Beaching It at Hermitage Artist Retreat

The Hermitage Artist Retreat provides grants that allow mid-career artists of all disciplines to spend time at the beach retreat working on their craft. In exchange, participants are asked only to share their work at an event that's free and open to the public. Weather permitting, all or a portion of the presentations take place on the beach. It's quite magical, and I was happy to finally make it to an event on a lovely late May evening .

The gathering began in the Palm House with an introduction to Rob Tarbell's smoke art. About ten years ago, Tarbell came up with the idea of using the smoke created by burning his own credit and reward cards to "paint" an image. (In an interview with Sarasota Herald Tribune reporter Marty Fugate, Tarbell said the concept came to him while thinking about the smoky residue cleaned away from Michelangelo's Sistine Chapel.) Over time, his debris of choice has expanded to include other everyday household items such as 9 mm slides and old photos.

From Tarbell's"Smoke Rings" series

Even having heard Tarbell speak about his process, I don't begin to understand how it actually works. Here are the basics, though.Tarbell's first step is to design the subject to be depicted and consider how best to achieve the desired effect. An outline of the image is drawn on a piece of paper which is hoisted up so that it hovers horizontally just below the ceiling. The items to be burned are attached to forceps at the end of a wand.  Tarbell dons fire retardant gloves and a mask, turns on the air filtration system, and starts the fire. He then "paints" with the smoke. The closer the wand is to the paper, the darker the residue. Three works from Tarbell's "Smoke Rings" series were on display, and they are whimsical, mysterious and creative beyond belief. (Ironically, the "Smoke Rings" series, which features circus animals and their human companions engaging in tricks, was completed before Tarbell moved to John Ringling's Sarasota.) To read an interview with Tarbell in "My Modern Met," click here. To watch a video of Tarbell at work, click here.

Carmen Gimenez Smith and Kiki Petrosino

From there we moved to the beach to listen to poets Carmen Gimenez Smith and Kiki Petrosino read some of their work.  Their styles could not have been more different.

While Gimenez Smith captures a range of emotion in her poetry, it was her work inspired by her mother, who suffers from early onset Alzheimers, that hit me the hardest. Referring to the poems as "living elegies," Gimenez Smith said these poems are about "a very specific kind of loss." I was torn between listening and writing down phrases that broke my heart, like "the center of her is only depiction."  Her "Beasts" begins:

"My siblings and I archive the blanks in my mother's memory,
diagnose her in text messages. And so it begins, I write although

her disease has no true beginning, only a gradual peeling away
until she was left a live wire of disquiet....."

To read the poem in its entirety, click here. To hear Gimenez Smith read her poem inspired by the death of Robin Gibb (yes, the Bee Gee) that she wrote on the spot for NPR's NewsPoet, click here.

Audience members

Kiki Petrosino's work is more difficult to characterize, and excerpts don't capture the uniqueness of her voice. The cadence of Petrosino's poems was entirely different from that of Giminez Smith's work. Where Giminez Smith's words were lyrical and quiet, Petroino's felt urban and a bit angry. Her poems were harder to grasp after a single reading, but I could tell they would be worth the work required to consider their meaning.

Several of Petrosino's poems have been inspired by the work of poet Anne Sexton, with whom I am not familiar.  Here is an excerpt from her "Young," which she calls "after Anne Sexton."

"A thousand pilot lights ago
when I'm a teenager half-gone to flab
in a low ranch house crammed
with ribboned handicrafts in January
I go pulling all the false candy canes
from the stale mulch out front
clown-sun blinking whitely over me
my bedroom window an ear
painted shut to keep the calliope of dreams
from sounding....."

Unfortunately, you have to google "Petrosino" and "a thousand pilot lights" to find the rest of the poem online. To hear Petrosino read one of her own poems on PBS' Newshour, click here.

If the Hermitage sounds like a place you want to check out, the next beach reading is slated for July 8, at 7:30.  If you can't make it then, add a tickler to your calendar to check out the schedule during the season. It's a wonderful way to be introduced to talented artists while enjoying a sunset Southwest Florida style.

Reading Round-Up

With the season coming to an end, I've had more time to read. Sadly, there are lots of books that just aren't that interesting or memorable (or, even worse, are poorly written). On the plus side, it does make finding a book that engages me all the more enjoyable. Read on for three quite different books that have recently captured my attention.

 In "The Last Painting of Sarah de Vos," Dominic Smith creates a story in which a painting links three lives on three continents over three centuries.The fictional Sarah de Vos is one of the few female members of the Guild of St. Luke in 17th century Amsterdam, a union of sorts whose ranks included Rembrandt, Vermeer and Frans Hals. (The ways in which the Guild regulated its members' artistic lives plays an important role in Sarah's story.)  De Vos' best known painting, "At the Edge of the Wood," has been in Marty de Groot's family for many generations. During a charity event at the de Groot home in 1957, the painting is switched out for an expert forgery painted by art student Ellie Shipley. De Groot's search for the original painting leads to an interesting relationship between the collector and the forger. Their paths cross again in the year 2000 when Shipley, now a well-known art historian and curator, mounts an exhibit of Dutch Golden Age art at a gallery in Australia. Smith deftly alternates among characters, eras and settings as he builds a story that's both engrossing and satisfying.

"Florence Gordon" by Brian Morton had me from its opening page. "Florence Gorden was trying to write a memoir, but she had two strikes against her: she was old and she was an intellectual...Maybe it was three strikes, because not only was she an intellectual, she was a feminist...If you're an old feminist, anything you say, by definition, is strident and shrill..."  And while I wouldn't characterize Florence as strident or shrill, she is definitely blunt. A well-known essayist, she's perfectly happy in her own life, thank you very much, and isn't thrilled about the overtures her friends and family are making to get her out more into the world. They throw a surprise birthday party for her at a restaurant, telling her, "We wanted to get you out of your apartment so you could have some fun."  "I was having fun, Florence thought. I was having fun sitting in my apartment and trying to understand our life, our collective life. I was having fun trying to make the sentences come right. I was having fun trying to keep a little moment in time alive."  When she goes to the ladies' room, she contemplates climbing out a window but decides it would be too undignified. Instead, she goes back to her friends and family, tells them she has work to do at home, and leaves them to the festivities. As you can probably gather, Florence is a challenge. But her family and friends keep at it, both for her sake and their own.  I loved Florence's spirit and often found myself laughing at her crotchety nature while appreciating her desire to lead her life in her own way. A quick fun read that's perfect for a lazy summer afternoon. 

I'll tell you upfront:  reading "The Son" by Philipp Meyer is a commitment. The paperback version weighs in at 592 pages. The audio book (which was my version of choice) goes on for 18 hours. In this age of tweet-length attention spans, an author has to be at the top of his game to hold a reader's interest for that long. Happily, Meyer is a terrific storyteller. "The Son" relays the saga of five generations of the Texas McCullough family through the eyes of family patriarch Eli McCullough (aka the "Colonel"), Eli's son and family conscience Peter, and Eli's great-granddaughter and oil baroness Jeannie. As a child, Eli was captured in a raid by a band of Comanches. The sheer brutality of the wild west gave me pause, as did the way Eli became part of the Comanches' world. While Eli eventually returns to "civilization," he never wholly transitions back to the white man's world.  Jeannie is an equally fascinating character, a strong and capable woman in a man's world at a time when most girls were worried about their coming out parties. Peter's hand-wringing, though warranted, becomes a bit tedious over time. His perspective brings balance to the story, though, and his role as chronicler of the family's exploits during the early 20th century bridges the gap between Eli's and Jeannie's lives. "The Son" pulled me immediately into its rough and tumble world, and there was never any question that I would see the tale through to its conclusion. I'm far from alone in enjoying this book. It was a finalist for the 2014 Pulitzer Prize for fiction (but lost out to the even heftier "Goldfinch" by Donna Tartt). 

Let me know what's on your own bookshelf.  I'm always looking for my next favorite read.

The Orphan Master's Son by Adam Johnson

You may have seen on the news recently that Kim Jong-un was named the Party Chairman of North Korea's Workers' Party. There were clips of military personnel goose stepping in a celebratory march and citizens proclaiming their undying support for their leader. Kim Jong-un took the occasion to applaud the success of North Korea's fourth underground nuclear test in January. (The United Nations responded to the test with tighter sanctions against the country.) 

Why, you might wonder, am I mentioning this? I'm not a person who talks--or thinks--much about world politics. Historically, while I knew North Korea was on the "bad" list, I had no concept of what life is like for its citizens or how truly frightening a concept it is for North Korea to have nuclear capabilities. That changed when I read Adam Johnson's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel "The Orphan Master's Son," which has a ripped from the headlines quality to it.

 We meet Jun Do, the novel's protagonist, at Long Tomorrows orphanage for boys. His father is the Orphan Master there. The facility is quite full, as parents drop their sons off on their way to the 9-27 (prison/concentration) camps that house political dissidents. (Yodok is the largest of these camps and plays a role in the book.)  Jun Do's mother is long gone; he has seen her only in a single picture treasured by his father. He assumes that she, like all beautiful women from the provinces, was shipped to the capital of Pyongyang to be married off to a favored party official.

As the oldest child at the orphanage, Jun Do "had responsibilities--portioning the food, assigning bunks, renaming the boys from the list of the 114 Grand Martyrs of the Revolution. Even so, the Orphan Master was serious about showing no favoritism to his son...When the rabbit warren was dirty, it was Jun Do who spent the night locked in it. When boys wet their bunks, it was Jun Do who chipped the frozen piss off the floor...  The surest evidence that the woman in the photo was Jun Do's mother was the unrelenting way the Orphan Master singled him out for punishment. It could only mean that in Jun Do's face, the Orphan Master saw the woman in the picture, a daily reminder of the eternal hurt he felt from losing her. Only a father in that kind of pain could take a boy's shoes in winter. Only a true father, flesh and bone, could burn a son with the smoking end of a coal shovel."  

Adam Johnson catapults the reader into this world in the first three paragraphs of the book. Needless to say, this is a story that's not always easy to read. But it is always compelling and sadly educational. (I found myself doing a lot of googling to find out whether certain aspects were fiction or fact. Take for instance, the North Korean calendar, which as of 1997 is based in Juche rather than Gregorian years. Kim II-sung, Kim Jong-un's grandfather, was born in 1912, which is Juche year 1. The current year is Juche 105, which is sometimes modified with 2016 in parentheses. It's a simple example of the ways in which North Korea's totalitarian regime elevates its leaders and dictates all aspects of its citizens' lives.)

Part I of the book is titled "The Biography of Jun Do." Jun Do has no choice but to do what the government instructs him. He becomes a kidnapper, venturing into Japan to take whomever the state has targeted.  His superior, who has lost count of how many people he's kidnapped, tells him it gets easier. "Catch somebody with your hands, then let them go with your mind. Do the opposite of keeping count."

Jun Do goes to language school. He goes through pain training. He becomes a spy. In a pivotal segment of the book, he goes to Texas with a North Korean contingent. On the trip over, a colleague explains the difference between North Korea and the United States."Where we are from," Dr. Song tells him, "Stories are factual. If a farmer is declared a music virtuoso by the state, everyone had better start calling him maestro. And secretly, he'd be wise to start practicing the piano. For us, the story is more important than the person. If a man and his story are in conflict, it is the man who must change...But in America, people's stories change all the time. In America, it is the man who matters."

While there, a member of the Texan delegation asks Jun Do if he knows what it feels like to be free. "Are there labor camps here?" he asks. "No." "Mandatory marriages, forced criticism sessions, loudspeakers?" She shook her head. "Then I'm not sure I could ever feel free here," he said...."When you're in my country, everything makes simple, clear sense. It's the most straightforward place on earth."  And yet a seed has been planted that there is another way to live, a world in which individuals make their own choices.

Part II of the book is titled "The Confessions of Commander Ga." The reader is introduced to North Korean interrogation practices. A professor has been accused of "counterrevolutionary teaching, specifically using an illegal radio to play South Korean pop songs to his students." The team members are distracted when they learn that Commander Ga, a North Korean legend who has been declared an enemy of the state, has been captured and will be questioned. The story goes on from there and is told from various points of view. The action doesn't let up until the final page.

"The Orphan Master's Son" is an incredible book that tops my list of best all-time reads. Whenever I write about a book, I look back at passages I flagged to recapture what struck me. While doing so, I found myself drawn once again into Jun Do's world and had to resist putting all else aside and starting the book over. Such is the storytelling skill of Adam Johnson. I couldn't encourage you more strongly to put "The Orphan Master's Son" on your own "must read" list. 

Postscript: Johnson made a trip to North Korea while writing "The Orphan Master's Son." The book includes a fascinating interview with him about his journey. BookPage also did a wonderful interview with Johnson that you can read by clicking here.

The Who & the What at Gulfshore Playhouse

Earlier this year, I had the opportunity to see the Pulitzer Prize-winning "Disgraced" by Ayad Akhtar. It's an incredibly powerful play with its themes of identity, assimilation and cultural appropriation. And so I jumped at the chance to see Akhtar's "The Who & the What" at Gulfshore Playhouse. While the play didn't strike as deep a chord as "Disgraced" did, it was another thought-provoking afternoon of theater.

Rasha Zamamiri as Zarina and Rajesh Bose as Afzal

The characters in the show are Afzal, his daughters Zarina and Mahwish, and Zarina's suitor Eli (whom her father found for her on Muslimlove.com). The primary plotline revolves around a book Zarina is writing about how Muslim women came to wear hijabs, a practice she feels "erases" them.  She believes the genesis of the tradition can be found in an encounter between Mohamad and Zaynab, his daughter-in-law who later became his wife. According to the story (which is disputed by some Islamic scholars), Mohamad came upon Zaynab in a state of undress and told her how beautiful she was. When Zaynab relayed his comments to her husband, Zayd offered to divorce Zaynab in order to permit his father to marry her. Mohamad accepted his offer, and Zaynab became his seventh wife. At their wedding feast, Allah conveyed to Mohamad a new verse for the Qaran that stated,"When you ask his wives for something, ask them from behind a screen." From then on, Muslim women wore veils (which took the place of screens). To Zarina, it was Mohamad's lust for Zaynad (which her book describes in great detail) rather than the word of Allah that resulted in the offending tradition.

The book and its blasphemous ideas have significant repercussions for the characters. (Although a fatwa was not issued, it called to mind the controversy over Salman Rushdie's "The Satanic Verses" that kept Rushdie in hiding for nearly a decade.) Akhtar makes it clear that Zarina understood the potential for the book's explosive impact by her reluctance to tell people about what she was writing. 

The 90-minute play was very involving, and all of the actors were topnotch. I did, however, wonder why Zarina was so obsessed with the hajib since the females in her family (including her mother) did not wear a veil. Even more significantly, why didn't she publish the book under a pseudonym to avoid subjecting her family to the consequences of her actions?  

Professor Mohamad Al-Hakim

The performance was followed by a discussion with FGCU philosophy professor Mohamad Al-Hakim, which would have been worth the price of admission on its own. To Al-Hakim, the play was about the dangers of patriarchy, which of course is not unique to Islam.  He talked about the role of skepticism in religion and politics and, well, life, and its power to actually deepen one's beliefs. He argued against use of the word "tolerance" as it implies both a power differential and a negative moral judgment. (He advocated instead for "recognition" of different views and lifestyles.) And he raised the question of whether absolute truths really matter.  Janice and I were ready to sign up for his class.

I applaud Gulfshore Playhouse for presenting topical plays like "The Who & the What," which runs through this week-end. And I note that the theater will take on Lucas Hnath's "The Christians" next season. I saw the show at last year's Fringe Festival in Edinburgh, and it definitely got under my skin.  It's worth keeping on your theatrical radar screen.    

A Constellation of Vital Phenomena by Anthony Marra

Heartbreaking. Horrifying. Compelling. These are just some of the words I would use to describe Anthony Marra's "A Constellation of Vital Phenomena."

While the novel technically relates to five days in the life of a Chechnyan village, the story spans a ten-year period. It's 2004, and the Second War between Russia and Chechnya is at its mid-point. Events that occurred during the First War (which took place from December 1994-August 1996) play an important role in what's happening in the characters' lives.  The author includes a timeline at the beginning of each chapter to indicate when the action occurs.

Chapter 1 opens, "On the morning after the Feds burned down her house and took her father, Havaa woke from dreams of sea anemones." We quickly learn that eight year old Havaa is alive only because her father Dokka knew what the rumble of the truck in the middle of the night meant and sent the child--with her suitcase packed just for this occasion--out the back door and into the forest. We also learn that the house was burned in case she was hiding beneath a floorboard or in a cupboard.  Havaa, it seems, is a target of the Feds as well. 

When Havaa wakes up, she's in the home of her neighbor Akhmed. He bundles her up to take her to the city hospital where he's heard of a doctor he hopes will take her in. "He's not coming back, is he?" she asked. "I don't think so," Akhmed replies. "But what if he does?" the girl worries. "If he comes back, I'll tell him where you are. Is that a good idea?"  "My father is a good idea," Havaa says.

Over the course of the book, we learn about the lives of Dokka and his dead wife Esiila and the birth of Havaa. We get to know Akhmed, the self-proclaimed worst doctor in all of Chechnya, and his invalid wife Ula. We meet Sonja, the doctor in whose care Akhmed intends to place Havaa, and her lost sister Natasha. And then there's Ramzan, the village informer, and his father Khassan, a writer who chronicled the history of Chechnya.  The characters' lives are interwoven in complicated and unexpected ways.

Marra during a research trip to Chechnya

The world captured by Marra is a place where people can be taken to the Landfill for the most ridiculous of reasons. The specified reason for the arrest of an iman was that he was "too short." (The Feds were looking for a mastermind who had a beard and was less than two meters tall. Everyone in the village fitting this description was taken away.)  Some who are taken are returned, although their existence will never be the same.  The others become part of the disappeared. 

It's a world where intense periods of bombing lead everyone to seek shelter outside, finding it easier to sleep in the cold than with the fear of falling rubble.  "The homeless, insane and alcoholic reigned in this world...The city pariahs were inundated by professors and lawyers and accountants whose degrees were worth the five seconds of warmth they could fuel."

It's a world where the bombed out hospital treats only war victims and expectant mothers and has a guard with only one arm. Land mine victims are the most common patients. "Leg amputations are normal business here," Sonja tells Akhmed.  The amputated legs are wrapped and saved for burial.

This is the world in which Havaa is growing up. Not surprisingly, she grasps onto the people whose lives touch hers. Her suitcase contains one change of clothing and the souvenirs she's collected from the refugees her parents have sheltered. When Akhmed leaves her at the hospital each night, she worries that she'll never see him again. He has instantly become her new father figure. And while Havaa doesn't view Sonja as a new mother, she is intrigued by her. Sonja is different from the women Havaa has known. "Women weren't supposed to be doctors; they weren't capable of the work, the schooling, the time and commitment, not when they had houses to clean, and children to care for, and dinners to prepare, and husbands to please. But Sonja was more freakish, more wondrously confounding than the one-armed guard; rather than limbs she had, somehow, amputated expectations. She didn't have a husband, or children, or a house to clean and care for.  She was capable of the work, school, time, commitment, and everything else it took to run a hospital. So even if Sonja was curt and short-tempered, Havaa could forgive her these shortcomings, which were shortcomings only in that they were the opposite of what a woman was supposed to be.  The thick, stern shell hid the defiance that was Sonja's life.  Havaa liked that."

"A Constellation of Vital Phenomena" is an incredibly hard read. Marra's impeccable storytelling skills and beautiful use of language make the torture and sorrow all too easy to envision.  But the way he weaves the stories together is nothing less than remarkable. And he somehow leaves the reader with a glimmer of hope for better days.  It's a book that will stay with you long after you've finished the last page.  Read it.   

Getting Modern at the Corning Museum of Glass

"Fog" by Ann Gardner

When Maggie visited me earlier this year, we visited the Morean Arts Center and its striking Chihuly Collection in St. Petersburg.  She immediately put a trip to the Corning Museum of Glass on our calendar for my visit. My head is still spinning from all the visual stimulation.

While the Museum covers 35 centuries of glass making, it was the work in its new Contemporary Art + Design Wing that really grabbed my attention.  The 100,000 square foot wing features 26,000 square feet of gallery space and a 500-seat theater for glass blowing demonstrations and glass design sessions (which are on my list for next time). 

The first work we came upon was Ann Gardner's "Fog" (which, of course, the photo does not do justice). The sculpture contains more than 100 mosaic-covered pods. While the square four-sided glass tiles (known as tesseree) are quite modern, they are made in the old-style Venetian manner.  Click here to see the pods in more detail.  I could almost feel the mist on my face.

"Endeavor" by Lino Tagliapietra

Our favorite installation might have been Lino Tagliapietra's "Endeavor," a stunning work of 18 colorful blown glass boats reminiscent of gondolas in his native Venice. (The sculptural forms are open to interpretation, though, and could also be seen as a flock of birds or a school of fish.) Tagliapietra began his studies in the glass factories of Murano at the age of 11; when he was 21, he was declared a "maestro" (master).  He didn't begin developing his own work, though, until at the age of 45 when he was invited by Dale Chihuly to teach Venetian glassblowing techniques at Pilchuk Glass School in Washington State. Click here to see a more vibrant image of a larger version of "Endeavor" at the Columbus Museum of Art.

"Forest Glass" by Katherine Gray

Then there was Katherine Gray's "Forest Glass," a work that--like a pointillist painting--is best viewed first from a distance. The "trees" are composed of plexiglass shelves on which more than 2000 drinking glasses have been set in a careful design. A few of the glasses are decorated with flowers or insects to add to the nature feeling. Although Gray is a glassblower, the glasses in the sculptures were found at thrift stores and on e-Bay.  The Museum's website explains, "Forest Glass is about creation and destruction, ecology, and historical glass. It refers to the history of glassmaking and its attendant environmental issues: trees—in fact, forests of them—were obliterated over the centuries so that their wood could be used as fuel for glass furnaces. In this work, Gray reconstructs some of these lost trees out of the material that destroyed them—in effect, recycling the trees with recycled glass."

 "Orpheus in Foliage"

The Museum's "old" contemporary gallery is also full of wonderful works. I loved their gemmaux, which are glass panels affixed to light boxes. Each panel contains hundreds of colored glass pieces that were cut and arranged by technicians known as gemmists.  Once assembled, the work was dipped in an enamel-type solution and then kiln-fired to fuse the glass. "Orpheus in Foliage" was designed by Jean Cocteau after his painting of the same name and then created by gemmists in the studio of Roger Malhere-Navarre. (Malhere-Navarre worked with painter Jean Crotti to originate the technique.)  Cocteau is credited with naming the genre as a contraction of the words gems and stained glass. (I don't quite get it either.) Crotti was a fan of Picasso and decided to replicate his "Le Coq" as a gemmail. When he showed it to Picasso, Pablo declared, "A new art is born!"  Picasso eventually created 60 gemmaux replicating some of his favorite works. Sadly, none are on public display.

Dominick Labino's "Ionic Structure of Glass" is yet another striking work. The cast glass window measures five feet in diameter and weighs in at 350 pounds. It was commissioned by the Museum in 1979 for the internal entrance of its new building and was intended to be the first work a visitor saw. The Museum's expansion led to the work being out of view for 15 years; it was reinstalled in the gallery in 2014.  In its original placement, the structure was backlit with floodlights and required its own air vent. (Replacing a bulb led to an uncomfortable climb through a mechanical equipment room. I can imagine a serious game of rock/paper/scissors to decide who got that job.) Today LED lights enable the work to shine.

The Museum has an app to view works from the Contemporary Art + Design Wing that can be found at http://glassapp.cmog.org/#/gallery.  There's nothing like seeing the glass in person, though. If you're in the Rochester/Buffalo area, make sure to add a stop at the Museum to your schedule.