THE SOURCE AND SOUL FOR PROMOTING THE ARTS SINCE 1994
MARCH 2022
THE ARTFUL MIND
MICHAEL LALLY PHOTOGRAPH BY BOBBY MILLER
THE ARTFUL MIND MARCH 2022 The cycle goes on, strong and steady, welcoming Spring soon ahead
MALIA’S GARDEN ART BY ALLISON GREEN WRITTEN BY LIZ LORENZ ... 8 MICHAEL LALLY WRITTEN AND PHOTOGRAPHED BY BOBBY MILLER ...16
VIRTUAL ART GALLERY FINE ART AND PHOTOGRAPHY BY ARTISTS FOR SALE
...26
JEAN BLACKBURN INTERVIEW BY H. CANDEE ...34
CD Release Party for Aimee Van Dyne’s upcoming album, Broken Love Songs
Friday April 29th 7:30pm at THE FOUNDRY 2 Harris St, West Stockbridge, MA
RICHARD BRITELL | FICTION SOMETHING FOR OVER THE COUCH
CHAPTER 8
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THE ARTFUL MIND MARCH 2022 • 3
SHABNAM JANNESARI
A.P.E. ARTS GALLERY CROSSING CULTURES: FAMILY MEMORY AND DISPLACEMENT “CROSSING CULTURES: Family, Memory and Displacement”, will be on exhibit March 9 – April 1, with an artist reception on Friday, March 11, 5-8 pm. This exhibit is curated by Claudia Ruiz Gustafson and participating artists are: Astrid Reischwitz, Claudia Ruiz Gustafson, Nilou Moochhala, Vivian Poey, Shabnam Jannesari, Nicolas Hyacinthe Crossing Cultures is an art exhibition about family, memory, displacement and identity from the point of view of six visual artists with roots in five regions: Asia (India and Iran), South America (Peru), North America (Mexico), The Caribbean (Cuba and Haiti) and Europe (Germany). Through the use of vintage family photographs, and the use of different mediums: photography, painting, mixed media and video, these artists uncover their family stories and create complex, multidimensional narratives to reflect upon what they have left behind while shifting countries and at the same time honoring and remembering family traditions and vanishing ways of life. We are a nation of people who have come from around the globe and have experienced loss
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and transformation as we make our way in a new place. A place where diverse backgrounds, political beliefs, faiths, identities, and ideas come together to create something new. This exhibition embodies and celebrates this ongoing transformation in what it means to find home at a time where migration across the world is at an alltime high. Astrid Reischwitz is a lens-based artist whose work explores storytelling from a personal perspective. Using keepsakes from family life, old photographs, and storytelling strategies, she builds a visual world of memory, identity, place, and home. Her current focus is the exploration of personal and collective memory influenced by her upbringing in Germany. Her work received multiple awards including Series Winner at the 2021 Siena International Photo Awards, a Juror’s Pick at the 2021 LensCulture Art Photography Awards, and the Griffin Award at the 26th Juried Exhibition, Griffin Museum of Photography. She is a four-time Photolucida Critical Mass Top 50 photographer and is currently represented by Gallery Kayafas in Boston MA. https://www.reischwitzphotography.com/ Claudia Ruiz Gustafson is a Peruvian Latinx visual artist and curator whose practice engages photography, assemblage, poetry and artist book making. Her work is mainly autobiographical and self-reflective; her cross-cultural experience and Peruvian heritage deeply inform her art making. She is a 2021 Massachusetts Cultural Artist Fellow and a 2021 Photolucida Critical Mass Top 50. She holds a BA in Communications (Comunicación para el Desarrollo) from Universidad de Lima, and a Professional Photography Certificate from Kodak Interamericana de Perú. She currently lives and works in Massachusetts. https://www.claudiafineart.com/ Originally from Mumbai/India, Nilou Moochhala’s visual practice has been channeled into examining issues of cross-cultural change and transformation through the use of language,
image, and memorabilia to create social and political narratives. She has exhibited in numerous galleries from Boston to Brooklyn, and her pandemic-inspired Virus Series is part of National Women’s History Museum. She was selected as the 2021 Artist-in-Residence for the Arlington Commission on Arts and Culture, and has been a recipient of numerous grants from the Mass Cultural Council and New England Foundation for the Arts. Her public art projects have been profiled in the Boston Globe, WBUR, Artscope, and Art Outdoors. https://www.niloumakes.com/ Vivian Poey is a visual artist and a Professor at Lesley University, College of Art and Design in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Her work examines a number of issues ranging from migration and cultural assimilation to the passing of time. Vivian is American, born in Mexico of Cuban parents and lived in Guatemala and Colombia before moving to the U.S. This complicated trajectory informs all of her art, which serves as a method of investigation, and includes photography, installation and performance. h t t p s : / / l e s l e y. e d u / a b o u t / f a c u l t y - s t a ff directory/vivian-poey Shabnam Jannesari is an Iranian artist who received her MFA with distinction in Studio Art at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth. She is a recipient of the Distinguished Art Fellowship at the University of Massachusetts – Dartmouth and the Elizabeth Greenshields Foundation Grant, Canada in 2020. She incorporates both drawing and painting to explore the memories and nostalgia of distant intimacies in her life through narrative. She illuminates the plight of the Iranian woman – censored by an overreaching patriarchy. Shabnam carefully composes the figures which empowers the complex reality of Iranian female identity. https://shabnamjannesari.wixsite.com/portfolio Nicolas Hyacinthe is a multidisciplinary artist born in Port-au-Prince, Haiti and now based in Boston, MA. He studied photography and film at Emerson College where he received a Bachelor of Arts in Film Production. During his childhood he witnessed his homeland endure drastic political and cultural changes. Nicolas’s art and activism is fueled by his unique experience and perspective straddling the chasm within the worlds in which he has lived, loved, created, and confronted. He is passionate about speaking up for those whose voices have been stiffed, oppressed and marginalized. http://www.nicolashyacinthe.com/ Until further notice, A.P.E. requires full COVID-19 vaccination for the gallery on Main Street and the building at 33 Hawley St. Exemptions can be accommodated by a negative PCR COVID test within the previous 48 hours. All attendees must wear a mask at all times while in the buildings. A.P.E. Arts Gallery – 126 Main Street, Northampton, Massachusetts. 413-586-5553. www.apearts.org.
Mark Mellinger Paintings - Collage - Construction
100 North St Pittsfield #322 914. 260. 7413 markmellinger680@gmail.com Where's Kizer? Acrylic and pigment stick on canvas. 2022. 65" x 65"
THE ARTFUL MIND MARCH 2022 • 5
WHITE STREAM, OIL ON CANVAS, 12” X 24”
GHETTA HIRSCH This has been an unusually icy winter and I have only explored nature safely, sometimes with snow poles or spikes under my shoes, but always with wonder. I want to share with you my appreciation for our magical Berkshires snow. Close to my home, there is a little stream that I visit regularly. It is hidden among rocks, old leaves, shrubby grass and downed tree limbs. Sometimes in the morning, you can see the start of the day in the Eastern sky, and the light plays with the snow in interesting colors. Snow is never quite white, especially after it has been on the ground for a few days. The stream itself changes at different times of the day or whether it is partially or completely frozen; it welcomes muddy foliage or broken twigs equally. I love to see how the water stagnates and reflects the landscape like a mirror. At times, the contrast between the trees, the rocks and the snow covering attract my eyes more than the stream. I have observed this little neighborhood nook so often that I could paint it by memory. “Winter Stream” is a thick 1 1/4” canvas. I did not paint the sides as I usually do. I also left it unframed as it is painted white on the side to imitate the snow on the ground. I used a palette knife rather than a brush to give it the texture that I see in nature. Soon, this stream will fill with melting snow and everything will look like mud! So let us enjoy this landscape even when walking around is a challenge! My art studio is open for visits. Please wear a mask and call ahead of time. Ghetta Hirsch - Text or call 413-597-1716 to check that I am home. Visit my images on Instagram@ghettahirschpaintings, or visit my Website: Ghetta-Hirsch.squarespace.com
VICTORIAN, WATERCOLOR
MARGUERITE BRIDE BERKSHIRES IN WATERCOLOR Painters who live in the Berkshires are really very lucky. There is always something inspiring to paint just by looking around outside. The inspiration never stops, no matter the season. I have painted nearly 200 paintings of the Berkshires and nearby region …. the iconic spots we all know and love, bucolic hillsides and landscapes, funky downtowns with their unique buildings, marketplaces, rivers, lakes….if it doesn’t move I have probably painted it. If you are interested in seeing these paintings, please visit the “Berkshires” gallery on my website. Many originals are still available and fine art reproductions can always be ordered. Do you have special occasions in your future? Anniversary? Wedding? Graduation? Retirement? Selling a home and downsizing? A custom watercolor painting of a wedding venue, a home or other special location is a treasured gift. Any time is a great time to commission a house portrait or favorite scene you would like captured in a watercolor. Paintings (or even a personalized gift certificate, then I work directly with the recipient) make a cherished and personal gift for weddings, retirement, new home, old home, anniversaries…..any occasion is special. Commission work is always welcome. Marguerite Bride – Home Studio at 46 Glory Drive, Pittsfield, Massachusetts by appointment only. Call 413-841-1659 or 413442-7718; margebride-paintings.com; margebride@aol.com; Facebook: Marguerite Bride Watercolors.
SNOW CANYON, OIL, GRAPHITE, 30” X 24”, 2022
PAPER ON BIRCH PANEL,
VIRGINIA BRADLEY Snow Canyon is the first painting to be completed in the ongoing Fairyland Series. In May of 2021, I took a breathtaking road trip to visit the National and State Parks in Utah. The series is named after the Fairyland Canyon in Bryce Canyon, a magical canyon filled with alchemical hoodoos. Truly all the canyons in Utah are captivating fairylands, each with their own sense of enchantment. The paintings depart from photographs I took during my trip. While reflecting on my Utah canyon experience, news and photos emerged of the devasting wildfires in the northwest of the United States. Increased extreme weather such as droughts and heat waves caused by climate change have exacerbated the scale and intensity of the fires. Many of these fires have produced pyrocumulonimbus (fire) clouds. These clouds are so intense that they modify local weather, producing intense downbursts and create lightning storms that can ignite more fires. Climate change has been an ongoing theme in my research from issues with the Caribbean to geysers at Yellowstone National Park. The Fairyland Series incorporates images of the wildfires into the Utah canyon landscape we all love. Hopefully, the viewer can reflect on the beauty of the painting as well as devastation that is part of its construction. Virginia’s studio is located in Great Barrington and studio visits are welcome. Virginia Bradley virginiabradleyart@gmail.com 302-540-3565, www.virginiabradley.com
"Painting is a blind man's profession. He paints not what he sees, but what he feels, what he tells himself about what he has seen." —Pablo Picasso
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THE NIGHT GARDEN
ALLISON GREEN
VAN CLIBURN GOLD MEDALIST PIANIST YEKWON SUNWOO
CLOSE ENCOUNTERS WITH MUSIC A NIGHT OF CHOPIN AND BRAHMS Van Cliburn Gold Medalist Pianist Yekwon Sunwoo will perform in his Berkshire debut this March. “A Night of Chopin and Brahms” which features four Scherzi and the piano quartet in G minor – Music of Demonic Power and Energy and will be performed live at the Mahaiwe Performing Arts Center in Great Barrington, Massachusetts on March 20 at 4 PM. The tickets for this event are $28/$52. Gold medalist of the 15th Van Cliburn International Piano Competition, Yekwon Sunwoo has been hailed for his “unfailingly consistent excellence” (International Piano) and celebrated as “a pianist who commands a comprehensive technical arsenal that allows him to thunder without breaking a sweat” (Chicago Tribune). He will be making his area debut on stage with acclaimed violinist Daniel Phillips, violist Daniel Panner, and cellist and artistic director Yehuda Hanani. The program showcases Sunwoo’s remarkable piano prowess both as a soloist as well as a chamber musician and partner. Following in the footsteps of former illustrious Van Cliburn winners such as Radu Lupu, Olga Kern, Alexander Korbin and Vladimir Viardo, the prize has catapulted Yekwon Sunwoo to international attention. Chopin’s Scherzi, from the word for “joke” (scherzo), are anything but light, humorous and fluffy, and though much recorded, are best performed live by only the most outstanding and secure piano talents. Considered among Chopin’s masterpieces, this large-scale work, dramatic and romantic, features startling effects, mesmerizing and spiritual passages and unbridled power and exuberant energy. Yekwon Sunwoo is joined for the Brahms Opus 25 Piano Quartet by veteran chamber musicians – members of the Orion String Quartet, Mendelssohn String Quartet, contemporary ensemble Sequitur, and frequent collaborators with other top ensembles. One of Brahms’s most viscerally seductive works, the Quartet in G minor it is much beloved for its famous rousing finale, the Rondo alla Zingarese (Gypsy Rondo). Close Encounters With Music - Post Office Box 34, Great Barrington, Massachusetts; 800843-0778, cewm.org, cewmusic@aol.com.
MALIA’S GARDEN
KENT MIKALSEN SCULPTURE “I am curious about the nature of reality, and I am interested in what scientists, mystics, and other artists have to say about physical existence. My art is a visual manifestation of those inquiries.” Kent Mikalsen is a professionally trained visual artist whose multi-dimensional work also includes experience as a designer and concept artist in architecture, visual effects for feature films, animation and entertainment park design. He grew up in NYC and completed his education in Florida, earning an MFA in sculpture from the University of Florida. During graduate school, Kent was considered a rising star. He was selected for prestigious national and regional shows, permanent collections in major museums and received commissions for large outdoor sculptures. At the height of his promising career as an artist, Kent became disillusioned with his unbridled and unfulfilling personal life. Seeking more meaning, he moved into an ashram for ten years to study yoga, meditation, and other transformational practices. This experience had a profound effect on his inner life and on his art. His work became a meditation on the nature of non-physical reality. An unresolved dialogue of opposites still remains between his pursuit of the ethereal and his large, heavy, carved wood sculptures. This paradox still resides at the core of his work. Kent lives in the Berkshires of western Massachusetts and has studios there and in Florida. “Concerning matter, we have been all wrong. What we have called matter is really energy, whose vibration has been lowered as to be perceptible to the senses. There is no matter. There is only light and sound.” —Albert Einstein Kent Mikalsen Email: kentmikalsen@gmail.com, Art website: www.kentmikalsen.com, Design website: www.kentmikalsenstudio.com, Instagram: www.instagram.com/kent_mikalsen.
Susan Eley Fine Art is pleased to present a solo exhibition of new paintings by Allison Green, the first showcase of her work in the Gallery’s Hudson location. The exhibition will be on view April 21—June 5, 2022. The opening reception will be held on Saturday, April 23, 57 PM. Green is a master of capturing the botanical. She constructs lush and mystical universes in her canvases, which range from monumental multipanel pieces to intimately scaled studies. Relying on both horticultural research and personal observations, Green renders flora and fauna with precision and care. Yet, her works are not mere imitations of scientific diagrams of plant life, nor do they fall prey to the tropes and nostalgia of traditional landscape painting. Instead, they are portraits—Poppies, Stargazer Lilies, Orchids, Adam’s Needle Yucca. Each depiction of an individual plant or an interconnected ecosystem contains a language, a narrative. Green’s vibrant, atmospheric environments are deeply influenced by events in the artist’s own life. This enables her compositions to manifest broader truths about nature and humanity: qualities of interdependence and healing, cycles of regeneration and rebirth. Anchored by the epic painting Malia’s Garden, the exhibition at SEFA Hudson conjures a veritable garden for viewers. Shown together, Green’s new works highlight the aesthetic wonders of her subjects while simultaneously transcending their earthly roots to elicit potent internal experiences. Susan Eley Fine Art - 433 Warren Street, Hudson, NY, 12534; susaneleyfineart.com, susie@susaneleyfineart.com, 917-952-7641.
“Art should comfort the disturbed and disturb the comfortable” —Banksy
THE ARTFUL MIND MARCH 2022 • 7
Allison Green, Malia’s Garden (2020), Oil on canvas, 72 x 132 inches
MALIA’S GARDEN ART BY ALLISON GREEN Text by Liz Lorenz Allison Green is a master of capturing the botanical. She constructs lush and mystical universes in her canvases, which range from monumental multi-panel pieces to intimately scaled studies. Relying on both horticultural research and personal observations, Green renders flora and fauna with personal attention and technical precision. Yet, her works are not mere imitations of scientific diagrams of plant life, nor do they fall prey to the tropes and nostalgia of traditional landscape painting. Instead, they are portraits: Poppies, Stargazer Lilies, Orchids, Adam’s Needle Yucca. Each depiction of an individual plant or an interconnected ecosystem contains a language, a narrative. Green’s colorful, atmospheric environments are deeply influenced by events in the artist’s own life. This enables her compositions to manifest broader truths about nature and humanity: qualities of interdependence and healing, cycles of regeneration and rebirth. *** On a bitter winter afternoon, I approach a 8 • MARCH 2022 THE ARTFUL MIND
massive complex of industrial buildings in Jersey City—rust-hued bricks and worn metals set against a frosty blue sky. This stark urban setting is home to Mana Contemporary: an expansive arts center that houses visual and performing artists in its studio spaces, residency programs and exhibition galleries. All are artists of a premier caliber who apply for their spaces in this former factory via Mana’s prestigious curatorial directives. The functional, almost harsh exterior of Mana’s main building, which greets me immediately, disappears upon entering the studio space of Allison Green. The contrast between the feelings is significant. Inside Green’s studio, radiant sunlight streams through the windows. The shadows are pronounced yet lyrical, casting attractive patterns on her worksin-progress and creating striations upon their golden and violet backgrounds. An array of tubes of oil paints are displayed on Green’s workbench: all of the colors she needs to craft her immersive natural scenes. Verdant and flowering plants—which are used for both enjoyment and study—line her studio. Leaves
soften the tiled walls; red and pink buds filter the light that radiates through the standardized factory windows. Appearances change with the weather and the time of day, as if in a poetic dance. Already, Green’s studio invites me into the garden that she activates to produce her story, her vision. Similar to her expansive studio at Mana, Green is vibrant and warm. She welcomes me into her realm with a quality of care and insight that mirrors the energy within her most recent pastoral mise-en-scène: Malia’s Garden. The work is a sprawling three-panel oil painting of orchids and birds set against an ethereal yellow background. It was conceived of as an homage to Green’s young daughter Malia. Also, the piece encompasses the artist’s long-term aesthetic and conceptual concentration on the botanical universe: its potential to flourish abundantly—one day, beautifully, even after the struggles. The painting Malia’s Garden is the anchor of Green’s upcoming show at Susan Eley Fine Art, a contemporary art gallery in downtown
Hudson, New York. In preparation for Green’s solo exhibition—the first showcase of her work at the Gallery’s Hudson location—I had the opportunity to visit her studio and conduct this interview to learn more about her practice and latest paintings. On view from April 21 to June 5, 2022, the exhibition at SEFA Hudson is also entitled Malia’s Garden, recognizing the preeminence of this piece—its inspirations and intentions. As visitors enter the Gallery, the traditional white cube space is transformed into a veritable garden. Shown together at SEFA, Green’s newest works highlight the aesthetic wonders of her subjects while simultaneously transcending their earthly roots to elicit potent internal experiences. *** Liz Lorenz: I sense that there is a strong connection between your new painting for this exhibition Malia’s Garden and your previous work The Night Garden. Both are monumental, multi-panel paintings that create a true “garden” for Gallery viewers, as described in your own words. The Night Garden was the centerpiece of your most recent exhibition with Susan Eley Fine Art, which took place in our NYC Gallery in 2018. The paintings are equally sublime, yet there is a darkness to The Night Garden. It focuses on the blooming of flowers during the night, specifically the luminous white lilies— blossoming at a time when most people would not be able to observe their beauty. To me, this painting and the sentiment within it feel like a
sort of contrast to the radiant glow of Malia’s Garden. This piece is golden, bright, exuberant; the purple orchids seem to dance triumphantly against the sunny background. For you, is there a connection or a relationship between these two paintings? Allison Green: Yes, there is absolutely a connection between these two paintings. I see it as a progression. As you know, I do not shy away from the autobiographical elements of my work—while also, I do not like my work defined completely by my autobiography; there is a fine balance. To provide a degree of context, I made The Night Garden while I was experiencing challenges with my fertility. Eventually, I had accepted and made peace with the prospect of not becoming a biological mother. Suddenly, I received the news that I was able to adopt a baby girl—Malia. Thus, Malia’s Garden is an exploration into light and lightness. For me, it is the overwhelming flourishing of life and nature. In conversation with The Night Garden— Malia’s Garden is the “other side of the coin,” the opposite. Indeed, they are like two sides of a coin: finding light in the darkness, and then having found that light, being actively saturated by the joy and love that accompany it. So while they are both fully flowering gardens, these paintings are different—yet intimately connected. LL: Thank you so much for sharing that personal context. Additionally, I would love to
further dive into the origins of the name “Malia.” I went on a bit of an entomology tangent earlier, and I have found that “Malia” is from Hawaiian origins. Its meaning is essentially peaceful, calm, beloved. Also, the sources I looked at have compared its pronunciation, or sound, to a “lyrical, breezy flower.” May I ask how you came upon the name Malia and decided on this name for your daughter? Did her name come first, or did the title of the painting come first? AG: Her name came first, and I made the painting for her. In terms of the entomology of the name, when I researched it further after selecting it—Malia is indeed peaceful and calm, but it also carries the meanings of rebellious, brave, beloved and “wished for child.” The multiplicity of its connotations are very important to me since I have looked into its various origins. The magical part is that we can uncover these nuanced and complex meanings as time progresses in order to enrich our understanding. Especially at this current moment in my life, I want to focus on the duality of “Malia,” both the calm and the brave. LL: Thinking of your response here—I would love to use Malia’s Garden as the title for your upcoming show at SEFA Hudson. Conceptually, we are weaving in this difference between the night and the darkness, and what challenges The Night Garden embodies for you; versus what Continued on next page...
Allison Green, The Night Garden (2018), Oil on canvas, 72 x 144 inches
THE ARTFUL MIND MARCH 22 • 9
Allison Green, Queen Anne’s Lace (2011), Oil on canvas, 60 x 48 inches
Malia’s Garden represents to you now based on your recent experiences: welcoming your daughter into your life and the associated celebratory, flourishing aspects. Also, there is the beautiful fact that you created an “epic garden” for us at the Gallery in New York City and next will create one for us in Hudson. What do you think of this proposal for Malia’s Garden as the exhibition title? AG: Wow, that’s awesome. I was actually just thinking about proposing Malia’s Garden as the exhibition title to you before our conversation today. The piece is fundamental to my newest bodies of work, which also include the “Safe Haven” and the “Pollination” series. Often, I am working on more than one series at a time, which you can see in my studio. There is a mix of themes and a variety of essential “figures” or “characters” that I focus on at the same time— specific botanical groups and related species, or larger symbiotic ecosystems. Then, I move between the series as I am inspired by the plant life around me in my studio. LL: Yes, I would be eager to learn more about the new “Pollination” series, which will also be featured in your exhibition at SEFA Hudson. AG: I have been reading a lot about orchids and how resilient they are, and that is what drew me to making these plants the “main character” in this most recent work. Soon after, I became fascinated with the interactions between flowers: how do they reproduce within the same species? 10 • MARCH 2022 THE ARTFUL MIND
Allison Green, String Theory (Blue) (2014), Oil on canvas, 60 x 48 inches
This led me to the “Pollination” series. Similar to my previous series like “String Theory” and “Thicket”—the factors of interdependence and regeneration were primary in my decision to depict these plants. So today in my studio, you can see the vibrant red Poppies and the deep purple Adam’s Needle Yucca. Both of these plants are visually stunning, and if the viewer chooses to engage with further study, they realize that the pollination practices are equally impressive. How such plants share these lifegiving elements, along with pollinators like insects and birds, is my current focus. My research has revealed the importance of biology, but I also uncover the stories within. LL: The plant life in your work is so precise and well-studied. Even though I do not possess the horticultural knowledge to judge the accuracy of the species that you render—there seems to be a true expertise in your paintings and drawings. How do you approach creating these renderings? What are your sources? AG: I use everything! Direct observations from plants that I bring into my studio, or simply the plants that grow around the urban landscapes where I live in New Jersey. I am able to study these directly, and after careful reflection, then I can delineate the essentials. I do use more scientific manuals as well, such as books on horticulture. These images and diagrams are the basis for my renderings so that I achieve a high level of visual accuracy. However, I privilege
artistic vision over a “perfect” reproduction. As you can see in my work, I often abstract or flatten the backgrounds. To me, this creates a more mystical, ideal space while also allowing viewers to concentrate on the essence—the feeling, the sentiment—of how I interpret the plants that I am depicting. For my series that includes birds, I have used Audubon’s renowned studies. For my flowers, I sometimes visit the botanical gardens around New York. LL: Indeed, your depictions of plants feel more like portraits. They are not scientific diagrams or traditional landscape paintings. Each flower or plant becomes a character it seems. AG: Agreed. I am very happy you picked up on that “portrait” quality within my practice. The actual power of a name and the study of language is very important to me: the subtleties of botanical nomenclature and the power of their meaning. I find my subjects through these needs, and everything is connected for me. Then, I weave these narratives together. For example, with The Night Garden, it is like finding the story of the king and the queen of the garden, then medling them into a fairytale of sorts. There is always an idea initially based on zooming in on the plants themselves (their names, their functions, their physical attributes) and then weaving them together to mirror the connections that I find within nature. LL: Finally, I see in your biography that your
Allison Green in Studio, Photo by Enga Purevjav
work is included in the Brooklyn Museum’s Elizabeth Sackler Feminist Art Base. That is a massive honor to receive from one of the premier libraries and collections of feminist art. Based on my own research and curatorial interests in contemporary feminisms—I would love to speak more about your work in this context. AG: Yes, I think that the “Arboreal Portraits” series is one of the best illustrations of my work within this context. This is a series of individual trees, such as birch, conifer and palm. Conceptually, each tree is a portrait of a strong woman that has shaped my own life, experience and point of view as a female—for example, my grandmother Henrietta. I express the powerful and resilient relationship between individuals and the universe through this venerable symbol of the tree—detailing their unique branches and trunks. In my paintings, the trees stand isolated yet strong, reflecting their history within their physicality. LL: And to ask that basic question—what artists are inspirations for you? In reference to your work, I would imagine that the Georgia O’Keeffe association comes up often—since she also painted such elegant and highly-studied images of flowers and plants. How do you feel about that comparison? AG: Oh I am flattered by the comparisons to Georgia. She is certainly one of my inspirations. Also, Frida Kahlo. Her recent exhibition at the New York Botanical Garden was incredible. I went there to observe and to study the flowers, which made their way into my own paintings. And certainly Judy Chicago! She is such an influence for me, especially considering her work The Dinner Party. The flower-like plates lining the table are both clearly female-centric
or “feminist” work; but they also are important as just being amazing works of art. It can be read within this female context, or beyond it—and it’s still an undeniably important artwork. Then, with my own inclusion in the Brooklyn Museum’s Feminist Art Base, it feels very special to think about this piece in relation to my work. LL: So one day you will have your plate at The Dinner Party too…! Green laughs in agreement, and our interview concludes as we continue to produce—to pollinate—our work and our efforts for her upcoming show in Hudson: the triumphant flourishing of Malia’s Garden this spring. *** Indeed, I believe that one day Green will rightfully earn her place at The Dinner Party. This artwork is a large-scale installation by Judy Chicago created in 1979. It is a cornerstone of the Brooklyn Museum’s collection, occupying an entire room in the wing housing the Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art. Essentially, The Dinner Party is a three-sided table in the form of a triangle. The top of the table is adorned with elaborate place settings—whose imagery recalls both the botanical and the female form. These dinner plates were designed by Judy Chicago to honor thirty-nine of the most influential women in history—from Sappho to Margaret Sanger, from Elizabeth I to Virginia Woolf—and of course O’Keefe. Green’s practice merits recognition of this sort, and her oeuvre will continue to resonate with broad audiences through its sublime beauty, while communicating her unique story and creative vision.
Information Allison Green: Malia’s Garden Exhibition On View: April 21—June 5, 2022 Opening Reception: Saturday, April 23rd Susan Eley Fine Art 433 Warren Street Hudson, NY, 12534 susaneleyfineart.com Allison Green was born in Philadelphia, PA and raised in a nearby rural suburb. Throughout her childhood, Green lived on the periphery of a lush forest—an experience that has greatly impacted the art she is best known for today. Currently, Green lives and works in downtown Jersey City, New Jersey. In her studio at Mana Contemporary, she creates large-scale oil paintings that intertwine themes from nature: flowers, trees, thickets, birds that populate this foliage. The artist’s first major solo exhibition entitled Deeply Rooted opened in March 2011 at Susan Eley Fine Art, NYC. Green’s work is now included in the Brooklyn Museum’s Elizabeth Sackler Feminist Art Base. She holds a BA from the University of Maryland with a concentration in Fine Art and Women’s Studies. Green also studied at Studio Art Centers International (SACI) in Florence, Italy in 1995. allisongreen.net Liz Lorenz is a curator and writer based in Upstate New York. She received an MA from the Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College in 2020. Currently, Lorenz is the Assistant Director of Susan Eley Fine Art, Hudson and has worked at the Gallery since its establishment in June 2020. ALL IMAGES COURTESY OF THE ARTIST AND SUSAN ELEY FINE ART THE ARTFUL MIND MARCH 2022 • 11
ANDREA JOYCE FELDMAN WATERCOLOR
Shore
Watercolor and oil pastel on paper 11” x 15”
$250
Purple Mountain Sunset Watercolor on paper 12”x 16”
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Martine Kaczynski
Abandon From a series called Signs without Words Location: Troy 2014
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Matt Chinian
Katherine Borkowski-Byrne
Figments
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First Snow Oil on Canvas, white wood frame 18 x 21”
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Still life by Kate Knapp Painting classes on Monday and Wednesday mornings 10-1pm at the studio in Housatonic and Thursday mornings 10am - 1pm out in the field. Also available for private critiques. Open to all. Please come paint with us! Gallery hours: Open by chance and by appointment anytime 413. 274. 6607 (gallery) 413. 429. 7141 (cell) 413. 528. 9546 (home) www.kateknappartist.com
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6178775672 THE ARTFUL MIND MARCH 2022 • 15
Photograph by Bobby Miller
MICHAEL LALLY Interview by Bobby Miller
A friend for over fifty years and finally I got the opportunity to interview him. Bobby Miller: Michael, you have had such a long and prosperous career as a poet, writer and actor. I hardly know where to start. Let’s just jump into any decade and see where this takes us. May I suggest we start in Hollywood. Michael Lally: In the mid-1980s I organized a group poetry reading as a fundraiser for a rights activist organization at Helena Kallianiotes’s night club, and she introduced me to Eve Brandstein to help me with a weekly poetry reading she wanted us to do at the club. Helena’s was on Temple Street in East LA, not in an area you would usually go to for nightlife but that’s why they could afford a big space. It had a big dance floor and a restaurant area with tables. So we’d set up in the corner near the tables and they wouldn’t play music and we did that once a week. My format for poetry readings went back to the Mass Transit days in DC late 60s and early 70s. My format was always let people read for 5 minutes or less. So if people didn’t like what they were hearing all they had to do was wait. So for Helena’s I’d get ten to fifteen people to read their poetry, and because it was a weekly event in order to generate material Eve & I would come up with a theme and people would write on that theme. And because I was living in Hollywood working in movies & TV 16 • MARCH 2022 THE ARTFUL MIND
as a writer & an actor I knew a lot of show biz folks and met others through my second wife Penny ( Milford) and through other friends like Karen (Allen). I would invite people to read and some people would ask if they could read, and if someone was an actor not known for their poetry, I would ask to see some of their stuff. And if they wrote something on a theme they’d run it by me and maybe I’d give them a little editorial help on it, maybe not depending on who it was. Some of them were just good poets. Period. So what happened was it became a thing. Helena’s was one of those clubs where you had to get through the door with the doorman and the line and the velvet rope and I always hated that. I hated any kind of elitism. So I said to Helena, if I’m going to do this then it’s got to be open to anybody on the nights we have poetry and she agreed. Eventually she lost control of the club and we had to move. She wanted it to end with her, but we said no, we were having too much fun. We were having a ball and people were really digging it, so we decided to find another venue. We switched the name to Poetry in Motion and started moving around ending up at Largo when it opened, helping bring in overflowing audiences. We did it for about eight years and one of the things that happened was these young actors would come who were friends of mine or Eve’s and had been labeled part of “The Brat Pack”. I had a stipulation about it being a poetry reading not a performance event, that caused me some trouble with some people. We had a podium that someone built for us. And I knew enough from doing this since the 60s. One of the first big events that I did was in DC, at the P Street Beach it was a rock & roll show against the Vietnam war and poetry was a part of it. I had been doing
it in Iowa City in the mid 60s and when I was young in NYC and because I was a jazz pianist as a kid, I knew how to get a crowd to quiet down cause that was always the trouble in the new venues we used, because people were jabbering, so I would control the lights. I think Eve videotaped a lot of them which you can see some of them online. We had the podium and a mic and when it was time to begin, and this was in restaurants and clubs with food so people would be eating and clinking dishes and talking, so when it was time for the show I would turn the lights almost all the way out in the room with just a spot on the podium. I’d have a list of the poets and there would be no introductions, no bullshit blowing smoke up your ass stuff. Eve would get up or I would get up and one of us would start the show and the other would end and when the poets would finish their poems they’d just say the name of the next poet to read. We’d read something on the theme and then say a famous actor or a known poet or an unknown one would read and because of the Hollywood people it would be standing room only. Some people would come just to read, others to show off and perform thinking there might be some movie or TV producer in the audience. So I would say look , I don’t give a shit if the page is blank, you go up there with a piece of paper and look like you’re reading off it because this is about poetry not about your performance. You ain’t auditioning, you’re reading poetry. One time there was an actor, I can’t remember his name, little darkhaired guy, and he said he wanted to perform and I told him that’s not the way we do it here and he got up and did a performance piece and when he was done I went up to him and said “Listen to me, you ain’t ever gonna be in here again. I asked you not to do that.” It happened a few times. The main thing was that our weekly poetry readings, Poetry In Motion, got written about all over the world but unfortunately it was often cynically written about . The reporters that were sent from People, Newsweek, Us magazine, The New York Times, The London Times and reporters from Australia, Japan and all the big papers from around the world were into it, but their publishers weren’t. When the stories would come out the reporters would come and apologize to me and Eve and say “ I’m sorry but this is what the editors did.” For instance I think it was Newsweek that titled their article “Whitman Wannabes. The brat pack showed up in Hollywood to read their poetry.” It was that kind of shit. Like one young movie actress read a poem about an abortion she’d had and it had everybody weeping including the reporter. So the stringers would turn in something very poignant and then their editors would distort it. The only ones who didn’t do that interestingly enough was The New York Times. The only thing they got wrong was they had a picture of Hubert Selby Jr and said it was me. He read every week and he loved it. The New York Times actually wrote about how moving it was and how good it was. It was the New Yorker in Talk of the Town, that said “ Poetry hustler Micheal Lally woke up one morning and realized he had a lot of famous friends in Hollywood.” Like I was exploiting them and my answer to this was “ Okay wait a minute. I’m trying to be democratic about poetry and open poetry up to audiences beyond the literary elitist cliques. Trying to bring it out to a broader audience and I’m being attacked because some of the people that read also happen to act in things. That seems to me to be kind of reverse elitism. What I’m doing by inviting them is showing that they are just like everyone else. They were just people who happen to be famous. And they want to write and express themselves. Why not? And some of the poets did the same judgmental thing. Once a famous writer came and read and afterwards stormed off and said “ Don’t ever ask me to come here again, it’s an insult to poetry.” But I thought that some of the famous movie actors who read actually wrote some good poems. Some of the poets in LA were also mad because poetry had disappeared in LA. Coffee house poetry, bar poetry had stopped when I got there in ’82. The LA Times Book Review made an announcement that they weren’t reviewing poetry books any longer. Poets came out and were picketing them. No one was paying attention to poetry any more. Why? And now suddenly poetry was getting publicity worldwide every week.
Book jacket, Photograph by Gus Van Zant
BM: Do you remember what year you came back to NY to do your events at Tommy Tangs in Soho? LAL: Late 80s I think. We did that once a month there. BM: I remember you invited me and I went to the first one. I had at that time Continued on next page...
Book jacket, The South Orange Sonnets
THE ARTFUL MIND MARCH 2022 • 17
IN MY LIFE I’ve been heterosexual homosexual bisexual tri-sexual pansexual transsexual multisexual omnisexual prosexual antisexual hypersexual unisexual unsexual sosexual ausexual protosexual neurosexual socialsexual spiritualsexual emosexual psychosexual selfsexual fantasysexual photosexual butchsexual femmesexual genderbendingsexual joysexual sadsexual lolsexual sobsexual morningsexual nightsexual daytimesexual memorysexual nostalgicsexual notnostalgicsexual sensualsexual poetsexual actorsexual moviesexual modelsexual privatesexual publicsexual computersexual phonesexual polymorphousperversesexual pagesexual screensexual oldsexual youngsexual hardsexual softsexual toughsexual gentlesexual permasexual avantsexual radsexual theshitsexual sunsexual moonsexual starsexual superstarsexual ultrasexual egosexual selflesssexual godsexual peoplesexual mesexual shesexual hesexual theysexual themsexual queersexual realsexual it’s complicated (C) 2021 Michael Lally
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only written a few poems that I liked. Most of my early stuff was bad and I didn’t like it until I went back a few years later and read it again and thought that they were actually pretty good. I remember going to your readings at Tommy Tangs that first time and thinking that there were a lot of young Hollywood there. And some of it was good and some of it was not so good and you came up to me after and asked what I thought and I said “ Looks like a bunch of Hollywood people trying to be poets and by my standards they weren’t my idea of great poets. I also knew that it didn’t mean that just because they were Hollywood actors didn’t mean that they couldn’t write good poetry. I think I said something like “ I write better poetry than that.” And you said “ Good. Well you come next week and read some of your poetry.” So I went home and wrote three poems in pencil and came back the following week and read them. And it was packed because the week before there had been so many famous people there and the word got out and the publicity brought a lot of poets and also some people that just wanted to see stars. But there were really great poets too. And Marc Smith from the Chicago Poetry Slam was there along with Bob Holman and I was invited to read at all the venues that had happened around the Poetry Slam movement. Because of you I didn’t stop doing readings after that for about the next ten years and curated 5 or 6 different venues in Manhattan. I got invited to curate and host a poetry series at a huge nightclub The Tunnel in NY in the basement bar and I told the owner he had to give me a budget to pay poets money because they were charging admission and my perspective was that they were making money so they had to pay the poets. Until that time no one had paid poets except Verbal Abuse at Jackie 60 because Chi Chi Valenti the owner there insisted that poets be paid. No one paid poets to read before that. LAL: Actually St Marks Poetry Project paid poets then. BM: Oh did they? I never read there. They never asked me. I complained about not having read there once to Penny Arcade and she said “ Don’t worry about it. You are one of those people who won’t be recognized until after you’re dead.” I said : Oh well that will be something to look forward to.” LAL: I got that all the time back in the 70s and early 80s. I would do a reading at St Mark’s and other venues and get huge crowds where they would sometimes have to put speakers in the street for the people who couldn’t get in. I wrote a letter to the New York Times saying “ You do reviews of Chamber Music with audiences of 20 people and poets including me are doing readings with crowds of hundreds and you say nothing is happening in poetry.” And they wouldn’t cover it and they wouldn’t respond to my letters. And it bugged the hell out of me. And it got me in trouble with a lot of people because I would get so angry about it. That kind of shit turned me arrogant and angry for a period of my life. In the middle period. In my 40s and 50s I thought I was supposed to be famous by thirty. I didn’t care about money or celebrity I just wanted the respect and recognition for the work, but I’m thinking: What the fuck happened? Some people had said you’re the greatest and time passes and you’re just a middle-aged guy. I think this is true for lots of people, it took getting into my 60s to turn around and say “Oh wait I wanted to be a creative person who made a living by my wits and my talent, and my main art is my poetry that belonged to me personally and maybe improvising on the piano. Actors say other people’s words and I was saying my own words. I got to do it. And someone came over to me after a reading and said ”A poem of yours saved my life when I was going to commit suicide” or “You opened my eyes to poetry and that saved my life”. I got to do that my whole life, and 30 times as of now someone came up to me and said “I’d like to publish a book of your poetry; can you give me a manuscript?” And I got published and I thought what more can you ask for Michael? I had a 9 to 5 job once for less than two years working for the Franklin Library in NY because my son Miles was little and it was just him and me and I needed money. I’d mostly made money with freelance writing of all kinds. BM: Was this when you were living on Sullivan Street? LAL: Yes and a few other places we lived downtown and then back on Sullivan Street, having lived with different women and a couple of men So it was about that 9 to 5 job. I didn’t mind doing it because it involved writing and most of it I could do myself. I once edited a newsletter for them that I wrote all the different articles for. But then they wanted me to fire a nice guy who had kids and I asked why, so they could squeeze a couple more bucks out of replacing him. I said no. So I quit. BM: So when you first came to NY when you were young, who was on the scene reading poetry? LAL: You know for me, growing up in the 1940s and ‘50s, Manhattan was a bus ride away,
Photograph of Michael Lally by Bobby Miller, 1990s
later a train ride though it was a little more complicated from Jersey then. I would get a bus from the bottom of my street which would take me to Newark where I would transfer to the bus that took me to Manhattan. I was the youngest of seven, the sixth one died so there was a five-year gap between me and my siblings. When the older kids were all in school my mother would take me sometimes to NY during the early part of the day to go to the Paramount to see a matinee or some funkier movie theater that had some type of vaudeville act in between features. She liked that kind of thing. She inspired my desire for performance. She was a cool cool lady. So I knew Manhattan and at about 13 or 14 I started going on my own. I would lie and get away with it because I worked after school every day and on Saturdays. As I got older on Sundays as well. I worked in my father’s home repair business mostly but he didn’t pay me. It was for room and board. So I had to get jobs to make some money. Like busboy and dishwasher. So they would let me go out at night. People were looser in the 40s and 50s. So I would get on the bus to Port Authority, hang out in the village and then get the bus back to go home. I’d come in late and take my shoes off so they wouldn’t know. I lived in the attic with my sisters when I was little and alone when I was a teenager. And to get to the attic you’d have to go through my parents room. And they were tiny rooms, it was a tiny house with tons of people living there. So I would be brushing by my parents bed and of course just as soon as I got in bed I’d hear my father get up. I’d get in trouble. So I was going to Manhattan often. BM: Can you tell us about your introduction to some of the Beat poets in the village at that time? I ran into a lot of poets. I’d have mostly indirect contact with them. Diane di Prima who was a great influence on my writing and my life. I adored her and we became friends. I was on the periphery. Corso was a total pain in the ass, so was LeRoi Jones (later changed his name to Amiri Baraka) who were very unkind and unfriendly in my experience. Joel Oppen-
heimer who was one of the lesser known people at that time a great poet and who started the St. Mark’s Poetry Project was so kind to me. I’d go to readings at The Gaslight Café and the Café Wha sometimes. I was hanging out with jazz guys, black jazz musicians because I would sit down at any piano at any jazz club and start playing and then we’d start talking so I knew a lot of those guys. I met these three older black guys who weren’t jazz musicians but were part of that scene and like pioneers in integrating Greenwich Village in the 50s. Clifford Heard, Dewitt Jennings and Mel Johnson. And I had three brothers their age so I was used to having these three older guys around. They kind of became my new brothers. I met them at a bar called Obies which had posters of plays that had won Obies throughout the bar. I just thought that the guy that owned the bar was named Obie. I was just a seventeen-year-old kid from Jersey. I had this street person with me named Princess who was from one of the islands. One of my black street friends told me that Princess was a dyke but she and I had sex all the time, we hung out. We were sitting in Obies and the three guys showed up and they sat down at the table and started saying shit like “I was at the mosque yesterday and Malcom was saying “Did you kick a white devil today?” “Yeah all these white kids polluting the race.” They kept throwing these jabs at me and finally I stood up and said “Ok Which one of you mothers wants to step outside with me?” And they just burst out laughing. They were all huge guys and I was this skinny kid from Jersey. They said “Sit down kid. We’re just fooling with you.” And then they invited me and Princess to a party and I thought this could be a trick to get me somewhere and beat me up. But I went and of course it was hip as hell with older folks in their 20s, white and black people into mixing which was rare in those days. Generally it was white women with black men in black neighborhoods. But this was in the Village, though even though there were certain types that would beat you up so you had to be careful. But my new three best friends were a part of the scene and knew everybody. As for the black musicians I knew, their take on the Beats reading poetry with music was they didn’t like it be Continued on next page... THE ARTFUL MIND MARCH 2022 • 19
his great works which was the mentality at the time. We can retrospectively say that was shitty and it was. So I didn’t identify with that part. I did identify with the Jazz influenced prose that was very poetic to me. Ray Bremser wrote a poem about the Jersey Turnpike “vroom vroom ” and that got to me cause it spoke to my teenage jersey working class roots. Even though I was a print junkie and read voraciously I tried to speak and write in a language that could be understood by teenage me and my neighborhood and my clan. I had been bad at languages I studied. But after a cancer operation in 2001, coming out of the anesthesia, my family told me I was using French phrases and German Phrases and Latin phrases and fancy words that I didn’t normally use in conversation. And after my brain operation in 2009 I found that my vocabulary had changed. If I couldn’t think of a word, a simple word I would normally use, my brain would come up with a more highbrow multisyllabic word cause that was all I could think of. I noticed that my vocabulary had broadened in my conversation and my writing because of the changes in my brain. [Although that’s not the case in this interview!] BM: And when you go back and read your earlier work before that change happened, do you like one better than the other? LAL: No I like all my work. I’m always amazed. I didn’t like it at a certain point. Like you said about you not liking your early work until you went back and it read it much later. I had a book come out in 1974 called “Rocky dies yellow” which when I first got my copy I wasn’t sure if people would get what I was doing. Then it got a lot of attention. Specially from the New York poetry scene. Like Edwin Denby and John Ashbery and all that crowd who were totally taken with that book. I met Edwin Denby at a party at Kenward Elmslie’s, and he came up to me, and Edwin was like one of these legendary older figures who had mentored Frank O’Hara who had a big impact on me, and said “ You’re Michael Lally. I’ve been wanting to meet the poet behind the mind.” I was just so thrilled, it was like finally somebody is getting it.
Photograph of Michael Lally by Bobby Miller, 1992
cause to them it was like they were stealing thunder from the music which was poetry itself of a different sort. So they didn’t like it when poets would show up and start blabbing on the mic. So I got this prejudice that I wish I hadn’t. That I had all my life. I’d meet really great musicians who would say “ You’re a poet and you play piano?” They’d suggest that we record some music to go with my poetry but I didn’t mix the two. I was a fool. When I first got to LA guys would want to go into the studio with me but I don’t know what I was thinking. I read once with John Densmore from The Doors playing drums behind me. I did a reading once with Ray Manzarek too, at The Vine Street Bar & Grill. He was backing up poetry with piano. We had a rehearsal at his studio in the valley and they went outside to smoke a cigarette and I sat down at the piano and started playing. Ray walked back in and said “Why am I playing keys? You should be playing.” I said “ No no no.” Ray said “ Yes you should be doing some poems accompanying yourself”. So I did a few with him backing me and two accompanying myself. Unfortunately it wasn’t recorded but the crowd went crazy for it. I don’t know why I had such a weird thing about it. I finally did do a CD (Lost Angels) with music in the 90s with my son Miles and some friends of his playing music behind my poems. As for the Beats, Ginsberg to me was just sort of a hustler back in the 1950s when I first was around him, much later we became friends. Seemed a lot of people admired Bill Borroughs who I thought was too cynical and misogynistic and nasty. And Kerouac who I identified with more, him being a Catholic Mystic, which I thought of myself as and son of an immigrant entrepreneur. I identified a lot more with his sentimentality and romanticism which was made fun of. But he was more misogynistic in his relationships. He wouldn’t claim his daughter Jan, who became a friend of mine, until later because he didn’t want his wife sucking child support out of him because it interfered with his writing 20 • MARCH 2022 THE ARTFUL MIND
BM: It’s so great to be back with you Micheal. Can you catch us up where we left off last month when we first began talking about your wonderful life as a poet, writer & actor. Tell us about how you went from a teenage poet to the beginning of your career. LAL: In the fall of 1966 I went to the University of Iowa on the GI Bill after I got out of four years in the military and had been married to Lee for two years. I had met a college guy in Spokane while I was there in the service and he got into The Writers Workshop at the U of Iowa and he said “ You should come.” I was living back in Jersey, in South Orange. My mother died and someone needed to stay with my father and all my siblings had their own homes so I was elected but Lee and me didn’t like it. We weren’t happy to be there. I got a job working at a mental institution as a recreational therapist because I played football in high school. I hated it and knew I was going to end up inside. I was identifying with the patients. So I had these letters from this guy that I had known in Spokane telling me to come out to the Iowa Writers Workshop. He told me I was better than the kids out there. I had already published poetry in magazines. This was ’66. So two weeks before school was to open we got a U Haul van, filled with nothing but art and books and records since that was all we had. So we drive out to Iowa City straight from Jersey, didn’t stop, cause that’s the kind of intense guy I was. So I go to the admissions office and say “I want to get in the writer’s poetry workshop.” And they said “ Well did you apply?” I said “ No, that’s what I’m here for.” “ Well the application period is over. Where did you get your BA from?” I said “ I didn’t.” She said “ Well you can’t get into a graduate workshop without having graduated from somewhere.” So I was like “Look. I’m married. My wife and me are here now. I came all the way out here. I just spent four years in the military. I don’t know about these things, I just heard how great The Poetry Workshop is. I’m just a guy from Jersey trying to get in” She said “well let’s see what we can do.” And she got me into the undergrad-
uate workshop. Once I got into that I applied to work on a BA and MFA at the same time and nobody had done that before. “There’s no rule against that is there?” “No” they said. ”Well see if I can get in.” George Starbuck ran the place. Everybody there was saying my poetry was too raw and unpolished . Which was a complaint I heard a lot throughout my life. Which was a deliberate thing I was going for. But George Starbuck, who was in the Korean war, in the graves outfit identifying bodies, he said “I think a working-class veteran would be good to shake these kids up.” And he was the head of it so he said it was ok, so I got in. And so if I had an A average I could work on both degrees at once. And I had to have part time jobs because Lee was pregnant, she was a telephone operator but, in those days, they would only let you work to a certain point if you were pregnant. So I worked at professor’s homes cleaning windows and doing repairs and I worked in a bookstore which I would take books from at night. Take them home and read them and bring them back the next day. I wouldn’t crack them or get them dirty. In the 50’s there was a cigar shop across the street from my father’s shop that had racks of paperbacks and I knew the man that ran the cigar shop and he would let me take books across the street as long as I didn’t soil them or crack the spine, and then return them. I have books from the 50s that still look brand new because I would always wash my hands before I’d read them and never break the binding. I’d do that in Iowa. People would mention the names of certain writers and I’d say “ I know them”. Then I’d go find their book and read it so I’d know what they were talking about. After a few months in Iowa, I got radicalized. I wrote a political column for The Daily Iowan and for a bunch of underground papers. In 1968 I ran for Sheriff of Johnson County on the Peace & Freedom ticket. I was kind of politically well known around the Midwest. One week I had five speaking engagements BM: Did you win? LAL: No, no. there was no way I could win. I came in second but I converted a lot of people. I did debates with the sitting sheriff in what they called Wallace country, today it would be Trump country in the rural areas. I remember one where I walked out with hair below my shoulders and had patched jeans on and I walked out to an audience of mostly rural farmers and the sheriff had just spoken and he brought pictures that he passed around of demonstrators and cops pushing each other, talking about the protestors being communists. So I walked out and I just stood there for a minute. They’re all staring at me and I’m not saying nothing. So I said “I bet some of you are wondering why I have such long hair and haven’t gotten a haircut. I’ll tell you why. I just spent four years in the military as an enlisted man and on my last day an hour before I was going to be discharged an officer stopped me and told me to get a haircut by the numbers” which meant according to regulations. “And I said “I’m on my way out in an hour” and he said “Well you better come see me after you get your haircut, or you won’t get your discharge.” So I went and got a haircut, came back and he okayed it and I got out. I said to my wife “I’m not going to get my haircut again until I feel like it.” And I haven’t felt like it.” And I felt the whole audience drop their guard! So I started talking and telling them that I come from a family of cops. My Irish immigrant grandfather, my brother, his father-in-law, my brother-in-law, my cousin, another cousin, the boarder that lived in our house. “Before I came here to Iowa I would have thought that everything the sheriff just said before me was true. “These kids are little commies…” and so on. But I’m going to school with these kids. They’re just kids. They’re just regular American kids who are being fed lies about what’s going on in Viet Nam and why we’re there. I’m a 26-year-old veteran and these were 18-year-old kids hipping me to what’s really going on and they were being sent to die in this place halfway around the world for what?” I’d talk like that. And they came up to me afterwards and invite me to their homes saying “You got me thinking.“ One guy, and this was unfortunately the typical attitude, came up to me and said “In world war two we captured some Germans. They spoke some Continued on next page...
I MEANT TO I meant to put those sixty-three names and email addresses in the BCC blind copy space, not the CC copy space. I meant to send it to him, not her. I meant to swallow not drool, on the computer, my lap, your sleeve, my arm, the floor, that first edition, in the drawer. I meant to walk and move with that feline grace someone once said I had, not wobble and stagger like an old wino. I meant to hit the “y” not the “t” the “h” not the “g” the “b” not the “v”, return not send, amends not amen. I meant to stand up straight not bend, to sit upright not slouch, to not fall down and get stuck between the couch and a hot pipe that burned my back like the prolonged sting of a fierce slap. I meant to stay twentynine or forty-nine, not be seventy-nine turning eighty in May this way, drooling and stumbling and unable to make a fist with my right hand or grasp a utensil in the proper way but instead need foam additions to the handles for my one or two fingers that can still curl without help. I meant to be the exception to obviously aging or a long gone legend by now not a bent over drooling old man who still often feels like a woman inside but I’ll accept what I’m left with for as long as I can and still be grateful for all that I’ve been and am.
(C) 2021 Michael Lally
THE ARTFUL MIND MARCH 2022 • 21
gibberish but other than that they were like you and me. But the Vietnamese are more like monkeys, don’t you think?” So there were some people you just couldn’t get to. I did better than people expected. Part of my program was to disarm the sheriff’s department and that wasn’t going over well. But I spoke at Quaker conventions and chambers of commerce. I knew how to talk to people.
create a new world where—as one radical writer put it—“love is more possible.” Lee had basically one other lover, a woman who called herself Atticus. There is an irony in Lee having a female lover named Atticus from “To Kill A Mockingbird“ because when she went back to being with a man he called himself Boo from the same book. So I kind of lived my life by following omens that came in threes in close succession. And there were two omens in a BM: After the University of Iowa where row of Lee lying to me. And the third did you go next? omen involved a young poet. You introduced me to her on Wisconsin Ave in front LAL: I was invited to go lots of places of Blimpies. I was with a guy named when I graduated in 1969. I wanted to go Randy who was friends with a lover of to Chicago to be with this group called mine, a Cuban guy named Ramon from “Rising Up Angry” They had a newspaper the P Street Gallery I think. Randy was I wrote for and were organizing a group visiting from New York and we came out of young white greasers against the war of Blimpies and you were walking with and for civil rights. We were aligned with the young poet and you introduced us and the Panthers and other freedom activists. said she was staying with a friend in The head of it, Mike James, wanted me to Georgetown further up Wisconsin Avenue come up there. Some anti-war activists in who had a town house with a pool and it Oakland and San Francisco wanted me to was a hot night and we all walked up to it come out there and work. Some artist and you and Randy immediately stripped friends in Spain wanted me to move there. and jumped in the pool. And the poet and Poets in New York like Ted Berrigan said I were talking and she gave me her Bookjacket, The Hollywood Review I should come back to New York. But by number. I posted it in a journal which I then Lee was pregnant with our second have, where I wrote “She’s too young and kid and she knew I sucked at the money beautiful,” She was like 20 or 21 and I was thing. She was like “I’m not going anywhere until you have a job like 29 or 30 and I’ve got a wife and kids and it’s too much. And then she wherever we’re going”. And none of those places had offered me a job. walked into The Community Bookstore one day and I was behind the Instead I got offered a job as a creative writing teacher at a Catholic girls counter so we started talking and she was feeling sad about some guy and college called Trinity Collage across the street from Catholic University I had a lunch break so we went back to her place and I held her in my in DC. So I took the gig to make Lee happy and we moved to DC. We arms and let her feel bad about the guy and we became friends. And Lee looked for an apartment which was difficult because in those days nobody said to me “either you stop being friends with that girl or get out.” And wanted to rent to a family with a baby or pregnant woman. No babies. So to me that was the third omen. Guess I’m getting out because I liked this we ended up in a working-class garden apartment in Hyattsville Maryland. person. We were really instant soul mates and we were hitting it off in a There were no gardens, but a very diverse mix of people and we lived deep way. We weren’t lovers at the time, we were just dear friends, and there for a few years. Miles was born at Children’s hospital in DC. I had still are. Besides I was still married, even though Lee had a woman in her a brother who lived in Hyattsville and was a musician playing gigs at night bed. It was the fall of ’73 and I didn’t want to leave before the holidays and also a principal at a local Junior high school. I asked him for some were over and upset the kids even more. So I waited and moved out in money until I got my first check from the collage where I was teaching January or February of ’74. And then I lived on P Street. There was this and he said “No, but I need a substitute teacher. You can work for your apartment in a house off Dupont Circle and a little old southern lady opens money and I’ll give you an advance.” So I taught Junior High School for the door and I say. “I’m looking for an apartment.” And she says “ What’s a couple of weeks. your sign?” “Gemini ” and she says “Come right in.” She immediately gives me the apartment and told me that she had been an assistant and BM: So what happened with Lee and you after I first met you in DC in mistress to an important southern senator for decades and that he had 1970? bought her this house so she’d have some income because she had retired from working for him. She rented out the first and second floors and she LAL: We both went through the transformation from being anti-war ac- lived on the third floor. I rented the first floor and had a mattress on the tivists and civil rights activists to women’s rights activists and gay rights floor and a desk. She came down as I was moving in and said she wanted activists. The house we rented in Northwest DC had already turned into to paint the first floor. And when she was finished she said “Why don’t a radical anti-Viet war commune, and eventually a feminist and gay rights you come up to my place”. And then she asked me if I’d like to make activists commune. Until the only other man in it left and it became a les- love. So I said sure. That was where I was at that time. Into anything and bian feminist commune. Lee was actually reluctant and she didn’t want anybody. It all seemed like love to me. So she put a blanket down on the to be a public figure but other women were always encouraging her to be. floor and we made love. Afterwards she made me dinner. She was as She was tough but she was a tiny woman and she was so strong in her sweet as she could be. She told me that I didn’t have to do this again if I spirit. [doesn’t sound like me} And she was so incredibly talented in so didn’t want to but if I ever did just to let her know. I said “Thank you!” many ways, not just poetry but the arts in general. But she became an in- And by then I was with the poet and we’re in bed one night and there’s a fluence in the feminist movement as I was in the anti-war moment and knock on the door. And it's Salt & Pepper, this Costa Rican woman named then we “came out” as gay—even though we were still lovers. I never Ana and the blonde woman that lived on the second floor with her husliked the word bisexual. That implies that there are only two kinds of sex. band. I asked if I could help them and she said “Do you have a cork I say there are as many different kinds of sex as there are opportunities to screw?” I said no , I don’t drink wine. So before they leave they say ”Why have sex. Once we were out we got into an open marriage adding lovers don’t you and your friend come up after you’re done and join us and have of the same gender, and we continued to be lovers. We were trying to a drink.” So I got back in bed and asked the poet what she thought and 22 •MARCH 2022 THE ARTFUL MIND
she said “Sure, let’s go.“ So we got dressed and went upstairs. When we got up there it was only the two of them and their husbands. So we’re all drinking except me because I had given up alcohol but I got high on some cocaine and pot. So everyone was fading and the husbands and the blonde conked out and then the poet is out and it’s just me and Ana. But nothing happened. Around that time the poet went off to work on a yacht for a year and it broke my heart for a while. Then late one night Ana called me from the apartment of a lesbian couple we were friends with saying they were arguing and her husband would be mad if she went home and woke him up and needed a place to stay. So I said sure come over, but I don’t have sex with married people. So she came over and of course we had sex. I was terrified that her husband was going to come through the door and blow my head off. So she comes to visit me a couple of days later on her lunch break. I told her that I couldn’t be involved with a married woman. So we stayed in touch and I would run into her and her husband at events and the vibe was still there. So she ends up knocking on my door one night and says “Guess what?” “ What?” ” I left my husband and got an apartment right next door.” So we became lovers. Then we talked about moving in together. I had gotten a lot of publicity in DC, the big fish in a small pond thing. But other things were happening. John Ashbery told me he was in love with me. New York was calling. You were there, and Tim Dlugos. So we decided if we were going to move in together let’s just go ahead and move to New York. We moved in May of ’75 so that my kids could come stay for the summer and know where I was living. I had them all summer. When Miles showed up he was saying things like “Boys aren’t any good.” He had all these negative comments about being a male. And then I saw a photo in the feminist DC paper Off Our Backs of the people in the commune and my daughter was there but my son wasn’t. And I was like “What the hell was that about Lee?” I told her that he was getting screwed up and that he needed to live with me. She said “Ok.”. Ana at this point said “if I’m going to raise your kids, I want my own kid.” Well I still wasn’t divorced from Lee yet and I didn’t want another kid yet. So she got a job around the corner and meets a young guy and I saw that and said “Uh oh.” And then she cops to it. She wanted to move back to Costa Rica and have a kid. So she left me for him. It broke my heart. I threw a giant party in a friend’s loft to help me get over it. BM: That was where I met my wife Aileen ( Ferriday), in the closet at that party. I was going to roll a joint in the closet and there was Aileen hiding from that abusive guy that she had been living with who cut all her beautiful red hair off and stole her grant money from the British Arts Council. I helped her escape from him and then she was deported back to Manchester. I went over there a few years later and married her so she could come back to New York LAL: Aileen was great, god rest her soul. Which reminds me, I didn’t have anyone steal my grant money from The National Endowment for the Arts, but I did have conservatives in Congress who were trying for the first time to defund the agency, they denounced my second grant saying the NEA supported “pornography” citing my 1974 poem “My Life” as evidence. But it didn’t work because newspapers and TV and radio news shows couldn’t quote the words the congressmen were calling porn, so no-one paid that much attention. The next year they focused on the visual arts and got a much much bigger reaction. BM: As we come to the end of this interview, is there any one poem that you wrote in this life that you have a great fondness for? Kind of like having a favorite child that you are most proud of?
Photograph of Michael Lally by Bobby Miller, 1980s
LAL: Some of my favorite poems of my own are long ones, like “My Life” and “Where Do We Belong”—two of which were book-length (“Of” and “March 18, 2003”)—and serial poems like “The South Orange Sonnets” or “The Village Sonnets”, most of which can be found in Another Way To Play: Poems 1960-2017. But usually the poem I “have a great fondness for” and am “most proud of" is a more recent one, so today it’s “I Meant To” written about a month ago. As for advice to young poets, all that comes to mind is: read everything you can get your hands on, go to poetry readings as often as you can, write every day if possible, and don’t expect any reward other than the joy of creating something you feel proud of.
Thank you Bobby and Michael for this interview! H
THE ARTFUL MIND MARCH 2022 • 23
ELIXIR Ode To Spring Ramps and nettle underfoot trout lily near the rushing brook coltsfoot by the beaten path dandelions push through new grass Moss and lichen glow and brighten dead fall in the wood all is good Snowdrop crocus daffodil budding lilac waiting still then when finally in bloom all will stop breath in and swoon Robin chickadee and sparrow in a dither here and there mallard family back again from who knows where spring beckons us to breath and see and hear as we are gifted with this miracle but once a year
Greeting Friends Of Elixir! How welcome spring is after a cold hard winter! Heading out to forage is one of the first things I do when the snow & ice have gone. I also like to do a deep cleaning of my home and take stock of what is still useful and in good working order and what needs to move on. This applies to my body as well. Spring cleaning is the best way to move through the seasonal transition. Spring can bring, congestion, allergies, sluggishness, and a number of other conditions that interfere with our engagement with this beautiful time of year. If you are interested in learning about and would like assistances with your body’s spring cleaning this year contact Elixir at organictearoom@gmail.com or 413-644-8999 for a health & wellness consultation, healing foods cooking instruction, herbal instruction, or to design a cleanse specific to your needs. It is my passion & my honor to help and guide people to a higher level of wellbeing. www.elixirgb.com
the art of mary ann yarmosky
visit and enjoy: maryannyarmoskyeclecticart.com 24 • MARCH 2022
THE ARTFUL MIND
UNFINISHED PROOF 2021, COLLAGE AND ACRYLIC
MARK MELLINGER ABSURDIST ARTIST STATEMENT My work explores the interconnectedness of Bauhausian sensibilities and Trobriand Island chants. With influences as diverse as Noble Sissle and Shemp Howard, new insights are created from both mundane and transcendant dialogues. Ever since I was a child I have been disturbed by the essential ephemerality of space/time. What starts out as circumlocutory vision soon becomes corrupted into a hegemony of greed, leaving only a sense of ennui and little chance of a new paradigm. As spatial miasmas become transformed through emergent Unabhängigkeitserklärungen, the viewer is left with a catafalque for the prognostication of our future. markmellinger680@gmail.com
Deirdre Flynn Sullivan
The Winged Lion and His Golden Dragon My love is a winged lion Soaring down from clouds Of wind splattered March And I am his masked dragon Calling from a lonely bell tower. The blue and rose skies Of a painted Venice Awakened our dark passions In the spring moon coupling Of suddenly fierce desires. Separated by the span of winter We rushed into a curving embrace Above cold peasants on a grey ground We lit the fire of their stories With our acrobatic swoops and dives. ~ Deirdre Flynn Sullivan 2/26/20 VENETIAN MASK: VARIATION: MYTHOS I ~ Deirdre Flynn Sullivan 2019
THE ARTFUL MIND MARCH 2022 • 25
VIRTUAL ART GALLERY BRUCE PANOCK
NINA LIPKOWITZ
CAROLYN NEWBERGER
GHETTA HIRSCH
MARK MELLINGER
SHARON GUY
MARY ANN YARMOSKY
Bruce Panock
Simplicity of Ferns
THE ART PRESENTATION ON THE FOLLOWING PAGES CONTAINS ART THAT IS ALL FOR SALE. PLEASE CONTACT THE ARTIST OR EMAIL : ARTFULMIND@YAHOO.COM
VISIT US ON FACEBOOK: ART GALLERY FOR ARTFUL MINDS AND ISSUU.COM (LIVE LINKS TO WEBSITES)
26 •MARCH 2022 THE ARTFUL MIND
VIRTUAL GALLERY
BRUCE PANOCK
Disappearing
Shadow
The Veil Each image is part of a limited edition. There are several sizes available. Each piece is priced according to size. Images are unframed and printed on Hahnemuhle archival papers.
Visit Bruce Panock:
www.panockphotography.com bruce@panockphotography.com 917-287-8589
THE ARTFUL MIND MARCH 2022 • 27
NINA LIPKOWITZ
Visit: Nina Lipkowitz: Ninalipkowitz.com / ninalipkowitz@gmail.com 28 • MARCH 2022 THE ARTFUL MIND
Series: KEEP BREATHING
CAROLYN NEWBERGER
Final drawing: Ma, Ax and Kavakos at Tanglewood July 30, 2021, pen and ink with wash, 12 x 18 inches
Piano Quintet at the Linde Center, November 6, 2021
The Calidor String Quartet at South Mountain Concerts, Pittsfield, MA, September 12, 2021
Czardas, graphite, pen and ink on paper, 12 x 17 inches
cnewberger@me.com
“Drawing Music”
Visit Carolyn Newberger: www.carolynnewberger.com 617-877-5672 Commissions Upon Request
THE ARTFUL MIND MARCH 2022 • 29
GHETTA HIRSCH
Fall Leaf Island 16”x20” oil on canvas, white wood frame, $850
“Snowy Ledge”, 12”X16” oil on canvas, white wood frame, $575
“Tree Line, 10”X10” oil on canvas, white wood frame, $500
VISIT GHETTA HIRSCH: Ghetta-Hirsch.squarespace.com Instagram@ghettahirschpaintings ghettagh@gmail.com Please text or call 413-597-1716 30 • MARCH 2022 THE ARTFUL MIND
MARK MELLINGER
Masters of War 2021 Collage 8"x13"
Solar Flare Acrylic on canvas. 2021 12"x12"
Pond Life 2021 Acrylic on 4 canvases. 12"x12"
Contact Mark Mellinger:
914-260-7413 markmellinger680@gmail.com
THE ARTFUL MIND MARCH 2022 • 31
SHARON GUY
Expansion Oil on panel 7”x5” $100
Spirit Rising Oil on cradled panel 8”x8” $125
Visit: sharonguyart@gmail.com (941) 321-1218 https://www.sharonguyart.com 32 • MARCH 2022 THE ARTFUL MIND
Beyond What Is Oil on cradled panel 12”x6” $150
MARY ANN YARMOSKY
Lady with Black Hair, Canvas, 20 “ x 16” $155
Beach Beauties, Canvas, 30 “ x 15” $225
Multi colored Lady, Canvas, 20 “ x 16” $155
Green Eyed Lady, Canvas paper matted and framed, 30 “ x 15” $225
Visit: maryannyarmoskyeclecticart.com myarmosky@comcast.net • 413-441-6963 Sea Creature Canvas (framed) , 31 “ x 31” $155
Face Book Instagram THE ARTFUL MIND MARCH 2022 • 33
Blindspot, 2020, Silkscreen on rag paper, gouache and watercolor, 22”x 24’
JEAN BLACKBURN Interview by Harryet Candee
I see your artwork being playful and imaginative. My eyes move around the parameters of each piece, perusing your paintings, sculptures and drawing at a slow pace, though I feel compelled to use my imagination and quickly fill in parts of objects that have disappeared from view. Am I on track with my reactions? Can you fill me in on what I am missing? I think play is one of the best things we do as creative beings. It is such a complex intelligent activity, involving experience, expectation, humor, and imaginative projection. It is one of the best ways we create new ideas. If my work has a sense of physical impermanence, it is because that was underlined for me when I had cancer in my mid-twenties. Happily, I am considered cured, but it forever changed my relationship to my body and my sense of certainty about the physical world. Though trained as a painter, I began making 34 • MARCH 2022 THE ARTFUL MIND
sculpture because I needed to contemplate, and at times, undercut the physicality of things. The home fascinates me because it is where we start. I work with existing domestic objects because they are already loaded with so many associations. Our early experiences act as templates that substantially shape future interactions and understandings. But this structure of understandings that we build as children is constantly tested and adjusted in dialogue with experience. Many of my works involve broken, subtracted, erased or repaired elements. I remove parts for a variety of reasons. It might be to suggest fragility and push the object to the brink of its physical integrity. It could be to mine material that can be used to make something else. Sometimes that thing is a model of the original object. Or removed material might be used in a repair. A recent piece called Flotsam deals with this quite directly. In response to the instability of
our contemporary moment, I broke a canoe paddle into fragments. The wood grain was very straight so it broke into long splinters. After removing as much as possible from the paddle and mapping the various fragments, I made small wooden splines from the scrap to pin the paddle back together. The boundaries or slippage of an object’s definition are particularly interesting. I often manipulate my objects to position them on the verge of multiple possibilities that reveal embedded assumptions, associations and deep poetic resonances in the mundane. I agree, that as we grow, the things we surround ourselves with in our homes are deeply engrained in us, as you have mentioned. Our past, our home life, the furniture the objects within our familiar space and embedded in our mind’s eye is a very powerful thing. How do you go about overlapping and joining past
Untitled, 2020, gouache on rag photo paper, 18"x22" Jean Blackburn Flotsam, 2021, wooden paddle, paint, approx. 46x7x2” Paddle reconstructed using splines of it’s own material. Jean Blackburn
and present in your art making? I generally work with objects that balance the generic and the personal. Usually they are commonplace in many homes. Though the objects may be from the past, my work is very much about the process the objects undergo- what I do to them. Those processes are metaphoric. Parts mutate, are reused, or devolve. Materials grow into each other as boundaries move, definitions change, and new structures emerge at the cost of older ones. They are in a state of flex, of becoming. In this way they also may address the future and pose questions about their potentiality. My pieces often take a long time to make- that labor and time passage also shapes the interpretation of the work. Thoroughly enjoying Drawings on Photographs, what techniques and process is used? I am intrigued by the carefully constructed, highly marketable models presented by cata-
logues such as Pottery Barn, Crate and Barrel, Williams and Sonoma, etc. Much of my two-dimensional work begins with images scanned from these home-furnishing catalogues. Part prescribed and part invented, the depicted rooms are intimate facades embedded with preconceived values and marketable or historic narratives. Recently I have been blurring this imagery to the point of only the simplest definition. To these I add spare lines of gouache brush strokes as possible interpretations or suggestions. Each painted line is a single color. But seen on the gradating tones or colors of the photo, they seem to change, float and almost twist. They are quite rigorous to make. The tones and the colors have to be exactly right or they don’t sit effectively in the space. Both blurred photo and painted line dance together on the edge of recognition. I am interested in how the viewer completes the image. The meeting of the line as figure and the photo
as ground is dynamic and open. It is a kind of perceptual casting for recognition or meaning. I love Blindspot, 2020! Tell us about this piece that is silkscreened on rag paper using gouache and watercolor, please. A while back I created a “library” of silk screens so I could print multiples of line images. Having numerous screens is great because it gives me a lot of flexibility in constructing layered line images. For Blindspot, I printed the line imagery in white and then painted over it in gouache and watercolor to play with color, transparency and opacity. The lines become objects, then revert back to lines. In the center it becomes a big knot of incoherence, but all the parts are tied together in a weave of lines. Interconnections, webs and weaving interest me a lot and are major elements in many of my installations. Continued on next page... THE ARTFUL MIND MARCH 2022 • 35
JEAN BLACKBURN
WARP, Installation, created in 2017, bed sheets, curtains, tableclothes, napkins, etc. Jean Blackburn
In your installation work, I love your titles, such as Warp, Eaten/eat, Arachne, can you explain how the titles fit the individual installations of art? I pick my titles very carefully- they often have several meanings. Both Warp and Arachne refer to weaving. Traditionally, weaving is women’s work. In Greek mythology, Arachne is the weaver whose skill so impressed and enraged the goddess Athena that she turned Arachne into a spider. And if you think of Penelope in the Odyssey, she is at home weaving, being productive, preserving her virtue being loyal to her husband. As a practice, weaving is very tied to gendered labor and control. We talk of the concept of a social fabric or web, and again, women have always been good at creating social connections. Weaving is also a system of interconnections and dependencies, a kind of tension structure. While it has a fairly simple configuration, a loom is capable of making complex patterns. Some liken it and the abacus to a simple computer. Warp refers to the vertical threads that run through a weaving (but it also is a form of distortion). In the installation, fabric elements made from bed sheets, curtains, tablecloths, napkins, 36 • MARCH 2022 THE ARTFUL MIND
etc. weave through the entire installation, leading from the bed, into diverse permutations and ending in a weave that frames a doorway. The crosslacing warp and weft unify the individual sculptural elements into tension as a mesh of interdependencies and connections throughout the whole installation. I’ve been particularly interested in the historical aspects of weaving because I have worked for several summers as an archaeological illustrator on an Etruscan dig in Tuscany (600 BCE). Archaeology has been an important influence on my work. At the Poggio Civitate excavations, under the direction of Dr. Anthony Tuck (UMass Amherst), ample evidence of weaving was found in a large workshop. Eaten/eat was an installation I was invited to do at the Aldrich Museum in Ridgefield, Conn. It was just before they renovated part of the Museum. I was asked to engage the floor in one of the galleries. Fortunately, they gave me carte blanche and allowed me to cut holes in their floor. These holes revealed the inner architectural structure of the building and also provided material for several vessels I had lathed, including a plate, several bowls and an urn. The title
Eaten/eat refers to the transformative process of cutting up the floor, which could be seen as destructive, but then using the removed material to construct plates and bowls which provide nourishment. The urn is the cipher. Also, I wonder, do these quickly come together? Are they spontaneously created? My work is usually pretty labor intensive, but that allows a form of meditation, where I can slowly shape an idea and take time to understand the implications of various choices. Sometimes an object will sit in my studio for a year or more before I know what to do to it. Pieces start with an idea but I’m never initially sure where it will go. I take a deep breath and get started, knowing that when I cut into something, there is no going back. But my process is intentionally improvisational, which gives me room to respond to material and process. Sometimes my best moves are accidents. At times I’ve broken something and incorporating the breakage has enriched the piece. I almost always end up somewhere I did not fully expect and that is a large part of what keeps me engaged.
Cornflower Vase, 2002, stoneware, approx. 10x10x20"
Eaten/Eat, Aldrich gallery installation, 2002, approx. 20x15x8.5'
Jean Blackburn
Jean Blackburn
Jean, I want to jump to another medium you enjoy, that is ceramics. Tell us about this venue, please. Clay is a wonderful material- so fleshy initially and so hard once fired. It is a natural medium to speak about the body. I’ve molded a number of stoneware vessels. This allows me to make multiples, but also engage the concept of the model form, the form the others are measured from. Usually I use two colored slips, to distinguish inside and outside. They both need to be visible. From the casts, I’ve subtracted as much material as I believe is physically possible to sustain physical integrity. If I’ve subtracted too much, the pieces crack during the stress of firing. Each piece is a wager. I lose about half of the pieces. What was one of your most memorable exhibits you participated in, and what was it about? One that I haven’t mentioned yet that was quite memorable was a huge installation entitled Mix at the Deven Golden Gallery in N.Y. It consisted of five bedframes of various sizes; each painted a different color. Installed, it created a rollicking meander of constructions, linkages, and interpen-
etrating materials that wryly contemplated the bed as a site of birth, death, dreams, sex, and sleep. It was huge- approx. 12’x12’x 25’ and took me about two years to complete. Working on it over the months, the piece became very playful, poetic, and rich with associations. I took a lot of chances with the construction and pushed it to do things I never thought I could pull off. You are also a professor in Fine Arts at RISD. Tell us what you teach, please. I teach a variety of classes, including drawing classes defining space and the human form. They’ve shaped my thoughts about how we perceive the world and how we can organize things visually to say or do different things. For instance, I’ll talk about how the structure of our eye allows us to experience the world in various ways. Perception and experience greatly influence our understanding of things. I love teaching drawing because it is explorative and its long history engages so many ideas. I think it is one of the most direct forms of visual thinking. I also teach a class on scientific illustration. Though it is fairly technical, we work directly with scientists for at least one or two of our proj-
ects. The topics that come up are fascinatingwe’ve worked visualizing cuttlefish camouflage, deep sea submersible exploration, ancient trilobite fossils, and many local biological species and their habitats. One of my favorite classes is called Visible Cities, (inspired by Italo Calvino’s remarkable book Invisible Cities). It is a world-building class and the students have all semester to create a civilization. They can be wildly imaginative or more realistic, but bottom line, the viewer needs to feel convinced visually and conceptually. We have a lot of international students at RISD so our conversations range extensively into many aspects of world culture. In my teaching, I tend to be more of a generalist more than a specialist. While I do cover specific topics in depth, I try to pull in elements from a broad range of areas and create over-arching connections to knit things together. In my own studio practice I’ve worked in a wide variety of ways with many different materials. My goal is to give students the tools to develop themselves and their ideas through their work intellectually, emotionally and physically. If they are Continued on next page... THE ARTFUL MIND MARCH 2022 • 37
JEAN BLACKBURN
Mix, detail, 1998, five wooden beds, paint, glue, dimensions variable Jean Blackburn
ambitious with their questions, it is a lifelong project. What can you say for your experiences being an artist who is also an art educator? How is it challenging to balance both? How is it gratifying? I’ve been doing both for a while now and I can say that time is always a challenge. It is really like having 2 full time jobs. But the combination is amazing. Being able to talk about the things you love and help students express what is most important to them is a real privilege. And though I may be the teacher, I am learning in the classroom all the time. Being able to talk on the fly about the diversity of things students bring up in their work is really stimulating. I try to stay open. As an artist and as a teacher, being willing to consider possibilities is essential. The problems my students are trying to solve often require elastic thinking. I love helping them brainstorm. It’s a form of play. I try to convey to my students that what they are doing is important and they need to be dedicated. Exploration is essential, doubt a frequent companion, and failure likely, but that may be the only way things move forward. 38 • MARCH 2022 THE ARTFUL MIND
What are some of the most interesting things you’ve done? Many things have shaped how I perceive the home. I’ve had a long-standing interest in archaeology and have worked on various digs as an archaeological illustrator. The most memorable were a Roman temple in Petra, Jordan, and Etruscan ruins in Tuscany, Italy. Besides the obvious adventure component, what I enjoy most about a dig is trying to distill from the material they left behind what ancient people thought and found important. How were things used? How are they similar or different from us? Through comparison, it’s a great way to contemplate our contemporary culture in relation to a much grander scale of time. Jean, I am curious to find out more about you, can you tell us a little about your childhood? And, what your life today is like? My childhood was relatively uneventful and pretty idyllic. I grew up in suburbia in New England. Much of my childhood experience informs my studio work. It is a key source of contemplation for me. We moved from Pennsylvania to
Rhode Island when I was 5 and I was unhappy to leave friends behind. My parents thought I showed some artistic talent so to keep me distracted, they signed me up for weekly drawing lessons. A local artist drove several of us to various locales to draw every week. It was pretty amazing and something that would probably never happen these days. But it did set me on the path to become the class artist. And I got to know lots of the nooks and crannies in Rhode Island. I loved to rove around in the woods and was always making things. Making is a great form of thinking-it propels me to this day. How has COVID impacted your life as an artist, teacher and in general, your life? What if anything, can you say you have learned from this world event? For me, probably like most people, covid slowed me down and provided more contemplative time for the mundane things. For a while I found it hard to work because it was so constrictive and there was so much we did not know. At this point, I think it has helped me appreciate the small human things we do all the time – our ex-
Template (Windsor) Jean Blackburn
changes and need for togetherness. It has really underlined how dependent we all are on each other. It's also made me appreciate lots of things people who don’t receive much credit do that keeps things going. My daughter is a nurse and I am so proud of what she contributes every day. What artistic challenges have you confronted over the years as you climbed the ladder of success in art? It felt like I had 3 fulltime jobs. But having a child necessarily pulls you out of yourself and grounds you. I think it made me much richer as a human being. There are times when being an artist seems ridiculously indulgent, particularly in light of all the difficulties that face us. Often things are not clear and it feels like wading through a swamp. I have learned to embrace not knowing, or doubt, as an important part of the creative process. I try to draw on myself fully-my emotions, my intellect, my body and my experiences to communicate. It's clear that the Arts encourage empathy and foster integration. Those things are really impor-
tant and in such short supply these days. I’ve come to think that being a banker is equally absurd. And perhaps a lot less fun. What challenges do you create for yourself when beginning a new piece of artwork? I try to go deeper than the most obvious things for an object or image I am working with, to find its poetry and open it up for the viewer. I am not interested in didactic work- I want the audience to be able to enter the work and find themselves in it. The simplest solutions are usually the best, but they can be the hardest to find. There is so much that needs to be cleared away. If you can call up one or two piece of art you have created, and love, which one would it be and why? I was commissioned by a collector to create a chair piece for his collection. I wanted the piece to reflect him and asked him to tell me about himself. He mentioned his parents had both been artists and that had been very formative for him. Because chairs evoke both presence and absence, I decided to make a half scale model of the orig-
inal chair from material removed from it. The two chairs would face each other. I choose a Winsor chair to start with. What I didn’t realize at the outset was that the curved back hoop or bow of a Winsor chair is bent while the wood is still green and flexible. To create that form with a dried wood was challenging- I had to learn a lot about steam bending and wood lamination. I came to realize what a beautiful and rigorous structure a Winsor chair is. All the parts are in tension and hold each other in place. It was a great learning experience from both a conceptual and craft perspective. Current Passions? I’m really fascinated by trees. I’ve been drawing them since childhood. Impressive in their strength, trees seem so vulnerable in their immobility. And we turn them into chairs and toothpicks because of it. But they are responsive to their environments in ways we hardly grasp. Much has been written lately about their complexity- like how they communicate or defend themselves. They are operating on a different time scale than we are. Continued on next page... THE ARTFUL MIND MARCH 2022 • 39
JEAN BLACKBURN
Feed, 2018, Pierogi Installation Jean Blackburn
They give me perspective and provide a glimpse into other ways of being. Another passion is my love of travel. When we’re in a new place, and we’re trying to figure it out, all our faculties are engaged and absorbing information. It’s such a rich experience and we are most fully alive. I think it is similar to the way we learn when we are children. Highest on my travel hit list are Japan and Istanbul. What you would like viewers to take away with them after experiencing your art? Let’s imagine a table for a minute. It might be a family heirloom, made of rare woods, or the place Grandma rolled out pasta or played Mahjong. Made by an exclusive designer, it 40 •MARCH 2022 THE ARTFUL MIND
might proclaim our economic status or our refined taste. Or it might be scavenged from a dumpster. To a small child underneath, it might be a fort. Bottom line, it provides a surface for an exchange to take place or an activity to occur. It could be a communal space. We sit around a table. The family dining table or the kitchen table is at the heart of the home. As the site of holidays, gatherings of friends or family, the pleasures of dining and conversation, the table comes to represent bonds, community, family, sustenance, negotiation and sharing. A table can also be a footstool, a desk, a chopping block, a make-up table or nesting tables, enabling various activities and hierarchies. The objects in our homes are so rich with as-
sociations. Contemplating how and where we find meaning in them is ultimately an integrative process. It helps us better understand who we are and what we have in common. There is poetry and resonance all around us. I try to open up those possibilities in the objects and images I work with. I invite you to see more of my work at my website: www.blackburnartproject.com
Thank you Jean! H
THE ARTFUL MIND MARCH 2022 • 41
THE VEIL
MATT CHINIAN
BRUCE PANOCK
PROSAIC REALISM
PHOTOGRAPHY H.C.B THE HELPERS, PASTEL 2019
THE ARTFUL MIND ARTZINE PUBLISHING SINCE 1994 Art is unquestionably one of the purest and highest elements in human happiness. It trains the mind through the eye, and the eye through the mind. As the sun colours flowers, so does art colour life. —John Lubbock
I have been a student of photography for more than 20 years, though most intently for the last five years. I am primarily a landscape photographer. Recently my photographic voice has migrated to the creation of work with reference to other art forms, notably encaustic painting and ancient Chinese and Japanese brush painting and woodblock art. My intention is to create with viewer a moment of pause and reflection; a moment to digest the image and find their own story in the art. Each image is part of a limited edition. There are several sizes available. Each piece is priced according to size. Images are unframed and printed on Hahnemuhle archival papers. Bruce Panock bruce@panockphotography.com
MARY DAVIDSON
My New Hat Series # 13 Acrylic Framed: 40 x 27 inches
wwwdavidsondesigncompany.net Studio appointments: Call 1-413-528-6945 Keith and Mary original artwork for sale Studio/gallery, South Egremont, MA 42 • MARCH 2022 THE ARTFUL MIND
I am a prosaic realist. That means I paint what I see and depict places and objects without sentiment or romance. My subjects are taken from daily life, things I see in passing, things I’m drawn to; they are mundane and often overlooked. I unlock patterns and relationships and do not judge. I practice ruthless honesty, and let the paint be paint. Visit: www.mattchinian.com
SHARON GUY
Messages Mixed Media on paper, 9” x 12” $150
https://www.sharonguyart.com sharonguyart@gmail.com • 941. 321. 1218
FOOD AS MEDICINE LAKSHMI’S GARDEN Recently I spoke of cleansing one’s body in order to get it functioning optimally. This idea also relates to all of life according to Ayurveda, including the mind. When our mind is cleared of clutter, truth is more apparent. This is why meditation is so effective. Similarly, when our body is cleared of waste and toxins, it’s tissues and organs are healthier and operate more effectively. Through the process of cleansing, we have the opportunity to cleanse the mind. According to Ayurvedic philosophy, the mind is shaped by our five senses - what we see, hear, taste, smell and feel. Our senses determine the quality of our thoughts. It follows that as we cleanse the correlating organs (eyes, ears, tongue, nose, and skin), our mind becomes lighter and clearer. The cleansing of the senses is a tennet of Ayurveda,
the world’s oldest form of currently practiced medicine. When we cleanse, we are stripping the body down and making it lighter. Accumulation is our tendency in this society, so, in order to create balance, we must eliminate the excess. This theory is known as the principle of opposites. If we’re feeling heavy or sluggish, we should lighten our load. If we’re feeling ungrounded or light-headed, then we should look towards heavier, more grounding foods, like grains and cooked vegetables, and practices such as meditation and walks in nature. Herein lies the beauty of Ayurveda, in that it’s logical and comes naturally to us. When it’s cold outside we don’t have to think about what to wear, we naturally gravitate towards clothing to keep us warm - the principle of opposites. I also mentioned recently that there is a myriad of cleanses on the market. Choosing which cleanse is appropriate depends on one’s current health condition, and one’s goal. If an individual has never cleansed before, and has a history of processed foods, alcohol, pharmaceuticals, or anything else that can lead to unhealthy conditions, it is likely that an extreme cleanse or fasting too quickly can lead to an overload of toxins on the liver. In this case, to start by eliminating processed foods and switching to fruits, vegetables, and grains would be a great way to prepare your liver for a cleanse and reduce a probable acidic condition. The same can be said for drinks. As the elimination of processed food
happens, so should the elimination of liquids that are not water or juice. Those who have a vegetarian diet or have cleansed in the past can consider more extreme programs, always being mindful of their acid/alkaline levels before fasting. Key points to remember when taking on what can be a potentially life-changing and habitchanging experience, are to take it slow, be positive, and seek guidance if there are any doubts or questions. We reboot our computers, change the oil in our vehicles, and flush the pipes in our homes when they’re clogged, why not give our bodies the same well-deserved attention. Your body will thank you and so will your mind. Lakshmi’s Garden, Terrel Broussard, Ayurvedic Practitioner, Herbalist, Bodyworker, 413-329-5440.
Bruce Panock “Don’t think about making art, just get it done. Let everyone else decide if it’s good or bad, whether they love it or hate it. While they are deciding, make even more art.” – Andy Warhol
Title of Photograph: SImplicity of Ferns
www.panockphotography.com bruce@panockphotography.com 917-287-8589 THE ARTFUL MIND MARCH 2022 • 43
MARY ANN YARMOSKY PAINTING BY KATE KNAPP CONNIE FLEMING
BOBBY MILLER
PHOTOGRAPHER My teacher, master photographer Lisette Model, taught me that the secret behind a great portrait is the relationship between the photographer and his subject and the artistic capture of the moment. In my studio in Great Barrington, I do hair, make-up, styling, lighting and photography, thereby creating a finished portrait that tells a story even in its simplicity. I believe in incorporating both the classic tools of the camera and newer technologies like Photoshop. In that way my portraits correct the small flaws that nature has bestowed on us. I create images that show us not only as who we are but who we can be as well. So, if you feel daring and inspired to have a portrait that defines you at your very best, I encourage you to come sit before my camera. Bobby Miller Studio, 22 Elm St, Gt Barrington 508-237-9585. By Appointment Only.
44 • MARCH 2022 THE ARTFUL MIND
FRONT ST. GALLERY Pastels, oils, acrylics and watercolors…abstract and representational…..landscapes, still lifes and portraits….a unique variety of painting technique and styles….you will be transported to another world and see things in a way you never have before…. join us and experience something different. Painting classes continue on Monday and Wednesday mornings 10-1:30pm at the studio and Thursday mornings out in the field. These classes are open to all...come to one or come again if it works for you. All levels and materials welcome. Private critiques available. Classes at Front Street are for those wishing to learn, those who just want to be involved in the pure enjoyment of art, and/or those who have some experience under their belt. Front Street, Housatonic, MA. Gallery open by appointment or chance anytime. 413-5289546 at home or 413-429-7141 (cell) www.kateknappartist.com
When I first started painting, I was asked why I usually painted women. This simple question helped me to clarify. Why did I feel the need to paint at all and why did my subjects most often involve women? I have been blessed both professionally and personally to know many incredible women. Some have climbed the corporate ranks through hard work and tenacity, some have struggled as single parents barely making ends meet. Some have lost parents, spouses and even children and somehow, they keep moving forward with grace and dignity. The stories vary, but the inspiration remains. My paintings represent my curiosity about what makes each of us tick. What gives us the courage to move forward with faith and determination and yes, with love and compassion. It’s up to you to decide who my ladies are and what they are thinking. They only came to me with the first stroke of a brush and a little paint. I don’t know their stories or where they hale from. I only know that they now exist, and some will love them, and some will not. Such is the life of a woman. I have always had an artist’s heart and insights. I studied fashion design in Boston, worked for the Boston Opera Company designing costumes and later for Sardella of Newport in Newport, Rhode Island, where we designed and made clothes for Newport’s elite, outfits that were photographed for Vogue and National Geographic and were worn to events held at the cliff walk mansions and beyond. My artistic ability then was confined to fashion sketches, imagining how fabric could be transformed into something beautiful and intriguing and then sewing what I visualized into something wearable. Designing outfits and seeing them worn was a heady experience, dealing with the women for whom those outfits were designed and their spouses, was often a challenge since egos prevailed. There was not much of a demand for fashion design when I became a young mother and moved to Pittsfield and eventually, I re-entered the world of work in a different capacity and was fortunate to hold many interesting positions over the years. As I began to shed those jobs to begin a new phase of life, my desire to create was renewed. Now here I am, dabbling with paint and fantasy. Hopefully my creations will bring and inquisitiveness. MaryAnn Yarmosky myarmosky@comcast.net, 413-441-6963, maryannyarmoskyeclecticart.com
BERKSHIRE DIGITAL
STAMPED ABSTRACT SERIES # 23
MARY DAVIDSON Mary Davidson has been painting on a regular basis for the last 16 years. Davidson’s paintings are a two-dimensional decorative visualization of line, color, design, shape, patterns, and stamping. As you begin to study the paintings, you will find the foreground and background tend to merge, with overlaid patterns. “I love the intense complexity and ambiguity of space and dimension.”. The effect can be startling: the longer you look at the piece, the more you see. With style more design than literal, she hopes to convey lightheartedness, playfulness and whimsey. “One of my favorite art teachers along the way used to say, ‘It is only a piece of paper and/or canvas. NO RULES’. Painting is a way to express my creativity. I always work in a series, which keeps me focused. I work with acrylic paint because it is so forgiving.” Davidson’s New Hat series consist of 70 paintings. “I start with a basic drawing, building with color and shape, coming to life with gesture and flow. As the title suggests, the hats are important, and the millinery designs emerge. There is much joy in their creation and my passion for playful designs is reinforced by their bright colors, linear rhythms and patterns leading our eyes around and through the painting. My newest series is even more abstract, with an even stronger emphasis on design. I do like to use stamping, along with painting, because I love the result. When I finish with a painting, I adhere the canvas with mat gel to gator board, creating a nice tight surface. My paintings are always framed.” In addition to an Associate Degree in Fashion Design from Newbury College in Boston, Davidson has taken many classes in drawing and painting, and participated in many art workshops. “I feel as though I have developed my own unique style at this point. I am a member of three local art clubs, along with two other clubs not so close to home.” Davidson’s biggest accomplishment was to become a juried member of the National Association of Women Artists, NAWA, New York, NY. She has also been juried into many art shows in New England, since 2007 and in some of the shows has won awards. Mary Davidson - PO Box 697, South Egremont, Massachusetts; 413-528-6945, Cell 1-413717-2332; mdavidsongio@aol.com, marydavidson83155@gmail.com, www.davidsondesigncompany.net.
AIMEE VAN DYNE BROKEN LOVE SONGS CD RELEASE PARTY Local Folk/Americana singer-songwriter Aimee Van Dyne from Brooklyn, currently calls Berkshire County her home. In New York, she has performed at venues such as The Bitter End and Rockwood Music Hall, where her live performances have been described as events where “three of the best voices in town soar through a uniquely imaginative blend of ideas: counterpoint, contrapuntal vocals, two sets of lyrics playing against each other, you name it!” Her original songs, characterized by “catchy choruses and melodies that frequently evoke the thoughtful, George Harrison-side of the Beatles” are a distinctive blend of Folk/Americana and Pop/Rock. Her Upcoming CD, “Broken Love Songs” was produced by multi-instrumentalist Jim Henry (Eliza Gilkyson, Tracy Grammer) and recorded by David Chalfant of The Nields. It features a first-class team of musicians, including Jon Carroll (Mary Chapin Carpenter), Paul Kochanski (Lori McKenna), and the Berkshires’ very own Ben Kohn (Misty Blues Band). Aimee began writing songs while still a student at Brown University and then continued to write and record while studying architecture at The Cooper Union. In 2001, she released her first EP, “Owning Up,” while working as an architect in NYC. After taking time off to raise her twin daughters, Aimee embarked on a major life transformation, moving up to The Berkshires to pursue a career in music full-time. Aimee is thrilled to be celebrating her CD Release Party on Friday, April 29 at The Foundry in West Stockbridge, MA. She will be joined by her six-piece band, featuring Jim Caron on violin, Sarah Mitchell and Francine Ciccarelli on vocals, and Fran Tokarz on upright bass. Aimee Van Dyne - aimeevandyne.com
Since opening in 2005, Berkshire Digital has done fine art printing for artists and photographers. Giclée prints can be made in many different sizes from 5”x7” to 42”x 80” on a variety of archival paper choices. Berkshire Digital was featured in PDN magazine in an article about fine art printing. See the entire article on the BerkshireDigital.com website. Berkshire Digital does accurate hi-res photoreproductions of paintings and illustrations that can be used for Giclée prints, books, magazines, brochures, cards and websites. “Fred Collins couldn’t have been more professional or more enjoyable to work with. He did a beautiful job in photographing paintings carefully, efficiently, and so accurately. It’s such a great feeling to know I have these beautiful, useful files on hand anytime I need them. I wish I’d called Fred years ago.” —— Ann Getsinger We also offer restoration and repair of damaged or faded photographs. A complete overview of services offered, along with pricing, can be seen on the web at BerkshireDigital.com The owner, Fred Collins, has been a commercial and fine art photographer for over 30 years having had studios in Boston, Stamford and the Berkshires. He offers over 25 years of experience with Photoshop, enabling retouching, restoration and enhancement to prints and digital files. The studio is located in Mt. Washington, but drop-off and pick-up is available through Frames On Wheels, 84 Railroad Street in Great Barrington, MA (413) 528-0997 and Gilded Moon Framing, 17 John Street in Millerton, NY (518) 789-3428. Berkshire Digital - 413 644-9663, www.BerkshireDigital.com.
Get involved and be seen... Advertising rates & other info:
413.645.4114
THE ARTFUL MIND
THE ARTFUL MIND MARCH 2022 • 45
NOTES TO MYSELF
BRICK AND SKY
MARTINE KACZYNSKI I question how we build and relocate our lives while striving to recreate the means and markers of settlement. Often what prevails in the work is a sense of dislocation; perhaps because I’m never at home nor away from it. I grew up London but have been living in New York since the late 90’s. Frequently I develop work on private property that has been awarded to me by various patrons. My large-scale projects have been exhibited at numerous venues, including Socrates Sculpture Park NYC, Turchin Center in North Carolina, The Lipe Park Syracuse, Rural Projects Gallatin N.Y, Art Austerlitz and Millay Arts Austerlitz N.Y. Visit: martinekstudio.com Instagram - martinekstudio
KATHERINE BORKOWSKI-BYRNE I studied painting at the Boston Museum School of Fine Arts when painting was king. It was when I first saw a deKooning painting, that I knew what painting could do and that I had to be a painter. My main love is oil on canvas or paper giving the full range of marks from watery thin to luscious thick. One of my favorite teachers at art school, said, "When you paint in oils, you have the whole orchestra." My inspiration comes from many outside sources but my excitement comes from the process of painting when any original ideas disappear and the painting has a life of its own. My favorite pieces are those that come from "within." Visit: katherineborkowski-byrne.com
DYLAN W. KUBIS “THE BEAUTY OF THE AMERICAN SOUTHWEST” I could not have asked for a better way to start the year then with the release of my 60page photograph filled book of my trip. This was one of the best trips of my life. Driving through 17 states, 7,866 miles of fun, songs, boring scenery, exciting scenery, fast food, new dynamic experiences, love, gambling, fine food, not so fine foods, 25 nights of hotels, and over hundreds of Inspirational, Sensational, Motivational, Imaginative beautiful photographs of the American Southwest. We’ve been planning this trip for a few years, to show the world that someone like me a person with special needs can be more, do more, than many people think I can. To me Down Syndrome is in some ways is a gift. I see, feel, think and sense differently than most. I hope you will see this difference, my overwhelming vision on the 60 pages and over 70 photographs of this photographic diary. Order your copy today at: https://www.dwkisphotography.com/store-1 or email me at dkubis@gmail.com Thanks for purchasing my book, Dylan
Let the artists know you have read about them in
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46 • MARCH 2022 THE ARTFUL MIND
PATH FOR TODAY
MOUNTAIN WISDOM, OIL ON CANVAS, 14”X11 ½”
SHARON GUY
INSPIRED BY NATURE My purpose as an artist is to connect with the healing power of the natural world and to encourage others to do the same. Nature is alive and infused with spirit. I constantly seek to reconnect with this spirit of nature through creating art. While I quietly observe and study land, water, and skies, the ordinary world around me is transformed by light and shadow into the sublime. I enjoy using an intuitive process while I play with the boundary between representation and abstraction. My work is in private collections in the United States and Canada. Visit: https://www.sharonguyart.com sharonguyart@gmail.com / 941-321-1218
JOSHUA BELL IN CONCERT WITH THE BOSTON SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA, PEN AND INK WITH WASH , 12 X 9”, AUGUST 7, 2021
CAROLYN NEWBERGER In my art I try to capture the essence of our human experience, in music, in dance, in our relationships with each other, and in the world around us. I work in several mediums, including watercolor, pen and ink, and collage. These drawings in this issue are executed in darkened performance halls, where with a loose hand and receptive mind I try to communicate both personal character and the spark, rhythm, flow and urgency of performance. Several of these drawings accompany personal essays and music and dance reviews in The Berkshire Edge. Carolyn Newberger - Cnewberger@me.com, 617-877-5672, www.carolynnewberger.com
Art is unquestionable one of the purest and highest elements in human happiness. It trains the mind through the eye, and the eye through the mind.
AWESOME
ANDREA JOYCE FELDMAN I started making art when I was terribly sick from chemo. I used pencil and charcoal, then an old tin of watercolors that I had. Dragging colors across a page made me feel better. I’ve continued to paint since then. I’ve taken a somewhat ritualistic approach to my work; gathering supplies, filling the water jar, or taping down the paper, are all part of the process. Much of my work is inspired by nature. I try to create a meditative space where the viewer might relax and restore in the quiet and the calm. Andrea Joyce Feldman andreajoycefeldmanart.com, andreajf@me.com, 413-655-7766.
As the sun colours flowers, so does art colour life. —John Lubbock
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Celebrating 22nd Year of Small-Batch Production All Ingredients Organic For More Information - 413-329-5440 THE ARTFUL MIND MARCH 2022• 47
Something For Over The Couch PART 8
“Judith and the Head of Holofernes” The following Saturday’s conversation seemed to begin where the previous conversation had ended, with the story of the figurine I had accidentally broken, and the realization that the one art object in our house was something my mother hated but displayed out of a desire not to hurt my aunt’s feelings, since it had been a gift. Hanna, my art teacher, moved by this story, began to expound on the idea that many lives are ruined by the desire to do things one hates for the satisfaction of others. “Keeping some art object on a shelf to please your aunt is just a small example of this tendency people have to take some job, marry some person, go to college or even have children, to please some other person. People will often do things that they absolutely hate just to please others, even others they also hate, just out of this stupid feeling of obligation.” As she said all of this, her voice kept rising and getting more animated, so that finally I interrupted her and said right out loud, “Hanna, are you talking about yourself?” My question calls for some explanation. For the first time, I addressed my teacher by her first name, and even now I can remember the strange sensation as the sound of it hung in the air. More importantly however, was that I had suddenly turned the tables on her, and rather than constantly avoiding the questions about my dead father, I challenged her to talk for once about her own life. Emboldened by the ensuing awkward silence, I ventured further and asked, “Why did you leave your first husband, and do you still love him?” This question was deliberate revenge for her having had the audacity to ask me if my mother had loved my father. That was such a strange, unacceptable question that I couldn’t stop feeling upset about it. “It’s a thing impossible to explain. I don’t even know how to begin,’’ she began. “I can’t tell you the entire story, but I will just tell you the end of it. My first husband… there was a waitress in the bar where he and his friends would sit for hours and talk about art. There was a girl who tended bar, and she spoke with an attractive Irish accent. She was eighteen, but looked like she was fourteen. This is what she was like. Harold, the owner, had hired her one night, and by the end of two weeks his bar had become an important place, with twice the clientele. “Harold, I am sure, never saw any connection between his new waitress and his sudden 48 • MARCH 2022 THE ARTFUL MIND
prosperity, and probably just attributed it to the change in the season or some other meaningless cause, but it was Judith, his new employee, who was the reason. First of all, she was simply a child, a beautiful child, who for some unknown reason was consumed with some sort of burning anger at the world. This anger expressed itself in caustic remarks and outright insults to the customers, but the customers, far from feeling abused and insulted, were positively overjoyed by her abuse, and felt it was a badge of honor. “Overhearing some person’s name, she would adroitly mispronounce it to them on purpose while serving them, twisting the sounds into something demeaning, and even obscene. But it was impossible to be angry with her, especially because of her large, dark eyes, which reflected a kind of loving tenderness, like the eyes of a wolf. “And so it happened, and I was there at the beginning of it, that some of the patrons created a game of inventing little stories about the source of this demon’s anger, and the game required that the last words of the little stories had to be, ‘and then she cut his head off.’ “It was actually my husband Max who started this game. Max was the name he gave himself when he became an art dealer, and I didn’t object. He said it sounded the part. His actual name was Anthony, which he thought would never do. Anyway, he was the first to invent a story to explain little Judith’s anger, and she was little, not quite five feet tall, just under. He was very proud of the literary skill displayed by his invention. He likened it to the Decameron and its hundred stories told during the plague in Florence, and he took credit for the whole idea. His story involved Judith being abused by her drunken Irish father until, moved to rage, she cuts off her father’s head with a kitchen knife. “Many of the stories they made up usually revolved around the same theme, and it was amazing how the punch line not only produced loud laughter, but seemed to increase with each retelling of the tale, until all they had to say was ‘and then,’ to get a laugh, especially when talking about some irate female’s indignation about some affront. “The entire thing made me so incredibly angry that I finally could not contain myself, and at one point I suddenly and unexpectedly burst out crying, threw something, I don’t even remember what it was, down on the table and shouted out, ‘Stop it for Christ’s sake!’ “The bar, the table, the conversations, were strictly a man’s world, and I was hardly ever there at all, only one night a week, so what happened was that the men didn’t even know what I was talking about, and one man, Erik, the brother of… it doesn’t matter of who, even looked around the room in confusion as if I must be objecting to something somewhere else in the bar. But when it dawned on them all that it was their funny stories I was so upset about, they began to reason with me, trying to calm me down and saying things like, ‘It’s just fiction, only stories, just a literary thing.’ Someone else insisted that it was an art form, a creative endeavor. Then Max said, ‘But really, what’s the problem? Doesn’t she take her revenge in the end? So, you know, a happy ending.’ “ ‘Happy ending? Abuse turns a child into a murderer and that is supposed to be a happy ending?’ That’s what I shouted at him, and then I left. I didn’t even slam the door as I went out, that’s how certain I was of the morality of my position,
and the correctness of what I had said. “That night, obviously, we had a tremendous argument, our first and our last, and we had been married for ten years. I was angry back then because I wanted to do something creative with my life. I no longer was content to be in the audience and cheer other people’s accomplishments, so to speak, but I wanted to be up on some stage for once. And poor Max, he was consumed with jealousy because his blue chip gallery sold only the established, boring, washed-up old dead artists, and all around us unknown crazy people were becoming famous for outrageous, gigantic paintings which were just one big mess after another. How many times did I have to hear him rage about Rothko and Kline, and how great everyone thought those canvases were, and then there was Max in his gallery on 57th, selling Grant Wood drawings, and Ashcan School. “So, things were said, bridges were burned, foundations were blown up, words were spoken that can never be unsaid or forgotten, even up to and including words about sex and its disappointments. But it was not the end. Rome wasn’t destroyed in an afternoon; it took a few days. “I remember at that time Max had decided to read some classics, and Crime and Punishment was on the bedside table. He picked it up, waved it in my face and said, ‘Look, when Dostoevsky wrote that passage where the main character murders the old lady with the ax, what do you think his wife’s reaction would have been, to walk out on him, make him burn the manuscript?’ ‘Perhaps, if he laughed about it after he finished the page,’ I said. ‘It’s fiction. It’s art, you moron!’ he screamed at me, and suddenly I wondered if he might not be right. “But then I discovered that the whole thing was much more serious than I could have ever imagined, becuse he announced, ‘I intend to get that young woman, one way or another, to paint ten or twelve huge abstract paintings, and I am going to do a show of them, but before it opens, I am going to pass around the story that she murdered her father and fled from Belfast with her aunt, disguised as a boy, and is wanted for murder in Ireland. This will make us rich and her famous, there can be no doubt about it.’ ‘But Max,’ I said, ‘the girl probably knows nothing about art, not a thing.’ ‘Really Hanna, do you think that matters at all? Just look around you.’ he said.” That was all she told me that Saturday afternoon, and when the cook came into the kitchen, I stood up to leave. As I was going out the door, I asked her if that is when she left him, and she said, “No, he left me a year later.” On the following Monday morning, I went to the library and took out Crime and Punishment, and also The Decameron. I looked up Ashcan School and Grant Wood in the encyclopedia. I was unable to find out what “blue chip,” meant, but I was able to figure it out from the context. But 57th remained a mystery.
—RICHARD BRITELL PARTS 1 THROUGH 7, AT SPAZIFINEART.COM (SHORT STORIES)
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