Random Acts of Art

WITS students from St. Michael Catholic School take an exclusive tour of the Menil exhibit space and write about what they see. Photo by David A. Brown

Reprinted from Culturemap.

What did you do this summer? I cleaned about 100 junk drawers in the process of selling my family home in Buffalo, NY., and found a gorgeous tabletop biography of Anna Pavlova. Just recently, I learned that my own ballet teacher, Kathleen Crofton, known as “Pavlova’s baby,” danced in her company during the 1920s. No way was I going to leave this treasure behind. My ballet roots run deep according to the contents of my junk drawers.

It’s no wonder that I’m called an arts evangelist; every other object I came across in my house seemed to have something to do with dance, music, theater, visual arts or literature. My life path left its mark in the remnants of my childhood home. From a reel-to-reel recording of Joan Sutherland singing Norma to a dusty collection of prints from the Metropolitan Museum of Art, I literally grew up tripping over art.

All of this got me wondering, how do we attach to art?From a reel-to-reel recording of Joan Sutherland singing Norma to a dusty collection of prints from the Metropolitan Museum of Art, I literally grew up tripping over art. All of this got me wondering, how do we attach to art?

Finnish choreographer Jorma Elocame to dance via ice hockey. Watching Houston Ballet perform his wild ride of a ballet ONE/end/ONE, I wondered what other movement practice inhabited his body. With Elo’s daredevil lifts, swooping contours and breathtakingly reckless partnering, hockey seems about right. I’m heading to see Elo’s piece again when Houston Ballet makes their big return to New York City at The Joyce on Oct. 11-14.

This weekend you can watch Houston Ballet principal Simon Ball dancing Jerome Robbins’ romantic classic, In the Night. Both Ball and Robbins came to dance by hanging around their sisters’ ballet classes. Aren’t you glad their mothers didn’t have anything else for them to do back then?

Robert Moody, a guest conductor for River Oaks Chamber Orchestra (ROCO), has a great story on becoming a musician. Moody is music director of the Winston-Salem Symphony in North Carolina. He did not grow up in a musical family at all, it was a prank that led him to the cello, when his 4rd grade girlfriend signed him up for a demonstration on string instruments as a joke.

“As a 9-year old, I had no idea how to explain any of that to a teacher, so instead, I just got up and went to the class. I started on the cello, and that is why I’m a musician today,” writes Moody in the ROCO program notes.

I attended the superb concert last season, and extend my personal thank you to his childhood girlfriend.

When Houston native Everette Harp performed at the Hobby Center as part of a Musiqa benefit, he mentioned growing up in a house with Miles Davis’ Kind of Blue. Harp spoke honestly about what the impact of Davis’ seminal jazz album had on him.

Later in the evening, Ricky Polidore gave his now-famous speech on exposing kids to art. It’s a plea to keep arts in children’s lives as moving as Jane Weiner’s hilarious rant/dance called Salt, where she argues that art is as essential as salt for our subsistence. I have no trouble believing that some of Weiner and Polidore’s students will end up populating Houston’s future audience seats and stages.

Let’s hear it for the schools

Certainly schools play a huge role in the attachment process. Bravo to Todd Frazier and his cohorts over at Houston Arts Partners for making it easier for educators and arts organizations to connect. I’m looking forward to their conference next Tuesday at the MFAH, especially Musiqa chief Anthony Brandt’s talk, “Why Young Minds Need Art.”We can’t leave it all for the schools, arts organizations or even parents. Life unfolds more happenstance than that.

“I’m using brain science to put forth an argument that, I hope will be both clear and convincing,” says Brandt. “I’ve never worked harder to prepare a talk.”

Houston artists are making a difference in the city’s classrooms. It works best when, like Writers in the Schools (WITS), it’s not a passive experience. For example, this summer, young writers visited Houston Ballet to investigate everything from tutus to toe shoes. Writing is a form of attachment. WITS partners with numerous arts organizations, including The Menil, Art League Houston, Blaffer Art Museum, among others.

Yet, it’s too much of a burden to think that the school system is our sole exposure to the arts. We can’t leave it all for the schools, arts organizations or even parents. Life unfolds more happenstance than that.

An arts version of Pay It Forward

Perhaps we should go the way of BookCrossing, a practice of leaving a book in public places. How could we use that concept to bring art more into the world? We could leave a Houston Met class schedule, a pack of colored pencils, the Glassell School course catalog, a magazine folded to a enticing story, Matthew Dirst’s Grammy nominated CD, or a pair of Miller Outdoor Theatre tickets.

The Trey McIntyre Project has a blast dancing in the streets, cafes and shops of whatever city they happened to be visiting. Or imagine the delight of pedestrians watching a shoot from Jordan Matter’s Dancers Among us. He literally sneaks dance into the urban landscape. I’m just dying to trip over some of those mini figures in The Little People Project: abandoning little people on the street since 2006. What wonder!

If random acts of kindness work, why not random acts of art? Although can we hold on the flash mobs? Once they are on commercials, they are done for me.

As I was scurrying about my Buffalo house for one last look, I found a grand illuminated volume of William Blake’s poems and prints. Just before I stuffed it in my suitcase, I thought to myself, no, don’t take it, leave it for the next set of dwellers.

Years from now, I picture a young poet talking about finding this book his grandmother’s house. It could happen.

Now go leave some art out there for people to trip over.

Art Wakes You Up

Walter De Maria, Bel Air Trilogy, 2000–2011 (detail), stainless steel rod with 1955 Chevrolet Bel Air two-tone hardtop Photo by Robert McKeever Courtesy of Gagosian Gallery/© Walter de Maria

 

Reprinted from Culturemap

Sleepy? Lethargic? Listless? Having trouble focusing?  Don’t remember what you did yesterday? Walking around the house in daze, looking for your glasses while wearing them?

I have just the thing for you — art.

Yes, you heard it here first. Actually, I heard it elsewhere first, but I’m the one selling art as the wake-up cure. If all this art-making holds the potential to not only bring something of beauty into the world but also wakes us up, you have to admit it’s considerably more alluring than gulping an energy drink.

I’ve heard it all: art generates cash when we eat out, park and pay the babysitter. Art helps kids learn just about every subject, or at least make it more interesting. And then there’s my favorite rant, art has value, now just get over and on with it.

But when I heard Anthony Brandt utter, with a mischievous smile, “I protect consciousness, what do you do?” during his talk “Why Young Minds Need Art” to an eager crowd of educators and arts administrators at the first Houston Art Partners conference held at the MFAH last month, I thought, well now, that’s a new one. The premise of Brandt’s theory is that art has the power to wake us out of our coma though a process of bending, breaking and blending an idea.

Brandt is an associate professor at Rice University’s Shepherd School of Music and artistic director of Musiqa. He runs the popular Exploring the Mind through Music conferences and likes to hang out with neuroscientists. Later this season he teams up with celeb scientist/authorDavid Eagleman for Maternity – Women’s Voices Through the Ages, premiering with River Oaks Chamber Orchestra on April 21. The guy knows his way around gray matter.

But let’s let the brainy composer speak: “Human minds constantly make a choice — prune neural networks for efficiency and reliability, which removes options and makes the behavior unconscious; or allow redundancy to thrive and promote networking, which offers flexibility and allows the conscious mind to participate,” says Brandt. “Activities that involve drilling and rote learning lead down the path to streamlining; that’s why habits are so hard to break.  Activities that offer novelty, problem-solving and subjective reasoning keep the brain’s options open. That’s how the arts protect consciousness: They fight automation and keep us awake to our experiences.”

Here’s how the three B’s rouse us out of our automated trance: Bending involves a transformation to the original. Breaking happens when we smash up the pieces to make something new. Blending occurs when two sources merge.

It’s no wonder I could penetrate Stanton Welch’s angled offshoots from classical technique in Indigo, during Houston Ballet’s recent performances. In fact, much of Welch’s work bends classical forms to new contours, summoning many a “how did they do that?” sort of experience. Nice, Mr. Welch, keep that up. I wasn’t alone in my accolades; the audience went bananas. We like waking up when it comes to ballet.

Amy Ell, artistic director of Vault, challenged the norm of partnering inTorn as part of her DiverseWorks residency ConTornTion. Bending the rules of aerial dance, Ell twists the rules of gravity as the dancers lift each other through novel uses of rock climbing harnesses. Later in the piece, a trio hanging from the ceiling further skews our perspective by dancing perpendicular to a wall. The founder of “area” dance, the choreographer considers walls, ceilings and floors all reasonable places to dance. ”Activities that offer novelty, problem-solving and subjective reasoning keep the brain’s options open. That’s how the arts protect consciousness: They fight automation and keep us awake to our experiences,” says Musiqa artistic director Anthony Brandt.

If Houston Ballet and Vault woke up my eyes, then theCatastrophic Theatre woke up my ears in their recent production of Mickle Maher’s There Is a Happiness That Morning Is,running through Oct. 23 at their Sul Ross office. The entire play rolls off the tongue in rhyme. You don’t want to miss a word. Even the title represents a clever arrangement of words. The set-up of two William Blake scholars facing the aftermath of a night of public love-making on the yard of the their fledgling liberal arts college makes for a rich language feast. Blake liked to mess with the order of words, too. In fact, “I happy am” from Songs of Innocence factors into the drama big time. Maher bends language with a breathtaking originality. The terrific cast has a blast with Maher’s word wonk ways.

For breaking, head over to 3705 Lyons St. to see Dan Havel and Dean Ruck’s Fifth Ward Jam, made possible in part by a 2008 Houston Arts Alliance Artist and Neighborhood Project grant. The public art for the everyman team, who gave us the sucked in house called Inversion, sure know how to smash up a couple of bungalows to show us what breaking looks like.

I found blending in the most unusual place — the 18th Century — as part of MFAH’s Life and Luxury: The Art of Living in Eighteenth-Century Paris.French aristocrats’ savvy silversmiths merged their designs with the food underneath it. Who would imagine broccoli would blend so well with silver?

Bending, breaking and blending are harder to discern at The Menil inWalter De Maria’s Bel Air Trilogy, featuring three red shiny 1955 Bel Air Chevrolets, each speared by a 12-foot-long stainless steel rod, resulting is something new, bent, broken, blended and quite extraordinary.

See what I mean? Nothing refreshes our neural networks like art.

As we continue to quantify the value of art in our children’s lives, Brandt’s thesis may be the one with staying power. Too often, we speak about creativity as a vague, mysterious thing. Clearly defining the territory, as Brandt elegantly did, elevates the discussion. Musiqa will be doing their part in that mission on Oct. 25 through 28 with their NEA-funded school programs Around the World and Musiqa Remix on Dec. 6 and 7.

I’ve often gravitated toward art as a way to change my brain, my mood, or just to jar me into a new perspective. As I traipse the the city, eyes wide open, I see much to keep me awake.

Art has value that goes way beyond the economy and testing kids

Travesty Dance Group

Photo by Karen Stokes

And now, a little rant from your resident art evangelist.

I will never forget the humiliation and anger I felt when, sitting in a meeting as the teaching artist liaison, a board member, announced that dance had the least impressive studies when it comes to helping kids learn math. Well, excuse me, lady, let me just run over to Houston Ballet, call all my choreographer and dancer friends, and tell them to quit because dance doesn’t help us learn science, math and social studies as well as the other arts.

Her comments speak to a system where we only value an art form in its ability to do something outside of itself. It’s a disturbing trend.

I have used this space to highlight a number of outstanding arts and education outreach programs in Houston, such as Musiqa, Houston Grand Opera, Houston Ballet, Society for the Performing Arts, Travesty Dance Company, InterActive Theater, Main Street Theater (MST) and many more. These are the people who are introducing the power of the arts to Houston’s students. If curriculum connections manifest, terrific, go for it.

The best arts programs leave open the possibility that children are equally excited by the arts as they are the subject tie-ins. Designed to deepen and freshen teachers and students’ experience with the Shakespeare canon, MST’s peer to peer Shakespeare program is a perfect example of an initiative that puts art first.

Talking about the arts only in terms of its economic value, a virtual mantra of the arts community in Houston, is another concept that makes me want to scream at an annoyingly high pitch. Cancer makes a lot of money, too. Shall we shout that from roof tops as well?

Apparently, Houston arts bring in some $626.4 million into the city’s economy. We eat before, during and after a show. I know I do. That’s great, it’s a benefit and a handy fact to have in your pocket. If you want to delve deeper, read The Value of Culture: on the relationship between economics and the arts, edited by Arjo Klamer. Diane Ragsdale, ofJumper, understands the dilemma well in her numerous blog posts addressing these issues.

If I hear about another expensive study on the impact of the arts on the economy, you will hear an even higher pitched scream. We have enough of these. And yes, they were crucial in getting arts funding included in the stimulus package, an impressive effort organized by  Washington, DC-savvy  Amy Fitterer, the new executive director of Dance/USA. I understand that making it clear to lawmakers that the arts provide jobs and are good for business is important, but it gets tricky when we leave it there.

John Kay gets it right in his essay A good economist knows the value of the arts

“The surveys on my desk are expensively commissioned because their sponsors perceive a language they detest and do not understand. We need to put out of our minds this widely held notion that there is such a thing as “the economy”, a monster outside the door that needs to be fed and propitiated and whose values conflict with things — such as sports, tourism and the arts — that make our lives agreeable and worthwhile. Activities that are good in themselves are good for the economy, and activities that are bad in themselves are bad for the economy. The only intelligible meaning of “benefit to the economy” is the contribution — direct or indirect — the activity makes to the welfare of ordinary citizens.”

Here’s the rub. If we only talk about art in terms of the other things it can do, help kids learn things and make money, we are essentially devaluing art itself. That’s the message loud and clear. I am by no means suggesting we ignore the fact that the arts contribute to the economy or that children can learn all kinds of ideas through movement, the visual arts, music and theater.

We just need to stop thinking it’s all we got. It’s two fabulous things for our toolbox. But does it come close to the ecstasy, elation, illumination, emotion, soul-enriching mind-expanding mystery we can feel from an art experience? No way, no how.

What if we had a cultural policy in place that stated that we value what the arts contribute to our lives. That simple. We want to live in a world with arts and will do what it takes to ensure that continues. Oh, and by the way, the arts generate money and oftentimes learning. We can count dollars and test kids. But measuring how the arts make our life richer? That’s tough. It can’t be done in a qualitative way.

Who here wants to live in a world without art. Anybody? I didn’t think so.

The arts have value. Say it, believe it, lead with it.

Stepping off the soap box now as I wish you a happy holiday.

Reprinted from Culturemap