Kickstart my hiatus!

Southernist has gone on hiatus. In the meantime, be sure to check out my favorite site in the whole wide world (and on world wide web) Kickstarter for tons of cool projects happening all over the south!

Louisiana
Georgia
Tennessee
North Carolina
South Carolina
Kentucky

Oh! Did I ever tell you that one of the Kickstarter founders is from Virginia??

By for now,
Sweet Tea

Trouble The Water

Tomorrow night on NatGeo:
http://channel.nationalgeographic.com/episode/trouble-the-water-4249/Videos#tab-Overview

Big Freedia the Queen Diva @ PS 1

New Orleans bounce artist Big Freedia is performing at PS 1's Warm Up tomorrow (8/28). It's gon' be Azz Everywhere y'all!

Well, it's shaping up to be Katrina week....

Out now via Creative Time:

WAITING FOR GODOT IN NEW ORLEANS: A FIELD GUIDE
EDITED BY PAUL CHAN

The final installment of Creative Time's multi-part Waiting for Godot in New Orleans by Paul Chan, A Field Guide brings together a rich collection of primary ephemera, photographs, articles, and essays that explore the project's unique community-centric process from conception to completion. Divided into eight sections—Remember, Picture, Relate, Organize, Appear, Play, Film, Reflect—the book centers around Creative Time's production of Samuel Beckett's classic play over two weekends in two New Orleans neighborhoods—the middle of an intersection in the Lower Ninth Ward, and the front yard of an abandoned house in Gentilly. The production re-imagines the post-Katrina landscape of New Orleans as the setting for the 20th century's most emblematic story of waiting, and in doing so, illuminates the personal and political conditions facing the people of New Orleans and the evacuees in surrounding cities. (source)

One Block

Photographer Dave Anderson’s recently released book One Block: A New Orleans Neighborhood Rebuilds is a powerful portrait of post-Katrina New Orleans as seen through the prism of a single city block whose residents are attempting to rebuild their homes. Using portraiture and still lifes, Anderson explores the very nature of community while testing its resilience. (source)

Citizen Gulf tonight in NYC

Tonight (8/25) – in conjunction with the fifth anniversary of Hurricane Katrina – there will be a series of CitizenGulf meet-ups across the country to fundraise and benefit fishing families affected by the oil spill. At the #citizengulf NYC meet-up, you make a step towards actionable change. Held at the Village Pourhouse in the East Village, special guest speaker is Erik Proulx, executive producer of Lemonade, the movie, will be joined by social media voices like Damien Basile, Anna Curran, Nicole D'Alonzo, Erica Grigg, Geoff Livingston, Richard Laermer, and Greg Verdino. Social Media Club is a national partner for this event. Register: http://citizengulfnyc.eventbrite.com/

Please tweet about the event:

Join @SMCNYC on 8/25 for #CitizenGulf Fundraiser RSVP http://citizengulfnyc.eventbrite.com/ pls RT

(source: smcnyc)

Katrina Ballads @ (Le) Poisson Rouge

Tonight (8/24) @ 6:30PM at (Le) Poisson Rouge:

Ted Hearne's KATRINA BALLADS featuring René Marie

KATRINA BALLADS, recipient of the 2009 Gaudeamus Prize, is a collection of songs by Ted Hearne. Featuring five singers and a band of eleven instrumentalists, it is set entirely to primary-source texts from the week following Hurricane Katrina - including everything from testimonies of survivors and relief workers to the words of Anderson Cooper, Kanye West, and George W. Bush's infamous "heckuva job." Like American music and New Orleans itself, Katrina Ballads is an omnivorous and multi-stylistic work. It is rhythmic and dramatic music, with an edgy post-minimalist drive and a deep jazz influence. With new work from renowned filmmaker Bill Morrison, Katrina Ballads calls us to reflect upon our own very recent history.

Katrina Ballads was premiered to rave reviews at the 2007 Piccolo Spoleto Festival in Charleston, South Carolina. It has since been seen at Chicago's Fine Arts Building, at the New York City Opera's VOX: Showcasing American Composers series and at the 2009 Gaudeamus Festival in Amsterdam. This performance commemorates the fifth anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, and accompanies the release of the studio album, produced by Lawson White, on New Amsterdam/Naxos Records.

To stream audio: http://www.newamsterdamrecords.com/#Album/Katrina_Ballads

To read an interview about Katrina Ballads: http://www.indigestmag.com/hearne1.htm

(source)

Also tonight:

Spike Lee revisits New Orleans five years later with "If God Is Willing And Da Creek Don't Rise" tonight on HBO.

Citizen Architect tonight!!

I've been waiting months and months and months and it's finally THE day! Citizen Architect is airing tonight on PBS. What's all the fuss?

Hale County, Alabama is home to some of the most impoverished communities in the United States of America. It is also home to Auburn University’s Rural Studio, one of the most prolific and inspirational design-build outreach programs ever established. Citizen Architect is a documentary film chronicling the late Samuel Mockbee, artist, architect, educator and founder of the Rural Studio.

Citizen Architect explores Mockbee’s effort to provide students with an experience that forever inspires them to consider how they can use their skills to better their communities. Revealing the philosophy and heart behind the Rural Studio, the documentary is guided by passionate, frank and never-before-seen interviews with Mockbee himself. (source)

Brand new Flavor in your...eye!

NY Mag recently did a wonderful piece on Flavor Paper's move from New Orleans to Brooklyn. Here's the back story:

Founded on the Oregon coast by a guy named Ted, this small handscreened wallpaper company flourished in the Age of Aquarius.

Many years later, some young designers seeking striking wallcoverings discovered Ted’s greatness- just days before the designs and equipment were to be destroyed. Knowing what had to be done, these young designers headed west to save Ted’s legacy…

Relocated to the Bywater District of New Orleans, Flavor Paper continued to print using Ted’s traditional printing methods and vacuum table, but with greatly increased accuracy and detail. Contact (them) in (their) new Brooklyn, NY Flavor Lair to see samples of fine handscreened wallpaper designed in Ted’s days or fresh from the next generation of Flavor Paper designers.(source)

And, yeah, that's scratch-n-sniff wall paper above!

Neshoba: The Price of Freedom

Opens today (8/13) @ Cinema Village:

Neshoba: The Price of Freedom tells the story of a Mississippi town still divided about the meaning of justice, 40 years after the murders of civil rights workers James Chaney, Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner, an event dramatized in the Oscar-winning film, Mississippi Burning. Although Klansmen bragged about what they did in 1964, no one was held accountable until 2005, when the State indicted preacher Edgar Ray Killen, an 80-year-old notorious racist and mastermind of the murders. Through exclusive interviews with Killen, intimate interviews with the victims’ families, and candid interviews with black and white Neshoba County citizens still struggling with their town’s violent past, the film explores whether the prosecution of one unrepentant Klansman constitutes justice and whether healing and reconciliation are possible without telling the unvarnished truth. (source)

Deerhunter @ Pier 54

Atliens Deerhunter rock the river tonight (8/12)!

"Musically, Deerhunter is, and has been, many things – ambient punk, noise rock, art rock, shoegaze, post-punk and plain pop. Their second and third albums Cryptograms and Microcastle were ranked by music critics and aficionados alike as among the best albums of their respective years – and the latter ranked among the best of the past decade. " (source)

@ Pier 54

2 more Parking Lot Movie days!

The Parking Lot Movie Trailer from The Parking Lot Movie on Vimeo.

The one week run of The Parking Lot Movie ends tomorrow (8/12) - catch it if you can:

Yo La Tengo bass player James McNew used to work there, as have grad students, overeducated philosophers, surly artists, middle-age slackers and more from the fringes of Charlottesville, Virginia. Irreverently but warmly celebrating a brotherhood of eccentric attendants who man a unique two-acre lot from the most ramshackle booth ("like something you might discover in Albania at the border"), THE PARKING LOT MOVIE humorously reveals class warfare within its blacktop microcosm. SXSW 2010's "most feel-good film" (The Wrap) makes its New York premiere with a week-long engagement, August 6 - 12.

Three years in the making, director Meghan Eckman's documentary portrait shows how certain details and themes gain profundity through the daily scrutiny of these parking lot attendants: car culture, capitalism, entitlement, fury and justice, public drunkenness, spiritual awareness, societal frictions, and other existentialist cries from the service sector. If the intersection between the status quo and the quest for freedom is their ultimate challenge, could a slab of asphalt be an emotional way station for The American Dream? As one part-timer laments, "We had it all in a world that had nothing to offer us." (source)

Rosanne Cash @ B&N

Tonight (8/10) at Barnes & Noble - Union Square:

Singer/songwriter Rosanne Cash will perform selections and discuss her new memoir, Composed: A Life, in an on-stage interview with journalist Katherine Lanpher. (source)

Bessie on the Hudson...

Thanks to Film Forum, you can catch the only big screen appearance of blues legend Bessie Smith tomorrow night (8/10) .

This conjures my own memory of Bessie...and the photo I took, during a road trip thru the MS Delta in 2001, of the room where she died.

I'll drink to that!

Southern Comfort will donate up to $250,000 to the Gulf Relief Foundation to help the fishing community and support wetland preservation in Plaquemines Parish. Plaquemines Parish is the location of the famed Woodland Plantation appearing, until recently, on the Southern Comfort label. Created in New Orleans in 1874, Southern Comfort is kicking off the effort with an initial donation of $50,000 while raising the additional $200,000* through a Facebook initiative and a donation per bottle sold campaign.

On the Southern Comfort Facebook page, Southern Comfort will donate $1 each time a friend sends a virtual gift to a friend**. Southern Comfort will donate $0.25 for every bottle purchased until the end of October when the Voodoo Experience music festival takes place in New Orleans.

“With Katrina, we waited, we waited and we waited, but we don't wait anymore," said David Freedman, general manager of WWOZ radio station and a member of the three-person foundation board. "We really appreciate the support we're getting from Southern Comfort in helping us reach out to the folks who need help right now.” (source)

Is that Alabama in your pocket or are you just happy to see me?

Peep the Field Notes "County Fair" collection. You get a 3 pack of each state...but I wish you could mix & match 'em:

For Summer 2010, FIELD NOTES COLORS celebrates the 50 great U.S. states with COUNTY FAIR, our seventh quarterly installment. Each COUNTY FAIR 3-Pack highlights an individual U.S. state, with one memo book each in the colors of 1st, 2nd and 3rd place County Fair ribbons; blue, red and yellow. They’re printed on 100-lb. linen cover stock and all three feature metallic gold printing and 48 pages of graph paper with light blue/grey lines inside. The back covers feature a bevy of meticulously-researched state facts and figures. (source + buying info here)

20x200 Love!

20x200 made this dreamy print available a week or so ago:

Midway, Neshoba County Fair, Philadelphia, Mississippi
by Mike Sinclair

ARTIST STATEMENT:

The Neshoba County Fair is different from the county fairs we have in the Midwest. It has most of the things you usually find: livestock judging, a beauty pageant, horse racing and a midway. The unusual thing is that it has over 600 one- and two-story cabins, called fairhouses, arranged into streets and neighborhoods on the fairgrounds. People own these cabins and live in them for the seven days of the fair. They are highly prized, handed down from one generation to the next. For the visitor, it gives the place a strange feeling: you are not sure if you're in a public or private space. When I was there I remember feeling like I’d come upon some extravagant neighborhood block party and it was obvious—at least to me—I was from another block.

The question of being on the inside or outside of a group is something I think most photographers think about. Do we photograph the familiar or the exotic, are we reporters or memoirists? If I went back there this July, twenty years later, what pictures would I take? (source)

SONG: Dr. John 8/2 & 3 @ City Winery

That's pretty much all you need to know. Go here

Get Low back in NY!

Set in the 1930s in a rural Southern town, the film follows scruffy hermit Felix Bush (played impeccably by Robert Duvall), who has lived alone on the outskirts of town for 40 years shrouded in a dark mystery. One day he emerges from isolation to plan his own living "funeral party," expecting the townsfolk who have rejected him for years to attend. Denied a proper funeral for his checkered past, Felix perseveres to set the record straight. With the help of Frank Quinn (Bill Murray), the town's broke funeral director, his quirky assistant Buddy Robinson (Lucas Black), and an old friend and widow Maddie Darrow (Sissy Spacek), he tries to retrace history and expunge his record. (source)

Get Low opens today (7/30)

Another cool Kickstarter project!

Hmmmm...I think this may become a regular feature. So many great projects! This one is based in Birmingham, AL:



In December 2009, a bunch of writers, editors, educators, students, photographers, designers and artists launched a not-for-profit writing center in Birmingham, Ala., called the Desert Island Supply Co.

Inspired by programs such as 826 Valencia and the Austin Bat Cave, DISCO is dedicated to giving area students, ages 6 to 18, more opportunities to strengthen their writing skills, explore their minds, intensify their intellectual habits and shape their own futures.

We offer free writing workshops for students, tutor inside local schools and generally try to help out in whatever way we can to assist teachers and principals who want to instill a love of writing in their students. We're also in the process of building out the world's very best desert island supply store. (source)

Chicken y Chicken

photo: Drew Coyle

Two round-ups recently of all of NYC's fab fried chicken spots. Time Out NY vs. NY Mag. Which is your fave??

STAGE: The Angel In The Trees

Now thru 7/31: The Production Company presents
The Angel in the Trees
A new play by Dan O'Brien
Directed by Mark Armstrong

Less than a year after moving to Lowden, a small town below the Mason-Dixon line, native New Yorker Madeline Singer encounters an unexplained phenomenon while walking through the woods. The Angels in the Trees is an evocative one-woman show about ghosts, God, and the American South. (source)

ART: Lonnie Holley

On exhibit thru August 6 at Jeff Bailey Gallery in Chelsea:

Lonnie Holley: Assemblages and Drawings.

Holley, a self-taught artist, is a sixty year old native Alabamian whose work has been exhibited widely throughout the United States. This is Holley’s first solo exhibition with the gallery, and his first in New York in sixteen years.

Holley’s unique combinations of found materials and everyday detritus result in mysterious and powerful objects. They reference spirituality, African American art forms and history, nature, and family relationships. Simultaneously, the visual impact of Holley’s work invites comparisons to the work of other contemporary artists, and therefore continues to break down the distinctions often made between self-taught artists and those with an art education background.

Holley’s assemblages can be simple or complex in their composition. Along the Rails combines old wire, iron, wood, colored paper, cardboard, plastic and other materials. Assembled with both delicacy and verve, its title suggests a journey, escape or hardship. Molting Lonnie is composed of three parts: found concrete with a rebar that serves as the vertical support for a piece of molten iron. The top of the concrete base is splashed with red paint, dripping down the sides. The materials and their deft organization evoke a raw and formal beauty, while the title of the work suggests impending growth, a recurring theme in Holley’s art.

Featured prominently in Holley’s work is a facial profile, found in drawings, wire sculptures and carved sandstone pieces. Small or large, single or in layers, the profiles have open and expressive eyes. In the drawing I in the Teacher’s Chair, profiles face left and right, while one large eye dominates the center. A kneeling figure cradles a child, watched from above. It is a family or community of sorts, observing and caring for one another.

These faces and figures function as characters in an ongoing story. Indeed, Holley’s vivid descriptions of his art stress the interconnectedness of all people and things, both past and present.

Lonnie Holley was born in Birmingham, Alabama, and is the seventh of twenty-seven children. Against significant obstacles he has been a working artist for over thirty years. In Birmingham, he created a unique outdoor installation of his art on the acre of property where he lived, until a forced relocation seventeen years later. Holley lives and works in Harpersville, Alabama.

Holley’s work is included in numerous public collections: American Folk Art Museum, New York; Birmingham Museum of Art, Alabama; High Museum of Art, Atlanta; Milwaukee Museum of Art, Wisconsin; Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; New Orleans Museum of Art, Louisiana; Philadelphia Museum of Art, Pennsylvania; Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, D.C., among others.

(source)

Hotter Than July

photo: roadfood.com

Hot damn hoe here we go again! NYC's got hot chicken y'all:

From Time Out NY:

Nashville hot chicken

Fiery, cayenne-laced fried chicken—usually served with pickles over white bread—is eaten throughout Music City, but its spiritual home is Prince’s Hot Chicken Shack. Lore traces the recipe to current owner Andre Jeffries’s great-uncle Thornton Prince. When a spurned lover fed him extra-spicy chicken out of vengeance, he liked it so much that he began cooking it at his restaurant.
Eat it here: Restaurateur Craig Samuel serves a super-crispy version ($12) at Peaches HotHouse (415 Tompkins Ave at Hancock St, Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn; 718-483-9111). In addition to seasoning the free-range poultry with garlic, onion powder and cayenne, Samuel uses a secret spice mix that he says contains the “two hottest peppers in the world.”

Beach Schmeach!

First off, I have to say that friends have come back from trips to the Bama coast saying "we didn't see any oil all week!" So, I'm not sure how bad it is right now in person, despite the news reports. But regardless, there's still a ton of great stuff to do in the area that doesn't involve actually going to the beach. Here's a list from OrangeBeach.com.

STAGE: Six by Tenn

Thru July 18: Playhouse Creatures Theatre Company kicks off its inaugural season with performances of six rarely produced short plays by Tennessee Williams.

The 6 shorts include The Municipal Abattoir, Mr. Paradise, Hello From Bertha, The Fat Man’s Wife, The Pink Bedroom, and Talk to Me Like the Rain and Let Me Listen...

Until recently four of these plays (The Municipal Abattoir, Mr. Paradise, The Fat Man’s Wife, and The Pink Bedroom), were never-before-published. Written decades ago, only within the past 10 years have they made their debut in production.

Around 1950 Tennessee Williams wrote to Elia Kazan, “I don’t write with the effervescence that I used to. It comes harder. The peak of my virtuosity was in the one-act plays, some of which are like fire-crackers in a rope. Some of that came from sexual repression and loneliness which don’t exist anymore for very good reasons, and some of it came from plain youth and freshness.”

Where:
The Red Room
85 East 4th Street
Between 2nd & 3rd Avenue (Bowery)
Third Floor, No Wheelchair Access
Tickets: $20

(source)

LookBetween

Do you know what I love most about Look3? It, very much like my beloved Doo-Nanny, started in someone's backyard. Look3 returns to Charlottesville in 2011 with guest curators Scott Thode and Kathy Ryan. In the meantime, they had a small gathering called LookBetween this past June:

LOOKbetween at Deep Rock Farm from Andrew Owen on Vimeo.

CONGRATS!!

I'm excited to see 3 very cool southern (yep, i'm including TX in this one) projects selected for 2010 Black Rock Arts Foundation Grants!! (Full disclosure: I won a Black Rock Arts Grant in 2005 for my public art/restorative justice project, ArtCarTraz). Needless to say, BRAF funds some cool stuff and I'm happy they are here!

Community Art Makers

David Umlas, Marrilee Ratcliffe - Austin, TX

photo by Ira Weinschel

'Community Art Makers' are Austin, Texas based community leaders offering work and meeting space, guidance and assistance to artists endeavoring to engage our community. Former notable projects have inclulded recently showcasing the 32 foot tall fire tornado from the BRC 'Fire of Fires' Temple for a public audience of thousands, and the fist public burn night on NYE, 2009 of the Resolution Clock in the center of Austin, Texas for 100,000 people. Attached photo by Ira Weinschel.

BRAF's infrastructure investment will allow the Community Art Makers to build upon current resources and offer more structured, resources and work space for artists. Their upcoming projects are focused on artist empowerment and community building. Some of these projects for 2010 include partnerships with the City of Austin Library, Parks and Art in Public Places Departments, 'Art Outside' and 'First Night' pieces that showcase interactivity to a public audience and hands on classes and training for trained and aspiring artists.

The Music Box

The New Orleans Airlift, featuring Swoon - New Orleans, LA

The Music Box will be an interactive environment built from the remains of an 18th century derelict cottage in New Orleans. This imaginatively reconstructed, and ultimately livable “house”, will become a musical instrument to be played by visitors. Instrumentation will range from the rudimentary banging of wooden boards to more elaborate sounds mechanically triggered by opening doors or pulling levers. In addition to visitors, a range of local and national musicians, including a regional high school marching band, will be invited to play the house for the project’s Block Party series, which will be free and open to all.

The installation will visually resemble works Swoon is best known for – a series of intricate handmade boats that have floated the Mississippi, the Hudson river and most recently the Adriatic Sea and the canals of Venice, Italy during the 2009 Biennale. As with these floating crafts, the focus for The Music Box is on found materials, artistic and community collaboration, functional environments and interaction that involves sound and performance.

The New Orleans Airlift is a multi-disciplinary arts organization that produces and facilitates innovative artistic opportunities for New Orleans-based artists locally and around the globe. Bringing influential artists like Swoon from abroad to participate in cutting edge collaborations with local artists at home in our own community increases exposure, amplifies resources and aids the creative development of our city’s unique and irreplaceable creative community that still struggles for sustainability in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.

The Music Box is the first incarnation of what will become a permanent performance, exhibition and residency space for he New Orleans Airlift.

Reclaimed Art: Community Art from Recycled Materials

Wayne Andrews - Oxford, MS

The Yoknapatawpha Arts Council, working with students from the University of Mississippi Student Art Association and volunteers from the community, will host a series of community art days. The purpose of the community art days is to reclaim materials from a 1928 building, transform them into works of art, and utilize the work of art to create a focal point around the building the materials where removed which is be renovated into a community arts center.

“We are excited that we have been able to reach several community goals with this project”, shared Wayne Andrews, Director of the Arts Council. “ The project will provide a demonstration of how art can impact a community both by providing beauty and economic development. The art, artists and volunteers will transform an industrial building into a community center with the “undesirable & unwanted” elements repurposed into a piece of community art.”

SCREEN: Honkytonk Man tonight (7/14)

Tonight at Lincoln Center (as part of their Clint Eastwood retrospective):

In the middle of the Depression, alcoholic country singer Red Stovall (Clint Eastwood) moves in with his sister's family on their western farm. Red's young nephew, Whit (played by Clint's son, Kyle Eastwood), becomes his dissolute uncle's protector, accompanying him to Nashville for a Grand Ole Opry audition. Joining the duo on their trouble-fraught journey are Whit's grandpa (John McIntire) and another aspiring singer, Marlene (Alexa Kenin). (source)

YUM!!!

Another amazing adventure from the fab folks that brought us PieLab and BikeLab:

Pecans! is a business started by PieLab* in Greensboro, AL in conjunction with the YouthBuild* program. It was made possible by the Design Ignites Change Grant given by Worldstudio and Adobe Youth Voices. Its goal is to teach local youth to create a profitable business using a plentiful local resource, pecans. Designers at PieLab have helped the students acquire the skills they need to formulate a business plan, develop their pecan products, brand and market their products, and successfully sell them to delighted customers in Hale County and around the country. (source)

Proceeds go to the YouthBuild Scholarship Fund.

*PieLab is a pie shop and community space that was started by a group of graphic designers in conjunction with HERO, Hale Empowerment Revitalization Organization.
*YouthBuild is a national program for high school drop outs that helps them earn their GED and learn job skills while serving their communities.

SONG: The Blind Boys of Alabama 7/12, 14, 16 @ Lincoln Center

The Blind Boys of Alabama curate, host, and perform in three distinct programs developed specially for Festival audiences. Each night features a different musical journey with special artists from many walks of life, joining The Blind Boys in a celebration of what it means to perform music, in any genre, that is not only entertaining but moving. These concerts are inspired in part by the group's latest collaborative release Duets, which showcases the band's unique ability to blend with a wide variety of musical styles and artists. (source)

Head here for more info on what each night has to offer.

BOOK: Mary Karr @ 192 Books tonight (7/12)

Texan Mary Karr celebrates the paperback release of her 2009 bestseller Lit tonight with a reading at 192 Books at 7PM.

From 192: Please join us in celebrating the paperback release of Lit, named one of the “10 Best Books of 2009” by The New York Times. In Lit, the long-awaited sequel to he bestselling memoirs The Liars’ Club and Cherry, Mary Karr chronicles her descent into the inferno of alcoholism and madness, and her astonishing resurrection. A recollection of her struggle to come to terms with her Christian faith after years as an agnostic that explores the relationship between spirituality and substance abuse and depression, Lit is also about getting drunk and getting sober; becoming a mother by letting go of a mother; and learning to write by learning to live.

Memphis Beat

I haven't had a chance to check out the new Memphis Beat TV show on TNT yet but i did find this way cool interactive map of Memphis on the show's website!

SONG: Steve Earl & Allison Moorer - City Winery residency

Steve Earle and Allison Moorer will play a Summer residency this July and August at City Winery. The four-week run will see the couple join forces for a special series of shows, and will feature a roster of invited guest and friends. July 8, 15, 29 and August 5.
(source)

ART: Hipsters, Hustlers and Handball Players

At the Metropolitan Museum of Art thru Oct 17, a retrospective of photos by famed street photographer (and West VA native) Leon Levinstein (d. 1988). From the Met:

Leon Levinstein (American, 1910–1988), an unheralded master of street photography, is best known for his candid and unsentimental black-and-white figure studies made in New York City neighborhoods from Times Square and the Lower East Side to Coney Island. This exhibition, drawn exclusively from the Metropolitan's collection, will feature some forty photographs that reflect the artist's fearless approach to the medium. Levinstein's graphic virtuosity—seen in raw, expressive gestures and seemingly monumental bodies—is balanced by his unusual compassion for his offbeat subjects from the demimonde.

Born in West Virginia in 1910, Levinstein moved to New York in 1946 and spent the next thirty-five years obsessively photographing strangers on the streets of his adopted home. (source) <---click there to read more

SWING: New Orleans Moonshiners NYC Debut!

Tuesday, July 6, 2010 at 6:30

Dance Lesson at 6:30, Live Music at 7:30

“They are the type of group that takes away any worry about the future of traditional jazz in the city that created it.” — AllAboutJazz.com

The jaunty swing of N'awlins has become so iconic that even those who've never visited the Crescent City can get wistful about what it has to offer. Fittingly, the New Orleans Moonshiners are a septet you won't soon forget once you've danced to their bouncy, reverent music. It's the sound and spirit of Louis Armstrong shot through with the subtlest contemporary harmonies, just one reason that the Moonshiners are poised to develop a national following with their first show beyond their Louisiana home base.

Traditional Jazz, Swing
Lesson: Paolo Pasta Lanna teaches Lindy Hop and Charleston
DJ: Tomo Tanaka

Damrosch Park
62nd Street between Columbus and Amsterdam

source

Happy 4th of July!

Almost makes me want to sew for real!

From Alabama Chanin: DIYAmerican Flag Quilt Kit - Make your own Flag Quilt from 2 layers of 100% Organic Cotton. Follow technique instructions from the Alabama Stitch Book and Alabama Studio Style. Kit comes cut, painted and ready to sew with all materials. Finished size: 103" X 62"

STAGE: Another Part of the Forest

Now thru July 11 (yes, it's been extended!) at The Theatre at St. Clement's:

ANOTHER PART OF THE FOREST

The first New York City revival in decades!

The shocking, rarely-seen “prequel” to The Little Foxes, Another Part of the Forest depicts the early days of the notorious Hubbard family. There’s the father, Marcus, the most-hated man in town; his emotionally crippled wife, Lavinia, who has secrets of her own; their wayward daughter, Regina, and two resentful sons. The eldest son, Benjamin, uncovers a long-buried secret. Threatening to reveal it, he attempts to blackmail his father into signing over the family fortune or face an angry lynch mob. (source)

ART: Paul Chan - Waiting For Godot in New Orleans Talk tonight @ MOMA

In November 2007 in New Orleans, artist Paul Chan worked with New York's Classical Theatre of Harlem and the public arts group Creative Time to present five free site-specific performances of Samuel Beckett's play Waiting for Godot in two neighborhoods destroyed by Hurricane Katrina. But the project involved much more than the play. In this program Chan—whose work will be on view in the upcoming reinstallation of MoMA's Contemporary Galleries (June 2010–Summer 2011)—and some of his key collaborators discuss the project and all the different components that made it possible. Participants include Robert Lynn Green, New Orleans resident and "neighborhood ambassador" for the Godot project; Greta Gladney, Executive Director of The Renaissance Project, a nonprofit organization dedicated to improving the quality of life in New Orleans; and Christopher McElroen, Co-founder of the Classical Theatre of Harlem. The program is moderated by Kathy Halbreich, Associate Director, MoMA. (source)

Tonight - Wednesday, June 30, 2010, 6:30 p.m.

SCREEN: The Killer Inside Me

First posted about here, The Killer Inside Me is back in NYC and showing @ The IFC Center until July 1.

Adapting pulp master Jim Thompson’s novel, Winterbottom turns his masterful hand to neo-noir with the story of handsome, charming, unassuming West Texas deputy Lou Ford (a stunning Casey Affleck). Lou has a bunch of problems. Woman problems. Law enforcement problems. An ever-growing pile of murder victims—and the secret that he’s a sadist, a psychopath and a killer. Suspicion begins to fall on Lou, and it’s only a matter of time before his alibis start to unravel. But in this savage, bleak, blacker-than-noir universe nothing is ever what it seems. With Kate Hudson, Jessica Alba, Bill Pullman, Elias Koteas and Ned Beatty. (source)

Abita's SOS Beer!

LOVE LOVE LOVE!

From Abita: This Abita brew is a message in a bottle...a distress signal for the troubled waters of our Gulf Coast. For every bottle sold Abita will donate 75¢ to the rescue and restoration of the environment, industry and individuals fighting to survive this disastrous oil spill.

Drink up y'all!

STAGE: Can you Hear Their Voices

From Theatermania: Before the New Deal's Works Progress Administration and the Federal Theatre Project, there was Can You Hear Their Voices? (A Play of Our Time) written by Hallie Flanagan and Margaret Ellen Clifford. The play, based on the true story of a 1931 Arkansas drought, revealed a rural world of hunger and privation that was horribly neglected by government bureaucracy. With today's frequent and casual use of labels like "Communist" and "Socialist," Peculiar Works Project mines this landmark agitprop play to uncover how such words were interpreted in an earlier--yet remarkably similar--era. The news media constantly reminds us how our current economic situation is the worst "since the Great Depression;" Voices shines a spotlight on the root causes for radical political movements then and now.

Closes 6/27

SCREEN: Smokes & Ears tonight @ Water Taxi Beach LIC

Smokes & Ears

SMOKES & EARS from Joe York on Vimeo.

by Joe York. See the story of the Big Apple Inn in Jackson, Mississippi. Known as "Big John's" by its faithful customers, the Big Apple Inn's defining duo of pig ear sandwiches and hot smoked sausage sandwiches (known as "smokes") has kept folks coming back again and again for over 70 years, and counting. The film is made in recognition of 2009 Ruth Fertel Keeper of the Flame Award Winner Geno Lee. (from Southern Foodways Alliance)

Showing tonight at the Food Film Festival @ Water Taxi Beach in LIC (which is, of course, sold out).

Pride! A Deeper Love vs. Mississippi Goddam!

photo: advocate.com

FROM NY DAILY NEWS:

Who needs prom court when you’ve got the gay pride parade?

A lesbian Mississippi teen barred from attending her prom because she is gay and hoped to bring a female date has been named a grand marshal of New York City’s June 27 pride parade, organizers announced.

Constance McMillen, 18, gained national attention after she was barred from attending prom at her Fulton, Miss. high school with her longtime girlfriend.

The American Civil Liberties Union sued the school district on her behalf after school officials said she could attend the dance with a male date, or alone.

A federal judge ruled that the school had violated McMillen’s First Amendment rights.

She received a $30,000 scholarship from “The Ellen DeGeneres Show” after the talk show host said she admired McMillen for standing up for herself against her school district’s prom policy.

SONG: James Cotton @ Lincoln Center 6/24

Blues Summit: James Cotton & Friends

Thu, Jun 24, 8:00pm - Rose Theater

Blues are the true facts of life expressed in words and song,” according to the late great blues icon Willie Dixon. Find out for yourself what the blues are all about in this special concert showcasing the greatest living blues harmonica master, James Cotton, and an all-star line-up of contemporary giants including the 96-year-old legend Pinetop Perkins and the always innovative Taj Mahal. In two distinct sets, one electric and the other unplugged, Cotton will be joined by reigning blues diva Shemekia Copeland, guitarist and Howlin’ Wolf alumnus Hubert Sumlin, plus Willie “Big Eyes” Smith, Darrell Nulisch, David Maxwell, and others. (source)

GEORGIA PLACES IN PERIL: Call for Noms!

DUE MONDAY 6/28:

Georgia’s Places in Peril 2011
Do you know of a special irreplaceable historic building or site that is highly threatened by demolition, neglect, inappropriate development or other threats? If so, this is your opportunity to help save it. The Georgia Trust’s Places in Peril program seeks to identify and preserve historic sites threatened by demolition, neglect, lack of maintenance, inappropriate development or other threats. The 2011 Places in Peril list will be announced in October 2010.

Visit: Georgia Trust

STAGE: Sister Myotis's Bible Camp

Now thru July 4:

DOROTHY STRELSIN THEATRE

Sister Myotis’s Bible Camp

Being the head deaconess of an 80,000 member mega-church is not without its challenges. The faithful flocks need tending and the faithless… well, let's just say there's hope. Sister Myotis, Ima Lone, and Velma Needlemeyer will be in attendance to host the annual Women's Church Retreat in hopes of giving backsliders, whoremongers, and the “chronically mediocre” a second chance at salvation. (source)