April 2006 Archives

Sharkstock 2006 is only hours since past, and by all accounts it was a tremendous success. Early estimates place crowd figures somewhere around 500, and a good time seems to have been had by all.

And why not? Happy busy sharks are friendly sharks, and who could be anything but happy when you've got the likes of Mucca Pazza, The Nicholas Tremulis Orchestra, Rick Rizzo and the issues playing?

While that's all a happy memory, there's no reason to stop now. Sharkforum is not just about making merry, it's also about artists helping themselves and others. To that end Wesley Kimler and David Roth will be giving a presentation tomorrow (Sunday) at 2:00 PM at Art Chicago (Chicago's Merchandise Mart, 8th floor) entitled "Promotional Bootstrapping and Self-Publishing for Artists in a Brave New World."

Come say hello!

Sharkforum's own John Kruth blows the doors off the Bowery Poetry Club:

In the face of rising oil prices, religious fanaticism and the threat of nuclear devastation

THE BOWERY POETRY CLUB PROUDLY PRESENTS:

Reckless Optimism
featuring:
JOHN KRUTH – mandolin, guitar, harmonica, voice
JOY ASKEW (Peter Gabriel, Laurie Anderson) – keyboards, voice
DAVE DREIWITZ (Ween) - bass
ANDY DEMOS – drums, tabla
&
IBRAHIM GONZALEZ (AKA the Mambo Dervish) - congas

SATURDAY, APRIL 29TH @ 8 PM - $8
THE BOWERY POETRY CLUB
308 BOWERY, NYC
(X the street from CBGB)

FUNKY, FOLKY, PSYCHEDELIC, SOUL

Note: I wrote the below before the turmoil of Art Chicago 2006 that still hasn’t completely played out at the time of this article’s posting. I hope everything works out, but I have to admit, I wasn’t planning to attend the opening night no matter when or where it takes place. Just too many memories….

Dave asked that we all put forth our best stuff this week, as Sharkforum is participating, due to the generosity of Tom Blackman, in Art Chicago. I thought for a moment, wondering what my best stuff might be, and with a cut of dread realized it is probably Nostalgia.

Last week I was a guest speaker for a undergraduate class at UIC. I was there to talk about the inner workings of museums. In introducing myself, I was appalled to hear myself say “I’ve been at the MCA probably longer than most of you have been on this earth.” Of course I wasn’t appalled because I was exaggerating or anything like that. I was appalled because when I was ‘their age’ I would have squirmed to hear anyone saying such a thing. How old-fogey can you get. (Now that’s a term you don’t hear much these days.) How does saying such a thing do anything except point out the obvious while using a really really embarrassing cliché? But the truth of the matter is I have been around a while now, and yes, I remember the ‘old days.’ In the course of my speechifying and exhorting of the ten or twelve earnest young people, including a girl who brushed her hair during class, which of course catapulted me far enough back to realize, with a start, that my self-conscious, how-do-I-look, hairbrushing-in-public days were so long past as to be terrifying obscure to me, I even mentioned the old days of the art fair. Yes, the art fair, for it wasn’t always Art Chicago, having started out at the Chicago International Art Exposition. Tom Blackman’s Art Chicago was in fact the upstart, much like Nova is to Art Chicago, begun with great excitement and anticipation cheek-by-jowl with the Navy Pier’s CIAE, in a tent on a parcel of real estate on Ogden Slip that surely now sports at least one, maybe even two, sixty-story shiny condo highrises. For this class, interested as they were in the inner workings of museums, especially the one I work for, I pointed out that in the 1980s and well into the 1990s the MCA routinely scheduled its ‘best stuff’ in May, when the international art world came town for the Fair. (The late April dates being a function of the “new” incarnation of Art Chicago, returning to its roots to a tent as it did last year).

The Progressive Department at Atlantic Records was tucked away in a corner of the label headquarters in New York’s Rockefeller Center offices. Why they called it progressive, I’ll never be certain; there was no plan for progress. The bands were not well-known; The Subdudes, Map of the World, Lemonheads (before Mrs. Robinson). The department was there because indies were getting too popular. Just in case there was money to be made, the majors wanted to make sure they were the ones making it. When A&R rep Bettina Richards came to see Eleventh Dream Day for the first time at Cabaret Metro, she walked up to the dressing room moments after our guitarist Baird Figi had hurtled a folding chair down the stairs in disgust at what he thought was our worst gig ever. After sidestepping the chair she assured us in her inimitable affability that we were great and that no band was ever signed or not signed because of one gig. By January of 1990 we had remixed our Beet record at Fort Apache in Boston with Lou Giordano and were ready for our first major tour. When I first saw that classic green, white and orange Atlantic label with our name on it I felt as excited as I would have making my pitching debut with the Chicago Cubs. Led Zeppelin- Houses of the Holy and Eleventh Dream Day.

There's an old saw employed by artists, actors and musicians when they can't find work: "I can't even get arrested in this town." Well my earnest young aspirer - fret no more! Here's a fool proof way to get your name in print, and you know what they say - it's not bad PR if they spell your name right.

Forget that painting of Mayor Washington in lingerie, or that American flag on the floor, or even that ever-so-reviled Crucifix in urine.

No sir or ma'am, you can now use the nail-biting reality of the post 9/11 security state to your advantage. Take a sad song and make it better!

Courtesy ITV News:

Security alert sparked by 'artist'
1.47PM, Wed Apr 26 2006

A woman has been arrested in connection with a security alert sparked by the discovery of a number of suspect packages.

Here's a "Covers Bunch" which I made as a sort of editorial cartoon commenting on our artworld. It is a collage of paintings of mine with some added verbage in the center.

While Tom Blackman and the good people at the Chicago Merchandise Mart have managed to salvage Art Chicago, Michael Workman and the gang at the NOVA Art Fair have been making busy as usual. We at Sharkforum think that shows like NOVA are exactly what the Chicago scene is in need of - spirited advocates who are prepared to help others and themselves as well.

She certainly ain't singin':

"Art Chicago in the Park announces a change in venue!

With the generous assistance of the Merchandise Mart Properties, Inc., Art Chicago has been given the opportunity to mount its International Exposition of 104 dealers in one of the Mart's massive exhibition halls!

Please join Art Chicago 2006, April 28th - May 1st. at Chicago's Merchandise Mart at 350 N. Orleans."

And Sharkforum will be there as well - come see us - the Chicago River will be teeming with sharks.

---

The ghosts won’t come to rest. For months, I’ve culled their mythology, steeped it in Chicago history and flashes of abrupt beauty. Close my eyes—their tale dodges me. Open my eyes? I see the passways of their restless circling. I frame and then run as the image materializes.

After another short night, and another drive to the airport at Kloten, we dropped Julie off… Sergio talked her into taking the Zimmerman accordion back to Nashville with her.

We played a trio gig at the Palazzo Mysanus in Samedan on the 29th, a ski town about as far to the southeast as you can go in Switzerland, and accessible this time of year only by a train ferry. It’s not always easy to play for the locals in a resort town, and this was one of those nights. We played for ourselves and at the end we won over a small crowd. Stopping once for coffee, and again when Hans-Ruedi pulled over to fish an apple out of the back, we returned the way we’d come, by Bregenz, around the southern shore of Lake Constance, on past St. Gallen to Frauenfeld where we made a final stop at the music store for strings and a new ‘G ’ harmonica. Heading home by the back roads, we had one night to get ready for Scotland and Netherlands. The phone rang while we were packing: it was my sister telling me our mother had died that morning in Dallas, about nine-thirty their time. Slipped away, she said. Counting ahead I figured we were somewhere close to home, about the time we stopped for the apple. I didn’t feel anything at the time, no kind of preternatural trans-oceanic signal to tell me she was gone. I thought about canceling, but it wasn’t only me involved; there were others, and plans long set in place. We had said goodbye in Dallas in January. Mom would have wanted us to finish the tour, I reasoned. I didn’t have to think about it for too long.

Art Chicago exposition opening in doubt

By Alan Artner and Charles Storch
Tribune staff reporters
Published April 25, 2006, 12:45 PM CDT

"Two days before the scheduled opening night of Art Chicago, the international fine arts exposition's prospects appeared dim Tuesday because all work apparently had ceased at the fair's Grant Park site."

We're holding out our best hopes for the fair. We all know that Tom Blackman has his detractors (we are not among them), but no matter how you feel about Tom the demise of this fair, in this way can only be bad for our local art scene and Chicago in general.

Let's hope they manage to pull the weenie out of the campfire. If they do, come see us at the fair, wherever it is - we'll have a booth.

---

Recently I began reading an old book that traces the history of art criticism as a discipline, which the author starts much earlier than I would have ever imagined -– in Greek times (‘Chap. 2: Art criticism in Greece in the third century before Christ and its conditions,’ etc.). I had come across this book as I have the labor of love of sorting through (with the help of a very able assistant) the library of Joseph Randall Shapiro, which he donated to the Museum of Contemporary Art upon his death in 1996 at age 90+ (being of a heritage and era where exact birthdates were often obscure). I loved Joe Shapiro, his passion for life and art, and the obvious sustenance he drew from art. I even loved his undisguised delight in and appreciation of “the fairer sex” (which disturbed many) and felt it was a privileged view on a courtly time that was fast disappearing rather than some sort of rude affront to my gender. Joe did not disguise that he loved to lunch with “his harem,” mostly curators and other museum people — female of course — at those dreary sorts of middlebrow restaurants that sprang up in the 1950s and 1960s, i.e. The Homestead in Oak Park. Very few of these places exist today and thus can exist in some sort of rosy glow of nostalgia. In reality they were pretty awful. When invited, however, I always attended, and when I had business with Joe, as I often did, I would bring along other female MCA staffers who had not heard his repertoire of humorous stories which would slowly wind into the realm of bawdy jokes if his listener(s) seemed comfortable. Of course it wasn’t so much that he enjoyed the food at these restaurants. It was the company and conversation that he craved, and it was as much sustenance to him as the daily special. He was an esthete who could converse on the highest levels about art, yet what really tickled him was to author an advice column for the MCA staff newsletter titled “Joe Sez” (which was compiled, incidentally, into a bound volume and presented to Joe, who is often called the “father” of the Museum of Contemporary Art in appreciation for all he did).

There are some trespasses which cannot be allowed to stand unpunished. The exquisite order of nature instructs us in more ways than can be named that nothing may interfere in the relation of a mother and child. The primacy of this bond is the glue that has kept humans on the planet. The feelings I had struggled to comprehend began to take a tangible form. I took to playing only loud, fast Rock ‘N’ Roll. Husker Du, Flesh Eaters, Naked Raygun, The Germs. I polished my anger like an ice ball and waited for my opportunity to present itself. I never worked as hard on anything as I did on this plan, but then again, I never cared about anything nearly so much. At first Melanie found my old school rediscovery amusing; she was a head banger herself from way back. But over time she grew weary of the 2/4, and she’d try to slide a disc or two into the mix.

Carolyn Guinzio's book West Pullman won the 2004 Bordighera Poetry Prize and appears in a bilingual English/Italian edition. Her work has appeared recently or is forthcoming in Indiana Review, Luna, New American Writing, Octopus, Colorado Review, Willow Springs, and elsewhere. She earned a Master of Fine Arts from Bard College and has received awards from the Fund for Poetry, The Illinois Arts Council, the Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs, and the Kentucky Arts Council. She currently resides in Fayetteville, Arkansas with her husband, the poet Davis McCombs, and their children, Warren and Charlotte.

from West Pullman
VII.

Architecture
1. A double curve with the shape of an elongated S.
2. A molding having the profile of an S-shaped curve.
3. An arch formed by two S-shaped curves meeting at a point. Also called ogee arch.

Congrats to Sharkforum's own Jim Lasko and all the fine folk at Redmoon Theatre!

THE GOLDEN TRUFFLE officially opened last night to a sold out house, and is also newly Jeff Recommended! Audiences throughout the run have been celebrating the unique mix of original musical theater served in style with a four-course truffle tasting by Vosges Haut-Chocolat.

Nick Tremulis: As she’s not one to toot her own horn and as I’ve brought her on board to this nasty little pirate ship that is Sharkforum, I thought I’d take a minute to write a brief intro to you all about my pal Kim.

Kim’s poetry came to prominence in her home state of Arizona, although her work and herself, for that matter, have been featured on both coasts as well as in England. She’s taught at a couple of colleges over the years but “can’t stand bossing people around”, so you probably won’t see her at the front of a lecture hall or an army brigade in the near future.

My friend, Alejandro Escovedo, had read some of her poetry and sought her out to see if he could set some of her poetry to music and/or possibly collaborate on something. The collaboration led to love, a baby, a marriage, a life.

Three of Kim’s extraordinary spells of poetry can be heard on the forthcoming Alejandro Escovedo CD, including the title cut: “The Boxing Mirror”. We are pleased to have her join Sharkforum.

The new CDs arrived in time for our show at the Albisgüetli Country Festival in Zürich on March 15th where we opened for Albert Lee and Hogan’s Heros. One of the best bands I ever heard, these guys blew me away. You can hear world-class pickers any night in Nashville, ad hoc ensembles put together for the occasion. But watching a real band work is to observe a whole different class of animal, with precision and dynamics that come with years of playing together. Named after the steel player Paul Hogan—likely a joking reference to the television series— they go back over twenty years. Albert has played with Eric Clapton, the Everley Brothers, and Emmylou Harris. Just for starters. Sergio tells me Albert Lee’s influence on country guitar players has been major. I believe him. And keyboard Pete Wingfield… have mercy. Albert had his own piano on stage as well. The music was still ringing in my ears when we got back to the house about two. We stayed up ‘til four just winding down. Sergio and I smoked a fat one.

A FAVORITE PASSOVER FOOD.

Garin Cycholl teaches writing and literature at the University of Illinois at Chicago, where he also works as co-editor of Near South, a journal of experimental poetry, fiction, and drama. His recent work will appear this spring with Admit2 and Keep Going. He is author of Nightbirds (moria books 2006), and Blue Mound to 161, a book-length poem on geological and historical displacements in Southern Illinois (Pavement Saw Press 2005).



from Blue Mound to 161

When I finally got home I fell down on my bed and slept. I didn’t sleep long, and even though I wasn’t physically ill I was incapable of even passing out. The answering machine was blinking an insistent staccato. Every light in the apartment was on; what’s up with that? I sat down next to the answering machine and put my ear to the speaker. The volume knob had been acting up, or the recording tape was just too old, or something else was wrong, but the volume had been almost too low to understand lately.

Charles Boetschi, 48, painter, died of a heart attack on April 4 in Thurgovia, Switzerland.

Boetschi was -- is --- one of the best artists I have ever encountered. Certainly the best working within, with and against the geometric tradition. I switched from the past tense to the present there, for when discussing artists as artists that is the correct tense in the English language and I agree. They may be gone as people, but their work lives on.

Every year in October the Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs presents Chicago Artists’ Month. Various cultural institutions and galleries partner with the city of Chicago to offer exhibitions, open studios, demonstrations, workshops, neighborhood art walks, and a variety of additional events in art communities throughout the city.

The College Art Association has a nice blurb on Mark Staff Brandl's recap of their recent event in Boston:

"The American-born, Switzerland-based artist Mark Staff Brandl has written probably the longest and fullest account of the conference—who he met, what he heard, and what he saw—at the blog collective Sharkforum. Brandl offers detailed summaries and informed criticism the panelists’ talks for the many sessions he attended, as well as the one he in which participated. Brandl’s conference experience really exemplifies how busy, vigorous, exhausting, yet extremely rewarding, the CAA meeting can be.

There's a great photo of Sharkforum's very own Rick Rizzo by Wes Pope in the Tempo section of today's Chicago Tribune. You can see Pope's photo folio of Eleventh Dream Day here.

Day 2 SXSW
Nicholas Tremulis: Our first full day at SXSW started out a little on the rough side. My gig at Maria's Taco Express was called off due to the rain. After an 18 hour drive and a morning of gearing up to perform at one of my favorite picnic style of gigs, it was hard not to feel a little let down. But when the going gets tough, the tough go shopping. The Shark, Alejandro, Kim, and I spent the morning checking out Texas wear at a friends store. After the Shark purchased some charro pants, the only pair of pants not camouflaged with oil paint stains that he owns, we headed over to catch a few bands playing at a tent party off of 6th street. I should also say that The Shark bought me a pair of white sunglasses. Did this make me his bitch? I'm still not sure.

Soul Asylum
Closer to the Stars: The Best of the Twin Tone Years
Rykodisc

The hipsters who worship at the altar of the Replacements and Husker Du seem all too reluctant to give respect (or even props) to the mighty Soul Asylum.