News & Sillies & Confession & Praise

WHERE I'D LIKE TO BE

Mako Fujimura does the most interesting collaborations. I had the fun of doing one with him not long ago, and here is a new one that sounds especially attractive. If you're in New York City, this just might be something wonderful to do:

Fujimura Studio Announces: Makoto Fujimura to become first visual artist ever to paint live at Carnegie Hall in his collaboration with Susie Ibarra, composer.

World-renown percussionist and composer Susie Ibarra will premiere her new work, Pintados Dream (The Painted's Dream), a concerto for percussion and orchestra, in collaboration with visual artist Makoto Fujimura and American Composers Orchestra, at Carnegie Hall's Zankel Hall on October 19th. Tickets are available at http://www.carnegiehall.org/ or by calling (212) 247-7800.

While Fujimura and Ibarra have collaborated and experimented with live performance art several times in the past three years, this premiere will represent a first for Carnegie Hall: never before has an artist painted on stage during a performance there. Fujimura's technique, heavily influenced by Japanese Nihonga as well as American abstract art, provides a visual complement to Ibarra's largely improvised percussion sounds, underscored by the American Composers Orchestra.

Fujimura, founder of International Arts Movement, uses all natural materials in his art. "I am more and more convinced that the imperfections are more important to define humanity than perfected products. Acrylic and synthetic mediums can accomplish great feats in design and other plastic applications, but in direct painting, I believe that natural mediums.... have 'memory imprints' of the past, and Japanese materials in particular (reflect) a collaboration with nature, heritage crafts and art."

Educated bi-culturally between the US and Japan, Makoto Fujimura's paintings have been exhibited all over the world. He was honored in 1992 as the youngest artist ever to have had a piece acquired by the Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo. He was also the youngest person ever to be given a Presidential appointment to the National Council on the Arts, the highest arts position in the United States.

Susie Ibarra's Pintados Dream (The Painted's Dream), a collaboration with visual artist Makoto Fujimura and American Composers Orchestra, will premiere at Carnegie Hall's Zankel Hall on October 19th. Tickets are available at http://www.carnegiehall.org/ or by calling (212) 247-7800. The performance will be repeated in Philadelphia on Sunday, October 21 at 7:30 p.m. in the Harold Prince Theatre of the Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts, University of Pennsylvania. Details can be found at http://pennpresents.org/press/?item=2007-09-25a.

International Arts Movement will host a fund raising event to commemorate the event. "Evening with Fujimura and Ibarra" will feature a studio tour, premier seating for the October 19th event, and buffet meal at IAM's brand new Space 3839, as well as invitation to the reception with Susie Ibarra and Makoto Fujimura. Please contact Christy Tennant at Christy@iamny.org for more information. Photo credit: IAM press release.

***
HOME FROLICS WITH SLAPPING

N: Hey, what do you think this?

(Slaps torso wildly)

N, in a silly but fierce voice: The Macarella!

*

R (15) and N (10) are cutting up on the way back from North Carolina. R slaps N playfully.

R: How dare you!

N, in an obscure and romantic foreign accent: Oh, what a beautiful lady. But so dangerous!

*

N calls out as the car passes River St. at night: Guys! Penguins! Go back!

The penguins turn out to be a crowd of orange cones nesting on the sidewalk and in the street.

The Next Morning

(Much teasing from older siblings over breakfast.)

N's salvo: Why would there be so many if they're not penguins in disguise?

**
Teenagers, arguing about whether one of them is a midget or not.

Small classmate turns to R: Well, what do you think? Am I a midget or not?

R: Only a little.

**
Meanwhile B is a senior of 18 and still plans to be a general (he has been deeply, deeply obsessed with military history since first grade) and President. Dear reader of these words, my advice is that you immediately put on your boots and tremble. Trembling in boots is a time-honored mode of dealing with fearsome prospects, and it's as good as anything as a way to get ready for the Dominion of B.

***

MARLY'S LOUSY WEBSITE

Yes, I now confess my utter laziness in not checking for Firefox, Safari, Utnostifelque, Opera, Rosti, Snitter, Lear, and other browsers in re-making my simple, primitive website at http://www.marlyyoumans.com/. However, as the planet has whirled around the sun once more and time has thus come round for the famous 2-day birthday bash of R, I simply have time for nothing else than the usual events plus the approaching extravaganza of drama, gustatory piggishness, songs (some mocking), detection, sleeplessness, costume changes, charades, etc. You will just have to put up with the darn ignorant thing as is, at least for a while. I'm just too busy. Also, some of us are web morons and not even properly ashamed.

TEACHERS

I am now officially expressing my gratitude to teachers of small children. Do you know how hard it is to teach the same dratted material four times in a row to hordes of children packed full to bursting with questions?

It wore me out.

Let's pay the teachers more, or at least give them a good lie-down and a cup of tea.

Y-Y-Y

MB of Find Me a Bluebird has pointed out that a Ms. Y ran away to Yaddo and Yale, and asks if she has any other Y venues lined up. She does not—that is, I do not, though I am open to other Y-ideas. Those of us in the long tail of the alphabet, with those less-used letters, need to promote them. Up with X! Up with Y! Etc. Etc.? Make that Xvz! For the next year, buy all your books from authors whose last names start with W, X, Y, and Z. They have been languishing in the dust bunnies on the bottom shelf for years.

As I have been away for twenty-nine days, my house is a sad wreck. Somebodies have been flinging broken pop tarts, dirty cups, and assorted laundry over the house. Another somebody had no boxers left. Domestic explosions are in evidence in all areas except the dining room. Meanwhile, it is still Easter in the living room, complete with baskets and egg tree! It will take a long time to comb the snarls out of this bad-hair-day house. Bad-hair-month house.

Here is the good stuff.

At Yaddo, I drafted (yes, I wrote like a maniac) a short novel and a story. I also met lots of interesting artists, attended readings and concerts, and went to open studios. Once I did a reading from my recent poetry. Once I read from the above-mentioned short novel. That is a brief and bare account of twenty-five days that satisfied my desire to do little else than meditate on the emerging shape of a book and write.

I came home, hugged my family, and then raced off to Yale Divinity School, where Makoto Fujimura and I did two collaborative presentations at the “Faith as a Way of Life” conference on pastoral excellence. Our events yoked my “The Pilgrim Soul” with eleven paintings titled with phrases drawn from the story. And yes, it is thrilling to see images made as a response to one’s own writing. As Mako works in the Nihongan style with a paint made of crushed jewels (along with vermilion, cochineal, silver, gold, and platinum), it’s hard to find photographs to do justice to the marriage of light and paint. He’ll be having somebody who specializes in micro-photography record the images, and eventually I’ll post a link. We may be doing a few other things with this project . . .

And that is the nutshell version of Y at Y and Y.

Oh, I spent a wonderful afternoon at the Yale Art Gallery, too. So many lesser-known museums have such splendid collections. This spring I’ve been to the Corning Museum of Glass and Yale, and found them both very worth seeing. While the contemporary/modern sculpture at YAG had a familiar air of fascinating tedium, there were lots of lovely things in the “ancient,” Asian, and painting collections. Think I’ll add going to smaller museums to my year's resolutions.

Credit: The photograph above is a photograph of an installation by Makoto Fujimura at All Hallow’s, London (curated by Meryl Doney of The Hayward Gallery for The City of London Festival.) It originally appeared on his blog, Refractions. The measurements of the three “Mercy Seat” paintings were 1 ½ x 2 ½ cubits—a cubit being the length from the tip of the middle finger to the elbow, and the unit of measurement used in the pyramids (Pharaoh’s cubit) and in the mercy seat atop the Ark of the Covenant (Moses’ cubit.) Mako used the "cubits" of his three children. A little boat covered with Chinese paper sits on the floor between the mercy seats, the source of the video, “Nagasaki Koi,” that floats in the air above the seats.