Handmade Art is now Cool: The Walker Art Center says so

mnartists.org presents
ARTmn: The Precious Object
+ Share This Article + Add to Collection + Printer-Friendly Format
by mnartists.org September 1, 2009

The Precious Object brings together 14 artists from locales throughout Minnesota in the inaugural exhibition of mnartists.org's ARTmn visual arts series, presented in partnership with the Hennepin County Public Library.
Article Image Gallery
Expand slideshow

ARTmn: The Precious Object

Speaking to the desire for the handmade in a world awash in technology, The Precious Object brings together 14 artists from locales throughout Minnesota in the inaugural exhibition of mnartists.org's ARTmn visual arts series, presented in partnership with the Hennepin County Public Library.

The artists -- selected from a pool of more than 300 applicants by a panel of curators, artists, and critics -- explore issues related to nature, simulation, craft, collecting, and fantasy. While the work employs a broad range of materials and processes, taken together it speaks to the personal connections we forge with physical objects as a means to commemorate and sometimes replicate an experience and or place.

We also have an engaging essay by Andy Sturdevant, "Inside the Cabinet of Wonders," reflecting on the perennial lure of strange and beautiful objects, written in honor of mnartists.org's inaugural ARTmn exhibition, The Precious Object, at the Hennepin County Library in Minneapolis.

OPENING RECEPTION
ARTmn2009: The Precious Object
Friday, September 18, 6-9 pm Free
Central Library, Cargill Hall

Panel Discussions:

"Faking Nature"
Tuesday, October 6, 7 pm, Free
Central Library, Pohlad Hall
Artists Liz Miller, Alison Hiltner, Paula McCartney, Sam Spiczka, and Karl Unnasch talk about their work in relation to the natural world.

"By Hand: Craftsmanship, Labor, and the Handmade"
Tuesday, October 27, 7 pm, Free
Central Library Pohlad Hall
Scott Stulen, mnartists.org project director, and Alisa Eimen, associate professor of art history at Minnesota State University, discuss their process for organizing The Precious Object and the central themes within the exhibition with artists Margaret Wall-Romana, Kristin Van Dorn, Erik Waterkotte, and Michon Weeks.

"My Precious: Obsession, Collection, and the Souvenir"
Tuesday, November 17, 7 pm Free
Central Library, Pohlad Hall
Artists James F. Cleary, Beth Barron, Andy Ducett, Joan Iron Moccasin, and Ginny Maki explore topics of appropriation, memory, and desire.

______________________________________________________

The Precious Object, mnartists.org's 2009 ARTmn exhibition, opens at the Hennepin Country Central Library in Minneapolis on September 18 and will be on view through January 3, 2010.

a project of The McKnight Foundation and Walker Art Center - contact us
© 2009 mnartists.org. All rights reserved.

The Mason Theory: Cottage Industry

Monte Mason is a good composer colleague of mine and has had a theory for many years explaining why there are so many composers working in Minnesota compared to places like New York or Los Angeles: our weather. We can't go outside because it's too cold...so we might as well compose!

We worked together at the Minnesota Composers Forum many years ago and we would postulate on the socio-economic explanations for why 500 composers were working in Minnesota. We were young back then and used to think that 500 was a big number. Now, we know that 500 is the cost of having someone remove a season of snow from your driveway or a house visit for a man to come fix your furnace or the price of a good space-heater.

Back then, when the MCF (as it was called) was gathering steam, we had visions of Minnesota becoming the Athens of the Cornfields. That was before we understood that the citizens of Athens liked their slaves obedient and their wars fought by the Spartans.

Now we understand that 500 composers in the middle of the country amounts to not even 2% of the ASCAP writer membership (which would be the average if composers were evenly spread like peanut butter all over the country). We know, too, that composers are like dust-bunnies -- they gather together in clumps, but not under beds or in the corner of rooms. Composers go where it's possible to hear their music played and that often means going to places where there is money to pay musicians. Composers go where there's money.

I know that sounds crass, but I think it's true. Compare North and South Dakota to Minnesota. The people are more or less the same. What's the difference? In Minnesota, there is more business, people, wealth, concert venues and, as a result, there are more churches, orchestras, open-mic nights at the coffee house, and night clubs. And this isn't happening to the same degree everywhere in Minnesota. It's happening in the concentration of all of these things: in cities. The bigger the better. And the Twin Cities are the biggest cities in the Upper Midwest whose states are listed here in the order of their populations: Wisconsin, Minnesota, Iowa, North and South Dakota.

There is always somewhere that is more important, bigger, and wealthier than wherever you live. It's a curious fact. Grand Forks looks to Fargo looks to St Cloud looks to the Twin Cities looks to Chicago looks to New York looks to Los Angeles looks to London looks to Berlin looks to...ad infinitum.

So what is the importance of the cottage industry? and how does this relate to composing music? and how does this relate to where you live?

From the InvestorWords.com website, comes this interesting definition for cottage industry: "An industry where the creation of products and services is home-based, rather than factory-based. While products and services created by cottage industry are often unique and distinctive given the fact that they are usually not mass-produced, producers in this sector often face numerous disadvantages when trying to compete with much larger factory-based companies."

Handmade goods. There is something quaint about that term "handmade" but I think it is congruent with what today's composers do. They work alone, usually at home, and create unique and distinctive products and services. I think the idea of a "cottage industry" was created in retrospect after the industrial revolution got started.

Once the majority of people were in factories, those still stuck at home making handmade products (like sweaters, furniture, etc) must have looked antique and uncompetitive. But we're in a new revolution: the information revolution with the internet and file-sharing and instant messaging.

The Digital Cottage Industry is connected, internationally, to the widest of markets via new technologies. It is now possible for someone in a place as remote as Valley City, North Dakota or Casselton or Hurdsfield to compose, record, distribute, and sell music to a breathless public. Composers may work in their cottage but they have the same tools as anyone in the music industry.

So what about the Mason Theory that Minneapolis is a Golden City on a Golden Hill among fields of Golden Grains? Is it possible that no place is bigger or better than any other place now that the internet flattens the playing fields of gold?

The cottage industry that depends on imagination and innovation needs more than the tools. No, I'm afraid it really does matter where your cottage is. Proximity to intentionally and professionally creative people still matters. I would like to suggest a corollary to the Mason Theory.

I will call it the Davidson Corollary. Creative communities exist because individual creators need a host of like-minded individuals to compare works and ideas. Creative friction between individual creators generates creative "heat" which generates better work which attracts more like-minded people which generates more creative "heat." A virtual circle of creativity.

In this description of the world, the egg comes first: a critical mass of people, money, and time. The dust-bunny (creative community) springs forth from that egg.

Location. Location. Location. In your little Digital Cottage.

(I've got to cut down on my metaphors in the morning.)

An earlier version of a riff on Greg Sandow's book

By Greg Sandow
==============

Hi, everyone,

Here’s a riff from my book. It’s a quick and dirty version of the beginning, not the actual text, but a riff on what the beginning is likely to say.

Why did I write this? Because of thoughtful comments from a number of people, including some highly placed in the classical music business. Maybe, said these comments, the book as I outlined it earlier to all of you spends too much time proving that classical music (as we know it) is in trouble. Because everyone knows this! Instead, I should jump in with visions of classical music’s rebirth — since “Rebirth,” after all, is the book’s title.

I do get a lot of arguments, though, about classical music’s health, and so do others. So I’m trying to split the difference — reserve space for demonstrating how bad the problems are, but also jumping right in with something positive. Hence the riff. See what you think. Comments, as always, more than welcome (but completely optional).

And note that the copyright notice at the end allows all of you to spread this riff — and the outline — as widely as you’d like, subject to some fairly obvious provisions the notice sets forth.

Riff:

[from Chapter I --Rebirth and Resistance]

Let's look at the rebirth part.

So many changes in classical music, going off like fireworks. And nobody has ever catalogued them (which of course becomes one more reason why I'm writing this book).

All of these changes bring classical music right into the culture shared by the rest of the world. Just imagine what would happen if these changes gathered strength. Classical music could be reborn. It could rejoin the culture around it. Which would mean incisive classical concerts, with lots of new music, and a much younger audience. The musicians might look both sharp and informal. They'd talk to their audience. They'd be empowered -- controlling their concerts, playing for people much like themselves, playing the music they care about, in ways we can hardly dream of now.

Though if we want any hints, we can look at how freely classical music was performed in past generations. Or at what students at the National Orchestral Institute did when they took control of one of their concerts this summer. Or at alt-classical concerts in New York -- the Wordless Music orchestra concert, with two sold-out houses of 1000 people each, or the Bang on a Can marathon, playing one year to 1000 people, and the next to 2000.

Some other straws blowing in this strong new wind:

Maestro, classical music reality show on the BBC. Celebrities try to conduct an orchestra. OK, minor-league celebrities, like David Soul, sometime blonde hunk on Starsky and Hutch, a ghost from the '70s, now a folksinger. But the job they had to do was very real, and the judges -- who included two top conductors, Sir Roger Norrington and Simone Young -- were very serious, though of course fun. You haven't lived till you see a dance DJ told that he hadn't indicated upbeats clearly enough, when he conducted an aria from Cosi fan tutte. The payoff from this? The winner got to conduct a piece at a Proms concert, and viewers got to see -- and hear -- exactly what conductors do.

A concert I hosted and helped plan, on a Pittsburgh Symphony series called "Symphony With a Splash." We programed the "Bacchanal" from Samson et Delila, and -- shades of the Biblical Samson -- shaved the head of a volunteer from the audience while the music played. (I can't take credit for this. The idea came from the Symphony's VP of Artistic Planning, Bob Moir.)

Messiaen's Quartet for the End of Time, played at Le Poisson Rouge, the club in New York that's becoming a classical music destination. On a bill with two ambient electronic pop musicians. The audience of 275 or so equally split, or so I was told, among fans of all three acts. Which meant most of the crowd had -- it seems safe to guess -- never heard the Messiaen before, or even heard of it, or heard of Messiaen. The result? A restless crowd for the first five minutes, then silence. And then an ovation.

Commercials that use classical music. A huge new crop of them. Classical music no longer is used to signify something, elite, like Poupon Grey mustard. It's just used for fun, or because it sounds lively. Like the start of the first Bach cello suite, used in a terrific AMEX ad, where smiley faces show up unexpectedly on buildings and in the street, formed by windows and headlights. The message conveyed here, about classical music? That it's part of our lives, both classy and fun.

I could go on. Supply your own examples. We've all seen them, or heard of them. How many classical musicians these days play in clubs? Classical music, meet the real world.

***

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License. Which means that you may share this, redistribute it, and put it on your own blog or website, as long as you don't change it in any way. You can't charge money for it, or use it for any other commercial purpose. You also must include my comments on what's left out of the outline, and you must give me credit, which means naming me as the author, and providing a link to my blog, where this riff will also appear. (The link will be
http://www.artsjournal.com/sandow/2009/10/a_riff_from_the_book.html)

Greg Sandow's riff on a new book

Rebirth: The Future of Classical Music
by Greg Sandow

[Again from Chapter I, Rebirth and Resistance, extending my previous riff about how the chapter ‐‐ and the book ‐‐ might start. This is how the chapter might continue.]

So we've had a dose of heady inspiration. Rebirth! What a terrific concept for classical music. Where do we go from here?

Well, it might be time to step back, and ask some questions.

First:
If classical music really is changing, which it is — and if, through those changes, it might be reborn — why are the changes happening?
For two reasons, I think.
First, there's the crisis in classical music, the fear that classical music is slipping away from the contemporary world, and that its audience is shrinking. That leads people, even at the biggest classical music institutions, to wonder how they might reach out, and speak to the outside world.

Second ‐‐ and, I think, much more important ‐‐ there's the simple fact of change. Cultural change, going very deep, and gaining speed for the past two generations. Ever since the 1960s. Maybe since the '50s!

So who does that cultural change affect? More or less all of us. Including those of us who work in classical music. We've all changed. We think differently, we have different ideas. And so we want to do classical music differently. Thus, we ‐‐ individually, collectively, sometimes independent of each other, sometimes inspired by each other ‐‐ start doing new things.

And that's especially true of younger people in the business, music students, young musicians, younger people in classical music management. Younger people in classical music ‐‐ as I've seen from teaching them, for a start ‐‐ live in two worlds at once, the classical music world, and also in the wider cultural world they share with everyone else their age. They watch the same TV shows their friends do, go to the same movies, listen to the same bands.

But their friends, often enough, don't pay attention to classical music at all. So younger people in classical music become a bridge to the rest of their world. They can leap the gap, if anyone can. They can find ways to present classical music, that will grab the attention of people their own age.

Which is a big reason why I'm hopeful for the future. But don't think classical music won't change, when younger people start giving classical concerts in their own way. Rebirth won't be rebirth, if it's only a new way of packaging something old.

More questions. How far have the changes gone? Not all that far, to tell the truth. So many exciting things have happened, as I've said (in my first riff). But you can still go to classical concerts ‐‐ as we all know ‐‐ and see more or less what we would have seen five, ten, or twenty years ago. Musicians in formal dress. An older audience. And, on the program, the same old lovely, familiar, comfortable classical masterworks. Nothing against them, but they just don't reflect our own time.

And yes, I know some things have changed. Musicians might talk to the audience. Program books, at least at a few of the biggest orchestras, might be designed to look like slick, professional magazines.

But guess what ‐‐ these changes, and others like them, aren't enough to make a big difference. A conductor can say a few words to the audience, and then turn around ‐‐ wearing formal dress ‐‐ and conduct the same familiar masterworks to the same older audience.

Same with other changes ‐‐ conductors not wearing formal dress, for instance. By themselves, these things don't change the essential concert ambience. Maybe they're first steps down the road of change, but they're only first steps.

Even new works ‐‐ classical pieces written this month, or this week ‐‐ may not make much difference. The audience might hate them. And, more crucially, they may taste like they were written for the classical concert hall, without any savor, not even a trace, of the world outside.

Which brings me, to end this riff, to what I think are the two kinds of classical music change. First, changes made by mainstream classical institutions. And, second, changes made outside the classical music mainstream, which, taken together, create a new kind of alternative classical music world, which I've been labeling (on the model of indie rock), alt‐classical, though maybe indie classical would be just as good, if not better.

The alt‐classical changes go a lot further. Here we see classical music starting to be fully reborn. But of course there are more of the mainstream changes, since there are so many mainstream classical music institutions, and alt‐classical is still something new.

There's also money. You can make a living in the mainstream classical world. If you're lucky, if you get an orchestra job, if you really hustle. It might not be easy, but many people (especially including musicians) do it.

But you can't make a living in the alt‐classical space. Maybe a few people can, but the financial models for doing it basically don't exist. If you're a string quartet, life might be hard, but at least, if you’re booked by a mainstream performing arts center, you get a fee.

Play in a club, and maybe it's a thrilling gig, with a new young audience right in front of you, but where's the money? Well, you're not doing it for money, but without your mainstream bookings ‐‐ and, most likely, your university residency ‐‐ you won't survive.

The mainstream is shrinking, though. So chances to make a living from it may well start to disappear. So here's a challenge for the future. How can we develop financial models for the alt‐classical space, so musicians (and everyone else who makes a living from classical music, managers, administrators, publicists, you name it) can survive in it? And even thrive.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution‐Noncommercial‐No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License. Which means that you may share this, redistribute it, and put it on your own blog or website, and in fact circulate it as widely as you want, as long as you don't change it in any way. You also can't charge money for it, or use it for any other commercial purpose. And you must give me credit, which means naming me as the author, and providing a link to my blog, where this riff will also appear. (The link will be
http://www.artsjournal.com/sandow/2009/10/another_book_riff.html)

60 years

I have read recently about how to assess age and experience. There is a theory afoot that 60 is the new 40 or 45 or 50. I would be sorry to hear this because I would hope that as humans begin to live to 70 and 80 and 90 and even 100 that they extend their fruitful lives rather than compressing it into immaturity.

I want to imagine that as humans gain lifetimes that extend into three digits that we begin to experience new insights and accomplishments possible only from having experienced more. Imagine someone gaining 60 years of experience and then continuing for another 60 productive years.

The phenomenon is already happening, I think. I went to a 60th birthday party last Saturday night at the gorgeous Antonello Music Hall at MacPhail Center for Music in downtown Minneapolis. The concert consisted of works from the catalogue of one of America's most talented and musical composers, Carol Barnett. Did I say that she was well-known? Pay attention because she is only going to gain in recognition among performers -- those individuals who can present a composer's music to wider and wider publics.

The wonderful performers from Saturday night included the premier soprano in the Upper Midwest (and some would say one of the leading lyric sopranos in the country) Maria Jette. Along with David Hagedorn and Brian Roessler, she gave a stunning performance of Sapphic Fragments by Ms Barnett. This was the highlight of the program will, doubtless receive much more attention in the coming years. If yo can imagine a jazz trio improvising a set on the melancholy and sensual poetry of Sappho, you have a good sense of what Ms Barnett is able to accomplish.

This is a work created in the last couple of years (when the composer was in her 50s) and one cannot imagine that someone younger understanding or expressing the complicated affect more completely. But, no matter. Ms Barnett defeats any attempt to hear "age" in her music. In fact, her music is becoming more humorous, more sensual and more confidently graceful as each year passes.

The closet of music must be full because Carol was able to find works she composed in graduate school for the event. The earlier works are less confident, I think; less likely to toss up their heels. But you can hear they contain the early attempts of an artist to hit stride, to execute complicated dance steps.

Carol Barnett is 60 and one is confounded. How can she be halfway through her career, already. Her best works have been created in the last five years, unlike the trajectory of most creative artists who blaze early in their careers and then slowly decline to a smoldering ember. She has continued to create, to explore musical paths that interest her, to break-through into new song.

Happy Birthday to Carol Barnett. And start paying attention to this composer's work because it is becoming more and more compelling with each passing year.

Bueller? Bueller? Anyone?

Remember the character played by Ben Stein in the movie, Ferris Bueller's Day Off? He was taking attendance in class and kept repeating "Bueller? Bueller? Anyone? Bueller?"

I feel the same way about my interest in forming a team of people who have a special set of skills. I want to create a new economic index. You know what I'm talking about, right? There is the Consumer Confidence economic index created by, I think, the University of Michigan.

I want to test the correlation between live performances of music and the health of a regional economy. Could you begin to forecast the business climate based on how much live music can be heard in a narrowly defined geographic area? This is really interesting to me.

I have often used the "canary in the mineshaft" analogy to talk about the significance of the arts as a barometer of the economic storm fronts -- to mix a few metaphors. But there has been no way to measure that barometric pressure, that I know about.

An endeavor like this would take a team of people designing an economic index that would be intuitive and sensitive to the realities and exigencies of the music business. And then there would need to be a cadre of field researchers to gather accurate information.

Does anyone reading this have any suggestions how to proceed? I want to take the initiative and would be happy to be responsible for most of the organizational work. Bueller? Bueller? Anyone?

Wisdom and where to find her

What passes for wisdom in the music business is usually the sad and brutal stories recounted by musicians who have endured long drives in the middle of the night to the next town on the band's tour. Last night, the Intro to Music Business class that I teach had the pleasure of hearing wisdom.

She was wearing black and had a leather coat and a pair of glasses tangled in her blonde hair. She spoke with a dead-pan alto voice that only exceeded the interval of a minor third when she would crank up her story-telling. Wisdom was patient and kind. Wisdom was not jealous as much as she was curious about the digital age and what was going on in the Twin Cities music scene. She did not boast -- on the contrary, she kept down-playing her accomplishments to the point that you might have missed that when she decided to move on with her life (and away from the Rock 'n Roll road show), she finished a Master's degree in creative writing. She began to teach. She had a family. She figured out how to be a grown-up.

After she had left class, we had a chance to process the words of wisdom. One student observed that she didn't seem proud enough of what she had done. Maybe she wasn't as happy with herself.

Here is what I think. Wisdom comes in small hand-made batches. It is not something mass-produced for consumption. That's why we shouldn't be looking for wisdom on the news or from our politics. Wisdom is personal and thoughtful and open-ended because wisdom is never complete. In class today, wisdom went by the name Laurie Lindeen.

Laurie's book, Petal Pusher, is something that rockers and jazzers and every other kind of musician should read aloud to each other. Wisdom resides there and it has got a sense of humor and a personal narrative that disguises its universal messages. I would suggest that those looking for wisdom about music, business, and life should take a few hours of thoughtful reading. It will be worth the effort.

Agreements, convenants, contracts, promises

Students in my Intro to MuBu class are just now beginning to think about the prospect of putting together a letter of agreement between a "manager" and an "artist." In most cases, the manager is someone with an interest in (or a major in) business. The artists are, for the most part, music majors. I have asked them each to consider realistic projects that they need to think about and then to create a letter that would articulate their deal.

Hard part is, that the students are slightly confused about whether they are working in Fantasyland or RealityWorld. Rather than put the managers in the position of authority, I have asked the students to think about what music projects appeal to the artist. This puts music first, where I believe it belongs. We call the field and practice Music Business, not Business Music. Can you imagine what it would be like if the world of music put business ahead of the music? Oh, right. Sorry. I was losing my mind there for a second.

I guess I have skewed the world to reflect my fondest wish -- or I am trying to teach the students that music comes first, the deal follows.

So how does someone build a business plan around the feathery wispiness of a musical ambition, dream, or idea? In my own experience, good people have tried mightily to create business around some of my ideas. Where it has worked best is when the music is in existence and then the business has a commodity that can be "exploited" (in the best sense of that word). When a work is in the process of coming into existence and is not a commodity yet, the business people can get involved in the creative process -- this is usually bad news.

I can imagine that my students are slightly confused as to how to proceed when music has not been created yet. I have asked the managers to listen to their artists' music and to get engaged in the excitement of creation. If we can find a way to teach the business end of MuBu to get passionate about music, then I think we should figure out a way to bottle it. We could sell that for considerable amounts of money.

But first, we have to be creative. How to teach passion?