March 2008 Archives

Margo Berdeshevsky was born in New York City in 1945; she was an actress; she has lived in Hawaii; she currently lives in Paris. But a Passage in Wilderness is her first poetry collection (Sheep Meadow Press, 2007). Her works have appeared in Agni, Kenyon Review, The Southern Review, New Letters, Poetry International, Runes, Siècle 21, Europe. Her Tsunami Notebook of poems and photographs followed a journey to Sumatra in Spring 2005, to work in a survivors' clinic in Aceh. A book of short fictions, Beautiful Soon Enough, and Vagrant, a poetic novel, wait at the gate. The cover art for But a Passage in Wilderness is one of her montages.

communion

Let us come into communion
The sea is sick of fish--randomly, it wants a god.

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Yerra Sugarman was born in Toronto, and lives in New York. She received the 2005 PEN/Joyce Osterweil Award for Poetry for her first collection, Forms of Gone, published by Sheep Meadow Press in 2002. Her second book, The Bag of Broken Glass, was also published by Sheep Meadow in 2008. Her poems and articles have appeared in ACM, The Nation, How2, Pleiades, Barrow Street, Verse Daily, and 100 Poets Against the War. She holds degrees in visual arts from Columbia and Concordia Universities and in writing from City College. She currently teaches poetry at Rutgers University and is Writer in Residence at Eugene Lang College The New School for Liberal Arts.

Story

If it had only been a story

A Sharkforum Feeding Frenzy Funnies special by Steve Hamann and Mark Staff Brandl.

James Kalm slips into Soho for a Thursday night debut opening of Carriage Trade. Located right above Finneli's bar at Prince and Mercer Streets, this location has been an artist's haven since the 1960s.

Cartoon by Moogee the Art Dog, Nottingham UK

Art is booming and the auction houses are rubbing their hands with glee. After the short dry spell, one is allowed to hype again. And the transition within the art academies from the European system to a modified Anglo Bachelor and Masters system will certainly contribute to the cause of manifesting and solidifying the new Academicism.

The development, or progression, of art no longer(?) lies in the hands of artists, who would now much rather insert themselves comfortably into the system, having little desire to concentrate on the development of personal ideas, much preferring to ask for simple survival strategies. Thus exhibitions are filled with a new form of fickle superficiality, the obligation for which is equally borne by artists as well when we play along on every level as Class Clowns.

Fritz Haeg: Animal Estates (detail)

Quantifications
Don't believe everything you read; the Whitney Biennial isn't all bad. In fact, as a crystal ball, it is cause for hope. But before we start reading tea leaves, we can indulge in quantifications.

Good friends of mine, Greg and Jim Zimmer from Grid Gallery, are doing a collaboration project with Mike Genovese and will be unveiling it Friday March 14th at their gallery space. Beverages will be flowing. Limited edition prints and merchandise will be available.

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Steve Lisios: Demonstrating Water With Stones
A documentation of Demonstrating Water With Stones: a 35 feet long, 6 feet wide and 10 feet high installation by artist Steve Litsios. First presented in Geneva Switzerland it is composed of 500 sheets of 30 x 20 inch paper each containing a multitude of images and words that like a watermark, can only be seen against the light.

This interview with Sean Singer about his book Discography was conducted during the week of February 11th, 2008 by seven poets: Rachel Chamberlain, Vince Francone, Andrew Galligan, Joshua Lobb, Virginia Smith, Rose Woodson, and Nate Zoba.

Nate Zoba: When writing about a particular musician or music, do you listen to that musician or that type of music before writing, while writing, in rewriting, or all? How does the music affect the form of the poem, the rhyme scheme, and the meter? If the affect is significant, do you ever find that there is a point where it is best to work a poem without its subject's music playing? Does the music of the subject ever become too influential on the form of the poem?

Sean Singer: I listen to jazz obsessively, and was doing so when I wrote the poems in Discography, which was between 1995-2000. Also, I have nearly 1900 jazz CDs in my collection.

Daniela Olszewska holds a BA in Poetry from Columbia College Chicago. Her poetry-related activities include serving on the Editorial Board of Columbia Poetry Review and acting as Editorial Assistant/Intern Coordinator for Switchback Books. Her poems have been/ will be published in Keep Going, Shampoo, Melancholia's Tremulous Dreadlocks, and La Petite Zine. Her chapbook The Partial Autobiography of Jane Doe was published by dancing girl press, 2008.

Zombie: 24 Hours In The Life Of

Green glow, eel glow. I wake up.
Obliterate all traces of breadcrumbs.

MS Brandl installation

Editor John Lent opened the pages of his remarkable academic journal, The International Journal of Comic Art to several essays on gallery comics grouped as a symposium. The latest issue (Fall 2007, vol. 9 no. 2) combines perspectives on gallery comics from artists, art historians, collectors and curators including essays discussing the art of Mark Staff Brandl, Andrei Molotiu, and C Hill.