Another Portrait
I always find it interesting how I eventually wind up. It is all a part of the process in learning how to paint.
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Suzan-Lori Parks * Excellence
Suzan-Lori Parks is an author, award winning playwright and screenwriter. I was going to categorize her as an “over achiever”. But, that’s probably a disservice – she is just doing what she has to do. Doing what matters to her – with excellence.
She won her 2002 Pultitzer Prize for the play “Topdog/Underdog”. I saw this in San Francisco a few years ago and enjoyed this clever, funny and explosive story about 2 brothers – “Lincoln” and “Booth”. You might imagine how it ends, but, it will still shock you.
Like in the Akira Kurosawa’s film “Rashomon” , where the same scenario is told from different points of view, this play illustrates how 2 boys in the same family can remember differently and be affected differently by the same traumatic event. Their perceptions colored their actions and attributed to the way they chose to lead their lives.
(The NYC Public Theater production had Jeffrey Wright and Don Cheadle as the siblings – you can just imagine the power of that duo.)
Ms Parks had an idea to write a play for every day of the year, the result is “365 Days, 365 Plays“ which she wrote between 2002 – 2003. Starting in 2006, they were presented at theaters, coffee houses and auditoriums across the country. Some venues could do a few of the plays, some as short as one page , and other locations could only stage one. However, all were seen before the end of 2007, just as she envisioned.
NADIA HIRONAKA: THE LATE SHOW
Nadia Hironaka My Stars, 2003
Conversations @ 11
Friday, Oct. 17, 11 a.m. – Artist Nadia Hironaka
Opening Reception
Friday, Oct. 17, 7-9 p.m.
NADIA HIRONAKA: The Late Show
In her multi-channel video installation, The Late Show, Nadia Hironaka expands the cinematic experience into the realm of the gallery environment. Synthesizing video projection, videos on monitors and audio, Hironaka entices the viewer to imagine characters leaving the confines of the projected image and entering the real space of the gallery. Using an abandoned drive-in movie theater as her point of departure to examine the convergence of cinematic and real space, Hironaka also asks us to reflect on how mood and emotion are constructed within the context of film.
ASU Art Museum Presentation
Organized by John Spiak, ASU Art Museum Curator, The Late Show will be installed in the Arizona State University Art Museum’s Nelson Fine Arts Center location.
Food and Travel – Great Combination
Not just Tapas and Paella, Spanish food, delicious and diverse, is so much more. You can get an idea just by watching the weekly Paltrow and Batali (or, Batali and Paltrow) traveling feast show on PBS called, “Spain… on the Road Again”.
Joined by food writer Mark Bittman and Spanish actress Claudia Bassols, Oscar winner Gwyneth Paltrow and Chef Mario Batali, of Food Channel fame, takes us along as they travel by car to assorted cities such as Toledo, Valencia, Madrid, Galicia, Catalunya, and north to the Basque country.
We get to see the countryside as each team visits several restaurants and legendary chefs during each episode. They taste and watch as the meal is created and chat about the ingredients and the cooking methods. Mario and Gwyneth seem to be particularly having a great time since they’ve both lived in Spain at one time and speak Spanish very well. (Their conversations with the locals have accompanying subtitles)
BTW: Visiting Spain has been on my bucket list for quite awhile. I love the PBS series “Europe Thru The Back Door” with Rick Steves when he people watches while sitting at a table in one of the Spanish town squares, travels the pilgrimage road to Santiago de Compostela, eats succulent tapas and drinks the local wine.
Spain & food, excellent idea – you betcha!
“Vanity Fair Portraits: Photographs 1913-2008”
From 10/26/08 – March 1, 2009, LACMA, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, will present portraits from the archives of Vanity Fair Magazine – 150 of the world’s most famous faces past and present.
Pictures of the most influential from sports, music, art, dance, and politics, have been culled from hundreds of images from 1913 to now. These photos give us an historic view of who was considered in/out over the years.
Vanity Fair’s favorite photographers represented here include “James Abbe, Malcolm Arbuthnot, Cecil Beaton, Harry Benson, Julian Broad, Imogen Cunningham, George Hoyningen-Huene, Annie Leibovitz, Man Ray, Mary Ellen Mark, Steven Meisel, Helmut Newton, Irving Penn, Herb Ritts, Lord Snowdon, Edward Steichen, Mario Testino, and Bruce Weber.“
LACMA/ Los Angeles County Museum of Art
5905 Wilshire Blvd., Los Angeles, CA
323-857-6000
(Image: Actress Gloria Swanson, “A Much Screened Lady”, by Edward Steichen, 1924)
The Modern Spy Story
Most of us were first introduced to John le Carré via the very anti James Bond like spy master George Smiley. “The Spy Who Came in From the Cold”, “Tinker, Taylor, Soldier, Spy” & Smiley’s People” and more. A spy with very human problems and no super power talents. He got things done by thinking.
“The Perfect Spy” another le Carré novel is the perfect spy book. Spies are not necessarily good or bad people, just people without a cause. They don’t know who to root for. Being authentic is difficult – “I’ll be who ever you need me to be”.
Since the end of the Soviet Union, spies have become people with causes, their own. Individualized causes are reasons for governments to be concerned. I am sure to be enlightened once again when I read “Most Wanted Man”
Here is the trailer for le Carré new book.
Books – John le Carré’s ‘Most Wanted Man’ – Cloak and Dagger in the Post-9/11 Age – NYTimes.com