I live my life in widening circles

I live my life in widening circles

that reach out across the world.

I may not complete this last one

but I give myself to it.

I circle around God, around the primordial tower.

I've been circling for thousands of years

and I still don't know: am I a falcon,

a storm, or a great song?

~ Ranier Maria Rilke ~

 (Rilke’s Book of Hours:Love Poems to God, translated by Anita Barrows and Joanna Macy)

 Ich lebe mein Leben im wachsenden Ringen

Ich lebe mein leben im wachsenden Ringen,

die sich über die Dingen ziehen.

Ich werde den letzen vielleicht nicht volbringen,

aber versuchen will ich ihn.

Ich kreise um Gott, um den uralten Turm,

und ich kreise jahrtausendelang;

und ich weiß nocht nicht: bin ich ein Falke, ein Sturm

oder ein großer Gesang.

Rainer Maria Rilke (Paris, 1913)

The Andean Condor above is from my Peru project

coming to the Marion Gallery at Mt. Mary College in January.

I heard the poem recently and wanted to share it.
This being Arts Without Borders, I found it in the original German too.

Memo to Milwaukee Film: ARE YOU KIDDING!!

I suppose it could be seen as an odd kind of experiment: if the entire audience of the large central screen in the Oriental Theater were strung out in a single line, how far would it extend? Just before the doors opened at about 7:30 last night there were a thousand people lined up along Farwell to the corner of Ivanhoe Pl., all the way down to the corner of Prospect Ave. and then most of the distance to the next corner, well over halfway around the entire city block.

The crowd, all ticket-holders and therefore assured (presumably) of a seat, remained calm and good-natured about it, but cell phones were buzzing along the entire line. I guess it could also be seen as a test of Milwaukeeans' patience. One does have to wonder how it would have played out on a cold, rainy day.

Is this a measure of the festival's success or simply someone's misjudgement? Is the movie schedule too crowded to allow one audience to exit the theater in time to let a new audience in without waiting outside?

The good news for the festival is that they are selling a lot of tickets and filling the theater. The festival has endured a couple rocky years and it's great to see the enthusiasm. In order to maintain this momentum, festival organizers will have to consider how to prevent an embarrassing repeat of this situation. The good news for me was that I got in to see the movie this time (see yesterday's post.)

And it was definitely worth waiting for (in the pleasant conditions and with the cooperative crowd.) A Funny Kind of Story takes us inside a psych ward - and inside the head of Craig, the depressive main character who can't quite commit to following through with his suicidal inclinations. Vaguely reminiscent of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, this is a more restrained, subtle, and introspective story. It is clever, funny, and thoughtful. Although it's been a long time since I was an adolescent myself, I could easily identify with Craig's internal confusion and tribulations. After convincing the ER doctor to admit him to the psych ward, Craig quickly decides that he's in over his head and the audience, too, is subjected to the relativity of mental distress. Craig seems so normal. (I'm crazier than him!) How many kids grow up today driven by familial and societal pressures to this malaise, this vague unease and incipient anxiety? How many of us, even as adults, need to be medicated to withstand a world full of ever-increasing pressures--to succeed, to consume, to raise healthy children, to see this show, to write about that, to do the right thing?

Again, to see more about the Milwaukee Film Festival, go to Milwaukee Film.

The Kids are Alright and the Milwaukee Film Festival is even better!

At least if you go by the size of the audience it is. I guess it’s a good problem to have, though I’m not on the inside of Milwaukee Film and know little about the logistics of scheduling and less about their bottom line. What I do know is that lots of people went to the Oriental Theater Friday evening to see the festival offerings and many could not get in to see what they came for. Lynn and I went there to see Baraboo only to find ourselves at the tail end of a long rush line of people hoping that those who had the foresight to buy advance tickets wouldn’t show up to claim their seats.

Our hectic lives make it difficult to plan ahead and in the many previous years of the festival we had never been shut out of a movie before. I hope this means success for the festival. Perhaps it means they needed to book a larger venue and if they had they’d have sold more tickets.

We ended up skipping the long, futile line and seeing the one non-festival moving left playing at the Oriental, The Kids are Alright. More evidence that someone hadn’t planned the Oriental’s screening schedule with sufficient prescience came as we entered and found ourselves among eight or ten people enjoying the pre-movie organ music as it echoed in the huge, ornate, empty theater. We also discovered that this movie deserved a larger audience!

On one level, The Kids are Alright is a pretty standard comedy about two parents trying to raise two teenagers. The plot revolves around the kids’ secret decision to locate the man who had donated sperm to their mothers eighteen and fifteen years ago respectively. The story moves along a fairly predictable trajectory that includes a clandestine meeting, discovery, recriminations, jealousy, sexual shenanigans, guilt, etc. There are a couple twists I won’t reveal. A relationship-driven story like this depends upon the actors’ abilities to create believable characters and the entire ensemble is seamless. There’s the uptight, over-involved breadwinning parent, the insecure, lassez-faire stay-at-home parent, the introverted, overachieving high school graduate ambivalent about leaving the nest, and the emotionally withdrawn star athlete. Then there’s the organic food-growing, motorcycle-riding, happy-go-lucky sperm donor who drives a wedge into the familial mix with iconoclastic charm. I write this as if they’re all stereotypes, but they don’t come across that way because of the exceptional acting and honest depiction of family interactions. Annette Benning’s performance as the overwrought, overprotective doctor is especially engaging.

The thing that separates The Kids are Alright from similar stories is the fact that it is all happening to a family with two lesbian parents, played with intelligence, compassion, and gritty realism by Benning and Julianne Moore. But what is most remarkable, I think, is how completely matter-of-fact this is. How refreshing to see a story of such unself-conscious normality! Let’s hope life in the U.S. can imitate art because the kids are alright.

If you want to read more reviews of this highly rated film, go to Rottentomatoes.

To learn more about the Milwaukee Film Festival, go to Milwaukee Film.

Milwaukee Film Festival starts today!

Clear your calendar for the next week and a half. I know, it's hard. I've tried in past years with varying success. But when I made it to more movies I found it was worth it. You don't see movies like these in regular theater schedules.

Living in Tosa as I do I miss having festival movies at the Times Cinema. It would help us west siders to bring that back!

If you don't have the print version of the schedule, go to Milwaukee Film.

Revisiting Vietnam: The photography of Larry D’Attilio

“Get to know your subject” is an appropriate mantra for aspiring and veteran photographers alike. Many of the most admired photographers have been known as much for their subjects as for style, technique, or conceptual approach to the medium. Yosemite Valley belongs to Ansel Adams; the lowly green pepper became Edward Weston’s forever monumentalized icon, and although many photographers have trained their cameras on wars, none is so enduringly identified with that vast subject as Robert Capa.

If people don’t soon begin to associate contemporary Vietnam with Lawrence D’Attilio it won’t be for his lack of trying. Over the past four years, D’Attilio has traveled to that distant land many times, often spending months on location. The depth of his exposure is clearly evident in the work that is on view at Redline Milwaukee through the end of September. This is no travelogue. In fact, in this unconventional installation, with a trio of shows related only by their common subject, formal experimentation almost eclipses the artist’s mission to bring Americans up to date on this complex land. The desire to express that very complexity is what integrates three rather distinct bodies of work.

Tucked in a back corner gallery, color prints in a traditional documentary style depict entrepreneurial women who have managed to create small businesses with the aid of a microloan program. But D’Attilio is not content to show us neat rows of carefully framed images. The other two legs of this triadic exhibit have less in common with traditional photographs than with installation art in other media. Upon entering the main gallery, one is confronted first by enormous mixed media collages that the artist titles “Time for New Women.” The physicality of these pieces combined with their larger than life depictions of young Vietnamese women elevates them from commonplace portraiture; they become totemic metaphors for an ever-changing and unpredictable contemporary global culture.

The third and most unexpected component of this installation occupies the center of the gallery space. Large transparent black and white images on film are suspended from wires. They swing freely as visitors pass in between and around them. A reductive process has created stark graphic images that almost seem hand drawn. During the opening reception this installation was accompanied by a jarringly discordant sound track of music and ambient sounds of traffic recorded in streets of Hanoi. We are transported out of our normal lives to the frenetic and mysterious culture of Vietnam that shifts even as we try to make sense of it.

It is an exhibition that could be called “photography without borders” so of course I was intrigued. Redline, with its open spaces and flexible display systems, is the perfect venue for such a complex show. Vietnam, which continues to confound most Americans 35 years after the cessation of hostilities, is a challenging subject and the scope of D’Attilio’s examination of it is ambitious. Try to see it before it closes Sept. 30.

For more information go to Redline Milwaukee.

But wait…there’s more! Ambitious as this show is, D’Attilio has two additional concurrent exhibits of photography from Vietnam in the Crossman Gallery at the University of WI – Whitewater.

You can also see more of D’Attilio’s work on his website.



War: Missing in Action? An interactive installation at Merge Gallery

The United States has been at war for nine years. But, while our tax dollars have poured into Afghanistan and Iraq and our young men and women have fought and died, for the most part, our attention has been elsewhere. I don’t believe Americans typically think about being at war on a regular basis. The evidence doesn’t support such a conclusion. Unless you have a family member or friend in the military (which I don’t), the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan rarely intrude on our daily lives. They show up in the news with some regularity, of course, but these are wars interrupted by commercial messages—often overshadowed by commercial messages.

Along with the general public, artists largely go on about their business despite the ongoing wars. This is true of my own art work, although I try to keep abreast of world events. However, it is emphatically not true of the two artists who collaborate on an installation at Merge Gallery in Milwaukee’s Third Ward. It is called War: Humanity in the Crosshairs. Although the show has been up since the Fourth of July—no coincidence—I just got around to seeing it last weekend. Merge occupies a small space tucked away in a second-floor corner of the Marshall Building. The walls are rough bare brick. It’s a good setting for the stark, often rough images that surround you as you enter. Rows of what appear to be heavy caliber bullets (they are really metal pressure valves) are hung from the ceiling, creating an immersive experience; one must weave around them to see the work. It is immediately clear that this is not going to be standard art gallery fare.

War: Humanity in the Crosshairs is a collaborative installation by gallery owners Valerie J. Christell and Tori Tasch. They work separately in a variety of media, but their individual contributions complement each other beautifully and create a powerful and engaging combination.

This image from the installation pairs Christell’s “Residual Pain/Mines” (top) with Tasch’s image of a World War II era pin-up girl surrounded by the scrawled musings of sailors. The latter was inspired by the artist’s recent visit to the USS Bowfin, of WWII vintage. Christell’s work relates to the current conflict and sometimes incorporates photographs taken in Afghanistan by her son. Of this and similar pairings Christell says “the similarity between the gestures of sex and death is powerful.” It is indeed and so is the total effect of the installation, which has provoked many “thoughtful conversations.” I am not surprised. Art can—and should—serve many functions. Unfortunately, in my opinion, its function as the conscience of the culture seems to have gone out of fashion. But at what cost? The Merge installation seems to have tapped into an unsated hunger. Christell shared this observation: “Over and over I hear [from visitors] that, in spite of how tough the images/concepts are, this is needed.” I agree and I applaud Merge for providing it.

The mission of Merge Gallery is “to broaden audience awareness of social issues through the blending of artistic viewpoints.” Christell and Tasch plan to present a new theme related to contemporary issues and current events every three months. I for one look forward to the next installation. We need a venue for art that tackles the tough issues.

War: Humanity in the Crosshairs will be on display through October 2. Merge is located at 207 E. Buffalo St, Suite 204. Hours are noon – 4 pm Fridays and Saturdays.

You can see more images from the show at Valerie Christell’s website.

Starving Artists smile at Mount Mary College

To misquote one of my favorite lines from one of my favorite old movies, Little Big Man—“It’s a good day to starve.” Today was one of those perfect, crisp, almost-autumn, apple-picking days when the sun melts over everyone like hot caramel. I did go apple-picking at Barthel’s farm in Mequon. Then, on my way home, I stopped at Mount Mary College to check out their Starving Artists Fair.

I’ve always worried over that name—“starving artists.” Doesn’t it sound just the teensiest bit patronizing? But it seems to work as a marketing ploy, not only for the art-buying public, but for the artists, too. I spoke with several who unanimously agreed it had been a great day. I arrived late, after the grass had been completely flattened and some of the booths stripped of their wares. Photographer Fred Fischer said I should have been here at 10 a.m. when they opened the gates. Apparently it was like opening the doors of the mall on Black Friday. Or, to outrageously mix my metaphors, like the start of the running of the bulls in a china shop!

Life imitates art?

With low booth fees and lots of sales, the artists did well. (They come from all over the state year after year; it has to be worth it.) With the maximum value set at $100, the price conscious art-buying public did well. (For the artists that’s a thankfully higher maximum than past fairs.) And with hordes of people paying $5 entry fees and buying refreshments, the college did well. Sounds like a win-win-win to me. Although, by design, this fair caters to lowest economic denominators of art (I overheard one potter confide that he brought only his ‘seconds’ along), it’s nothing to shake a rag at when art sells during a recession.

And, just as the old Indian in Little Big Man didn’t die that day, no one at Mt. Mary seems to have starved either.

Art reflects life?

If you missed this one and have a hankering to go to an art fair, you’re in luck! The Hidden River Art Festival in Brookfield is next weekend.