Should We Ask More of Our Arts Patrons?

Sunday’s New York Times had a lengthy article about supporting the Arts: “Arts Patrons, The Next Gerneration.”

Kathryn Shattuck wrote an informative article about the philanthropic legacy of arts-supporting families. She wrote of the 20-30 year olds who are “not merely passing through, writing a check and dressing up for a night in order to rub the right sholders.” She wrote about their assuming positions on arts Boards, chairing fundraisers and managing their family’s donations to the arts through their foundations.

I applaud these young men and women and praise their parents for encouraging such involvement, dedication and philanthropy to the arts. BUT — let me assume the voice of an invited graduation speaker, challenging the audience to capture their dreams and discover themselves.

Their parents may have bought tables to the Museum Ball, be subscribers to the Symphony, donated to the Opera and chaired numerous fundraisers, but these young people have to do more! THEY HAVE TO CHALLENGE AND ALLOW THEMSELVES TO ACTUALLY BE THE ARTISTS THEY SUPPORT!

They have to give themselves permission to follow incredibly stimulating and rewarding, although possibly not lucrative, paths. They have to convince their parents that an artist’s life is commendable. They have to train, study and explore their potential to actually be the poets, the painters, the musicians, dancers and actors they fund. Should we and can we ask more of our arts patrons?

DIY: Yes We Can!

Cooke County Master Gardner Melitta Taylor at North Haven Gardens’ Basic Canning Class.

Yes we can can, and it’s easier than I thought! This past weekend as part of their Salsa Sunday celebration, North Haven Gardens presented a Basics of Canning class that was helpful and informative for a beginning gardener and canner, such as myself. Cooke County Master Gardener Melitta Taylor, led the demonstration. She educated us about the nutritional and economic benefits of canning. With a little bit of patience, and a modest investment for a few supplies, canning is a great way to enjoy summer fruits and vegetables all year round. As part of the celebration, North Haven Gardens held a salsa recipe contest. Participants brought their best salsa recipes and got creative! There was an Asian salsa with peanut butter, an Italian salsa with olives and basil, and even a couple of entries with fresh mint. Three recipes were chosen, and they are delicious! Trust me, as one of the judges I know. Check the North Haven Gardens website this Wednesday for the winning recipes. It’s not too late to start that salsa garden, and perfecting your recipe for next year’s event. North Haven Gardens offers free classes every weekend for the beginning to advanced gardeners. Click here for a schedule of classes and events.

Next Up: Paint-your-own-pottery at Purple Glaze!
Why not get a head start on those Christmas presents? This weekend I’m headed to Purple Glaze. a paint-your-own-ceramics studio in Dallas to escape the heat and start on that dog bowl I’ve been promising my special pooch.
See you there!

Casting Strong as Santa Fe Moves to ‘Figaro’

Casting was definitely a strong point in the Santa Fe Opera’s opening weekend. A well sung and strongly acted Falstaff was followed on Saturday night by an equally effective Marriage of Figaro. The weekend was dedicated to outgoing general director Richard Gaddes. This salute was quite a compliment and a memorable part of his legacy.

As usual, Mozart and his collaborator, Lorenzo da Ponte, created a set of well delineated characters in The Marriage of Figaro. The text and the music accentuate their individuality, and this was further enhanced by the fine voices and theatrical sense of Saturday night’s cast. There wasn’t a one who didn’t seem to fit the part.

Luca Pisaroni (Figaro) and Mariusz Kwiecien (Count Almaviva) were a well-matched pair of antagonists, each singing powerfully and projecting his strengths: the Count a commanding figure and Figaro a worthy opponent with his intelligence and not-entirely-subdued revolutionary sense. [Read more →]

WALL-E is Outta’ This World!!

It is rare for me to be so captivated by a movie that I forget what I’m actually watching is a Disney flick. Nothing against Disney, but thank God for Pixar! Many of my most cherished movies are Pixar creations. Not that extraordinary unless you consider the fact that I am a 40 year old single male with no children. It is the ability of Pixar to make movies with such a universal appeal that I find extraordinary.

Almost immediately, WALL-E wins you over with an endearing charm you wouldn’t expect from a robot. But watching his inquisitive curiosity is like watching a child discovering his world.

He tugs at your heart with his nurturing, maternal-like devotion to the wellbeing of EVE for whom he experiences love at first cyber-sight. EVE, which is an acronym for Extraterrestrial Vegetation Evaluator, has been programmed to search the universe for evidence of plant life. At first, she plays hard to get before her programming unexpectedly puts her systems into hibernation mode.

The dynamics shift once she gets a glimpse of the chivalrous protection and care WALL-E exhibits during her extended sleep.

Ultimately, the two embark on galactic adventure that pulls you to the edge of your processor seat in this unconventional binary love story.

There are also moments for parents and adult movie-goers that clearly give tribute to other movies such as 2001: A Space Odyssey, Close Encounters of the Third Kind and even One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.

WALL-E is well worth seeing. However, you are cautioned to watch this movie at your own risk. Please make note of the following disclaimer.

WARNING: WALL-E may infect you with a virus that activates your tear ducts, overloads your laugh sensors and warms your heart-drive.

Santa Fe Season Opens With Witty ‘Falstaff’

That endearing old rogue Falstaff blustered his way through opening night of the Santa Fe Opera’s season Friday. Led by a baritone who seemed born for the part (that is, if anyone could be born Falstaff), the cast gave a lively and witty performance of Verdi’s final opera.

The star of the show was decisively French baritone Laurent Naouri, who will be singing Falstaff through July 11; afterward Anthony Michaels-Moore will take the part. Through costuming, makeup and acting wizardry, Naouri was transformed into the fat, balding, dissolute old knight (I’ve been told that this is far from the real Naouri. If you met him on the street afterward, you wouldn’t recognize him). Naouri has a virile and polished baritone voice and works well in the ensemble cast. Outrageously vain and supremely self-confident despite his setbacks, he stays a winner (of sorts) to the end.

With the exception of the Fenton of Norman Reinhardt, who was vocally a little below the level of the rest (though he was believable enough as a handsome young lover), this was a top-notch cast who sang well and worked beautifully as a collaborative ensemble. [Read more →]

DIY with Paper Nerds

Paper Nerds Tish Brewer (middle) and Shannon Driscoll Phillips (right)  help Jackie Chaiken (left) as she pieces together her Jacob’s ladder Structure.

Guest blogger Lydia Regalado is an arts educator and blogger who writes for Art&Seek about people who gather to make things.

“It’s all in the wrist!” That was one of the many things I learned from the Paper Nerds last weekend at their Jacob’s Ladder Workshop. Paper Nerds Tish Brewer and Shannon Driscol Phillips own and operate The Center for Art Conservation here in Dallas, and Paper Works are workshops that they offer for those who love the paper arts (a.k.a. Paper Nerds).

This 3-hour workshop focused on the processes and techniques used to create a Jacob’s ladder book. This multi-paneled structure can appear to be a simple accordion book, or with the flick of a wrist turns into a flip-flopping slide show of colorful images. Once the mechanics of our model were mastered, the ideas on how to best use this structure poured in. What a great way to commemorate your summer vacation, or in my case, summer stay-cation! Since our model used 12 images, the Jacob’s ladder book is a great way to display baby’s first year, or a new couple’s first year together. The good news is, the possibilities are endless and I know what to do with all of the pretty paper scraps I’ve been saving.

Paper Nerds offers workshops monthly, and their next one is Japanese Book Binding, click here for details.

Next-up: Salsa Sunday!
Stop by North Haven Gardens this Sunday for their Salsa Sunday festival. Learn the basics of canning at 11 am with Melita Taylor, Master Gardener. Then at 1:30 pm, Dallas Country Master Gardener Tom Wilten will tell us how to get the most successful harvest of tomatoes and peppers. Oh, and don’t forget to sample some prize winning salsas! This is a free event.
See you there!

Famous Giant Not by Goya

El Coloso, the famous painting of a naked giant striding past a caravan of terrified people — supposedly an allegory of the brutal Napoleonic war in Spain — is not by Francesco de Goya, a Prado museum specialist says. After some 20 years of study, the Prado’s senior Goya specialist determined the painting was by one of his pupils — presenting a problem for the Madrid museum, where the painting has held pride of place and where a blockbuster Goya retrospective opened in April

Extra Bonus Art Smarts

Edgar Degas, Yellow Dancers … Vincent van Gogh, Self-Portrait

Images courtesy of the Art Institute of Chicago

Invited guests and members of the press who attended today’s preview of the Kimbell Art Museum’s Impressionist exhibition, opening Sunday, were rewarded with a remarkable tour. Malcolm Warner, acting director of the Kimbell, led the group past the 92 works on loan from the Art Institute of Chicago’s outstanding collection of 19th-century French paintings. The AIC is working on its new Modern Wing — designed by Renzo Piano and set to open in 2009 — which is a chief reason the Chicago museum let the largest group of Impressionist paintings it has ever loaned come to the Kimbell.

But what made the tour a delight was the presence of Richard Brettell among our group — and Warner’s gracious request that Dr. Brettell contribute any comments he’d like to. It wasn’t planned, Warner insisted, but he’d have been foolish to let the opportunity pass. Brettell is the McDermott Distinguished Professor of Art and Aesthetics at the University of Texas at Dallas and, of course, the former director of the Dallas Museum of Art. But not only is he a leading authority on French painting from this period, once upon a time he was the Searle Curator of European Painting — at the Art Institute of Chicago. He lived with these paintings for years.

Brettell has done this before for the Kimbell — he co-curated (and gave the press tour for) 2005’s Gauguin and Impressionism exhibition. Informal, learned and able to convey his own excitement over these works, Brettell would seemingly pop up with the amusing anecdote, the revealing detail — how, for instance, the room in van Gogh’s 1889 painting, The Bedroom, was Gauguin’s room when they lived together. Or how it was the museum that bought Gustave Caillebotte’s butcher-shop still-life (one of only seven museum purchases among the 92) instead of one of the Chicago philanthropists who endowed the AIC with such riches. Slaughtered cattle — an image that anticipates Francis Bacon’s work — is not an image that collectors would love, Brettell said. It’s a great painting but it’s a curator’s painting.

The Kimbell should just have him do the audio tours.

Malcolm Warner in front of Gustave Caillebotte’s street scene

Student, Faculty Discounts to See Wynton Marsalis

Young jazz lovers take note: Malcolm Mayhew from Bass Performance Hall sends word that students and faculty with ID can get 25 percent discounts on tickets to the July 14th performance of Wynton Marsalis and Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra. Call 817.212.4280 or order online.

You’re from Where?

Never much liked Dallas, the TV show. Not because of any sense that it was a false representation of the city. It was just a primetime soap about the oil rich and not to my taste, even as a camp in-joke. I watched one of the first episodes (barely) and never sat through another.

So naturally, my utter obliviousness to the show became a major conversational hindrance in, of all places, England. I spent the summer there, just after J.R. was shot (when I flew over, I wasn’t even aware of the season-ending cliffhanger). Once they learned where I lived, nearly every Brit I met — from Oxford dons to an elderly couple in Wales who picked me up in their ancient Mini while I was hitchhiking — peppered me with questions about the show, any speculations about the shooter, inside scoop on the actors and did I live near any of the “real” locales. In the end, the Brits often ended up explaining the show’s plot lines to me, the Dallasite.

Now, in what must seem a bit of horrendous timing (have they seen the price of oil lately? Or the president’s approval rating?), the Bob Bullock Texas State History Museum in Austin has decided to re-consider/extol/wax nostalgic over the Ewings with the exhibition, “Dallas: Power and Passion on Primetime TV,” through Sept. 1. According to Jordan Breal in Texas Monthly – who argues mightily, by the way, for the TV show’s shimmering historical and political significance and our need to “re-claim” it — the museum exhibition is only “semi-tongue-in-cheek.”