Catching Glimpses of the Commonplace
Have you ever thought that you need photographs to prove your experiences because your stories are not enough? Horrible storytellers, like me, rely on images to tell our tales, both ordinary and extraordinary. Typically, the best spoken stories involve uncommon events: strange encounters with the homeless or rescuing an outrageously drunken friend from his demise. But what about the ordinary, the everyday moments ...
What Will We Do without the Avant-garde?
I recently had the distinct pleasure and honor of performing a new piece of music with composer Christian Wolff and the Merce Cunningham Dance Company in the final performances of its Legacy Tour. This groundbreaking dance company served as a vital space for cross-fertilization between dance, music and visual art for what became a legendary generation of New York artists. According to the final wishes of the choreogr...
And Then Came Sebastian Barry
As a young girl, my fictitious heroine was Anastasia Krupnik, the star of Lois Lowry’s acclaimed (and sometimes-banned) series of Anastasia books. Despite Anastasia’s comparatively more remarkable life – her father, a poet; her mother, an artist; a childhood spent in Cambridge at Harvard’s doorstep before a move to the suburbs – she and I held a desire in common: a constant wish to have something “interes...
Facebook’s Got Soul?
Check out this post by E.B. Boyd at The Morning News about Facebook's new 'Timeline' feature. From the post: Facebook’s Timeline (the new version of the user profile which is slated to be released to the general public “in the next few weeks”) wanted to do something more: It wanted to convey a feeling. Two feelings actually: The feeling of telling someone your life story, and the feeling of me...
Help Us Curate: Good Country Music
After writing my eloquent and diplomatic piece rant about contemporary country music today (it's just as bad as that other CCM!), I wondered how we could crowd source all the good country music into one spot. Since this webzine is The Curator, I thought to myself the most productive thing to do at this point is to curate a list of good country music artists. These country music acts should be contemporary, so naming ...
A Lament for Country Music
I miss country music. I really do. I used to love it. After moving to the New York City metro area almost seven years ago I went through withdrawal. There was no country music station. Top 40 was everywhere. It was awful. But then something started happening in country music shortly after I moved up here. The neo-traditional wave started by artists like Alan Jackson began to putter out and was replaced...
“Technology Transforms Tradition”
Following on from a recent post on IAM Facebook page about innovative painting apps for smartphone, here's an article from Glasschord about an artist Mikko Ijas, who has created extensive bodies of work using Brushes application on an iPhone and iPad. While Ijäs is a skilled draftsman, he is anything but a traditionalist. Using digital media enables him to work quickly and directly in his chosen landscape or settin...
