THE ARTIST’S LIFE
The Book Isn’t Dead, But That May Be a Problem
by Adam Leipzig
Never chop down a tree in the forest before you know what it will sound like when it falls.
Millions of people, however, are clear-cutting forests with only this sound: Pages turning, no one reading.
It seems that everyone is writing books these days, and publishing them too. That may come as a great surprise if you, like so m More...
For the Labyrinth of Life, a Complex Theatre
by Guy Zimmerman
At UCLA LIVE the night after George Bush was re-elected president, 2004, I saw a production of Sarah Kane’s 4.48 Psychosis. It was really the perfect thing to see at that moment, partly because I was astonished at what had just happened. I think everybody in the audience felt a palpable sense that this was the right meditation to have at that More...
8 Ways to Treat Freelancers Well
by Chloe Veltman
What fealty does a freelance (arts) journalist owe to her media clients? What does an editor working from within a media organization owe a trusted freelancer?
The media industry is changing fast and these relationships desperately need to be re-thought.
It used to be that a freelancer was a hired gun with no real need for l More...
Toilet-Scrubbing Boomers?
by Diane Ragsdale | Jumper
In last week’s post, I asked whether the nonprofit art sector in the US constitutes ‘good work’ from the perspective of the artists and staffers working therein. The paragraph on ‘scrubbing toilets’ sparked quite a bit of attention and stimulated several comments on succession planning. While succession planning (or the lack of it) in the More...
On Letting Her Have It
by Chloe Veltman
It's been an interesting couple of weeks for impassioned feedback on pieces I've written about various arts events in the Bay Area. The variety of approaches and fury-levels prompts me to create a short list of the most over-the-top ways in which artists and arts organizations have exerted their will in recent times:
1. Leave More...
Evolving an Authentic Theatre
by John Steppling
Playwright John Steppling recently convened a gathering of Los Angeles theatre-makers for a discussion called The Uninvited: Crashing the Party, a conference to re-imagine the next 50 years of Los Angeles theatre. The party being "crashed" was Theatre Communication Group’s annual meeting of regional theatres, which was being held More...
Tristes Tropiques
by William Zinsser | The American Scholar
One day in the fall of 1956 my wife and I were waiting on a dock in Suva, the capital of Fiji, to board a flying boat to Tahiti. No other air service to that island paradise was then available; the seaplane that was to drop us in Tahiti wouldn’t come back for two weeks.
Among the waiting passengers I noticed a slight American man in his la More...
Father’s Day: Art, Technology and a Daughter’s Memory
by Ulli K. Ryder, Ph.D.
This is the 19th Father’s Day since my father’s death. Most people remember my father as a visual artist. Some also remember him as a jazz pianist. One professor and his wife at Brown University remember him as the neighbor who called the fire department in the middle of the night and saved their home (and the professor) from burning to More...
The World’s First Photograph
by John Bailey
He took his middle name from the ninth century Patriarch of Constantinople. He and his brother, Claude, invented the world’s first combustion engine, receiving a patent from Napoleon Bonaparte in July of 1807. A lunar crater is named after him. He was an independently wealthy farmer who raised a plebian crop of sugar beets. He coined the term v More...
Looking for Truth in the Mediated World
by Adam Leipzig
The movie moved us, so my wife Lori and I decided to drive to the ocean. It was a clear and early evening, traffic surprisingly light. Voices on the radio complained about the White House not releasing photos of bin Laden dead. They would have proved nothing, Lori reflected. Critics would claim they’re Photoshopped. T More...
