2/18/2017 0 Comments Interview with artist Sofia MinsonAoraki Fractalis Sofia Minson creates maori portraits where once passive gazes upon them are redirected, where strength and autonomy beam out from the inside of the canvas. Mythical landscapes that pay homage to the creation myths and voyage histories of her native New Zealand, like travel mementos from a fever dream, vividly haunting in their details and the objects they include. Sofia works much like an archivist, but one who deals in living matter, these stories and people are not just of the past, they live in every breathing pore of the here and now. They are poetry on the move and they are not bound to a single spot, a single story. AHC: What first drew you to art? Was there a specific moment in your life or turning point where it became clear to you that you were being called to create? Sofia: I was always painting, drawing and creating since I can remember, there are drawings my mum has kept from when I was two years old. A lot of kids are like this, the only difference is I never stopped! Atua Wāhine AHC: Could you talk some about your overall process, themes & inspirations? Sofia: I'm inspired by my mixed Ngāti Porou Māori, Swedish, English and Irish heritage as well as the taonga (treasure) that are New Zealand’s people, land, forests and birds. I spent much of my childhood in Samoa, Sri Lanka and China due to my father’s civil engineering work. Now painting from my Auckland studio, my contemporary portraits, landscapes and images of nature often contain patterns from ancient cultures that celebrate connections between diverse peoples. My ideas and techniques have evolved over the last 13 years of being an artist professionally. For the first decade I was painting New Zealand landscapes and seascapes with waka and obsessively honing a moody, glowing oil painting technique. For the last couple of years I’ve been playing around with water-based paints and and highly detailed patterns and symbols from Pacific and Asian cultures. The Warrior and The Lover AHC: Who are some of your artistic influences? Is there anyone outside of the art world whose work has impacted your own, or who just generally inspire you, writers, filmmakers, musicians etc? Sofia: When painting Maori portraits I look to historical C.F. Goldie and Gottfried Lindauer portraits and old black and white 20th century photographs of Maori. My inspiration for ideas largely comes through audiobooks and podcasts that I find fascinating. Often they're about ancient civilizations, human nature, cosmology, or just plain entertaining. The spiritual element in my work is often enhanced by listening to things like the Tao Te Ching, Khalil Gibran's "The Prophet" and Rumi's poetry. The Other Sister AHC: In your series of Maori oil portraits, your subjects evoke such strength and dignity, could you talk a little about that series, how and when the idea came to you and what this series means to you? Sofia: The first Maori portrait I created was in 2006 of my own Ngati Porou great grandmother Matire Te Horowai and the idea has evolved since then. Like in early 20th century Goldie and Lindauer Maori portraits, I try to re-create that centuries-old romanticism and depth, which is quite nice for a change in this modern, digital, face-paced world. I'm interested in painting creative and inspiring Maori people who are helping to evolve today's culture through their own art forms or roles in society. The works explore the modern meaning of heritage for an indigenous culture living in a post-colonial country. Few people realise that there is actually no tradition of Maori portraiture since Lindauer and Goldie. There are no good portrait paintings of most of our most eminent Maori figures. So, I feel like I'm filling an important niche by creating Maori oil portraiture for my generation, using the traditional Western medium to show contemporary Maori as a vibrant and evolving people. In the early 20th century, Western colonial artists took it upon themselves to record in precise detail, the 'vanishing race' of Maori. This was a belief commonly held at the turn of the century. I intend to use their medium to show Maori as being a very much living, evolving and creative people, inhabiting real and current time and space. My large-scale, close-up paintings often tower over you in size and hold your attention with detailed, highly realistic eyes. Often the portraits are painted with a grey or sepia palette that alludes to 19th century black and white photographs of Maori who were posed and adorned with status-defining feather cloaks, huia feathers, Ta Moko (face tattoo), pounamu (greenstone) and other taonga (treasures). My aim is to redirect the ‘gaze’ of indigenous portraiture. Rather than European colonial painters and audiences gazing upon Maori subjects, as a Ngati Porou artist I am depicting fellow contemporary Maori people. The gaze is now between Maori and out of the canvas to the rest of the world. Turumakina AHC: What was the most difficult piece for you to create, technically and conceptually? Have you ever had to abandon a piece because the elements just weren't coming together in the right way? Sofia: I've abandoned many pieces! Sometimes I paint over what my husband thinks are perfectly good paintings. But for me there's something about them that annoys the hell out of me, haha. I would say one of the most difficult pieces for me to create was the Travis Rapana portrait, purely because of the size - 3 metres high x 2 metres wide. It sat there for 2 years while I worked on it bit by bit while doing other works as well. At one point he was nearly done, he was painted totally with black and white paint, and I decided he needed to be a sepia palette instead. So that new sepia look and brown skin tone took weeks and weeks to complete as another couple of layers of oil paint were needed over the whole 2 x 3m canvas. Whakapapa Origins AHC: What is the first work of art you encountered that took your breath away? Sofia: Hmmm this is a hard one because I think my breath gets taken away when I hear a really powerful piece of literature or piece of music that makes me tear up, gives me chills or that feeling of connection. I create visual art but I don't actually view a lot of painters' work at museums and galleries. When I look at pictures of art it's often with a critical eye and I'm thinking about how I could use certain elements in my own style in my own work. As I mentioned in an earlier question, things like the Tao Te Ching, Khalil Gibran's "The Prophet" and Rumi's poetry really get me going. Serendib AHC: Are there times when you become blocked creatively? What do you do to rekindle inspiration? Sofia: Omg absolutely!! Sometimes my "painter's block" has lasted for months and I've become quite depressed. I'm usually blocked because I'm not working in a way that is authentic to me. But those struggles have taught me how I work best! I'm happiest when I'm playing in the studio, staying innocent, not worrying about what the world thinks about my art, and listening to fascinating audiobooks, podcasts and music. Also after travelling, whether it be a road trip around NZ or a trip overseas, I'm always fresh and rearing to get painting again with clear ideas. I think it's the perspective you get on your life and what you're passionate about, when you change your environment. Tame Iti AHC: Do you have any upcoming exhibits or new projects you'd like to tell people about? Sofia: I'm currently staying as playful as possible and creating work just because it's fun, rather than thinking about how and where it's going to be exhibited. However in the real world, yes I do have a few things booked... I have an upcoming solo show of a tonne of brand new work in June 2017 at Parnell Gallery in Auckland, New Zealand. Every year in October I paint live, outdoors with Jazz musicians at the Queenstown Jazzfest, which is such a lot of fun so come and join us for some good music and art in the mountains. I also have another solo show in January 2018 at ArtBay Gallery in Queenstown already lined up. Aroha mai, aroha atu (Maori proverb meaning "love received, love returned.")
For more information, updates and artwork visit www.newzealandartwork.com/ All images © Sofia Minson
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"I know the way you can get / When you have not had a drink of love." --Hafiz
Some books take almost a life time to be written, because they are born of experience, of having been there and back again, living to tell the stories that no one else could possibly tell, not in this way, with as much truth, pain and broken beauty as such experience affords us. In Spent Saints, Brian Smith writes a book sorely needed in this current age where we often come up short on empathy, here we are confronted with all of the people our culture forgets, addicts, the working poor, the unemployed, unloved kids, bad marriages, bad lives, unkind, unforgiving landscapes, unresolved hatreds, glimmers of hope and just enough love left in these lost, weary souls to still be recognizably human. Brian Smith is a more forgiving Hubert Selby, there is no last exit, there are many roads left open, even if they remain mostly untraveled by the wounded inhabitants of this book. In Lost in the Supermarket, the book opens with a man named Rowdy passed out on someone else's lawn. Surrounded by "Flawless symmetries of houses and yards. Boomroomy tract houses with polished door hinges and wagon-wheel mailboxes and shiny cars that left no oil stains on driveways, each home filled with a happy family so perfect that they left no mark in front yards or on the street, never an errant playground toy or uncoiled garden hose. Brand-newness owned everything, like the hundreds of homes he’d worked on. Rowdy saw it all as unreachable success, the kind of success designed for people who aren’t him." We are pulled into Rowdy's skin from the get go, something wet wakes him and us up. These are not easy, gentle lives. We hear pool filters humming, promised lands made to everyone else, like salt rubbed into a wound. "Clean, rinsed suburbia always made [him] aware and ashamed of his scars, and he felt like a dirty outsider. He longed for that car, that dog, that wife, that dental plan, that stainless steel refrigerator stocked to the gills. He could be unsoiled, walled in by all-you-can-drink wet bars and swimming pools, with big screens in every room and fake Mexican tiles and giant silk pillows on king-sized beds. Everything would be swollen — the cars, the faces, the lawns, the sun, the wallets, the sky, the produce sections, the cancer, the lives. He wanted to be numbed and comforted by all of that safety, diversion, excess." Walking in the desert heat, trailed by bored suburban kids on bikes, we hear Rowdy's inner monologue of all that has gone wrong for him over the years, and of all that he still dreams of, still longs for. A passing driver of this unattainable suburbia, shakes Rowdy's mind, "He reminded himself that people do what they must to survive. He understood a need to survive, how it manifests into a profound blankness that’s a long long way from ever returning to nature. People here overcame the odds to live and breathe on these streets and lead dreamed-of lives with their wives and their wounds and their kids." Rowdy may have missed that boat, but he hasn't stopped wanting it, something far better than he has now, which is next to nothing. Next to nothing is not nothing, this is Smith's core reminder throughout Spent Saints. In The Grand Prix we have a kid who competes, extremely, as a cyclist, like a cutter with a blade, to make manifest and real an inner, inescapable ache. His coach's hand on his shoulder "felt like it belonged to someone’s dad, and it comforted him." The youngest character in Spent Saints, a kid who has "heroes, not parents." Whose "parents’ marriage had gone off the rails before [he] was born. Mom couldn’t stand Dad who couldn’t stand himself. Dinner table conversations were non-existent, only tired grunts from a dad intolerant to the sound of his children; Mom rarely made it home after work. She’d occupy any number of mid-town barstools and hotel rooms with her married boss from the downtown office where she worked." And the kid is good. He pushes himself past what a body is capable of enduring, but these bodies defy logic, they have little choice but to defy it. In a world so shut down and short on kindness, one person's belief in you can go a long way. When your Dad can only muster this advice, "Dreams just don’t work out, son. You’ll wind up flipping burgers. That way of teaching violence, from father to son, filled the living room with fear, rage and dread. The knuckle-to-bone terror that only a father can administer to his son." Pushing himself through blinding, bone crushing pain in a competitive race, Smith conjures up, through this kid, one of the many profound insights that bubble up throughout these incredible stories; "It’s an addict’s need, this yearning and learning to live on risk and pain. Winning teaches you how greatness lurks down deep inside, and quells childhood beat downs that said you don’t ever belong anywhere. And that joy of winning — there’s something about that kind of joy, it’s hard-earned because it rises from a place of pure agony. Hums like the perfect song, the perfect prose, the perfect painting, and your shoes can hold you up above the earth and you’re able to walk like that." There is something inside each of these characters that just will not allow their lights to go completely out. Part of the challenge of living, especially when so much has been taken from you or has never even been given to you in the first place, is developing appreciation for the possible in the face of the impossible. Smith strives to place questions marks in the suffering of these lives. We don't know for sure if they're doomed or not, we suspect they can still turn things around. There's no naive optimism here, but if you've ever lived rubbed this raw to the bone, and are still here, it's the kind of faith you can't have in things beforehand, it comes at the other end of the tunnel, this book and its author, I suspect, somehow made it through. In the title story, Spent Saints, we get a glimpse into the music business and a California where "even the palm trees [want] a better life." Of music producers who are on "spiritual Auto-Tune," who no longer "get it" the transcendence, the emotional weight of a song. At a coke fueled party we encounter a faded actress who is "reclined on [an] antiquated sitter, framed by Beverly Hills in the window, she was lost, broken. I fought off images of our own future lives, the disconnections, sadnesses, and agonies. This is where it all leads," muses the main character, as he musters the courage to follow his integrity and leave the luxury flat back out into the unforgiving California night with his fellow band members. We get the sense that things may not work out well at all for any of these people, but as Bob Forrest once said of his own battle with drug addiction, "I thought inevitably this isn't going to end well, but I was mistaken because it does end well if you don't die." Smith understands this and conveys it hauntingly in the pores of every single story in Spent Saints. In Eye for Sin, a man and his friend Tinkles, on their way to score meth from a racist skin head, gives this description of a place that time has forgotten and that hope has overlooked, "I saw sallow faces in joyless interiors lit up in reality show colors, the hues of celebrity deification and yearnings for easy fame and wealth. It gave the illusion of living in vibrant lights. Hi-def desperation fueled on meth, fantasy." Inside a trailer that smells of armpits and despair, a woman at the door who "vanished like a ghost down the dark hallway. She had no presence, emanated nothing, and left little impression. People ravaged by crystal meth are like that; like something tangible in their being — astral planers say “aura” — had been eaten away. You see them physically but they’re lighter in every sense of the word." Another woman in the same despair filled trailer, missing an eye, had "taken the time to apply makeup around her one eye — eyeliner, shadow, mascara. In that moment she broke my heart. She knew too many ways to die but instead had accepted some way of living, and the makeup committed her to a kind of composure, or a sense of place in this world. Maybe the colors helped her dream of the girl she used to be and no amount of deformity could crush that." Smith works hard to portray the glimpses of inner children even in the deepest, darkest corners of living. Humanity won't quit these people. We should know this, but we often forget it. That is the power of this book, its reminder that nothing human should be foreign to us. In No Wheels, a man on his nightly run to buy alcohol from a convenience store, "this Circle K was life among the dead. It was the quick fix in a neighborhood where there were no outs. At night its bright fluorescent lights reached out offering hope for late-night transience, for the lonely and the reclusive. Hope for the meth-addled prostitutes whose bodies were long past reclamation, and for the desert-rat dayworkers with shot, red eyes. It was light for those like me who were just becoming aware that they were speeding on some road to the bottom and not even listening to what their own story might or might not have been telling them." Where fellow neighbors "get drunk and slow dance to old Emmylou Harris records on the front porch," and conversations amongst curbside drinkers who "had zero chance of ever becoming one of those people whom others respected and admired." Who had all "dropped out of something, or [were] hiding out from someone, or [were] just damaged in some way. [Or] all three of those things." One of the curbside drinkers, Raul, asks another man named Frank, “So how do you live with a wife that you hate?” Frank said, “You take that hate and tell yourself you’re just reliving some hateful episode from younger days. It’s not hate. It’s love. You just get tired.” We don't know what we're capable of surviving until we do. Dark nights feel like they'll never end, the years piling up in front of us like reminders of all the things we can't change but nonetheless long to. It's longing that saves our ass sometimes. This book and its author know just how dark a life can become, which is also why Spent Saints keeps roads, fates open. It's a testament to Leonard Cohen's "through the cracks, that's how the light get's in." That goes for people too. Through the cracks in each of these character's skin hope gets through, a little broken on the inside, wounded on the battlefield, a lot can go wrong, a lot can go right, if we survive. These lives aren't good, or easy, or joyous, but they are lives nonetheless. Smith's great achievement is to constantly remind us at every pained, turn of the page, that these are in fact lives, broken ones whose pieces matter. Smith pays attention to the fragments a person can become, not to romanticize their suffering, but to hear voices still singing in the dark, unrecognizable but worthy songs, a chorus of lives in disrepair and breakdown, hauntings of could have beens, promises just out of reach. Yet the point is that they still reach, still go on despite almost unbearable odds. Doing the best and the worst that they can with what little they have. A little bit of anything can go a long way. Hope, love, empathy, will, desire. Maybe having too much of something keeps us from acting at all. These characters are worn out but they are still in their lives. Hurting, struggling, longing, living. Wildly, bravely, brokenly, for as long as their bodies will let them, which is to say for as long as they are alive. "All we need to begin again is our lives," Susan Sontag once wrote. Smith takes that dictum very seriously. In Spent Saints, we see an American landscape that is still very much like the one we live in now. Hope is on short supply, and even when everyone is said to have access to it, very few feel like they do. But this book isn't about defeat, like a plant that survives in an ill suited climate, the characters in Spent Saints do too. Buy the book here spentsaints.com Spent Saints will be released from Ridgeway Press in March www.ridgewaypress.org/ Visit Brian Jabas Smith's website for all of his latest news and projects at www.briansmithwriter.com/ 2/17/2017 0 Comments Three poems by Jon BennettHummingbirds Roberto has a Walgreens sack of gummy worms and talks about his diabetes while Gorgeous George’s overly sensuous mouth sucks at grenadine and gin Sugar is in the air our tongues are glossy with syrup and in the toilet powdering my nose my heart is all aflutter. Monarchs The monarch butterflies would fly around San Francisco they’re gone now, I suppose due to some disappearing shrub These days I look at the city’s drag queens not many of them left, either and so fragile, our little sanctuary eroding at the edges like everywhere. Plastic The utilities were still on so me and Andrea slept on the floor eating take out until piles of garbage were stacked around like trail markers We couldn’t put it outside because the landlord would see “but we have to put it somewhere,” said Andrea So I went to 24 hr Walmart and got some plastic bags and Andrea stole a recycling bin from one of the neighbors We took the plastic bags out of their plastic bag and put that plastic bag into the plastic bag we lined the bin with and then we threw away all the chip bags, sporks, candy wrappers, styrofoam cups, take out containers and other plastic shit lying around When we were done I wanted to throw myself away, too. -------------------------- Image - Holly Levey www.flickr.com/photos/hollyapl/ Bio: Jon Bennett writes and plays music in San Francisco's Tenderloin neighborhood. You can find more of his shit on iTunes and Pandora. For booking please contact [email protected] 2/16/2017 0 Comments Two poems by Christopher HopkinsStreetlight witnesses The steel shows its weakness at speed. Their arms and legs as brittle as the storks wrapped in cellophane, placed at the end of the parallel sway. An action burned into asphalt. Tiny daggers of colored glass, that came to rest against the gutter and curb, like confetti thrown on a marriage of death, though they were known as girlfriend and son, reported, printed, paper thin. Quicksand cocktail juice I rolled awake at the feet of gods. Blessed and cooked. Dressed in black, and like a clapping hand inside me, just below the ribs to the right. Bruised lines of finger grips, my Sargent stripes, across both shoulders, and kisses which broke the lip. The blood still tasted liquor high. I'm a white omelette. Plateau'd and served. Good Morning to the Mischief. God bless today. Bio: Christopher Hopkins, was born and raised in Neath South Wales, surrounded by machines and mountains, until he moved to Oxford in his early twenties. He currently resides in Canterbury and works for the NHS. Chris has had poems published in Rust & Moth, The Journal, Anti-Heroin Chic, Tuck Magazine, Dissident Voice magazine, the online literary journal 1947, Transcendent Zero Press and Duane's PoeTree. Two of his early e-book pamphlets "Imagination is my Gun" and "Exit From a Moving Car" are available on Amazon. Chthonic is a rare album, a living metaphor. In the deep thematics of the underworld, Julia Lucille carves out a landscape of struggle and rebirth, a phoenix rising from the ashes, building a home of its own in a world that may be none too welcoming. Transformations need no permission to occur, they are born, either way, in mid flight or crash, and it is the unspoken in each of us that emerges when our psychic, physical ropes fray. In putting this album together, Julia admirably strove to highlight feminine aspects instrumentally "rejecting guitar parts and tones that sounded too aggressive or masculine in favor of balance and subtlety." Here emerges the evolution of a "passive girl becoming queen of the underworld," of "going really deep down into the darkest places emotionally and then coming back up," edges shimmering. In a time where our collective dreaming seems to be on decline, Chthonic sparks out into the manufactured darkness, piercing the veil and letting in much needed light. AHC: What has this journey in music, so far, been like for you, the highs and the lows, and what life lessons do you feel you've picked up along the way? Julia: When I first started to pursue music as a career in my early 20s I was really unsure about it. I didn't know if I had any real talent, I hadn't developed any stage presence and my songwriting wasn't very good. I felt very insecure, but I also felt curious about what might happen if I continued and could develop as an artist. I felt I had something to say. I'm 29 now, and every year has been slowly more and more empowering. I don't really worry about whether I have a right to be an artist anymore. I feel like I am beginning to work with music in a way that feels more like a confident exploration rather than having so many doubts. This album was a big step forward in all of that. I had to trust myself while navigating territory. Sometimes it feels like making art can be reduced to just being able to trust your gut in any and all circumstances--trusting yourself to make a series of artistic decisions. AHC: What first drew you to music and what was your early musical environment like growing up? Were there pivotal songs for you then that just floored you the moment you heard them? Julia: My parents are music lovers and some of my earliest musical memories are of my mom putting on Stevie Wonder and Joni Mitchell records and my dad putting on Bill Evans and Ahmad Jamal records. "Ladies of the Canyon" was incredibly inspiring to me and still is. Imagining all of the beautiful ladies living their lives in a beautiful place and being creative in their personal spaces. I also remember hearing "Here Comes the Sun" for the first time in a movie theater and thinking it was the most beautiful song I'd ever heard. I got an alarm clock radio in elementary school and it was always on, playing Mazzy Star, the Cranberries and all that great, sensitive 90s music. AHC: Do you remember the first song that you ever wrote or played? Or that first moment when you picked up a pen and realized that you could create whole worlds just by putting it to paper? Julia: The first songs I wrote were simple instrumentals on piano. I remember it always felt very natural. I took piano lessons while growing up and later guitar and my teachers would ask me to play them my songs and were very encouraging. I did have a moment while on vacation with my family. We were walking down the street in Paris and I realized I could write music in my head and hear music that wasn't there. I also remember going to music class in elementary school and disguising my voice to sound like the other children's voices and then going home later and singing to myself and realizing that my voice could do what I wanted it to and that that might not be normal. I also sang in church and was in musicals as a kid and was given solos and made to feel very special for my voice. I loved singing for people. AHC: Which musicians have you learned the most from? Or writers, artists, filmmakers etc? Julia: Alela Diane was a revelation for me. Her album Dry Grass and Shadows was the first music I had heard that I thought--that's what I want. That's where I want to go. I learned lots of her songs to try and understand how her chords worked. Sibylle Baier was a similar experience. I couldn't believe Colour Green the first time I heard it. My friend sent me a link to it and I listened to it about ten times lying in bed. I began tuning my guitar down like hers and began to use chords like hers as well. That vein of almost extremely personal songwriting, in a folk tradition, but with with a more dreamy, modern quality really appeals to me. I'm also inspired by Julia Cameron and Brenda Ueland as well as Sofia Coppola and Woody Allen. All of these people share the attitude that art is about play and not judging yourself. Creating worlds, trusting yourself, trying new things and having fun. They all helped free me up and have a healthier relationship with art. AHC: What do you think makes for a good song, as you're writing and composing, is there a sudden moment when you know you've found the right mix, that perfect angle of light, so to speak? Julia: I like to record and listen back as I write. I feel that it all comes down to how it feels to listen to the song rather than play it. Sometimes it's more fun to play a complicated song, but a simpler version just sounds better and is the better choice. I like to write very freely and record it all as I go. Then I listen back and see if anything rings out. I'll often start with a ten or twelve minute ramble and then pick out my favorite words and favorite chords progressions. I'll keep listening back from time to time and keep refining and rerecording new versions of the song. Then there's always this moment about a month into a process where the song either will stand the test of time--or not. Probably 80% of my songs don't. AHC: This new album, Chthonic, is inspired by Persephone, a dark journey/ a rebirth, could you talk a little about how these themes came together for you and what they mean for you personally and artistically? Julia: I've experienced intense periods of depression and periods of being in living situations and environments that did not work for me. And periods where I felt extremely isolated from the people around me. I think the Persephone myth appeals to me so much because I relate to that experience of going really deep down into the darkest places emotionally and then coming back up--of having those dual realities. I think seeing those experiences as part of a greater story really helps me. And also seeing those dark moments as something that could become empowering rather than something that's just a nuisance or something shameful. Persephone goes from being a sort of passive girl to becoming queen of the underworld. I do feel that experiencing pain can empower and enrich your life, and it can take you from being passive to being more proactive as you figure out what doesn't work for you and what does. You appreciate the good moments and the good things that happen to you so much more. For me, experiencing deep unhappiness has given my experiences of happiness a lot of potency, and I really value that. AHC: Do you consider music to be a type of healing art, the perfect vehicle through which to translate a feeling, a state of rupture/rapture, hope lost and regained? Does the writing and creating of the song save you in the kinds of ways that it saves us, the listener? Julia: Yes, especially if I'm going through a painful period. If you can express what you're feeling and make something beautiful out of it, especially just after writing a song, I do feel the pain gets trasmuted and it feels wonderful. And songs can be informative as well--they can be a sort of therapist. Sometimes they'll tell you things you haven't acknowledged yet, like letting you know a relationship is toxic or has ended before you've even begun to see it. AHC: What are your fondest musical memories? In your house? In your neighborhood or town? On-tour, on-the-road? Julia: My fondest musical memories have been the shows where I lose myself and feel like I'm really giving something and the audience is going along with me. Also those songwriting moments where I feel so jazzed about what I've created. Both are sort these empowering, out of body experiences that I really live for and I feel are really the reason I'm doing this. Working on Chthonic was also one of my fondest memories. Working with Dan Duszynski, who played Drums and Bass on the record and produced it, was such a creative and intense experience. We both cared so much about getting it right, and trying all sorts of creative ideas out while slowly getting each song to that perfect place was such an incredible experience. I've had so many wonderful evenings playing shows with friends in Austin, and going to my friends' shows. I'm so thankful for the music community here. I'm not exaggerating when I say that my friends are the most talented musicians I know. To spend time with them is such a privilege. They've taught me so much. AHC: When you set out to write a song, how much does 'where the world is' in its current moment, culturally, politically, otherwise, influence the kinds of stories you set out to tell? Julia: I think that influence is always there. I think each song has the personal and the meta/universal in it. And I do think that when you're writing as a woman, about your relationships and your life and the things you long for, that that's inherently political. I feel that a woman making art itself is political because you're sharing an alternate view of the world, and it often turns the 'standard' world on it's head or sees things very differently. Even my song Eternally. It's about ambivalence towards marriage. The desire for it and feeling also repelled by it and wanting to run away with your dearest friend instead. I feel that's politcal. It's about how we have these traditions like marriage that we idealize as a society, but at the same time historically marriages haven't been ideal for women. Marriage used to mean stripping your rights, your property, your voice even. So I think it's natural to feel confused about that. AHC: Do you have any words of advice for other musicians and singer-songwriters out there who are just starting out and trying to find their voice and their way in this world? What are the kinds of things that you tell yourself when you begin to have doubts or are struggling with the creative process? Julia: I would reach out to other musicians in your area. See who is playing at local venues you like and see if you can meet them for a drink or play a show with them. I think music so so communal and it comes down to groups of friends supporting each other. Whether that's in one venue or one city or it's national or international, it's about supporting each other and feeling inspired about each other. I think it can be hard for musicians to reach out when they're starting out because musicians are often introverted, but I think the best thing you could do is find people you could encourage, support and believe in and who feel the same about you. These days when I have doubts and am struggling with my art or my ideas about how my life should be going, I think of all the things I have. It sounds corny but it works. I list all the things that are going well, all the people that I love, all the friendships that I treasure. I think being an artist is all about becoming, but it's important to not future trip too much. For more information visit Julia's website at www.julialucille.com/ Chthonic comes out April 7th on Keeled Scales. Preorder by visiting www.keeledscales.com/ 2/14/2017 0 Comments Three poems by John D RobinsonTHE VERY, VERY OLD TIMER Within a few moments she noticed my finger rings as genuine works of the Navajo Nation and right away told me that in her past lives she had lived as a native american, not once, but twice and she could see my native american profile- aura and feel my distant heritage back in peaceful and harmonious times in north america before european whites invaded and introduced their treacherous trash and diseases into the inhabitants lives in the most deadliest and ugliest of ways; ‘Throughout the centuries I’ve seen so much tragedy and cruelty and I’ve seen so many inspirational rainbows’ she told me looking over my shoulder; I dropped my dead cigarette into an ashtray ‘I’ve no doubt’ I said ‘Ancient Egypt was simply amazing! and Cleopatra!’ she said; ‘Listen’ I said , ‘ ‘I’m sorry but I’ve got to go, I need to take a piss, then find my wife, I’ve got a sense that she may need me right now’ THE UNANNOUNCED VISIT Theresa was several years younger and we’d been lovers for just a few weeks; she had a beautiful pair of pert breasts with wonderfully inverted nipples and I took her on an unannounced visit to meet my father, he answered the door and he was drunk and he was dressed in a fake-fur women’s shawl and little else; he welcomed us in and we stepped into the apartment to see his wife, high and fucked-up on numerous chemicals, dancing half-ass naked to some Jerry Lee Lewis; Theresa didn’t say a word, she didn’t even look at me, she turned around and walked out of the scene forever; I sat down and joined the party, ‘Who was the woman?’ my dad asked, ‘Someone who doesn’t appreciate Jerry Lee Lewis’ I said, he nodded his head and Theresa was forgotten. AIR RIFLE I felt bad the moment I pulled the trigger, I heard a soft thud and watched as the small sparrow tumbled, flaying its tiny wings in fear and panic through the dense gorse bush; I lost sight of the poor thing but could hear it writhing on the ground, fighting, holding on to its last and I felt a painful and horrible shame and I was 13 years old beginning to encounter myself and the cruelty within and without and I knew right there and then, that it would be something I’d battle with for the rest of my days. ----------------------- Image - www.flickr.com/photos/40745211@N00/ Bio: John D Robinson is a published poet; ‘When You Hear The Bell, There’s Nowhere To Hide’ (Holy&intoxicated Publications 2016) Cowboy Hats & Railways’ (Scars Publications 2016); a contributor to the 2016 48th Street Press Broadside Series; his work appears widely in the small press and online literary journals including Rusty Truck; Red Fez; Outlaw Poetry; Bareback Lit; Degenerate Literature; The Commonline Journal; Haggard & Halloo; Beatnik Cowboy; Boyslut; Anti Heroin Chic; In Between Hangovers; Grandma Moses Press; Yellow Mama; Hobo Camp Review; Eunoia Review; Zombie Logic Review; Rats Ass Review; Sentinel Literary Quarterly; A Cavalcade Of Stars; Dead Snakes; Hand Job Zine; Horror Sleaze and Trash; Outsider Poetry; Your One Phone Call; Spokes; Grandma Moses Press; Down In The Dirt Magazine; Walking Is Still Honest Press; he is married and lives in the UK with his wife. 2/13/2017 0 Comments Three poems by Kenneth P. GurneySnowflake In Summer Leon drank a quart of stars out of the milky way. He had a half-dozen double-stuff Oreos to wash down. Some of the stars in that quart were segments of constellations where lines are drawn to connect the academic illustrations. All the prognosticators of heavenly inspired horoscopes learned in earnest what thrown for a loop meant. Leon spent an hour and seven minutes on his smart phone search engine trying to determine if the Milky Way was whole, skim or non-fat. Leon then wondered why the Native American Indians did not drink quarts of white men and white women to wash down packages of Dancing Deer Baking Company triple chocolate chip gourmet cookies and return the antelope and buffalo to the great plains. Pregnant Turning forty years old Leon ended up crawling home when balance failed his two feet and his blurred visual acuity sometimes misidentified dog shit as rocks. No one on the streets past bar-time stopped to help Leon home or help him up but one ne’er do well helped himself to Leon’s wallet when Leon crawled into the darkened driveway that leads to his upper apartment. The night birds watched the whole robbery without guilt as they wished the two men to clear the darkened alley so the mice would brave the outdoors on their way toward the dumpster. After the thief jumped back into an idling mustang muscle car Leon pulled himself up on the down spout and his hand started to swell up from an itsy-bitsy spider bite. Leon made it to his porch couch and crashed into the cushions disturbing the sleeping birds in the ivy and dreamed himself pregnant with a tabby cat unaware his body landed upon and nearly smothered a stray enjoying the comfort of the porch couch cushions. I Slew It I slew it. The embroidered dragon in my mind. A simple set of standard stitches undone, undoes what holds me together. I forgot the indoctrination song and the litanies of Tammany Hall politicians. When I thought cleanliness was next to godliness it never occurred to me scrubbing my skin off was a misinterpretation. I slew it. The embroidered touch at the edge of memory. Not by scissors. But by unraveling each repressed neuron at the seam. The golden ratio fails my hands to make a godly instrument. Which song of wool will set the past down in the past as well as virtue. As well as my eyes following a pulse of lights there and back again. ---------------------- Image - Chiara Stevani https://www.flickr.com/photos/stevanichiara/ Bio: Kenneth P. Gurney lives in Albuquerque, NM, USA with his beloved Dianne. His latest collection of poems is Stump Speech (2015). He runs the poetry blog Watermelon Isotope. His personal website is at kpgurney.me. the protection of important things In Shaden's world we encounter layers of metaphor that carry lives of their own, sometimes revealed, often not. The great mystery here is intact and part of the encounter with these images is about leaving us open to ourselves. Not all art achieves this state as seamlessly or as beautifully, though sometimes painfully, as Brooke Shaden does. Taking inner states and casting them out like a net into dark waters, it is the environment, the landscape that gets caught up in the catch. The two come through intertwined, almost indiscernible, personal narrative, myth, idiom, and above all mystery. Imagine Virginia Woolf and Carl Jung, out of a shared, unshakable longing, setting out to sea in search of the great, beautiful, terrible unknown. Their suitcases, upon return, would be filled with photographs such as these. Each one fragments, captured states of all that may be fleeting yet is still so necessary. AHC: What first drew you to art? Was there a specific moment in your life or turning point where it became clear to you that you were being called to create? Brooke: I have always felt like creating was an intrinsic part of myself. I never considered that I wouldn't lead a life centered around creating, though photography was not always my focus. My first passion was writing, which turned to filmmaking in high school when I took a course that I loved. I went to college and studied Filmmaking and English Literature and graduated with degrees in both. Right around the time of graduating, however, I had a creative breakthrough. I had been creating short films that were dark, creepy, and surreal but never fully connected with the process. I love to work alone and create quickly, but film doesn't allow for both of those things to happen. I found myself frustrated with not being able to get all of my ideas out. That was when a friend called me up and asked if I wanted to take self-portraits with her, since we lived in different states and didn't see each other much. I thought it would be fun so I pieced my equipment together and began taking self-portraits in my small apartment in Philadelphia. After the first few shots I was absolutely hooked, and I never looked back. It was the first time in my life where I felt completely free - from collaboration, from constraint, and from judgment. waiting for mother AHC: Could you talk some about your overall process, themes & inspirations? Brooke: My process is very rooted in theme. I love to think of one or two words that encompass the message of the image and then plan from there. For example, some themes that I love to deal with are "life vs. death", "decay", and "fragility". Other slightly happier themes would be "finding hope in darkness", or "overcoming adversity". Given the theme, I then start to ask myself why I am drawn to that message and what statement, specifically, I am trying to make. After I have the "why" down, I begin to ask the literal questions, such as what prop/wardrobe/color/location (etc.) would bring this theme to life. From there I create the image and usually spend about 2-4 hours average in Photoshop after. the world above AHC: Who are some of your artistic influences? Is there anyone outside of the art world whose work has impacted your own, or who just generally inspire you, writers, filmmakers, musicians etc? Brooke: Yes absolutely! I love books and paintings very much. My favorite book is Dune by Frank Herbert (I even have a quote from it tattooed on my arm). I love anyone who can create totally unique worlds while still maintaining an interesting and important message. I love the Pre-Raphaelite painters as a visual inspiration. My favorite movie is Pan's Labyrinth which inspires me endlessly for the visual representation of theme. catharsis AHC: One of my favorite pieces of yours is one entitled 'catharsis,' visually it's amazing but also metaphorically it feels very meaningful and layered, could you talk some about the inspiration behind this piece? Brooke: Thank you for saying so, as it was my personal favorite piece that I created in 2016. It felt more personal than the rest of my images. I remember really feeling like I looked like that on that particular day. It was unnerving and refreshing to feel something so deeply and then accurately represent that in an image. I remember feeling like my skin was crawling. I felt like I was not myself, like I was just a hollowed version of her. So, I created an image with stuffing coming out of my back. It was sort of the visual representation of "having the stuffing knocked out of you". To me, there are infinite ways of telling a single story. For this image, I chose for it to take place in a bed due to the intimate nature of the space. It felt like peeking into someone's private world. The lighting had the effect of making the situation seem very poignant and reflective. And the deep blue colors gave an overall feeling of melancholy, as did the hunched pose. finding your place among the stars AHC: You've written that self portraiture is not autobiographical in your mind and work, that it's the environment that tells a different story or changes the meaning and layers of the work, could you talk some about the role environment has played in your art as both a driving force and narrative tool? Brooke: I have a strong belief that in a lot of art, there are many elements that go into making an image successful. There is prop, theme, color, location, wardrobe, character, pose, etc. All of those things are present, therefore they all need to have meaning and articulate the story. When we focus so much on what we are feeling and how we personally would portray that, the story can turn into something so personal that it doesn't translate. I create for myself, yes, but very much for other people to feel their emotions more deeply. So, instead of focusing on how I feel and how I would do something, I try to put equal emphasis on all elements so that they work together to universally tell a story. Environment in particular is important to me because it mixes my personal sense of inspiration with a timeless beauty that I think my work needs. For example, I am very drawn to forests. I love being surrounded by trees and creeks and dirt. It is my happy place. But it is also timeless. It is also dark and mysterious. And those are elements that play to my advantage in my work, so it ticks all boxes. character of the world AHC: What is the first work of art you encountered that took your breath away? Brooke: I was in 6th grade, so about 11 years old, and my school class took a trip to an art museum. We were told to walk around, choose one piece of art that we loved, and to write about it. I settled on a piece, which I'm not sure was a photograph or a painting, of a man's arm. It was very simply his arm with rope tied very tightly around it. I remember finding a beautiful and honest balance between strength and weakness. in and of earth AHC: Are there times when you become blocked creatively? What do you do to rekindle inspiration? Brooke: I can say honestly that my creativity is never blocked, but sometimes it is not fresh. I can always find an idea, but that idea isn't always up to par with where I think I should be in my creativity or career. The times when I feel I don't want to create are when my desires and dreams have moved beyond the ideas I can come up with easily. I want there to always be some tension in the creation process. Usually I take a short break. I spend more time reading or watching movies and doing things that inspire me. I always spend more time asking myself WHY. That is the all-important question that, when answered thoroughly, gives birth to better ideas. holding on to broken pieces
AHC: Do you have any upcoming exhibits or new projects you'd like to tell people about? Brooke: Yes! I have an exhibition up right now of my newest series in New York City (Chelsea) at the JoAnne Artman Gallery. I'll be announcing my third annual Promoting Passion Convention soon, which I'd love to meet new people at. It is a coming together of an incredible community with inspirational speakers and educators. 2/10/2017 0 Comments Three Poems by Donna DallasJaded See me now no longer the lost fragile insecure child that clung to you like a lollipop. Sweet. You were so sweet. Me I was never sweet or sugary like your lollipop lies. I was too messy and raggedy with dark circles under my eyes from staying up all night to wait. What was I waiting for? Thanks anyway for letting me lick you like a tootsie pop—I lapped away trying to reach your chewy center. My gums are raw and my lips crusted from trying to suck sweetness out of you. All I ever got was semen. Melted I’ll try once more to be buttery sweet and soft let it all go start anew try deep breath come undone try calm the nerves seep into deep space melt stars I never get out of my head enough to realize I am nothing save the few bits of blood and bone I’ve left squandered all the rest on something radical I believed as love call it madness I go again Disco Queen Your blonde hair has flopped, sticky bangs pasted to your forehead. A messy blend of blue black has smeared under your eyes and your underarms are sweaty and stained. Men have checked out your tits, they have rubbed their cocks up against you on the dance-floor. They spilled their vodka and cranberry on your black high-heeled boots. They bought you chardonnay and tried to get you out into the parking lot. You’ve had your fame for the night. You end up giving some guy your real phone number in the hopes that he won’t end up being an asshole and now it’s 4:00 A.M. in the morning and you look like shit. The last song is playing and you’re all alone with cigarette butts and empty beer bottles. ---------------- Image - lauren rushing www.flickr.com/photos/white_ribbons/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/2.0/ Bio: Donna studied Creative Writing and Philosophy at NYU. She meandered about before she became a successful business woman, married and mothered 2 beautiful children. Donna is passionate and deeply inspired by the works of Sharon Olds, Sylvia Plath, Allan Ginsberg, Robert Creeley, Jayne Anne Phillips, Mary Karr, Denis Johnson to name a few. In their raw honesty and bare bones she has found her own niche and has been inspired over and over again to continue to seek out her voice. Her life is a paradox of cryptic and dark melded into alive and bold. She has written down events from scribbles to journals. Over the years she has documented lives growing up poor, witnessing drugs, prostitution, overdoses and death. She has bundled stories of lives that fell apart in front of her or with her. She’s been compelled since her youth to open it up onto paper, with pen. Donna has been published in Mud Fish, Nocturnal Lyric, The Café Review, The New York Quarterly and was lucky enough to study under William Packard back in the day. She took a slight hiatus and can most recently found in 34th Parallel. Sarah White became involved with the growing music community in Charlottesville and played in several bands towards the end of the 90's (White Trash Cookin', Pat Nixon, Miracle Penny). At the time the record label Jagjaguwar was based out of Charlottesville (before moving to Indiana to merge with Secretly Canadian) and released her first solo album in 1997, a collection of lo-fi four-track recordings made over a 3-year period dubbed All My Skies Are Blue. In 2000, she released her second album, also on Jagjaguwar, entitled Bluebird which was more melodic and was recorded in a studio. The record garnered her a wide range of positive reviews and comparisons to artists like Cat Power and Edith Frost. Later that year she recorded and self-released Pickin' Strummin' And Singin'... The Versatile Sarah White which was a collection of early country standards and traditional songs. After remaining fairly quiet for the next several years, Sarah White returned with a new band, Sarah White & the Pearls, in 2004 with the self-released You're It EP which focused even further on melodic writing and incorporated the more traditional folk and country song structures. In 2006 she completed her next full-length album with The Pearls, White Light, which was released by Antenna Farm Records. She also performs with Sían Richards in the Acorn Sisters. Of her record Bluebird, The San Francisco Bay Guardian wrote: “A delicately bare and pretty album that ensures the singer-songwriter a place in the company of Cat Power’s Chan Marshall and Edith Frost. Yep, that good.” And Dave Matthews has written “Sarah’s music kills me, beautifully from the ground up, no plastic.” AHC: What has this journey, this life in music been like for you, the highs and the lows, and what life lessons do you feel you've picked up along the way? Sarah: My musical journey - if there has been one - has been rather haphazard. I’ve had many different iterations of myself with different bands along the way. I’ve played some big stages but then still gig in coffee shops or bars because that’s what I’m able to get together right now. I never found it possible to support myself solely through music - that used to feel like a failure somehow. But I’m older and wiser now and I realize it’s an incredibly hard life, one that very few people are able to master. That’s a good lesson. Don’t beat yourself up, just do what you can, and of course: keep writing. AHC: What first drew you to music and what was your early musical environment like growing up? Were there pivotal songs for you then that just floored you the moment you heard them? Sarah: My dad was into early country and bluegrass. We listened to a lot of his records -- most of which are now in my collection -- Bill Monroe, Stanley Brothers, Country Gentlemen, etc. My mom is more of a ‘60s folk rocker: Dylan, CSNY, Graham Parsons, Janis Joplin, Linda Ronstadt, Emmy Lou, etc. so I grew up with all of the above. My first album was My Tennessee Mountain Home by Dolly Parton. The intro is a recitation of a letter she wrote to her folks after leaving home for Nashville, followed by a bevy of songs recollecting sweet childhood memories. These images fit right in to where and how we lived, in rural West Virginia, with the fireflies and butterflies, “when the evening shadows fall”…. I listened to that record over and over, holding tight the album with beautiful Dolly on the back cover, crying my eyes out in our huge yellow arm chair. I was only 5 but I do recall the full weight of the words and music on my heart. Imagine my joy at finally catching Dolly Parton live at the Hollywood Bowl in October. When she sang Tennessee Mountain Home it was like heaven. AHC: Do you remember the first song that you ever wrote? Sarah: Yes. I can still play it too. It’s the first song that my friends started requesting back in high school…. They say angels are made of fire and ice Little boys made of sugar and spice Some people say Elvis is alive Walking the streets of Memphis… AHC: Who are some of your musical inspirations? Sarah: Dolly Parton, Blondie, Bee Gees, the Stanley Brothers, Bob Dylan, Beatles, Janis Joplin. This is the stuff I got way into at one time or another in my early years … And of course, my dad and all the folks who sat around playing music in my early years. AHC: What do you think makes for a good song, as you're writing and composing, is there a sudden moment when you know you've found the right mix, the perfect angle of light, so to speak? Sarah: I don’t have a strong ritual, a true process in place for writing. This is something I am always working on. The little moments - the flash of some inexplicable truth or the perfect turn of phrase - come fairly easily if I am open and receptive. The hard part is maintaining that effortlessness, i.e. not killing that perfect moment, in the process of capturing it. AHC: Do you consider music to be a type of healing art, the perfect vehicle through which to translate a feeling, a state of rupture, hope lost and regained? As a listener of music I have this impression, I wonder, as the artist, the creator, do you have this feeling about the power of song? Sarah: I believe this is true. Making music and writing songs was always a healing act for me. My songs are very much ripped from my own life/internal/processing. That being said, I feel like I hide enough behind my words that my songs are open to interpretation - that they can belong to the listener - and they are NOT about me. I could be completely wrong about this. AHC: What are your favorite on-tour, on-the-road memories? Sarah: Thinking.... AHC: Do you have any words of advice for young musicians and singer-songwriters out there who are trying to find their voice and their way in this world? Sarah: Not sure I do really. I feel like I’m still a young musician and songwriter trying to find my voice. Funny huh? But here’s a few things I’ve learned
AHC: Do you have any new projects in motion you'd like to tell people about? Sarah: Yes! I did a Kickstarter in 2015 to raise money for a new record. It’s being mixed right now and I’m very excited about it. I think it’s the best sounding record I’ve made. It’s got some old tracks, some new tracks; it’s basically a collection of my best songs re-imagined with the help of a talented producer. Speaking of Dolly Parton, I just sang on the Wrinkle Neck Mules version of one of her songs Down From Dover. It’s up on their page right now for download… https://wrinkleneckmules.bandcamp.com/album/entierro-2 --------------- Visit Sarah's website for more http://sarah-white.com/ |
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