So, what have you been upto lately?
Allison Joseph: poetry from Canada by way of the Bronx
Subversive and revolutionary murals
Seeing Vermeer in a new light: a book review
Constitution Square has a gallery in it, Lord have mercy on our soul!
Feldman’s Quartet No. 2 Flux with my mind
Jennifer Deleeuw
Cento Writer
Saturday, March 3, 2001. 1:55 p.m. I arrive at Weisiger armed with twenty ounces of Diet Dr. Pepper, a fresh pack of Twizzlers and all my homework for the weekend.
Six hours, I think, six hours – imagine what I can get done in six hours. I scope out the theater and immediately decide that Ian’s couch, which he had ingeniously relocated into the theater from the lower lobby, will be the coziest locale for the occasion, even if situating myself there means sitting next to Ian for six plus hours. I make myself at home and ready myself for some serious schoolwork.
2:07 p.m. Enter the members of the Flux Quartet. They sit. Without a word, they begin playing. It’s an appropriate way to open: Morton Feldman’s String Quartet No. 2 doesn’t seem to really have a beginning, it’s like we audience members have just walked in on a scene that’s been in process long before our arrival. The music is mellow, unpredictable, subtle and gently disorienting. I suppose if one had come to the performance expecting six hours of Chopin, one might be feeling a little perplexed or even cheated. Lucky for me, my only expectation was to get some work done. After listening for a few moments, I decide to turn to that pile of books I lugged in with me.
Time passes. I realize that I’m not making much progress here. Even as I think I’m focusing on my work, I find myself focusing on the music. Despite its quietness, it is probing and incessant, and after reading the same page at least twelve times, I accept that the music will allow me to do nothing except engage in my favorite pasttime: sitting and thinking. This is ideal thinking music. It doesn’t interfere; there’s nothing jarring or artificially emotional about it; it demands neither my attention nor violent mood swings. It influences rather than dictates where the mind goes.
8:32 p.m. Stretch. Six hours– it’s dark outside–six hours and change, but I abandoned checking my watch every few minutes several hours ago, and I’m not sure how long the performance actually lasted. I’m not sure what to do now that it’s over. The drawing, of course, for the trip to Cancun. I have a real problem with this. The idea of raffle prizes (bait) to bribe us students into attending this concert really bothers me. It’s degrading to both the musicians– whose excellent and moving performance revealed not only technical proficiency but also mental endur-ance and powers of concentration of superhuman proportion and to us audience members, who are aware of the awesomeness of what we just witnessed.
What did we just witness? I don’t know about the others, but I just witnessed a powerful and deliberate statement about our perception of time, about our sense of proportion. We live in a world where efficiency and speed count; where we’re constantly urged to go faster, faster, faster; where the pedestrian has become something of a sideshow freak and people drive rather than walk across campus in the delusion that they’re saving a significant amount of time.
Feldman’s quartet defies this mode of living with a quiet refusal to move quickly or to be entertaining–it leaves the listener to fend for herself, to just be and to be aware of just being.
Whether or not Feldman’s music appeals to the listener, she cannot deny the power and appeal of such a statement or understatement. It was no Chopin and I didn’t get one damn homework assignment finished. While I don’t know that I’d want to do this every Saturday afternoon, I don’t regret a minute I spent listening to Flux. Of those who scoffed at the event as a waste of time, I ask: what did you accomplish in those six hours? Back to top...
So, what have you been upto lately?
Mike Stauss
Cento Writer
Recently we have rocked-out with Guided By Voices. They're a band, they're pretty good. They played at Headliners in Louisville. On the way we had some pizza at Wick's. That's my favorite pizza place. We also had Guinness, on tap, just the way God serves it. It was a pretty good night, I guess. Oh, that was last Saturday.
So, it came to pass that on a fine Saturday afternoon (June 21, 2000), I was sitting in the Rav Chen movie theatre in Jerusalem watching one of my favorite movies (Magnolia) with one of my favorite people (Liz), and at that very same moment (well, really, approximately one hour into the movie), my cousin (Brian) was getting married in Kokomo, Indiana. In fact, one of the original appeals to me of the summer program in Israel was that I wouldn't have to make up an excuse to avoid my cousin's wedding. It was only after returning home that I learned of the exact time of the wedding and was able to calculate that it coincided with the film. That gave me a happy warm fuzzy feeling inside. I imagine that the phrase "I do" was accompanied by frogs falling from the sky. But, yeah, that was a good day.
Yesterday, that was an ok day.
So, what was I talking about? Oh, right. Guided By Voices played this David Bowie song, maybe you know it, it's called “Five Years” and it's the first song on Ziggy Stardust. It's a really awesome song. Well, let's face it, Ziggy Stardust is a really awesome album. Yeah, so, GBV played it pretty well. They rocked.Yeah. And they played a lot of their songs too. You know they have over a thousand songs? Kid Rock has maybe, what, fifteen? I think GBV should be nice and give a few songs to Kid Rock, don't you? He'd f*** it up, though. He always does. Back to top...
Allison Joseph: poetry from Canada by way of the Bronx
Kathy Nelsen
Arts Consultant
The College English Program will sponsor a poetry reading by award-winning poet Allison Joseph. The event will take place on March 22 at 8 p.m. in the Norton Center Board Room.
Allison Joseph is the author of three poetry collections: What Keeps Us Here, Soul Train and In Every Seam. Joseph's poetry appeals to broad audiences because of her accessible style and use of humor.
Her most recent collection of poems, In Every Seam, focuses on childhood and growing up. She writes about childhood concerns such as her Barbie doll and Barbie's relationship to her little sister, Skipper, as well as the mysterious readership of the Archie comics. Referring to herself as a "pop-culture diva", Joseph says, "I'm both in love with popular culture and critical of it. It's a source both to embrace and make fun of."
Originally from London and born to Caribbean parents, Joseph grew up in Toronto, Canada and the Bronx, New York. She holds degrees from Kenyon College and Indiana University. Joseph is currently an associate professor at Southern Illinois University in Carbondale, Illinois, where she serves as poetry editor for Crab Orchard Review.
She has received fellowships from the Sewanee and Bread Loaf Writers' Conferences, an Illinois Arts Council Grant and a Literary Award. She recently won first place in the year 2000 poetry contest sponsored by So to Speak: A Feminist Journal of Language and Art, published at George Mason University. She is founder and director of the Young Writers Workshop, a residential writing workshop for high school students held at Southern Illinois University. Her work has appeared in many anthologies including The New Young American Poets, American Poetry: The Next Generation, Giant Steps: The New Generation of African American Writers and others.Back to top...
Subversive and revolutionary murals
Carrie Leslie
Cento Writer
Would or could the Washington Monument ever be depicted as a large phallic symbol to represent the oppression and slavery found within the “land of the free” and independent society that is the United States of the Americas? To my knowledge, this has never occurred. However, a very similar national symbol in Cuba, the bell tower of Trinidad, was portrayed with such iconoclastic undertones in the artwork of a young contemporary artist, Erbo.
The intense and complex societal force (or enslavement) that would drive an artist to explore such images is the same language speaking to the artists of the murals of Latin America, specifically, Nicaragua.
Expression such as this only arises out of societies of oppression and inequality. Who is the oppressor portrayed in many of the murals? It is the bald eagle, the symbol of freedom of the United States or the nation’s mascot, Uncle Sam. In Cuba, murals proclaim similar “anti-imperialist,” pro-revolutionary slogans alongside a portrait idolizing Che Guevara or Fidel Castro.
When I sat in the U.S. Embassy in Managua, I saw a glimpse of this oppression, shall we say: a firing squad of five men, trained to shoot at one who attempts to critique the interests of the United States in Nicaragua, with a bullet of smooth rhetoric and choice phrases. The disgust with the philanthropist who is attempting to “enlighten” the hardened and weathered ambassadors could be the source of this distribution of unequal power.
This display was neither new nor original to the stoic ambassadors. They viewed the country of Nicaragua as a place that needed an economic push in the right direction, not necessarily the liberation of the masses which is the message within the murals.
Murals depict a hard life of toil to which the impoverished majority of Latin America can relate. The subversive power within murals is that they liberate the eyes that gaze upon their bold colors and illustrations of vitality. Murals have an element of a communal life of unity and interconnectedness—a concept slightly foreign to those of us living in alienating, westernized societies.
A society, such as ours, that mandates individualism, but embraces conformity in the same instant, has little room for organization centered around a threat to existence or an urgency to sustain oneself or one’s family. Murals recreate this urgency, and in such an image of unity, hope is discovered.
For some reason, this is viewed as dangerous. To unify the people of a nation under a single revolutionary voice puts fear in the elite government of Nicaragua and probably makes the U.S. ambassadors quiver behind closed doors. The murals evoked so much insecurity in Managua that they have recently been painted over in solid colors. Mask the politically subversive murals and replace their influence with promises toward a better economic future in the ideological phrase of President Aléman, “Obras, no palabras” (Works, not words) that now covers any flat surface in Nicaragua.
In a Nicaraguan mural, an old woman can stand with leaders of political revolutionary movements. People are liberated through this equality in the art of murals. People are also inspired and invigorated by a broiling, dynamic stew of signs, markers and politically charged points of view illustrated by the artist.
Pizza Hut, a new development in Managua, stands next to the Texaco gas stations that dot the countryside. So, paint over the murals and bring in foreign investment. This is the answer to the poverty and the oppression that is being prescribed to Nicaragua. To match my sarcasm with a hint of idealism…. My hope is that the murals remain untouched.Back to top...
Seeing Vermeer in a new light: a book review
Maura Walters
Cento Writer
Johannes Vermeer was a 17th century Dutch artist who is considered today to be perhaps the best painter to have ever lived. He died young, poor and left a widow with 13 children and an unpaid baker’s bill.
Vermeer painted quiet scenes that have a luminous, still life quality—he is known for his almost miraculous ability to capture a sense of light.
However, a feeling of mystery surrounds both what is known about Vermeer’s life and his paintings. In Girl With a Pearl Earring, Tracy Chevalier uses this mystery to create a rich and beautiful novel that is less about Vermeer and more about the people that surrounded him and the ideas and faces that influenced his work. She uses truths and facts about his life and the era in which he lived to create a story that asks questions that are important and interesting to artists and non-artists alike. This is an unconventional love story that, though immersed in a time and culture very foreign from our own, seems remarkably modern and relevant.
Girl With a Pearl Earring is written from the point of view of Griet, a 16-year-old girl who finds herself a maid to the Vermeer family due to unfortunate circumstances. Her observant nature and eye for beauty catches the otherwise remote and aloof Vermeer’s attention early on. He recognizes in her a kindred spirit, one who sees the world in the same way as he. In him, she too finds understanding, if not affection. The character’s rich and vivid personalities and the intricate, but never boring, details Chevelier writes about truly captivate the reader. It is about Vermeer the artist growing up in 17th century Delft. Ultimately, however, the story revolves around the interesting and evocative relationship that evolves between Vermeer and Griet and the outside forces, both cultural and otherwise, that affect their lives.
Chevalier writes in a style that is both simple and elegant, which is a contrast, or perhaps a pleasant surprise, when compared to the thought-provoking questions and ideas that are brought to mind: 1) Artists give to society, but sometimes they also take from and manipulate the people and places that surround them in a much more personal way. 2) Do artists have to be self-absorbed in order to be great or is that just the nature of an artist with natural talent? 3) What is the moral responsibility of an artist to the things he paints? To himself? To society?
Girl With a Pearl Earring is both an entertaining and thought-provoking novel. It causes one to think about art and artists in a new way all the while maintaining a moving and very human story.
Girl With a Pearl Earring
( by Tracy Chevalier
Penguin Outnam Publ.,
1999, New York)
Constitution Square has a gallery in it, Lord have mercy on our soul!
Lee Burkett
Arts Editor
Danville and Boyle County have many hidden secrets; the Elmwood Inn, Burke’s Bakery, Denny’s and the list goes on. Well, here is another diamond in the rough that we, as students, neglect: Gallery on the Square.
The gallery is in Constitution Square. At the moment the gallery is featuring local artists, David Cornwell, Wayne Daugherty, Bill Fletcher, Guy Ingram and Jack Kaiser. The Group Invitational Exhibition opened on March 5 and will close March 31.
The curator/ owner of the gallery, Robert Moler, is an artist in his own right. His studio is part of the gallery. The product that is seen in the gallery is unexpected.
Immediately upon entering the gallery, in the first room on the right Fletcher, an artist from Nicholasville, is exhibited. He has a series of still lifes which are quite impressive. The artist works fairly tight, meaning he has a very controlled brush-stroke, yet he also has a loose handle of his material allowing his brush strokes to be seen.
Like Sargent’s Victorian portraiture, Fletcher de-scribes the still life using striking light and dark contrasts, carrevagio, which allows the form to be modeled. His works are still lifes containing fruits, flowers and fine china. He utilizes small surfaces as well as medium sized supports to paint his windows into different spaces.
Moving through the gallery one would next move to the upstairs galleries.
On the way upstairs one notices the rural scene masterly crafted in Prima Color Pencils on the wall. This piece is rendered by the Danvillian artist Daugherty.
Daugherty works in water color and colored pencil. His pieces displayed all contain rural scenes. One might notice them from being on display recently at T.J.’s Coffeehouse.
Daugherty’s work is well executed, his pieces are worked to the point that it can be hard to distinguish the watercolor from the colored pencil. The scenes move from the interior of a barn to the bails of hay against a barn and even winter landscapes are included.
Kaiser, another Danville artist, is the only artist exhibited using abstraction. The artist uses both 2-d and 3-d in relating his feelings to the viewer.
His sculptural pieces come from treasures he finds in barns. His 2-d is interesting in that it uses guilded metal along with Acrylic paints in order to talk to the viewer.
The last artist of the ensemble is Cornwell. Cornwell is from Harrods-burg and he makes small caricatures from soft woods (pine, balsa and others). The characters are reminscent of Thomas Hart Benton, and his folky renditions of rural America.
Moler (not exhibiting) describes himself as a profesional artist specializing in high art and high craft. He designs and sells beautiful pillows as well as paints detailed portraits.
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Gallery on the square is located in Constitution Square. “Group Invitational Exhibition: David Cromwell, Wayne Daugherty, Bill Fletcher, Guy Ingram and Jack Kaiser” runs through May 31. Robert Moler, curator, can be reached at (859) 936-1800. Gallery hours are from 10:00 am to 3:00 pm Mon- Fri. Back to top...