Filed under: ART, COLLAGE | Tags: 22, art, artist, collage, Dalachinsky, magazine, poet, steve, the
Filed under: POETRY, WRITING | Tags: 22, a, Barnes, brooklyn, madeleine, magazine, new, office, poet, poetry, the, york
by Madeleine Barnes
Curled inside the body of a lamb is half the moon.
I see her kneel down beyond a splintering fence.
One friend has died, for now, at least—I’ve lost my whereabouts.
Inside the body of half the moon are seventeen eggs.
When the world comes to you this way, muffled though
irresolute flamelight, you must enter and refuse to leave.
Inside one egg, a parabola, a solitary winter morning.
Crouched in the stable one red colt wavers on thin legs.
What does he see from within the orb of his eye?
The deep terrain of the unperceivable track revolving
as he runs, record time.
Scintillate. Keep warm. Inside the black fountain of a crow’s
back I see maps of fragile questions. One friend has gone
without leaving an address, training himself to paint outside of school.
Nested on the edge of a mountain he found a lateral vision
of what remains outside of time. Inside the bare armor of skin
the sun has burned me deep enough to reach him.
My friend is trapped inside the entire arrangement of this web,
his body wrapped into one thin point. When it trembles
it asks questions: Can you bear the indivisible light?
And then it answers for us: yes, we are connected by the gift
itself, the endless ability to see.
Madeleine Barnes is a graduate of Carnegie Mellon University in creative writing and fine arts. She was the recipient of West Virginia University’s Hungry Poets Prize (2012), an Academy of American Poets Prize from Carnegie Mellon University in 2011, the Borders Open Door Poetry Prize in 2009, and the Princeton Poetry Prize in 2008. Her poems have appeared in places like The Rattling Wall, Open Thread, Oakland Review, Weave Magazine, North Central Review, Three Rivers Review, Collision Magazine, Allegheny Review, Albion Review, 5AM, and Plain China.
Filed under: POETRY, WRITING | Tags: 22, a, act, brooklyn, domenic, for, Hatter, lost, mad, magazine, maltempi, new, not, poet, poetry, raffle, the, to, york
By Domenic Maltempi
Sometimes our hatter acted as our doctor. Hats were not in fashion, for fortuity’s sake or otherwise.
Contra-attests hardly provoked a smile. Local prognosticators did not see this trend ending. International Endings petitioned Universal Truths for at least a comment. The latter would only accept text messages, claiming it was busy with way more than what International Endings had on its plate.
We were all at the end of our tether deciding on a song for our town—not a town-song necessarily. We wanted folks to slow down, enjoy browsing through Yogurt Trap or Visual Eyes in our proudest strip.
Better! We would prefer it if they chose to sequester themselves where our illuminated founder’s favorite plant thrived. This living thing of beauty was a 145 year old Mexican ‘Sedum morganianum’ sitting in a key maker’s window for many of those years.
( )Its own uplifting dragdown polished in enough light
( )Its own whistle why you work book deal worth
( )a thousand friends in theory and not theory
( )its own blown election victory for the glory of the people for a few days
( ( )Its own Mexican dressing room to pace through goldenly
( ) till ‘Hair’ knocked or things were canceled
( ( )its own canceled screen-door sweepstakes announced too late
( ( )Its own gray fingered nail wedding party on the waves
( )Pulled from that well combed hat
( )By the youngest with the
( )sweetest tilt of head
( )A title scrawled neatly on premium acid free paper
( )Read: Catching up to what I Know
( )But what kind of song would this be
( )to come back for?
( )Return against?
Domenic Maltempi is a musician and writer living a little too close to his home town in New York. His poetry and prose have appeared in “The Scroll,’ ‘Incredible Melting Object,’ and ‘Perfect Sound Forever.’ He is a member of the bands The Whispering Olympians and El Alto (http://www.myspace.com/elalto) (http://whisperingolympians.bandcamp.com/) He is currently working on a collection of short stories about loaner cars and, cocky watercolorists, and a collection of poetry called “Catching up to what I know.”
Filed under: POETRY, WRITING | Tags: 22, akron, and, brooklyn, JW, magazine, mark, new, ohio, poet, poetry, save, scrimp, the, york
JW Mark
All in static black we scrimp and save
Despotic in our malcontent
For what could be, (but never is) the end
Of hunger, dread and doubt.
Feigning sleep to wake at mid-day
when the sunshine spent (now lost)
We leave in hopes to find a cloudy indecision
black sheet focus/ rain swept fortune
All in torment of our purpose and our course
Wander pathways paved of horrors
Find a someplace white inside she screams
Disenchantment held inside her vowels, she says,
“I think I cry torrential downpours” and
Presumed escape from some entrapment
held inside her mind and treading in misfortune
All is scattered, lost and lazy
JW Mark is a poet living in Sagamore Hills, Ohio. Among the publications to include his work are The Ampersand Review, Eunoia Review, The Midwest Literary Magazine, flashquake, and The North Chicago Review. He is the author of a novel, entitled Artifice, as well as a book of poems entitled Patched Collective. He can be contacted at jwmarkmail@gmail.com
Filed under: POETRY, WRITING | Tags: 22, a, art, artist, artists, arts, baton, brooklyn, desert, Jane, macavay, magazine, new, ny, nyc, orleans, poem, poet, rouge, writing
by Jane Macavay
If this were the desert,
a separate sea,
what then of that drum we left sitting on the bench that day in Tyman park?
Do you think it decayed?
Broke down,
skin first,
then the bells?
Did anyone try to save it?
Who cares?
Left over: a feather, slick and a little greasy,
rested on the edge of that sad instrument,
trembling in a hasty breeze.
Jane Macavay is an musician and writer born in Baton Rouge. She now lives in New Orleans with her sister and three parrot’s. She has been published in various small reviews and magazine’s and her forthcoming book of poetry “If it’s not for Breaking, Is it for Smashing?” comes out in the Summer of 2013.
Filed under: THE WEEK/THE WEEKEND | Tags: 2011, 2012, 22, 4, 42, 7th, a, actress, adam, America Robert, and, annual, apple, art, artist, artists, arts, Ashley’s, assemble, back, Bedroom, beth, big, BIGGEST, brooklyn, by, Canem, Chamber, CIRCE, composer, Concrete Brain, CONQUER NATIONAL, CONQUER NATURE, conversation, cooperation, craft, Dangerously American, Delisle, Density, Downes Simultaneous NATIONAL, Dreaming, DUO DIAMOND, Edelson, effects, Eggs Sigils, Eleanor, energy, Ensemble The, Ensemble Vonnegut, EVANS, experimental, Featuring, festival, Festival Brancusi, FETISH Low, fight, Fixins Contemporary, for, Frances, future, Future THE, Guanzhong Slavoj, Guy, Heartney, historians, hosted, hyper, in, ink, international, is, Issue, JERUSALEM Frackonomics GRADUATE, JUKEBOX Freeze, K., Kathleen, lady, Lara, Launch, library, live, LIVES, lorin, magazine, Manhattan League, mary, McDormand Drawn, Moody, music, Networked, new, night, ny, nyc, of, Offit, on, or, our, paintings, paris, party, Party Either, Patrick, Percussion, performances, photographs, pianists, Pink Extreme, playwright, poet, poetry, poets, Pornography Revolutionary, presented, presents, PRESENTS…PRACTICE! Greenlight, professional, Quarterly, Reading “The, residence, review, Rick, Ron, Rosal Late, Ruhl, Salon Contemporary, sarah, SERIES PETER, SHE, Sidney, Signs Ladies, smith, spring, STABINSKY, Stein Cave, STOOPS, surreal, TERRIFIER, the, theatre, to, Tracy, vision, Wentrack HYDROGEN, Wilson, with, women, Wu, year, york, your, Žižek
EDITOR’S PICKS:
The 22 Magazine is putting on a show this Thursday at Vaudeville Park in Brooklyn. Hope you can join us!
Check out a preview for the show.
The 22 Magazine Presents: Fixins
http://www.the22magazine.com/Pages/upcomingevents.html
04/26/2012-04/26/2012
The 22 Magazine is pleased to present an evening of music, art, food and puppetry with Andru Bemis, Anna Gevalt, Elizabeth Laprelle and Katherine Fahey, who along with singing, will be presenting a cranky. Also known as scrolling panorama, or crank box, the cranky is an old-fashioned hand-cranked scrolling device, illustrating a story or song. They will be joined by FAHEY, puppeteer Daniel Patrick Fay, and visual artists Jimmy McBride, Megan Canning, Eileen Hoffman, Reineke Hollander and more. There will be a potluck style buffet, so feel free to bring something to contribute! The event will take place on April 26, at Vaudeville Park in Brooklyn.
Filed under: WRITING | Tags: 22, a, author, body, brooklyn, divided, dreams of, east, FLY, jerry, magazine, new, NOVEl, ny, nyc, on, our, pickle, poet, ratch, reality, the, village, West, wild, writing
I think I know that fly
That fly followed us from our apartment
on W. 11th St
When I opened the door he flew right in
and when we left, he flew right out again
Followed us on the subway to Times Square
Took the Shuttle apparently
Followed us all the way through the tunnels
up the escalator and into Grand Central Station
Then down to Juniors in the food court below
where he joined us for lunch
the best Chicken Caesar Salad on the planet
So famous, even the flies know about it
We asked the waitress for an additional chair
but he took a seat on our pickle instead
“Oh, don’t worry,” we told her,
“we know him. He normally lives
“down in the Village”
The waitress eyed us suspiciously
“East or West?” she asked
“As if that mattered!” we said
Jerry Ratch has published 12 books of poetry, and the novel, Wild Dreams of Reality, and now the memoir, A Body Divided the story of a one-armed boy growing up in a two-fisted world. His work can be purchased through the author’s website: www.jerryratch.com He has had poems published in Antioch Review, Carolina Quarterly, Louisville Review, Negative Capability, Nerve Cowboy, Slant, Voices, and many others.
Filed under: WRITING | Tags: 401, archeology, atms, blogger, film, hardie, iphones, karges, maker, philosophy, poet, traveler, Video, world, youtube
Will they ever get it? (future archeologists, that is)
Will they ever truly understand what it is we did here?
()
Rummaging through city dumps, kitchen middens, Indian
mounds and Chinese cemeteries, they’ll have a job for life
()
They’ll understand the cars, no doubt, since car=chariot,
same word same deal, but will they understand
the computers, the ATM’s, the iPhones, the YouTube?
()
They’ll have the hardware, but they won’t have the program
They’ll just have dead plastic that long ago lost its language,
carrion baggage that got lost in transit…
()
Remember to get something down on paper, even if it’s not
written in stone
Remember to look around outside yourself, even if it’s on the
long way home
Hardie Karges is a poet, blogger and film/video-maker, philosopher by degree and world traveler/trader, having traveled to 139 countries and lived in several of them. He currently lives in LA, but is not an Angeleno. His work has appeared in various online publications and a book is in the works. His personal blog is at http://hkarges.wordpress.com/.
Filed under: WRITING | Tags: 22, 98, artists, at, brooklyn, edith, johnson, Lee, magazine, michael, mother, new, ny, nyc, poet, poetry, writer, writing, york
Edith, in this nursing home
blinded with macular degeneration,
I come to you with your blurry
eyes, crystal sharp mind,
your countenance of grace
as yesterday’s winds.
I have chosen to consume you
and take you away.
“Oh, where did Jesus disappear
to,” she murmured,
over and over again,
in a low voice
dripping words
like a leaking faucet:
“Oh, there He is, my
Angel of the coming.”
Michael Lee Johnson is a poet, freelance writer and small business owner of custom imprinted promotional products and apparel, from Itasca, Illinois. He is heavily influenced by Carl Sandburg, Robert Frost, William Carlos Williams, Irving Layton, Leonard Cohen, and Allen Ginsberg. His new poetry chapbook with pictures, titled From Which Place the Morning Rises, and his new photo version of The Lost American: from Exile to Freedom are available at Lulu. The original version of The Lost American: from Exile to Freedom, can be found at here.
Filed under: WRITING | Tags: 22, art, artist, artists, brooklyn, completely, gallery, gone, he's, leif, magazine, new, ny, nyc, performance, poet, poetry, say, solem, the, They, york
They say he’s gone completely off the rails
or what’s the new favorite?
Right: out where the buses don’t run.
It was pride once — back in his twenties
chasing girls, always ready to pounce — the ink of him
indelible in each and then on to another,
showing off, wasting his promise on the glimmer
of aimless days on the Lower East Side.
Gone off completely, not even rhyming anymore, not even
English really, no syntax, just a mushy concentrate to push
the drawer closed over along with all the old
black & whites, there to ripen and grow that sepia
patina like a skin of fuzzy mold.
They say too he’s out West somewhere, who cares where,
maybe the Cabinet Mountains or the Sound, switched to bourbon
maybe, ego receding, cataracts on the memories
of the good old days like moss on a pond, the rowboat rotting
by the dock, but still that same smile, that hint
of the boyhood back when spray paint stuck to train cars,
those old screeching IRT red birds, and the sun shone on the brick
buildings up by Columbia.They say he’s gone completely off
but maybe he’s happy.
Leif Solem was born in New York City. He lives in Spokane, Washington, where he plays music on street corners when the weather permits.
Filed under: WRITING | Tags: 22, a, art, artist, artists, arts, Bethany, brooklyn, carlson, clue, existence, explain, for, lake, magazine, new, ny, nyc, of, poem, poet, poetry, silence, small, the, to, valedicition, writing, york
How this lake Collects hearts, incredulous
at the thick of its seam; how you might tremble
to know the rind at the water’s bare edge,
surfaces zeroing across the mezzo.
Beyond the sandbar’s reach, trees exchange
glass teeth & shades of Red. How she is saying Open,
Open wider. This is what it means to be created:
the water, in relief, moves across the frozen
dome of sky fraught with sky. I know it’s vague,
she murmurs, the trees leaning in to listen; laissez-faire,
their singular arms, the rustle of this deep lake. Segue
to last night, the same arms falling in unison around her–
soon these winters accumulate like souvenirs,
pairs of wings (tepid, indistinct) caught on the passing months
while the Lake of Small Silence continues to love her
& love her, the freshwater charged with cinema.
Bethany Carlson is currently studying poetry in Indiana University’s MFA program. She has been published in Memorious, Washington Square Review, Cream City Review, Bellingham Review, Night Train, Diagram, Drunken Boat, Ruminate, Juked, Boxcar Poetry Review, among others.
Filed under: WRITING | Tags: 22, art, artist, artists, arts, ben, brooklyn, Divisions, gallery, Nardolilli, ny, nyc, painting, poet, short. piece, the, Various, writing, york
North and south of you, weak winters,
How light the morning comes in your gutter.
Fish swim in circles through the pond,
( ) fleeing a need for home
As day sails over like a steam engine.
Week after month, you become of more use.
Like this sparrow,
( )you remain stubborn on the ground.
What do you dread about being twenty-four?
Yesterday was rosy.
( )Day before that was brighter still.
The earthworms are tunneling as loud as possible.
Flies are buzzcutting every moment of silence
( )between ceiling and carpet.
Into the world’s order, the day’s routine of hours,
Bring some noise, a song.
Ben Nardolilli is a twenty five year old writer currently living in Arlington, Virginia. His work has appeared in Perigee Magazine, Red Fez, One Ghana One Voice, Caper Literary Journal, Quail Bell Magazine, Elimae, Super
Arrow, Grey Sparrow Journal, Pear Noir, Rabbit Catastrophe Review, and Beltway Poetry Quarterly. Recently, his chapbook, Common Symptoms of an Enduring Chill Explained, has been published by Folded Word
Press. He maintains a blog at mirrorsponge.blogspot.com and am looking to publish my first novel.
Filed under: WRITING | Tags: 22, art, bird, brooklyn, drawing, flowers, magazine, new, ny, nyc, poet, poetry, stephanie, the, valente, writing, york
she is petulant; partly,
of feathers, even after
the mourners come and go
stand on a man’s legs,
and bathe in the water
this is what they told her
in the backyard that day, full
of professional mourners
that come and go
they are thick, floating
on webbed legs,
and still, there is writhing
bergamot, rosemary, rose hips
set to lips, white-washed
to kiss her through netting,
clapped hands
but, to catch a bird,
that is the real feat.
Stephanie Valente lives in New York. One day, she would like to be a silent film star. Her work has appeared in or is forthcoming from dotdotdash, Nano Fiction, LIES/ISLE, and Uphook Press. She can be found at http://kitschy.tumblr.com
Filed under: WRITING | Tags: 22, 3:38, art, artists, arts, aviv, ayala sella, brooklyn, driver, irish, israel, magazine, new, ny, nyc, poet, poetry, shotgun, tel, the, txi, WRIP, york
in a few hours
i’m off to london
and then to
the city
except today
there’s still
live music
at the boom bar
and tall glasses
of tuborg
and camouflage
trousers that
if you please
you can
WRIP
and the taxi driver
which I always shotgun
here
says
“my brother has an irish
wife who’s really catholic
but they seem to get
along ok”
to which I reply
“that’s all that matters”
and he says
“the trick is
to bend down
without it hurting”
Ayala Sella is a writer, living and working in Bushwick, Brooklyn. Born in Israel, she moved to the United States at the age of four, and has spent the past years traveling between these two countries. Her first book, a collection of poetry entitled soliloquies of a crosswalker has just been released by Wasteland Press. Her first interview will be published in the KGB Lit Magazine in August and her work is forthcoming in the New York Quarterly. She will be participating in the monthly storytelling series at The Bodega on Sunday, August 7th, and will be reading at the Bowery Poetry Club August 9th, at Bluestockings Bookstore on August 18th, at Cafe Orwell on August 28th and as part of the Guerrilla Reading Series on August 31st.
Filed under: WRITING | Tags: 22, a, aimee, brooklyn, day, for, i, laundry, magazine, man, money, new, NICOLE, ny, nyc, of, poet, poetry, quarters, roll, sexual, slept, the, with, york
I slept with a man for a roll of quarters.
I told him I gladly accepted bills,
but all he had was laundry money.
So, I pocketed the quarters and thought
it was surely convenient that I no longer had to venture to the local bank
to change my last hard earned ten,
just to submerge my lights and darks in frigid water.
For weeks, I will wear clean clothes
and worry about my appearance as it comes a dire need.
About Aimee: While not reading, painting, and with her family, Aimee is finishing up a YA manuscript. Aimee graduated from Roger Williams University with a degree in Creative Writing this past May and has been published by Red Booth Review, Mouth of the Bay and two of her poems will appear in the upcoming fall publication of Psychic Meatloaf. In August she will also be featured on The Journal of Compressed Creative Arts’ blog for a statement of compression.
Filed under: INTERVIEWS | Tags: activist, album, and, animal, animals, ann's, art, beastie, boys, Bronx, carson, cover, coytoe, culture, D., darwin, darwinian, davis, deborah, drawbacks, dual, enviroments, envrioments, francisco, gallery, habitats, hip hop, human, india, institute, intellectual, interaction, intergalatic, lab, LZ, mad, man, marionettes, matt, mccullers, mike, muralist, natural, nature, necessity, new, November, ny, october, of, painter, painting, perspective, poet, poetry, project, puppet, puppets, pursues, reeck, reevaluation, residency, road, saint, san, sculptor, sculpture, show, simon, space, st, st. ann's, studio, tamara, taxidermy, the, toys, Utica, versus, with animals, york, zoo
Deborah in the studio with her sculptures. ©2011 The 22 Magazine
This past Friday, I paid a visit to Deborah Simon who has an upcoming show at NY Studio Gallery‘s LZ Project Space opening this Friday, May 20th. Deborah has been a painter and sculptor for several years now and will be part of the Sculpture Space residency in Utica, this coming October and November. She has worked at the Bronx Zoo building habitats and “intellectual toys” for the animals, and her work reflects the understanding of the dual nature of man-made versus natural environments and the drawbacks and necessity of both. Her sculpture’s present a strange encounter and cause the viewer to approach the animal in an unusual and raw manner, suggesting a reevaluation of the nature of human and animal interaction.
We truly appreciate her taking the time to talk about her work and upcoming show.
The 22 Magazine: You worked at the Bronx Zoo correct? Can you tell us a little about what you did there?
Deborah Simon: Sure, I did some design work. It was everything from giving exhibits face lifts to mural work, to sometimes just flat out designing and building exhibits. [I also built] intellectual toys for the animals. With that you have to make everything look natural. So [you have to make a] tiger toy that looks [for example] like a rotten piece of wood. It was one of those oddball weird request situations, keepers would come and say we need hummingbird feeders made out of XY and Z and we’d have to figure how to make them look natural.
The 22: How did you get into that kind of work? Did you study design in school or elsewhere?
DS: No, I’ve got a fine arts background. [I studied at] San Francisco Art Institute, which prepares you for nothing but making conceptual art. I just happened to have a realistic bent to what I do, which was thoroughly discouraged but…
I started working as a muralist and then the zoo had an ad in the paper. I replied to it and got hired. It’s one of those jobs where the guy who runs the department is fantastic, and he just expects that you need a lot of on the job training. You need to be able to weld, you need to be able to fiberglass, you need to be able to do some basic carpentry. There are just so many skills that no one person is going to have them all. They do invest in teaching you quite a bit [so], I learned a lot, and it all goes back into what I do.
The 22: In regards to your artists statement, which talks a little about the animal confronting the viewer in an unrestricted environment, did working at the zoo conflict with ideas of how animals should be treated in any way?
DS: I think it’s a conflict a lot of the people who work at the zoo have, because everyone who works there more or less loves animals. We all have multiple animals, we are deeply concerned about animal welfare. Some of the holding areas are very old and not that great. Some of the animals are permanently on medications because [there is] not the best ventilation but, on the other hand, you can’t just let them go. [I believe] Finland ran into this problem. They decided it was cruel and inhumane to keep this baboon exhibit. They decided it was inhumane to keep more tropical animals in Finland, but they couldn’t get rid of them because they breed really well and every zoo has a ton of them. So, they were going to euthanize them but the public had a fit and they had to keep them. So, now they have these unhappy baboons; animals that are obviously not doing well, but there are no other options for them. [I think] a lot of the people [that work at the zoo] go through this. [They think] these animals didn’t ask for this, they didn’t want to become ambassadors of their species, but on the other hand sometimes when your standing and watching the public watch these animals and they suddenly make this connection to the human traits of the animals you really hope it does something. They are suddenly more aware of them and, you think, I hope this means that it will translate into something, maybe [that wouldn't be there] if they hadn’t seen it. Then again, zoo animals they don’t behave like wild animals, they have three meals a day, they sleep all day. [In the end] it’s a lot of mixed emotions.
The 22: A lot of your animals actually are puppets or look a lot like traditional marionettes. Stylistically how did you decide this was how you were going to build?
DS: It’s weird because I have this totally anal goal to be as accurate as humanly possibly, but I’m always reminding myself it’s art, not taxidermy. I was living in India for a while and India is a very sculpture oriented place. I had been painting for years and years at that point, and maybe it was just being around so much sculpture. I was home in the states and one day I just thought, what would happen if I make sculpted animals with fake fur? The hyena was the first one. I found [the hyena's fur] in the bargain bin and I thought, this looks just like spotted hyena fur, no wonder it’s on sale. I brought back Sculpy and fur and whatever else I thought I wouldn’t be able to get in India, and just started working. I was originally thinking of porcelain dolls-[with] the hard heads and the soft body. I was thinking more along the lines of what would it be like to make these things so they look like creeped out porcelain dolls, but they actually ended up a little but more like [weird] taxidermy.
Deborah working in her studio. photo ©2011 Ted Szczepanski
The 22: They seem to have this really human quality, a very aggressive straight on gaze…
DS:I feel even though animals are a really popular subject right now, it’s always animal as metaphor or animal as parable. They play the role of an odalisque and they don’t confront the viewer. They are a stand in for history, they’re a stand in for human behavior, but they are never just themselves, and when they are themselves it’s more kitschy animal art. I want it to be as if you were walking into their space. It’s kind of that feeling when you out in the woods or hiking, or even in Central Park [where] it tends to be a bird of prey, a hawk or something, and you have that instant where they look at you, and you look at them, and you have no idea what’s going to go on. Especially if it’s big enough to hurt you. Then it’s this totally different interaction than the zoo or anything else. Your walking into their space, and they are psychologically dominating it. The sculptures themselves are going to be hung so your going to have to walk around them. They force you to move around them instead of being on the walls or giving a pathway.
The 22: Can you tell me a little about Coyote Pursue’s puppet project?
DS: It was a pretty amazing experience. Collaborating was new to me but Matt Reeck is a good friend and amazing to work with. We shored up each others strengths and weaknesses really well. I would never have been able to direct something like that. I think in the future I may do more puppetry but do it so it’s video.
Coyote Pursues, 2010. photo courtesy of St. Ann's Warehouse
The 22: Is there a difference between building the puppets versus building the sculptures? Is that something you had to learn?
DS: Yes. St. Ann’s puppet lab is a nine month program so they are a huge resource, but it took me forever just to figure how to walk them. It took me two months just to build one, to actually physically construct it so that it moved properly. Once I got the basic structure it took me weeks to figure out how to string it, and that’s one of the times the lab was great. I brought them in and said I don’t know what to do, and one of the guys [showed me], and it was done. It was wonderful.
The 22: The piece itself was about a world where humans are gone, and coyotes are the only ones left right?
DS: [Matt Reeck] is a wonderful poet and he gave me a book of his poetry and asked me to illustrate it. At the time I was just feeling like, I don’t want to paint anything, and I don’t want to sketch.
[But] I was thinking [the poetry] would be perfect to do a puppet show with, and so we said what the hell, we’ll write a puppet lab. We threw it together in two weeks, and we were really surprised we got in. Originally we had taken three of his poems, more short prose really, and the one we both had a very clear vision-that was the same vision-was [the coyote] one. We started building and time started ticking by, and we realized the other two we’re never going to make it, and that we wouldn’t have time [to perform more than one]. You only got twenty minutes tops to perform. So, we decided just to focus on the coyotes, and it was really based on his writing, and [the idea of] not using the animals as parables but to be really Darwinian about it. What would a coyote really be doing if they were wandering around in this world with nothing really left. We were thinking of it as The Road but with coyotes.
The 22: Did you do a cover for The Beastie Boys [Intergalatic]?
DS: I had actually done the paintings and they ended up on the cover. The paintings were actually in the small works show at NYU and Mike D’s wife bought them. So, she came over to my studio and she’s chatting and we’re having this very nice conversation, and she keeps talking about her husband’s band and so I’m thinking….ok, band whatever and being polite, I ask oh what band is your husband in? And she’s says, The Beastie Boys, and at that point I’m immediately intimidated. So about six months later, they called to see if it was ok with me if they used it as an album cover and I just thought….ooook, twist my arm. It was just this little freak thing, they were just these little freak paintings, that I wasn’t planning to do as a body of work or anything.
Memento mori: Ocelot and ocelot skeleton, oil on wood, 68” w x 36” h, 2001
The 22: What about the memento mori series paintings? Can you talk a little about what this series means to you and why you decided to do it?
DS: I think in that series I’d been reading a lot about evolution. I was thinking about how death influences life. I was thinking about a Darwinian perspective, you have these animals with these constant pressures, and it’s survival of the fittest but also thinking about viewing what human’s do in the world [destruction and pollution] as unnatural, but it is natural because we are part of the world and this is part of what we do. Animals routinely destroy their environments, but they don’t do it in the same numbers that we do. Elephants constantly trash environments and have to move on, but there are so few of them, they aren’t ruining Africa or Asia-we sort of beat them to it. I guess I was thinking about that simple pressure and interaction, and how some of your stiffest competition is from your species. You know species always have more children than your going to need. You really only need a one to one replacement and chances are that’s all your going to get if your lucky.
Filed under: THE WEEK/THE WEEKEND | Tags: 22, 3rd, a, Adam Matta, affairs, and Rosanna Warren, animals, ansel, apress, art, artists, arts, b, bedford, between, birthday, black, blacklight, books, bradbury, brooklyn, bruno, budget, bye, center, central, chickens, cocktail, Colvin Grannum, conseling, consumer, Contemporary, Corporation, crossing, cullman, culture, cultureal, cut, cutting, Danny Simmons, day, department, department of, development, Domenic M. Recchia, dortothy, eamon, edge, elkins, empowerment, experience, fair, for, furies, gallery, gathering, gowanus, grennan, heaven, hell, in, information, ireland, itinerant, jamey, japan, japanese, Jimmy Van Bramer, joe, joe's, Jr., Kate D. Levin, kincet, kitty, kyle, lewis, library, light, lincoln, lounge, love, magazine, make, makerbot, Marty Markowitz, mcdonald, media, money, my, narratives, Ned Rothenberg, of, of financial, office, on, performance, personal finance, Philip Levine, poet, poetry, project, proteus, prototyping, pub, public, QMAD, queens, Racheal Price, Rachelle Garniez, rapid, reading, resources, Restoration, resurrected, robot, secret, shadow, shirey, society, Sonny Singh, spring, stalkers, Stuyvesant, sxip, Terry Dame, the, the road, thera, thon, three, Timothy Donnelly, to paradise, tribes, Vengeance, W.B., walter, ward, webb, with, with Eamon Grennan, workships, writing, xavier, xBox, yeast, your
MakerBot Make-A-Thon // Experience Cutting-Edge Rapid Prototyping
MakerBot Make-A-Thon
Saturday, May 14th, 2:00 – 6:00 pm
195 Morgan Avenue, Brooklyn NY
FREE
The MakerBot Thing-O-Matic is 1) a modern manufacturing breakthrough, and 2) also a lot of fun.
The 3rd Ward MakerBot Make-A-Thon is your chance to see these tiny factories in action, print awesome 3D objects and even a 3D portrait of yourself.
MakerBot Artist-in-Residence Kyle McDonald will be presenting his work turning the Xbox Kinect into a 3D Scanner. He will scan you in his 3D Photo Booth, then print you using the MakerBot.
The Makerbot prints anything up to 4”x5”x5” with ABS and PLA (biodegradable) plastic. All you do is hit print, and the machine does all the work. Print 100 butterflies, an entire chess set — anything! And see a 9 foot-wide geodesic dome, printed entirely on the MakerBot.
Learn more about the MakerBot and the 3rd Ward Make-A-Thon in The New York Times here.
Plus, win prizes from MakerBot, Apress Books, and MAKE Magazine!
RSVPs are required at http://www.3rdward.com/rsvp
MakerBot Industries was named one of the top 20 startups in NYC, and has been featured in The New York Times, Wired, Make: Magazine, The Wall Street Journal, IEEE Spectrum, CNN, Financial Times, NPR, The Economist and others. For more information on MakerBot, click here and see photos of the MakerBot Thing-O-Matic here.
Learn more about Kyle McDonald’s Xbox Kinect hack in this 3rd Ward blog post.
BYE BYE KITTY @JAPAN SOCIETY. Between Heaven and Hell in Contemporary Japanese Art
Friday, March 18 — Sunday, June 12
Bye Bye Kitty!!! is a radical departure from recent Japanese exhibitions. Moving far beyond the stereotypes of kawaii and otaku culture, Japan Society’s show features sixteen emerging and mid-career artists whose paintings, objects, photographs, videos, and installations meld traditional styles with challenging visions of Japan’s troubled present and uncertain future.
Buy the Catalog
Admission & Gallery Hours
MY W. B. YEATS
Timothy Donnelly, Philip Levine, and Rosanna Warren, with Eamon Grennan
Saturday, May 14, 2:30pm
MAP
An event curated by noted Irish poet Eamon Grennan, with American poets reading and responding to Yeats’ work and exploring the influence of this literary giant on their own poetry.
Co-sponsored by Culture Ireland, the Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman Center at Lincoln Center, and the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts.
Admission is free.
Bruno Walter Auditorium
111 Amsterdam Avenue and 65th Street
THE BLACK LIGHT LOUNGE@ SECRET PROJECT ROBOT.
Saturday, May 14 8-11pm.
How awesome would it be to walk into a room filled salon style with black light posters and art!? This Spring Secret Project Robot creates the long awaited fluorescent opulence. Over 30 artists participate to transform the gallery into a black light cocktail lounge.
THE ART OF MONEY: PERSONAL FINANCE RESOURCES FOR ARTISTS
WEBSITE
Join the Department of Cultural Affairs, Bedford Stuyvesant Restoration Corporation, and Department of Consumer Affairs Office of Financial Empowerment for a day of FREE financial counseling sessions and workshops designed to help working artists, arts administrators, and independent workers reduce debt and manage credit.
SATURDAY, MAY 14, 2011
Information Fair, Workshops and Counseling Sessions 12 PM – 5 PM
Post Event Reception 5 PM – 7 PM
Bedford Stuyvesant Restoration Corporation | 1368 Fulton Street, Brooklyn, NY 11216
OPENING REMARKS BY
Kate D. Levin, Commissioner, New York City Department of Cultural Affairs
Marty Markowitz, Brooklyn Borough President
Jimmy Van Bramer, New York City Council Member and Chair of the Committee on Cultural Affairs, Libraries & International Intergroup Relations
Domenic M. Recchia, Jr., New York City Council Member and Chair of the Finance Committee
Colvin Grannum, President, Bedford Stuyvesant Restoration Corporation
Danny Simmons, Chair of New York State Council on the Arts and Artist
Love Your Library Day!
Saturday, May 14, 10 AM – 3 PM
Central Library, 10 Grand Army Plaza
As Brooklyn Public Library (BPL) faces a city budget cut that could reduce library hours, materials and free programs, we need your support!
Show your elected officials how much you love BPL by coming to this important, fun event on Central Library’s Plaza.
| 10 AM – 3 PM: | Book, T-shirt and tote bag sale |
| 10 AM – 12 PM: | Performance by BPL’s own Lost in the Stacks |
| 12 – 1 PM: | Advocacy rally |
| 1 PM: | Performance by Vo-Duo, a group inspired by the vodou music traditions of Haiti |
You can also use our computers to email your elected officials to say NO to budget cuts and remind them how much your library means to you.
Suggested donation for the event is $5. This donation, as well as proceeds from book, T-shirt and tote bag sales, will help purchase new library materials.
CROSSING ART GALLERY
Saturday, May 14 from 6 to 9 PM
136-17 39th Avenue
Flushing, NY 11354
QMAD, Queens Media Arts Development, in partnership with Crossing Art Gallery, presents the First Annual Performance Art Festival of Queens featuring new works by local, national and international performance artists. This year’s program, ITINERANT, focuses on works that treat notions of displacement, delivery, and transformation. Participating artists use performance narratives and actions that evoke immediacy and intimacy to bridge the gap of communication and distance. (READ MORE.)
Shadow-stalkers and Resurrected Chickens:
Animals on the Road to Paradise
Saturday, May 14 at 7 pm
$5 admission
MAP
Stories about the journey to paradise, in religious and literary traditions, feature animals as both obstacles and allies.
In Seamus Heaney’s translation of Beowulf, Grendel is the “shadow-stalker” the hero must slay
to prove himself and attain an earthly paradise; on the medieval pilgrimage trail to Santiago de Compostela, Spain,
there is still an ornate chicken coop housing a pure white rooster and hen in the cathedral in one town
to commemorate a pilgrim’s miraculous escape from disaster.
What beasts block our roads or assist us on the way?
Rev. Craig Townsend presents an evening of tales, images, and soundscape evoking and exploring
the human-animal interactions that illuminate both the journey and its goal.
Craig Townsend is an Episcopal priest serving as Vicar at St. James’ Church on the Upper East Side of Manhattan.
He has a Ph.D. from Harvard that, while focused on American religious history, also entailed
the study of the world’s major religious traditions.
Please visit the Proteus Gowanus website for more news and information about upcoming events.
SXIP SHIREY’s B-DAY at Joe’s Pub.
Saturday, May 14 at 9 pm
MAP
It’s my birthday next month and as a present to myself I’m doing a big “solo show” at Joe’s Pub with some of my very favorite NYC artists who I haven’t had a chance to perform with much or at all. (Aside from Adam but…he’s ADAM) Adam Matta, Ned Rothenberg, Terry Dame, Rachelle Garniez, Racheal Price, Sonny Singh and Xavier.
I will be presenting an expanded version of the Sxipenspiel. I also have a new device called a gravity marble tree…and a perfect Sam Cook styled R & B tune to be sung by Xaxier. I am going to do “Ring My Bell with Rachel Price and I’ll be performing an improv piece with the amazing Ned Rothenberg. PLUS I do a rendition of a composition by Shelley Segal.Very exited to announce that Mathias Kunzli will be the percussionist for the evening.
A brief interview with Sxip about the show and participants:
THE 22: Variations and experiments in breath seem to play a large role in both yours and Ned’s work. Besides the fact that you both play reed instruments do you feel you push the boundaries of the human body as a musical tool?
SXIP SHIREY: I don’t think I am pushing the boundaries of the human body honestly. Back in my 20s when I wanted to be a punk Michael Hedges I ended up with tendinitis for two years. The first time Ned saw me play he commented on how tense I held my body when I played. He plays with such a focused relaxed quality and puts the intensity just in music. He circular breaths beautifully, which is pushing the body in a sense, but really what is great about him is the calm control of tones that are ever evolving and unwieldy. My playing is definitely a product directly of what my body is doing. Modern dancers sense this and they love my performance, but I don’t think I’m pushing the body, I am pushing the instrument. Oh shit..I just reread the question. I see what you are asking now. I didn’t think of breath as pushing the boundaries of the human body as a musical tool, I just did it. Breath is a rhythm we all understand deeply, it is the most intimate rhythm we make that we can easily hear (unlike a heart beat), there is incredible power in making this intimate sound epic. I am ever creating a palette of compelling of sounds that that I can draw from to take me and the audience to effective places.
THE 22: What are you thoughts on the traditions in music versus the basic elemental pleasure of sound? Is either more important?
SXIP SHIREY: I am finding this question hard to answer. It’s not that either is important or not important. It’s just not the issue. I make sound and music because I have to. It’s what I have to do, sometimes it’s a song with guitar, sometimes it’s playing folks songs, sometimes it’s rolling marbles in glass bowls, sometimes it’s tweaking virtual synths on the computer. It’s all the same to me.
THE 22: What about each of these musician’s appeal to you in collaboration and why did you chose to share this birthday celebration with them?
SXIP SHIREY:They are musicians who have an immediately strong seductive presence the moment they play or sing. They are people I simply like hearing and will go out to hear when I am in NYC. I thought it would be great to actually play with them. Most of them are not my normal collaborators.
THE 22: Can you tell us a little about the SxipenspieI and gravity marble tree?
SXIP SHIREY: The Sxipenspiel is perhaps my favorite birthday gift of all time. I was on tour with Amanda Palmer and Jason Webely’s Evelyn Evelyn tour and my birthday fell on a day we were in Berlin. Amanda and Neil went to a flea market in Berlin and bought these great bicycle bells that do a trilling long tone. They mounted them on a candlestick with a bent copper pipe at the top and dubbed it “The Sxipenspiel”. It’s a totally awkward instrument that sounds somehow amazing. I’ve learned to play it gracefully and I play it a lot. There is something magical sounding about it.
Bells historically are used to give us directions. “it’s time to go to church” “come to the door I am here” ” the egg is done cooking”. There is certain power to use them as a compositional element because their sound stimulates those parts of the brain.
THE 22 MAGAZINE PRESENTS: The Three Furies, Writing with a Vengeance
Sunday, May 15—5:00pm
A Gathering of the Tribes
285 East Third Street (between Ave C & D) #2
(212) 674-3778
A GATHERING OF THE TRIBES
THE 22 MAGAZINE
MAP
Known as “the Angry Ones” in Greek myth, the Furies were a trio of vengeful women born from the blood drops of the castrated appendage of Uranus (whose Titan son, Cronus, did him a dirty turn). They were psychological tormentors, the personification of vindictiveness and retribution. In art they were represented as winged creatures wearing nothing but snakes. In this reading by emerging writers Jamey Bradbury, Ansel Elkins, and Thera Webb—recent graduates of the MFA program in creative writing at University of North Carolina-Greensboro—they will forego niceties and read from an unforgiving selection of their latest work. If you’re bored with bucolic love poems, or have recently be wronged by a paramour, this Gathering of the Tribes is the place to savor the sweet taste of revenge.
Ansel Elkins
has poems appearing this spring in Boston Review, Mississippi Review, Ninth Letter, The American Scholar, The Believer and The Southern Review. She is one of four winners of the 2011 “Discovery”/Boston Review poetry prize. She lives in North Carolina.
Jamey Bradbury
has appeared in Black Warrior Review and is forthcoming in Zone 3. She is a literary assistant in Vermont, and is working on her first novel and a collection of short stories.
Thera Webb
is a radical feminist and resident of Brooklyn. She received her MFA in poetry from UNC Greensboro, and has had work in Fiction (JP) and Forklift, Ohio. Her chapbook, On The Shoulders of the Bear, was released this fall from Fractious Press.
Filed under: EVENTS, WRITING | Tags: 22, 3, a, american, angry, ansel, assistant, author, black, boston, bradbury, brooklyn, carolina, cronus, discovery, elkins, event, events, Fiction (JP), forklift, fractious, furies, gathering, greek, greensboro, jamey, letter, literary, magazine, MFA, mississippi, mythology, Nation, new, ninth, north, ny, nyc, of, ohio, on, ones, poet, poetry, poets, press, prize, program, psychological, reading, review, scholar, southern, the, the beat, the shoulders, thera, three, titan, tormentors, tribes, UNC, university, uranus, veng, warrior, webb, with, writing, york, zone
The Three Furies: Writing with a Vengeance
Sunday, May 15—5:00pm
A Gathering of the Tribes
285 East Third Street (between Ave C & D) #2
(212) 674-3778
A GATHERING OF THE TRIBES
ONLINE INVITE
THE 22 MAGAZINE
MAP
Known as “the Angry Ones” in Greek myth, the Furies were a trio of vengeful women born from the blood drops of the castrated appendage of Uranus (whose Titan son, Cronus, did him a dirty turn). They were psychological tormentors, the personification of vindictiveness and retribution. In art they were represented as winged creatures wearing nothing but snakes. In this reading by emerging writers Jamey Bradbury, Ansel Elkins, and Thera Webb—recent graduates of the MFA program in creative writing at University of North Carolina-Greensboro—they will forego niceties and read from an unforgiving selection of their latest work. If you’re bored with bucolic love poems, or have recently be wronged by a paramour, this Gathering of the Tribes is the place to savor the sweet taste of revenge.
Filed under: EVENTS | Tags: 10th, 122, actor, broncos, east, edgar, gentleman, goodie, helen, hess, jared, new, ny, oilcan, oliver, performance, playwright, poet, press, PS, special, street, york
Photo by Andrew LaChance: http://www.flickr.com/people/alachance/
If you happened, by some amazing lapse in judgement, to miss poet and playwright Edgar Oliver’s original performance of his one man show “East 10th Street,” there is still hope for you. The fates have smiled and Edgar will be performing his masterpiece for 3 weeks in March-April at PS 122!
And certainly there is only one appropriate response to that……goodie.
PS 122 Listing.
TICKETS AVAILABLE HERE.
Fridays at 8pm and Saturdays at 10pm ** March 18 – April 2!
READ THE NEW YORK TIMES REVIEW OF EAST 10TH ST.
ABOUT EDGAR OLIVER:
Edgar Oliver started performing in New York at the Pyramid in the mid-1980′s alongside artists including Hapi Phace, Kembra Pfahler, Samoa and playwright Kestutis Nakas. As a playwright, many of Oliver’s plays have been staged at La MaMa and other downtown NYC theatres, including The Seven Year Vacation,The Poetry Killer, Hands in Wartime,Motel Blue 19 and Mosquito Succulence. As a stage actor, he has performed in countless plays including Edward II with Cliplight Theater, Marc Palmieri’s Carl the Second, Lipsynka’s Dial M for Modeland numerous productions at Axis including Trinity 5:29, A Glance at New York (Edinburgh Festival Fringe & NYC), Julius Caesar, USS Frankenstein, the Hospital series, Seven in One Blow, or the Brave Little Kid and the one-man show East 10th Street: Self Portrait with Empty House (written by Edgar & directed by Randy Sharp — Edinburgh Festival Fringe & NYC). Edgar is also one of the most beloved storytellers at The Moth. His film roles include That’s Beautiful Frank, Henry May Long(directed by Axis’ Randy Sharp) and Gentlemen Broncos (directed by Jared Hess). His published works include A Portrait of New York by a Wanderer There and Summer (published by oilcan press); and The Man Who Loved Plants (published by Panther Books and available at Goodie.org).
