tell me nothing, y’all can’t tell me nothing. Y’all can say the record sucks. So? James Taylor liked it.” Babyface is at the top of his game, and like a fine wine he will only get better with age.
The lecture ended with a Q&A session in which Babyface and Rob Lewis addressed some questions from the crowd about the music industry, and they gave some very good advice for young musicians. “Don’t listen to just what’s hot today, go back and listen to a great Rolling Stones album or Eric Clapton, or the Beatles. I push my kids on the Beatles all the time, because that’s like Melody 101 class. Start with the Beatles, go listen to Elton John, listen to Stevie Wonder, get those albums and make them part of your playlist. Listen to them, constantly, because there’s so much music there that will inspire you to do things other than just today.”
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portrait of an Artist:
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kerri McGill
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“I was traumatized by the art world at an early age.� Photography by Jaymes Leavitt 29
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“The Unicorn Hunt Tapestries brought me to tears at the Cloisters in New york. What kind of person would hurt a unicorn?� 30
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A Brief History by Kerri McGill I was traumatized by the art world at an early age. The Girl with the Pearl Earring shared a room with my uncle’s leering self portrait of blues and greens. The two guarded the room following every step of anyone who entered. No one could escape their unblinking stares. The Unicorn Hunt Tapestries brought me to tears at the Cloisters in New York. What kind of person would hurt a unicorn? Bouguereau’s Nymphs and Satyr at the Clarke was troubling too. I was, however, very happy to see that pans were real. At the age of six I didn’t understand history, artistic styles, or themes. What I saw was as real as any scientific fact, a proven truth. It was sometimes beautiful, sometimes horrific, and always worth pursuing.
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“At the age of six i didn’t understand history, artistic styles, or themes. What i saw was as real as any scientific fact, a proven truth. it was sometimes beautiful, sometimes horrific, and always worth pursuing.�
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I graduated Mass Art in photography and painting. The painting department had a core of professors who believed in the voice of the medium, aka post-modern abstraction. I had a love of image over medium. The photo department provided a more traditional structure. After a company lost my film, a heartbroken photographer picked up the paintbrush again. Painting has an immediacy and control in the image making. Teaching grammar school art was a turning point. I landed the job accidentally and spent the year translating spatial concepts, color theory, and artists’ intent into “kid speak”. They understood! I was shocked. Hooray for the future! The parents were the ones I wanted to reach. They were my real audience. They all seemed to like the idea of art, but wouldn’t go out of their way for it. They were busy parents. They weren’t going to gallery openings and studios. They had important soccer games to attend. They were buying $20 Monet posters and spending $100 on the frame. They could have it all done while buying shoes at Payless next door at the mall. I wondered if I could establish a better rapport between contemporary arts and “the parents”.
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My focus shifted from trying to reach galleries to trying to reach the audience, a very busy audience. I would bring the artwork to them! I recruited artists and hosts for home and business hosted art exhibits. The Floating Gallery was born. Every exhibit would be different. People could come and see different artwork on a different backdrop every time. New homes, old Victorians, apartments, gardens, and even a boat became the gallery for the day. It’s not a new idea. Salons of old were held in homes to view art and converse. The idea of one day shows and continual movement works with the fast pace of today’s world. The Floating Gallery has awards from the Boston Globe and the Improper Bostonian. It encourages viewers to support local artists. It encourages artists to investigate new ideas and talk to their audience. Art is a part of everyday life and should be a part of every home.
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“Salons of old were held in homes to view art and converse. The idea of one day shows and continual movement works with the fast pace of today’s world.” 35
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The Antique Series Inspired by antique and classical artworks, this series was produced by Jaymes Leavitt.
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To Be Inspired Art and Poem by Erik Danesh She left the mountains of New york City on a Silver Greyhound Bus from Port Authority. Always leaving, always coming Back Take a moment to stop! And sit facing her with a candle burning. Blue Fluorescent Butterflies absorb the Sky, A Snowflake surrendering its unique immortalization. one minute more of daylight‌ thank you! The ice is slowly receding, the same way her skin Knows she is alive. The river is moving frozen‌ Thoreau has come down to Walden Pond. We should keep the Children from walking on Water this Time of year. The trees are talking among themselves. And home is not a place but someone you Love. how close can you sit together Sharing a great Big oversized Book; A gallery of paintings illustrating illumination on the Earth. you could Share your Entire Body To be inspired. Create a Silver Thread to the Soul! you are commissioned to Dream up A wonderful Beginning Filled with little surprises Like a Dance of Buttercups Growing in her hair, Maybe a Muse Now that you have come home, Away from home.
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Amy Ross Nature Morph
Interview by Mark Donavan Intro by Jaymes Leavitt
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n an art studio located in the SoWa art district, Amy Ross has a table full of cut out paper illustrations laid out neatly. “Don’t worry about these, I am just working on some new ideas,” she said as she cleared a spot for me to photograph her paintings.
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How did you get involved with art? I have thought of myself as an artist since I was a child, but it wasn’t until I was in graduate school for religious studies that I began to take myself seriously as an artist. I started out taking night classes at the Cambridge Center for Adult Education, then at Massachusetts College of Art, and then after I got my theology degree, I enrolled in the Diploma program at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts here in Boston. The rest, as they say, is history. What have been the most memorable moments in your art career to date? I had a lot of lucky moments early on, where I was in the right place at the right time, or I entered an art competition that was juried by a curator who saw my work and put it not just in the juried show, but also in other exhibitions. Getting picked up by Allston Skirt Gallery in Boston changed my career, as did signing on with a gallery in New York a year ago. I would also say that perhaps the biggest turning point for me was being invited to do a site-specific wall mural at MassArt for a group show revolving around Bosch’s Garden of Earthly Delights. That project changed my life as an artist. It introduced me to a whole new way of making and thinking about art. Where do you find your inspiration for your art? I am the mother of a very imaginative five year old, and I like to try to see the world through her eyes, which is a very magical place where surreal, otherworldly things can happen. This is a fantastical place where people have the heads of animals, where sheep and goats can spring forth from magnolia buds, where birds and mushrooms intertwine their parts. I’m also inspired by scientific discoveries and experiments that involve altering nature, such as Dolly the sheep, or the scientist who grew a human ear on the back of a mouse. I have 48
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never been very scientifically inclined, but I think that the media coverage of cloning, genetic engineering, and so forth, caused these ideas to infiltrate my work almost inadvertently. What are your plans for the future? It’s been a while since I installed a mural, so I’d like to line up another one soon. I also feel like I’ve hit a bit of a plateau in terms of the size of my drawings and paintings on paper, so I want to work much larger. Right now I’m preparing for a few West Coast shows that open in the Spring, and then I have other shows in Los Angeles, New York, Richmond, and Boston farther down the line, Despite having a full exhibition schedule, I want to be able to slow down and make less work, better. I would like to not feel so frenetic all the time. Have you ever been in a show outside of this country? I have a bunch of leads right now for some international projects that are brewing, and I’ve shown in London at an art fair that my Boston dealers participated in. I do have a lot of work in international collections, thanks largely to the explosion of online sales, as well as the art fairs that take place in Miami every December, which attract an international audience.
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Photography by Jaymes Leavitt
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Art With a Purpose
Tell me about your work. What influences do you incorporate into your artistic mix? What you see up here now is an array of work from the last year and a half, two year… It has been a transitional year that’s why the work will look somewhat shifting… Here you’re seeing the end of one piece of work and the beginning of another piece of work. Well the history comes out of one piece hear that I want to show. Eight years ago, I was drawing and mind-raking and exploring the depths of oneself and out of this comes these images. What was happening was I was exploring my own self and… line making become more important than the colour. The line making actually began taking the form of a script. The script came out of the process. I am process orientated and here the script just takes over as much as the images underneath the mark making and the mark making got pushed underneath the images and eventually the mark making said, “This is what I am all about.” It is about a dialog between the work and the materials. Over a period of several years this mark making became more important…. I gave it a name… I call it markography. I am very political and very much concerned with issues of the world. …. The notion is to try to reconcile the relationship with opposites. Markography. Is that your own coined term? It was actually coined by a visitor to my studio and some years ago and I just decided that was a good way to answer the question people ask me what is this script about. So what happened again is this language evolved. 53
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What is the title of this piece? repetition indifference. is is derived from the French Philosopher Deleuze. i like to simplify it as everything is always changing, but some things stay the same. What has happened is that in my work has is taken me to philosophy, ancient texts, and the study of the theory of the theory mind conscious and i am leaning a great deal about the universe as we understand it. Do you look at other artwork in the mix of influence? i look at classical art. i love rembrandt. i study a lot of the work of the deconstructionists and they inspire some of the work you see here. The work also responds to ancient texts that have always been the basis of my work. Ancient Chinese poetry from the 11th century, ancient hebrew poetry as in the bible and my sense has always been that there is meaning and there is true meaning of our words and the words that we have constructed miss the point. it’s like shooting arrows. you only get close to it …words are just on the surface of what we are really trying to say. What happened is that this markography has taken on for me the notion of a preconstructed language. it’s the way thoughts are… the way we would read thoughts before they get narrowed down to English as we render it in French, Chinese, German, Chinese, Arabic or hebrew. i studied at the University of Beijing and, while i did not inspire a form of calligraphy, the depths of the Asian arts surely affected me. i travelled across China and spent some time in Tibet as well… it gets complex. So this process
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that I engage in, is called my reflex… my nature of process art and also dialog between the material and the mark making. It has taken on a universal nature. So…. What happens is people come up to my studio; I have had a Chinese person come in and said it looks like contemporary Chinese Calligraphy. I had a Japanese woman come in, as a matter of fact she actually bought a piece from me, … said she was sure it spelled her name. I had a couple come in, they were Arabic, and they said it looked like ancient Arabic. I will have people insist there are ancient symbols again I have had someone who studies Japanese, lived here several years, say that these were Japanese words sort of speak…. symbols.
What personally is the highlight of your career? Probably my experience in Israel and the Palestinian territories In 2001 during the rise of the intifada in Israel I felt was compelled to see if there was anything I could do with my work to reconcile the differences not that is was going to save the world but just. The this thing I do is make art and so I got on the internet and I contacted those Palestinian and Israeli people who where doing work sort of bringing both of those together for some sort of resolution or reconciliation and I found a couple of centres, one in Hai8fa and one in Ramalla. It was great. I was going to lead a workshop in doing this sort of work in this workshop with people who were doing this sort of work.
The universal nature of this language has become the most curious part for the average person. For me, it is evolved mark making. Mark making that has evolved into this form.
In this workshop we have maybe six or eight people around a table. We all share one sheet of paper Everyone engages in mark making and the mark making is a way of engaging a dialog so people make a mark you make a response not thinking anything about is just looking at it and this would go around a table so it this being the cause being a neutral place this being a dialog.
Do you have any interesting life anecdotes? Dealing with opposites. With china the East West thing…. And I am trying to understand these relationships. When I was a kid. I was five years old I would often reflect on that. Id sit by the shore and see the water splashing against this big rock and I was just curious of the notion of this big rock which is very concrete and solid and the fluidity of the water and that became… eventually shows up ion my work as a relationship with that is linear and that which is not linear that which is quantum mechanics... relationship to conscious things which are measurable in forms of algorithms so working intensely with those opposites what they mean to us internally is part of the process. This script… Markograpohy.
Pure dialog in both in terms of science and diplomacy means neither party has an idea of what is going to be the out come. Same thing when you make art you engage in a dialog… complex dialog but you don’t know what is going to come out of it. It its that process of dialoguing that creates the final piece. So in sense when the conversation is resolved that is when the piece is done. Or almost resolved so I explained this process and I to people on the Internet back and forth. I had an invitation to the centre of reconciliation and mediation in Ramalla and also one from Haifa. And a week before I left that is when the bombing really went crazy blowing up busses and we got emails from both 57
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parties saying that running a workshop would be impossible no one would show up but I went anyway and knowing nobody would show up really just committed to being there and see where this was taking me. Sort of living through my own drawing process going one step at a time without knowing what the outcome is going to be. Sometimes it’s a good way to process life too. Going one step at a time without knowing what the outcome is going to be. Just as you are doing the thing that feels correct in the moment. And so I went. Went into a coffee shop one morning I was in Jerusalem and a young woman came in and I started to chat with her she was an Israeli of European descent migrated from Germany. And she said what are you doing here I was the only American, the only Westerner in all Israel… I mean when I flew there the plane was empty I mean this was a conflict so she said what are you doing here and I explained as I explained to you and she said that is fascinating do you like music? And I said yes. I have tickets to the Jerusalem symphony. And after the show I would like to introduce you to some artist and poet friends of mine who would be interested in what you are doing and that became the beginning of and an incredible journey for a month so I met these folks and they invited me to their home where I was meeting more artists and poets and writers, some of them Palestinian some of them Israeli. And told them what I was trying to do. .. Well it’s a great idea lets see if we can get something together, why don’t you call this guy see what he thinks he is a very active Palestinian Artist so I would do that and with everybody I would explain and they would say what about politics are you Jewish? Yea but I am not involved in Politics and I don’t know anything about politics though certainly. I got in touch with this one person named Ali Clebo and he was referred to me through some one else he says well I don’t really have time but if you’d like come to the west bank if you are willing meet me at this coffee shop and I will talk to you for a few minutes. So I get to the 58
coffee shop and in the west bank, it’s nine a clock at night and he was wearing a funky shirt and I was sitting there reading as a matter of fact my book on Deleuze the philosopher who speaks about the deconstruction of language and so this guy who had no time for me really walks in and says he starts to say hello he said you are reading Deleuze! That’s my MAN!!! He is the man! So he smiled right away and he sat down and what was supposed to be a 10 minute meeting turned into a three-hour meeting. Now, this fellow is no lightweight. He is PhD Anthropology and teaches at Al Quud University in East Jerusalem. He is also a painter; he had a show at the Turkish culture museum in Jerusalem. He also is a filmmaker and had completed a film with a grant by the French Government premiering the week I was there, which was also similar to the work I was doing at the time. So we became very good friends and he took me to see some performances and he introduced me to the musicians who took me to their home and we had dark Egyptian and Arabic coffee and we played instruments it was great. The thing is that the notion of this language this script the Markography, the notion it is conceivable we can have a dialog some common fashion is possible and then in spite of all these once people accept that they are all identifying with the work in their own way and then realizing that the same thing is appreciated by all of us. That is a little bit of the storey of the nature of this work. Are you creating your own language through your art? Here it is not contrived, it is an organic process that is why when you look at this work you’ll see that the symbols repeat themselves organically where they are and this is the mystery behind this thing. Not like hieroglyphics where you make a mark and that symbol becomes something this is more organic and they are signs and symbols that people respond to. Because markmaking, not
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driven by reason charged with emotion but driven by emotion charged with reason is what helps form the symbols. It’s just a piece of the process. What is gratifying to you in your work? When people see and understand dialog. The dialog consistently changes. So the work never dies. You wake up today and you get a somewhat different experience. To some people it is meditative. Words take on different meanings in different ways so that spaces the spaces between words and the language of silence so if you take on different meanings. What is your favorite medium? Paper. This (piece) is oil on heavy paper and panel. Any plans for a new exhibition? I do. These six pieces I had been working for the last year, with white in white and last fall over the winter just calling back into the studio working with white paper and I had read a commentary and analysis on ecclesiastics. I had told you I refer to ancient texts and in that it speaks to the journal Solomon which by tradition is the foundation of ecclesiastics and the journal of Solomon, supposedly the earliest written document on relationship of science and belief and that ties in again with the theme of my work with working with opposites and things which are beyond our understanding and reason concept of infinity or universal dynamics. So I was very moved by this d, which reflect the twelve chapters of Solomon’s journal.
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Mitch Glassman can be reached at 617-584-3063 or mjglassman@comcast.net 61
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James Mercer Public Arts inspiration
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Photography by Jaymes Leavitt
I
found James Mercer’s art to be very intriguing, and rather odd, at first. There was a quality to his work that meant something to me, and went beyond just what I saw. When I met with him, I was expecting to meet with an older, more sophisticated person. I was surprised to find that he was a rather young, hip looking individual. As we spoke, I found him to be soft-spoken, eloquent, and really creative. I could tell that this was going to be a great interview.
James Mercer stands in front of his instalation in Downtown Providence RI.
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“influence starts from the surrounding. What you are surrounded by is your influence.�
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When did you first become an artist? I’ve been an artist all my life. I was first into [art] in high school and it grew from there. I always wanted to be an artist all my life. What was your first major project? My first project was a web site I built. I enjoyed the experience of building it. What are you influenced by? Influence starts from the surrounding. What you are surrounded by is your influence. If you put yourself somewhere, the environment will affect the outcome. When there is potential, there is the capability of building on that. A lot of my work deals with multiples and multiple themes; [The] repetition of ideas. I don’t look for inspiration somewhere. I look within myself for my inspiration. Inspiration for me is just an instinct. I do what I feel at the time. The subconscious is way more powerful than what we are actually thinking. Are there any artists you are interested in? Sean Greenly, Katabasis, and Pleasure Horse. Are those Musicians? Yeah. I also like Sarah Sze, I think that is how you spell her name, she is an artist. [She] does these cool sculptures, really ground-breaking stuff. I also like Chiho Aoshima and Yusuke Gunji. What is important to you? Being prolific is important to me. I like to produce and to be actively creating 65
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all the time. i like to not plan things. The probability factor is cool. Not planning and improvising when you need to. That is important to me. in my work. Good work should be punishing. it should take a form and translated over time. if through my work i translate something to someone and it survives time and people are still thinking about it. Things that are honest are important to me too. Do you have any new projects you are working on? i am working on a music video for a band. i am also doing a project called tape art. it is about doing art in public spaces. We are teaching people about art, process and the way humans and the environment interact. introducing people to public art. We are bridging the gap between art and the environment. We want to change the way people think about art and public space. Has there been a memorable experience for you in your career? Jay [zehngebot] influences me a lot. We lived in the Providence Place Mall in an empty concrete room under the garage for four years. it seemed like an abandoned room so we moved in. We used the bathroom in the mall, we found an extension chord [that] we ran to an outlet in the garage and had light, heat, a hot plate to make food. We just made art down there. it was really Jay who was into the whole public space thing and we just had a great time there.
“Being prolific is important to me. i like to produce... to be actively creating all the time.� 66
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John Legend appears at Mantra in Boston Photography by Jaymes Leavitt
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Matt Damon
Madeline O’Brien
The Best of Boston Boston talent gather at AMC Loews Boston Common for the premier of Gone Baby Gone in 2007.
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Casey Affleck
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Ben Affleck 71
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Richard Matthew Stallman richard Matthew Stallman, often abbreviated “rMS”, is an American software freedom activist, hacker, and software developer. in September of 1983, he launched the GNU Project to create a free Unix-like operating system, and has been the project’s lead architect and organizer. With the launch of the GNU Project, he started the free software movement and, in october 1985, set up the Free Software Foundation. Stallman pioneered the concept of copyleft and is the main author of several copyleft licenses including the GNU General Public License, the most widely used free software license. Since the mid-1990s, Stallman has spent most of his time advocating for free software, as well as campaigning against both software patents and what he sees as excessive extension of copyright laws. Stallman has also developed a number of pieces of widely-used software, including the original Emacs, the GNU Compiler Collection, and the GNU Debugger. he co-founded the League for Programming Freedom in 1989. Stallman announced the plan for the GNU operating system in September 1983 on several ArPANET mailing lists and USENET. in 1985, Stallman published the GNU Manifesto, which outlined his motivation for creating a free operating system called GNU, which would be compatible with Unix. The name GNU is a recursive acronym for GNU’s Not Unix. Soon after, he started a nonprofit corporation called the Free Software Foundation to employ free software programmers and provide a legal infrastructure for the free software movement. Stallman is the unpaid president of the FSF, which is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization founded in Massachusetts. in 1985, Stallman popularized the concept of copyleft, a legal mechanism to protect the modification and redistribution rights for free software. it was first implemented in the GNU Emacs General Public License, and in 1989 the first program-independent GNU General Public License (GPL) was released. By then, much of the GNU system had been completed. Stallman was responsible for contributing many necessary tools, including a text editor, compiler, debugger, and a build automator. The notable exception was a kernel. in 1990, members of the GNU project began a kernel called GNU hurd, which has yet to achieve the maturity level required for widespread usage. in 1991, Linus Torvalds, a Finnish student, used the GNU development tools to produce the Linux kernel. The existing programs from the GNU project were readily ported to run on the resultant platform; most sources use the name “Linux” to refer to the general-purpose operating system thus formed. This has been a outstanding naming controversy in the free software community. 72
Stallman argues that not using “GNU” in the name of the operating system unfairly disparages the value of the GNU project and harms the sustainability of the free software movement by breaking the link between the software and the free software philosophy of the GNU project. Stallman’s influences on hacker culture include the name PoSix and the Emacs editor. on UNix systems, GNU Emacs’s popularity rivaled that of another editor vi, spawning an editor war. Stallman’s take on this was to jokingly canonize himself as “St. iGNUcius” of the Church of Emacs and acknowledge that “vi is the editor of the beast,” while “using a free version of vi is not a sin; it is a penance.”
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A number of developers view Stallman as being difficult to work with from a political, interpersonal, or technical standpoint. Around 1992, developers at Lucid inc. doing their own work on Emacs clashed with Stallman and ultimately forked the software. Their fork later became xEmacs. An email archive published by Jamie zawinski documents their criticisms and Stallman’s responses. Ulrich Drepper, whom Stallman had appointed to work on GNU libc for the GNU Project, published complaints against Stallman in the release notes for glibc 2.2.4. Drepper accuses Stallman of attempting a “hostile takeover” of the project,
“The idea of copyright did not exist in ancient times, when authors frequently copied other authors at length in works of non-fiction. This practice was useful, and is the only way many authors’ works have survived even in part.” — richard M. Stallman
referring to him as a “control freak and raging maniac.” Eric S. raymond, who sometimes claims to speak for parts of the open source movement, has written many pieces laying out that movement’s disagreement with Stallman and the free software movement, often in terms sharply critical of Stallman. Source: “richard Stallman.” Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. revised 1 Mar 2009, 07:22 UTC. Quotes from www.brainyquote.com. 73
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“Anything that prevents you from being friendly, a good neighbor, is a terror tactic.” “if you want to accomplish something in the world, idealism is not enough — you need to choose a method that works to achieve the goal.”
Free Software “People sometimes ask me if it is a sin in the Church of Emacs to use vi. Using a free version of vi is not a sin; it is a penance. So happy hacking.”
insightful quotes from the mind of a professional hacker Source: www.brainyquote.com
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“Fighting patents one by one will never eliminate the danger of software patents, any more than swatting mosquitoes will eliminate malaria.”
“Value your freedom or you will lose it, teaches history. ‘Don’t bother us with politics’, respond those who don’t want to learn.”
= Freedom “The reason that a good citizen does not use such destructive means to become wealthier is that, if everyone did so, we would all become poorer from the mutual destructiveness.” 75
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Bread
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Directions: Fill a glass with 1 cup of warm (not hot) water. Mix in yeast, sugar, and salt. Stir and leave for 10 minutes to activate the yeast, which will bubble and foam at the top of the glass. The yeast is usable only if this happens. Meanwhile, find a large bowl and run it under hot water to ensure it is warm (this is very important to preserve the yeast). Combine the flour, oatmeal, cracked wheat, and brown sugar in a the warmed bowl. once mixed, make a depression in the center and pour in the yeast mixture. Stir in another cup of warm (but not hot) water. Knead the dough for 10 minutes, then form it into a ball inside the bowl. Cover with a towel and let sit for 2 hours in a warm place. if necessary, let the bowl sit in a pan of hot water to keep it warm.
Ingredients: 2 tbsp yeast 1 tbsp sugar 1 tsp. salt 2 cups sifted white flour 2 cups whole wheat flour ½ cup oatmeal ½ cup cracked wheat ¼ cup packed brown sugar 1 tbsp butter
Preheat oven to 425 degrees. Place two small porcelain or Pyrex backing containers in the bottom rack, with their lids on the top rack. Sprinkle a light coating of cracked wheat onto a clean, warm counter top (preferably close to the oven). Add a sprinkle of flour also to keep the dough from sticking to the counter. invert the bowl over the cracked wheat and lightly peal the dough away from the bowl onto counter top. Split dough into 2 halves. Gently form each loaf into a ball, taking care not to flatten or knead the dough. Make sure cracked wheat is covering the circumference of the dough. With a butter knife, make two 1/4 inch slits on each loaf. Cut butter into 8 even pieces and place 2 pieces in each depression. Cover loaves with a towel and let sit on the counter top for 15 more minutes to rise a little bit more. Make sure the counter top is still warm (the heat from the oven should do this for you). Uncover the loaves and gently place each loaf into the heated containers. Bake for 20 minutes with the cover on, then 15 more minutes uncovered. Cool for 10 minutes, slice open and enjoy your freshly baked bread! Makes two loaves. Prep time: About 4 hours.
You can make it at home
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Chef Jeff Fornier of 51L 51 Lincoln Street Newton, MA 617-965-3100 Photography by Jaymes Leavitt
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Taste The Mixture
Duck Rangoon Orange Chutney & Pomegranate infused liquor Appetizer 79