PRĂ˜OF Magazine Vol. 1, Issue 3 For the Record
Cover art: The Blind and Deaf Insane Man by Ethan Heidelbaugh
Table of Contents
Record by David Ruhlman New Zealand: 2nd Tour by Venus DeMars Butterfly by Venus DeMars I Have Always Loved You by Lynette Reini-Grandell Two Figures by Venus DeMars To Change the World by Lynette Reini-Grandell Lived Religion by Canaan A. West Without Music by Kenneth Yoder Rebelle by Moira Villiard Two Apostrophes to ’The Requiem’ by Noah Warren Veery by Terry Falsani An Argument for Time Travel by Alethea Tusher Blinded by the Light (with Heartfelt) by AJ Atwater Clair De Lune (with Banjo) by Kevin Ealain Featured Artist: Gregory Euclide Our Beat by Lou Tollefson Grandma by Lou Tollefson Teen Angst Art by Robert Dewitt Adams Excerpt from Fortnight in America by Bill Payne I Can Already Hear It by Eric Chandler Take One by Ed Newman Blue Cathedral by Paul Peterson Humans in Montana by Brian Beatty Skater by Liz Minette Deeper by Amina Harper Stones by Ed Newman Otuskirts by Mark Maire :: play it again :: by Jozef Conaway Liberace Played by P.A. Pashibin Arethusa by Angel Hawari Painting with Music by Adam Swanson Two Footsteps on the Ground by Adam Swanson Aries and the Arrival of Spring by Adam Swanson
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Visual Artist credits: " I want the world to see what I can see through this eye inside of me." Ethan Heidlebaugh Amina Harper on ‘Deeper’: “I have been listening to Nujabes for over 10 years now. His music is the soundtrack to my daydreams and has gotten me through many rejections, disappointments, and moments of extreme self-doubt. When I hear songs like Aruarian Dance or Tsurugi no Mai I feel like the world is made up of the most transcendent magic; it makes me feel like I'm strong enough to make magic too. Nujabes brings calm and clarity to otherwise chaotic experiences and enables me to focus on my goals and the tasks ahead. His instrumentals turn my everyday life into a vibrant and reflective journey of the soul.” Ed Newman, currently advertising manager at AMSOIL INC., has been a publishing writer and columnist since the early 1980’s. In 1991 his story The Breaking Point won the Arrowhead Regional Arts Fiction Competition. Moira Villiard on ‘Rebelle’: “This piece will hopefully be an attestation to potential and possibility. I had no idea what I was getting into when I started this I just knew that I wanted to use colors and to work with effects I hadn't really tried before. Most of all, I wanted people to see the process because my goal isn't to intimidate anyone or stir up envy when I paint ... it's quite the contrary! If you look at the initial stages of any piece I create, there's really nothing to what I do. The only thing it takes to make something (to your liking, at least) is the courage to make mistakes and the willingness to problem solve around them. It's a process that's a whole lot like life; sometimes innovation and solutions can't occur unless we become totally familiar with the problems themselves. (Keep your friends close and your enemies closer, if you will...) Another thing I've been considering lately( in my recent focus on "diversity") is the idea that good music, art, stories and general communication reaches across cultural barriers. Of course, there's nothing wrong with art that's representative of a specific culture or their history but I think we can all benefit from that which connects us on a human level. It speaks to us in ways that can't be described except through more art and shared inspiration. Lauryn Hill was particularly good at expressing this idea.” David Ruhlman currently resides in Minnesota. He paints primarily in gouache on wood panel. He is interested in the double, and its grotesque cousin, the anagram. The world rearranged, language transformed, the image as puzzle. He views art as a process, an investigation of materiality, color, and form. Through his continual experimentation, he finds enjoyment and gratification in his artistic practice.
In this edition of the magazine, some of our visual artists have written poems or prose with their pieces. Artist bios are featured alongside written work in these cases.
Dear readers, Thank you for taking time, once again, to check out a new edition of PRØOF. This issue will bring together work from rising and established artists all over the country, and we are proud to present it. It is also our first fully digital issue. During my time in the publishing world, I have come to believe that online publishing, while not without its own carbon footprint, is becoming the most responsible and forward-thinking way to show art and literature to the world. Plus, it lets us share art and literature with all of you, free of charge! ‘For the Record’ is a compilation of work on the subject of music. Like the written word, music is in a state of flux thanks to widespread accessibility to technology. Large production companies and multimillion dollar studios are giving way to smaller, nimbler businesses with local followings. It has become a medium made for communities, but able to be experienced by listeners thousands of miles away. And so we come to the content of this issue, an exercise in great and small, young and old, fame and anonymity, all opposites struggling to coexist in the world of contemporary art. Even when the record industry ruled unchallenged, though, music created unique stories in the lives of the individuals listening to it. This volume, then, spans style and substance, from the youthful rebellion of a D.C. punk rocker to a young poet’s reverence for Mozart. Many of the artists featured here have brought their own music into our lives, whether it comes in the form of a bird outside the window in morning or the rhythmic mental chant of a drummer. It is also my pleasure to welcome an Assistant Editor to the PRØOF crew, now of two. Katelynn Monson came to me, as an intern, while completing a degree in Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies and Political Science at the University of Minnesota-Duluth (should have been minus Political Science, add English). She has been instrumental in creating this newest version of the magazine, and is now a full collective member. Thank you, Kate! We love you, readers, and we are excited to share this new issue with you. Enjoy! Yours, Kathleen H. Roberts
Record by David Ruhlman
New Zealand 2nd tour According to the ancient Greeks, when we look up at night, we don't see gods. We see evidence of gods. We see the underside of their realm, worn through in spots like old cloth. Worn to tiny pinprick holes in that centuries old fabric. Heavenly daylight shines subtly through. The god-realm brilliance occasionally blocked by shadows cast as the deities themselves move about, causing leaked specks of god-sun to blink off And on And off. And we imagine we're not alone. • Wellington, New Zealand. Friday August 29th, 2008, their winter. Evening. We found them, Lynette and I. The glow-worms. That night. The tour was cancelled, after just one gig. Matthew cancelled it. Or actually, Eddy pulled the household investment, and then Matthew cancelled it. After an argument. After that first gig lost money. More on that later. We found the Glow-worms at the end of a street and about a block down a dark, overgrown, dirt path. In a park just over the hill, north of downtown. Downtown Wellington. We'd taken the touristy incline trolley up at dusk, and wandered through the quiet, darkening, residential neighborhood past the very few people out walking dogs, or out running errands, or just out. After they'd pass, we'd be alone again. Alone in thoughts. Silent.
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Walking. Like a spell. Like we were afraid to put words to a jinx. My thoughts were about the damn tour cancellation. I don't know what Lynette's thoughts were, but I'm betting they probably surrounded the same thing. The tour was the reason she was here. That and because it was an excuse for an adventure, a kind of couples overseas trip adventure. My band wasn't with me. I'd taken that hiatus. This was a solo tour with a New Zealand back up band. OK. It was SUPPOSED to be a solo tour with a New Zealand back up band. It was SUPPOSED to be my 'Return to New Zealand' tour. It wasn't anything now. My New Zealand assembled back-up band and I, (including Matthew on bass), rehearsed four days in a row, then performed wonderfully at the first gig in Wellington's 'San Francisco Bathhouse' night club. Now it was suddenly done. Now it was just Lynette and me, stuck awkward in Wellington. No Ohakune hot springs resort gig. No Auckland gig. We were just here. With nothing to do. Now looking towards nothing but overstaying our time with Matthew and Eddy for the next week and a half. So we decided to look for glowworms. Eddy, Matthew's husband, gave us directions. "There's a path leading into the park. I used to see them there when I was a kid." He'd said. Eddy grew up in New Zealand. A slight, skinny, blonde haired boy, now grown man, but still quite boyish. Slight and skinny, but his blonde hair now a short-cropped green instead. Relocated to LA, then New York where he met Matthew, also blonde, not too tall, but not too slight. Matthew has more of a muscular bull-dog type punky build, his blonde hair shaved into various styles of mohawk; singular tall classic, duo-hawk short, full blonde-hawk floppy, but most often a short hawk floppy, dyed to an almost neon brilliant blue, as it is now, and as it was when they met. I was there. So was Lynette. It was at the Meow Mix. Matthew had said he may not come back to the hotel with us after the show. He'd explained by introducing us to a beautiful green haired boy; Eddy. They fell in love, and got married. Got married here in New Zealand, not New York. Gay couples couldn't marry in New York then. Matthew is my friend and sound-man/tour manager from Minneapolis, then New York, now New Zealand. He's toured with me for years. Helped us establish ourselves in New York. Helped me on the
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England tour. The first one there. We got drunk together on Absinth. In a London. On that first tour there. We'd bought a bottle of it up North. In York. During that leg of the tour. Not New York mind you. Just York. The original one. In northern England. I kept the bottle safe and unopened in my gear. The absinth, still illegal in the States, was something neither of us could pass up when we saw it in the store. Both of us, now sitting in that Gower Street Bed and Breakfast back in London, drank it. Watched TV, and talked. We watched a late-night English adult-cartoon about dead rock stars. I remember a simply drawn Freddy Mercury discussing death, fame and music. It was quite funny overall, with the exception of the adult-cartoon's creator's decision to attach exaggerated cartoongrade gay mannerisms and voice to their Freddy Mercury character. That didn't make me laugh, it just irritated me. We waited for that fabled wood-worm effect from our Absinth consumption. It didn't happen. We just got drunk. We talked about the tour. Talked about touring in general. Talked about dreams and possibilities. And life. I love Matthew. And I love having Matthew in the band. Once he'd re-located to New Zealand, he set up our first full band tour there. It was quite successful. More than that. It was very successful.
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Because of that previous perfection, I of course, asked him to set this current New Zealand 'soloreturn' tour into place.
Matthew became a New Zealand citizen. Now, after their marriage, he's become a Kiwi. Lynette and I found the dark, overgrown path. Like Eddy said. At the end of the street. And then there they were. The glow-worms. 50 feet down the path. In the overgrown darkness. Tiny soft dim-glowing spots. Illuminating from under a root overhang in the embankment. Hundreds of them. Soft, glowing bodies hung from delicate threads. Threads attached to the roots above. Glowing bodies slowly curling and climbing, stretching and descending. Gently touching each other as if to caress quiet sadness away. We looked up, eyes adjusting to the almost blind-dark path. Slowly, in the distance, we saw more. Tiny glowing, soft curling, bodies. Clustered up and down the overgrown trail. Small iridescences spaced here and there. Blind-black darkness between. Our silent presence lit by nothing but coolwhite moonlight piercing down into the blackness through clusters of hanging leaves. Lit by nothing but that, and occasionally, by our phone screens used to light the way; I was reminded of that time in New York. In early spring. In Madison Square Park. At night. Lynette and I. Just us. No band. We'd taken the slow way back to the hotel after dinner out. Winding through the noise and crowds, dodging the cabs, ignoring the horns. Winding past the Flatiron building. Then turning into the park. 3 blocks from The Carlton Arms Hotel. The art hotel on 25th and 3rd. The place where the band would always stay when touring New York. The art hotel where Lynette and I painted that installation in room 5D. The room we always stay in now if it's free. But it isn't always free now that it's so popular after the painting and poetry. The room with the life-sized painted blue trans figures with wings and one cradled by an octopus. The room where Lynette had painted the words "I Have Always Loved You" on the bathroom wall. That late afternoon after we'd argued, and I left to angrily wander Manhattan. Alone. I found the room empty when I returned, Lynette having left as well.
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Those five words freshly painted. “I HAVE ALWAYS LOVED YOU.� I cried. And there, in Madison Square Park, the warm quiet began. Like a soft green blanket laid carefully over all the sharpness of city edge. Laid carefully over the sharpness of traffic scrape. And there, in warm New York spring, Madison Square Park, lighting bugs flew. And everything stood still. Stopped. Except for them. Hundreds of silent blink, blink, blinks. Grand old trees stood strong and dark all around. Their branches spread out and down towards the tended grass yards enclosed by fences. They stood sheltering, strong and tall over this expanse of pause. The glow-bugs drifted like tiny, land-kept stars. Blinking now. And now. Back and forth. Up and down. On and off. On and off. Here in New Zealand. On the other side of the world. As we'd done back there in New York. We left them. We left the glowing creatures. Returned to the city. Surfaced as if rising quiet from a dream. Slowly becoming aware of the world, the sounds, the troubles. Aware of the street lights and houses. Of pavement and time. And I felt my chest cave inwards. A helpless tumble towards my heart, tugging, in and down. I felt the sadness begin it's trickle into the void. As if thoughts were attached by tiny silk threads, curling and descending. Curling and twisting. Stretching. Pulling. Gently caressing as if over a fresh wound.
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Radiating pain again and again with each gentle stroke. Down, and down. Till each thought found their sad comfort nesting place deep within my center. How long have I tried? Twelve? Maybe thirteen years? How many songs had I written? How many albums had I paid for? Written, recorded, designed, then presented hopeful, complete, bold. Then watch them dissipate into pointless. How many times had I re-formed the band only to re-form, again? Then again. How many times had I broken my hands? Both of them. Blind with despair and rage. Three times? Four? Against stud and plaster. Floor and door jambs. Broken enough times that Lynette no-longer came to comfort. Now, she only turns to leave. Stupid for spending all this money! Stupid for dragging Lynette along! Stupid to think I could make this all work again. Fucking, fucking, stupid! And my thoughts cycle. And I look up. And I see the stars. And the stars made me stop. "Lynn! Look! The stars, I don't recognize anything!" They crowded the sky. She looks at me. I continue, "Nothing! No 'Big Dipper,' no um... What's that guy with the belt?" "Orion." Lynette says, now looking up. "Yeah, Orion. Nothing. It's all different." "It's because we're in the southern hemisphere, honey." 13
I say, "Beautiful!!" And I know that I love being here. And I love life. And we finally talk, and make a plan: Fuck music. Fuck this tour. Let's just be here. Let's be together.
Venus DeMars has traveled around the globe as the transgender founder and leader of the indyunderground Trans-glam punk-band called, "Venus de Mars & All The Pretty Horses." S/he is currently writing a memoir about Hi/r experiences as such over the past twenty years.
To Change the World First, I would give everyone a piano.
a way to open the body.
It is not enough to watch, it is not enough to listen, unless you are Keats looking at the Elgin Marbles, shocked by vividness, light-headed from longing, dreading mortal numbness, the prickling static of a limb asleep, trying to wake.
I want to sense the kindling in all things, to join the whirling dancers on the stage, their fuchsia turbans and fluttering silk scarves. Those are my surprised pale hands reaching toward the fevered poet— that is my fear of death.
My body wakes. My hand begins to write, my lips move, my fingers press piano keys, the means to an end,
and then the note, reverberating.
It is a flash of fire, the hammer sound on steel-wound string,
Lynette Reini-Grandell Originally from Duluth, her first record was with the Ordean Junior High School Orchestra. Now based in Minneapolis, she teaches at Normandale Community College and performs with the Bosso Poetry Company. Her poetry has been published in Poetry Motel and Revolver, among others, and has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Her first collection, Approaching the Gate, will be published by Holy Cow! Press in October 2014.
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Lived Religion Today it all fell together: I stomped the circle of three or four or six beats With a freedom of foot that I have never felt before— With the conviction of someone Who is found. I danced aloud, loudly, Pounding, hands full with sticks, Heavy on a drum So whole-hearted that it has Taken on the form of family— Relaxed backwards into the ring Of the beating of a bell pattern That I have struggled with for three years: De Ga DiDe Ga Ga DiDe Ga DiDe Ga Ga DiDe Ga DiDe Ga Ga DiDE GaMMDiDeMMGa Ga DiDe GaMMDiDeMMGa Ga DiDe Prro ba da, Prro ba da, Prro ba da In the wrong damn place: Try again: Prro ba da Prro ba da And again: Prro Ba Da And again. I have struggled two against three against four, Against downbeats, Against Ga DiDE Ga Ga DiDe, For three years Picked it apart, thoughtful, For three years, But I can feel it by heart now— With an ease of foot I have only ever felt Arms and legs dancing around a Boba, Sticks in my hands, heavy, So whole-hearted that I Drum. Canaan A. West is a Psychology major and an enthusiastic African drummer at Carleton College in Northfield, MN. In 2013, she received the Kelley Fellowship for International Research, with which she traveled to Senegal and France to write poetry about movement and the lived experienced of West Africans. More poetry from Canaan can be found in Carleton College's literary Magazine, The Lens.
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Without Music Framed in a tight glass box The rosebud is forbidden To become the rose Kenneth Yoder is a poet and performer living in Minneapolis. His poems have appeared in ArtWorld Quarterly and Main Channel Voices. The poem “Without Music” is written in response to his partner’s relationship with multiple sclerosis and playing the cello.
Years gone, the trickster Stripped me, cut me To the quick, burned Synapses between The warm wood vibrates The gut strings tum, tum The shapely body Leans against me With ease The endless loop of the drone, The thrilling tingle of sound Can never be The music I lost
Rebelle by Moira Villiard
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Two Apostrophes to The Requiem Dies Irae The Latin hacks at you like a halberd: Gravely Mozart lies dreaming a thundercell, Black egg and electric, cracking open And you, unspooling from its shell. You are the dream beneath the cell, Above you, the chorus with its weapons, Meaning militant, Rages over the top of the forest you’ve made Whipping the boughs, forking fire— Then it sinks in, its massed voice Straining through your needles. And you begin to echo it. But the Latin mind is not yours: You are a dark dream of unity Sliding on black chords Around the feet of the forest Like black water. Against the chorus, against force, You offer a minor balm.
Lux Aeterna
A forest striving in the wind: I know what you think of fate.
You extend the offer of yourself: Unbroken and uninflected light Shining unevenly on a flat ocean. You make room for the single voice, A little room in the hall of light Shining down on a flat ocean. You extend the offer of yourself, You welcome me into your hall Then you end, and drain away, Like a wall at the end of the ocean.
Noah Warren was born in Nova Scotia and is living in New Orleans. His poems have appeared in Poetry, The Yale Review and elsewhere.
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Veery --for Betsy Johns, November 3, l984--June 22, 2004 In anticipation of this gathering on the anniversary of her death, I thought how none among us have not lost someone, our days partly cloudy, nights a free-fall tumble into black holes of grief. Well, that’s cheerful I thought and wondered where to find words of consolation. Then, Betsy showed up.
Terry Falsani was born and raised in Portland, Maine. She has lived in Duluth, MN since 1973. A mother of two, she enjoyed careers as creative director at Fochs and Associates Advertising and teaching writing and literature. Falsani has twice won both the Peace River Center for Writers (Florida) and Lake Superior Writers (Minnesota) contests. Her writing has appeared in Dust and Fire, Beloved on the Earth, Migrations, Upon Arrival of Illness, and several other anthologies and journals.
She’s been hanging around in my woods for weeks now, pretending to be a little brown bird singing in the sullen June air. Oh, that’s a Veery, you’ll say with Audubon authority. A small thrush, hard to spot, nests on the forest floor, lovely flute-like song, winters in Brazil. I know it’s Betsy. What I don’t know is why she’s come, what she wants me to write in anticipation of this gathering. So I listen to her flute ringing like steeple bells in the greening trees, dancing with shadows rooted to earth. Dusk shrouds the pines and still she plays, her anthem transcendent, coda to dark
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An Argument for Time Travel mother calls cabbage darling and i roll as lettuce wilting, mother, mother, i haven't, and she responds willingly sylvia marks dissonance and i her fathomable component marches in string theory toward melodic wanting bernie maps contingencies as freckles in constellation (consolation unsounded) for the loss of infinite distance between waking and waking i make maggie weep and weeping she begins seeking and in seeking we no longer are but what we are still to be "Martin, I haven't the time for this. I must be getting back." "Alethea dear, you can't get back. Where is it? Obviously not here, and here is all there is." "Marty dear, don't be silly. Just turn around." Martin in blue jeans and the whitest, crisp and clean, button-upped cotton shirt, incidentally with a collar, makes for the door but changes his intentions by acting on the impulse for love, even troublesome, loud and a bit off her rocker—love. Oh, but sincere, and sincerity was something he dreamed about while reading old letters in hardbound books checked out from the public library, knowing that someone had intended the letters to be sent to him despite the different names. He takes a seat at the kitchen table, on silver chairs with red plastic seat covers that sparkle in the fashion of retro eateries with jukeboxes. There is no jukebox. He looks to Alethea to bring him a cheeseburger, but she only smiles, and in that smile promises never to bring him a cheeseburger. growing green, gray colors past the window, drawing shades of herself along the lines of exposure meryl mates dinner to wine, stains the carpet and finds hardwood floors finished antony knocks white paint chipped until honey makes simple the bitter revenge of ravished tea leaves no one rights the writing on the wall, but lyle sits reading, waiting for alethea to return marty's old cd's
Alethea Tusher is a Minneapolis based poet. She writes for catharsis and love, but usually fails at both. She would like to have coffee with you sometime. Just ask.
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Blinded by the Light (With a nod to Bruce Springsteen) She stared at the sun until she went blind. Still, he paid her no attention.
AJ Atwater is an abstract landscape painter and literary fiction writer based in Duluth and NYC. She has exhibited in Manhattan + Minnesota and been published in SCRUBADUBDUB, Pank, Vestal Review,Taproot Literary Review, Oasis and others.
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Clair de Lune Speak. (softly) Look. (carefully) Breathe. (deeply) For the sun rises over a hill, and a fog is lifted from the river's swell. Notice laughter between your teeth, and touch the salt stained dream with your scarred fingertips. Feel the dirt between your toes, pebbles beneath calloused pads, and run through the rain. (heart beat)
Banjo by Kevin Ealain
Stop. (taste the air) Run. The texture of life is soft; Fall.
Kevin Ealain is a writer, actor, and photographer out of Minneapolis, MN. He’s always felt that this quote by Baudelaire sums up his approach to life: “You have to always be drunk. That’s all there is to it – it’s the only way. So as not to feel the horrible burden of time that breaks your back and bends you to the earth, you have to be continually drunk. But on what? Wine, poetry, or virtue, as you wish. But be drunk.”
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PRØOF Featured Artist:
Gregory Euclide “It came together and began to make sense,” are the words, Minnesota River Valley artist and teacher, Gregory Euclide uses to describe his white board project. He began these creations on his lunch breaks at work. “I liked the sumi ink because of its intense blackness. I started playing with it on the whiteboards. I liked that I had the option to draw something and then erase it. That idea of being able to work ‘into’ as well as ‘take away,’ was very interesting to me.” In 2011, when a friend told me that Bon Iver had a new self-titled album coming out; I rushed to my laptop to pre-order it. The day the record arrived on my doorstep, a text message from the carrier chimed on my phone. I could barely wait to leave work and listen, like any other fan girl. However as I ripped the brown paper off the edges of the album, the moment finally arrived, I paused awhile to look at the album art. For me, album art had always been a second thought. Now I imagine other listeners have done the same, cradling the album in their hands, paused in their enthusiasm by the image printed and wrapped, in loving care, around the record. It was Gregory Euclide’s album art for
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Bon Iver’s self-titled album that led me to listen to Lubomyr Melnyk’s album, Corollaries, whose art Euclide also created. This spring, I wrote to Euclide, eager to speak with the artist himself about his work. His responses were refined and thoughtful, and led me to even more queries about the relationship between art and music, as well as his own transition from the life of a musician to a successful career as a visual artist.
You have mentioned in other interviews that he listens to the music he is creating for while working on the album art. What does this mean? How does sound change the physical process of creating? After finishing cover art for two different artists, did you have similar experiences? Yes, when I do an album cover for a band I really try to get into what is being said through the music. Both of these experiences were highly rewarding. They are both really great pieces of work. Lubomyr’s album has very few words; there is only one song that contains lyrics. It is a very intense music, something that could lift you into another place – mentally. Lubomyr holds the world record for playing the most notes per second. He plays in waves and the album is mostly piano. There are a couple of other instruments, but what you really feel is the piano. There is kind of this intensity of sound that is coming from one instrument; creating these images and patterns. I wanted to reflect that in the design of the cover. I photographed a plastic bag and used its contour for the die-cut. Then, I
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created my own cut piece of paper and photographed that to be printed next to the real die-cut. Through the die-cut one would see the paintings. I liked the way a listener would get to music visually and physically. Along with creating while listening to music, you are inspired by the natural world. In the past, you have referred to landscape as an 'experience of memory'. Whose memory do you feel that you are experiencing, and what does that experience mean to you personally? I was talking about how the land has a history. We often romantically think of rolling farm fields as being rural nature, but there is nothing natural about flat fields of corn. In those locations there used to be forests. As a kid I used to lament the farms being taken over by subdivisions, but what I was missing is that those farms took over prairies and Oak savannah. With respect to the memory portion of that comment, I was talking about how I grew up walking fields and playing in forests. I have a love of these open places. I did not think at the time that the tree lines between farm fields were manmade, but they certainly are. They are only there because they were too wet to farm. I have many memories from these places and when I walk the land now it is impossible to not reference them. Speaking of natural and human spheres, your work seems to contain a tension regarding the separation and relation between human culture and natural landscape. Are these two interdependent? Does one destroy the other? Are they one entity, or is does man exist outside of nature? Everything must destroy something in order to live. If you destroy too much, you risk not having the ability to support yourself as a species. Man does not exist outside of nature; even separating them in a sentence like that is problematic. Man is part of nature, just like a fruit fly or a rose. There are many theories on why we view ourselves outside of nature or why we feel we need to subdue it. Many of them trace back to religions. These ideas are so deep rooted in our culture that they play out almost unconsciously. See Reinventing Eden by Carolyn Merchant for a mind-opening account of why we treat nature the way we do. Time, decay, and ephemerality play a large role in your work, particularly the whiteboard pieces. What do you want to convey to the viewer about these ideas, both in natural and human spheres? I started making these works while on my lunch break at work. I liked the sumi ink because of its intense blackness. I started playing with it on the whiteboards. I liked that I had the option to draw something and then erase it. That idea of being able to work “into” as well as “take away”, was very interesting to me. It was especially interesting giving the history of sumi ink. Traditionally it was used 25
to paint on silk and was kind of a one-shot deal. If you messed up there was really no way to mask it like with oil painting or drawing. So, if you take the material and what it means along with the subject matter/imagery that I was dealing with – it came together and began to make sense. Our country has set a standard as to how to be modern. Developing countries have a desire to emulate our standards of material use. That is a problem, because we have not really acted responsibly. Let’s put it this way, if China, Brazil and India all create the mess we did, we are going to have a serious crisis on our hands. Yet, we behave as though we can somehow fix the environment – wipe it clean and start again. There is not a majority out there that understands who all these things are interconnected and how you cannot mine for gold and leave all the rivers polluted without having long-term negative effects on the land; long term effects that cause serious health problems.” You had a wonderful passage on your blog, which talked about the way producing work gives you the same feeling as listening to music. Why did you choose to become a visual artist rather than a musician, given that music seems so vital to the way you experience life? I was a musician for a while and then I felt I had to make a decision to be one or the other. They both take a lot of time to do correctly. I didn’t have the time to do both and when I tried, one suffered. Now, I just buy it and listen to it and no longer make it. I tend to think of the world in terms of sound. Every action has a sound associated with it. When making work I am often thinking of sounds that my gestures make or they are trying to describe sound. To be honest, I have not figured it out yet – that is to say, I am not sure why this sound/motion correlation exists. One could easily find similarities between the song structures of my favorite musicians and the objects I make. It feels very natural for me to draw upon sound and make a work come from that place or fit into that template even if it is visual. Gregory Euclide currently has a couple of jobs lined up with Erased Tapes. The first is a cover for their various artists sampler that will be coming out in June (see preview above). He recently released the first in a series of prints for spring, which can be found at www.gregoryeuclide.com/prints/ He is an active gardener, and Euclide and partner are having a baby in June. “I want to grow the food that we eat as much as possible,” he says, “so I enlarged the garden to be twice its size. I have been starting over 400 plants indoors and it is going well so far. I can’t wait for the actual spring to happen.”
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Our Beat I am no virtuoso Maestro is not me In spite of my ineptitude I keep an incessant beat, steadfast beat with you. Quotidian chores Beat. My beat is Temp O rising My own kind of maestoso Delicately tuned Efficient In each breathe A beat. A duet played solo. Your beat is occupied Mostly, Placid nonetheless Invariably A beat. ‌ When our hands embrace our duo begins Heartbeats impeccably synchronize realized harmony unspoken euphony a song of solidarity unambiguously, you keep a beat with me.
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Grandma by Lou Tollefson
Lou Tollefson is a Minnesotan artist of many mediums. She graduated from the University of Minnesota, Duluth in 2011 with a B.A. in Art and Women’s Studies. She currently resides in Watkins, Minnesota with her partner, Chris and her cat, Tuna. It is in her tiny apartment in Watkins where her imagination experiments with supplies such as paints and pens in hopes someone may be amused.
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Teen Angst Art Dan seemed such a bland name for our school punk. I wondered how he got around the Catholic school dress code with his mohawk and Alien Sex Fiend leather jacket. He was rumored to eat cat food from the can in the cafeteria. But what really caught my attention were the photocopied ‘zines he handed out around school. A teen in the '80s, I was just getting over my Reagan adoration after the disastrous Carter '70s. I was beginning to question my DC indoctrination in the cult of conservatism. Invading Grenada had been cool, and sending Marines to Lebanon to lay down the law out seemed bad-ass, till Ronnie forgot to have them load their guns and terrorists blew up the base. I felt the Gipper's pain when years before Freedom Fries, the French were still cock-blocking us... making our bomb-laden F111's fly all the way around Spain to blow up Khaddafi's kids, instead of cutting through France. Some ally. But the same people who supported our masculine foreign policy also wanted me to cut my hair, and to do engineering homework instead of partying with my friends. Punk music and art spoke to my troubled teenage soul. I was enthralled with the way Cat Food Dan cut up pictures from magazines and newspapers, recombining the pieces to ridicule the establishment. Bands my friends were turning me on to, like the Dead Kennedys, also had furious collage art in their albums. That started to pull my eye away from the Def Leppard and Dio poster art on my walls. I started producing my own ‘zines, using the crass Sunday newspaper ads and inserts, chopping and recombining the depressing headlines to heighten their absurdity I checked out old school yearbooks from the library, to copy the faces of classmates and teachers. I usurped most of my family's dining table in our small apartment, to spread out the clippings and test my compositions. A hated teacher's jowly head grafted on a ballerina body, my right-wing buddy's face superimposed on Rambo. I clicked dime after dime into the clunky copy machine at the local High's dairy store, holding up grumpy old men trying to copy their tax forms. Freedom of expression for ten cents a page! I distributed copies of my first 'edition' to classmates at school, and held my breath for their reaction... the response was electric, even better than I expected! Fellow students convulsed with laughter, passing the sheets around urgently and jabbing at their favorite jokes. Encouraged, I worked on more. Rolling out each new sheet became the thing I looked forward to most at school. Hard to keep my focus on computer science and pre-calculus. Teachers became concerned about my dropping grades, and I found myself in a meeting with the principal. I assumed I was doomed when he pulled out a copy of one of my 'zine pages. But surprisingly he had a sense of humor about it, even though one of the jokes was about his receding hairline. I was spared detention, unlike when the iron-fisted Vice-Principal had found snap-n-pops in my bag on Sprit Day. The drawback of my artistic success was actually from other students - rumors started that I hadn't actually done the art. I was only known in school for being good in science. My friend Gary on the
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other hand had been cracking the student body up with his football team posters and student caricatures. People thought HE must be the true genius behind my collages. That was frustrating, but my course was set. I wanted to do art. I started to see collage everywhere. It took me longer to decorate the envelopes I sent to my pen pals than it did to write the letters inside. Jeff was another influential friend of mine. At least I tried to think of him as a friend - he seemed to think most everyone and everything in mainstream life was ridiculous, and he spent a fair amount of time making fun of me as well. But Jeff did condescend to make me mix tapes, of music like Art of Noise and Einsturzende Neubauten, where sounds clashed together in aural collage. I tried my hand at that too, taping toilet flushes, hairdryers, vacuum cleaners, and other abrasive household sounds on a cassette recorder. I wished it was as easy to edit tapes as it was to cut paper. Jeff talked me into venturing to decrepit downtown DC for my first live taste of the punk and alternative scene. It was mostly thrilling, and only slightly terrifying. One band 9353 had eyecatching retro photomontage poster art, and despite my cheapskate ways I had to venture down the dark stairwell to the dank basement of the 9:30 Club. The merchandise room was next to the frightening bathrooms there. I got a T-shirt featuring indecipherably surreal collaged silhouettes. I went to see them a lot more times with Jeff, I loved their quirkiness and that of their fans as well. I'd seen slam-dancing in MTV videos, but at 9353 shows, the audience would often drop to the floor and writhe around, a snake pit instead of mosh pit. Perhaps thanks to the DC straight-edge culture, the club floor wasn't as sticky with spilled beer as it could have been. I heard a story that their name was due to one of their girlfriend's job at the Smithsonian. Browsing through the formaldehyde-bottled freak collection, she found a Victorian fetus with a penis growing out of its head. The "peckerhead baby" was labeled specimen number 9353. Beyond music, I began to see that writing could be a form of collage too. Writers like Douglas Adams, cartoonists like Gary Larson, performers like Monty Python, filmmakers like David Lynch and Jean Luc Goddard all brought conflicting ideas and images together that clashed in humor or drama. I spied connections as well with artists I'd seen at the Smithsonian, like the DADA movement, Robert Rauschenberg, and folk artist Howard Finster who did covers for REM and Talking Heads. With my mind opening up to all this, I struggled on in science for a few more years, urged by my practical parents. My favorite part of the environmental job I got with the Maryland Conservation Corps was the trash and debris I fished from local streams, and brought home to
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use in sculptures. Eventually I went back to school and got a Master's in art. It was weird teaching college for the first time, being part of "the establishment" after doing most of my art outside of school inspired by the DIY punk ethos and untrained folk artists. One professor suggested that with my undergrad in science, I'd always be a bit of an outsider in the art world anyway. That sounded like an insult, but then she said it was actually good. I like how mixed up things can be. Robert Dewitt Adams is a Duluth artist, writer, and library staffer often roused from dreams by a pet rabbit hopping on him. Originally from the Washington, D.C. area, he has also inhabited Seattle, Oregon, and Sicily. Locally he has shown work at Prove, Ochre Ghost, Zeitgeist, and the Duluth Art Institute; and written for the White Earth Land Recovery Project newsletter, cartooned for the Cass Lake Times, and photographed Paul and Babe for the Bemidji Pioneer. Excerpt from ‘Fortnight in America: 7-2 through 7-15, 2013 Off in the distance, way behind the stage, somewhere in Wisconsin a big cloud occasionally flickered. Hidden lightning bolts pulsed inside the bursting boomer, lit up tangerine or peach by the electricity. But like the Bob on stage, the one that changed the world, we could not hear the rolling thunder. We could only see a distant light, a shadow of what once cut through our dark night and helped us see that something was most definitely blowin’ in the wind.
and hear the roaring boom that sparked the firestorm of our youth. He’ll die a troubadour, A traveling minstrel searching for that flash and boom once more. We witness… until the light goes out, storm clouds gone, low growl of thunder in the air no more. And now we wait. (pause)...(distant rumble) Do you hear something?
But the times, you know, the times did change. (silence)
William Payne is a poet, a director of stage plays and video documentaries, an arts educator, and Dean of the UMD School of Fine Arts. His poetry can be found regularly on Twitter @DeanBillPayne.
Old Bob has played his last set in a birthplace he didn’t much care for, and we witnessed it. Some longed to see the flash of light 31
I Can Already Hear It Afterwards, the flags sprouted up like flowers. An explosion of unity, I was old enough to know they would tatter and fade like the public’s passions. The magnets that support the troops would fall off the cars into the ditch. A good thing would turn into a demonstration of short attention spans. I could already see it. I sit at my breakfast table. I read National Geographic and crunch on some cereal. I’m old enough to know that the music drifting in from the other room won’t last.
Take One by Ed Newman
My kids will grow up and leave home. The piano that I don’t know how to play will fall silent. I can already hear it.
Eric Chandler has written for Flying Magazine, Silent Sports Magazine, Northern Wilds, Minnesota Flyer, and Lake Country Journal, to name a few. Literary journals like The Talking Stick and Sleetmagazine.com have published his fiction, creative nonfiction, and poetry. He recently released his book, Outside Duluth, a collection of forty stories about local outdoor family adventures. He is a member of Lake Superior Writers. Eric is also an Air Force veteran with twenty years of experience flying the F-16. He served in Iraq and Afghanistan.
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Blue Cathedral Blue Cathedral or the sounds that make us present chimed reverberations in pools on the roadbed concrete rubble lying under monolithic raised highways soaring upward swaying in the steam of the Huangpu night we pass the water through a maze of interlocking concrete projections empty signifieds neon blinking colors all around blinking pixels calling McDonalds and KFC blinking moonlight haze of wandering spirits painted white she’s ghostly pale in the shimmering a see through chemise like silk screen mountains rivers and temples meditating over craggy cliffs characters vertical Paul Peterson lives in Superior, Wisconsin. He enjoys failing to decipher the indecipherable, traveling, and watching steam rise off Lake Superior in subzero temperatures.
yet soft and flowing as tapestries of notes cascading her parasol is all of this slippers somehow not dirty against the coal dust grime of blackened concrete skyscrapers glimmer dully like dusk in Bagan and I can’t tell if the highway is swaying or if multistory towers are lilting
Yi, Er, San, Se! a loudspeaker crackles on the early morning tennis court then scratches and a waltz comes on to the people they dance outside of time together gliding past sunlight piercing a canopy of sound cicadas in trees with amputated branches bandaged white noodles slap next to baskets stacked steaming a honking far away faint it approaches circling bicycles chime behind till blue dump trucks without hoods over engines roar past gears seething black oil cigarette smoke and a Stomp of thirty million feet 33
Human Nature in Montana The one-armed blonde live on stage would reveal even more of herself (in ways truly wild) if gentlemen threw something more than money at her. She too has learned to ignore the pounding house music that sounds (little wonder) like the world’s about to end. As she undresses she daydreams about a garden-variety butterfly missing a wing becoming a riled grizzly bear — of a rushing river of blood swirled a golden pink with spilled beer pouring across the big broken mirror she would make of the dance floor if freed from this cage. Until her next song begins. — in memory of James Crumley
Brian Beatty’s jokes, poems, reviews and short stories have appeared in numerous print and online publications. He also performs as a stand-up comedian and storyteller.
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Skater Echo through Skywalk sounds like freight train coming on. But the kid weaves like water between poly-rayoned skirted secretaries in hose, their feet encased in marshmallow thick running shoes. They all walk together and complain about their husbands. Skater zigzags with he's-done-this-a-thousand-times confidence between myself and a guy who has pasty skin and bug eyes, who wears pale, button-up shirt and walks for lunch hour, just like me. Skater makes jumps where there are none. He wears bright red nylon pants, has a beautiful afro. Skater kicks off, rolls, jumps, kicks off, rolls, jumps, board wheels clacking, rolling far ahead of us, until he slam stops, his body language, 'oh man'. A cop's walked up and barks for skater's I.D. Skater shrugs, toes and flips skateboard up into his hand. Cop then points to smeary window (outside spatter, pigeon ghost), asks what does the fourth line read? (NO SKATEBOARDING). The last command below no this, no this, no that. Cop takes out his ticket book, asks for skater's full name, birth date, address (our footsteps metronome cop's demands). Lunch hour ends 1 pm. As I circle, make my way back, I pass skater walking with friends, who came out of nowhere, all of them carrying their boards now, and laughing.
Liz Minette has had worked published in PRĂ˜OF Magazine as well as Aqueous Magazine, Nerve Cowboy, and Poetry Victims. She also has writing forthcoming in Abbey and Calyx. She lives near Duluth, Minnesota and DJ's once a month for The Women's Program on KUMD.
Next page: Deeper by Amina Harper
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Outskirts Dog barks echo through hollowed-out buildings, a thin strip of blue at the horizon. Tufts of straw rise up between thrown-out boards, while swifts arc and dip in a single wave. The bleating of an old pickup drowns out “I never promised you a rose garden” borne aloft by a kitchen radio. Barn cats flash blue-gray eyes beneath stripped elms: black arms above plow parts, sheet metal strips. The people are the kind who inhabit outskirts anywhere, their frost-tinged faces weary of all weather, they and the cats a remnant waiting to be gathered up. Mark Maire lives on Duluth's west hillside. His poetry has appeared most recently in the Minnetonka Review, the second issue of PRØOF Magazine, Slant: A Journal of Poetry, and on Northern Community Radio. :: play it again :: These thoughts of mine, chained and wailing for expression, never seem as profound as they fall mangled off my tongue. Jozef Conaway, often mistaken for a wight, is a writer and musician from the heart of the Iron Range.
Chained and wailing for expression, they reject simplicity as they fall mangled off my tongue. To understand is an illusion.
One time, he beat the world record with no witness.
They reject simplicity but for fleeting, epiphanal moments. To understand is an illusion, beautiful and terrifying. But, for fleeting, epiphanal moments, these thoughts of mine-beautiful and terrifying-never seem as profound.
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Liberace played I’ll be seeing you, in all the old familiar places That this heart of mine embraces All day through…. It was his song. Your song, too, or maybe I just made it so. The night of your funeral I tried my voice on it --standing on a table top, drunk past oblivion. The manager kicked us out. He couldn’t abide grief like that -I wore mine brash, like a coat of feathers, fur and rhinestones, so heavy I had a hard time standing. I wanted to make sure you could find me in the morning sun and when the night is new I’ll be looking at the moon, but I’ll be seeing…you. P. A. Pashibin is a poet and folk artist, presently working on a collection of poetry and graphics in the form of picasiette mosaics. She received her MFA from Hamline University's College of Liberal Arts. In December her collage work was featured at Homewood Studios' "Transparent Self" show in Minneapolis. Her writing appears in anthologies, literary journals, and self-published chapbooks. Below: Arethusa by Angel Hawari
Painting With Music I listen to music every day. I paint every day and I use music to help me along. Now and again I switch to MPR or a Ted Talk or something. But there is music in that kind of thing too. Sometimes I listen to the same MPR program twice in a day. It's not because I necessarily want to re-digest the information. It's mostly because I forget that I'm listening. And I find the voices comforting. When I listen to music, the rhythm of the tune helps me find a flow. The melodies and tones filter through my brain and into the movements of my wrists and fingers. Also, I steal lyrics from songs to title my paintings. But I don't call it stealing. I call it paying homage.
Adam Swanson is an artist who lives and works in Duluth, Minnesota. Making art is the most effective way I am able to process thoughts and ideas in search of the truth. I find solace in the deeper aspects of art and the lighthearted, silliness of it, in equal parts.
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