POETSBURGH is back! Open Thread's series of emerging poets in iconic spaces returns this Friday, December 12th, at the University of Pittsburgh's English Nationality Room in the Cathedral of Learning. We're also thrilled to announce that Weave Magazine is now partnering with us on this reading series, and that their first edition will be for sale at the event!
Four local readers - Tom Laskow, Molly Prosser, Dan Shapiro, and Michelle Stoner - will read selections from their work. There is just a suggested donation of $5 at the door that will benefit upcoming events and projects by both organizations, and did we mention that the Cathedral will be decked out for the holidays? So come share your yuletide spirit with OT and Weave, then join the poets at the Union Grill afterwards! Doors open at 7pm!
Dear OT Members, Supporters, and Participants,
Open Thread has come a long way since we began holding events and reading your submissions in early 2007. Since then, we've held more fun-filled Variety fundraisers, established a new reading series - POETSBURGH - with Weave Magazine, and created the OT Blog. This month we're launching the online preview of the Open Thread Regional Review, Vol. 1, which goes to print this January!
We may be wary of open displays of sentiment, but our success is due to you, dear reader. Maybe you've participated in our events or submitted your work online for our consideration. Perhaps you've simply done us the crucial service of paying the suggested donation at events. Whatever the case, when Vol. 1 goes to print, nearly 100 of your regional peers will have had their work featured by our publications, events, and blog.
Thank you.
To keep this regional arts goodness going, though, we need your continued support, and you don't have to wait until our next event to deliver! Click here now to make an online donation! Open Thread is a sponsored project of Fractured Atlas, a non-profit arts service organization. Contributions in behalf of Open Thread may be made payable to Fractured Atlas and are tax-deductible to the extent permitted by law.
2009 has even more in store for you and Open Thread, including a second volume of the Regional Review, a new regional chapbook competition, more of the events you've come to know and love, and some super secret surprises for our registered members! You want to see it all happen, don't you? Don't you? Give today.
Hello, OT Blog readers! As you may have noticed, the "Artist of the Week" feature is going on a brief hiatus for the holidays, as we here at Open Thread gear up for Poetsburgh this Friday and a very special online launch this New Year's Day! In the meantime, stay tuned to the blog for other features, including updates on Open Thread's many up-and-coming happenings, including the return of Variety, Variety, Variety!
All the best this holiday season,
The Staff of Open Thread
About Michael Mallis
Michael Mallis (yes, as in "malice") is another on our long list of artists who came to Pittsburgh for school and are still here. Fresh off his degree in Fine Arts from Carnegie Mellon, Michael - who works primarily in video and animation - is already showing his work around the region.
If you attended either of the Three Rivers Film Festival's short programs last Friday, you would have had the fortune of one of the following videos: The Pittsburgh Wing Ding Miracle, one of a small group of short films in Pittsburgh 250's Pittsburgh Reframed, or Natural Selection: The Rise of the Proletariat, which was awarded third place in the short competition.
If you missed their screenings, don't fret. Natural Selection is already up at his website, and Miracle will be added soon. If you've seen them, and you're wondering what kind of mind is behind the absurd, at times demented, animation, just give his interview (below) a read.
Straight From the Artist's Mouth!
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Michael Mallis: I already had a huge following of harem and helpers here and it would have been too costly to transport them elsewhere. I'm working on a plan now though to fit them all inside a caravan that I'll take out west with me. Mustn't forget my love of free Wing Dings every Tuesday.
OT: What does Pittsburgh offer that a larger city like Philadelphia cannot?
MM: I have a better chance of becoming mayor here than in Philly. I only need to campaign for, what like, a few hundred thousand people. Compare that to reaching over a million homes if I were to run in Philly. Also it would be easier to sell the Stillers to Cleveland. I would get shot if I tried selling the Eagles to Dallas.
OT: Your work has been featured in several festivals, including Pittsburgh's own Three Rivers Film Festival. Though your work could be described as experimental animation, it is often sandwiched between more standard fare. How do audiences react to your work? What is your intended audience?
MM: My biggest fans are the elderly. I feel it's important to try to reach them as a key audience and let the support trickle down to younger generations. Pittsburgh is heavily populated in the old, so why not be maybe the only animator catering to their interests? I'll have a monopoly on that market.
OT: As an animator, what sort of support (from institutions, other artists, etc.) have you found in the Pittsburgh area?
MM: The Church of Scientology here is very kind to me. They have helped me with all my spiritual needs and have even expressed an interest in my future fame and fortune.
OT: Though your work is concentrated mainly in media, you also make comics. How has that form influenced your own work, and where do you see those forms overlap?
MM: I would like to start making comics again, sorta like Kathy meets Dilbert because I don't feel like my work is reaching the middle-aged office-crowd demographic, the kind who love their water cooler jokes. Or I could make Dil-Kathy-Peanut cartoons.
OT: What can OT Blog readers expect to hear from you in the coming months?
MM: Great things, very great things. I've already begun an animation on the life of L. Ron Hubbard, who is a personal hero of mine, and I hope I'll be able to spread his message of pseudo-Hindu/Freudian self-help to the masses. Oh, and I just found out I won third place in the Three Rivers Film Festival Shorts Competition.
About Brian Brown
Visit Carnegie Mellon's MFA program at the College of Fine Arts, and you'll see and hear a lot about "new media," that elusive term that encompasses most video, CG, interactive work, and lots more. You'd imagine that a painter would have to be pretty special to break through in a program so focused on technological potential. And in the case of Brian Brown, you'd be correct.
Brian's visually stunning, painstakingly detailed work often tricks observers into thinking he's an inventive photographer. Instead, he's a quirky, sickeningly skilled painter, with an incredibly distinct style that resonates with critics and laymen alike. You can find three (three!) of his paintings in the forthcoming Open Thread Regional Review, Vol. 1, and you can see the rest at his flickr site. If you're interested in commissioning, buying, or featuring Brian's work (which you surely will be after viewing his work), you can reach him at bmbrown@andrew.cmu.edu.
Straight from the Artist's Mouth!
OT Blog: You've only relocated to Pittsburgh recently, in order to study painting at Carnegie Mellon's Fine Arts MFA program. What did you expect from Pittsburgh as an environment for your life and work? What sort of environment has Pittsburgh actually been?
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BB: I'm a completely narcissistic control freak and/or a pervert, apparently. No. I don't know. I think I once heard a story, or saw a movie, or read somewhere about this guy that kept a false diary in which he lied about everything that happened to him everyday. In making paintings, clearly half of what is being communicated is ABOUT PAINTING (its history, various forms of representation, etc.). Right? With that stated, the images are usually assembled because of this ongoing dialogue that I have with myself, about myself - or my thoughts on whatever I might be thinking about. Yes, I have my opinions. But they're stated in my work as if I'm whispering to myself, "I'm really not sure if I should be admitting to this."
OT: What can OT Blog readers expect to hear from you in the coming months?
BB: I'm opting to skip this question if you don't mind. No, okay, fine. I really want to build an airplane. Laugh if you will, but stranger and less likely things have happened.
Upcoming Artists of the Week, Michael Mallis and Josh Tonies (both of Pittsburgh), will be featured at 8pm this Saturday in Pittsburgh Reframed (at 250), the final event of the 2008 Three Rivers Film Festival, to be held at Regent Square Theater. Tickets, which include a reception with the artists, are $15 and available at ProArts tickets Michael's film is titled The Wing Ding Pittsburgh Miracle.
Other filmmakers include Mike Bonello, Tony Buba, Olivia Ciummo, Brian Cohen, Matthew R. Day, Patrick Francart, Carolina Loyola Garcia, Anna Hawkins, Ben Hernstrom, Charlie Humphrey, Thad Kellstadt, Brady Lewis, Jesse McLean, Gordon Nelson, Bob Rutkowski, Elizabeth Seamans, Minette Seate, Chris Smalley, and Lucian Wintrich.
About Jon Brodsky
In a stunning continuation of what's emerging as a trend with OT Blog's Artists of the Week, it's hard to tack Jon Brodsky down to one particular form. While his degree in design (Carnegie Mellon, 2005) has given Jon a solid basis for his work, he seems intent on pushing his expertise in every possible direction, for the sake of some fun and experimentation. There's music; his band, Shambolish and his solo act, JonBro, are similarly driven by Jon's distinct, innovative gameboy sound devices. As JonBro, he performed at Variety, Variety, Variety! in 2007.
Then, of course, there are his design skills, which are hardly limited to the page. As the second Flying Destructicate of Encyclopedia Destructica (We'll be featuring the first one soon!), Jon is pushing the role into new territory, including animations and experimental PowerPoint (!) - both of which he'll explain below.
For all of his output (He even blogs like us - and twitters, too!), sitting down to chat with Jon is more relaxing than you might expect. Unlike many busy, prolific artists, Jon's nature is as calm and cool as a cucumber, rarely flustered, hurried or agitated. If you didn't know him better, you might think he wasn't up to much. And you'd be wrong, dear reader. You'd be wrong.
Straight from the Artist's Mouth!
OT Blog: You moved to Pittsburgh from the Bethesda area in 2001, so that you could attend Carnegie Mellon. What made you decide to stay? What sort of environment has this been for your work?
Jon Brodsky: To a great extent, I am still here because this place is not done with me yet. I am still learning new things, and I still have many of the same problems and questions that I showed up with. On a more hopeful note, Pittsburgh is the right kind of challenge for me. I can make things happen here easier than I can get out of bed. In fact, I could probably operate everything I wanted to from bed. I don't think that is the case with many cities. Also, the spectrum of work is not yet filled here, so I can operate on a wide chunk of it and feel like I am not really stepping on anyone else's toes. This is obviously not the most perfect solution, i.e. finding other people in the city that are interested in identical forms and tools can be impossible, but it does give a wide berth for mistakes.
OT: You graduated from CMU with a degree in Design. How do you think that influences your work as an artist, if at all?
JB: What I came away from the CMU design program with was a great love for excellent tools. I get really excited when I find a tool that is fun to work with, or formats that I like. Specifically, I am really into building instruments that make the actual artmaking process less difficult to screw up. The difficult part is allowing failure into the instruments as well.
Also, the design program drove me to find ways to do more loose projects, so I got really into comic jams, and doing nonsense art and drawing. I am way more enamored with crap art now then I was when I went into the design program mostly because it is something that can't really be taught, the ability to be happy with something that you know other people will find nearly universally horrible.
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JB: I am always baffled and honored when someone enjoys what I do, but I think that [the directors] Chris [Kardambikis] and Jasdeep [Khaira] wanted to get someone that wasn't a standard print/drawing artist to take a stab at the project. Coming into it, most of my ideas were of performance or real-time pieces, and they are slowly making their way to the paper. The first big event that we hosted was called BYOPPT, a super fast lecture night. It got me increasingly more excited about the lecture format for actual art, and what you can do to create a space with just slides and a voice. I am also working on a series of animations in which I am grabbing somewhat arbitrary directions from the internet, and using them to move elements around.
OT: What can OT Blog readers expect to hear from you in the coming months?
JB: The Destructicate book in January, which will have quite the release party on approximately the 24th. On november 21, there will be a second go round with the BYOPPT. The only other big thing that I have going is turning http://fuckthatbullshit.org into a house show / mp3 / cd label on which the following releases are slated: a collection of pieces for voice and cello by my sister, Lara Brodsky, a four year retrospective of epic abstract videogame influenced machine music by Simon Cohen, and a collection of nonsense songs that I have written for various nerd music battles that happen around the internet.
For purposes of full disclosure, S.E. (or Sarah, as we know her) is a dear friend of Scott and I. But don't worry; favoritism this is not. After reading about good old S.E. it'll be clear that we're lucky just to know her! Enjoy!
About S.E. Smith
After growing up along a country road on her parents' farm in Greene County, PA (along the West Virginia border), S.E. studied Creative Writing and English at Carnegie Mellon University, where she immediately got busy being semi-famous and multi-talented. In her four years there, she was the winner of many awards (1st place Adamson Awards in both poetry and fiction, an Academy of American Poets Prize, Bucknell Seminar for Younger Poets Fellowship); a jazz aficionado (minor in Jazz Performance, first chair trombone player - and only woman - in the CMU Jazz Ensemble); and a published poet (Find some of Smith's undergraduate poetry at the Beloit Poetry Journal or Issue 2 of Swink.) Upon completion of her degree in 2005, she was named the first Artist in Residence for Creative Writing at Lincoln Park Performing Arts Center, a charter partnership between LPPAC and CMU. During this time, she was also nominated for a Pushcart Prize .
Now in her third and final year repping Western PA at the University of Texas at Austin's Michener Center for Writers, where she is focusing on poetry with a secondary focus in fiction, S.E.'s continuing her stunning run of success. After being named a finalist in Black Warrior Review's 2006 poetry contest and taking over as Poetry Editor for the Bat City Review, S.E. has had a spectacular 2008, first being named a Runner-up in the Atlantic Monthly Student Writing Contest, then winning the Keene Prize for Literature, which rewarded a collection of her fiction with $18,000.
If you're dying to read some of this much-honored work, fear not: her work is forthcoming in Caketrain, the Best New Poets 2008 anthology, and - yes, it's true! - Vol. 1 of our Open Thread Regional Review. Isn't that great? You can also find out more about Sarah and see her exciting new multimedia work here.
It's really not fair to S.E. for us to list off these accomplishments under an "About S.E. Smith" heading, as though she's some Tracy Flick type, out to build up a resume that makes all the rest of us wilt. What's most striking about S.E. is her graciousness, humility, vulnerability and honesty when you, oh, ask her a standard interview question, or something like that. Oh, and she's beautiful and a great dancer, too. Don't believe us? Read on!
Pegradation
(Video Stills)
Straight from the Artist's Mouth!
OT Blog: You grew up in Greene County, PA, which I've often heard (and experienced myself) to be just as West Virginia as it is Pennsylvania, culturally speaking. What kind of setting was it for your formative years? How has it informed your poetry? Your fiction?
S.E. Smith: Greene County is definitely Appalachian in a big way. In college, it did delight me to bring my urbane, sophisticated friends to Greene County for a weekend and watch you all freak out. I think it helped my city mouse friends understand me a lot better to see the kind of environment I grew up in and reacted to. It makes my own urbane sophistication all the more impressive! Seriously, though, I don't want to trash Greene County because I love it there, and I love it more the more I grow up and shed my adolescent defense mechanisms, but I encountered a lot of anti-intellectual sentiment there. People were always telling me that I used big words and should cut that out if I wanted anybody to like me. Good thing that not being liked fit so well with my acerbic adolescent persona. When I was 14 half of my statements began with the rhetorical question, "Do you know what makes me really mad?" Anyway, like many parts of the south, the community is obsessed with local heritage going back generations upon generations; a lot of kids my age had their whole extended families nearby. I seemed like a transplant because my parents grew up in the midwest and moved to Greene County along with a pretty sizable influx of hippie-esque back-to-the-landers. So I grew up really feeling like an outsider, but also resenting that feeling, because I was born there like everybody else.
That outsider feeling is probably the biggest influence on my writing, but I don't think it surfaces in any obvious way. It's tempting to psychologize myself and say, "Well, probably feeling like an outsider made it easier for me to take the stance of an observer, and through observation end up at writing," but I don't think it's ever that simple. More likely the outsider feeling left me with a gulf of sadness, a sense of the abyss, which I am forever trying to fill in with slapstick and dance moves. In a recent poetry workshop here at UT, Dean Young said that there's a theory that humor is self-defense, and there's some truth to that for me. I think I've only been able to write about Greene County since moving to Texas, which is so different, it allows me to sift through all of the stuff I remember, and to decide what's actually interesting or usable in that material. And by "material" I mean "angst" obviously. And cornbread recipes.
OT: What has it been like to leave the region after 18 years in Greene County and five years in Pittsburgh? How do you feel about the prospect of returning?
SES: Let me say that people in Texas are extremely puzzled by the northeast. (I don't necessarily consider Western PA a part of "the northeast," but for Texans anything above the Mason Dixon line within reasonable proximity of the Atlantic counts.) They're always surprised to find that Pennsylvania is actually a pretty big state. And they always mix up Philly and Pittsburgh, which angers me to no end. Lately, with the World Series, all of my sports-inclined friends assume that I'm rooting for the Phillies; they don't understand how I can be all "Eh, good for them" and "STEELER NATION FOR LIFE" simultaneously. The upside, though, is that everybody here has a potent mental image of Pittsburghers as tough bitches, so yeah, that's fine because I'm full of true grit.
It took me four or five months to adjust to the move, though. When I left Pittsburgh I felt like I was dying, which sounds kind of extreme, but what can I say? Western PA was the world that I understood. It was the world to which I had been calibrated. And I still feel this really overwhelming pride for the region, all angst aside. I'm always telling people that Sammy Nestico is from Pittsburgh, that the lady who played Agent 99 on "Get Smart" went to CMU. I dragged one of my friends out to see "Smart People" just for the ample Pittsburgh/CMU shots. I'm such a regional booster, I don't know how my friends and acquaintances put up with me. Especially the ones who agree to watch Steelers games with me and then have to deal with the alarming spectacle of yours truly decked out in a Polamalu jersey, Terrible Towel in hand, making frequent/panicked phone calls to my father when the running game isn't working out.
Texas has been good for me, especially climate-wise. I thought I was a depressed and inherently cranky person, but no, it was just the weather! Also, I love the Michener Center, my MFA program. And plenty of bands/plays/whatever are always passing through Austin. But I kind of think Austin has it too easy. Sometimes it feels like everybody here is sauntering around humming "Girl From Ipanema," eating their organic foods, drinking their kombucha. It gets old. And I am thinking about moving back to Pittsburgh next year. In my extremely hazy life-plan, I end up back in Pittsburgh eventually. I think it's the most beautiful city in the world. Every time I come back and drive through the Fort Pitt tunnel again, I cry, for serious.
OT: You recently won the Keene Prize for Literature, a pretty big-time award at UT-Austin. What were your winning stories about? How does it feel to win for your fiction in an MFA program where your focus is poetry? What is the most frivolous/fabulous/preposterous thing you plan to spend [even a little of] the prize money on?
SES: For the contest, I submitted a small collection of stories titled "The Wild Girl of Western Pennsylvania." The title story is based on a news item from a few years ago about a feral teenage girl appearing in Java. She fascinated me because she was so weirdly socialized; she could use a spoon but not a fork, she could sing a few traditional songs but couldn't speak. Translating that idea into small-town Appalachia came easily for me, and also engaged some of those outsider tropes noted above. The other two stories in my entry also take place in Western PA. "The Bigtime" is about the organizer of a baby pageant who wishes she had moved away from the small town where she was raised and still lives--she's a mirror version of myself if I had never left Greene County, so it follows that she's mad as all get-out. And "Night Shift at the Don Knotts Memorial Hospital" follows a group of badass night nurses at an imagined hospital in Pittsburgh. Well, the city isn't identified in the story, but it's clear for me that the no man's land between three hospitals is in Bloomfield. When I brought these stories to workshop, usually somebody would point out a quintessential Western PA detail and say, "This, here, this just isn't realistic. This belongs to some other time and place." And I would think, nope, that's just where I grew up.
As to your second question, well, it feels great! Only current students at UT-Austin can apply to the Keene Prize, but there are so many outrageously talented writers here and the competition is strong. At CMU we were encouraged to write in more than one genre, and I don't think any of us students thought of ourselves merely as poets, fiction writers, or anything else exclusively. The Michener Center asks all of its students to take classes in two genres, which was one of its greatest selling points for me. I came here ready to devote a lot of time and energy to fiction as well as poetry. Ultimately my decision to submit a group of stories was pragmatic; contemporary poetry is, for better or worse, best understood by contemporary poets, and the Keene committee did not include any poets. My stories and poems share plenty of weirdness, but narrative makes weirdness more palatable.
It's not glamorous, but plenty of the prize money will go directly to American Education Services to clear me of student loans. But I did use a little of it to finance my first tattoo, which is an image borrowed from a Margaret Kilgallen painting. I'm not going to explain the "symbolism" of the tattoo because it's always kind of reductive to do so, but it definitely represents for me the fact that I'll never be a banker, and maybe alludes to the possibility that I'll be able to live my life on my own terms. Aside from that, I'm saving the rest, but who am I kidding? I have inexpensive tastes, and I usually spend my money on cigarettes, bar tabs, and tacky clothing.
OT: Do you find anything essential in the voice of writers from the tri-state area? Writers of your "generation"?
SES: I have a theory about working class writers, especially working class writers from the tri-state area, and it might be bullshit, but here it goes: for working class writers, the act of writing is always a decision, a sacrifice. It's not something you just end up doing because hey whatever, it's kind of fun. It's a choice that you make in full awareness of the choices your parents had to make to send you to college (for "choice" read "sacrifice"), and that sense of proportion makes it kind of difficult to fuck around. At the end of the day, I don't think poems deserve to be read just because they're poems. I think poems have to work hard to snag and keep their readers. This doesn't mean that we have to write what we think an audience (audience being a gauzy term) wants to hear, or to only deliver scrappy working class narratives or whatever, but it does mean that we can't just spray some of our consciousness onto the page and expect everybody to care about it.
I don't want to sound despotic and evil, so I should probably modify that statement slightly: I'm a fan of the fact that anybody writes poetry anywhere, and for whatever purpose. All poems deserve to sit down at the grown-ups table at the Poetry Feast. But there is a difference between poetry that only engages with the selfhood of the person writing it and poetry that engages with craft and the massive preceding tradition entire. I get the sense that working class writers are sensitive to this distinction and, as a result, try to engage with a broad range of influences. I don't want to exclude other writers from that designation, of course, but it seems to be a prevalent ambition among writers of a certain regional/socio-economic disposition.
Fiction doesn't play into this dynamic as much because our culture embraces narrative; short stories and novels don't have to fight as hard to be read by somebody, and that's great. But it doesn't really lend itself to polemics. Sadly.
Writers of my generation seem less interested in maintaining genre boundaries; I don't think anybody's really waving the L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E or narrative or formalist flag right now. We'd rather borrow generously from all of the traditions than swear our allegiance to one. This may change, of course, once we try to get tenure. But I think we've come to writing from so many points of entry, many of which are not explicitly literary, that the previous distinctions cease to hold our devotion. That is to say, I'm excited to see what we'll do.
OT: What can OT Blog readers expect to hear from you in the coming months?
SES: Well, blog readers, you can find my poem "Bedroom Community" in the upcoming Best New Poets 2008 anthology (along with poems from Anne Marie Rooney and Karen Rigby, both of whom are recent CMU graduates), which is exciting because it was guest-edited by Mark Strand, whose work I adore, and is distributed nationally. Also, I have a poem forthcoming in Caketrain, which I'm particularly delighted about because it's a Pittsburgh-based journal. Otherwise, you can expect to hear the sound of my over-worked printer churning out copies of my first manuscript for all of the first book contests I'm entering, the sound of my checkbook depleting as I draw up entry fees for said contests, and the sound of innumerable late night bedroom dance parties, because that's just what I do.
Introducing OT Blog's Artist of the Week series! Each week, a different artist, writer, performer, or other emerging voice in our region will be profiled and interviewed. (E-mail us at Open Thread if you're interested in being profiled! Unfortunately, there are only so many weeks in the year, but we'll do our best to feature you!)
First up: sculptor, illustrator, writer, chef, and all-around policy maven Laura Miller!
About Laura Miller
If you'd like to know what a real Renaissance woman looks like, look no further than Laura Miller, 22, of Squirrel Hill. Fresh off a BFA in Art and Ethics, History, and Public Policy (Yes, that is in fact what her diploma says.) from Carnegie Mellon University, where she graduated with honors, Laura decided to stay put. (Read her interview, and you'll understand why.)
Straight from the Artist's Mouth!
OT Blog: What is your relationship to Pittsburgh and the surrounding region? You left and then came back, correct?
Laura Miller: Yes. I feel like Pittsburgh is very much a part of who I am and how I came to be an artist, historian, and policy person. I think something happened when I was young that influenced this. When I was little living in Pittsburgh I spent a lot of time with my grandparents, my mother's parents. I learned from them to appreciate and reflect upon the environment around me, and I came to crave learning about the past in order to figure out what to do in the future. Also when I was very small I just loved Pittsburgh, but not in just a civic pride sort of way, or a competitive way, but where I felt like my emotions and perceptions of the world were formed by the geography of Pittsburgh. So when I left - even though we moved when I was eight - Pittsburgh was the only place that ever felt like home to me. I lived in Nashville for ten years, but I knew I would never stay. I simply counted down the days until I could leave, and then I left. Pittsburgh is my spine.
OT: What sort of environment has this been for your work?
LM: Well, Pittsburgh is my home base. I feel like I can do great art and be creative outside of Pittsburgh, but the work that I do pretty much always relates to how I see the world, and that developed in Pittsburgh. So while I guess it would be interesting to take my work out of the Pittsburgh environment, so much of my work up to this point has been about interacting with the people around me. Over the past five years those people have been in Pittsburgh.
OT: Your strongest interests outside of art - history and food - seem to maintain a pretty strong presence in your artwork. What other interests have manifested themselves in your work? Is it a conscious decision?
LM: Let's see. I have a strong interest in death, dealing with it, and fear of it. It has been a big thing for me in the past, not as much now as before. Yes, I was aware of the death. It was kind of inevitable given how I was thinking about the world at the time. But to answer the question I wouldn't say that history and food are my interests outside of art, I think those are two of my interests in art, as you (sort of) said. Public Policy is another interest I have in art. As I am living it, the policy work I do is my art piece, when I talk to people and socialize in a deliberate way, that is my art piece as well. There is a beauty in interacting with people, and I want that to be a part of my art.
OT: What can OT Blog readers expect to hear from you in the coming months?
LM: I've been working on RV Eatin. I plan to continue that into December. In 2009, I would like to get more involved in the policy arena, and I've already started working for the Jason Altmire campaign. I would like to continue making art in Pittsburgh - but we'll see where policy takes me!
About the Black Sheep Puppet Festival
Greatly expanding its offerings to celebrate its tenth year
of existence, the Black Sheep Puppet Festival kicked off in Pittsburgh on October 10th – but don't fear! It
runs until October 26th! Most of the events are free, many are
interactive, and only a few require an RSVP.
You can purchase tickets to selected events at ProArtsTickets.org or by calling 412.394.3353. Tickets also available at door. (Cash only.)
What the Black Sheep Puppet Festival Can Do for You
If you're a puppeteer, you should visit the festival's
website to learn about
participating in next year's festival. But if you're just an intrigued
puppet-goer like us at Open Thread, the festival has quite a schedule remaining. Check it out!
Curious Machine
(Pictured: screenprinted potholders and pillows.)
Built In Pittsburgh
(Pictured: high-waisted heavy wool
twill shorts.)
Garbella
(Pictured: bicycle chain ring clock.)
Ray-Min Shoulderware
(Pictured: messenger bag.)
Tugboat Printshop
(Pictured: "Battlecrabs in Love," from
the duo's "Deep Blue Sea Woodcuts.")
Lemon Cadet
(Pictured: a ringer onesie.)
About Handmade Arcade
Now entering its fifth year, the ever-growing
Handmade Arcade
is the largest indie craft fair in Pittsburgh and one of the largest in this
corner of the country. As you've probably guessed, everything sold at the fair
is handmade, giving the event a kitschy, often silly, feel that more standard arts
and crafts fairs lack. (We can pretty much guarantee you won't find any landscape paintings here.)
Held on Saturday, November 8 AND Sunday, November 9 in the Hunt Armory (324 Emerson St.) in Pittsburgh's Shadyside neighborhood, there's no entry fee, and food and drink vendors will be there too!! With over 80 vendors and more than 8,000 in attendance last year, this is not an event to be missed.
What Handmade Arcade Can Do for You
First and foremost, Handmade Arcade will introduce you to dozens of local vendors who make (sometimes literally)
one-of-a-kind items. As the event is held in Pittsburgh, this includes a lot of Burgh vendors, including
Built In Pittsburgh,
Garbella,
Ray-Min Shoulderware, and
Tugboat Printshop
which features the work of accomplished printmakers Valerie Lueth and Paul Roden
There are, however, plenty of vendors from other parts of the country, including two from Morgantown: Lemon Cadet and Curious Machine, a vendor at Open Thread's Variety Variety Variety fundraiser.
If you're an indie arts-and-craftsman (or woman), stay tuned to Handmade Arcade's website in summer 2009, when they'll open registration for next year's fair. In the meantime, volunteer for a two hour shift or check out their nifty early birdie sale, which costs just $15 and gives you first dibs on the whole fair! (They'll be mailing the passes out on October 29th, so order yours soon!)
About The Lit
Known as The Poets' and Writers' League of Greater Cleveland (PWLGC) since 1974, The Lit has shed its unwieldy title and is chartering a new course under the leadership of Executive Director Judith Mansour-Thomas.
"We've undergone some pretty major changes since the strategic re-planning [in the 2000s]," says Judith. The changes are evident: in 2001, the PWLGC committed itself to the creation of the Literary Center, a space that could host seminars, workshops and readings. The Ohio Writer is now The Muse. In 2007, the board of The Lit - newly christened - created a new Executive Director role; enter Judith Mansour-Thomas.
"It's the best job I've ever had; everyone here loves what they do," says Judith, who got her dream job after years as the Assistant Director of MoCA. Under Judith, The Lit most significant change has been its literacy efforts in Cleveland communities. "We look at it as a matter of expanding our audience," she explains.
That growing audience is lucky; The Lit offers seminars, workshops and a spectacular lineup of readings. "The Cleveland area is just packed with great writers - Pulitzer winners and nominees - and nobody knows they're here!" Judith says with equal parts exuberance and exasperation. Take it from us in Pittsburgh, Judith: We understand how you feel! Check out their packed calendar of events.
What The Lit Can Do for You
If you like to volunteer, The Lit can do a lot. Literacy volunteers, event volunteers, office volunteers - you name it, this small, efficient organization will use it.
If you don't like to volunteer, there's good news: The Lit can do even more. Its annual competition closes in just a few days: Oct. 15. So submit now. Its quarterly journal, The Muse, has a distinct blend of art and writing with a great twist: writers of all forms use their work to respond to local artwork. Perhaps most impressive are their non-stop course offerings, including offerings for area youth and a discount for members.
Heck, if you want to hold a release party for your new book of poems, The Lit is here to help you again. "We absolutely want to hear from people [who want to do that]," assures Judith, who just hosted local poet and professor Mary Weems for the release of Weems' latest poetry collection.
Whatever your literary needs, if you live in Northeast Ohio and haven't used their services, it's time for that to change. To visit The Lit: Cleveland's Literary Center, go to the ArtCraft Building at 2570 Superior Avenue, Suite 203. To contact them, 216.694.0000 info@the-lit.org.
If you're reading this, you probably know at least a little about our organization and its mission. You might also know that we highlight local poets in our POETSBURGH reading series, and that we feature musicians, comedians, performance artists and more in our Variety Variety Variety fundraisers, AND that Vol. 1 of our Regional Review - teeming with emerging artists and writers - is due out later this year. (Register and submit your work for Volume 2 today!)
So how does a blog fit in to the mix?
Regional Organizations
First, we'll be providing you with periodic profiles of other organizations that serve Ohio, Pennsylvania and West Virginia. The Lit, the focus of our first profile, provides exactly the kinds of services emerging artists are looking for: events, competitions, publications, seminars and workshops that are all open to the public.
Artists of the Week
You could be new to the region and looking for an arts community. Maybe you're an artist and you want us to help promote your work. Or perhaps, like us, you are simply in continuing to
discover this region's emerging art, writing, music and more. Each week, the Open Thread Blog will introduce you to another artist, writer, musician - any upcoming regional guy or gal whose life is in the arts!
News and Events
Submission deadlines, upcoming arts spectaculars, or updates on Open Thread's own happenings: we'll help you stay abreast of what any local producer (or consumer) of art ought to know.
Publication of the month and other reviews
Zines, books, journals, albums, chapbooks and more are pouring out of (and into) our region. We (along with some guest writers) will point out a few that are worth some of your meager artist income.
We'll post every week - so check back regularly. Welcome to the blog - and welcome to a little more of your regional arts community.