3/26/2012

Terroir Creative Writing Festival April 14, 2012

Three weeks until the Terrior Creative Writing Festival opens Saturday April 14 at the McMinnville Community Center.  Registration is at 8 am, talks, workshops and readings begin at 9 am and go until 4:30.

Barbara Drake, poet, teacher and co-founder of the Terroir Creative Writing Festival  and indicated she was coordinating the program for the Festival.  There is an impressive program of authors, Chelsea Cain , LEANNE GRABEL , WILLY VLAUTIN ,  MATT LOVE , CHARLES GOODRICH , and EVELYN HESS and many others.

Willy Vlautin will talk about finding inspiration in Oregon.  Matt Love will discuss creative non-fiction and Leanne Grabel will have a workshop on writing and producing your own play.

A chance to meet writers, talk writing and books and listen to writers reading their work.

3/17/2012

Elizabeth Santone, Featured artist at Meet the Artist at Portland Art Museum Rental Sales Gallery


Final adjustments
Elizabeth Santone was one of the featured artists at the Portland Art Museum's Rental Sales Gallery Meet the Artist event on Saturday, February 25th.  She talks about her paintings and her inspiration.


Director for the Portland Art Museum’s Rental Sales Gallery, Jennifer Zika is a wonderful host and although our filming with a big tripod was an slight obstacle in the Gallery’s limited space, she made us feel welcome.


In 1959 the Women’s Council of the Portland Art Museum appointed a Gallery Board which opened the Museum’s Rental Sales Gallery staffed by volunteers.  The Gallery’s mission is to promote the arts in Oregon, to provide a showcase for Oregon artists, and to increase public awareness of the Art community.  Gallery commissions proved revenue for the Museum and help support the Artists.  


According to The Oregon Encyclopedia membership in the Portland Art Museum is a prerequisite for renting artwork from Rental Sales Gallery.  Artworks is consighnment, price set by the artist and rental fees are on a sliding scale.  The Gallery host three artist shows a per year, in April, June and October.  Currently more than 250 artists from Oregon and Southwest Washington are represented.  All work is original and juried.  There are 600 art works in the Gallery at any one time and over 2000 works all together.  Art mediums include; oil, acrylic and watercolor paintings; wood, metal and stone sculpture; drawings; collages; photography; and framed prints.

Monthly Meet the Artists events began in the Fall of 2010.  Each month on the last Saturday the Gallery provides an opportunity to get to know 4 or 5 artists represented by the Rental Sales Gallery.  There is the chance to look around the Gallery, enjoy a nibble, a sip of wine and listen to featured artists talk about their work.

In addition to Elizabeth we filmed the presentations of Ok Ji Radda and Janet Lauvau Holt.
 
 
Ok Ji Radda
                                          

 
Janet Holt

3/10/2012

Metaphor for creativity: There are no mistakes on the bandstand

 The TED talk by jazz musician Stefon Harris There are no mistakes on the Bandstand demonstrated how a "mistake" like an out of key note, was an opportunity if the other players who where listening and responded to what they heard.  Harris talked about the Bandstand as a special place, a place without past and without future.  The bandstand is a place of the complete present.  Musicians in the present and responding to one another in a natural way results in opportunities for creativity.  Harris and the 3 players with him showed how it worked when they let a note by one lead toward a new directions.

No mistakes on the bandstand is a natural metaphor for creativity in almost any creative endeavor.   Bandstand is the creative moment.  The here, the now.  With the understanding or assumption there needs to be a excellent level of craft, there are no mistakes, just a deviation from an expectation and an opportunity for a new and creative direction.  Harris did not talk about level of craft, he assumed a high level.

As metaphor bandstand to have no mistakes is to be open to change, be ready to adjust and avoid being judgmental, especially on the bandstand at the time of creating the art.

3/08/2012

Curiousity and Danger, Connections at my fingertips

I love this time we live in.  Connections at my fingertips.  On Facebook I "like" Prairie Schooner the literary magazine.  Their page sends out a "share" to FilmMaker Magazine  with an article Ten Lessons on Filmmaking from Director Marjane Satrapi.

Filming Meet the Artist
Our recent video project is the Meeting the Artist Event at the Portland Art Museum Rental Sales Gallery we filmed February 25th.  So film making is on my mind.  Not at the level of Satrapi's "Persepolis".

Of Marjane Satrapi's list of ten lessons I like 1. Learn to tell your story, 2. Create Don't Produce, 4. the best films come from the best collaborations, 5. Don't waste your time on Divas, 6. Try Dallas (she means go to places where not everyone agrees with you), 7 Suffering is optional, 8. Shoot for beauty, 10. Remember Humor.

How easy it is to learn things these days.  Curiosity can also be dangerous.  Access from afar is very possible and real.

Earlier today I watched a TED talk All Your Devices can be Hacked  by Avi Rubin.  He presented a horrifying list of devices that can be hacked and controlled.  Pace Makers, Cars, phones, two way radios, and stealing key strokes from your computer.  Access is not easy, it takes knowledge, some very esoteric knowledge, but access can be achieved.  Some of the methods are beyond me.   In Rubin's talk there were seeds to several 21st century spy stories and some pretty good mystery stories.

Those who say privacy is dead, get over it.  Yep.  I hear you.

3/04/2012

Jim Gullo: "Trading Manny" Father Son Baseball journey

I had forgotten about Dizzy Trout.

Last week Jim Gullo and his son Joe came to the McMinnville Community Media studio to do an Arts Alive interview with Lynda Phillippi.   Jim wanted to talk about his forth coming book "Trading Manny" , the story of a Father teaching his son Joe to love Baseball during the steroid scandals which made respecting baseball very difficult.

I was never a big baseball fan.  Although I remember the summer of 1953 or 54 I searched the neighborhood, the school, the city for a card on mostly Detroit Tigers and then Boston Red Sox pitcher Dizzy Trout.  He wasn’t that great pitcher and he was a bit long in the tooth, but  I loved his name and he wore glasses, so I could relate.  I had rookies Jim Gilliam, Harvey Haddix and Ray Jablonski to trade,  I was even willing to throw in 10 rare red cat’s-eye marbles.  I never found Dizzy’s card.  I read that year “Disappointment  is necessary to develop character”, I wasn’t convinced.  In 1955, the World Series went to the Brooklyn Dodgers over the New York Yankees, and my interest in baseball fanned out. 

By 2006 when Lance Williams and Mar Fainaru-Wada book  "Game of Shadows" came out, followed in 2007 by the "Mitchell Report", it was not a shock or even a surprise that baseball players were abusing steroid drugs to get a competitive edge.   Only 89 players?

It turns out I was not the only one who thought 89 might be a low ball number.   In 2007 Jim Gullo/s his seven year old son Joe, whose baseball hero was Manny Ramirez, was asking,      Page 20 of "Trading Manny"   “Look Dad,” he said, waving a card of a player who had not been named by Mitchell or associated with drug use.  “This guy hit forty-eight homers in 2001 and hasn’t hit more than twenty-one since.  He was probably using drugs, wasn’t he?”

To redeem his own love of baseball and to be true and honest to Joe in a time when baseball was down, Jim Gullo and his son went on a quest to find the truth about steroid use and to seek the soul of baseball.  “Trading Manny” is the story of their journey.

On the same day as the Arts Alive interview Jim posted on his BLOG an instructive chronology of “Trading Manny” from the inception of the idea to the publishing of the book.  If you have a book idea and are getting ready to get to the writing, check out the blog post.

On Febrary 28th, Jim and Joe Gullo talk with Arts Alive host Lynda Phillippi about their journey and the writing of the book.    You Tube has a 15 minute limit.  The 30 minute show is the above is Part One and go to Part Two to see the last half of the show.


Jim Gullo lives in McMinnville.  In addition to the forthcoming "Trading Manny" he has a recent novel  "Fountain of Youth".  He is the editor and publisher of a web magazine http://www.oregonwine.com covering Oregon wine industry.