Recently by ed

Editor's note - With the Katrina disaster now two years old we asked Rob Miller to send us an update. He was back in New Orleans recently, this time for business, and his observations are chilling -ed.

Two years.

It seems like only yesterday that I watched the destruction of a great American city, a great WORLD city, with stultifying disbelief. In almost real time, I watched how we all allowed the social contract that binds us together as a nation be trampled on or ignored. I watched as governmental agencies at every level exhibited new lows in craven self-preservation at the expense of real solutions and dedicated leadership.

Severity of sculptures stems from caprice

Alan Artner Tribune art critic
August 3, 2007

David Roth's painted wood wall sculptures at the Packer Schopf Gallery have some of the severity of abstract wall reliefs by Russian Constructivists such as Ivan Puni. But their assertiveness is often of a very different kind that comes from the forms being pushed into the territory of caprice to relieve the modern high seriousness.

The rest of Alan Artner's Review can be read here. You'll have to register, but it's free.

Low-ish res images of the work can be found here.

---

American Flag by Kirt Markle

I’m Raoul Deal, a visual artist: painter and so-called community arts creator. I went to the U of I at Urbana-Champaign as an undergrad, together with Mark Staff Brandl, with whom I also worked at the Field Museum of Natural History, and who has now gotten me involved here at Sharkforum.

Sharkforum's very own John Kruth and the Eva Destruction Orchestra will be debuting songs from his new album Eva Destruction.

Good Friday, April 6th, 8 PM
Center Portion
2850 1/2 W. Fullerton Avenue
Chicago Illinois 60647

With an opening set by poet/performance artist Dan Hanrahan.

Then on Saturday John will be reading and signing his new book To Live's To Fly - the Ballad of the Late Great Townes Van Zandt at Seminary Coop Books

April 7, 2007 6:00 PM
57th Street Books
1301 East 57th Street
Chicago, IL 60637
773-684-1300

Details after the jump.

That's right kids, Sharkforum's very own John Kruth has published what promises to be the definitive text on one of America's greatest songwriters ever, Townes Van Zandt. This is no vanity press, it's the venerable Da Capo Press. We here at SF are proud as punch, and will continue to post reviews. It will also be available at bookstores worldwide beginning this monday, March 5.

Following the jump is a review from the Nashville Scene.

Sharkforum's very own Nick Tremulis shares a radio show withi Jon Langford called "The Eclectic Company". Tonight's show promises to be another good one:

Tuesday, February 20 at 10 PM: Fat Tuesday Special - Nick is joined by Mark Guarino, Daily Herald music columnist, and Bloodshoot Records owner and co-founder, Rob Miller for a show devoted to songs and stories from today's New Orleans.

THE SOUND IN MODERN TIMES
The moment we started thinking about sound, we started making sound films. The moment the soundtrack stopped being an assumed quality and started being a controlled aspect of the presentation of a film, we started thinking sound cinema. The Passion of Joan of Arc is a sound film because Dreyer insisted that it be shown without a soundtrack. And Charlie Chaplin, who waited so many years to finally reveal his voice, was the one of the greatest early sound directors. Recently, while watching Modern Times for the first time in many years, I realized that it’s an exemplary sound film. In it, Chaplin utilizes the faculties of sound to achieve the desired comic effects only sound effects and music could create.

Photo by Bob O'Connell