State of the Arts

State of the Arts: January 24, 2011 Archive

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Monday news and reviews

Posted at 9:21 AM on January 24, 2011 by Marianne Combs
Filed under: News and reviews


If you weren't able to make 89.3 The Current's birthday bash, and didn't stream it online either, check out Erik Thompson's glowing review of the evening...

Art

Eternal life in alabaster
500-year-old French national treasures - now showing at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts - depict sorrow exquisitely in stone.
- Mary Abbe, Star Tribune


Books

Snake charmer Minnesota authors are back with zookeeper Snake Jones and her husband in another thriller
Minnesota authors Michael Allan Mallory and Marilyn Victor send Snake to the northern Minnesota town of Wolf Lake in "Killer Instinct," where Snake is scouting locations for a television show she and her husband have mortgaged their future to produce.
- Mary Ann Grossman, Pioneer Press


Fashion

MNfashion's Spring 2011 Fashion Week Preview
Last week, MNfashion hosted a 2011 spring preview event giving local designers the chance to showcase pieces of their collections that will be viewed in full this April during MNfashion week.
- Stacey Tuthill, City Pages


Music

The Current's 6th Birthday Party at First Avenue, 01/21/11
The Current has had such an impact on the local music scene in its six short years of existence that it's hard to remember a time when the station wasn't an integral part of the Twin Cities musical landscape. And Friday night at a sold-out First Avenue, it was a chance for all of us music fans to celebrate not only the 6th birthday of a radio station that so many of us hold dear, but also the talented local artists that they champion so passionately on the airwaves.
- Erik Thompson, City Pages


Angélique Kidjo at the Ordway: Better than Springsteen
When I walked out of the Ordway after seeing Angélique Kidjo on Friday, I was surprised to see snow. The concert was so full of warmth, I was sure the heat would radiate outward to the entire city and melt all of it away.
- Betsy Gabler, TC Daily Planet


Stage

This Babe's the pick of the litter
The Children's Theatre production of the story of the sheep-herding pig is a porky delight.
- Rohan Preston, Star Tribune

Park Square Theatre's reach exceeds its grasp with 'Odyssey'
Hubris, any ancient Greek could have told you, has its costs. But a few millennia and countless examples later, Park Square Theatre displays plenty of overconfidence in a staging of "The Odyssey" that bites off more than it can chew.
- Dominic P. Papatola, Pioneer Press

A fast, funny, and profane "Misanthrope" at Illusion Theater
Illusion Theater and the Lighthouse Group presented Molière's Misanthrope or the Impossible Lovers as this year's Lights Up production. Eric Powell Holm updated and directed this famous 17th century French comedy of manners about love, hypocrisy and self-indulgence. The production starts out sluggish but ultimately proves worthwhile.
- Bev Wolfe, TC Daily Planet

MN poetry: MC Hyland's "Epistolary"

Posted at 12:28 PM on January 24, 2011 by Marianne Combs (1 Comments)
Filed under: Minnesota Poets, Poetry

MC Hyland lives in Minneapolis, where she runs DoubleCross Press and the Pocket Lab Reading Series, and works as an administrator and occasional letterpress instructor at the Minnecota Center for Book Arts. Hyland's latest book of poetry is Neveragainland, published by Lowbrow Press.

Before you read Hyland's poem "Epistolary" you might find the following definition from wikipedia helpful: "An epistolary novel is a novel written as a series of documents. The usual form is letters, although diary entries, newspaper clippings and other documents are sometimes used. Recently, electronic "documents" such as recordings and radio, blogs, and e-mails have also come into use. The word epistolary comes from the Latin word epistola, meaning a letter."


Epistolary

I am a handsome and lonely man.
I like to write these letters to the housewives:
Dear Betty, I am a handsome
and lonely man. I appreciate
your zinnias and Buick. RSVP.
I seal them in envelopes made from top-secret
blueprints. Then they get intercepted
by my ex-girlfriends in the postal service.

Dearest, I have sabotaged the factories of sleep.
I drive around and around the abandoned worksite,
taking photographs. Smug workers, sealed
in their plexiglass pods. I cry out to them: Vive
la television! Abajo las manzanitas!

Will you write to me? I confess to the housewives
everything, everything. I could curl your hair
around my wrist like a shackle. I could draw
our path on every map in the atlas. Look: we are crossing
the Atlas mountains. It is like The Sound of Music
without the element of escape. I am singing you a song
that I wrote for the people of my country
about their beautiful, beautiful smiles.

When we get to the other side, there will be
a house with steaming coffee and pancakes.
I will stitch this letter into my arm.


- "Epistolary," by MC Hyland, as it appears in her collection of poems "Neveragainland" published by Lowbrow Press. Reprinted here with permission from the publisher.

(1 Comments)

Julian Schnabel is next subject of Walker Regis Dialog

Posted at 5:43 PM on January 24, 2011 by Euan Kerr
Filed under: Film, Painting

Painter and film director Julian Schnabel will visit the Twin Cities in mid-March for a Regis Dialog at the Walker Art Center. The event will be the culmination of three weeks of a retrospective of his acclaimed film work.

While he prefers to see himself as a painter, Schnabel is now better recognized for his film-making. The Walker retrospective will include all five of his features so far, including his latest "Miral" which tells a very personal history of Middle Eastern conflict through the eyes of four female characters.

Schnabel's best known film is the multiple-Oscar nominated "The Diving Bell and the Butterfly" (2007) which tells the story of Jean-Dominique Bauby, a high-flying magazine editor almost completely paralyzed by a massive stroke. The film is based on Bauby's memoir, which he dictated by blinking to an assistant.

The Walker retrospective will open with his first film "Basquiat," (1996) followed by "Before Night Falls" (2000) which drew Javier Bardem's first Oscar nomination. It's followed "The Diving Bell and the Butterfly" and then a free screening of "Berlin" (2007) which captured Lou Reed's first live performance of his famous album in 30 years.

The final weekend of the Schnabel event includes a screening of "Miral" on March 18th, and then the Dialog between Schnabel and Walker curator Darsie Alexander on March 19th.


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