The artful mind april issue 2016

THE ARTFUL MIND THE SOURCE FOR PROMOTING the ARTS SINCE 1994

APRIL 2016

MATTHEW TANNENBAUM OWNER OF THE BOOKSTORE, LENOX, MA PHOTOGRAPHED BY SABINE VON FALKEN

EDWARD ACKER photographer

Hours:

11am-6pm Thursday - Monday, Saturday dinner 6pm-8pm closed Tues and Wednesday 70 Railroad Street, Great Barrington, MA www.Elixir.com organictearoom@gmail.com 413. 644. 8999

Time flies. Get pictures.

800-508-8373

EdwardAckerPhotographer.com

Kris Galli

jane feldman photography

Mona Lisa, Oil on Canvas, 40 x 30�

Represented by

www.janefeldman.com

janefeldmanphoto@gmail.com

Lauren Clark Fine Art

25 Railroad St. Great Barrington 413-528-0432

krisgallifineart.com

MARILYN KALISH

Vault Gallery, Great Barrington, MA. 413.854.7744 Lilly Clifford Gallery East Sussex, England www.marilynkalishfineart.com

ElEANoR loRd

RECENT PAINTINGS

Month of April, 2016 Artist Reception: Friday, April 1, 6 - 8pm

BUSHNELL SAGE LIBRARY, 48 MAIN St, SHEffIELd, MA ElEANoRloRd.Com

nina lipkowitz

Glyphs & Squiggles

Glyphs & Squiggles, iPainting, Limited Edition Archival Pigment Print, 30 x 23”

ipad paintings created on an ipad limited Edition archival pigment prints

April 1 - May 1, 2016

Artist Reception: Saturday April 2, 3 - 6pm ninalipkowitz.com

510

Vinyl, iPainting, Archival Print, 30 x 23”

510 WARREN STREET GAllERY Hudson, New York 518-822-0510 510warrenstreetgallery@gmail.com 510warrenstreetgallery.com

Hours: friday & Saturday 12 - 6, Sunday 12 - 5 or by appointment

WARREN ST GALLERY

THE ARTful mINd APRIl 2015 • 1

ARTFUL CALENDAR APRIL 2016 ART

A destination for those seeking premier artists working in glass

510 WARREN STREET GAllERY 510 WARREN StREEt, HUdSoN, NY 518-822-0510 April: Nina Lipkowitz; “Glyphs & Squiggles”, iPad paintings, friday & Saturday, 12 - 6, Sunday 12 - 5 or by app 510warrenstreetgallery@gmail.com / 510warrenstreetgallery.com CARRIE HAddAd GAllERY 622 Warren St, Hudson, NY 518-828-1915 25th Anniversary Exhibition, Leigh Palmer, dale Goffigon, Ginny fox, & Leon Smith, Artists' Reception: Saturday, May 28th 6-8pm; May 25, 2016 - Jul 10, 2016; Summer Exhibit Anne francey, Stephen Walling, Marion Vinot, & Vincent Pomilio Reception: Sunday, July 17th 2-4pm Jul 13, 2016 - Aug 28, 2016

ClARk ART INSTITuTE 225 SoUtH StREEt WILLIAMStoWN MA 413-458-2303 / www.clarkart.edu An Eye for Excellence, thru Apr 10, 2016

ClAIRE TEAGuE SENIoR CENTER 917 SoUtH MAIN St., Gt. BARRINGtoN, MA 413-528-l881 Artists tea, fri, April 15, 3-5pm. Public invited to meet artists who have loaned their work to the Senior center and see the newly rehung permanent collection.

Regular Hours: Monday- friday, 8:00 AM - 3:30pm

dENISE B CHANdlER fINE ARt PHotoGRAPHY & PHoto ARt 413-637-2344 or 413-281-8461 (leave message) *Lenox home studio & gallery appointments available. *Exhibiting and represented by Sohn fine Art, Lenox, MA *Exhibiting as an artist member/owner at the 510 Warren Street Gallery, Hudson, NY dIA ART 3 BEEkMAN St, BEAcoN, NY • 854-440-0100 / diaart.org Robert Irwin: Excursus: Homage to the Square. thru May 31, 2017

fRoNT STREET GAllERY 129 fRoNt St, HoUSAtoNIc, MA • 413-274-6607 Housatonic gallery for students and artists, featuring watercolor & oil paintings by artist kate knapp Good PuRPoSE GAllERY 40 MAIN StREEt, LEE, MA • 413-394-5045 kayla corby, Berkshire Revelations, thru May 17 (9am - 4pm every day)

JoHN dAVIS GAllERY 362 1/2 WARREN St, HUdSoN, NY • 518-828-5907 art@johndavisgallery.com Jane culp, Slipping and Sliding in the Anthropocene: Recent Paintings from California Wilderness, Desert and Mountains, thru Apr 24 2 • APRIl 2016 THE ARTful mINd

ST. fRANCIS GAllERY RtE. 102, SoUtH LEE (just 2 miles east from the Red Lion Inn) friday thru Monday 10-5pm.

Reopening in spring 2016!

THE ClARk ART INSTITuTE 225 SoUtH St, WILLIAMStoWN, MA 413-458-2303 An Eye for Excellence/ twenty Years of collecting, clark’s permanent collection, thru April 10

mac Conner: A New life Norman Rockwell museum dIStINGUISHEd ILLUStRAtoR SERIES MARcH 19 tHRoUGH JUNE 5, 2016 9 MA-183 StockBRIdGE MA • 413-298-4100 / www.nrm.org lAuREN ClARk fINE ART 25 RAILRd. St, Gt. BARRINGtoN, MA • 413-528-0432 Lauren@LaurenclarkfineArt.com www.LaurenclarkfineArt.com www.windowworldart.com fine art and framing.

mARGuERITE BRIdE HoME StUdIo At 46 GLoRY dRIVE, PIttSfIELd, MA 413-841-1659 or 413-442-7718 MARGEBRIdE-PAINtINGS.coM fB: MARGUERItE BRIdE WAtERcoLoRS original watercolors, house portraits, commissions, fine art reproductions. Seasonal scenes always on exhibit at crowne Plaza, Pittsfield; Studio visits by appt.

mASSmoCA 1040 MASS MocA WAY, NoRtH AdAMS, MA 413-664-4481 clifford Ross: Landscape Seen & Imagined, thru April 17, 2016. Liz deschenes: Gallery 4.1.1. thru April 24, 2016. Artists' choice: An Expanded field of Photography, thru April 24 SAmuEl doRSkY muSEum of ART StAtE UNIV. of NEW YoRk, NEW PALtz 845-257-3844 Among the exciting exhibitions planned for 2016 are: Made for You: New Directions in Contemporary Design, investigating the ways in which contemporary design objects are customized for the individual whether handmade or through 3d printing technology.

Hours: Wednesday-Sunday: 11 am - 5 pm SCHANTz GAllERIES 3 ELM St, StockBRIdGE, MA • 413-298-3044 schantzgalleries.com

T H E G E o f f R E Y Y o u N G GAllERY 40 Railrd. St, (above JWS Art Supplies) Gt. Barrington, MA The Bridge, a mixed media installation

by John clarke, April 2016. Reception for artist: April 23, 5-9pm.

VAulT GAllERY 322 MAIN St, Gt. BARRINGtoN, MA 413-644-0221 Marilyn kalish at work and process on view, beautiful gallery with a wonderful collection of paintings

dEB koffmAN’S ARTSPACE 137 fRoNt St, HoUSAtoNIc, MA • 413-274-1201 Sat: 10:30-12:45 class meets. No experience in drawing necessary, just a willingness to look deeply and watch your mind. this class is conducted in silence. Adult class. $10, please call to register.

MUSIC

CHESTER RAIlWAY STATIoN 10 Prospect St, chester, MA. dixieland Stomp is presenting a concert of dixieland Music, April 28, 7 to 8:30 pm, free.

CloSE ENCouNTERS WITH muSIC MAHAIWE PERfoRMING ARtS cENtER, Gt. BARRINGtoN, MA • 413-528-0100 / WWW.cEWM.oRG “fiddler off the Roof”, explores Jewish music, April 17, 3pm

dEWEY HAll 91 Main St, Sheffield MA thursday April 21st, 8pm: oldtone Productions Presents: Bruce Molsky in concert, $15

WHITNEY CENTER foR THE ARTS 42 WENdELL AVE, PIttSfIELd, MA • 413-212-4459 / info@samandron.com Ron Ramsay & Samantha talora with Michael Gillespie: A Sondheim trilogy, the Songs of Stephen Sondheim, Sat May 21, 7:30

THEatre Company presents...

LAUREN cLARk fINE ARt 25 Railroad St, Gt Barrington, MA 413-854-4400 leave name and date, tele. fRoM dooR to dooR

By James Sherman. A warm-hearted, fullproduction play about three generations of woman spanning 63 years. A Mother’s day treat! directed by Bruce t. Macdonald; Leah Marie Parker, Gayle Schechtman and Harryet candee. May 6 - 8, 7pm and May 13-15, 7pm. Matinees May 8 and May 15, 2pm. Please call to reserve.

Blue Gray Soldiers Approach Dam, 2015, 48 x 40 inches, Oil on Mi-Tientes A.P.E GALLERY, 126 MAIN St, NoRtHAMPtoN, MA

dAVId BREWStER, MAGNEtIc cIRcUItRIES APRIL 14 – MAY 15, 2016 ARtISt REcEPtIoN: fRIdAY, MAY 13: 5-8 PM

THEATRE & ENTERTAINMENT

VENTfoRT HAll mANSIoN ANd  GIldEd AGE muSEum LENox, MA Pete and chris: two-Man kid’s Magic Show, tue Apr19, 3:30pm

WAm THEATRE the third season of WAM’s popular fresh takes Play Reading Series kicks off on April 17 with a reading of The Last Wife, by kate Hennig, directed by Molly clancy. Returning once again to the gallery space at No. Six depot Roastery and cafĂŠ in West Stockbridge at 3pm on Sunday afternoons starting on April 17 and including: May 15, Photograph 51 by Anna ziegler, directed by kelly Galvin; June 19, The Oregon Trail by Bekah Brunstetter, directed by EstefanĂ­a fadul; August 21, Samsara by Lauren Yee, directed by Megan Sandberg-zakian; and September 11, Grand Concourse by Heidi Shreck, directed

by Sheila Siragusa.

mAHAIWE PERfoRmING ARTS cAStLE St, Gt BARRINGtoN, MA • 413-528-0100 david Sedaris, Sunday, April 10, 7pm, $48 – $68

mASSmoCA 1040 MASS MocA WAY, NoRtH AdAMS, MA • 413-664-4481 zvidance: on the Road, Apr 23, 8pm, Multi-media dance production explores the general upheaval of the 1960s and the Beat Generation

lECTuRE ANd PAINTING WoRkSHoP  WITH dAVId BREWSTER www.bluewayartalliance.org May 5, 7:00 pm LEctURE: “Art is a Habit of Being�, oxBoW GALLERY PAINtING WoRkSHoP: MAY 6, 7, 8 friday – Sunday: An outdoor three day painting workshop will take place in the urban streets of downtown Holyoke.

SABINE VollmER VoN fAlkEN  PHoToGRAPHY  Please call for workshop schedule Studio 413-429-6510 / 413-298-4933

Send in your events by the 5th of the month prior to publication. Welcome text files and images: artfulmind@yahoo.com Read back issues and new issues of The Artful Mind on ISSUU.COM

WARNER THEATRE 68 MAIN St, toRRINGtoN, ct 860-489-7180 www.warnertheatre.org Gordon Lightfoot. Yes! Gordon Lightfoot!

April 14, 8pm

CLOSE ENCOUNTE ERS S WITH MUSIC PRESENT TS

F idd Fidd i ddler ler

OFF OF FF F F

ColoNIAl THEATRE 111 SoUtH St, PIttSfIELd, MA • 413-997-4444 www.berkshiretheatregroup.org Bella’s Bartok cd release masquerade, April 16, 8pm; through the Looking Glass: Musings from Pens of Berkshire Women Writers, the Unicorn theatre, Sunday, Apr 17, 3pm

HElSINkI CAfE 405 coLUMBIA St, HUdSoN, NY • 518-828-4800 info@helsinkihudson.com crystal Bowersox, Sat, Apri 9, 9pm; “Reeling in the Yearsâ€?, Steely dan tribute, Sat Apr 16, 9pm; April 17, 7pm: the Mystery of the family Jewles, A whodunit play with burlesque, drag & circus performances; double Bill, the fIGGS, /the Upper crust, friday May 20, 9pm.

WORKSHOP

Th T h e R oof oo f Jewish Music spanning a multitude of culturres and centuries: Gershwin, Bernstein, Mahler, Milhaud Mendelssohn, Bloch, Ravel, Max Brruch, D ZRUOG SUHPLHUH E\ 3DXO 6FKRHQäHOG D tou uch of Klezmer and more...

Sunda S unday, April April 17 17 at at 3PPM M THHEE M MAHAIWE AHAIWE

GREAT G REAT AT B BARRINGTON ARRINGTON, M MA A

MIICHELE CHELE LEEVIN VIN, p piano iano PAAUL UL GR REEN EEN, cl clarinet larin i et ALLEX EX RIICHARDSON CHARDSON, te ten nor n or SAARAH RAH MCELLRAVY RAVY, v vio iollin in YEEHUDA HUDA HA ANANI NANI, ccello ello www.cew w ww.cew wm.org m . or g | 8 800.843.0778 00.843.0778 TTickets: ickets: $45 $45 orchestra/ orchestra//$ //$25 $25 balcony/$15 balcony/ y//$$15 A Age ge 30 30 and an d u und nd der er 413.528.010 4 13. 528.010 00 0 oorr www.mahaiwe.org www.mahaiwe.org

THE ARTful mINd   APRIl 2016â€ˆâ€˘â€ˆ3

THE ARTful mINd ARTzINE APRIl 2016

Thank you for the bread on our table and this artzine in our hand

Paula Shalan Ceramic Artist interview by Harryet Candee page 6

Gabriel Squailia interview by H Candee Page 14 Matt Tannenbaum & The Bookstore interview by H Candee Photographer: Sabine von Falken page 20

Planet Waves Astrology APRIL 2016 Eric Francis page 30

fICTIoN: mussolini’s fiat Richard Britell page 32

Grandma Becky’s Recipes Laura Pian page 37

Kelley Vickery BIff interview by Harryet Candee page 38

Contributing Writers and Monthly Columnists Eunice Agar, Richard Britell, Eric Francis Laura Pian, Amy Tanner Photographers Edward Acker, Lee Everett, Jane Feldman Sabine von Falken, Alison Wedd Publisher Harryet Candee

Copy Editor

Marguerite Bride

Editorial proofreading Kris Galli Advertising and Graphic Design Harryet Candee

mailing Address: Box 985, Great Barrington, mA 01230

artfulmind@yahoo.com 413 854 4400 All mATERIAl due the 5th of the month prior to publication

FYI: ©Copyright laws in effect throughout The Artful Mind for logo & all graphics including text material. Copyright laws for photographers and writers throughout The Artful Mind. Permission to reprint is required in all instances. In any case the issue does not appear on the stands as planned due to unforeseeable circumstances beyond our control, advertisers will be compensated on a one to one basis. Disclaimer rights available upon request. Serving the Art community with the intention of enhancing communication and sharing positive creativity in all aspects of our lives. We at The Artful Mind are not responsible for any copyrights of the artists, we only interview them about the art they create.

4 • APRIl 2016 THE ARTful mINd

THE muSIC SToRE

As we celebrate the coming of spring, we are mindful that the benefits of shopping locally are many. And as more and more small, independent stores close we think how thankful we are for our many loyal and hugely supportive customers. We continue our support for many of our local schools' art programs and performance groups. And we are able to showcase some of the fine work that independent instrument makers and luthiers are creating one at a time right here in Berkshire county including: - Brier Road's Guitars' gorgeous oM Acoustic Guitar made entirely from fine tonewoods sourced in Berkshire county, - Undermountain Ukuleles' lovely A/E flame Maple Soprano, a big voice in a small, appealing package - our own dr. Easy's drunk Bay cigar Box guitars, simply the most amazing bang for a box ever heard and featuring six brand new boxes so far for 2016, - the Rowe Stick dulcimers - strum sticks par extraordinaire, provided for sale and for donation to outreach and Veteran's programs, - lovely Stockbridge made Serenity Bamboo flutes and Walking Stick/cane flutes and - Whitmer acoustic guitars, lovingly made one at a time in Pittsfield from fine tone woods, - don Waite's Gadjo Guitars - gorgeous and daring for a killer price. the Music Store has, for fifteen years, enjoyed helping the community, near and far to make music. And this is a rewarding and satisfying enterprise for us. We look forward to continuing this mission into the second half of our second decade. And, as always, we offer wonderful musical instruments and accessories at competitive pricing. But there are just some things that we like to share with you, including support for our newest music makers, and Great deals, Raffles and New and Used Instruments for everyone. come and join the fun . . .

We welcome the lovingly Berkshire county individually (not factory) made Brier Road Guitars, Whitmer Guitars, and Undermountain Ukuleles. Play and own

an absolute original. composite Acoustic guitars (the forever guitar) and their peerless travel guitar, the cargo, a favorite of our own dr. Easy, david Reed, made of carbon graphite and impervious to most changes of temperature and humidity. You can see it often in his hands in performance locally and abroad.

Guild Guitars - light, powerful, affordable, beautiful. terrific Ukuleles 60+ different models: Soprano, concert, tenor and Baritone, acoustic and acoustic/electric, six string, resonator, the Maccaferri-like Makala Waterman Uke (made all of plastic for easy portability almost anywhere!) the remarkable U-Bass, and the new Solid Body Uke Bass by the Magic fluke co.

How about a cordoba cuatro? or Guitarlele?

Experience the haunting sound of High Spirits Native American flutes.

How about a West African djembe with a smashing carry bag? or a beautiful set of African djun djuns? try a 'closeout corner' instrument to suit almost any budget.

Alvarez guitars - great tone and great value.

Breedlove - beautiful, American, sustainable. And so many more brands and types, including Luthier Handmade Instruments from $150-$5000 .

Ever heard of dr. Easy’s drunk Bay cigar Boxes?

Acoustic/electric cigar box guitars, exquisitely made, which bring the past into the present with a delightful punch, acoustically and plugged in! You can even hear them in concert if you catch dr. Easy's act in local venues!

Harmonicas, in (almost) every key (try a Suzuki Hammond ‘Mouth organ’).

Picks (exotic, too!), strings (!!), sticks and reeds.

Violins, Mandolins, dulcimers, Banjos, and Banjo Ukes.

Handmade and international percussion instruments. dreamy locally made bamboo and wooden flutes and walking stick flutes.

And the new Berkshire county Rowe Stick dulcimers, easy to play and adore, the sales of which benefit Veteran's homes and outreach programs.

And there is more to delight the eyes, intrigue the ears and bring warm joy to the heart!

We remain your neighborhood music store, where advice and help are free and music is the universal language. Working with local luthiers and repairmen we offer stringed and band instrument repair. And we just may have something you haven’t seen before (have you heard the Electric cigar Box Guitars?). We match (or beat) many on-line prices for the merchandise that we sell, and do so in person, for the most part cheerfully (though we reserve the right to glower a little when asked if we can ‘do better’ on the price of a pick)!

The Music Store, located at 87 Railroad Street in Great Barrington, is open Wednesdays through Sundays and by appointment. Call us at 413-528-2460, visit us on line at www.themusicstoreplus.com, on facebook as the Music Store Plus, or shop our online Reverb store at https://reverb.com/shop/theMusicStorePlus.

NINA lIPkoWITz

“BIG REd dot” IPAINt oN MY IPAd ARcHIVAL PRINt, 30”x23"

GlYPHS & SquIGGlES

five years ago multi-dimensional artist, Nina Lipkowitz, painter, potter, sculptor and watercolor artist began experimenting with painting on an iPad. With no additional materials or supplies, Lipkowitz paints both abstract and realistic color-filled images; meditations which can be painted anywhere. With its back-lit screen she can paint in complete darkness, bright sunshine, freezing snow or rain. She creates these iPad paintings (she calls them iPaintings) with the touch of her index finger, turning the device into endless sheets of “drawing paper” painted in light with infinite marks, brushes and colors ultimately printed as beautiful, limited edition, archival, pigment prints on the finest watercolor printerpapers.

Her latest exhibition at 510 Warren Street Gallery; “Glyphs & Squiggles”, will be her first show at 510 created entirely with an iPad and a printer. Lipkowitz sees her Glyph and Squiggle abstract iPaintings as being filled with sacred symbols and lines. they are filled with secret meanings known only to the artist herself.

“I never meant to be a painter. it just happened. I learned about form and color during my years as a sculptor and potter. I carved marble and alabaster, created clay vessels; learned what makes colors sing and drew and drew and drew, slowly learning how lines twist and turn and dance across paper turning into forms, becoming sacred spaces containing endless puddles of color. Place one mark and then another and another, each building upon the next. Paint or pixels it’s all the same. Layer after layer the paintings begin to appear.”

Matisse, Van Gogh, klee, Miro, kandinsky and the fauves; all continue to inspire her.

Whether painting watercolors, on paper or finger painting on an iPad screen her work is exquisitely her own, an exploration of line and color, pattern and light, density and transparency. there is no preconceived notion of where it is going or what it will look like when it is finished. ninalipkowitz.com / nina@ninalipkowitz.com

STEPHEN fIlmuS

l’ATElIER BERkSHIRES

L’Atelier Berkshires is a unique art experience, with a novel contemporary art gallery and a working sculpture studio in a historic Great Barrington building.

Recently opened by renowned artist Natalie tyler, glass sculpture is made on-site, bringing about nostalgia for artwork made by the artist’s hand. the current exhibition includes encaustic paintings

by John Ratajkowski, sculpture by Sarah Logan, Eva connell and Natalie tyler. during the winter, the gallery is open on weekends and by appointment. originally from california, Natalie tyler moved to the Berkshires after receiving a grant from Mass MocA, encouraging contemporary artists to relocate to the area. tyler’s sculptures draw inspiration from nature, as she casts its’ essence into the elements of metal and glass. Her work is truly inventive and original as she masterly casts bronze and glass.

L’Atelier Berkshires - 597 Main Street, Great Barrington, Mass. For more information call 510-469-5468, email:natalie.tyler@atelierberks.com, or visit website: www.atelierberks.com

coMMISSIoNS

this favorite Berkshire hillside, loved by a Boston couple, was commissioned to mark their special anniversary.

Giving a gift of art like this ensures that the essence of a special time and place will endure and give pleasure for years to come. “the commission process is collaboration between artist and client. Whenever possible we visit the site together and discuss the elements of subject, color, form and the “feeling” of the scene. the next step for me is to create a detailed color sketch that reflects the client’s vision and gives them a good sense of how the finished artwork will look. At this point the commissioner can give input and suggestions as I work toward the final design.

“Lastly, I simply do what I know how to do - I sit at my easel and paint.”

Stephen filmus is represented by J. todd Gallery in Wellesley, Ma. He is presently exhibiting several landscapes at the Bennington center for the Arts and his work can also be seen at his studio in Great Barrington by appointment.

Stephen Filmus - art.sfilmus@verizon.net / 413-528-1253, www.stephenfilmus.com

If you hear a voice within you say 'you cannot paint,' then by all means paint, and that voice will be silenced.

-- Vincent Van Gogh

THE ARTful mINd APRIl 2016 • 5

PAulA SHAlAN

5x13.5x13.5" Large Smoke Fired Bowl" slab constructed, textured interior with polished terra sigillata, smoke fired, white earthenware

ceramic Artist

Harryet Candee: Paula, can you please define the conceptual ideas that you apply in making your earthenware vessels, bowls and boxes, and how you give them their very distinct style?

Paula Shalan: If I had to give you a one-word answer it would be “attention.” Attention to my environment and attention to the material—which in my case is clay.

I want to honor both the immense beauty in our world and this raw material we dig from the earth. When I work, I am entering a conversation with a non-verbal but very responsive material. I have my clear intention but always pay close attention and respond to what the clay does. It essentially becomes a back and forth dialogue between me and the material.

How did you work your way to this particular Shalan style? What style were you working in before this? I imagine there may be historical references and influences… Traveling?

Paula: My father travelled the world and always returned with unusual objects for each of his children. I cherished these and still have many of them. Both my parents loved art and beauty, and there was always a box of crayons on the kitchen table. As a young teen I was very fortunate to try my hand at many art mediums: weaving, lapidary and jewelry work, sculpture, bronze casting, marble carving, watercolor, acrylics, pastels and printmaking. Experience with these varied mediums has ultimately found its way into my ceramic work.

My mother was a ceramic artist, so as a college student I was determined to do any studio art other than ceramics. I was taking printmaking, painting, and drawing classes. In my sophomore year, I ran up against the typical existential angst and could no longer 6• APRIl 2016 THE ARTful mINd

interview by Harryet candee

face a blank canvas. the solution for me was to go into the ceramic studio and create a useful object such as a bowl to eat rice from. In the beginning, I was focused on functional, glazed work. I then began bringing my experience from printmaking and textiles to my work with clay. I fell in love with this malleable material and began exploring its various properties.

Although I still create forms traditionally used for function, such as bowls and boxes, my current work is mostly decorative. My work is simply bare clay that has been polished and smoke fired. I felt that glazes covered up the nuances of the bare clay. I wanted even the minutest impression or imperfection in the soft clay surface to be revealed in the final piece. once I was introduced to smoke firing and terra sigillata—a fine clay slip applied to the surface of a completed form— I had found a way to finish my work that I felt showcased the elements of clay that I admired.

Early on, due to a low back injury, I realized I couldn’t throw on the wheel. So I have been hand building for over thirty years. Both the building methods and the finishing and firing methods I use have been used throughout history and across the world. When I attended the School of the Art Institute of chicago, I would visit the field Museum of Natural History on a regular basis. I loved the ancient clay work but was just as fascinated by the ancient textiles, bronze, and wood pieces. the inspiration from these varied artistic mediums has influenced my unique look.

Having spent time in oaxaca, Mexico, I recall the burnishing of their black clayware. It reminds me a little of your work. But in some of your surfaces there are different applications, such as the look of some kind of warm, metallic, symbolic relief symbols, along with various other textures. can you elaborate on this?

photographs by John Polak

Yes, many of my pots are built using a coil method that mirrors the tradition from oaxaca. I also polish parts of the clay and leave parts matte. I finish and fire my work in a similar fashion to many traditional cultures around the world. By putting pots in a container with fuel and starving that atmosphere of oxygen, one sets up a condition that allows carbon to be deposited in the surface of the clay, turning the work black. I have been playing with this simple finishing and firing method for years, over time developing the unique look of my work.

Sometimes, I use colored clay on the interior of a bowl. I fill this with sand during the firing to protect the color from the smoke. In more recent experimentation, I paint a white slip onto my piece, then carve designs through the slip. After the initial bisque firing I rub a black ceramic stain into the lines, re-bisque, and then mask with aluminum foil before smoke firing. this adds the element of line drawing, juxtaposed on the black burnished surface.

The surfaces remind me of things of nature, like wood and other raw materials. What is the connecting factor for you, the thing that makes the texture and the shape harmonize?

Paula: As you know, I love the beauty of raw material.

I have searched for ways to recreate or preserve that quality in my ceramic work. I am also attracted to contrast. Most of my pieces contrast satin smooth areas with detailed texture or design. A bowl or container of any kind, with its interior and exterior, is the perfect vehicle for holding those two elements side by side, yet clearly defined. Sometimes I play with those boundaries and a bit of texture finds its way to a smooth, burnished area.

Paula Shalan 18hx20'wx8'D "Birches of acadia" slab built, hand polished slip, sgraffito, smoke fired white earthenware

A seed pod has a smooth exterior, and within, a richly complex structure. You might notice the dry, rough, cracking bark of a tree, and beneath is the smooth, fresh, unblemished surface. I’m moved by these sensual contrasts.

I admire the way you do not overwork a piece to the point where people have to guess or be surprised at what the object is all about, other than the obvious, that it is some sort of vessel. do people tend to see right away a sense of either super primitive, or ultra modern?

Paula: I think people realize that my pots contain both a sense of primitive and modern design. they see the ancient and traditional techniques but in new, innovative ways. I leave evidence of the way the piece was constructed. I find beauty in seams and joints. overworking a pot may lead towards a seamless perfection, but it can diminish the sense of fresh energy. I want my work to express the constant fluidity of life that honors material and process. the Japanese term “wabi sabi” describes this aesthetic. It is a way of living that finds beauty in imperfection.

What kind of clay do you favor using, and why?

Paula: I use a low-fire clay from Sheffield Pottery called Mass White. It has terrific strength at my very low firing temperature. I do a preliminary (bisque) firing in my electric kiln, transforming the clay to a white color. In the smoke firing, “naked” Mass White absorbs less carbon than the areas with the polished slip. the bare clay turns a lovely gray that contrasts nicely with the intense black of the polished slip surface.

Paula, tell me more about your firing process.

Paula: outside I have small kiln I built from house bricks. I fill this with a mix of hardwood shavings and my pots. I add a bit of newspaper and light it. Within a few minutes, the shavings are burning and I cover the kiln. It burns for about 24 hours. Smoke firing is very unpredictable. on a windy or rainy day the pots can have a very dynamic and smokey look to their surface. over the last few years, I have been working with either texture or line drawings on my work, and do not want the atmospheric, smokey look to detract from the form and surface design. So I had to come up with a way to achieve a more uniform black/gray surface. to do this, each piece is wrapped individually in a single sheet of newspaper, then in foil, and then placed in the kiln. As the paper burns, the smoke is trapped against the pot by this foil saggar. the results are a very even black/gray.

What do you have in your studio that, say, painters do not have?

Paula: In addition to my electric kiln for bisque firing, one of my most frequently used tools is a large rolling pin for rolling out slabs of clay. And of course, I have hundreds of “found tools” for creating various textures.

My favorite textures are created from both common and uncommon items: a serrated steak knife, a non-slip

rug mat, an oversized wooden bead from Africa, and the end of a bamboo paint brush. I also have boxes and boxes filled with objects that I have collected from nature: coral, seed pods, sea grass, tiny animal bones... I use these for impressions in the soft clay and for inspiration.

I’ve always loved the glazing process, but your unique surface comes from the use of terra sigillata (polished slip). fascinating! Tell me more!

Paula: Yes, I make the terra sigillata myself. It is basically the finest particles of clay separated out from the coarser ones. It is a very refined clay slip that has the consistency of skim milk. I paint multiple coats over the surface of my pot before it is fired. this is done at the bone-dry stage, when the pots are very fragile. At just the right moment, when the terra sigilatta has lost its wet look but still remains moist, I polish the entire surface. Because the particles are so fine, when polished they lay flat, and this allows the light to reflect off the surface, creating a beautiful satin to glossy sheen. the terra sigillata fires white (similar to the clay) in the first firing and can become a rich black in the smoke firing.

I’ve always loved to work with different kinds of clays. I love the results of porcelain, the feeling of slip, like mud, the brushing on of the mysterious

THE ARTful mINd APRIl 2016 • 7

Paula Shalan 7x5x5 "St John Plant Form" hand coiled w textured slab, polished terra sigillata, smoke fired white earthenware

glazes, the heat of the kiln and seeing the fire-hot heat emanating and filling the room. I love the manipulation of soft, warm clay, the pliability, and the smell! What do you love most about clay?

Paula: My most favorite thing about clay is its malleability. It responds to the minutest touch, recording the tiniest of details. I love the fact that I have my hands directly on the clay—that often during the construction process there is no tool between me and the material. clay’s tactile nature is such a joy in our very verbal world. I find working with it grounding and deeply peaceful… an antidote to our hectic, electronicheavy lives.

unpredictability may have been the only disappointment I faced, after removing a pot out of the kiln… Why did the glazes change color, or not take? Why did the piece shift and warp?

Paula: there are so many things that can go wrong, especially when you are new to the craft. It takes a lot of trial and error, and I could have easily spent my entire life exploring all the technical aspects of ceramics.

A while back, I decided that I needed to narrow my focus in order to develop a well-defined voice. I have pared my firing technique down to one of the simplest forms and at this point have fairly predictable results. this allows me to concentrate on form and surface, and focus my experimentation within this very specific firing process. When I am trying out new avenues within my framework of building and firing, I have to do a lot of testing. that is part of being a potter. Sometimes the ceramic surprises are disappointing and sometimes a delight.

8 • 2016 APRIl THE ARTful mINd

Are you very choosy about where you show your work?

Paula: for me, the gallery owner is more important than location or prestige. I show my work in galleries both locally and nationally. I like to find galleries where the owner and staff understand and appreciate the aesthetic of my work, and can display it in a way that compliments it. It is important that the gallery owner is able to honestly share his or her enthusiasm for the work with the customers.

In the Berkshires, you can see my work at Lauren clark’s in Great Barrington and at LocAL in Lenox.

I am very excited to have an upcoming opportunity this summer to show a collection of my work at the Hoadley Gallery in Lenox. In addition, I am part of the Berkshire Pottery tour, which takes place annually on the last weekend of September. It’s a fun way to get a glimpse into the working studios of seven local potters.

However, I sell the majority of my work through competitively juried retail shows such as the Philadelphia Museum of Art Show. My work sells well to serious and knowledgeable craft collectors. I think my work has a very particular aesthetic. Because it is pottery, yet mostly decorative, it has a smaller audience than most functional pottery. I was recently accepted into the Smithsonian craft Show, coming up at the end of April. It is widely considered the country’s most prestigious fine craft show, so I feel very fortunate to participate.

How do you market your work? do you do this alone?

Paula: I have a website (www.paulashalan.com) that I do my best to keep updated with shows and upcoming workshops. I don’t sell directly from it because all my work is one of a kind. However, I do take commissions to create similar work. In fact, I am working on three commissioned orders as we speak.

I also try to post on facebook and Instagram (@paulashalanceramics). And I always send out emails when I have an upcoming show. the marketing efforts do take time and I don’t have any help. of course, I would prefer to spend the time in the studio... but as we all know, marketing is an essential part of getting your work out there.

Are you staffed with interns?

Paula: No, I work on my own. Production work is more suited to having interns. My work is all one of a kind. the solitary time alone in my studio is important to my work and peace of mind.

Paula, I know you are a teacher as well. How would you describe your teaching style?

Paula: My initial teaching tool is a demonstration of the basic hand building techniques. I then encourage my students to discover the process for themselves, while I aid and advise. Beyond demonstrations, I try to bring multiple angles to the learning process. I will have my students do creative exercises such as one minute “sketches” in clay. I try to encourage exploration and learning from each other.

My hand building class at IS183 Art School almost always has a wide range of student experience. Some have never touched clay and some have been with me

Paula Shalan, 7.5x25x1 "Smoke Fired wall work" textured slab, polished terra sigillata, smoke fired, white earthenware for years. I love seeing students give each other advice and suggestions on how to solve a problem. I believe it is important to give personal time and attention to each student, especially as they are working on developing a personal voice or a particular body of work. Exposing students to both historical and contemporary ceramics is also an essential component to my classes. I hope I create an inspiring and cooperative environment for learning. I feel very grateful for having the opportunity to share my love of clay with others.

kid’s creations in clay are the best! They use and abuse and work at just what they envision in their minds. It’s such an amazing learning material for kids! What developmental skills are you particularly interested in instilling?

Is it different when teaching adults?

Paula: I adore kids’ expressive and brave work. the gestural quality they naturally bring to it is so refreshing. the youngest artists (ages 3-5) tend to have an innate sense of composition and color. As kids get older, caution often finds its way in. As a teacher, I try to honor their need to perfect the craft, but I also want to encourage innovative and explorative work. clay classes for kids provide an amazing opportunity for communication and problem solving. Having taught children ages 318 for over thirty years, I never cease to be amazed at the work they create. Adults could learn a lot from this kind of “all-in” approach. With most adults, I feel like I need to encourage exploration, freedom, and the letting go of preconceived notions.

It is more of a challenge for adults to spontaneously respond to the clay. I try to encourage all ages to simultaneously develop their skills while having the courage to express themselves.

do you think a visual artist can be a better artist by working with clay? Seeing in 3d might help an artist with his 2d painting skills, don’t you think?

Paula: Yes, and vice versa. I am a strong advocate for trying one’s hand at a variety of mediums. Each can inform the other.

It is important to move beyond your singular, comfortable world and challenge yourself by exploring other, unfamiliar ways of making art.

What were your earliest interests that may have been indirectly or directly leading to clay work? did you find yourself building sand castles? Sculpting your food?

Paula: Well, my mother was all for playing with food. Looking back at my upbringing, she encouraged creative play and

Paula Shalan, 7.25x5x5 "St. John Cacti" hand coiled with textured slab, polished terra sigillata, sgraffito slip,smoke fired white earthenware

THE ARTful mINd APRIl 2016 • 9

Paula Shalan, 4x15x13 "Bio Forms" pinch and slab constructed, polished terra sigillata, smoke fired white earthenware hands-on exploration of our world. She wasn’t afraid of mess; dirt, worms, turtles in the bathtub were all fair game. My siblings and I created an entire hotel, school, and library system for our stuffed animals. We were always making things. We spent hours in the woods exploring the multitude of sensations; rock, bark, and mud. I think I always enjoyed the tactile nature of outdoor play. the combination of an early childhood living amongst a very lively and creative family, along with my parents’ reverence for the beauty inherent in raw materials and good design, set me up to embrace a life in the arts.

Who was your mentor, and in what ways did this artist help you to discover how to use your hands as tools?

Paula: My mentor was my college ceramic instructor Mikhail zakin. She instilled in me two very essential ideas and practices. one was to have a clear intention before touching the clay. once set, make your move with a confident touch. don’t fiddle and fix. Let your simple but decisive action speak for itself. the other key lesson I learned from her was the importance of working in a series, making multiple related objects. thirty years later, I continue with this practice. As long as I pay close attention, I never fail to learn something of value from the earlier piece in the series that will enhance the next piece.

Clay is so basic, yet it’s not so easy to make it do ex10 • 2016 APRIl THE ARTful mINd

actly what you want. How do you go with the flow when you need to make the clay work with you?

Paula: Skillful work with clay, like with any other medium, takes thousands of hours of practice. I strive to find the balance between giving the clay structure and honoring the inherent qualities of the material. I know my clay body well and don’t ask it to go beyond its abilities. Every clay body is different, and it behooves a potter to find the right clay for their particular needs. A margin of error, however, is inherent in raw materials dug from the ground, and changes can occur causing unexpected problems. It is simply part of being a potter.

Where do you think the border is drawn, when it comes to artwork being classified as fine art or craft?

Paula: this is a common question that has been very prominent in the clay world. there is a different value put on work that is defined as art versus that considered to be craft. Because ceramics is often functional, it is usually lumped into the craft category.

I like to say that almost everything we do in life has craft to it as well as art. for myself, I see craft as the skill taken to do something, be it making a pot or a painting, or even preparing your dinner. the more one practices the skills involved in that activity, the better the craftsmanship is. I see art as the part that brings the craft to another level—gives it distinct expression and unique voice. Art shows up in all areas of life when we

infuse our task at hand not only with technique and skill, but with all the richness, depth and nuanced attention to what we are doing.

When you have a discriminating art collector looking at your work, interested in buying or collecting, what do you think they are looking for? What is it you think they are attracted to, in comparison, maybe, to other ceramicists?

Paula: Although smoke firing is quite common in contemporary ceramics, I believe I use this firing method in uncommon ways. the knowledgeable collector, familiar with hand built, burnished pottery, admires my craftsmanship and creative design. Some find it hard to believe that my very large bowls are coil built and not thrown on the wheel. My customers often speak of the pots having both strength and delicacy. However, the most common feedback I hear from my customers is that my work brings them a sense of peace.

What are some of the spiritual and philosophical beliefs that you apply to your art-making?

Paula: My work encompasses the four elements in nature: earth, air, water, and fire. It has a simplicity and hopefully a beauty (in the widest sense of the word) that honors our natural world. I know, in the making of it, I feel grounded, peaceful, attentive and very alive.

I hope some of that is contained within the work. If my work can stop someone, for even a moment of their day, and give them a sense of beauty and peace or help

Paula Shalan, 6x19x5 "Descending Pinch Pot Sculpture",piched pots with slab constructed base polished terra sigillata, smoke fired white earthenware them to connect to their senses and quiet the constant chatter in their heads, I am grateful.

You artwork is timeless, and yet a touch of sci-fi comes to me as well. Am I at all on the same page with you?

Paula: I’m not sure about the sci-fi piece, although my work definitely has elements of science and biology that mix with my imagination. I have an unusually high number of scientists who buy my work, especially biologists.

How would you say your personality is similar to the artwork you create?

Paula: Many people describe me as having a calm presence, yet my mind moves a million miles an hour most of the time. there is a lot of activity going on inside me—far from calm. My work, with its smooth exteriors and often complex interiors mirrors that.

I think to be able to create something that has some kind of credibility and beauty, one must study the history of that form of art through the ages. do you think that’s true of ceramics? And who would be the father/mother of ceramics?

Paula: our long history of human hands creating with clay is informative and inspiring. As early as 24,000Bc, humans were creating figurines from clay, so the true mother/father of ceramics is unknown. As for contemporary ceramics, some would argue that Peter Voulkos was responsible for bringing ceramics from craft to a viable art form. As an artist and an educator, he had a tremendous influence on the field of ceramics and the art world as a whole.

I am wondering, what was your childhood like, and where did you grow up? Was it a colorful childhood?

Paula: I grew up in a suburb south of Boston, but on thirteen acres of land that had woods and fields. I spent countless hours playing outside with my siblings. I can still smell the decaying leaves of fall that had accumulated on our cement steps, feel the prickly grass on my bare feet. I was always a sensory-based child, and have crystal clear and very rich memories. We spent the summers on the cape at my mothers family home. I recall the feel of sea air on my bare skin, sand between my toes, salt water gently lapping at my feet. As you know, my mother was a clay artist and my father was a surgeon. this mix of art and science definitely finds its way into my work. Both parents, in their own way, were very innovative in their approach to life and problem solving. Education, hands-on learning and hard work were highly valued in my home. these, along with a deep appreciation for art and beauty, are all ingredients that have deeply influenced my art practice.

How do you mesh your art making and teaching with family life?

Paula: I love children. Very young children have an innate and unfettered wisdom that allows them to fully experience life. When I had my own children, I was determined to spend as much time with them as possible. My degree is in Studio Art and child development, so it was a perfect fit when we moved to the Berkshires and discovered that IS183 Art School was right around the corner from our house! I taught part time throughout their childhood. I acted as head of the Young Artist Program and began a few of the programs

we still have in place. It was very convenient—my kids grew up coming with me much of the time when I taught the children’s classes and camps. two of my three kids ended up having their first paid jobs as assistants at the IS183 summer camps. one of the benefits of working at the art school was that I was able to use the school’s ceramic studio before I was able to build my own. It was during those early years when the founder of the school, Sam kasten, saw my work and offered me a show in his newly opened gallery in Great Barrington. I am, to this day, very grateful for his support and enthusiasm for my work.

I am also lucky to have a very supportive husband who has encouraged the growth of my work throughout our 28 years of marriage.

My kids are all grown now (two are professional artists and one is studying art at college). I have much more time to work in my studio and am relishing the opportunity. Recently, I was awarded two different artist residencies at our national parks. I have found that these times of concentrated observation and work, coupled with the solitude, have served as a rejuvenating catalyst that continues to propel my art forward.

G

THE ARTful mINd APRIl 2016 • 11

lAuREN ClARk fINE ART fRAMING oN tHE EdGE

the art of picture framing is a collaboration between the artist or collector and the design team at any custom picture framing establishment. At “framing on the Edge” our experienced and creative staff is happy to help you select framing for your painting on canvas, paper or other substrate, mirrors, or any other frame-able objects. our extensive selection of frames includes classic favorites as well as fresh and funky designs from America’s top frame companies. come in for a design consultation and we will guide you through the process of finding the best choices to compliment your art, style, and budget.

We offer only conservation quality matboards that are acid and lignin free and alkaline pH balanced in a beautiful palette of colors ranging from classic neutrals to the latest color trends. We also have rag, linen, and various other textures, thicknesses and finishes to suit any piece of art you might present or purchase from the gallery. to protect our client’s artwork, we offer all types of glazing, including conservation and museum glass and Plexiglas.

Please visit our website for a full listing of our services and to see photos of a few of our frame samples.

Framing on the Edge @Lauren Clark Fine Art - 25 Railroad Street, Great Barrington, Mass; 413-528-0432, www.LaurenclarkfineArt.com

JENNIfER PAzIENzA

RoBERT foRTE RoBERt foRtE, BIRcH, 30 x 40”

After recently completing a body of work for my featured artist's show at 510 Warren Street Gallery in Hudson, N.Y., titled "Iconic Imagery", I began to develop several new avenues for self-expression. Each builds directly upon my last show, which reinterpreted my childhood icons through an adult lens. the affinity with my current work lies in the use of strong color and simplified forms to establish mood and emotional impact. the focus of my new paintings, however, shifts from remembered subjects to internal psychological conflicts, reflections, confrontations and awareness. these themes resonate throughout my placement, pairing and grouping of human figures, and the use of distortion for greater physical immediacy. the second approach that I have adopted seeks the same results but is more indirect. Here I use subjects mostly drawn from nature to channel the psychological content. How often we experience the known and familiar through perceptions altered by context and outlook. these paintings work as semi-abstractions through bold and stark imagery that isolates and magnifies objects to heighten the underlying theme.

In addition to regular exhibitions at 510 Warren Street Gallery, I will be exhibiting at Atlantic Gallery in chelsea, in both group and solo shows. Locally I have also exhibited in Great Barrington and Housatonic, and I have participated in the New Marlborough summer shows at the Meeting House gallery for the past three years. After retiring from the practice of law, I studied painting with cornelia foss at the Art Students League in New York, and figurative drawing and painting with Philip Pearlstein and Minerva durham. My works are held in many private collections throughout the country.

Robert forte - www.robertforte.com

There is one knows not what sweet mystery about this sea, whose gently awful stirrings seem to speak of some hidden soul beneath.

--Herman Melville

12 • APRIl 2016 THE ARTful mINd

Long before I load a brush with colour the ritual act of carefully stapling canvas to a well-crafted stretcher frame, testing for the drum-like sound it should make, applying two or three coats of gesso, depending on the weight of the canvas, lightly sanding in between, is a vital dimension of my painting practice. Until that time images, ideas, emotions and spirit swirl around in my head and heart. the moment of preparing canvas means I have made some decisions, the size, shape and direction, horizontal or vertical, of the eventual painting. Hints of imagery float in and out of consciousness as I prepare my workspace and materials. the joy and gratitude I experience (evident in the smile on my face) in response to the body memory that greets me and lately, delightfully surprises and reminds me that I still have the physical strength to do this work. When I was younger I took great pleasure in building the stretcher frames too. Now, without access to a wood shop, my dear friend Micheal carr builds them for me as I once did, from poplar.

Preparing a beautiful and well-constructed foundation, capable of receiving the layers of paint that follow mirrors the art of making pasta sauce that I was introduced to in my mother’s kitchen so long ago. Il sugo, sauce begins with developing patience (my name in Italian, pazienza) for making the battuto (from battare, to beat, think batter in English) by combining all or some of the ingredients including onions, garlic, carrots, celery and parsley, prosciutto, pancetta or bacon carefully sautéed (this is where we need pazienza) in olive oil and or butter (or lard when I was a girl). the battuto creates an aromatic base for the insaporito (from insaporire to season) the promise of ever rich and deepening tomato flavours to come, for example.

Have you ever asked why there are so many different shapes and sizes of pasta—penne, rigatoni, spaghetti, fusilli, cappelini and the list goes on? Each pasta type pairs best with certain sauces. Shiny, smooth, elliptical linguini, with no tooth at all, pairs well with a garlic and oil sauce, the base for pasta con vongole, clam sauce, while rigatoni (riga the word for the line or stripe on the surface) is happiest and more than capable of carrying a hearty Bolognese, or meat sauce. flat fettuccine beckons rich and creamy alfredo sauces. Like pasta different kinds and weights of canvas (cotton or linen) has varying degrees of tooth and yes, stretched canvas, like perfectly boiled pasta should be aldente, (literally, to the tooth) taut, not slack.

Jennifer Pazienza’s work is held in Public, Private and corporate collections in the US, Italy and canada.

She will have work in the 510 Warren Street Gallery’s June Invitational Show. Jennifer is represented by Art + concepts Gallery in fredericton, NB and the Jonathan Bancroft-Snell Gallery in London, ontario canada.

Jennifer Pazienza jenniferpazienza.com; jennpazienza@gmail.com.

Denise B Chandler Fine Art Photography

©Denise B chandler

EXHiBitinG and REpRESEntED by:

JEnniFER paziEnza PORTALE, woRk in pRoGRESS

jennpazienza@gmail.com http://jenniferpazienza.com/

FRONT ST. GALLERY

• Sohn Fine art Gallery 69 church St., lenox, ma

• 510 warren Street Gallery 510 warren St., Hudson, nY

510

CCCA Columbia County on the Arts’ 2016 Juried Art Show Spencertown Academy, April 2016, Spencertown, NY

www.denisebchandler.com info@denisebchandler.com

WARREN ST GALLERY

RoBERt FoRtE

Kate Knapp

ClASSES! ClASSES! ClASSES! Painting classes on Monday and Wednesday mornings 10-1pm at the studio in Housatonic and thursday mornings 10am - 1pm out in the field.

Also available for private critiques. open to all.

Please come paint with us!

gallery hours: open by chance and by appointment anytime 413. 274. 6607 (gallery) 413. 429. 7141 (cell) 413. 528. 9546 (home) front Street, Housatonic, mA

Robert Forte,tropical canopy, 30” x 40”

510 WARREN STREET, HudSoN, NEW YoRk fRIdAY & SAtURdAY 12 - 6, SUNdAY 12 - 5 518. 822. 0510 510WARRENStREEtGALLERY.coM

robertforte.com

510

WARREN ST GALLERY

THE ARTful mINd APRIl 2016 • 13

GaBRiEl Squailia Photograph Bill Wright

interview by H. Candee

Harryet: I don’t want to seem like a complete repeat freak or anything, but I am always so taken when I am introduced to strong talent, uniqueness, and the ability to create beautiful and imaginative works of art. It gets to be a melting pot, speaking to artists of various genres—and I mean this in the best way—the culmination of all art forms growing, changing, and breaking new ground. There is always someone that hasn’t been exposed to an artist’s work, despite the fact that the artist may be a ball-busting marketer, with or without agents, but these are all the reasons why we now have to catch up!

14 • APRIl 2016 THE ARTful mINd

do you think brilliant talent emerges best when you’re young? or do you see yourself still writing fiction and poetry to your best or higher abilities when you’ve reached the Beatles’ golden age of 64?

Gabriel Squailia: talent is overrated—it’s the boring stuff that gets you where you want to go, like perseverance, practice and, look, I’ve already put myself to sleep. And youth is great at parties, but age is far more useful for novel-writing. I was alright as a teenager. I had a certain degree of raw talent, but I couldn’t finish anything. then I purposely kept my work to myself during my twenties, because I didn’t think it was good enough to submit. I’m starting to feel competent now, though I’ve still got a ways to go—and I’m constantly stumbling across techniques I’m not sure I should even attempt. Will things get better from here? Lord, I hope so. I don’t know if I can take it if they get worse. I can easily imagine myself being far more impressed with

myself at 64 than I am right now, but whether I’ll actually be better at writing is anyone’s guess. I just imagine myself caring less.

Is there someone in your life that continually feeds and motivates you to work on new material, or does it come all from within; dreams, revolving thoughts and inspirations?

Gabriel: Revolving is the right phrase. Most of my ideas leave and come back repeatedly, until I’m finally ready to deal with them. the inspiration comes from all over, though there’s usually a central person or two.

Every novel has its own patron muse, who then has to deal with me awkwardly asking for permission to mutate their biography. “So I seem to be writing about you, but you’re doing a lot of things you wouldn’t do. that is, I’m writing about me, but I’m terrible at writing about me, so I’m pretending I’m you. It’s very

weird. You might not want me to do this. I’m sorry.”

So far, though, my friends have been kind enough not to cancel any of my books, and they still return my calls.

What I am interested in is this: I see you writing very quietly in a very quiet space, overwhelming peace and solitude, only the sounds of paper and pen and some wood possibly burning, a dog yawning… then BAm! You’re ouT there dJing music all over the place! You must have two sets of friends! do the social circles overlap?

Gabriel: I write in a windowless room, and while it’s not exactly quiet, it’s solitary. And the difference between a daytime spent in the office and a night at a party is pretty stark. But this is the Berkshires, where everyone seems to have more than one gig, so I do see the same people in both worlds quite a bit. the WordxWord festival brought me into contact with people from the literary crowd who are also out and about, and I do a bunch of dJing on the Berkshire gala circuit, which is full of artists. the energy is different, but around here it’s all one thing, and we help each other out a lot, whether it’s trying to make a living or getting the best possible opening night together.

Tell me about what gives you this electrical charge, and the ability to keep these two different worlds of art on their axes!

Gabriel: I’m still fairly terrified of dying before I get enough done, so the electrical charge is mostly thanks to mortality. As for the different worlds, I feel like they balance each other out, at least in terms of solitude and socialization. I don’t do well with too much of one or the other, so why not swing wildly between extremes on a more or less weekly basis?

Now, can you explain where they merge together for you? Example of such?

Gabriel: Both writing and dJing are performative arts. I write for my own voice, and I’m always thinking about the staged readings and the audiobooks. composition is the pupal phase, and eventually the book gets its wings and starts flapping through the world, having whatever effects it has on people. And both disciplines are about producing certain effects on their respective audiences. My instrument, when I’m dJing, is the mood of the crowd, and I’m making my decision about what song to mix in next based on the effect I imagine it will have on the room. So I think of each song as a word in a sentence, with the entire night becoming a poem, or a story we’re telling together. this is a horribly pretentious way to talk about making drunk people dance, though, so please don’t tell them.

Is there a time when you like one art better than the other?

Gabriel: I like writing better. dJing was accidental, and writing is the thing I always wanted to do. the payoff is more satisfying—I get to finish something that feels the way I want it to, with an absurd degree of control over the tiniest details. And I’m nothing if not a control freak. When I’m dJing, I have a good deal of control, but it’s a much wilder thing, and there are so many people in my head while I’m spinning that I rarely have any idea what happened when it’s all over. But there is an immediacy to it that sometimes feels like an antidote to the molasses-slow pace of publishing. When I write a book, it can be months or years before I find out if I did a good thing. or

never—there’s always never. But when I drop a song on a dance floor, I know right then if I had a great idea or if I embarrassed myself. And if it’s the latter, hey, they’re tipsy, they’ll get over it. Whee, here’s another song! Bombing a novel, on the other hand, can take up years.

How did you get into the dJ scene?

Gabriel: I lived in Queens while working in Manhattan, and every day I’d come home from that long commute feeling too scraped out to write. What I often did instead, besides the heavy drinking and other extracurricular pursuits, was make mix cds. one day I went into a café where a friend worked and I heard one of these compilations playing for the customers, and it occurred to me that I spent an awful lot of time collecting pop music for a grown person, and that someone might want to pay me to do it. I started taking dJ classes at the brand new Scratch Academy, and six months later I bought a pair of used technics turntables. fatty’s opened on the corner of my street shortly after, and they were kind enough to hire me for my first weekly gig—because the owner and I both liked Roy Ayers, and agreed that his bar ought to sound like “Everybody Loves the Sunshine.”

What is your favorite music to listen to? do you listen to music when you write?

Gabriel: I’m a restless listener. I don’t have a favorite genre, or even a favorite decade. I just need variety, and constant access to every album that’s ever been vaguely important to me. I always listen to music when I write, more ambient electronic stuff than anything, though there are occasional guitars and trumpets and things. the majority of my current novel has been composed to Aphex twin. He’s got about 48 hours of recorded music, if you count his unreleased stuff—so I’ve been having fun plucking my favorites out of that pool and putting them into a giant playlist, which I’m planning on listening to, and possibly ordering in some overly finicky way, during the upcoming revisions.

What seems to be most well-liked these days for everybody else?

Gabriel: We’re fracturing into all these little niches now. there used to be massive, unifying artists, and songs that stood for certain seasons of certain years. there were contrarians, of course, but there was something in particular they were contrary to. Now it’s, I don’t know, Adele? I still haven’t heard a single song from her last album, because I’m living in my own little bubble, and no one’s requesting her music when they’re dancing. these days, as many pop-cultural critics have noted, it’s hard to imagine anyone succeeding the way that Michael Jackson did. It wouldn’t really have mattered if you didn’t have tV in 1982—good luck getting away from thriller. this suits me fine, though, since my signature as a dJ is a constant willingness to take left turns. I just keep putting everything in a blender and trying to figure out where the varying tastes of tonight’s dance floor might synthesize, at least for a couple of hours. And if that fails, well, hell, there’s always thriller.

You are a dJ and I know it’s very important to you, and how you present the music is as well.

You once said that the hours you have to dJ are like a musical canvas for you. How does this relate to your approach to writing?

Coffee

The first pot of coffee has no coffee in it,

is only beige water

steaming its reminder

of my failure to reliably function at this hour.

Any sane man would return to his bed,

but a sane man has no cave girl screeching

from the kitchen table,

“all done all done all done,” then continuing to eat

her berries and cream.

I used to think a poet

had to quit his job in order to function reliably,

then I learned to do everything at once, a trick made easy

by the tyranny of a child.

The first Sesame Street

is an act of desperation,

an admission that a man doing everything at once

is a man who needs saving by a bunch of puppets

who remind him of his own infantile reign.

-gabriel squailia THE ARTful mINd APRIl 2016 • 15

SOLO People keep asking when we’re having another, the Italians especially, who explain with a scolding glee how terrible it is to be an only child, though they never get around to telling me why. I always fumble the answer, thinking of the stark terror of her birth, of the blue of her skin, of her belated breath, of the way my wife’s body shuddered as they wrestled my daughter out of her spattering womb, of the way I sang to them both, unable to think of anything more useful to do. But even if I shoved all that through my clogged throat, I’d still have failed to explain that trying again would feel like winning a million dollars on a scratch ticket, then heading back to the convenience store, jabbing my finger over the register, and telling the clerk, “Give me the one that says ten million.”

-Gabriel Squailia

Gabriel in center Photo: eric Korenman 16 • 2016 APRIl THE ARTful mINd

Gabriel: dJ’ing is all about compromise. You lose the crowd, you lose the next gig. I try to get people to step out of their comfort zones, from time to time, but I’m still playing on their turf. Writing gives me a chance to be selfish, and present what I want to—and if you’re not into it, hey, find another book!

Maybe I’ll mellow out one day, but so far my clearest expressions as a writer have been pretty strange. though I suppose there’s something odd about my spinning, too. As a dancer recently told me, my sets are about these weird points of connection between very different types of music. And they’re certainly bizarre to people who have never heard music mixed and beat-matched.

“Why does he make it sound like one long track? Where are all the silences between songs? those are my favorite parts.”

Going back in time, Gabriel, where did you grow up? do you have poems about your childhood?

Gabriel: I was born in Rochester, NY, then bounced around a bit—Monroe and Newburgh, NY for elementary school, then suburban Philadelphia for high school. My parents were hippies, and I was around newspaper people a lot, too, since my mother was an editor. Storytelling, meditation, deadlines, and solitude were all part of the gumbo. I don’t write much about my childhood, or about my life at all. It’s rare that I manage to write anything autobiographical that doesn’t feel painfully artificial. My fantasy writing, on the other hand, feels real to me, and more authentically personal than any attempt to describe what actually happened, or how it felt. Because reality is terrifying, and skeleton-people comfort me.

I read on your website that you do not keep a journal anymore. Is this just on the site, or in general? Isn’t a journal kept and loved and housed by every artist?

Gabriel: I hope not, or I’m doing this all wrong! I do keep process journals for my novels, but other than that, I’ve largely abandoned the practice. I was a compulsive journal-keeper for years, and I’d love to get back to it. It comes down to time, I think—my four-year-old eats it. And with what I have left, I’d rather read than journal.

It must be a thrill to have a book published. Going on two! Before we talk about that, I am wondering what ever happened to a book you started called Scarecrow County. I would think readers here can get some insight of how the mind changes its course of action.

Gabriel: I came up with the idea for Scarecrow County on January 1, 2000. I found that very significant, because I was twenty and found everything very significant. So I immediately set out to write this massive, intergenerational epic that would, I felt sure, be an immediate creative and professional triumph.

I had no doubt that it would be published—it didn’t occur to me to doubt that sort of thing until I was actively not getting published, which is a sign of privilege or lunacy, or both. I had a lot to prove, to myself and to capital-L Literature, and I didn’t write an outline for that book so much as a manifesto. But I had no idea what I was doing, and I ended up beating my head against it for a full decade. there are thousands of pages of drafts of this novel, with each of its dozens of characters being ‘recast’ dozens of times. the question I was asking, over and over again, was, “If I can imagine each scene in this book in hundreds of different ways, how will I ever know when I’ve found the right approach?” I’m still asking that question, and the most compelling answer I’ve found is to pick a good team of collaborators, including as many professionals as you can get to speak to you, and let them help. But what happened to the book? I put it down after a decade of trial and error, and started seeing other narratives. Maybe we’ll get back together one day, or maybe we’re just bad for each other.

So, now you have Dead Boys. The book is a fantasy, and philosophical to some degree, according to the descriptions I read on Amazon.com. I want to read this book, but it may scare me. It sounds original and engrossing.

Tell us what the crux of this book is about, and why did you write it? What did you want to share?

Gabriel: Dead Boys is a metaphysical action-adventure about a band of walking, talking corpses who are questing through the underworld in an attempt to find the Living Man. He’s a legendary figure who traveled to the Land of the dead while he was still alive, then met his grisly end in a bar. I wrote it because I was surrounded by man-boys, and it occurred to me that I was one of them.

Whether or not any of us would bother to grow up concerned me, and one of the biggest obstacles to my adulthood was that I hadn’t managed to write a novel. So I chose this world of life-in-death as the crucible where I hoped to share my process of becoming while it was happening, in story form. If I

Photograph by Brett Limes failed, the book wouldn’t get written, and if I succeeded, the book would be the record of my (patently ridiculous) hero’s journey. While I was at it, I got a bunch of macabre set-pieces, classical allusions, and dick jokes out of my system. It was a sort of yard sale of my adolescent imagination, and now I can get on with my life.

You had a very interesting and unusual path in terms of how Dead Boys got published. Can you tell us the story?

Gabriel: When the book was done, I sent queries to a bunch of agents, which is what you’re supposed to do.

But I knew it wasn’t an easy sell, particularly in four paragraphs. Matt Bialer, a creative triple-threat and literary agent who was interviewed in these pages last year, was at the top of my list. He passed, but I didn’t believe that the standard submission process was right for me, so I ignored it. When one of his authors, fantasy novelist Patrick Rothfuss, ran his Worldbuilders fundraiser for Heifer International that year, he auctioned off the chance to have Matt read and critique a novel—and I bid high. I won the auction, he read the book, and ended up digging it enough to take me on as a client. Not that we had an easy road with Dead Boys. As Matt said, “the fantasy editors think it’s literary, and the literary editors think it’s fantasy,” which is as apt a summary of my work as you can find. But we were lucky enough to find a home, after years of rejections, at talos Press. they were in their first year of publishing fiction, and they were hungry to take on new talent. Long story short, I went sideways and got lucky.

You were challenged by a very good editor to rewrite Dead Boys after you had effectively self-

published it. What was that like? Was that challenging?

Gabriel: Excruciatingly so, at least at first. cory Allyn clearly got what I was doing, but there was a learning curve. At one point I wrote to Matt and said, “He said he just wanted to tighten things up a little, but now we’re cutting bone.” But I’d challenged myself to say yes to everything at the outset. It was the first time I’d ever worked with a professional editor, and I’d been waiting for the chance for decades. I figured that if we changed something and made it worse, I could always pitch a fit later—but if I dug in my heels, I’d never know what the collaboration might lead to, or if it would make my work better. It did, so much so that I pitched my current novel to him when it was only an idea. Now that I have trust in the result, I’ve learned to unbunch my own undergarments whenever possible.

Were there any little storyboard drawings you made up while writing this book? Just wondering if you were compelled to see it in a visually-formatted way to help with ideas.

Gabriel: I had a sort of mental storyboard. Each character would be built up as an imaginary clay figurine, the kind you’d use for stop-motion animation. they all had physical descriptions as soon as they had names.

Remington, for instance, has a hollowed-out skull with a hole in the back that a crow uses for its nest. I just didn’t have the skill to draw that—it was hard enough to figure out how to describe it clearly. okay, for dummies: What do you do to start a book? Where does a writer begin? When do the outlines come in, and the actual writing?

Gabriel: I’m still figuring it out, and it changes depending on the book. Usually I’ve got some image burning a hole in my brain, and then it takes years to justify using it. After the first scene fails, and then I try it from a different angle and that fails, and then I’ve gone on that way for a hundred pages or so, I’ll start outlining. the actual writing comes when everything gels, which is often years later. But for my current novel, the whole process will be over in less than a year. from what I understand, most authors feel like they’re starting from scratch every time, even if the process is more or less the same, and the process differs radically from one writer to the next. We’re all just making it up as we go along.

How different is writing poetry from writing a book such as this, and your novel due to come out in october, Viscera (great title). do you think in poetic prose, then they become sentences somewhere along the line, or… not at all?!!

Gabriel: Poetry is hugely different, and I’m grateful. I can’t write poetry all the time, and it usually comes in bursts that last for a year or three, then dry up entirely.

When the tap is on, I’m just grabbing anything that floats in front of me—interesting phrases, weird visual images, inside jokes, arguments I’m having with no one in particular, dreams, things that just happened, thoughts I can’t shake. then I write the poem, polish it a couple-few times, and forget about it. Sometimes I’ll fiddle with a couple of words a few days later, but that’s about it. they’re catch-and-release, and novels are the big game.

Writing great books that you think push the envelope or writing books that sell a lot of copies— which would you choose?

THE ARTful mINd APRIl 2016 • 17

The Moment I Decided To Marry My Wife Love didn’t crystallize inside my heart in any given beat, but in the flow

of moments shared between us, from the start of our acquaintance to the dusk that slow approaches, lending every hour heat.

No soft-lit cinematic moment passed in which I realized her as my sweet spot in eternity. Instead, the fast-

elapsing sequence of those early nights

became a space in which I’d clearly seen

the strength of our shared being lit by lights our common causes powered. No one scene

was shot in which the borders fell—no ‘when’.

It takes place out of time.

Right now.

Again.

-Gabriel Squailia

Gabriel: I would choose selling a lot of copies, I think, but I’m a natural envelope-pusher. It’s just what keeps my interest over the course of three-hundred pages, and however I’ve tried to shake the habit, I’m stuck with what I like. one of the best things about working with my agent is that he’s finally convinced me to go with my enthusiasm, rather than what I think will sell.

(My “commercial” ideas are pretty wretched.) And I’m so happy to be getting things out of my head and into the world that it’s silly to even think about sales figures—particularly because I’m so very, very new at this.

What is Viscera about?

Gabriel: Viscera is about a band of misfits whose bizarre abilities allow them to survive their travels through the roving depredations of the Endless War. the conflict has been going on so long now that no one remembers how it started, but everyone agrees that it’s got something to do with the catacombs under the city of Eth, which are built from the calcified organs of long-dead gods. It’s gruesome, darkly comic, and great fun to write—like inviting a bunch of your best friends to a party that they probably won’t survive.

18 • APRIl 2016 THE ARTful mINd

Well, now I need to know a small detail… What are your food/drink favorite sidekicks when you’re at the typewriter/computer? do you write in other places than your studio?

Gabriel: Irish Breakfast tea in the morning, and blueberry tea in the afternoon. I eat fruits and vegetables, mostly. My characters are almost constantly intoxicated and covered in blood while I’m eating carrot sticks and pretending to be all high and mighty. I’d rather be drunkenly cracking the bones of my enemies with them, but I’m officially too old. I used to write in public libraries a good deal, but now it’s my office or nothing. Hell, for me, is a dimension where I’m only allowed to write in a Starbucks.

Were you the first in your family to settle down in the Berkshires? You now have a family of your own growing up here. How does it all feel to you being here and doing all that you do?

Gabriel: I was the first, but not the last—my father lives and teaches in Stockbridge now. I’ve been here for fifteen years, give or take a few, and I love it here.

Pittsfield is affordable, to the point where I can keep an office outside of my house. It’s only because we’ve got such a lot of wedding business coming into this

area from out of town that I can manage this balancing act.

Are you a good storyteller at bedtime for your little girl? What is her favorite book? does she read a lot, or have a lot of picture books she goes through?

Gabriel: She gives me good reviews. We definitely read a lot of a lot together. Right now, she’s obsessed with The Adventures of Beekle: The Unimaginary Friend by dan Santat. this is one of those books we’ve developed secondary rituals around, so there’s a whole rigamarole before the story even starts, a recurring joke with the back cover, and so on. We read a lot of graphic novels together, too—particularly the spin-offs from the show Adventure Time. And Baba Yaga’s Assistant, by Marika Mccoola, is a big deal to her—she likes the witch, and the house with the chicken legs. the comics are intended for kids much older than her, but with funny voices and a lot of exploratory conversation, she seems to prefer it that way.

What would you like your future to be like? Working less? more? Jumping through more hoops, or laying back with the headphones on and digging new music? How do you see all this unfolding, if you have a say?

Gabriel: I’m good with hoop-jumping for a while. the way things are going now, I’ll hit my deadline right around the time wedding season starts, then try to do the whole thing again in the winter. I’d like to get a book out once a year, if I can keep up the pace. If I had a say, I’d prefer the writing stuff to slowly eclipse the dJ stuff. It’s more realistic to assume that my books will always be pretty obscure, though, and I have no problem with that. If they’re out of my head and on the shelves, and my family is still eating, I figure I’m ahead of the game.

What have been some of the most challenging experiences you have faced with becoming a successful writer?

Gabriel: More than anything, it’s been about managing myself. the howling, wounded ego of the unpublished novelist is unpleasant for anyone to deal with, even its owner. Luckily, I calmed down a few months after Dead Boys came out, and I’m feeling far more content these days. I hope it’s a lasting contentment, and that I don’t wake up one day after Viscera comes out with an insatiable thirst for the blood of my commercial betters. I feel like I’m getting somewhere in that respect, that I’m learning to trust my creative instincts and not worry so much about the stuff I can’t control. But I sympathize for artists at every stage of the game, because our demons so rarely stay slain.

- Gabriel can be reached at: squidheadkid@gmail.com

T

Good PuRPoSE GAllERY kAYLA coRBY (cRoPPEd)

BERkSHIRE REVELAtIoNS

mARGuERITE BRIdE MARGUERItE BRIdE, JAzz fEStIVAL

SPRING-SUMMER ScHEdULE

the chatham country Store and Gallery, old chatham, NY will feature the original paintings of Marguerite Bride and the work of fabulous abstract artist, karen Jacobs June 3 – July 27. It will be a lovely mix of abstract oils and watercolors with each artist contributing 10-12 original pieces. the opening reception is Sunday, June 5, 3-5 pm. Visit their website for hours, menu and directions (www.oldchathamcountrystore.com).

And if you cannot make the reception, do stop by for lunch! for the past two years Bride has been preparing for a special exhibit called “Jazz Visions” that will happen this August at the Lichtenstein center for the Arts in Pittsfield….focusing on the influence jazz has played in her creative life. this month-long exhibit will feature 12-15 new paintings, mostly watercolor on canvas, along with the exciting fine art jazz photography of Lee Everett. opening reception friday, August 5, 5-8 pm during the August Pittsfield Arts Walk.

Bride will also be exhibiting in two weekend shows this summer: church on the Hill fine Art and crafts Show in Lilac Park, Lenox on July 30 and 31, and the Stockbridge Summer Arts & crafts Show, August 20 and 21. known primarily for her custom house portraits and watercolors of the Berkshires, Marguerite Bride’s repertoire includes far more than that. take a look at her online portfolio (website) for a visit to Italy, Ireland, france, Mexico, England and other far flung destinations. You will also see lighthouses from near and far (even Lake Superior), quaint New England scenes, and some fascinating moonscapes. Soon to be added will be the Jazz Visions page. fine art reproductions and note cards of Berkshire images and others by the artist are available at the Red Lion Inn Gift Shop (Stockbridge), Lenox Print & Mercantile (Lenox), and Hancock Shaker Village. Seasonal scenes are always on display in the public areas of the crowne Plaza in Pittsfield.

Marguerite Bride – Home Studio at 46 Glory Drive, Pittsfield, Massachusetts by appointment only. Call 413841-1659 or 413-442-7718; margebride-paintings.com; margebride@aol.com; facebook: Marguerite Bride Watercolors

In April, the Good Purpose Gallery presents kayla corby, a Berkshire local, who creates artwork that is beyond versatile. the exhibit, Berkshire Revelations, showcases kayla’s oils, charcoals, and mixed media paintings: both landscapes and figurative. Please join us for an opening reception on friday, April 1 from 5:30 pm – 7:30 pm. the exhibit runs through May 17th.

“All of my work conveys intense depth of emotion, spirituality, and movement. I try to find a balance of chaos and structure in my work. Variety of style, subject matter, and mediums reflect the many inspirations and interests in my life. I am a born artist. I have been drawing since I was a young child. I have a world of interests including art, music, writing, and gardening. I look to find the light in the darkness and beauty in the chaos.

Life is ever changing and eternal.” corby has exhibited in Boston, New York, and other places but she considers herself a true Berkshire artist, having shown throughout the Berkshires for many years. the Good Purpose Gallery and Spectrum Playhouse are professional venues that exist to offer students with learning differences real-life training, experience, and integration with the community. Both venues host professional artists and events on a regular basis throughout the year, including student events such as plays, performances, art exhibits, and more.

Good Purpose Gallery - 40 Main Street, Lee, Massachusetts. The gallery is open 9am - 3pm Wednesday Monday. For more information on the Gallery, visit our website: Goodpurpose.org.

“I love deadlines. I love the whooshing noise they make as they go by.”

-- Douglas Adams, The Salmon of Doubt

dENISE B CHANdlER fINE ARt LIMItEd EdItIoN PHotoGRAPHY

denise B chandler is a fine art photographer who has had her work exhibited at the Berkshire Museum, Sohn fine Art Gallery, Lichtenstein center for the Arts, IS -183 Art School of the Berkshires, St. francis Gallery, chesterwood, the Hudson opera House, Spencertown Academy Arts center, and tivoli Artists Gallery. In 2012, chandler completed the Photography Residency Program at Maine Media Workshops & college. While in Maine, she was guided, encouraged and her work critiqued by renowned photographers: Michael Wilson, Andrea Monica, Peter Ralston, Arthur Meyerson, david turner, Brenton Hamilton, david Wells, and Syl Arena. chandler has continued her formal workshop training with master photographers, Seth Resnick, Greg Gorman, and John Paul caponigro. denise B chandler, a lifelong Lenox resident where she maintains her studio and private gallery. the majority of chandler’s work is contemporary and concentrates on the details of a subject frequently embracing bold colors, geometric shapes and patterns. denise B chandler is represented by Sohn fine Art Gallery at 69 church St. in Lenox, Massachusetts where various selections of her work can be seen throughout the year.

Chandler offers private gallery visits at her personal studio/gallery by appointment only...please call either number listed below. A member of 510 Warren Street Gallery, Hudson, NY., her fine art photography can now be viewed Friday and Saturday 12 - 5, and Sunday 12-5 or by appointment.Denise B Chandler, Studio & Gallery visits by appointment only. 415 New Lenox Rd, Lenox, MA. Please call 413-637-2344 or 413-281-8461 (cell).

Website: denisebchandler.com / : info@denisebchandler.com

THE ARTful mINd APRIl 2016 • 19

MATT TANNENBAUM

& THE BOOKSTORE Interview by Harryet Candee

Happy Anniversary to you and The Bookstore! Has this bookstore always been in lenox? the Bookstore began its days in a living room in Stockbridge, just behind the alley that housed what later became known as Alice’s Restaurant. It moved to Lenox sometime in the late 60s, first to franklin Street, next to “the Restaurant” then to the corner of church and Housatonic (now home to Shots café) and then to its current location around 1974. I bought it on April 1st, 1976, ten days before I turned thirty.

What made you decide to have a bookstore?

I was a bookseller in New York city and then in Washington, d.c. before moving to the Berkshires. I’d heard of the Bookstore in Lenox before I moved here, and jumped at 20 • APRIl 2016 THE ARTful mINd

Photographs by Sabine von Falken

the chance to own it when the original owner decided to sell.

What made you decide to call it The Bookstore?

Harryet, I’ve got to tell you, things were much simpler way back then.

You’ve lived in the Berkshires a long time; have had a lengthy and interesting life up in the country.

Where did you live before? describe the road you traveled that lead you to being here, and the reasons why you did not stay in New York, where you grew up.

for ten years, from the end of high school to the time I

moved here to the Berkshires, I yo-yo’d between New York city, where I was born, and Washington, d.c., where I went to college at American University, was a sailor at the Navy Yard, and worked, first as shipping clerk then a small press buyer at a book wholesaler. Had me a short but intense time in Western Europe and North Africa as well. But my real apprenticeship was at the Gotham Book Mart in midtown Manhattan. It’s not that I didn’t see a future for myself there, it was just always time to move on.

Until I got here, that is. looking back on your teen years, can you paint a picture for us of what your life was like, what key memories you hold dear that may have helped guide you into adulthood?

teen years, eh? dad died when I was twelve. Broke up with first girl friend when I was nineteen. Lot of loss. Gave me a good dose of melancholia, I’d say. But family life was terrific. Very close with Mom, two brothers and sister.

Mom saved my life when I got drafted during the Viet Nam war. older bother Aron was a Yankee fan, so I followed suit. Yankees always won, in those days, making up for the other losses. Younger brother ted was a dodger fan.

And cousin david was a Giants fan. I think the main memory of my teen years was being a baseball fan in those golden years. oh, and then came the folk music scare of the early sixties!

I bought my sister Rose her first guitar. We’d all sit around and sing Alice’s Restaurant . . .

Are there any writers who reinforced the shaping of the lifestyle you wanted to have? Please explain.

Guy I met in the Navy turned me on to three writers: kerouac, Mailer and John fowles. Also fred Exley. I finished reading On the Road about a month before kerouac died.

I felt, duh, as so many did, an immediate kinship with his “. . .girls, visions, and everything.” I have a pretty good collection of Beat literature. Best thing in it is a personal inscription by Allen Ginsberg, introducer, on the title page of the posthumous edition of kerouac’s Visions of Cody.

Mailer’s Advertisements of Myself was revelatory. He had such fun writing. I want to do that, I thought. And so I started writing. I wrote a sad story about a sad young man on a city bus in New York, called it The 104. I sent it to the New Yorker and got a rejection letter. Right away. Ah, me. I think I should have tried to write a fun one! Anyway, I never wrote another one!

John fowles’ The Magus introduced me to not only powerful writing, but powerful fiction writing. I can still see the last scene in the book as I imagined it on first reading.

And Exley’s A Fan’s Notes is still one of my favorite post coming-of-age novels.

Before I forget, let me ask you: surely one of the greatest of all reasons to have a book store in lenox is all the fascinating people you get to talk to. Am I right?

A few months ago, as a young couple was leaving the store I said to them, mock disappointed at the door, “What, you’re going already?”

“We’ll be back,” said the woman. “You know, I used to have a bookstore and wine bar in Prague.”

“Prague?” said another guy who was just walking in with his wife. “I was the canadian ambassador to Prague back in the midnineties.” the former ambassador and I then embarked on a conversation about politics in the czech Republic, complete with matching anecdotes about President Vaclav Havel, whom I had met back in 2009, during the week-long celebration of the Velvet Revolution in November of 1989.

Another time a guy was browsing around awhile before I asked if I could be of any help. “I’m looking for a gift for my dad.

He’s a kind of outdoorsman.” Bob Smith, a writer and baseball historian who lived in Lenox at the time, was in for a chat at the front desk. He said to me, “tell him about my latest book, ‘My Life in the North Woods.’ ” I showed the customer Bob’s book and told him the author was right here in the store.

He went over and introduced himself. “I’m Jim Bouton,” to which Bob replied, “We have a mutual friend, Marvin Miller.”

Miller was the former head of the Major

League Baseball Players Union, a man despised by the owners but much appreciated by the players, and by someone like Bob who knew baseball inside out. He knew, like Bouton knew and wrote in one of his books, “Baseball’s like religion—great game, lousy owners!”

We still sell Bouton’s first book, Ball Four, which was selected as one of the hundred most influential books in the twentieth century.

Bobby Mcferrin spent a summer one year as artist in residence at Jacob’s Pillow. He loved coming in and waiting till we had maybe a small line at the cash-out desk. He’d choose a book and get in line. then he’d start his scat. customer right in front of him didn’t know who or what was behind him, but then Bobby would catch my eye and say something like, “c’mon Matt, let’s sing a little,” and get the whole line humming along.

Just about everybody who comes into a bookstore is bound to be even a little fascinating. Everybody’s got a story to tell. Last fall we hosted david Black, tV writer extraordinaire and novelist, whose novel Fast Shuffle is about a used car salesman who thinks he’s a private eye! Harry thinks of everyone he meets as having some mystery in his life, and of course he manifests a story out of it. couple of years ago a customer introduced himself as Joe Green. “Giuseppe Verdi!” I said, and put his name in the bonus club as the composer. Joe Green comes in every summer and proudly announces himself to any new employee with “Giuseppe Verdi. I’m in the club!”

Recalling one of the highlights over the years of interesting and famous people you became friendly with, who was your favorite? Is there a “matt story” that goes with this? I do hope so.

I’ve got a lot of favorites but a real fun one was the time we were celebrating our twenty-ninth year: it was when we had opened up the second room but before we put in the Get Lit wine bar. We had an open mic for anyone who wanted to get up and sing or recite or tell a story, and Bouton was just leaving after reading from a new book. I was saying goodbye on the sidewalk and when I turned around and walked back in there was a guy, a real familiar looking guy, real blue eyes, and he says to me “Have you got any quartets?” I look at him a little puzzled and then he says, “I had them on the kitchen counter but Joanne forgot to put them in the car.”

I realize suddenly it’s Paul Newman.

At that time we were selling classical music cds and they were right up front where the two pink chairs are now. I had just got a shipment in a few days earlier and hadn’t put them all out yet. So I said yes, they’re back here, in my office.

So I take Paul Newman back to my office and he likes what he sees so he says, “Go get Joanne.” I go out and look for Joanne Woodward, who happens to be browsing the paperback table all by herself. I recognize her because she’s the only one inside the store wearing dark glasses!

So now they’re both standing at my desk, browsing the collection of “quartets” when my good friend Vera appears in the doorway with a camera in her hand. “can I take a picture?” she asks. And Paul and Joanne, standing on either side of me, both stop and put their arms around me and Paul looks up at me, because I’m slightly taller, and he looks at the top of my head and says, just as Vera snaps the photo, “I hate your hair!”

So I wouldn’t say we became best friends, but then again, how many people do you know whose hair Paul Newman was jealous of?

And just to get both sides of the spectrum, was there one close-to-terrible experience you had with a customer or somebody you crossed paths with that might have left a scar?

Maybe an ornery customer or two over the years, but no, no scars. When the Israeli army was battling Egypt in the 1948 war, the enemy’s aim, I’m told, was so bad that instead of shouting “incoming” when a mortar attack began, the soldiers cried “outgoing” to indicate that, yes they were being fired upon, but the shells were so far off the mark it was as if they were not the target at all. that’s kind of the way I deal with someone who is unhappy with a book or the selection or anything untoward that he or she has brought into the shop. It really has nothing to do with me at all.

Books... photo by Sabine von Falken

What was the Bookstore like when it first began? Was it a lot different than it is now? the sections were just a lot thinner. And the way we bought books was way different.

About twenty or thirty times a year, maybe twice a month, I drove down to New York city, parked my car under the old West Side Highway and ran around the Bookazine warehouse on West 10th Street, picking special orders, replacing stock that had just been sold, and finding new books from literally hundreds of publishers. I’d drive down early thursday morning, finish my

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Matt

photo by Sabine von Falken

picking by 3 p.m. and get back on the road by 4, before rush hour began. I’d drop the boxes off at the store at night and Jo would unpack them friday morning before I came in.

If you came in on Wednesday and ordered a book I might have it for you in two days. that was considered quick then. Nowadays Bezos can drop-ship a drone onto your doorstep in a matter of hours, but we still write up special orders on 3 x 5 cards and call you on the telephone when your book comes in.

Back when West Stockbridge was a toll call we’d send a postcard. forty years ago, we had two tables in the middle of the store, one for new hardcovers, one for paperbacks, new and recommended. Now we’ve more than doubled that number, although hardcover fiction is still the first thing you see when you walk in. these days we put your purchase into a small or mediumsized paper bag with handles and a sticker that shows our logo. We never use plastic bags, never have. In the old days, our customers brought in previously used paper bags that we would smooth out on the desk and reuse. that later became known as recycling, but it was really just common sense.

What slant or theme runs through your selection of books? Has it changed over time?

Most common comment we’ve gotten over the years is, “You have books here I don’t see anywhere else.” followed by but unspoken, “How come?”

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And the answer is simply that we choose the books that we think are the best for the kind of bookstore we want to be.

And we want to be the kind of bookstore that offers you more than the usual fare. that allows you to see what the writers of our day and of days long gone have had to say. the world of literature, both fiction and non-fiction, is one of humankind’s most noble expressions. It’s my pleasure to find and make available lots of examples, in just about every subject under the sun (some exceptions may apply). one of my mentors, ted Wilentz—the guy who hired me for my first bookselling job at the Gotham Book Mart— once famously said, “A good bookseller stands behind the writer, and ahead of the reader.”

And, to quote Emerson, “tis the good reader who makes the good book.”

I like to read. I think I’m a good reader. I love stories. I admire the writers who write them.

And Lenox is a great book town. Some of the best readers in the world come through my front door. I think I’ve grown as a bookseller because of my customers. that hasn’t changed a bit over the years. Provide the best, the best will come.

do you prefer hardcover to softcover? Any particular reason?

When I was younger I gobbled up paperbacks. on an airplane one time couple of years ago I read a 1920s mystery in an old mass market edition, maybe 6 pt. type, that I don’t think I would have attempted at home. At home, on the red couch, under the table lamp in the corner of the living

room, I’d say hardcover.

I noticed that you also have an extensive poetry section. do you cater to local self-published writers?

I inherited, both from my days at Gotham and from my predecessor here in Lenox, a great appreciation for poetry.

My first job at Gotham was alphabetizing, by author, all the new poetry titles from the then brand-new Black Sparrow Press. I myself have probably written two poems in my whole life. But I love what poets have to say and how they say it. I love going over to the poetry shelves and picking out a book for a customer, or even one poem that I think the customer will like, or perhaps need, at that particular time. I love customers telling me about poets they love, and then getting those new books onto the shelves.

Local and self-published writers are vital to the health and well being of my shop. As Buddy Glass once said of his students at the mythical college where he taught. . . “they may shine with the misinformation of the ages, but they shine.”

Listen, every book that comes across my desk is worthwhile; I really believe that. I don’t judge ‘em. As for the self-published books, I’m honored that writers who want to share their work will come and offer their book to me so that I can offer it to the community of which they are a part. can you imagine walking into a bookstore and finding the author of a book you love just standing there? It actually happens a lot. We always have a pen handy for an emergency autographing. . .

What was the heftiest book you’ve ever read and loved?

Anna Karenina. When cranwell went from Jesuit school to Golf club I got offered the library. Among the thousands of books was a collected Works of tolstoy. Not leather-bound, but a matching set of ten volumes. No dust jacket, no introduction, no forward or afterward, nothing but tolstoy. Anna k took up two of the ten volumes. About two-thirds through, one morning I was shelving some new stock at the store and happened to open a Penguin edition of the book—maybe I was looking to see how the famous first line was translated, I don’t know. Now, there’s something that happens at the end of the book that I didn’t know was going to happen, and when I opened the paperback copy I read the introducer’s comments on what happens at the end, and it completely ruined it for me.

Well, not completely. But to this day I warn my customers about reading introductions to some books.

Second heftiest: Laughing Matters, a humor anthology edited by Gene Shalit. A big hardcover book that makes a big clunk on the floor when it slides off my lap because I’m laughing so hard.

Matt’s cash register, push-pinned cartoons that have a meaning to him, and bottom photograph- he writes a secret note.... photos by Sabine von Falken

Would you consider carrying an author who is considered extreme in thinking, possibly criticized greatly, not agreed with, and possibly plain outrageous?

You mean Ayn Rand? We also carry karl Marx and George Gilder. on the same shelf!

So much of matthew Tannenbaum is felt when entering your bookstore. mainly a sense that anyone

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a stone’s throw away from all the endless bookshelves is Matt’s nice wine cafe. time to chill. walking in will find the right book. And then there are those who order a particular book, of course, but the walk-ins that are more or less browsing seem to always find something of interest. maybe you let them read the books a lot longer than most bookstore owners do? maybe it is simply that people like being in your store because they like you! Any thoughts?

Alright, I’m going to tell you two secrets of my success! first is sight lines. there are no high shelves in the middle of the store to block your view, so I think the sense you get when you come in to browse is both endless and free.

Second, we display the books on the tables by color and cover. Lurid cover next to plain. dark color next to light.

Unless we’re showing off books that are so similar they demand proximity. this comes from being visceral. You can buy a shirt from a catalogue with a nice description, but when you can feel the texture when you pick it up and look at yourself in the mirror in the actual store, chances are you’re going to feel differently about it.

So, sure, we let you browse. to your heart’s content. After a while, if you’re standing there just looking, maybe I’ll come over, point at a title and ask if you’re familiar with it. that gets the conversation going, and whether a sale happens or not, you are engaged, connected. And most people enjoy that. (or maybe you’d rather be left alone, and we can relate to that as well!) okay, third secret—but it’s not really a secret—is that when you browse our shelves, let’s say in fiction/literature, you’re going to find not just one or two bestselling titles by a particular author, but more of his or her complete works. Alice Munro, for instance. She only writes short stories. If you can’t get enough from one or two of her col24 • APRIl 2016 THE ARTful mINd

lections, we’ve got more if not all of them. Same with authors of history, poetry, gardening, etc. etc. etc. I could go on with other writers’ names, but you get the point. Just look at your own bookshelves at home and see what you’ve collected. fourth, also not a secret: we love to talk about books with you. that may be obvious, but what’s not is the conscious effort to find books that we think you might like but that we might not know anything about ourselves. then you’ve got this reciprocal life-long learning deal going down, and people like that, too.

So, matt, who is matt????? (It’s okay to start your answer with “I am…”)

Let’s see: white, Jewish, male, father, brother, cousin, son, in-law, reader, writer, bookseller, shopkeeper, actor, whiskey loving, coffee-drinking domestic partner, friend, fan and advocate. or, according to the seven ages deal: Infant, mewing and puking, whining schoolboy, lover singing like a furnace, soldier (i.e. hippie) full of strange oaths, then justice w fair round belly, slippered pantaloon, but not quite yet sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything.

And I’ve still got all that hair!

do you consider yourself to have a good sense of humor and to have insight into the human plight, since everyone thinks you read every book on the shelf before selling it?

Haha, yes. It’s true—I read and have read every book that I have in the store. How I do it is, of course, a great secret, but I think it has something to do with my sense of humor.

photo by Sabine von Falken

What is involved in being a good bookseller?

You gotta love the product and the customer the same. one would literally cease to exist without the other, so you have to love them both the same.

do you ever compare your business to bookstores in the city?

I sometimes fantasize about sharing with some big-city bookseller my secrets of success: a strong belief in my own choices in the face of massive marketing campaigns that would devalue my opinion in favor of some mass-manipulation of their choice of the moment. If I ran a bookshop in the city, I think I would be this great big old anomaly, barely noticing the passage of time, whilst my big-city customers would be bombarding me at the speed of light.

How do you decide that a book is not worth selling?

If it insults my intelligence or sensibility, it’s not worth selling.

Well, how is it that you keep up with all the books that are constantly coming out and available?

You know the old saying, there are only really four stories worth telling: Boy Meets Girl. Good & Evil. Grail. Return of the Prodigal.

I just look for good versions of each of these. they may come from large publishers with big advertising budgets that make me sit up and take notice, or from small presses with a fervor that burns just as bright but on a much smaller scale.

University presses bring out incredible books year after year. I mean Harvard and Yale and MIt but also Nebraska

and Iowa and Massachusetts and New Mexico. I could and oftentimes do binge on publishers’ catalogues, even as more and more of them are just online now.

In the old days something like the Black Sparrow Press bimonthly announcement pamphlet would take up an entire lunchtime perusal. And we never thought of looking through such a catalogue as work. or, if that was work, well just give us a little more each day.

Times have changed, the world has changed, how has the literary world changed in your eyes?

Like in every era, the literary world has both seen better days and is at the peak of its new golden age. More books than ever before or fewer of merit? Evolution of style or lousy scholarship? there are times I find myself on both sides of the argument. But this is my life, this offering of literature to my friends and customers. So I close my eyes to the faults and concentrate on the eternal values that the contemporary world still reflects.

matt, you’ve got the art of conversation. You added a cute wine bar to the bookstore in the connecting part of the store. What do you enjoy most about this relatively new entity? I think it gives you a great opportunity to talk to people in a relaxed way, tell some good stories, and lend an ear, as a good bartender would tend to do.

You know, I built it in homage to Jan Wiener. He and his wife zuzana were among the first people I met at the Bookstore in 1976. We had a conversation one day, sitting in an outdoor café in Prague, his native city, about café culture in Europe, the lost world of his father before the war.

Last time I saw him, in a military hospital on the outskirts of the old city, I knew it was up to me to carry on what he had taught me.

I don’t know so much about conversations at other places in town, but Get Lit, when I remember to turn down the overhead lights, with books piled high all around the bar, a mellow selection of fine reds and whites, Prosecco and now sake, offers an ambience that I like to think he would have enjoyed.

lets go back in time, matt. during your time in lenox, what do you remember as being the significant changes and trends that have dropped in, stayed, vanished?

How did any of these times affect you personally?

A couple of years ago I realized I was on my third set of sidewalks in this town.

Gone now are the days when a quartet of shops put together a quarter-page ad in the Penny Saver, announcing 10% off to anyone who mentions the word Armadillo! Suchele Bakers, clearwater Natural foods, Glad Rags and the Bookstore did a series of these ads during the late nineteenseventies. We were the new, young businesses in town.

Paddlewicker Gallery would have joined in, I’m sure, but they were gone by then.

We were just trying to have some fun, as well as remind people to come and walk our streets.

Bart Arnold made a hand-drawn map of the town circa 1976 and it’s a lot of fun to look at it now. I should bring a copy to the new Lenox Merchants Group that has just been formed.

Gone is the Lenox Savings Bank, gone the crazy Horse, the Lemon tree, Alden’s Service Station (now Hoff’s), Wheeler’s Package Store, Lenox Package Store, Ella Lerner Gallery, Mildred Hado Gallery, Spiritus Mundi, the Restaurant, Hawthorne Press, Lenox Hardware, Hagyard’s Pharmacy, Lucy-Lou fashions, the Sounds of Music, the J. Perspico factor, Ida & John’s, the toby Jug, 4 Seasons travel and dee’s department Store.

Gone are the quiet Saturday afternoons from September to June around 4 pm when this nice old man, Jean-Marie chalufour, would come in and pick out a selection of maybe a dozen or two titles, his choices entirely, though sometimes I’d help or guide him to a particular section, that he would then offer to congregants the next morning at the Pittsfield Unitarian church’s coffee hour after Sun-

Matt and his kids... 1993 photo by Dick Brof Matt and his kids... 2014 photo by Jim Youngerman

day services. Monday, usually late morning, he would come in, return unsold stock and count out the take, in coins and small bills, keeping 20% for the church, which was the bargain set up by my predecessor and Jean-Marie.

He would take a break during the eight-week summer season, July and August. first week of September he’d be back without fail.

Who was he? I never knew.

Gone is the time when the Berkshire Eagle was an afternoon paper and the kids who had paper routes would all gather in front of Mike’s Variety two doors down from me around three in the afternoon, right after school, to pick up their bundle, their bicycles strewn all over the sidewalk.

Mike had penny candy and comic books too, and I envied his ties to the kids and their families. He was a Lenox native and I wasn’t. forty years later some of my customers now are the children of those kids I used to see on their bikes. that is the most gratifying thing for me. I mean, besides seeing my own children grow up. Shawnee and Sophie both help out at the store; they’ve both returned to the Berkshires after living away for some years. they’re the ones who really grew up in the store and it’s a pure thrill for me to see how much they absorbed of it all over the years. It’s almost like watching myself as a young bookseller when I see them behind the front desk.

And I love the way they treat the Lenox families who come in. It’s almost as if they know they used to be those kids themselves, and they can see the delight on the faces of the parents whose kids have made the Bookstore a second home.

I hear some people say Lenox needs to attract young families to keep the schools full and the tax rolls even, but from my perspective we’ve got a very healthy group of young parents who are happy to have come here and/or come back home to raise their families.

You ought to see these kids on the weekend of Shakespeare’s fall festival in town. they are from all over the county, and have met at the Bookstore all through their high school careers. And then there are the ones who come home from their first semester away at college, and congregate at my place first thing Saturday morning of thanksgiving vacation.

What is it that you seem to think a lot about when you have a chance to daydream?

It used to be going on the Johnny carson show with my first novel, but now it’s probably, what shelf is that new shipment of books going to go on. . .

Are you also a writer, matt?

I gave a talk some years ago, and my notes got noticed… a small publisher approached me and it came out as a memoir of my years as a bookseller in New York city. then a friend of a friend, a literary agent, found it and offered her services if I was interested in expanding it. So yes, I am a writer, but it’s not quite working out the way I thought it would. Usually a writer writes a book, finds an agent, gets it published. In my case I got it published, then found an agent, and now I have to write it! p.s. I’m working on it, as they say. . .

Who are your favorite writers? Give us an in-depth look at who it is that gives you the most insight and inspiration.

Here’s my top shelf, currently, alphabetically: John crowley, Patrick Leigh fermor, charles Mccarry, Alice Mcdermott, Patrick Modiano, Richard Powers, thomas Pynchon, J.d. Salinger and clancy Sigal. then there’s Witter Bynner, Lawrence durrell, Bob dylan, Jack kerouac, Somerset Maugham, Alice Munro, Shakespeare, Mary-Ann tirone-Smith, tolstoy. Mel Brooks once THE ARTful mINd APRIl 2016 • 25

said, after reading tolstoy, that he wanted to shake his fist at the universe beyond the starry sky and shout “Look what one of our guys can do!”

Modiano is my latest heartthrob on the page. He won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2014 and I’ve been reading him in translation ever since. the guy makes me feel like I wanted to write what he’s written. No, it goes beyond that: I find myself wanting to be the character he’s writing about! I don’t think I’ve thought like that since I read Studs Lonigan by James t. farrell, which came out in the thirties and whose first line got me and didn’t let go: “Well, I’m kissin the old dump goodbye tonight. . .”

I’m reading Patti Smith’s new memoir M Train right now, and loving it. I never got into dickens or trollope, I’m saving them for old age, when I can really really regret never having read them when I was young.

So many books, so little time? I can’t afford to think that way. You know what I love to do? Read a paragraph or even one or two sentences of a book a customer is about to buy. A lot of times I’ll read the first sentence aloud, with the customer’s permission of course. A lot of times that first sentence will tell me what kind of experience that particular customer is going to have with that particular book.

And while that may be thought of as not quite “reading a book,” it’s what works for me. I can’t read ‘em all. My customers are all my additional sets of eyes. Hey, you can’t taste your own kisses, can you? But that look in her eye whom you’ve just kissed can tell you plot, motive, narrative, poetry and denouement as if you’ve read it all yourself.

What topics or subjects in books, matt, make you feel nostalgic? What makes you feel sentimental? for many many years it seems I read only fiction. I watched and listened to so many customers who did not, and I think I really didn’t know why. from the beginning of my time as a reader, made-up stories had taught me all

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I thought I needed to know about the world and how to live in it. Authors who created characters who were either larger than life or even just true to life, were my heroes. My sense of this was confirmed as I met and befriended real published writers. to this day I marvel at a writer’s ability to create dialogue, invent a world with a just a few well-written sentences.

A man named Hollis Hodges was the first fiction writer I met when I took over at the Bookstore. His first novel, The Fabricator, was published on the same April 1st, and we immediately became fast friends. they made a madefor-tV movie of it and a bunch of us went over to his house the night it was on to watch it with him. I recall now that Hollis kept himself very busy that night, serving snacks and assuring our comforts, most likely so that he wouldn’t have to concentrate on what the producers had left in and what they had taken out of his original work.

John crowley was the second published writer I met. He lived around the corner from the Bookstore and my memory has him coming into the shop on afternoons after he had finished a day’s work, and chatting about this and that.

It was only after I read the advance copy of his then latest novel Little, Big that I realized I had been getting outtakes of his imagination during those innocent afternoons, now recognizing scenes and characters that we had talked about in the abstract, emerging full-blown on the pages of his book. the third writer in those early days of mine in Lenox was david Gates, whom I last saw a few years ago in Santa fe, New Mexico, where he had moved and about which he was writing detective stories. Gates can set up a scene so quickly you almost can’t believe you’re just home sitting in your favorite chair reading it.

In each of their works, Hodges, crowley and Gates, the author gets out of the way of the story and lets the reader enter unencumbered. It doesn’t matter what they were about, what I loved about them all was the invented worlds that

became real when I read them.

How many times, as you are getting close to finishing a book, do you find yourself slowing your reading down, so as to delay the inevitable, reaching the end of the story?

Nostalgia and sentimentality are what I feel after finishing the last page of any novel that I love. And I still love a lot of ‘em!

How did you think you would be celebrating the anniversary of the Bookstore this coming year? Are you following your word?

What I’d really like is for people to come in and tell me stories about their own experiences here. I’m going to put out a notebook to write ‘em down.

What would you give yourself as a gift for being a success? Why? this time of year I think a really cool gift would be an endless afternoon on a beach somewhere, with a good book, prescription sunglasses so I can read in the sunlight, a large, delicious drink that maybe could have alcohol in it but that wouldn’t make me drunk, maybe just a little bit inebriated, a favorite companion for whom a nod is as good as a wink, and an evening and next morning to look forward to. And no calls from publishers demanding money! matt, do you enjoy going to the theatre in the Berkshires? The movie theatre?

Yes, I do. I get very excited just before the curtain goes up, especially since I started acting a few years ago. What happens between actors on a stage is a whole world in itself, one that I would never have guessed at before taking part in it myself. two or three people telling me a story while they’re telling it to themselves at the same time, well that’s a perfect treat. It’s like reading a book with the author in

Customer at the Bookstore photo by Sabine von Falken

your lap!

Movies… I love most movies I see. My girlfriend carol loves to take me to movies. I love to show her movies that I’ve collected at home, older movies that still speak volumes to me.

What did you last see? did you like it, and why? the coen brothers’ Hail Caesar So well done.

What was the most challenging thing you had to face in your life? How did it seep into the life of the Bookstore?

Raising my kids after my wife Sheila died. Jo Baldwin, my right hand at the Bookstore for over twenty-five years, was my rock. taking in the grief of hundreds of friends and well-wishers was as life-changing for me as becoming a widower. Books became props on the wind-blown stage of my new life. they had their stories, I had mine.

Have you thought about publishing your memoirs, matt? I would be interested in reading it!

Volume 1 is available at the Bookstore and also online!

I bet you would have interesting childhood stories. I wonder what your parents were like. Can you paint a picture of what they were like?

Mom used to tell me a story about my dad and me. I was maybe three years old and I wandered into the living room where they were hanging out. Actually, I didn’t wander so much as march into the room, as a three year-old might.

And I wasn’t staying; I was just on my way somewhere.

Where are you going? my dad asked. out, I answered, and I’m going to smile at people and they’re going to like me!

I have a picture of the two of them the year they were married, 1936, taken by a street photographer, on Broadway in New York city. they’re both dressed stylishly. Mom is looking directly into the camera just as she looked directly in front of her every day of her life. dad is looking only at her, hands in his pockets, kind of casual, almost a whistle on his lips.

He knew she was a good catch. She knew it, too. dad was from what is now Ukraine, Mom came from Brooklyn. He was an illegal immigrant, snuck into the U.S. after eastern European quotas were filled in the early twenties, learned English by reading the New York times, took us kids to Van cortland Park in the Bronx to watch polo matches after the last operation on his broken leg rendered him unable to ride horses himself any more. I remember his last days, when he was ill, lying on the couch, watching westerns on the tV. Mom quit college to work in her father’s coat factory but went back to school forty years later and earned her degree the same year as her daughter. She marched against the Viet Nam war long before I knew what was going on there. She was widowed at 42 with four kids ranging from 18 to 5. It was from her I learned how to be both mom and dad.

And how important is family to you? for some people it means everything, even over their career and other life passions.

I’m a very lucky guy, with a lovely and loving family surrounding me. Sometimes, I’ve got to tell you, I feel as though my wife was someone who came by, dropped off a couple of kids, and moved on.

We were married for eleven years, she’s been gone now twice that long, and although I can recognize myself in photographs from before that time, I date my real life starting on my wedding day. And it started again the day Shawnee was born, and yet again the day Sophie entered the world.

And I also have my tribe, the family whose members chose each other. the three friends who invited me up here to the Berkshires, Alan Silverstein, Jim Youngerman and Michael Ansell. they’re the ones who’ve shared all the happiness as well as the sorrows with me.

I think it’s wonderful that you have your sister living in the Berkshires. Just wondering, did you arrive up here at the same time? How did all that happen?

Rose moved up a few years after I did. She got married a couple of years after I did and we raised our families together. cousin david also moved here, and with his kids there were just cousins galore!

Rose has had a great couple of careers here in the Berkshires. She’s the one who told me about the tap dancing class in Gt. Barrington. She worked at the old Serenity Leather Shop in West Stockbridge, back in the day. Plays banjo, paints, designs books. And she still dances, long after I hung up my own shoes.

What interesting activities are you involved with other than the Bookstore? Please tell us all about them!

I’ve acted in some plays at Riggs theatre 37 and I learned to tap dance some years ago. You and I are also in Pat Bonavitacola’s acting workshop, although we have yet to do a scene together. Also, Al and Jim and I were three of the founding members of the Sunday morning softball game at Green Park in Monterey. once I ran like a deer. that was a long time ago.

Also, I’ll tell you a joke at the drop of a hat. that’s about it.

Should anything that we’ve read here so far give us a clue as to what you would like to do in your life over the next, sayyyy, five years?

Just keep on keeping on, as they say.

What would be your message in a bottle? tell me a story!

What quote or thought that you hold dear can you share with us, so we can really see how you live and prosper and survive as a creative being?

Life may be an illusion, but love is real.

G

Here’s to another bunch of good, healthy, happy years of good reads at Matt’s— The Bookstore, on Housatonic Street in Lenox, Massachusetts.

THE ARTful mINd APRIl 2016 • 27

fINE lINE mulTImEdIA

YEHUdA HANANI, cELLISt

CloSE ENCouNTERS WITH muSIC

the fascinating phenomenon of Jewish music—spanning multitudes of cultures and centuries—its ancient roots, its meandering trails as it wends its way across continents, and its contribution to the American voice—takes center stage at a matinee performance Sunday, April 17 at 3 PM at the Mahaiwe Performing Arts center in Great Barrington.

Works by Gershwin, Bernstein, Mahler, Mendelssohn, Milhaud, Bloch, and Max Bruch, (non-Jewish, but who adopted Jewish modes and themes), will be performed.

And of course, expect a touch of klezmer, the toe-tapping Eastern European celebratory music imbued with spirituality. Medieval Iberian ballad repertoire will meet German Enlightenment (Bruch’s kol Nidre and felix Mendelssohn’s incomparable Piano trio in d minor). the musical material has been passed from generation to generation, with adaptations, emendations, additions, and reinterpretations. Ravel’s rendition of kaddish, which recycles the ancient chant in Aramaic for the departed dating back to the first century, will be sung by tenor Alex Richardson, who this season appeared with the Boston Symphony orchestra, the Los Angeles Symphony, at Santa fe opera and Spoleto USA. Tickets, $45 (Orchestra and Mezzanine) and $25 (Balcony), are available at The Mahaiwe Performing Arts Center box office,413.528.0100. Visit our website at www.cewm.org

LIVE PERfoRMANcE PHotoGRAPHY ANd VIdEo

fine Line Multimedia provides single or multi-camera video of music, dance and theater performances. Services include: scripting and storyboard art, videography with professional high definition cameras, high quality audio recording, sensitive lighting design and creative editing with the latest non-linear editing system. for the past 45 years fine Line Multimedia has provided audio/video performance production for the Boston Symphony orchestra at tanglewood, Berkshire Performing Arts center, National Music foundation, Recording for the Blind and dyslexic, United Way of the Berkshires, Arlo Guthrie, Rising Son Records, Bobby Sweet, World Moja, Phil Woods, Grace kelly, Heather fisch, opera Nouveau, Ellen Sinopoli dance company and many more. fine Line was established in 1970 by Lee Everett in Lenox, Massachusetts. Everett came to the Berkshires after studying Advertising design and Visual communications at Pratt Institute and working for years as an Art director in New York. He taught Art in local schools and began a full-service multimedia studio in Lenox specializing in the Performing and Visual Arts and other business and industry.

With Photography, Graphic design, Advertising, Marketing, Audio/Video Production, Website, Social Network creation and Administration together under one roof, fine Line can satisfy the artistic communications and promotional needs of a wide range of clients.

Please look at some examples from our portfolios of work on our website and use the contact information on the site to get further information, to see more samples, photographs or video reels, for professional and client references or for a free project consultation.

Fine Line Multimedia - 66 Church Street, Lenox, MA; www.finelinelenox.com Contact: Lee Everett, 413-637-2020, everett@berkshire.rr.com

You've got to be a bit of a bastard to

understand bastards, and you've got to

understand everybody. I think the most difficult

equation to solve is the union of the two things which are absolutely necessary to an actor.

One is confidence, absolute confidence, and the other an equal amount of humility towards the work.

That is a very hard equation.

-- Sir Laurence Olivier

28 • APRIl 2016 THE ARTful mINd

ElIXIR

Although we have had an unusually mild winter this year, and some of us are still longing for a wonderful snowstorm to complete our hibernation, spring will soon be upon us. ELIxIR can help you make the seasonal transition a joyful experience. come in and ask about our 21 day Restorative cleanse that does just that…cleanses and restores!! If the commitment seems too much at this moment, remember we have delicious fresh pressed juices, enlivening smoothies, and an array of elixirs and tonics to help you move from winter to spring.

We offer our cleanse people a 4 course luncheon of healing, balancing, whole foods that others may partake of, preferably with a reservation, or by chance. Everything is 100% organic, freshly prepared with love, intention and expertise, with your healing, wholeness and well-being in mind.

Stop by for a soothing cup of tea in our quiet, calm, tea salon atmosphere.

Reflect, read, converse, play a board game with a friend, draw, write…

Later in March, look for your loose teas, herbs and spices from ELIxIR. our shipment is on its way and we are thrilled to be offering these to our community. We invite you to future tea tastings. think of having an ELIxIR tea Party for birthdays, showers, anniversaries, or just for fun!

Last but not least, check our facebook page for the wide variety of evening events we host from the Berkshire herbalist collaborative workshops, to artist talks, and Musical chordination interactive music workshops.

We look forward to greeting you for all of these offerings.

Elixir - 70 Railroad Street Great Barrington (next to the Triplex); 413-644-8999, organictearoom@gmail.com, fb: elixir www.elixirgb.com

fRoNT STREET GAllERY kAtE kNAPP

Pastels, oils, acrylics and watercolors…..abstract and representational…..landscapes, still lifes and portraits….a unique variety of painting technique and styles….you will be transported to another world and see things in a way you never have before…. join us and experience something different.

Painting classes continue on Monday and Wednesday mornings 10-1:30pm at the studio and thursday mornings out in the field. these classes are open to all...come to one or come again if it works for you. All levels and materials welcome. Private critiques available. classes at front Street are for those wishing to learn, those who just want to be involved in the pure enjoyment of art, and/or those who have some experience under their belt. Perfect if you are seeking fresh insight into watercolors, and other mediums. A teacher for many years, kate knapp has a keen sense of each student’s artistic needs to take a step beyond. Perfect setting for setting up still lifes; lighting and space are excellent. Peek in to see!

Front Street Gallery – Front Street, Housatonic, MA. Gallery open by appointment or chance anytime.

413-528-9546 at home or 413-429-7141 (cell).

JoHN ClARkE

tHE BRIdGE: A MIxEd MEdIA INStALLAtIoN

Please join John clarke for the opening of "the Bridge" at the Geoffrey Young Gallery on Railroad Street in Great Barrington on Saturday night, April 23 from 5-9pm. over the past few years, John has been combining abstract drawing and painting with representational photography. "the Bridge" highlights works that document the genesis and evolution of this body of work, culminating in a large scale, multi-panel piece inspired by the monumental works of Nancy Spero. Using the repeated image of a single section of train bridge, John creates a hybrid world of reality and emotion, highly symbolic yet grounded with the weight of sky, water, steel and age.

the gallery has extremely limited hours, so if you are interested in seeing the show, please make every effort to attend the April 23rd opening. Local music producer Stitch will provide the music for the evening. food and drink will be provided. contact John directly with any questions, or to set up a private viewing.

John is represented by Sohn fine Art in Lenox, MA. to see more of his work, or the work of many other fine photographers, please visit their website.

John clarke – contact at beneathourtrain@hotmail.com.

Also visit sohnfineart.com to see more of his work.

Known for their support and All day comfort

THE ARTful mINd APRIl 2016 • 29

Planet Waves by Eric Francis ARIES -You’re bestowed with more energy than you know what to do with. Yet the planets are encouraging you to do something not so characteristic of your sign: pace yourself, move methodically and take the long view. You’re onto something unusual, with a bit of extra potential. Yet your path to success looks like it will require you to revise your plan several times, including the financial end. keep in mind that you’re not sprinting but rather running a marathon, one whose course is not exactly set at this point. As you take the journey of the next year or two, you’ll become a distinctly different person from who you are today. the greatest points of potential emerge where you encounter any seeming obstacle, diversion or reversal. that’s where the real power is contained. to tap that power effectively, you’ll want to be moving slowly and with conscious intention. the challenge here is that you are likely to be feeling driven and ambitious, which for you translates to the desire for speed. Instead, work for mindfulness and efficiency.

Most important, focus on who you are becoming as much as on what you’re doing, making or reaching for. When all is said and done, that’s the single most important factor in the equation of your life: who you are becoming, in the present, now.

TAuRuS -You seem to be jumping with anticipation, as if everything is about to happen all at once. You might feel that way, though I suggest you take events one at a time, just like you would move one piece at a time in a game of chess. Most of the pressure you’re feeling is coming from inside you rather than from some external source. for some, this may feel like living on the verge of a panic attack, and for others, tapping into a deep source of inspiration. one thing I suggest is that you keep your attention as inwardly focused as you can. there’s nothing as interesting in the outer world as what you have going on in your inner world. the great stage of your mind is teaching you everything you need to know; yet at the same time you have the ability to express your most intimate ideas to others. You’re learning to do what most people never figure out, which is how to articulate what really matters to you. the more you figure out what that is, the clearer you’ll be able to express yourself, and I suggest that you not hold back. Speak up about what you care about. Be open about whom you care for, and why. consciously break the taboo of revealing your actual personal truth, and feel the rare strength that offers you.

GEmINI -Whatever you may be doing, you have the ability to reach many people this month. What’s more is that you get to be unusually bold about your ideas. Generally society requires people to mince their words and blend them with mayonnaise to ensure public acceptability. You have the opposite effect going on.

You will gain traction by presenting your actual concepts, even if they seem radical or like you’re way ahead of your time (which is likely to be true). A win-

30 • APRIl 2016 THE ARTful mINd

For APRIL 2016

dow to the future is opening up, and it will stay open long enough for you to make your mark. I would, however, recommend that you follow what I call the American law of success: You can do anything you want, as long as you do it well. Based on that social contract, refinement counts. Quality counts, and so does being thorough. Presentation is essential. If you want to violate cultural taboos, or push the edge, it helps immensely to be polished and manicured.

When dealing with business people, have your numbers in order. When addressing editors, make sure everything is already fact-checked and proofread before you turn it in. When working with art directors, present them with two or three options. Above all, be polite, pay attention and listen. You can pull off some wild, unusual coup this month, as long as you’re smooth and well organized.

CANCER -this is a take-charge moment for you. No doubt you’ve been feeling this as unusual confidence. You can feel your own presence in the world, so it’s not surprising that others feel your presence as well. the usual glass ceiling has opened up into a skylight. You are visible and people are taking notice of both how you look and what you have to say. this combination of factors is often the formula for success. I would suggest one thing, which is that if you want to be a revolutionary, you must mind your politics. Live as if every word you’re saying is being recorded. Understand who has influence and why. know the difference between formal leadership (the boss, for example) and informal leadership (the executive assistant who can make anything happen) and work with that distinction. All in all, remember the human dimension of everything. Slow down and make contact with people, one at a time. Learn the names of everyone you work with and pay attention to how they feel. this would usually come naturally to one born under the sign of mothering, but right now your solar chart suggests you’re more like big daddy. So make sure you draw reserves from your feminine side and take the time to express genuine caring, even as you set out to achieve bold and beautiful things like never before. lEo -- You have a future. that’s a big deal right now, with the world living like there’s no tomorrow.

While it’s not a good idea to obsess over the future or to treat it as your only resource, you will live more confidently in the present moment if you know you have time, space and potential ahead of you. think of this message as: take your time rather than waste time. taking your time means using time well. one particular angle of your chart is trying to get your attention, which is the house that addresses the themes of creativity, pleasure and risk. It seems as if there is something you want to experiment with or explore, yet you don’t know whether to dive in or to hesitate.

If this involves something you could call purely creative -- that is, some form of expression with few possible consequences -- you risk nothing by diving in. If there are some actual, potential consequences,

which you must risk in order to succeed, then consider the worst-case scenario. What could go wrong and what are the chances that it will? How can you mitigate those potential effects? then ask yourself if it’s worth taking that risk to achieve what you want to do. once you decide to proceed, skip all the hesitating and get on with the show.

VIRGo -You are one of the lucky ones. Remember that all the time. You have resources available to you that most people don’t even dream of, which include actual, practical intelligence, the ability to solve problems and, right now, the potential to understand where anyone is coming from. that particular one, above all else, is your greatest asset at this time. You do not need to be mystified by the people around you, or the ones you meet. the first thing is to notice how you feel around anyone you encounter. that will tell you almost all you need to know, though if you listen you will learn more. If you’re paying attention you will hear people describe or admit to everything that really matters; notice what you learn the first hour. You can learn through these experiences that it doesn’t help to search for your completion in other people. the more you recognize the differences between you and others, the more interested you’ll be in living as your own distinct person, in your own way. Relationships have their place, though the way to find it is to live more independently of them for a while. When you show up feeling like a whole person, which takes practice, you can have a lot more confidence in yourself and in the situations you manifest. once again, the time is right. lIBRA -Instead of wishing that life was not so confrontational, you might consider rising to the occasion. this will be easier than you think, especially if you consider that you’re paying for the same team as most of the people around you. Rather than invoking an ‘us and them’ kind of response, you might consider everyone ‘us’ and see how that works. What might seem strange is how self-focused people around you are, up to the point where many ordinary aspects of life can seem competitive. one reason people choose to play this kind of game is because it’s more fun, or seems so. Who really wants to play softball if one team doesn’t get to win? Yet few people understand the nature of cooperative games. I would propose that the most significant game going on in your environment (mental and physical) is about figuring out who you are, and understanding your identity, without the need to resort to any form of aggressive confrontation. You would be the likely person in your environment to offer that idea through your example. Some people may understand this one if you offer it in theory, though figuring out and demonstrating what Germaine Greer called “the trick of cooperation” will work a lot better. Note that this would involve cooperating even with people you don’t like; but that’s the whole point, isn’t it?

SCoRPIo -Mars, the classical planet associated with Scorpio, stations retrograde later this month. this focuses questions of attachment, jealousy and, most notably, your relationship to money. Mars will retrograde into your sign, where it will spend all of June and July.

So this is less about figuring out things, and more about gaining an understanding of who you are in relationship to those things. the bottom line seems to be about identifying what you actually need, and then learning how to say that out loud. on the deepest level this is an emotional question. We’re really talking about how you feel and how you relate to what you feel, and about a grouping of themes related to survival. It’s possible to play out all kinds of rootchakra dramas and burn up a lot of energy. It’s also possible to seek authentic understanding of your most basic requirements for living, make peace with them, and learn to speak in language that other people understand. Yet this requires the intent of being understood, and the willingness to receive. How do you get there? I would say that generosity would teach you plenty. do you really need to hold on so tight? Learn to share what you feel and what you have, and soon enough it will seem normal -- as will the feeling of being understood.

SAGITTARIuS -You might feel like some kind of showdown is brewing, though I doubt it. the real question seems to be what you’re going to do with all this energy you’re feeling. Even if you’re not one of these people who lives surrounded by art supplies, musical instruments and notebooks, I suggest you find a creative outlet for your abundant energy. one secret to the sign Sagittarius is that the most natural place for you to cultivate and grow your sense of personhood is in expressing yourself. travel is important -- yet I would propose this is more important. I am confident you’re aware of the many ways you want to get your thoughts out of your own mind and into the world.

You now have the advantage of the best thing that inspires art or writing, which is necessity. You need to take this chance, and to embark on this personal mission. If you’re already an artist in some form, you can do riskier work and take yourself to a deeper

place. In a little while you’ll wonder how you ever survived without living like this all the time. Exploring in this direction will be one of the most dependable ways to find your path to the professional success that has been calling you, and that you’ve been reaching for. Set your mind free and good things will follow.

CAPRICoRN -If you’re experiencing turbulence in your environment, or if you’re feeling insecure, strive to make peace with yourself. to the extent that we humans create our reality, much depends on how safe we feel within our own mind and body. Part of what leads to your particular form of turbulence is that your imagination is confined. It often seems you can make the most elaborate and beautiful life you want, as long as it’s a shoebox-sized diorama. You want and need more space and freedom than this, and you owe it to yourself to reach for it. the persistent question seems to be: what would people think if they knew what a wild thing you are? Yet why do you care? there’s a reason, which functions as an excuse. It’s easier to judge yourself if you let other people do it for you.

Not judging yourself would mean granting yourself permission to explore, to expand your horizons and to experiment with your feelings, your ideas and your body. this would clearly threaten an identity you’ve cultivated around being small. You cannot have both, though I would ask why you would ever want to shrink yourself down. Initially this began as the desire to please other people without actually succeeding. You and only you can call a stop to this cycle, which means claiming your existence as your own.

AquARIuS -Be mindful of your need to plan things out. You have enough momentum in your life, and sufficient resources, to wing it for a while. Planning and strategy have a defensive quality, which can cut you off from your abundant creativity. this is a state of mind thing. Strategizing when you really would thrive on going with the flow is a distraction, which takes you out of the moment and therefore out of your ability to make decisions based on what is actually happening. If you want a strategy that might work, keep

looking around at your environment and ask yourself what you need to be aware of, and what you need to do right now. this is called immediacy. It may seem radical not to dwell on the past or on the future, but it’s not so strange if staying right in the moment puts you in contact with the equivalent of vast wealth -emotional, creative and material -- plus a community to support you. Home in on what is genuinely available to you. Notice how generous people will be if you show up and are real in the moment. You might be amazed at all you were missing all that time, but you don’t have to dwell on it. You have what you need, and who you need, right here and right now.

PISCES -You have before you a brilliant moment of inventiveness with money and other resources. While I’m always careful to include finances as one among many types of assets you can work with, money is the one deserving of your attention and creativity right now. this is mainly because you can get results beyond what you typically think are possible. Many factors in your chart reveal an unusual drive for success and numerable opportunities available to you. You are in rare form now, taking control of your affairs and removing needless obstacles. Yet at the heart of every business plan are the financials. the numbers have to add up, and when you need money to do a certain job, that’s the thing that does the trick. You’re someone who usually avoids being associated with a drive for wealth, though I suggest you try on this identity for a while. try relating to your desire to be well funded, and to have enough to go around. Wash your hands and clear your mind of any notion that there’s something unholy about money, and remember that the meaning of any tool is about what you do with it. there is plenty that you want to do, and plenty that you can do; one distinction of Pisces is taking the long, slow route, which is now evolving into the faster, more direct way.

Many people prefer comedies, and this is

fine; but for me understanding the tragic sense of the human condition creates a

heart-breaking beauty which strikes me as the essence of what it means to be alive.

-- bMac

THE ARTful mINd APRIl 2016 • 31

Nichole, talking with you today was wonderful, and it was so interesting that you are a journalist/writer, a mom of two children, and an accomplished athlete. do you think there is room on your plate for anything else at this time?

Nichole: there is always room on the plate, or at the table!

I just got a violin for my 39th birthday, and I’ve been spending some time with it. I can’t say that my kids enjoy my ‘screeching’ sessions, but I’m picking it up pretty quickly.

My daughter and I jam together sometimes, me on piano and her on guitar or uke. You can play a pretty bluesy version of “St. James Infirmary” on the uke, you know! It’d be nice to learn another language, probably Italian.

What was the transition like for you when you went from being a single mom to a married mom, in terms of having more time to do your freelance writing work?

Nichole: My identity as a mother has never been separate from my identity as a writer. As a single mom, sure, there were times when I was dragging those poor kids to all the polling stations during town elections to get the evening results. once, I had a phone interview with Ricky Skaggs, the bluegrass legend, in the waiting room of the dentist’s office ‘cause the kids had a cleaning that day. Not much has changed since being married. I write late at night, or early in the morning. the kids are older now and sometimes the three of us go to a café after school and they do homework and I write. It’s actually really inspiring to have the three of us, with our brains humming along, at the same little table. My husband does drive them to school in the morning most days, which is nice. I can finish my coffee before it gets cold.

NIcHoLE dUPoNt JouRNAlIST WRITER Interview by Harryet candee

32 • APRIl 2016 THE ARTful mINd

Your family comes from a long line of men who were arborists and lumberjacks. Can you tell us about some of the family’s early history and how they worked their way to making their permanent home in the Berkshires? It sounds like you have a very interesting cultural background with french, Irish and….?

Nichole: there are so many men in my family, I tell people I was raised by wolves. Some of the family history is a little murky, apparently we court scandal by way of having ‘illegitimate’ children. My father’s grandfather was from france and his grandmother was from Sweden. they somehow made their way to tolland, MA. they had six children, and apparently they lived in a historic farmhouse and that irked the people in town. My dad once showed me a clipping from an old newspaper that complained about the dupont family, called for their eviction from the community, saying ‘they barely speak any English,’ that the children were filthy and dark-skinned. those kids had it rough.

My dad’s father was a really stern man. Lean and mean.

He owned a saw mill. He was a boxer, too, and trained with Willy Pep. My dad says there were always boxers working at the saw mill as part of their training.

My father’s mother was… is… my inspiration. I named my daughter after her. Anna. She was only five feet tall, if that, but totally fierce. She never knew who her daddy was, but always assumed it was this Irish fellow. She was close with her grandmother, too, who was mostly Iroquois and some french. When my grandmother died, it left a huge hole in my family… not a day goes by I don’t think about her and wonder if she’s proud of me.

My maternal grandmother is a scrappy woman. She’s from northern Maine—really tough folk, french and Penobscot, true Acadians.

How did you help your dad with his work when you were young? And your mom? Who were you more inclined to want to work next to?

Nichole: I don’t know if he considered it helping! Sometimes I’d go to work with my dad and clear away little sticks and branches while he worked. I loved riding in his log truck. My dad spent a lot of time working (logging hours are early hours) so I woke up earlier in the morning just to catch a glimpse of him before work. He’d give me a little coffee and we’d hang out at the breakfast table. My

ma started her career as a seamstress—she’s an interior designer now. I hated sewing, so obviously I’d prefer to be with my dad out in the woods. But she was incredibly patient. She gave me little projects to do, and I liked the challenge. I still have the first doll I stitched by hand. It’s hideous. I used my mom’s lipstick to give the doll pink cheeks. I’ve sewn a few curtains and quilts in my time. And chopped my share of firewood. I’ll always prefer being outside. And the smell of gasoline and sawdust.

How did you first get interested in writing?

Nichole: I think that fascination started early. I would scribble in a notepad, probably wasted thousands of sheets of paper, pretending to be writing in cursive even though I didn’t know how to write. I liked the thoughtful look on people’s faces when they were writing. I just always wrote.

In second grade I wrote my first ‘graphic novel,’ fully illustrated. of course it was about magic horses and outsider rebel children with freakish powers. I read every book, every story I could get my hands on… Archie comics, Shakespeare, Reader’s digest… even the damn encyclopedia. I always had stories and observations floating around in my head about every little detail. How my little brother’s hair wasn’t just blonde, it was golden like wheat. or how my dog Bandit (he was a Husky) was a character from a Jack London novel and had thoughts like a human.

How did it lead to journalism?

Nichole: I watched a lot of “60 Minutes” growing up. And the news. I felt the power in those stories. Real power. I knew I was watching history. the tiananmen Massacre, the fall of the Berlin wall and the Soviet Union, the scenes from apartheid South Africa… the world was nuts and screaming for truth. I always wanted to be part of that truth.

What is it about the art of writing that you are drawn to the most? And why is that?

Nichole: the isolation. It’s a pretty lonely endeavor for the most part. So quiet but so active. I have to live my life a million times to get the story right, to get the words, the feeling, the image just right. there are events, little moments in my life that I don’t want to forget. I’m drawn to preserving the memory.

What has been your favorite piece of writing up until now? What was it about? Why did you write it?

Nichole: that’s a tough one. I’ve met so many people and covered so many topics and issues. I wrote a personal essay years ago about my then brother-in-law. He’s very involved in Special olympics—swimming, bowling, track—and I wanted to tell the world about him, his sweet awkwardness, his love for the Grease soundtrack, his total pride in his gold medals for swimming. He has so much goddamn heart. So I wrote this piece and my editor published it.

Is it easier to write for others as a paid job, or is it easier to write for yourself without boundaries?

Nichole: It helps to have boundaries, or at least perimeters for my paid writing. Whether it’s with a pitch or an assignment. It’s easier than writing for myself. I can’t reign it in sometimes when I’m working on an essay or fiction. there’s too much life material that I feel compelled to include; steam from a mug, a harsh look, the way the ground starts to smell when it thaws. It all seems so important.

Have you found your own style of writing and expressing yourself—one that makes you unique in the literary world? Can you explain the tools or thinking processes that might be involved in making yourself different and strong?

Gabriel: I don’t know if they’re tools or traits, or maybe both. In my professional writing I have to paraphrase quotes without distilling the personality or passion of the subject. I prefer clipped dialogue in my personal writing.

It’s how I was raised. My family, for the most part, are people of few words, but what they said and when they said it really mattered. timing is everything. And action. Smok-

Family portrait this is me with my fight squad--anna, my daughter sitting next to me. Lucian, my son sitting in front of me. and nolan, my nephew, standing. we are a tight family. we train together.

ing a cigarette or clinking a spoon while a character stirs his coffee. All of that is very final. Like a revelation.

Tell me what was, to you, an amazing journalism experience.

Nichole: Ruby Bridges. Hands down. I did a phone interview with her. It was pouring rain and I was parked on the side of the road talking to her about her life as a civil rights icon and how she lost her brother and her son to gun violence in New orleans. We talked about justice and how we have so much work to do. I told her about my daughter and the challenges of raising a bi-racial child in a rural, condescendingly racist community. At the end of the interview she said, “tell your daughter to never give up. And you don’t give up either, ok?” I hung up the phone and started sobbing. I was honored and devastated all at once.

Were you grounded with your writing skills with the help of a mentor? Tell me about this person and how you connected.

Nichole: My first editor was Glenn drohan. He took me in as a rookie reporter for the Advocate Weekly. I mean total

rookie. My kids were really young… hell, I was really young. He said, “You know what the three rules of journalism are?” I fumbled with an intelligent answer and he just shook his head. “Accuracy, accuracy, accuracy.” He was hard on me, never patted me on the back, but he was always teaching me. We both liked to fish, so we had that in common. He smoked like a chimney and called me “kid.” When he passed away, I knew the bar was set. I learned everything from him.

How do you divide your time now, with training and sports and freelance writing? do they overlap? describe your favorite sports.

Nichole: It’s not so much dividing my time as it is trying to find a way for all this stuff to jibe, and it does. I start my workday early in the morning and try to wrap it up by midafternoon. I train Brazilian jiu jitsu (BJJ) and Muay thai kickboxing and other combat sports at night, on the weekends, whenever I can. It’s a discipline, but it carries over into my writing life. I find that I have more focus when I work, and I’m harder on myself; I don’t let myself plateau or write formulaically. I’m still getting used to it, the THE ARTful mINd APRIl 2016 • 33

the issues you are currently dealing with?

Nichole: My main concern is that time is passing so quickly, especially as my kids are growing up. I worry that I’ll miss something, some important step or lesson that I forgot to teach them so that they can go out into the hard world and still be happy and self-sufficient. I think the biggest issue I still deal with is injustice and inequity. It’s subtle around here, but very much a part of the culture. I can only solve the problem by first calling attention to it. We need to face the issues of racism and sexism in our idyllic Berkshires. We need to face that we have a heroin epidemic. I write about these things. they are personal. they impact what happens in my living room and the conversation at my dinner table.

bruises, the sore muscles every day, the mortified looks on my parents’ faces. When I’m not training I’m at a soccer game, or a tennis match, or baseball practice. My kids are really active athletes. We all train together at some point. I do BJJ with my son, the boxing and long runs with my daughter. Sometimes those nights are the only thing we have in common.

How does the combination help or hinder each art form for you? And your children are involved with your work! That’s great! Tell me about all this.

Nichole: It helps to keep me focused. I’m a little hindered right now because I blew out my AcL at a grappling tournament, so I’m off the mat until I heal up. Sometimes I can’t train because I have writing deadlines and sometimes I can’t do interviews or cover events because I have training. I don’t apologize for either. It’s what I do.

I’m a grown woman. And yes, my kids are involved in my work. they sometimes come along with me to events I’m covering or they give me some much-needed perspective. once I was working on a piece about art exposure for young students and I asked my daughter her opinion about local museums that she’d visited. “they underestimate that we have passion and that we know what it is in art,” she said. “You’re kidding yourself if you’re really moved by a portrait of a dead white guy.” out of the mouths of babes, I swear…

Where do you think you would like to be in terms of your career(s) in about ten years from now?

Nichole: I’d like to be writing screenplays. I have this series I’m working on now—I won’t say much but it does involve violent combat sports— and I totally see it running in my mind, episode by episode. I’m so attached to the storyline and the characters, I don’t want to let them down. they’re hardworking, complex people, and their stories are important. I wouldn’t mind pursuing some gritty travel writing, either.

Are you attached to living in the Berkshires?

Nichole: No. I have a love/hate relationship with this place for sure. I grew up here, I have a nostalgia for my own childhood and the people in it.

I know the bright spots and the dark corners. I’ve visited a lot of places in the world and there are a few that I wouldn’t mind spending more time in, as a local. I like warm weather. the hotter the better, actually. I really want to make a move to New orleans. It’s a beautiful, hot mess full of irony… and just… fire. the last time I was there it broke my heart to leave. I felt like I was home already.

Give us an example of writing you would like to share, please, Nichole. Anything. And an intro to it would be marvelous.

Nichole: this is from my blog, verbosaversus.blogspot.com. I wrote it in response to police violence against people of color. It’s a section from that blog. this hits me in the guts. I have anxiety when my daughter is out to the movies with friends or dealing with people at her workplace. I don’t trust the “good Samaritans” to watch out for her when I’m not there. It has taken its toll on me.

You are keeping so busy these days. What are your main concerns and challenges? How do you hope to be a creative problem solver with 34 • APRIl 2016 THE ARTful mINd

Knowing Better

By Nichole Dupont She’s just a kid.

I’ve felt compelled to warn her about things. I am the one chipping away at her innocence for the sole purpose of trying to protect her. It’s unconscionable. But, it’s my job. I cannot trust that society will watch out for my kid when I’m not there. Because it won’t. The same police officer that will help your white daughter back to her sorority house because she’s had a few too many is the one who will look at my daughter like a piece of dirt, and bloody her lip and throw her in jail…or worse.

OR WORSE. Where your thoughts have stopped, mine keep going to the routine traffic stop where my daughter is a new driver—probably speeding if she is anything like her mother. The car will be searched for drugs. She will be roughed up, handcuffed, injured… shot.

“I think there is a huge difference between calling someone a nigga’ and a nigger,” she says, in between drags off a cigarette.

What advice do you have for the world as you become one of the wise women of our time?

Nichole: Lets start with: Never… And then: Always… And then: I discovered that… And, to be successful, it’s important to…

And anything else you can think of!!!

Never take less than what you’re worth. I mean it. could be in a relationship or a job or a simple social interaction. You know what you’re worth. Go out and fight for that.

Always carry dental floss and a sturdy pair of boots in your car.

I discovered that people will always have something to say about you, whether they know you or not. Let them talk. And keep them on the edge of their seat.

To be successful, it’s important to have dreams and goals. If you really work hard at something, and work smart, you will get there.

It might not be the way you planned to get there, but if you’re serious about something, be serious about it in all ways.

To be successful, it’s important to know that success is not linear, it doesn’t move in a straight line. don’t just show up. Life isn’t a spectator sport. You are at the center of your life, you have to be rock-solid at the center. I remember talking with my maternal grandmother after a yoga class we were both taking.

I was like ten months pregnant with my daughter, only 23 years old, single and miserable and scared. I was having a pity party for myself in the passenger seat of her car, this woman who was born in the year of the Great depression, who was a widow with six children by the age of 40. She just turned to me and said, “Honey, build a bridge and get over.” It seemed harsh at the time, but man, she was right. I had to build that bridge myself if I was ever gonna get across that moment in my life.

I am stunned. The air is heavy. I can’t breathe. She is a cop. She has a gun. These are the thoughts…

“Why don’t you ask my daughter,” I say, slowly. “I’m pretty sure she won’t notice the difference. They both sound the same to me, especially coming out of your mouth.”

I suddenly remember my daughter’s third grade social studies folder. And a packet she brought home, entitled ‘Teaching Tolerance.’ We should be grateful that society puts up with us.

And I wonder.

Who’s tolerating who?

G

Mary Carol Rudin

“Let Them Eat Cake, Chocolate”

www.mcrudin.com mcrudin123@gmail.com

THE ARTful mINd APRIl 2016 • 35

MUSSOLINI’S FIAT

from “No Cure For The Medieval Mind’ Richard Britell

There are very few places in society where the prevailing conventions of fashion do not exert themselves as a relentless tyranny. Fashion, which we often think of as a superficial distraction from important matters, is actually a set of absolute laws. Those laws are ever- changing, and yet are enforced by relentless immediate unseen punishments, in the face of which there is no appeal.

A person’s entire life, history, and accomplishments can be thrown out the window in fifteen seconds if one is wearing the wrong shirt and tie to a certain meeting. Lawyers know that their clients will often go to prison or go free because of a haircut and the choice of trousers, rather than a collection of evidence carefully presented. A client may be

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convicted even though he wears the correct coat and pants, if the lawyer himself has a hairstyle out of the sixties, or worse yet, out of the seventies. Let me ask you this. Would you trust your wealth and the decisions about your investments to a man who is dressed in a checkered suit and looks like one of the Three Stooges because of his hair? It is not going to matter to you what his reputation is, if a person is dressed like Harpo Marks they are not going to be making your investments for you. You will go instead to the man who just stepped out of the pages of a recent Gentleman’s Quarterly.

In a recent Gentleman’s Quarterly, every single man will not have a beard, but will nevertheless need a shave.

But if it is an old GQ then everyone will be clean-shaven.

If your new investment advisor needs a shave that is perfectly fine, but if this was 1978 then any investment advisor needing a shave is probably fleeing from auditors. Cleanshaven or needing a shave, this is where millions are won or lost, because fashion rules, and is more important than knowledge in all areas of human endeavor.

Nobody is willing to admit that this is so, and yet everyone is subject to it every day of their lives.

Consider industrial design, the discipline of coming up with the various forms and shapes our manufactured items take (such as cars, toasters, refrigerators, and the like). The decisions those professionals make are much more important in society than, for example, political decisions made by any government.

This idea is meaningless unless we consider some concrete examples. Therefore, let’s consider a certain year in human history, say for the sake of argument, 1938. Using 1938 as our touchstone, consider the various political ideas being promoted by various factions of the human race at that time.

There is Fascism and Nazism; Socialism and Communism; and Democracy. During the year 1938, millions of people are dying bloody violent death because of the clash of these three political systems. Representatives of any one of these ideologies firmly felt that the other two had to be eradicated from the face of the earth. And don’t be deceived by the apparent harmonious cooperation that existed between the democracies, and communism during that time. They were content to help each other eliminate the Nazis, and when that was accomplished they immediately began menacing each other from either side of the Berlin Wall. But during that time, when vast armies were fighting to the death promoting their various diverse ideologies, if you look carefully at the newsreels of the day, you will notice that all of those people are

driving around in cars whose design is practically interchangeable, and their suits look almost as though they were made by the same tailor. Hitler stands in the back of Mercedes Benz with chrome bumpers and detached round headlights and a vertical grill, and so does Stalin and Churchill.

Mussolini commissions Fiat to create a grand sedan that is identical to the Hitler Mobile and the Cadillac that Eisenhower was riding around in. In the morning Roosevelt puts on a three piece suit cut a certain way, and so does Mussolini, unless perhaps Il Duce is going to wear his military uniform. But if it is a military uniform, it will be cut to look like a late 30s military uniform, because Mussolini would never be caught dead in a military uniform cut in the style of World War I. Now it is true that Stalin was in the habit of wearing conventional clothing with a few more pockets that gave it a sort of military look, and he must have liked the look of Mark Twain because he tended to dress all in white. But regardless of the extra pockets and the all white look, you could never photoshop Stalin into a group photograph next to Mr. Twain and get away with it, because the obvious anachronism would give it away in an instant.

Stalin went so far as to copy Mark Twain’s moustache.

In the 1940s he could get away with copying Twain’s moustache because that look was still hanging on from the turn of the century. But he would never have considered utilizing Mr. Twain’s pork chop sideburns. If he had decided to wear those sideburns with the haircut, he would not have been taken seriously when he met Churchill and Roosevelt at Yalta, regardless of all of the Red Army’s victories.

Then there is the question of the style of shoes, eyeglasses, haircuts and the like. We could go further and talk about figures of speech, and even facial expressions and the various ways people smile, frown, and indicate disbelief with assorted body language. All of these things, from the size of one’s lapels, to the way one expresses surprise with a movement of the eyebrows, down to the pattern of ones socks, is ruled by imperceptible, ever-changing but iron-clad rules of both habit and fashion, laws that everyone will obey despite themselves.

This is not to say there are not variations — even extreme variations — but the passage of time, expressed as fashion awareness, decrees that the only way you can transpose clothing from before French Revolution to the present, is by way of the costume party or Halloween.

I put a marker at the French Revolution because that revolution was only a grand worldwide revolution of clothing. The various classes of society were leveled not by changes in taxation, not by the abrogation of the feudal rights and prerogatives, but by the elimination of the embroidered surcoat, and the powered wig.

It was only a clothing revolution, and did not actually involve anything about the rights or man, as the speakers of the day imagined. Never forget that when Napoleon was attempting to spread the equality of man throughout Europe with his revolutionary armies, he was at the same time putting down slave revolts in Haiti with the use of maneating dogs. He had to suppress the slave revolts so as to keep the price of sugar down, since all of the French sugar was imported from the plantations in Haiti. So, in truth the French revolution only really succeeded in replacing buckled shoes with lace up shoes; that was its greatest accomplishment.

Other than the change in clothing, things went on happily as before. The rich wear the fashions of the day, and the poor wear their ragged hand-me-downs in whose design can be see the prevailing philosophies of a time.

-Richard Britell

Grandma Becky’s RECIPES

by Laura Pian

Becky’s family

Basic Matzo Brei

April is a busy month filled with holiday time for all. It’s Springtime, a time of re-birth! For me, April also represents the celebration of Passover (Pesach).

A time of reflection of a journey from slavery to freedom, a time for cleansing, a time for family, and a time for food (what Jewish holiday is not about the food?) My Grandma Becky, a mother of five and grandmother of 13, gathered us all up on Passover for a most wonderful, annual holiday seder, chock full of traditional rituals and delicacies. Including the infamous children’s table, where all the mischief took place. Being the baby of the cousins, I luckily never seemed to outgrow my place at this table.

During Passover, special foods are bought and the entire home is supposed to be rid of any & all chametz (leavened food). Matzo takes center stage on Passover. Considered to be a poor man’s bread. It is made of only flour and water, then quickly baked (under 18 minutes) so that the dough has no chance to rise. We did not keep strictly kosher in our home, but in preparation for Pesach, Grandma Becky would scrub clean (reyn) the oven as thoroughly as she could, running all the heat and gas burners for at least ½ hour. I suppose it was her way of “cleansing and starting fresh”.

One of my favorite Passover memories is waking up to the amazing smell of Grandma Becky’s Matzo Brei for breakfast. Plain and simple, a recipe of broken up matzo boards and egg, then fried. It’s Passover’s version of French toast, always to be eaten in pajamas.

Everyone has their own personal version of matzo brei. You’ll find if you ask someone about it, they’ll usually reply with a unique twist such as “I like mine with jam”, “I love it dipped in honey”, “We make ours with orange juice and pineapple bits”, “sugar & cinnamon”, “sour cream”, etc. Some like it eggier, some like it crispier. My favorite, Grandma Becky’s recipe which is just the basic savory style with lots of salt.

But, no matter how you prefer your matzo brei prepared, it’s always a dish made full of love with an old world feel. Add in any variation to the basic recipe (fried onions, raisins, fruit, dill, brown sugar, cinnamon), and be sure to keep all of your favorite “dippers” available (maple syrup, honey, sour cream, apple sauce, powdered sugar) – be creative! Someone once told me they dip theirs into Nutella! Uhhh, to die for! *Keep in mind for portion control purposes – Approximately one egg to one board of matzo Ingredients: 1 matzo board 1 egg 1/8 teaspoon kosher salt Pepper to taste Oil (enough for frying) Boiling water

Directions: Break your matzos into approx 1”-2” pieces. Place all the pieces into a bowl and pour boiling water over it, lifting the pieces to let the water reach all the matzos. Let the matzos sit in boiling water for approx. 1-2 minutes until semi soft, then drain.

In a separate bowl mix eggs, salt, pepper and any other add-ins you may have. Some might add a bit of milk for a slightly creamier consistency.

Toss egg mixture into bowl of drained soft matzo and gently mix well. Add oil to pan and heat medium to high. Pour in entire bowl of matzo/egg mixture.

Turn heat down to medium and allow to cook for a good 8-10 minutes (careful not to burn). Using a spatula or wooden spoon, break up into portion sized pieces and flip, cooking an additional 10 minutes, until desired browning is achieved. If you like it on the softer eggy side, use less time.

For crispier and well done, let it cook longer – think French toast! Transfer on to a paper towel lined plate to blot the oil, sprinkle with some more salt or powdered sugar – Serve immediately.

Happy Pesach (Passover) and esn gezunt! (eat well & healthy!)

Esn gezunt! (Eat well!) Comments? e-mail Laura at artfulmind@yahoo.com THE ARTful mINd APRIl 2016 • 37

commitment to the arts and community were deeply ingrained in me and have been a constant inspiration in my life.

What were some of your early successes or failures that brought out your desire to work with film?

Kelley: I’m not sure I had early successes or failures to speak of, but my true desire for film was infused early in my life! My parents would take me and my sisters to see films at all the art houses in denver: the flick, the ogden, the Esquire… which were showing Gallipoli, Das Boot, Harold and Maude, Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown… I was captivated by everything shown at those theaters. I also went to my first film festival on Nantucket when I was only ten. It was the Humphrey Bogart film festival, and we went to double features every day of our vacation—it was wonderful!

So, this coming June marks the next BIff festival.

Can you give us a sneak peek into any of the new plans, this year’s goals? How it will be better than any of the past years?

Kelley: We aren’t going to change things that much this year, but of course will present 75 NEW films and filmmakers! I can tell you that we will be presenting some new films that have deep connections to the Berkshires. However, the biggest new thing we are doing this year is presenting a “House Party” on Labor day weekend. the BIff Reel friends will present an annual party with a rotating fun theme, at a private home in the Berkshires, with seated dinner, dancing and various activities.

kEllEY VICkERY

BERkSHIRE INtERNAtIoNAL fILM fEStIVAL interview by Harryet Candee

The million dollar question: How did you begin BIff? What ingredients in your life, thinking and experience lead you to such a festival for film?

Kelley Vickery: I actually started the BIff because I needed a job! At the time, my three children were really young, and I wanted a job that I could be flexible about, where I could work early hours, late hours, weekend hours etc. I have a deep love of film, and my background is in special events and marketing, so I combined one of my passions with my work skills and began to talk to people about the idea. I also consulted with a very close family friend who started the denver film festival and another family friend who ran the Aspen film festival for years, and they gave me the courage and the outline of what I needed to do. I met with Richard Stanley, who agreed to have the triplex serve as a home for the festival, met with kevin Sprague at Studio two to help with a website, met with some distributors, and was given some seed money 38 •APRIl 2016 THE ARTful mINd

from Ronald frohne… A year later, BIff was born!

Where did you grow up?

Kelley: I grew up in denver and in the mountains of colorado.

Where did you study?

Kelley: I went to the University of colorado at Boulder, with overseas studies in London and florence.

kelly, you’re such a talented, artistic person. What was it about your childhood that pointed you in the direction of the arts?

Kelley: Both my parents were very philanthropic, community-oriented and involved with the arts in denver.

My mother lead the biggest fundraiser for the denver Symphony, and I would attend the symphony every week with my father. My mother also had me and my sisters in dance and ballet classes for years. their deep

Can you explain the logistical side, the business side to how BIff survives and thrives? What goes into the planning?

Kelly: BIff is a 501(c)3 and, like all non-profits, we seek money from grants, sponsorships, and individual giving as well as income from our pass and ticket sales.

A festival of our size is not inexpensive to produce, so we count on all of those sources to allow us to bring a world-class festival to our community. BIff also relies on our Reel friend Society members to provide funding for us to produce such events as the Mariel Hemingway event Running From Crazy and the unforgettable reunion of Animal House.

What are the challenges you face each time you start the year’s plan?

Kelley: the biggest challenge is what films will be available and presented to us each year. In addition to myself, Lillian Lennox and the BIff programming team screen dozens of films, beginning in September.

We view some 700 films, and curate that down to about 10% of them, to be presented at BIff.

kelly, who has been your inspiration and mentor in your life? How have they connected the dots for you in making your vision come to fruition in projects such as BIff? Kelley: My grandfather was an enormous mentor to me and although he passed away 17 years ago, he continues to serve as an inspiration. He was an entrepreneur, and started a bank during the Great depression after trying two previous times. He was a humble and generous man who loved everyone, and he loved helping people realize and achieve their dreams. His determination, his positive attitude and his love of life were infectious to everyone around him. He was also a great outdoorsman. I think of him every day. My three children also serve as a tremendous inspiration to me and

KELLEY VICKERY &....

(L to R) Peter Riegert, Deborah Nadoolman, John Landis, Karen Allen, Martha Smith, Mark Metcalf, Judy Belushi, Stephen Furst Kelley and Lauren Ferin, 2006

Otis Day and Kelley

I learn from tHEM every day. they motivate me to live life fully and make the most of every day.

does your work take you traveling a lot of the time?

Kelley: I go to Sundance every year to “shop for films.” I also will occasionally travel to attend the toronto film festival and the Berlin film festival to meet with distributors and filmmakers and to acquire films. I also need to go to NYc a few times a month, but mostly I am home in the Berkshires watching film!

I am wondering, what is the criteria for accepting a film?

Kelley: the criteria we all look for on the programming is an interesting and compelling story, told and directed well, combined with good editing and quality picture and sound. It’s harder to put all those qualities together than it sounds!

What are your thoughts on our Town - our community?

Kelley: I am one who is beyond proud to be in the Berkshire community of artists in all mediums, in this beautiful place. Are we doing the right thing here to make us happier and stronger? I think we have an extraordinary town and community. I am VERY proud to have the BIff’s home based in Great Barrington. our community has everything one could wish for…. beautiful location, great restaurants and businesses, a supportive town government, an engaged, curious and supportive audience, and wonderful, professional theaters like the triplex and the Mahaiwe.

Is BIff your way of contributing to our times now, in the Berkshires and beyond?

Kelley: Yes, I hope so…. I’m certainly not going to get rich doing what I do, but contributing positively to the community has its own rich rewards.

Kelley and Marina Abramovic

How do you see the overall picture and future for BIff? Kelley: Strong, fun, thriving and getting better!

What part of BIff is the most time-consuming for you?

Kelley: fundraising and programming?

What is the most fun part for you, the part you thoroughly enjoy the most?

Kelley: I love supporting independent filmmakers and sharing my community with them - and them with my community.

When is the most rewarding time of the festival?

Kelley: At about 9:30 on Sunday night, when the final curtain comes down….. www.biffma.org

R

THE ARTful mINd APRIl 2016 • 39

Directed by Bruce t. macDonald musical arrangement by alexander Sovronsky Gayle Schechtman leah marie parker Harryet puritzman candee Friday, Saturday MAY 6 - 8, 7pm Sunday Matinee at 2pm Friday, Saturday May 13 -15 7pm Sunday Matinee at 2pm tickets at door: $20 (special Senior and Student rush rates available) reservations: 413. 854. 4400 theatrecompany.gb1616@yahoo.com

40 •APRIl 2016 THE ARTful mINd