ART: Sally Mann @ Gagosian thru 10/31

Gagosian Gallery is pleased to present "Proud Flesh", a series of new photographs by Sally Mann.

Children, landscape, lovers—these iconic subjects are as common to the photographic lexicon as light itself. But Mann's take on them, rendered through processes both traditional and esoteric, is anything but common.

Her latest photographic study of her husband Larry Mann, taken over six years, has resulted in a series of candid nude studies of a mature male body that neither objectifies nor celebrates the focus of its gaze. Rather it suggests a profoundly trusting relationship between woman and man, artist and model that has produced a full range of impressions – erotic, brutally frank, disarmingly tender, and more. While the relation of artist and model is, traditionally, a male-dominated field that has yielded countless appraisals of the female body and psyche, Mann reverses the role by turning the camera on her husband during some of his most vulnerable moments.

Mann's technical methods and process further emphasize the emotional and temporal aspects of these fragile life studies. The images are contact prints made from wet-plate collodion negatives, produced by coating a sheet of glass with ether-based collodion and submerging it in silver nitrate. Mann exploits the surface aberrations that can result from the unpredictability of the process to produce painterly photographs marked by stark contrasts of light and dark, with areas that resemble scar tissue. In works such as Hephaestus and Ponder Heart, the scratches and marks incurred in the production process become inseparable from the physical reality of Larry's body.

Sally Mann was born in Lexington, VA in 1951. She has received numerous awards, including three National Endowment for the Arts Fellowships and a Guggenheim Fellowship. Her photographs are in the permanent collections of major museums and private collections including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Museum of Modern Art, and The Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; and The Corcoran Museum of Art, Washington, D.C. (source)

BOOK: Shop Class As Soulcraft

A philosopher / mechanic destroys the pretensions of the high- prestige workplace and makes an irresistible case for working with one’s hands

Shop Class as Soulcraft brings alive an experience that was once quite common, but now seems to be receding from society—the experience of making and fixing things with our hands. Those of us who sit in an office often feel a lack of connection to the material world, a sense of loss, and find it difficult to say exactly what we do all day. For anyone who felt hustled off to college, then to the cubicle, against their own inclinations and natural bents, Shop Class as Soulcraft seeks to restore the honor of the manual trades as a life worth choosing. (source)

Crawford operates his shop in Virginia.

ANGOLA RODEO - OCT 2009

The Angola Prison Rodeo, the longest running prison rodeo in the nation, takes place every Sunday in October at Louisiana State Penitentiary in Angola, LA. Read more here.

SCENE/ART: Where's Warhol (10/3 in NC)

Posting for one of my fave places (though yet to visit!):

In celebration of Elsewhere's recent receipt of programming support from the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, they're hosting the most fabulous event of 2009.

WHERE'S WARHOL? is a fundraiser building Greensboro through exceptional art.

Andy Warhol showed the world that going to the grocery store, the department store, and the laundromat can be an exceptional aesthetic experience. Andy is American Culture and American Culture is Andy--a love of things, a chaotic archive, colored camouflage, a silver factory, an attraction to the glare of the image-sheen. We are all going absolutely bananas over Andy's legacy living on here in Greensboro.

On SATURDAY October 3, in celebration of a tremendous gift from his foundation, they are converting Elsewhere into all things Warhol. The 15 hour extravaganza (8pm to 11am the next morning) will help exclaim a national art-landmark in downtown Greensboro. Join them for an evening of banana drinks and Campbells koozies, screen tests, photo booths, all night disco, a Velvet Underground cover band (undercover), Table 16 treats, and brunch the morning after with visiting art superstars.

Yes! Secure your spot at the extravaganza. Buy your ticket now, and play inside the magic! Tickets are limited (répondez, s'il vous plaît, s'il vous plaît). Your $ directly supports the artists that make Elsewhere possible day in and day out (and these artists need your help to make Elsewhere grow). Click Here! Click Here! See More! More is More. For more information about the party and to purchase tickets online, visit the Where's Warhol blog!

Can't make it to the celebration? Give the party magic as a gift and help transform downtown Greensboro through an exceptional contemporary art experiment.

Andy would have wanted it this way. (source)

SOUNDS: Lynyrd Skynyrd

Legendary rockers Lynyrd Skynyrd return to New York City for a CD Release Party and Concert at the Beacon Theatre on October 1.

Beyond the tragedy, the history, the raging guitars and the killer songs, ultimately, Lynyrd Skynyrd is about an indomitable will. About survival of spirit; unbowed, uniquely American, stubbornly resolute.

With their first set of new studio material since 2003's Vicious Cycle, the band returns with God & Guns, due out September 29 on Loud & Proud/Roadrunner Records. Recorded in Nashville in 2008-2009, the project was interrupted (but, tellingly, not ended) by the deaths of founding member/keyboardist Billy Powell and longtime bassist Ean Evans earlier this year.

Driven by core members Gary Rossington (guitar), Johnny Van Zant (vocals) and Rickey Medlocke (guitar), along with longtime drummer Michael Cartellone, Lynyrd Skynyrd have recorded an album ("under duress, as usual," according to Van Zant) that very much lives up to the legacy begun some 35 years ago in Jacksonville, Florida, and halted for a decade by the 1977 plane crash that killed three band members, including Ronnie Van Zant and Steve Gaines. Since then, the band tragically lost Allen Collins, Leon Wilkeson and Huey Thomasson, yet they rock on.

With the passing of Powell and Evans, "a lot of people probably expected us to say enough is enough," admits Medlocke. But that would not be the way of this Rock & Roll Hall of Fame powerhouse. With a catalog of over 60 albums and sales beyond 30 million, Lynyrd Skynyrd remains a cultural icon that appeals to all generations, and God & Guns is a fitting addition to the canon. The Skynyrd Nation awaits.(source)

BOOK: Floodmarkers

out now...

Yom Kippur

David Isay/Sound Portraits produced this piece a while back. I'm posting it here in honor of Yom Kippur today. Hope they don't mind...

Almost every Friday at about 7:45 p.m., auxiliary police officer Joe Erber calls in "Ten-Six" (or "busy") to his dispatcher. He cruises over to West Market Street on the outskirts of downtown Greenwood, Mississippi, and strides into Ahavath Rayim, the last Orthodox synagogue in the state. Erber grabs a prayer shawl off the rack, kisses it, and drapes it over his police uniform. Then he makes his way to the pulpit and begins the services: Hebrew with a drawl. For years, Erber has served as the de facto rabbi of Ahavath Rayim, spiritual leader to a once-thriving congregation that has dwindled down to almost nothing.

It's a story that can be found in small communities throughout the South. At the turn of the century, Jewish immigrants poured into towns like Greenwood, seeking relief from the stifling tenement life up North. They arrived as peddlers, saved money, opened up stores. By the 1930s, Jews formed the backbone of the merchant class in hundreds of these towns. Soon after, though, young Jewish people began leaving, opting for the larger cities. By the early 1950s, this small-town Jewish exodus was in full swing. Today, the exodus nearly complete.

Note: For the first time in well over 100 years, it appears there will be no minyan in Greenwood, Mississippi, to celebrate the high holy days in 2001; there are now less than ten Jewish men over the age of thirteen in the area. If you or someone you know can help Congregation Ahavath Rayim make minyan this year, please e-mail Joe Erber at joe_erber@hotmail.com.