Check Claire Danes’ speech at the PS122 gala:

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This just in from Juliana Francis, new mom and awesome artist:

Patron Saint Dolls

PATRON SAINT

An experiment with dolls made out of napkins and junk

Opening: Tuesday, June 16, 2009
Closing: Sunday, June 28, 2009

Performances take place at chashama’s 266 West 37th Street Window
Performance Space (between 7th and 8th Avenues)
Noon – 2 PM, weekdays through June 27th. On Sunday, June 28th, the
final performance will run from Noon – 5 PM.

DIRECTIONS
A/C/E/1/2/3 Trains to 34th Street
N/R/Q/W/7 to Times Square
M16, M34 Bus to 8th Avenue – M10/M20 Bus to 36th Street

ABOUT THE PROJECT:

DO YOU NEED A PATRON SAINT? I will make you one!

I am a doll maker and a performer. From June 16th – June 28th, I will install myself in the chashama gallery window at 266 West 37th Street weekdays noon – 2 PM, and I will build the first 50 SAINTS people tell me they need.

For the purposes of this exhibit, a Saint can be a preexisting Saint of any denomination, or it can be a Saint that does not yet exist, but perhaps should exist, i.e. “the Patron Saint of a New Job,” “The Patron Saint of Painless Dentistry” or “My Really Great Next Door Neighbor.”

To date, I have received 30 Saint requests from fliers and online bulletin boards. The requests run the gamut, from Saint Joan of Arc and Saint Francis of Assisi to “The Patron Saint of a Broken Heart” and “The Patron Saint of Shut the F**k Up and Be Where You’re Supposed to Be.”

All Saints will be made out of Marcal paper napkins and bits of candy wrappers, salvaged embroidery thread, etcetera – i.e.: stuff that isn’t worth much at all, if anything.

On the closing day of the exhibit, SUNDAY JUNE 28th, between Street, between NOON and 5 PM, anyone who requested a Saint is invited to stop by the gallery at 266 West 37th Street to pick up their Saint, free of charge. And if I get it together, there will also be cookies and juice that day. (I’m a new Mom though, so I might not get that together!)

ABOUT THE ARTIST: Juliana Francis-Kelly is an OBIE Award winning theater artist and doll maker whose work has been produced and published in the US, Europe and Asia. She has been making dolls out of cloth, paper, and found objects since she was seven-years-old. Her dolls have turned up in theater, film, animations, on several wedding cakes, and one lives in the American Museum of Natural History’s educational wing.

PATRON SAINT is made possible in part with public funds from the Manhattan Community Arts Fund, supported by the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs and administered by Lower Manhattan Cultural Council. Made possible in part by chashama.

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You’d think that since he overturned term limits to run again he’d at least be willing to discuss it:

Kind of rude, don’t you think? Notice how he seems to be saying, “You’re a disgrace” to the reporter at the very end.

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Here’s video of Ishmael Houston-Jones’ speech at the PS122 benefit:

courtesy of Jeremy X. Halpern.

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 Here are pix of the PS122 Benefit, courtesy of Andrew Bicknell. Complete set here.

Claire Danes

Dancenoise

Bebe Neuwirth and Isaac Mizrahi

Richard Move and Isaac Mizrahi

Justin Bond with AndrewAndrew

Butoh Rockettes

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Walter Kirn

Name: Walter Kirn

Title/Occupation: Writer
Organization/Company: Self

1.Where did you grow up and how did you end up where you are now?

I grew up in a couple of tiny towns along the St. Croix River in Minnesota, towns so small that the summer tornado sirens were practically the only entertainment other than waiting each evening to see the fireflies. From there I went to Princeton (see my book) and then on to Oxford University, where I took a stab at becoming a playwright. A year in London, failing, ended that dream, so on to New York to work in magazines, the last of which was Spy, the late great humor rag. By then I was writing short stories, had a book on the way, and knew that i couldn’t make it economically in the big city without a straight world job. On a freelance assignment in Montana (I was covering a survivalist cult here that thought the world was going to end) I found a 60,000 dollar house, plunked down a small down payment, and here I’ve stayed. I like it because the lines for stamps are short and I don’t have to comb my hair that often.

2. Which performance, song, play, movie, painting or other work of art had the biggest influence on you and why?

John Berryman’s Dream Songs, a cycle of poems; Dylan’s Highway 61 Revisited; and Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby. All these works had Minnesota connections and proved that art could come out of my home place, which I hadn’t believed early on while growing up there.

3. What skill, talent or attribute do you most wish you had and why?

I wish I could maintain a decent filing system and fill a single notebook from start to finish rather than living in a cyclone of clutter and scrap paper and scribbled-on matchbooks. That way I wouldn’t lose so many ideas and doing my taxes wouldn’t take a month and fill me with dread that eats into my writing.

4. What do you do to make a living? Describe a normal day.

I make a living writing for papers and magazines rather than teaching, which many of my friends do but strikes me sometimes as a fraudulent activity, since nothing I’ve ever learned as a writer has come to me in a classroom. Quite the opposite. The lessons I learned in school had to be unlearned, programmatically, before I could communicate in English. In school, and especially at princeton, I learned an entirely different language founded on words like “hermeneutics” which are meant to keep readers out, not draw them in.

5. Have you ever had to make a choice between work and art? What did you choose, why, and what was the outcome?

I used to think that work and art were opposed somehow, like marriage and true love, say, but over the years I’ve come to see that keeping work out of your art and vice-a-versa impoverishes both of them. At Oxford I learned that our language’s greatest writers, from Shakespeare to Dr. Johnson, collapsed this distinction, singing for their suppers without apologies. The notion that mere toil and fine expression are separate activities is mostly propounded by wealthy amateurs.

****
Walter Kirn’s memoiris Lost In The Meritocracy. He was recently reviewed in the NY TIMES (where there is also a podcast) and appeared on The Colbert Report.

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Wednesday night was P.S.122′s gala “Real Dancing with the Stars” at the Abrons Arts Center. I’ll admit, between my day job, a curating meeting for PRELUDE and the first rehearsal of my new top-secret theater project, I didn’t get to attend the whole thing. But the parts I did attend were fantastic and I could tell that P.S.122 is surviving, nay thriving, in these tough economic times. The crowd was filled with friends new and old and Abrons Art Center was an inspired – and inviting – choice of venue.  Plus, they were honoring the super awesome-tastic Ishmael Houston-Jones and in a truly inspired choice, C. Carr.

With all of the lamentation on the state of the press, arts writing and the death of print media, it was great to see P.S.122 honor a writer who has consistently crafted insightful and thoughtful prose on difficult art. More than many other writers, C. Carr has shaped the conversation around downtown performance and provided intellectual context and moral support for the adventurous artists who, all too frequently, would have been misunderstood and misrepresented in more traditional outlets. If I had money I would endow a C. Carr prize for innovative arts writing. She, along with a few key other writers who write across disciplines and genres, continues to prove that the relationship between critic and artist need not be reduced to qualitative “reviews” thinly disguised as consumer guides, but can be a thoughtful and profound exchange of ideas and creativity. As an arts writer and someone passionately dedicated to enhancing the quality, breadth and scope of arts writing (as well as strengthening the relationship between writer and artist) I look to writers like C. Carr for inspiration.

The evening started off with a pre-show performance by the Butoh Rockettes and pre-show video by Charles Atlas. The “Dancing With the Real Stars” section was hosted by Isaac Mizrahi and Richard Move with Bebe Neuwirth, Justin Bond and Stephen Daldry as the panel of judges. “Contestants” included a dance piece from Elizabeth Streb performed by Ami Ipapo, Adrienne Truscott, Arturo Vidich and Aki Sasamoto in a piece by Yvonne Meier, an excerpt from Fela!, DANCENOISE, Phiippe Petit, Regina Rocke and a showstopper of a performance from Billy Elliott by Liam Mower .

From what I hear there was nudity – as is to be expected at every P.S.122 Benefit – healthy amounts of drinking and dancing and, I’m sure that even as I write this at 3:30AM, there is a dedicated contingent who are debauching heartily into the wee hours. I was there for the pre-show and the post-show, catching a bit of the show at the end. Oh if I could only clone myself or figure out how to expand in spacetime to exist in multiple points of time simultaneously! Kudos to my former colleagues for persevering and preserving everyone’s much-beloved Performance Space 122.

Photos and, possibly, video to come.

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I’m a little late in posting this but its time for the annual Mixology Festival at ROULETTE. Always interesting experimental music-performance. I was definitely intrigued by this:

julie fotheringham

Check out the rest of the schedule at their website and checkout artist interviews on their blog.

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I’ve started a culture blog for my day job – its still under construction and in development. But if you want to contribute to it or get involved in some way, let me know. Check it out at Cultureshuk.com.

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this looks like it could be really cool. Just the thought of Edgar Oliver and Charles Gayle on the same bill is enough to blow your mind!

lilac co. and saint john’s theatre’s
hamlethouse
a black comedy. a postmortem Ophelia dream.

And Edgar Oliver + Kaneng Lolang + Charles Gayle

Edgar Oliver, whom the N.Y.T. has described as a “treasure and a Personality with a capital P” spins macabre with his newest poetry. lilac co and st john’s theatre performs (HH)hamlethouse – an Ophelia dream (postmortem), written by Sean Lewis and featuring Elisa Matula, Seth Powers, and John Morena. Followed by the voice of Nigerian-born and NYC based singer/artist Kaneng Lolang and the free jazz of the legendary saxophonist Charles Gayle. Warsaw’s famous long bar and kitchen will be open throughout the night.

At Warsaw
261 Driggs Ave in Greenpoint/Williamsburg, Brooklyn, NY 11222
Thursday & Friday MAY 28, 29 8PM $15 donation
www.warsawconcerts.com (718) 387-0505
www.stjohnstheatre.org (718) 612-1979

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