Archive for the ‘Social Commentary’ CategoryRecently, I submitted this piece and this piece to the Missoula Art Museum’s art auction. I’m not a very well known artist among “serious” art collectors in Missoula. I don’t expect my name will draw huge dollars in an auction. But, I think the work is good work, so, I submitted it. I paid the entrance fee, I spent several hours with the online entrance process. I like a lot of the work the museum brings to Missoula, and I want to support the organization. I opted to donate 100% of the proceeds of the sale of my work to the museum, should my work be chosen for inclusion in the auction & then sell. So, let’s say I got accepted. Let’s say the work sold for $500. Not unreasonable, I’ve sold work for more before, but these pieces are going for between $300- $500. OK. So let’s say some other, more well-known artist gets his work accepted. His piece sells for $1,000. But he opts to donate only 50% of the proceeds of the sale to the museum. Isn’t $500 five hundred bucks, no matter who it’s from? Right. Still, I didn’t expect to get in, because I know that “names” sell more than “art” sometimes, and I don’t have a “name” in the Missoula Art Scene. All of that said, it was with great surprise that I read the form rejection letter, sent by email, without so much as a subject line. Seriously. No subject line. And the letter didn’t tell me anything I could not discern from the artist call website. Was my quoted price too much? Too little? What can you specifically point to, John, that prevents the MAM from accepting my submission? The snobbery of the Missoula Art Museum is sickening. Here’s the letter: Dear Marc, Thank you for submitting to the Missoula Art Museum’s 38th Benefit Art Auction. Regretfully, your work was not accepted. The 2010 art auction will be held at MAM. While we are excited to present our annual fundraiser in our home, we cannot accommodate the same volume of guest as in the past. Due to this change we scaled back the number of art works accepted. This year was extremely competitive; the MAM Auction Jury reviewed over 200 works and selected 56 pieces for the live auction. We are humbled by the outpouring of support from artists such as yourself, and hope that the difficult choices that the jury made do not discourage you from supporting us in the future. The Jury took into consideration a variety of factors in selecting art works including value of work, number of works required for auction, and variety of media. Every year has its own unique set of circumstances and we hope you will consider submitting again to this important fundraiser. The auction exhibition is open from January 13 – February 25, 2009 with the Artini Auction on February 18 and the Gala Auction on February 27. Additionally, all auction works will be available online at www.missoulaartmuseum.org. We hope you will join us for these festivities! Once again, thank you for your submission, Marc. On Behalf of the MAM staff and Board of Directors, John Calsbeek BSDFF 2009 Review: Saturday February 14thFebruary 13th through the 22nd, The Wilma Theatre was overrun with filmakers, volunteers, and fans of the documentary film. I was one of the fans (and volunteers), and here I’ll be sharing with you thoughts from some of the almost fifty films I saw this year. The festival is growing and getting better every time, and I’m proud to have been a part of it once again. Even in poverty and chronic fatal illness, the people in this film are able to find snippets of happiness. The singing by the children was incredible, the cinematography amazing. It’s great to see that the gogos are trying to educate the young. It was also surprising to me that those doing the testing and processing of test samples did so without eye protection or gloves.
 Bonecrusher directed by Michael Fountain, 2008Lucas the father is Bonecrusher, and Lucas the son follows his father into the mines for a life fraught with the dangers of coal mining. The women behind the men were largely silent in the film, while Fountain focused upon the relationship between the father and the son in this compelling story where mining overshadows all aspects of life in this small West Virginian town.
There is a beautiful scene in Bonecrusher where Luke has just been honored at a little league softball game. He’s been a huge advocate of and volunteer for the softball program all of his life. The camera cuts away to a train pulling coal cars. As the whistle whines, we are reminded that mining permeates every aspect of the Dante, West Virginia people’s lives.
 In A Dream directed by Jeremiah Zagar 2008Heartbreakingly beautiful film. Isaiah Zagar, responsible, by his count, for over 100 murals, 7 buildings and 7 alleyways in Philly, opens himself, and his family, up to us intimately and without looking away. The film truly was a “mysterium tremendum”. Amazing.
Gogol Bordello Non Stop directed by Margarita Jimeno, 2009
Having heard of Gogol Bordello, and heard some of their music before, I was glad to be able to see what all of the fuss is about. The film is about what happens when you start following your dream and doing what you believe in.
It would seem that these guys must be seen to be believed, and I cannot wait to see them live. The film captured a lot of that energy, fun, love of life and good times.
 American Swing directed by Mathew Kaufman and Jon Hart, 2008Plato’s Retreat is the backdrop for a story that was really about the loneliness and egotism of Plato’s owner Larry Levenson. Kaufman and Hart have fashioned a compelling film using archival footage from Plato’s, talk show appearances by Levenson , and interviews with members and employees of Plato’s.
 Originally uploaded by BigSkyDocFF Thriller in Manilla Directed by Joe Dower, 2008I was too young to remember the details of these fights when they aired, but remember them being on TV. I never realized how much of an asshole Ali was, betraying his friend after Frazier supported him for years when he couldn’t box. Ali was the most barbaric poet in the world – rasicst and mean to his friend. Ali did say, afterwards, that he said some things he shouldn’t have. That doesn’t make up for the damage done to their friendship. A well-told story using interviws and archival footage. We are Wizards, Directed by Josh Koury, 2008Never having read the Harry Potter series, I wasn’t really sure what to expect from this film. Its main focus was on Wizard Rock, with bands like Harry and the Potters in the forefront of the movement. The film also delved into the Harry Potter boycott, started by a 16 year old girl who ran a fan site on the interwebs that was sent a cease and decist letter by Warner Brothers. I really enjoyed the film as it took me into a world I’d never experienced before, and erased preconceived notions about what a Harry Potter fan is.
Omen, Directed by Oksana Sokol, 2007Cinemetography really captured the movement of the art as it is being made. Watching the flow of the paint as it came out of the can, listening to the words of the artist – very inspiring. Number One With a Bullet, Directed by Jim Dziura, 2008
Well told story about gun violence and its consequences. Anti-gun without being preachy. Some things I scratched in my notebook as I watched: “Violence begets violence.” Tupac compared to JFK, Martin Luther King, John Lennon. “Hip hop doesn’t show this” (from a doctor in a hospital emergency room.) I’m live blogging the festival as I experience it via Twitter. Find me there, I’m @marcmoss. See you in the theatre. “Spread happiness…. Share it with all those who seek it.” Thank you Kieth Olbermann. Yesterday, I couldn’t focus on anything at work, so I took the day off and knocked doors to get people to the polls. I didn’t believe we could take Montana, but I thought I was making a difference. The party in the streets last night in Missoula was incredible. Thank you goes out to all of the volunteers, financial supporters and artists who helped to elect Barack Obama as our 44th president.
 In Search of the Hobo Railroad Artist Last night Monday night at the Zootown Arts Community Center, Debby Florence brought in an amazing filmaker,Bill Daniel, who screened his short film that was 16 years in the making. We were lucky to have him, as his biodiesel van had broken down at the Orange Street exit, and he had to hoof it over to the ZACC for the screening. Who is Bozo Texino? chronicles the search for the source of a ubiquitous and mythic rail graffiti– a simple sketch of a character with an infinity-shaped hat and the scrawled moniker, “Bozo Texino”– a drawing seen on railcars for over 80 years. Daniel’s gritty black and white film uncovers a secret society and it’s underground universe of hobo and railworker graffiti, and includes interviews with legendary boxcar artists, Coaltrain, Herby, Colossus of Roads, and The Rambler. Shooting over a 16-year period, Daniel rode freights across the West carrying a Super-8 sound camera and a 16mm Bolex. During his quest he discovered the roots of a folkloric tradition that has gone mostly unnoticed for a century. Taking inspiration from Beat artists Robert Frank and Jack Kerouac, the film functions as both a sub-cultural documentary and a stylized fable on wanderlust and outsider identity.
 See if I walk my talk or not Taylor over at Noteworthy* asked if “The Art of the Letter in a Digital Age” is an antiquated concept. The question is one I’ve been turning over in my mind very often in light of my current project, The Leaving and the Left. What follows has no scientific basis, merely observations from what I’ve seen, read, experienced and heard. From a young age, I wrote letters. My best friend lived almost 300 miles away. This was in the days before cellphones and email, before Facebook and Myspace. We wrote letters because it was inexpensive in comparison to long-distance phone charges and we had no other way to talk with one another. Letters take time. One must remove one’s attention from others in one’s life, turn one’s attention away from the television, ignore the radio, and immerse oneself in the emotion trying to be expressed. For some, that is enough, but even that act, in its immersion into the moment, is not enough. Some people are intentional enough to select specific papers and pens with which to express their thoughts. Some adorn their missives with doodles and scrawlings meant to elicit a specific emotion from the reader. Some anoint their letters with a scent meant to revive a memory, an event, a feeling, from the reader.
Others are not so thoughtful, merely putting word to paper. Even this act, however, is one of intense intimacy.  I love you with all my heart... It was with a letter, a long one, that I mended a rift between my father and me that had only intensified as I aged. I moved to Montana from Ohio and wanted to connect with him, decided, Hell, we’re both adults, lets deal with this, and wrote him a letter. I expected no response. Instead, I received a handwritten letter from him answering many, though not all, of my questions; a heartfelt letter that I believe would not be possible in a digital age. One that has allowed us to become very good friends to this day. Letters were once our only opportunity to communicate across the miles without great expense. In the United States, for the longest time, the United States Postal Service was the least expensive way to communicate. When I was growing up, long distance phone calls were a great expense, email hadn’t yet been made available to the masses, and cellular phones were a dream in someone’s head. Telegrams were efficient, but somewhat more expensive than letters. Faster? Sure, but speed came with a price. Today, the former largest telegraph service in the US no longer performs this service. From their website, “Effective January 31, 2006, Western Union discontinued all Telegram and Commercial Messaging services.” By the 1990s, email was the choice of economically minded folks to communicate quickly across great distance. Now, many young folks, from what I’ve read, choose Myspace over email. Social directories are visually based, and therefore more attractive to a generation that is constantly bombarded with stimulus from all angles. Other folks having disdain for Myspace, choose a more “mature” version of Myspace, Facebook. Both offer a way to message another member which the user has “become friends” with.  Remember: Fox Interactive Media -->Rupert Murdoch Besides these web-based solutions to communication, there are, of course, instant messaging solutions. IM was once proprietary. Users had to sign into their service of choice, be it Yahoo!, MSN, AOL, mac.com, Gtalk or IRC. Now, there are services that aggregate all of the above listed providers into one client, making communication much easier. Even Facebook and Myspace allow for “chatting”.
And that’s only the Internet. What about cellphones? (Or Skype?) I have a plan that allows me a ridiculous amount of minutes and I’m able to call anywhere in the United States for less than $70/month. I remember long distance bills when I was a kid greater than that, when we (my best friend and I) had decided that writing letters was not enough. And what of text messaging (SMS)? I can send a friend a 160 character message in a couple of seconds, saving me cost on my cellphone minutes, and communicate what needs to be communicated within a few minutes. I’ve made the case that communication has become easier, more pervasive and less expensive, but is it still an experience? How many of you remember receiving actual mail? Not just bills and offers for an upgrade on your cable, but actual MAIL from a loved one? It definitely is an experience. A rare one as far as I can tell. The question becomes: is communication denigrated? Implicit in the question is an understanding of the value of the unspoken message in the message. The feeling of a handwritten note is decidly much differnet than an electronic communique of any kind, to be sure. Letters can be long and mellifluous, while most electronic communication is stunted and, to be kind, concise. Telegrams are no longer available. Postage rates are rising. Electronic and cellular communication is becoming more widely available and inexpensive. I would argue that the art of letter writing is dying with my generation. (I was born in the 70s.) Or at lest the generation born in the 80s. It would be interesting for me to see a scientific study to determine how many under the age of 25 write letters regularly. I hope this isn’t the case for a variety of reasons. Taylor asks, “Do you think if we stop writing letters that we will lose some thing [sic] – a way of connecting with one another that forces us to slow the mind and really think about what it is we are trying to say?” I would answer YES to Taylor’s question. What think you?
 What would happen if the Greyman had nothing to paint over? Not that there wouldn’t be graffiti, but that it was done without paint? Missoula being the environmentally friendly “green” town that it is should have no problems with this, right? Let’s first have a look at the existing “green” art we already have here in Missoula, namely, SponCon. Spontaneous Construction is one hell of a lot of fun, and, when it’s all over, there’s some great art that gets produced out of recycled materials found out in the Home Resource yard. Often, as was the case this year with the solar shower, the art is quite functional. I can’t think of any other environmentally friendly art that gets produced in this town, especially not on such a large scale in plain view for public consumption. The fact that the building of the art at SponCon occurred in the street does not make it street art, of course. That would be a stretch. But it started me thinking about alternative ways to make street art. Then I remembered a FWDed email my ‘ole man sent me about Scott Wade, who, using a special Jedi mind-trick lightsaber brush, works in caliche covered cars to “unpaint” them into art. How fun would it be to do something like this on some dirty Suby that’s just come back from the woods? Or the back of a dirty UPS truck this winter? Next summer, should we have an awful fire season, I’d like to see folks come out en mass and do reverse graff on car windows around town.  Scott Wade does Johannes Vermeer I was hoping to dig through my old email to find the photos, when a good friend of mine sent me over to Environmental Graffiti, where they spotlighted the 35 Greatest Works of Environmental Graffiti. The dust paintings I’d seen before, and many of the stuff done by “the public” I had also seen before. Yes, it’s impressive, but I really liked the reverse graffiti done by a guy who goes by Moose. Oh, Man, I thought, when I saw Moose, how great would it be if some architecture firm in town or maybe a sustainable building supply company contracted with a local artist in town to do a reverse graffiti ad somewhere.  Moose gets green on San Francisco Then I started thinking, Where in Missoula would we find a building dirty enough to do something of that scale? I can’t think of any building, but the Orange Street underpass might be a good place. Or not. But it is well suited for something along the lines of the work that Alexandre Orion does. A transport tunnel in Sao Paolo, Brazil isn’t that far of a stretch from Missoula. OK, well, maybe it is, but I would love to see the faces on some of those SUV driving soccer moms if they were greeted by an Orange Street underpass that had piles and piles of skulls the entire length of the tunnel. Do you think they’d think at all about the detrimental impact their emissions have on the planet, on our economy, on the lives of our men and women dying in the desert?  Alexandre Orion - Skulls in Brazilian Tunnel What type of reverse graffiti would you like to see in Missoula? And how would the Greyman handle it? Would he clean the rest of the building? Would the artist still be arrested for defacing property, even though he was cleaning it? Would the punishment be that the artist would have to clean the rest of the building? If you want to do a little reverse graff and need inspiration, check out the captures from everyday Joes that EnviroGraff has.
Catholics are known for their devotion to the Blessed Virgin Mary, and traveling throughout Italy there is much evidence of this along roadsides, where one might find a grotto shrine dedicated to Mary every few miles. Often, the grottos are very elaborate and have all kinds of candles and rosary beads, Bibles and memorabilia from the faithful. People in the Midwest of the United States have taken that concept and made it their own, creating these same kinds of shrines in their backyard gardens, with the same fervor and passion. The big difference is that these folks have chosen to make their shrines out of bathtubs they bury vertically in their yards.
As the Daryls and I were trying to decide what we would build in this years Spontaneous Construction, the annual fundraiser for the local non-profit home Resource, we decided to honor that tradition, and yet make the shrine a little more Montana, and a little more functional. We decided to build ours out of a circa 1970s style bathtub (pink), and whatever we could find lying around in the yard. And our sweet little addition was to create a functional BBQ out of a discarded sink. Mary would be holding BBQ tongs and a spatula, presiding over our meal. The SponCon event, for those who don’t know, is a fundraiser in which contestants have five hours to construct a spontaneous piece of art from the riff-raff they find in the yard. Once the constructions are completed, some of them are entered into an auction, the proceeds of which benefit Home Resource. Daryl (Lucas Dupuis) is the Board President, and as such has had many responsibilities in previous years, and had always been unable to participate in the actual building event. I have never competed because in previous years I volunteered to help in the setup and running of the event. This year, we decided, however, that since our otehr friend Daryl (Lucas Grossi), was moving to Park City, UT, we should have one last hurrah (we had many), and form a team and compete in the event. The glorious result was the creation you see below, complete with a fully functional BBQ grill. Mary’s arms are made from a toilet seat cut in 1/2, and her shawl is made from a fireplace chain curtain.
Originally uploaded by love not fear |
Today the Hawk Takes One Chick
