THEOMENMAG #10

10

Omen Magazine

is a showcase for multi-medium International creativity. It is a visual online magazine that is a homage to Art and Fashion that may not be necessarily mainstream. It will be a hybrid of talent from up and coming to famous.The focus is on the image, not the buzz.

Omen wants to explore and expose to the cyber world, all the amazing work that is off the commercial radar.

www.theomenmag.com Cover Photo : Michael Palladino

Š 2010-2012 theOMENmag. All Rights Reserved.

10 Mário Correia - Graphic editor Marcus Leatherdale - Art Director / Art Editor Pedro Matos - Photo editor Jorge Serio - Fashion editor + Art Correspondents: Paul Bridgewater – NYC Amabel Barraclough – London Martin Belk – Paris / Glasgow Dan Bazuin – Toronto Patric Lehman – Toronto Jennifer Leskiw –Antwerp Anne McDonald – Prague Muga Miyahara –Tokyo Elizabeth Rogers – New Delhi Hector Ramsay - Florence Andrea Splisgar – Berlin Jorge Soccaras – Barcelona / NYC Arturo Toulanov - NYC Sheba Legend – NYC Jose Maria Bustos - Singapore + Fashion Correspondents: Michael Schmidt – Los Angeles Rebecca Weinberg – NYC Zuleika Ponsen - Paris + Literary Correspondent: Christina Oxenberg

JASON deCAIRES TAYLOR PUERTO MORELOS, MEXICO Jason deCaires Taylor was born in Great Britain in 1974 and is currently based in Mexico.

Much of his childhood was spent on the coral reefs of Malaysia, cultivating a profound love of the sea and fascination with nature. Working as a scuba diving instructor in various parts of the world, he developed a strong interest in conservation, underwater naturalism and photography. In his teens, experimenting with graffiti fired the artist’s interest in the relationship between art and the environment, fostering an ambition to produce art in public spaces.

Over the past several years, Taylor has created a large body of installations in aquatic environments. These ambitious public projects combine his unique range of logistical experience, artistic talent, scuba diving skill and marine life interest. Casting cement into full-scale figures and objects, the artist infuses his eco-sculptures with specialized pH neutral materials to encourage the formation of artificial reefs. The installations have a conservational aspect, drawing tourists away from natural reef formations thereby helping to replenish this endangered natural resource.

In 2006, Taylor created the world’s first underwater sculpture park in Grenada, West Indies, which consists of over 65 individual works and covers an area of 2,624 square feet (800 square meters), included among the top 25 wonders of the world by National Geographic. In 2010, Taylor founded the Museo Subacuático de Arte (MuSA), located in Cancún, Mexico, where he created and installed over 450 life-size figurative works under water, which occupy an area of 1,640 square feet (500 square meters) and weigh over 200 tons, collectively. The artist has received a tremendous amount of press including National Geographic, Vogue, CNN, BBC and Discovery Channel. One of Taylor’s images, titled Lost Correspondent was featured as the cover art for Ukelele Songs, a solo album from Eddie Vedder of Pearl Jam, released in 2011.

A monograph of the artist’s work will be published by Chronicle Books in the Spring of 2014.

SCOTT COVERT THE DEAD SUPREME _ EDELMAN ARTS – NYC Extended to Sept.5

SCOTT COVERT THE DEAD SUPREME Scott Covert is an artist on a transcendent, death-defying, quest. For the last 25 years, his life has been a never-ending, headlong pursuit of the beautiful and damned, beauties and thebeasts, the good, the bad and the ugly, the powerful and glorious, the naked and the dead.

On his creative pilgrimage he has travelled all over the United States and Europe, paying visits to a luminous pantheon of cultural icons: movie stars, explorers, politicians, artists, heroes, villains, architects, murderers, murder victims, singers, athletes, novelists, inventors, rock stars, poets. Scott’s odyssey gains in grandeur and poignancy once you know that his hosts were dead and residing in their graves when the artist came to call.

It is unlikely anyone has visited as many cemeteries as Scott: certainly no one has returned with such treasures from the necropolis. Cemeteries serve as adjunct studios for the painter who arrives with a sheaf of canvases, which the dead help bring to life—and vice-versa.

Once in his outdoor studio, the artist sets to work, prepping the fabric, placing it over the gravestones, and, using an oil or wax crayon, impulsively adorning the canvas with his subjects’ engraved in memoria. In piquant counterpoint to the 80s graffiti art practiced by his friends Jean-Michel Basquiat and Keith Haring, the artist does not leave a mark behind, but rather leaves with it.

Each brushstroke is a life, as Scott says. At times, one subject’s inscription will be repeated on a single canvas; other times, an inscription will be placed on a canvas in an impulsive collage of diverse personalities’ names, in varied colors and textures, producing a palimpsest for the viewer to explore and decipher.

Scott’s aesthetic choices convey the impulsive immediacy, directness and impact of Abstract Expressionism. As the gallerist Patrick Fox observes, Scott is the first artist to conjoin the prima materia of Pop Art—celebrity, notoriety and glamour—with the subterranean, unconscious rumblings of Abstract Expressionism. As the singer Patti Smith reminds us, “We are all Pollock’s children.” And we might add, Andy’s.

The painting “Yellow on Pink on Orange” (2010-2012), exemplifies Scott’s singular approach.

One would require something like a rosetta stone to properly interpret the dazzling montage—

or mélange—or ménage—of personalities in the lush, multitextured work. The names of dozens of famous—and infamous—figures —are artfully juxtaposed.

A careful inspection of the painting reveals—among many others—the rubbed names of James Baldwin, Dean Martin, John Dillinger, Sammy Davis Jr., J.P. Morgan, Jason Mizell (RunD.M.C’s Jam Master Jay), Don Knotts, Bill “Bojangles” Robinson, Donna Reed, Nancy Spungen, the tragimodel Gia, Frank Sinatra, Ella Fitzgerald, Cass Elliot, Buster Keaton, John Jay Audubon, Moms Mabley, Aaron Burr, Thelonious Monk, Toots Shore, Marilyn Monroe, Iceberg Slim, Gary Cooper, Natalie Wood, John Coltrane, Truman Capote.

One is reminded that Scott once worked with George Trescher, New York’s legendary party curator, helping place A-lister next to A-lister.

Inspecting the rubbed names, the viewer uncovers previously unimagined connections between the brilliantly disparate personalities. It is a work of art—and a work of archaeology.

Through his singular process and uncanny work, Scott engages in a kind of ontological alchemy.

The grave no longer marks the end, but the beginning of a new journey for his starry subjects. In the enchanted realm of Scott’s paintings, the dead come to glorious life, galvanized into celestial dancing partners with others from the necropolitan galaxy—Dancing with the Stars, you might say.

– Fayette Hickox Scott’s gravestone work represented a natural evolution from his earliest work, which were bejeweled skulls. His first grave rubbing was that of Florence Ballard (1943-1976), one of the original Supremes of Motown legend, who received Scott at her resting place at Detroit Memorial Park Cemetery in Warren, Michigan. Ever since, Scott has identified his school as “The Dead Supreme.”

When Cookie Mueller, the art critic, muse and downtown doyenne, saw the resulting artwork, she convinced Scott that he had found his métier.

René Ricard, the art world avatar, gave Scott another piece of advice: “A painting should be a beautiful, entertaining thing to put on the wall.”

“My work has nothing to do with death,” Scott is quick to remind us.

“It’s not morbid: it’s a celebration of life.” He adds, “I’m not about looking back, or even looking forward. I don’t have time for that. I’m all about right now.” And right now just happens to be the very moment we encounter Scott’s paintings

TAKEN AT HOME SELF PORTRAITS

By KENNY KENNY - NYC I’ve always used dressing as a way to express a mood and feeling. However I just realized that dressing alone was not translating exactly what I wanted to say.

So, I had a leap of faith and started to photograph myself, which translated more clearly what I wanted to express. ….Feelings of a love of Beauty – Melancholy – Strength and Hope.

So a passion and love for photography and dressing came together to express myself in a more creative and artistic way. These portraits are a vision of Myself and my World.

JOE CONCRA

Before delving into what is undoubtedly the prime fascination of a Joe Concra painting, I would suggest the tricky exercise of momentarily overlooking the subject matter per se and focusing directly on the paint itself. From the gracefully muted and diaphanous use of the medium, it could be inferred that as a painter Concra doesn’t really require a subject matter; paint is the prima mater here, literally and fundamentally. His canvases might well be simply filled with beautiful brushwork. However, this being decidedly but one level of Concra’s work, the viewer is indeed more likely to be drawn in by the subject matter. Rendered in the painter’s richly atmospheric manner, a familiar enough creature or thing – a bird, a clown hat, an elephant, a deck of cards – stands at once apart from, and as apparitional extension of its background.

Concra renders his subjects with equal parts playfulness and mystery, charming and intriguing the viewer, an artful ambivalence that grows more complex the longer one observes.

Unlike Magritte’s iconic pipe, in Concra’s world a clown hat is not merely a clown hat.

Innocent enough as a geometric form, conventional associations are turned on their heads via sparse composition and wry juxtaposition, heightening the drama and strangeness of the object, while raising questions about its place in the painting, as well as its relation to the viewer. However potentially risible or menacing, a clown hat, or any other subject Concra takes on, allows us to glimpse into its phantom nature, its existential inexplicability and looming mystery. Even the ground of the composition is often depicted as liquid of indeterminable depth, from which something is as likely to rise, as it is to sink back into. This is paint as matter as hallucinatory form. As in the world of dreams, all solidity is suspect, while any configuration of things is possible.

At a Joe Concra exhibition not too long ago, I stood by his painting of a wreathed pig, watching a woman stand before it contemplatively. When I ventured asking her what she thought of the work, she began explaining how the painting obviously symbolized Christ suffering the Stations of the Cross. I tried not to look flabbergasted, having previously seen children run up to this same painting and giggle with delight. It says much when an image can evoke such a range of responses. I, in turn, had much to ask the artist, who works out his home studio in Kingston, New York, together with his artist wife.

JS: How did you become a painter? Was it something you were always inclined towards?

JC: I had never been exposed to painting of any kind until I was in college. I went to college to study journalism. I took an art class as an elective and met a teacher named Evelyn Fisher. She exposed me to a whole new world of visual communication and language. Once I met her and started painting there was no turning back. She was an inspiration - a great teacher and friend. Without meeting her I may never have found painting.

JS: What was you early work like? When and how did you start painting the kind of thematic subjects for which you have become known?

JC: My early paintings were terrible! I loved making them. They were all over the place abstractions. It took me years to find my way because it was all new to me. It takes a while to develop your own language.

JS: In my preface I expound on some of what I see going on in your work. How near or far are my observations to your own concerns and intentions?

JC: You describe a number of things I am trying to achieve. I love the fact that you speak of the paint-handling first. I love paint - it is amazing to work with. I want to create a mood in the paintings and each one is different. The successful ones take you into a different place and keep you there a while so you can draw your own conclusions.

JS: I have had occasion to hear one person respond to a painting of yours as funny, and another person think the same painting sinister. What do you make of this?

JC: This is fantastic. I want the viewer to come up with their own ideas about what is happening in front of them. Often I do not even know myself.

JS: You’re able to imbue a clown, or most anything you paint with an equally wry and menacing sense. How much of this is artifice and how much is unconscious?

JC: I don’t know if it is that obvious to me. I paint until an image takes hold and I follow it. The clown is a scary one but at the same time a little sad. I would say it is a singular process.

JS: Your work is distinctive not only for its subjects, but also the brushwork. Do you in

fact lose yourself in your brushwork, or is it a kind of drudgery?

JC: I love paint. I love the process. What you see is the end result of a lot of work, and a lot of paint on the floor. I can spend months putting on and scrapping off paint until something sticks and I follow it. When a painting really takes off I completely lose track of time and even where I am. This is the best feeling - the work stops and the paint just flows.

JS: Your paintings seem removed from time. The first time I saw one, I couldn’t quite be sure it was contemporary.

JC: I like that you felt that way. I would like the work to feel timeless, even otherworldly.

JS: Who or what have been some important influences on your work?

JC: Everything is an influence and I never know what it will be. I love looking - seeing things like a discarded child’s toy in a puddle, for instance.

JS: Your recent work employs paper money as a theme. Why money?

JC: U.S. currency is ugly. I thought I could spruce it up with a little color. Also, I think we are too obsessed with it; it’s like a drug in our society.

JS: Do you see yourself staying with figuration in the future?

JC: I have no idea what I will do today or 10 years from now. I know that I will be painting, and I hope that you will still be looking.

INTERVIEW BY JORGE SOCARRAS

CROSSING HOUSTON Smart Clothes: Reinventing New York’s Downtown Art Scene

In 2009 a New York Times art critic commented that the Lower East Side’s fledgling gallery scene was not the new Chelsea and probably never would be.

(Two decades earlier, similar comments had been made about Chelsea in relation to Soho.) Soon enough, several name gallerists set up shop not far from the New Museum, the institution that had almost singlehandedly redefined the neighborhood. Their appearance legitimized the burgeoning scene, as did the more established artist names in these galleries. But the southern extension of this expanding district, still largely unknown to many an otherwise savvy New Yorker, has become prime territory for discovering new artists yet to resonate in the more established realms. Most densely concentrated between Houston and Canal, Bowery and Ludlow Streets, this mushrooming crop of galleries is still pushing its parameters, geographically and otherwise. Trailblazing the eastern front is a new gallery on the corner of Suffolk and Stanton Streets. Above the wall-to-wall windowed storefront,the original sign still reads “154 Smart Clothes” serving as marker of the neighborhood’s colorful history, as well as emblem of its new enterprise and the colorful history of the gallerist who chose to keep the name.

Paul Bridgewater is known to most anyone who has followed the New York art scene long enough. Having cofounded Hardart gallery in Washington, DC, in 1973, Bridgewater next moved to New York, where in 1978 he made art waves by creating a set of abstract paint-by-number kits that included real “artist hair brushes” made from his own hair. None other than Andy Warhol himself purchased a kit - the ultimate stamp of ironic approval. Soon Bridgewater was a prominent figure of the downtown art scene. In 1984 he opened Bridgewater Gallery in the East Village, on a burned-out block between Avenues Band C. (A striking scene in the documentary “Resident Alien” has Quinton Crisp sauntering through the rubble to visit the gallery.) There on Manhattan’s bohemian edge, Bridgewater dedicatedly brought art from the figurative edge to a wider public.

When in the late 80’s, New York Magazine ran a cover story declaring, “The East Village is Over,” the vibrant scene that had cropped up through the decade shrank in a matter of months from 70 to just 3 galleries. Bridgewater took the cue, relocating to Soho in ’89 with his assistant-turned-partner as Bridgewater/Lustberg Gallery. For the opening: a Robert Mapplethorpe exhibition, including some of his notoriously controversial images of black men. Tragically, Mapplethorpe died just two days before, inadvertently making this the photographer’s first posthumous exhibit.

In 1992, Bridgewater/Lustberg showed the Paint-by-Number collection of Saturday Night Live writer Michael O’Donoghue. Co-organized by downtown artist Trey Speegle, the opening drew 1,000 people and made quite a media splash. Many of those works are now in the collections of the Smithsonian, which in 2001 had a Paint-by-Number retrospective. Again, Bridegwater’s vision had proved prescient.

Now, after ten years as a private dealer, and having curated hundreds of exhibits, Paul Bridgewater has returned to his downtown roots, this time partnering with Justin Hysell, a research scientist brought up in the arts, whom Bridgewater mentored in his East Village gallery when Hysell was a youth. Their Smart Clothes venture promises to again raise the bar on what the downtown art scene was always essentially about: taking risks, and presenting new artists to the world above Houston Street. Adding to the mix are curatorial selections from the vast roster of artists Bridgewater originally promoted – artists that first drew world attention to the downtown art scene, such as Sean Earley, Phyllis Galembo, and Marcus Leatherdale, to name a few. Of course, being a seasoned risk-taker implies a certain unpredictability, and for the Smart Clothes inaugural exhibit, Bridgewater chose the work of Renee Radell, an 83-year-old painter whose masterful work has been largely overlooked by the more trend-conscious art scene. Thus in a year where critics have been declaring the demise of art that hinges more on the conceptual and the gimmicky than on fine-art skills, Bridgewater again seems to be ahead of the mark.

For the gallery’s major fall exhibition, Smart Clothes will reiterate its downtown legacy with “Crossing Houston,” a reexamination of the East Village as the center of New York’s do-it-yourself art scene in the early 1980’s. Curated by Gracie Mansion and Hal Bromm, who along with Bridgewater were all gallerists at the epicenter of the East Village art movement, the show will include work from an impressive array of artists: John Ahearn, Mike Bidlo, Barry Bridgwood, Craig Coleman, Jane Dickson, Luis Frangella, Duncan Hannah, Keith Haring, Marcus Leatherdale, McDermott/McGough, Rick Prol, Jim Radakovich, and David Wojnarowicz. If Paul Bridgewater is any indication, part of that dynamic force that impelled the downtown art scene still prevails, coming full cycle in his new gallery.

Indeed with its vintage sign and wonderfully big windows looking out onto the street, Smart Clothes feels as much a part of the Lower East Side’s history as it does its future.

CROSSING HOUSTON SEPT. 11 – OCT.11 154 STANTON STREET LES, NYC 212-627-3276 INTERVIEW BY JORGE SOCARRAS

KEITH HARING

BARRY BRIDGWOOD

CRAIG COLEMAN

JIM RADAKOVICH

DAVID WOJNAROWICZ

JANE DICKSON

DUNCAN HANNAH

RODNEY ALAN GREENBLAT

JOHN AHEARN

LUIS FRANGELLA

RICK PROL

MIKE BIDLO

McDERMOTT / McGOUGH

MARCUS LEATHERDALE

Take Your Shirt Off And Cry For our first class, David Mamet delivered a lecture the premise of which was that Bill Cosby was a whore. This was certainly a cutting-edge way of viewing him, given the popularity at the time of The Cosby Show, and we all sat in our seats, completely riveted, furiously writing notes into our notebooks. Cosby was a whore, television was evil and for whores, Hollywood was a hotbed of whoredom, and we were to avoid all of these things like the plague, unless, of course, we too were whores and not the artists we’d said we were. Why it never occurred to any of us to question the fact that Mamet himself was actively working in Hollywood, toiling away on movie scripts and, furthermore, television is beyond me. Maybe we intuitively understood that he wanted us to be “pure” in some parental way—a sort of don’t-do-what-I do-do-whatI-say. It reminded me of my father, sitting in his underwear at the dinner table, chainsmoking Marlboros and berating me for smoking.

“It’s vile,” he’d sneer, blowing smoke in my face. “I just don’t understand it. How can you smoke? You’re gonna ruin your singing voice after I paid for all those goddamn lessons!”

If these subtle ironies eluded us, perhaps it was just our sheer excitement.

Mamet was forever blowing our minds with his contrarian edicts, like the time he told us that for an actor there was “no such thing as character.” Character, he declared, was the job of the playwright. No matter how vigorously we argued or debated our position that actors had a huge part in the creation of their roles, Mamet stood impervious, arms folded, having none of it. It was infuriating. But it was also a total turnon.

Often, Mamet would begin his sessions with us by reading aloud an incendiary essay he’d written the previous night, embracing themes near and dear to his heart.

Banalities on Broadway was one; critics, whom he referred to as “the Syphilis and Gonorrhea of the Theatre” was another. Mamet rained down his most vigorous contempt, however, on Hollywood film producers, who he insisted were nothing more than a bunch of self-loathing Jews obsessed with making bad films about nice Nazis.

His style was rather breathtaking; each essay a rhetorical rant, artfully interspersed with potty-mouthed hyperbole, after which he’d take questions (if you dared) and he always presented each of us with our own essay copy to take home as a parting gift.

Turtle-Wax, Mamet style.

As fun and entertaining as Mamet could be, he was a dogmatic hard-ass about rules and respect for theater as an art and woe to the person who challenged him.

We were instructed from the outset that if we did not show up to class fifteen min-

utes early, we would be considered late and not permitted inside. No exceptions. No excuses.

“There are no accidents. People do what they want,” he told us after he threw one of the guys out who came in at five of with a whole story about being trapped in the subway for an hour. Mamet’s intolerance for lateness was extreme, as was his reaction if someone was doing an exercise or a scene and he couldn’t hear them.

“GET THE FUCK OFF THE STAGE. NOW,” he’d bellow from the back of the darkened Beaumont. “And,” he continued, his short, burly body bouncing around like a schoolyard bully in need of his daily Ritalin, “don’t fucking come back until we can hear you. How dare you---you’re WHISPERING. On the stage. It’s fucking passive- aggressive!”

As the disgraced culprit would slink off the stage and back to their seat, Mamet would press on:

“You know, folks—only people who are full of shit whisper. It’s a fact. They whisper because they are fucking liars. Once again—your job is to tell the truth. People think that to be a good actor you must be a good liar. No. A good actor is good at telling the truth. If you are not full of shit, if you are not lying, you speak so people can hear you. It’s that simple.”

I thought he was so terribly hip, mixing cocky, intellectual expressions like “This Is Exactly So” and “Edification” with Yiddishisms and raunchy jokes.

The tension in the air during his classes was palpable and everyone always seemed meek and nervous about volunteering for exercises, but somehow, the more bellicose Mamet got, the calmer I felt. Mamet’s two-fisted style may have freaked out my classmates, but I felt right at home; he reminded me of my father—aphorisms and all. It was like déjà Jew.

“You get no where being afraid of me. No where,” Mamet declared one afternoon, looking around the room with dismay. “Who wants to try the prologue from Henry V?”

My hand shot straight up.

“Me. I do!”

“Ok. Good,” he said handing me the book. “I want you to do it like you’re ‘imploring a loved one to give you another chance’.”

“O for a muse of fire that would ascend the brightest” was all I got out before Mamet blurted to the class: “Ok; this is very good. She’s not afraid. This is good.”

“So, nu?” Mamet asked, turning his attention back to me. “Have any ‘actions’?”

“Action” was his term for what was commonly referred to in acting parlance as “objectives”—or the thing you, as the character, want and thus are trying to achieve in the

scene. Mamet had asked that we keep a running list of actions to have at our disposal, so that we could use them in our work and also discuss them in class.

“Yeah. I’m in rehearsal for a production of The Maids right now; I play ‘Madame’ and I think this is a good one to use on the maids: “Get these assholes to cater to my every whim.’” Mamet’s eye widened and he looked up to the ceiling.

“Well, ok…” he said, beginning to laugh as he considered it. “It’s a bit over the top, but it works. And, it’s funny….”

“There’s also a bunch of times where I use “putting an asshole in her place”, but it’s not as fun as the other one.”

“So perhaps we need to investigate ways to make it more fun for Nancy to do.” Mamet said, addressing the class. “ ‘Putting an asshole in her place’ is the essential action, he said, turning his attention back to me. “It’s ‘as if’, what?”

(The “as if” was the last step in Mamet’s technique. It was used to help the actor better understand and personalize the action they have chosen. Using your imagination and your own words: What does the action mean to you?)

“It’s as if I could tell the English teacher I had freshman year to stop patronizing me….”

“Excellent—go.” “ Look, douche-bag—I’m gonna tell you this for the last time: DON’T CALL ME HONEY. OK?? My name is not ‘Honey’. You wanna tell me something, you wanna address me, USE MY NAME. It’s Nancy. N-A-N-C-Y. Get it? NANCY! Like the First Lady. Only, actually, nothing like the First Lady-- except maybe for the part where ‘I Just Say No’ to assholes who insist on calling me ‘Honey,’ despite the countless times I have asked (nicely) to be called my name, which, in case you’ve forgotten, is NANCY. Oh, and by the way? I totally know that you thought I was a moron because I didn’t know what the fuck a ‘gerund’ was, but guess what? I have finally figured it out! Here, I’ll use one in a sentence: ‘Excuse me--but do you mind my ASKING YOU TO GO FUCK YOURSELF??’ ” “OK, this is exactly so,” Mamet said, cutting in. “We have found an ‘as if’ for the action ‘putting in an asshole in his place.’ It was simple, it was clear and it looked fun. Was it fun?” He asked me.

“Very…”

“Good. By the way--do you write?”

“No.”

“Well, you should. Write a one-act, maybe. Why not?”

*** Mamet’s appearances in class, never regular to begin with, seemed to dwindle as time wore on. Though we were told that it was work that kept him away, I suspected that his complicated relationship with academic institutions contributed—at least in part—to his prolonged absences. When he did grace us with his presence, there was always a great deal of pomp and excitement about it. And he never disappointed: always with big stories about small men; funny pithy observations, and a dirty joke or two, mixed seamlessly, as usual, into class exercises or scene-work. After one of these classes, near the end of my last semester, I was walking through the bowels of Lincoln Center, toward the subway, when I stopped to light a cigarette.

“Got a light?” I heard a voice say. It was a question, but since there was no inflection, I turned as I lit. It was Mamet, holding and unlit cigar. I obliged his request and we walked for a moment, down the warren of dimly lit corridors, past empty rehearsal rooms and dressing rooms and costume and prop shops. I don’t remember what we talked about—class that afternoon, probably-- but whatever it was lead to a brief conversation about actors—in general first, then, in particular, me. Walking thought the Beaumont stage door, and into the parking garage, we paused for a moment between the street and the mouth of the long tunnel that separated the theater complex with the number 1 train.

“You’ve worked hard—good for you,” he told me. “Good work; you’re very good. I won’t say you’re talented. I don’t believe in talent; talent is meaningless. The only thing that matters is your will. If you exercise your will. That’s the only thing that means anything. And courage. You seem to have courage—good. That’s good, cuz you’ll need it.”

He paused for a second, looking at me ruefully.

“There’s nothing worse than being a woman in show business. Being a woman in this business you’ll be asked to do only two things in every fucking role you ever play: take your shirt off and cry. That’s it. Take your shirt off and cry. Still, there’s no reason that you can’t do those things and do them with dignity and the scene properly analyzed. Be brave. Be strong. Are you writing?”

“No....not really. Not at all…”

“Why not?”

“I just...I don’t think I can...”

“I know. Do it anyway. I know it’s hard. Do it anyway. When something’s hard, just do it anyway—that’s all you can do.”

Mamet told me he was going out of town for a few weeks, and when he came back he expected me to have written a one-act, which I was to cast, direct and present to the class.

“And if there’s no play when I get back, I’ll fucking fail you,” he said, turning, abruptly, and walking toward the street.

“I thought you said you don’t believe in grades.”

“I don’t,” he said, and then he was gone.

I put off dealing with the one-act until the night before Mamet was due back in class. I freaked out, smoking and pacing around my dorm room, having no idea how to even start and without Therese, no one to bounce ideas around with. I forced myself to sit down and at least stare at the blank page. In my mind I could hear Mamet say: “Tell the truth....”

I contrived a single scene play that aped the whole Mamet vibe with a role reversal about a girl and a guy on a first date at an upscale coffee shop. I called it ONE ACT and followed Mamet’s rule that there should be minimal stage directions, so other than placing the location, the only stage direction I gave was that as the guy spoke, (floridly about “the meaning of Theatre and its cultural implications in the ‘80’s”), the girl ashes her cig into her melted hot fudge sundae. The guy speaks without interruption for a few minutes after which there is a Long Pause: The girl puts her cigarette out in the sundae and finally speaks.

GIRL So—do you want to fuck me, or what?

(Pause) GUY What?

GIRL I said do you want to fuck me, or what?

GUY I (pause)—I...I mean...well, becau—I...you know there was a— GIRL Look, babe—let’s just be real: we are here now because you saw me at the thing and you wanted to fuck me and I am here because I thought, yes, that seems like it would be excellent. That’s what I thought. (Pause). Thinking empirically. (Pause). When we met. (Pause) And, forgive me, I don’t (and I’m not being, I don’t think, presumptuous in my postulation), but I don’t think we need to waste all this time with niceties and all that crap. Why all the talk? We know what this is. Am I right?

GUY Well-(Pause) GIRL Yes? GUY It’s not only that---I mean, I think you are lovely and I— GIRL What? I’m sorry—I can’t hear you. Why the fuck are you whispering? (She leans in.)

You know, only people who are full of shit whisper and I would hate to think you were full of shit.

GUY Well, I’m not. I’m— GIRL Yes? GUY I’m very, very-(Pause) GIRLWhat?

GUY Sincere.

GIRL Excellent. Then, what are we waiting for?

There was giggling from the moment the guy started his long-winded monologue, but when the girl uttered her first line, “So--do you want to fuck me or what?,” the room exploded with laughter and applause. I couldn’t believe it; I had been getting laughs as an actor practically my whole life, but nothing ever compared to the sound in that room and the way I felt. I was extraordinarily moved. From across the room, Mamet nodded to me—a sort of touché nod, then stuck out his tongue and grinned. My eyes burned a bit from the tears that were brewing, and I sat in the back, listening to the laughter.

MILOS MITROVIC

DON QUIXOTE Lucky you, Don Quixote she’s reading you now studying for the World Lit 1 or 2 exam.

She’s reading you and cares more about you than about me Quixote, you sod.

She reads you all night you lucky sod she disconnects her phone to be alone with you and I keep calling her to look at Brana Petrović, but no, she says she’s preparing your exam: - But you’ll never need any of that - But some of it stays in your cerebellum Quixote, you crazy sod, do you know whose brain you’ll stay in?

JUST LIKE THAT I turned around cricked my neck sprained my leg you wouldn’t even call.

Broken teeth bloody dog-like nose are not enough for me you are not enough for me having fallen to me like a pear while I was looking for blackberries.

I expected either a funeral or to be called to your wedding as it turned out while I rushed you took your time you passed me by, life, like everyone else just like that.

CAPITULATION Today I have capitulated against Everybody Friends, enemies, Clever ones, fools, Expectations, Ancestors, sons, Loves, books, Today I have capitulated Against writing, Deadlines, Time, counting, Roving, being bored, Sleeping, Aspiring, Waiting, Lying, Complaining, To myself, and to others of myself, Of others, Of these, of those, Today I have capitulated Against Fears, crying, Insecurity, trembling, Size, And its diminution.

Today I have capitulated against Ignorance, knowledge, Charges, battles, Removals, folding, Unfolding, not folding, Against Parades, masks, Cleaners, academicians, Outlaws, tailors, Eccentrics, Cheese pies,

Cigarettes, buffoons, Toilets, pedestrians, And queens.

Today I have capitulated against Instruments at the Kolarac concert hall, Pickaxes, spades, Aces, trumpeters, Dissidents, priests, dancers, Swans, sea cows (and land ones), Pančić’s spruce, The apricot-tree from which a swing swung, The apricot-tree that is no more.

Today I have capitulated To God and the rules of nature.

I take myself off the wall Like a picture Leaving a white trace Where my image was.

Translated from the Serbian by Novica Petrović

MICHAEL PALLADINO - NYC

I have always been interested in art, the creative spark equally as well as the execution process.

Over the years, my artwork seems to have narrowed into two groups: abstract photography and carved wooden panels. Encaustic wax is the common thread between the two.

As an artist with a generally representational mind, I push toward simplification and abstraction. I enjoy the challenge and layers in creating the final product, which usually appears more simple than the steps taken to make them. The wax on the printed image makes it softer and more etherial. The wax inlayed in carved and torched wood adds a natural dimensional depth.

Nature is my key inspiration. The five elements, earth, water, fire, wind, and void (air/sky/ heaven) are constant themes. These mixed media pieces lean toward the obscure, with an air of mystery and the divine.

This series, MOTH, was inspired by local leaves. A study of one beautiful thing morphing into another.

Creatures naturally drawn to the light, here camouflaged for survival.

METAMORPHOSIS

JEWERLY BY VALENTIM QUARESMA

PHOTOGRAPHY: PEDRO PACHECO CONCEPT AD/ STYLING/ MAKE-UP: JORGE SERIO Model: Sofia Martins

First published in Umbigo 2010

Music: Fanatico, Video art: Clark Clammann Tessio is the first EP release from Fanatico, a duo consisting of DJproducer Mathias Schaffhäuser and vocalist Jorge Socarras. Their collaboration came about via email after Schaffhäuser did a remix of a track from the “Catholic” album Socarras recorded with the legendary Patrick Cowley in the late 70’s. Schaffhäuser had never met Socarras, but was also a fan of the singer’s 80’s band Indoor Life, and suggested that perhaps they could work together sometime. Before long, Socarras went to Köln and spent a week recording in Schaffhäuser’s studio. Ranging from electronica to experimental, the resulting album comprises a surprising selection of cover songs, including Tessio, as well as original material, and is slated for release in early 2013. The Tessio EP includes remixes from Kink and M.in/Chriss Vogt, and is available on WARE Records.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PU8H5E4rNB0

“TEA WITH DUGGIE” LONDON http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DkXDg6yN23c& list=PLEC915E2DEC1011B2&index=8&feature=pl pp_video

Artists Paul Bridgewater: www.154smartclothes.com Scott Covert: www.edelmanarts.com Kenny Kenny: kenny.kenny.56@facebook.com Joe Concra: www.joeconcra.com Jason de Caires Taylor: www.underwatersculpture.com Michael Palladino: www.michaelpalladino.net Pedro Pacheco: www.pedro-pacheco.com Valentim Quaresma: www.valentimquaresma.com Jorge Serio: www.jorgeserio.com Jorge Socarras: www.jorge-socarras.com Duggie fields: www.duggiefields.com Milos Mitrovic: www.milosmitrovic.com