BOOK DESIGN || ILLUSTRATION
Peter Sis | Wonderfully intricate design from an MacArthur Grant recipient | They may be children's books that are being marketed, but they are beautiful in detail |

PERFORMING ARTS
Images this section ©2004 | fabulous dance theatre
Giselle | Fabulous Beast Dance Theatre | We saw Michael Keegan-Dolan's interpretation of Giselle at Yale's "Department for the Drama" and came out every bit convinced that we just saw a titally new take on theatre, dance and Irish drama | I thought it was an Irish Greek Tragedy, elaborately performed yet with only symbolic, and minimalist, staging | Powerful, poweful imagry that kept my attention rapt the whole time | It made a whole lot more sense after coming home and reading a historic synopsis of the ballet [first performed in Paris in 1841] but it was still riveting even without knowing the history |
     The story of the pitiful, dismal life of the innocent Giselle, imprisoned in a dark, cruel town of frustrated, venal, petty, yet passionate bakwards villagers [and especially by her demented, retarded incest-driven brother Hilariaon] Their lives briefly lifted each week with the spark and verve coming from the erotically charged country line dance teacher, Albrecht | Albrecht was equal opportunity seducer, giong first after the mute Giselle, but taking any interested party available, including the shy and handsome town butcher Patrick |
     Further peopled by the sadistic nurse Mary, as well as Giselle's distant, phone pole sitting father [serving as a lone "Greek Chorus" to update the audience with the story's twists and turns] the tale is grating and fierce |
     But it's the dancing that draws you in | Lithe and beautiful, [especially the duets between Giselle and Albrecht] and shows that Giselle can have joy and beauty in her tortured, troubled life | The Line dancing seqeunces seemed a gifted Irish choreographer's take on American Cowboy pop-culture skillfully intermixed with traditional Irish jig dancing [move over Riverdance, there's no comparison here] | The dance is joyful ...JOYFUL! |
     Chock-full with profanity, violence and obscene language, the spectacle of the tragic story nevertheless doesn't get hidden by such diversions | Lyrical and beautiful and sad | Gentle viewers might take heed in this notice, and there are several powerful, extended raw enactments of sexual encounters, cartoonish in depiction [perhaps] yet far more realistic and exotic than most any porn film I've ever seen or heard about | When Nurse Mary basically rape/seduces the butcher Pat while mending a cauterized finger, the scene is not just hilarious but very erotic | I can see why this made such a stir at the Dublin Theatre Festival |
     Giselle dies tragically, victim of an insane jealousy by her brother toward the suitor Albrecht | Her come-uppance is in the last part of the performance, during a chilling almost mystical sequence in the graveyard where, together with the ghosts of other young women dashed to death before their time, the spirits [the wilies, according to Slavic and Russian lore] first lure the mad brother, and smother him to death by seduction |
     One final bit player in this morality play, is the Church, itself absent of presence and involvement in the daily events, but imposing its judgement in the end by denying poor Giselle a proper burial in sanctified grounds | Why? because she'd had "relations with a stranger"! | As in life, the Church stays involved via force feeding opinions by virtue of power, not forgiveness |
     I'd go see it again, and again and again and again | The dancing -when it comes- is exquiste and beautiful | It's a whole new experience in dance | What I've said thus far is mere narration of events | In fact, what goes on before your eyes is sure to impact on dance, theatre and drama for years to come |

Neil Welliver | The first time I ever saw a Neil Welliver print I was stunned! A
six foot square presentation of raw wilderness resting on the wall of a hotel where I worked as a night shift security guard. Having moved to the city from the high peaks region of the Adirondacks, it was a breath of fresh woodlands air right there on the wall. The hotel actually owned six of these prints of Welliver's, and they kept me refreshed and gladdened whenever I saw them || A couple of years later, while still working at the hotel, I had the chance to more intently study Welliver's works in a book that was on display in some traveling book show. (I should have bought it). For a week I read each night about him and his approach to producing images. The lesson continued from there || Welliver has been enthusiatically praised as the "landscape artist's landscape artist." He recognized as a 20th century "realist" painter yet actually credits his style ~in part~ to the abstract artists of that same century || In truth, his images work because of what he does not display in the image || He allows the viewer's eye to decide for itself, what is displayed and what is missing. No small feat, indeed! Welliver often works in a square, rather than rectangular image. He'll start with 24x24 inch studies in preparation for working up to 6 foot square prints, like those I first saw years back ||

But the essays they take you to don't give you a fair sense of who Welliver is as a person. And for that,
I want to tell a story about him (anecdotal). Seems he was questioned about his career as an artist
and a painter. GIven that he's in the wilderness a great deal of time, he was questioned
about such a profession being, well, a bit fey. To which he commented, that as a man who goes out
in the wilderness with paints and water and brushes, works for hours at a time doing on-site
studies, often in the cold of winter, frequently using water based paints, well, seems
that standing outdoors exposed to the elements for hours at a time, freezing, carrying his own
supplies, there didn't seem to be anything more macho than that!

Rockwell Kent | While sort of aimlessly surfing sites about a couple of different artists, I stumbled upon a wealth of sites about the artist Rockwell Kent | I've long admiered his work, as well as his indomitable spirit | And it takes very little encouragement (none, actually) to spend a moment telling you all about one of my most favorite artists |

     Now, to bring you up to speed on this, Much of the time I spent was while looking at a remarkable site devoted to Kent's work that was put up by Doug Capra, a history and writing professor at Kenai College, up in the Kenai Peninsula Borough School District | I wrote Capra about his site | Herewith I share what I wrote |


     Coming across the pages -this evening- that you've put up about Rockwell Kent's time in Alaska was a breath of fresh air for me. And I read what you have written thus far on your play, which I gather you have already had at least part of it performed. Hope it was well received ...or is he still getting bad press in Alaska?

     And since I was able to enjoy another's perspective on an artist I have for many years enjoyed, I thought it only fair to share with you a brief encounter with Mr. Kent, albeit, posthumosly; he being represented by his widow, Sally |

     I was, at the time, working for a printing company (Denton Publications) in the Adirodacks back in the late 1970s. One Christmas season it was my job to come up with a center spread "Christmas Card" that would be published in all the 10 papers the company printed each week | One thing was certain was that everybody was tired of having head shots of themselves with some holly and wreaths on the side | Since I was handy at pen and ink sketching myself, I was assigned to come up with something new |

     At the same time, I had recently seen a show at Lake Placid Arts Center that was comprised of many different Christmas cards created by Kent for friends, family, corporations and just as concepts for cards | I quickly saw that whatever I would do wouldn't hope to match up with the beauty of Kent's possibly "minor" works | My idea, then, was to see if we could get permission to print a card or two as the centerpiece in the papers | I had no idea what I was getting into |

     I got the gumption up, looked in the phone book, and called Sally Kent Gorton at Asgaard Farms | She said she'd be delighted to have me come visit and see what might be suitable |


     I expected to stay an hour or so. I spent the entire day |

     She graciously showed me around their home, the one built after the fire in 1969, pointing out a vast array of paintings, prints, raw sketches, stage designs (for an opera, Peer Gynt) that he had done and were still at home |

     Because it was cold, the studio was closed, but after the tour of the home, she left me alone in a room filled with drawered cases of works on paper | She apologized for the work being so disorganized and told me I would have to look through the darwes to find the images I fet I needed |

     The rest of the day I was left alone with the collection | It was like being thrown in a cave of riches and told
to look at whatever I pleased | When I was through, I'd pared it down to some two dozen images, which she then entrusted me to take with me for a week so the printing company could reproduce them | She asked only that the paper print a proper copyright notice as the Estate was having troubles with an unnamed but prestigious publishing house in New York City that had apparently taken to publishing works of her late husband without even a scintilla of permission or credit, profiting from the sale of reproductions of work without proper payment |

     At the paper, it was difficult to pick out which ones would go larger which would not | We opted to print them all | One of them, a cross section of a family's home at Christmas, was the cover image |

     When I brought them back, she again thanked me and gave me a print of Kent's of the Upper Jay, NY covered bridge, only a few miles from Asgaard | I thought I should be thanking her |

     Later, I was to receive two gifts | One of them one of the few remaining signed copies of N X E, the other, an 1890s edition of William Blake's "Jerusalem" with two different bookplates on the inside page | A letter was enclosed noting "...the book had survived two marriages and a fire and that whenever I got tired of doing hand lettering to look at these things for inspiration..." |


     I still do |

     I also further marvel, to this day, how both the power and generosity of Rockwell Kent survived all this time, well after his passing from this realm |

     While I was disappointed in not learning what or how the play concludes, what I read so far has me hoping to some day read the rest | If you haven't already done so, I hope you can complete your play about Rockwell Kent | I recognize though, that, sometimes, any thoughtful project can take years to complete |

     It seems so important that people do what they can to preserve and make known the work and life of this exciting human being | How much richer we all are for the vibrance of his life, and for the ability he had in being able to chronicle it so skillfully |

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for more info on Rockwell Kent:
Plattsburgh State's Rockwell Kent Gallery | Rockwell Kent Wilderness Homepage by Doug Capra | Smithsonian Magazine article The Stormy Petrel of American Art | Artcylopedia's Rockwell Kent entry | The Hermitage Museum collection

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plein air painting | without a doubt, painting directly onsite outdoors, is my favorite method of painting | I'm required to work quickly, with available light, and taking into account that I might not have the luxury (a dubious one, I think) of a broad color pallette with which to work | So the Adirondack trip taken recently was ideally suited for me | Forget the black flies, they were a minor distraction at 13th lake, but did not drive me away |
     It is perhaps not surprising that I am drawn to painters like Neil Welliver, who once said that painting outdoors was one of the most "macho" professions: exposed to unpredictable weather conditions, have to carry supplies (which weigh a lot more than the non-painter might think) in and out of the wilderness, the temperature variants can mess with the fluidity of the media one works in | Point being here, less about endurance than making note of an exhibition at the Alexander Gallery [in NYC] set to end in June but now extended to 2 july 04 |
     All this said, you may find it disconcerting that the image here is neither from my recent 13th Lake trip [images still not scanned] nor anything of Welliver's | There's links here to his work, go to them | What you see here is a pix I did at night while cabin camping in New Hampshire | The cabins are no longer there, sold to developers for condos, sadly, but the image remains |