vhcle
ISSUE 15 SUMMER 2014 / VHCLE MAGAZINE
Globa l Warming is Not Simply Climate Change / Vhcle Books: Rereading, The Big Sleep, Dracula, Steinbeck Without a Syllabus: Check ing Out the Classics by Choice / Vhcle Woman: A llison Marie Cullen / Mar y Jane A nsell, Derek Wilson, K im Høltermand
Derek Wilson Featured A rt work ( pp64-79) 02
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CONTENTS VHCLE MAGAZINE / ISSUE 15
ART
04 CONTENTS
MUSIC FILM
05 MASTHEAD
PHOTOGR APHY DESIGN
06-07 CONTRIBUTORS
FASHION LIFE
08-15 Global Warming is Not Simply Climate Change
BOOKS
By Tim Sunderman
VHCLE MAN / WOMAN
16-35 VHCLE BOOKS 18-21 Rereading By Jamie Thunder 22-25 The Big Sleep Reviewed by Myles Lawrence-Briggs 26-29 Dracula Reviewed by Andrew Donaghy 30-35 Steinbeck
Without a Syllabus: Check ing Out the Classics by Choice By Marc Ingber
36-39 VHCLE WOMAN – Allison
Marie Cullen
40-93 FEATURED ARTISTS 42-61 Q&A with
Mary Jane Ansell
62-77 Q&A with Derek Wilson 78-93 Q&A with K im
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Høltermand
MASTHEAD MASTHEAD / CONTRIBUTORS
Charlie Lee / Founding Director charlie@vhcle.com EDITORIAL
Cassie Lee / Founding Editor cassie@vhcle.com Jamie Thunder / Books Editor, Sub-Editor jamie@vhcle.com DESIGNERS
Raoul Ortega / Visual Director raoul@vhcle.com Thomas Adcock / Visual Designer thomas@vhcle.com CONTRIBUTORS
Tim Sunderman, Jamie Thunder, Myles Lawrence-Briggs, Andrew Donaghy, Marc Ingber, Allison Marie Cullen, Mary Jane Ansell, Derek Wilson, Kim Høltermand COVER:
Mary Jane Ansell, Girlashoreuf Illustration by Thomas Adcock WOMAN: Photo by Katy Kirchoff
VHCLE BOOKS: VHCLE
-Vhcle Magazine Tel: USA +1 415.364.8568 Email: contact@vhcle.com Issuu: issuu.com/vhcle / Twitter: @vhcle / Facebook: Vhcle Mag -Published by Charlie Lee: Vhcle Magazine, www.vhcle.com. All content copyright 2014. All rights reserved. Without limiting rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced without the prior written permission from both the copyright owner and the publisher of this magazine. Vhcle Magazine is not responsible for the return or loss of, or for any damage or injury to, any unsolicited manuscripts or artwork.
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CONTRIBUTORS A L PH A BE T IC A L LY BY L A S T N A M E
– Vhcle — Brighton, UK
MARY JANE ANSELL / ARTIST Mary Jane’s passion for painting figures led to a series of successful solo shows and appearances in the prestigious BP Portrait Award in 2004, 2009, 2010 and 2012. Her work features on the covers of a number of recent novels, including New York Times bestselling author Tiffany Baker’s Gilly Salt Sisters and on Adam Ant’s recently released album, Adam Ant is The Blueblack Hussar In Marrying The Gunner’s Daughter. Born in 1972 in the UK, she currently lives near the sea on the South Coast of England and is represented by Arcadia Contemporary in New York and Fairfax Gallery in the UK. www.maryjaneansell.com – Vhcle — Sacramento, CA
ALLISION MARIE CULLEN / VHCLE WOMAN Allison Marie Cullen is 26 and lives in Fair Oaks, California. While attending the International Academy of Design and Technology in Sacramento, she dipped her toes into fashion styling and graduated with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Fashion Design and Merchandise in 2012. She works in a locally owned boutique in Sacramento called Good Stock, is the creative director of her blog Gypsy Coven, and continues to style fashion editorials, finding inspiration from music and nature. www.gypsycoven.blogspot.com – Vhcle — United Kingdom
ANDREW DONAGHY / WRITER Andrew Donaghy is a Copywriter in the North of England. Freelance features writer and former Essays Editor for Under The Influence, he continues to scribble away in half-filled notebooks. – Vhcle — Denmark
K IM HØLTER M A ND / PHOTOGRAPHER Kim Høltermand is a freelance architectural and landscape photographer from Denmark. He was born into a creative family with both his father and grandfather being artists; his grandfather once worked as an architect. In addition to his burgeoning career in photography which only began a few years ago, Kim Høltermand’s day job has him working as a fingerprints expert in the Crime Scene Unit of The Danish National Police. www.holtermand.dk
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– Vhcle — Minneapolis, MN
MARC INGBER / WRITER Marc Ingber is a communications specialist and writer for a nonprofit based in Minneapolis, MN. He was born and raised in the Twin Cities and attended journalism school at the University of Kansas. His primary interests include rock n’ roll, movies, food and drink, the Minnesota Vikings and the Minnesota Twins – probably in that order. – Vhcle — Occidental, CA
MYLES LAWRENCE-BRIGGS / WRITER Myles Lawrence-Briggs is a 20-something recent graduate from CU Boulder in English literature, Myles has moved back to the wine country to start a wine label with two childhood friends. He manages the estate vineyard and in his spare time reads far too much and writes far too little. www.senseswines.com – Vhcle — San Francisco, CA
TIM SUNDERMAN / WRITER Tim Sunderman is a graphic designer in the San Francisco bay area who does most of his art without a computer, using traditional techniques in drawing, painting, photography, calligraphy, and even sculpture. He is a graduate of the Academy of Art in San Francisco. He eschews speaking of himself in the third person, as he is here, but doesn’t mind too much for shameless self-promotion. www.timsunderman.com – Vhcle — Reading, UK
JAMIE THUNDER / WRITER Jamie Thunder is Vhcle’s books editor, and he works, reads and writes in the South of England. When he’s not doing any of these he runs long distances, and is always very relieved when he’s got to the end. – Vhcle — Ireland
DEREK WILSON / ARTIST Derek Wilson’s practice as a ceramicist centres on the making of a diverse range of contemporary objects – from the functional to the sculptural. He always starts with the same process, the potter’s wheel being his predominant tool, but his work is never static or fixed and in some ways reflects the multifarious identities of contemporary ceramics – a twenty-first century hybridization of studio potter and conceptual artist. www.derekwilsonceramics.com
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Global Warming is Not Simply Climate Change By Tim Sunderman /
Issue 15, pp8 -15
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9 that modern life is fraught with unprecedented diff iculties that will change us as a species, and none of them are as unavoidable and catastrophic as global warming. Let’s not mince our words and use the benign phrase “climate change”. Just as a broken leg is not adequately described as a “change in mechanical stability,” nor is the sense of urgency and importance severed from the grave seriousness of global warming by watered-down phrases like “climate change”. T H ER E’S NO DOU BT
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Carbon dioxide (CO 2 ) measurements from the present compared with climatic cycles going back 800,000 years irrefutably prove that global warming is directly caused by burning fossil fuels. This is not a matter of reasoned debate any more than the scientif ic fact that the earth is round.
Secondly, alternative energ y technologies need to be engaged, new research needs to be done, and infrastructures to support these need to be built.
So, the only question remaining is: “W hat do we do?” First of all, there needs to be enough political and social force to counter the disingenuous arguments put forward by the prof iteers who seek monetary gain at the expense of our collective survival. The corporate heads whose prof it margin depends on fossil fuels don’t believe for a second that this current global warming is a natural cyclical event. But they know that it’s in their interests to create a public disinformation campaign to prevent the switch over to alternative energ y for as long as possible.
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Lastly, current CO 2 levels need to be absorbed back out of the atmosphere. At present, these levels are far higher than in the past 800,000 years. Some techniques are already being tried with varying degrees of success, whether by cost or other limitations of practicality. But they will, no doubt, receive much more attention as cresting sea levels continue to threaten coastal cities. OK, let’s deal with these in order.
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1. Refuting the smokescreen argument that what we are experiencing is a cyclical event of natural temperature change. We can measure the amount of CO 2 (the main component contributing to global warming) that historically existed in the atmosphere by drilling ice core samples and testing CO 2 concentrations at different depths that correlate to different millennia. Based on samples that go back 800,000 years, we see cyclical warming trends where carbon dioxide levels peak at about 250 parts per million volume (ppm) about every hundred thousand years up from cooler periods of about 200 ppm. In May 2013, the US National Oceanic and Atmosphere Administration measured 400 ppm (a number that National Geographic says that we haven’t experienced on earth for millions of years). W hat’s more disturbing is that this rise has occurred
within the past hundred years, which directly correlates with the emergence of fossil fuels powering our civilization. Compare this to the typical f ifteen to twenty thousand years that the normal warming trend takes to peak, and you can see why the entire scientif ic community is sounding the alarm. But this doesn’t tell the whole story. We are on track to hit 500 ppm in the next 25 years, and there is no sign that this is slowing – in fact, it’s speeding up. We now have to start comparing these CO 2 levels to the highest known levels in the very distant past known as the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM) from 55 million years ago. Estimates from this era put CO 2 levels at 700 to 900 ppm where we see in the fossil record no polar ice caps, sea level rise of 200 feet from today’s oceans, lifeless equatorial zones, and palm trees at the polar regions. At this stage, it is useless to try to point out the effects
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of the damage to the habitation of our planet. It would be trite to say that agriculture would be gone, or that coastal areas would be f looded for hundreds of miles inland, or that the internet would be down. It would be like trying to describe the injuries to a body that had fallen from an airplane in front of a train and then knocked into a furnace. This warming would not be survivable.
years. In other words, half of its mass will radioactively decay into other isotopes and elements in this time, then in another 24,000 years half of the remaining mass will decay, and so on.
2. A lternative energies that can be explored and used without putting more carbon into the atmosphere. The obvious choices here are all the renewables – solar, wind, tides, and geothermal. Radioactive waste is so extraordinarily toxic that nuclear power can’t be considered a credible alternative. W hen Uranium is split to create nuclear power, it results in the formation of different elements like Plutonium-239. This particular isotope of Plutonium has a half life of 24,000
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That isotope will remain lethal for a couple of hundred thousand years, but other byproducts take even longer, like Iodine-129. This has a half life of 15.7 million years – considering that modern humans have only been around about 100,000 years, and civilization only about 8,000 years, the duration of nuclear waste makes it unmanageable. Geothermal energ y is incredibly eff icient, environmentally clean, and relatively nonintrusive in the landscape. But it is also very limited to the regions that happen to be on geothermal hot spots like tectonic plate edges. Iceland, for example, benef its from sitting atop the Mid-Atlantic R idge, and generates 85% of its energ y
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from geothermal and hydropower. But few places in the rest of the world are so geologically fortunate. Tidal power, conversely, is available where ever there are ocean waves. Tidal power uses the motion of the incoming and outgoing waves to turn turbines or push large plates. Though current energ y output of this resource remains modest, there are promising signs – Scotland is beginning work this year on the largest tidal power facility in the world. Wind power is similarly not an enormous part of renewable energ y solutions, but still a very viable part of the overall shift to clean alternative energ y. Spain, for the f irst time last year derived more of its electricity from wind than any other resource (21%). But worldwide, wind power only produces about 2.5% of electricity.
Far and away, the most promising alternative energ y solutions comes from solar power. One way to think of it is that all the energ y on the Earth comes from the Sun, with the minor exception of the radioactive decay of some of the minerals in the ground. Every bit of coal, oil, natural gas, and wood is simply a form of stored sunlight. So, solar panels are just a way to harvest this energ y without having to burn theresource in which it is stored. The National Academy of Engineering estimates that the earth gets 10,000 as much energ y from the Sun as all the commercial energ y that humans use. However, solar power still produces less than 1% of worldwide energ y consumption. There are basic solutions that could have a signif icant impact on reducing carbon emissions. Just as every homes has to have proper sewage lines, we could require all available rooftops to be outf itted with solar panels.
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And it’s possible now. Take a look at Germany: it leads the world not only in solar power, but in all forms of alternative energ y. On particular peak production days, solar has provided as much as 40% of Germany’s electricity. And when combined with wind power, there have been days when these renewables have provided as much as 60% of Germany’s power consumption. They have set goals for themselves to produce 35% of their power from renewables by 2020, and 100% by 2050. Unlike what some oil company PR campaigns would have us believe, this isn’t just some idealistic dream, as Germany is showing us. These are real solutions and they are happening right now. And this doesn’t even take into account the theoretical and experimental possibilities that we have yet to imagine. The speed at which our technolog y develops has repeatedly
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uncovered unforeseen opportunities that profoundly changed the way we live. Modern transportation, electricity, computer chips, and medical discoveries are clear examples of this. It’s not inconceivable that we might f ind solutions that are presently invisible. 3. Getting rid of the existing carbon. It’s too late to avert a climatic crisis: it’s already here. We’re in uncharted territory. Our atmosphere has CO 2 levels at a concentration not seen for millions of years, and they are rising at an accelerating rate. So, by the time we have stopped adding more, the oven will already have reached critical temperatures. And if we just wait for things to cool off, we can look to the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum to f ind that it took 200,000 years for the atmosphere to return to normal levels. I don’t think we can wait that long. To this end, there are a number of
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companies investing in technolog y and facilities to absorb carbon either directly from the exhaust of gas and coal-f ired power plants, or taking it from the air itself. In some cases, the CO 2 remains as a gas and is injected into the ground to be sequestered there with minimal negative environmental effects.
No matter what technolog y we use to dig ourselves out of the crisis that we have created, it will certainly take a long time. And major consequences already seem unavoidable. It is hard to imagine that the melting ice can be mitigated. Large sections of many of the world’s major cities will be under water. Adaptation will be a challenge.
Other approaches rely on biological processes, or biosequestration, where plants and algae are grown on a massive scale to breathe the carbon back out of the air. Reforestation, development of peat bogs, and wetland restoration can provide a natural and eff icient carbon sink. There are even developments in producing artif icial trees that can pull a thousand times more CO 2 from the air than a tree of similar size. Carbon absorption techniques that induce a chemical reaction to bind carbon to common minerals could also be part of a solution, but their large-scale eff iciency has yet to be tested.
As will recovery. Recovery is a process. It will start with awareness and forcing social behavior to respond, and will require concerted efforts on the part of every country. We are standing on the edge of an uncertain future, and platitudes or words of ingratiating encouragement ring hollow. Unless we stare, cold and unf linching, at the reality of this problem, we’ll never feel the sense of emergency that we need.
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/ Illustration by Thomas Adcock
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Rereading --
By Jamie Thunder /
V hcle Book s, Issue 15, pp18 -21
FROM A BOU T T HR E E quarters of the way through any book, I’m cheating on it. I might still be following the plot and engaging with the characters, but I’ve inevitably got one eye on my shelves, the piles of books on my f loor, and my Amazon wishlist, trying to decide what I’ll be reading next.
A long with this prematurely wandering gaze come questions: should I f inally give Portnoy’s Complaint a go? Is it time for another crack at Blood Meridian? Or I could lucky-dip from this year’s Booker Prize shortlist. It’s around this time, incidentally, that a vague sense of panic descends, and I realise that I’ll never complete reading.
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W hat rarely enters my mind amid all this is to return to something. My shelves are mostly f illed with books I’ve previously read – but they’re not the ones that catch my attention. And in a world so obsessed with the new, that’s maybe no surprise. The entire publishing industry is based on convincing us to try something different – whether that’s the latest bestseller or delving into a classic for the f irst time – rather than opening one of those books sat sadly on the shelf, its pages turned once then left to gather dust. And then there’s the sheer, daunting, mass of material out there, the vast ocean of existing titles and the constant tsunami of new ones, all bolstering the idea that rereading is some sort of indulgence. We’re hardly short of recommendations either, from friends, family, reviewers, prize shortlists, or Amazon Recommends. Choosing to reread, on the other hand, is taking your own recommendation and that just feels, well, like a bit of a cop-out. With so many new books to choose from, I doubt I’m alone in rarely rereading. Books are f inished, closed, back on the shelf, ticked off the list and rated on GoodReads. It’s a little unromantic, a touch mechanical perhaps, but it’s the only way to make any progress, dammit. Rereading feels something of a comfort, a guilty pleasure – and only makes me more keenly aware of that unread copy of Brideshead Revisited, borrowed from parents in a blaze of selfimprovement, eyeing me reproachfully. But it would be wrong to think of rereading as just an exercise in the enjoyment of familiarity. Memory, as any unreliable narrator can attest, distorts, refracts, and obscures; on a second reading remarks and scenes take on a new signif icance, characters shed and gain traits, themes emerge startlingly, like hidden images in a painting. It’s arguably only when reading for a second, third, or fourth time that a novel’s ‘full’ meaning is revealed – authors take months, years to complete their work, so is it realistic for us to think we can grasp it in its entirety in one take, in a few hours snatched before bed over the course of a fortnight?
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None of this was in my mind when I recently reread Even the Dogs by Jon McGregor, more for a break than any noble reason. I remembered it as a story about a drunk whose body is found, told in a slightly unnerving f irst-person plural, with the off icial procedures forming the spine around which we learn about his life and his mistakes. I wasn’t entirely wrong, but much more so than I was expecting. The main characters are in fact his friends, who I had thought were far less central, while the procedures – the autopsy and the inquest in particular – had much less of a pivotal role. W hat didn’t change were my overall feelings about the book and its bare, respectful treatment of its subjects, but now they were more detailed, more nuanced, and better-informed. Of course, rereading lacks the shocking joy of complete discovery of a character, a plot, a mood. It also carries the risk that a favourite book just won’t stand up to any further scrutiny (I can’t bring myself to pull The Remains of the Day from my shelf again in case I tarnish my memory of it). But it does have benef its. Reading for the f irst time can feel like being in a blizzard, with the result being that you’re unsure of precisely what’s happened when you f inish beyond a vague miasma of feeling. And it’s easy to get so wrapped up in the plot that it’s diff icult to step back and work out your thoughts about it. Rereading, by contrast, lets you savour the writing, the technique, without the rush to the end. It’s not dissimilar to walking along a new route: it might seem neverending and bewildering at f irst, but the second time it’s familiar enough to enjoy it (and to continue the analog y, gets really boring if you do it repeatedly). Ultimately, if reading is supposed to be for pleasure, then we should all reread more. The satisfaction is deeper, even if the thrill is a little less. Sorry Brideshead, but you’re going to have to wait.
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The Big Sleep R aymond Chandler --
Reviewed by Myles Lawrence-Briggs /
V hcle Book s, Issue 15, pp22-25
Raymond Chandler’s classic The Big Sleep is about power. Private eye Philip Marlowe is summoned to a rich elderly man’s house. As he says in the opening lines: “I was neat, clean, shaved and sober, and I didn’t care who knew it. I was everything the well-dressed private detective ought to be. I was calling on four million dollars.” General Sternwood, the “four million dollars”, is wheelchair-bound and sickly, but can still summon Marlowe and even make him dress up for the occasion. Yet when they come face to face Marlowe is physically powerful, not just able to walk but to drink and smoke, vices the General can only appreciate vicariously in his old age. It’s youth vs money, and though youth has its advantages ultimately Marlowe leaves in the General’s service, lending his youth to money. Money wins out a lot in this book, as it did in a 1930s America wracked by the Great Depression. AT ITS COR E
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But Marlowe is not bottom of the food chain. In an age when women could not go out at night without an escort, let alone vote, being a woman caught up in the seedy underworld of Los Angeles blackmailers, pornographers and racketeers was beyond dangerous. In any interaction between the sexes in The Big Sleep, the reader should keep in mind Oscar Wilde’s famous words: Everything in the world is about sex except sex; sex is about power. W hen Vivian, the General’s eldest daughter, tries to get information out of Marlowe, the scene immediately adopts sexual overtones: “I sat down on the edge of a deep soft chair and looked at Mrs. Regan. She was worth a stare. She was trouble. She was stretched out on a modernistic chaise-longue with her slippers off, so I stared at her legs in the sheerest silk stockings. They seemed to be arranged to stare at.” Vivian Regan is a woman in a world where women wield no real power, so she turns to the only weapon left in her arsenal: sex appeal. But Marlowe recognizes and rejects her tactics: “I don’t mind your showing me your legs. They’re very swell legs and it’s a pleasure to make their acquaintance… but don’t waste your time trying to cross-examine me.” This happens multiple times throughout the book: Marlowe is aware of the power dynamic and stops it. The women who are used to exercising this power over men f ind him vexing at the least and worth killing at the worst. Minorities, gays and women don’t tend to fare well in general in Chandler’s work. This isn’t sexism, however; he’s accurately portraying a world that has become disillusioned with the American Dream, and nowhere is this more evident than with the marginalized and disenfranchised. The core of this book is about power, but Chandler’s prose is what captivated me. I’ve never seen anyone match his hard-boiled style or come across another author who could so masterfully use a simile. His dialogue has an almost sour wit to it that is downright fun to read. I could feel the grin creep across my face when I read lines like “I don’t mind if you don’t like my manners. They’re pretty bad. I grieve over them during the long winter evenings.” Or the chills
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I felt at lines like “Dead men are heavier than broken hearts” that punctuate his bleak and gritty prose. Twisting plots and surprises this book has in spades, but when I tore through it in a single day back in high school it was as much to see what off the wall descriptions he would come up with next. The book shows its age here and there, with odd descriptions that might sound strange to modern readers and similes and dialogue that overreach at times. But the book is a masterful evolution of the detective novel, bringing the grand traditions of Sherlock Holmes to the grim realities of 1930s America, and paving the way for the f ilm noir of 40s and 50s cinema. The ending of the book is almost unsatisfactory, but in a good way. Justice isn’t exactly meted out, Marlowe isn’t much better off and is maybe a little worse for the wear and there aren’t many triumphs for the women or minorities in the book. The Big Sleep is, put simply, unique; and I recommend it to any mystery fans or someone curious about where the cliché of the private eye sipping whiskey in his off ice one rainy evening when the femme fatale comes through his door and drops a heap of trouble in his lap. Hell, if you just want to crack a smile at Philip Marlowe cracking wise, this book is for you.
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Dracula Bram Stoker --
Reviewed by A ndrew Donaghy /
V hcle Book s, Issue 15, pp26 -29
M AY W E A L L G O TO H E L L A N D BACK .
Stoker’s novel, published in May 1897, is a narcoleptic nightmare so lively with peril and dread that it has not lost an ounce of its potency when it punctures our imaginations today. From the very f irst line Stoker takes us on a frantic journey, from Munich to Vienna to K lausenburgh, as the f irst pair of eyes we peer through are those of a naïve Englishman called Jonathon Harker. Travelling on a matter of business, the newly-qualif ied solicitor is a visitor to the strange land of Transylvania, on a mission to explain and handle the purchase of a London estate.
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As the pages of Dracula turn, it becomes a raw collection of journals and letters, all in chronological order, from different individuals describing how their lives have been brutally touched by the Count. This method of delivery entrances the reader in the plot’s thick tension as characters that we are already aware of, like Van Helsing, are brought to life in their original surroundings, in a wholly more believable and brilliant way. We are the silent witness to Jonathon, his f iancée Mina Murray, and Lucy Westenra’s very personal and yet very shared horror. Setting the scene at Castle Dracula, the way in which Stoker depicts the Count’s homeland is beautifully ancient and enthralling. It is an adventure entwined by wolves and local superstitions, cold vice-like handshakes and bolted doors. In Dracula’s world we are utterly curious and completely powerless. Stoker, who was by no means a prolif ic writer, is simply a master of layering on suspense. Reading a revelation from Harker, as he describes what he has witnessed from his bedchamber’s window, I was chilled to the very core; such is the strength of the storytelling. Leaving Jonathon behind, Mina Murray’s concerned letters to her friend Lucy Westenra, transport us away from one terror and into another on the shores of England, and more specif ically, W hitby.
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This is also when women, who are the victims unsurprisingly – even th earlier, more deadly ones – become involved in a very signif icant way. They, with their dainty unprotected necks, are the creatures preyed upon by the Count. From the business of purchasing land, to the high seas and one of the most brilliant dockings of a doomed vessel you will ever have created in your mind. The foreign tyrant has arrived, landing in England to wreak his bloodthirsty brand of eternal havoc. From here on in Stoker unveils a frantic world of good versus evil versus religion versus science and technolog y. We are introduced to Dr Seward, along with his diary about one of his psychiatric patients in particular, as well as his mentor Abraham Van Helsing, a man of wisdom, courage and a very modern business about his international travel. Unexpected positive returns are greeted by tragic twists and turns as we move from W hitby, to London and beyond. Dracula is the ultimate chase through fog, mystery and death in the name of hope and the f inal delivery from the unknown, the ungodly and, most of all, the undead.
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Steinbeck Without a Syllabus: Checking Out the Classics by Choice --
By Ma rc Ingber /
V hcle Book s, Issue 15, pp30 -35
H AV I NG N E V ER R E A D one of his novels before, the f irst thing I noticed about Charles Dickens upon making it through the f irst few pages of Great Expectations was that he was a really good writer.
Perhaps a ridiculous statement, considering he’s one of the most acclaimed writers of all time, but I’ve found over the years that authors’ literary “genius” isn’t always immediately apparent in their literal words on the page. Greatness comes in different forms. Take Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, for instance. It deserves the acclaim that is regularly sent its way, but I would argue that mastering the art of local-color dialogue, in this case a Missouri drawl that only vaguely resembles the King’s English, requires a different skill set than what Dickens brings to the table.
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In Great Expectations, it’s apparent from the word go that Dickens has mastered what few writers ever achieve – sophisticated prose that seems high-brow without being elitist, with darkly funny undertones and a sprinkling of just the right amount of cynicism. Sometimes you read a book and it seems like something you could have plausibly written in your wildest dreams, if you had the time and really set your mind to it. Other times you read a novel and are 100 percent sure you couldn’t write something nearly as good given all the free time in the world. Great Expectations def initely falls into the latter category. Reading it in 2014 demonstrates how much our language has devolved to what it is today. In high school, I remember learning that the average person in the 1800s had a vocabulary that was more or less double what ours is today. This struck me as sort of sad – it meant the average shoe cobbler in 1867 probably had twice the linguistic skills that I do. And I was a journalism major. Despite (or maybe because of ) our significant advances in technology, people are markedly worse at speaking the language than they were hundreds of years ago. Simply put, the language Dickens dealt in is a far cry from anything we use today. If he were still alive and spoke anything like he wrote, a 30-second clip of him simply talking at a dinner party would go viral and he would be hailed as a real-life version of Dos Equis’ “Most Interesting Man in the World”. This type of linguistic fantasyland is what I have immersed myself in in recent years, as I’ve decided to read or re-read a handful of classics by greats like Fitzgerald, Steinbeck, Twain, Faulkner, Heming way and Dickens. My newfound interest in tackling classic literature has a rather simple explanation – I work full-time and have a 3-year-old daughter, meaning I have very little time to read. I tend to read in f ive- and ten-minute increments
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before falling asleep every night, meaning I can usually make it through about 2 or 3 books a year. So I f igure if I’m only going to get to a few of them, I might as well make it worth my while and stick to the classics. This trend started after I re-read The Great Gatsby on a whim. Like many people, I originally read it in my high school English class. Though I was a young pup of about 16, I liked the book and think I even grasped one of the novel’s main themes – the idea that people go through life unsuccessfully trying to recreate their past happinesses while continuously dreaming of impossible tomorrows. It was a concept that seemed true to life, even for a 16-year-old. But the various themes and meanings sprinkled throughout Gatsby were far more apparent when I read it in my early 30s, with a few more years under my belt. It was striking that F. Scott Fitzgerald, a 20-something from St. Paul (just across the Mississippi R iver from where I was born, raised and live currently) in under 200 pages could basically distill the entire American experience into a tale about young and drunk social climbers on Long Island during the Jazz Age. My elevated comprehension of the book was natural I suppose – novels, f ilms, songs, etc. are always going to take on different meanings as we age and our own life experiences add to our understanding of them. I’m sure if I read The Great Gatsby again in my 50s it will feel different once again. Regardless, I discovered I genuinely loved reading a book that many people don’t voluntarily bother to pick up as adults, after being forced to read it in junior high or high school. It made me want to pick up some other classics I never got around to in my formative years. This is what led me to Dickens, Heming way, and the like. I’ve liked all of the classics I’ve read thus far. Some more than others, but it’s
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fair to say, they have attained their classic status for a reason. It’s not always a breeze getting through them, though. Most of them aren’t “fun” books in any sense of the word. After reading one, I typically read its online “Cliff ’s Notes” and other essays available to make sure I understood everything that was going on. I’m not too proud to admit that sometimes I didn’t. Novels, unlike music and f ilms, tend to be a once- or twice-in-a-lifetime experience. I’ve watched my favorite movies 10, 15 or 20 times and listened to my favorite songs dozens and dozens of times, but a book – even one you love – you’ll probably only read once or twice. Though at times they can feel like a slog just to get through, I’ve never regretted reading one of these classics. W hen they’re effective, they stay with you the rest of your life. And not just when you’re trying to impress friends at a party with your literary knowledge. The life lessons and eternal truths contained within them have a strange way of creeping up on me at random times throughout the normal workday grind and I f ind myself contemplating the larger picture, even if only for just a minute. I can’t say Are You There, Vodka? It’s Me, Chelsea had the same effect on me.* * Though I thought it was funny.
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VHCLE WOMAN
ALLISON MARIE CULLEN
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Photo by K AT Y K IRCHOF F
GROWING UP, my parents took my sister and I on vacation every summer. We would go to places like Disneyland or Santa Cruz, and eventually Cancun and Hawaii. I think all this traveling encouraged my sense of freedom and inf luenced my particular style. Here are just a few of my recommendations for summer, as well as all year round.
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D A A / BV LG A R I POUR HOM M E Yes, I wear men’s cologne and I find myself taking off the cap for a smell. To me it smells like a balance of masculine and feminine, and I carry it in my purse at all times.
B B / IK E A C A NDL E S I have nights in when I take a lavender bath and light candles in my room and listen to music. I light them on these vintage crystal candle holders that I found in the cabinet. Perfect for the nights when I’m reflecting on my day.
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C / WORLD MARKET SEWING KIT I have a sewing kit with the essentials that I keep in my purse for those quick fixes. It not only comes in handy at photo shoots but in real life emergencies. I try to be prepared and keep my purse stocked with such things.
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D / MINNETONKA MOCCASINS They slip on and remind me of the 1960s every time. It’s as though I am stepping back in time to when my parents and all my muses were growing up. I have an undeniable thing for leather and these just do it for me in the summer.
E / PINS AND NEEDLES LACE-TRIM TULIP SHORTS I have them in both black and floral blue print. I rotate between the two depending on my mood and coordinate colors. Lighter colors with the blue floral and a flannel with the black.
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F / STEREO CRUISER BOARD I hardly ride it anymore, but when I do I put on Songza and cruise. I am not one for performing tricks because I am a klutz and prone to falling and banging up my knees just walking down the street.
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Ma r y Ja ne A nsell Derek Wilson K im Hølterma nd
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MARY JANE ANSELL /
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Tell us a little bit about yourself I’m a figurative and portrait painter based in Brighton on the South Coast of England. Though I was born in the rolling green hills of Shropshire I’ve spent the last 20 years living a few minutes from the sea, and I feel its influence more as time goes on. What is the inspiration behind your work? There are no limits to what can be inspiring. In fact, now we’re hit with full on 24-hour
rolling multi-media cultural over-stimulus from almost every direction. I think the trick is finding some way of filtering it all effectively so you don’t lose your own thread in all the extraneous noise! But then that in itself can be fuel… and the starting points into new work vary hugely. Often the narrative comes first, but sometimes it’s a more technical issue that sparks off the ideas. It can be as simple as a colour, and then a particular way of lighting my sitters, and the scenes that I’m imagining.
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Little Victories
2014 also marks my 10th year as a full-time painter, and right now as I’m preparing for my 6th solo show, and my first in New York (Arcadia Contemporary June 2015), I feel like I’m drawing threads together from throughout that time. Symbols that emerged for one painting reappear and gather greater meaning when used in another context and with a different model, and because I work with a small group of regular models and friends, their characters also become an intrinsic part of my work.
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What do you think is the artist’s role in society? It’s a great and eternally ponderable question, but to be honest I baulk at the notion that the artist should have any prescribed role in society at all – unless the artist chooses to have one! The impulse to create should be allowed to flow freely without the necessity of an external agenda. It’s that freedom that allows the artist to offer genuinely alternative ways to see, feel or make sense of the world around us.
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Beyond the Reckoning
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Above, Through and Beyond
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Reverie
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What superpower would you want and why? I used to have regular flying dreams which were extraordinary – especially when I first moved to Brighton. Incredibly vivid dreams exploring the city and its seafront, then flying out to sea and back, seeing the lights of the pier fade and reappear. Oh yes, I’d definitely take the power of flight! Favorite drink? A good day starts with strong coffee and ends with an ice cold dry white wine.
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A World Away
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The Gif t
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Janus
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DEREK WILSON -/
Vhcle Issue 15, pp63-77
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Tell us a little bit about yourself I am a modern-day potter, an artist, maker, craftsman and designer. At the moment my work is predominantly made using the potter’s wheel – a process and a tool that as of yet I have not tired of. I am passionate about the fluidity of making, and I see the process of using the wheel as a tool for 3-dimensional drawing. I graduated with a Master’s in Applied Arts and prior to that I trained and worked as an apprentice focusing on refining and mastering the skills that I required in order to articulate my own ideas.
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Currently I run a small studio in Belfast, Northern Ireland, creating a studio-based production range of hand thrown porcelain tableware – a range that consistently evolves and develops. At the same time I produce sculptural objects. More recently I have been designing a tableware range for an American company. I find the crossover between ideas and experimenting with materials and processes fascinating, and all of these elements tend to influence one another within my creative practice as a whole.
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What is the inspiration behind your work? My work tends to fluctuate between the functional and sculptural. I go through stages where I am purely interested in form, or the process of making and the challenges that arise from working with clay as a material. When working on sculptural pieces I am no longer interested in the function of the piece or how the object can be used – yet all of the work seems to evolve around elements of space and containment. Many things inspire me every day – in particular my surroundings, the city that I live in, the industrial history and the architectural heritage. I am also inspired by mid-century artists such as Ben Nicholson, particularly for his use of abstract form, colour, and his observation of surface and space. William Scott’s abstract interpretation of domestic objects, his use of scale, his simplicity of form, and many more abstract artists that fall into the minimalist and reductive categories and theories. I am also interested and inspired by early work produced by artists and designers under the Bauhaus, the Russian and British constructivist artists, and the vast and explosive array of experimentation and innovative production by designers, craftsmen, architects and artists during the festival of Britain.
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What do you think is the artist’s role in society? To observe, to create, and to provide a different perspective on the mundane. To view things differently, and to sometimes educate and challenge people’s perception. What superpower would you want and why? Teleporting. Mainly to be able to time travel and experience different eras and cultures. Favorite drink? A coffee in the morning to wake me up and on the odd evening a whiskey or an Armagnac to put me to sleep.
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KIM HØLTERMAND -/
Vhcle Issue 15, pp78-93
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Tell us a little bit about yourself My name is Kim Høltermand and I am 37 years old. I live just outside Copenhagen with my fiancé and her two children. I also have my daughter Sally. In 2007 I bought my first DSLR and started shooting landscapes and architecture, and on Christmas Eve 2007 I uploaded my first series to the Behance Network – the rest is history.
What do you think is the artist’s role in society? I think all artists contribute to the whole meaning of being on this planet. Without art and artists we would be a lesser people. What superpower would you want and why? Time travel. Both back and forth to be able to experience things.
What is the inspiration behind your work?
Favorite drink?
My biggest inspiration comes from sci-fi movies and music. Stanley Kubrick, David Lynch, Hammock, Sigur Rós. I have a long list.
Coffee. With milk and sugar
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