Models Die Young is a blog about indie, dub, punk, afro-punk new wave, any music that captures my ear, It's about culture, writing, poetry, modern art, the soul, the mind, or whatever happens to come to mind of least or must importance. It may change it's make up from time to time to reflect my brain's electrical, whatever...
Now for a little shameless self-promotion. Come see the show! Come see the show! Walkers Point Center for the Arts is opening its members show Friday, June 5 and my art will be on the walls. I got a peek at some of the other submissions and I think the exhibit is going to be extremly varied. Here's a look at some of my work.
Another night of MAM After Dark has come and gone. It’s the Milwaukee Art Museum’s way of getting people to come to museum under false pretenses. I suspect they don’t really care if you like the food or the entertainment so long as you see the art. The food and entertainment are the bate. That’s fine with me. The night featured old school hip-hop. True Skool brought the breakdancers and graffiti art. The movie “Beat Street” played in the Lubar Auditorium, and by DJ Tarik Moody of 88Nine Radio Milwaukee brought the music.
The crowd was large and energetic although there were moments when I sensed the event needed a little more direction. People needed to be told what to do, instructed on how to party. I spotted quite a few wall flowers standing around or sitting on the floor. And being that I’d already scene at lot of the art on display I quickly ran out of ways to occupy myself between breakdance sessions.
One display I had not seen was a group of portraits called Class Pictures taken of high school students from around the country by photographer Dawoud Bey. He’s been a photographer for over thirty years and a professor of photography at Columbia College Chicago since 1998. The purpose of the project in Bey’s own words is “to create a compelling and significant contemporary portrait of American youth in its various social and human dimensions.”
Each extra large, color portrait is accompanied by a description of the subject written by the subject. We see the image of the tall, handsome teenage boy, with steely eyes and read that he is really a mama’s boy and misses his family. We see the “pretty girl” who speaks for languages. Bey creates, by including the teens own statements about themselves an opportunity to view and understand the individual; and possibly relate through the memory of what it was like to be a teenager full of plans and expectations, but lacking life experience.
I just wish Bey could have gotten more of the teens to let their guard down physically. Except for a few they all appeared to me as angry teenagers at first glance, which of course they weren’t. Bey seemed to mainly capture a hardness, and standoffish air teens tend to carry in their body language. And of course what’s missing is the teens who aren’t in school, the drop outs and the runaways. The show runs to July 12, 2009. Examples of Bey’s other works can be found at his web site www.dawoudbey.net.
So I finally got up off my ass to go out on a Saturday night and hear some local music. I want to see and hear what Milwaukee really has to offer. For years I been putting it off and for years I’ve heard the complaints that Milwaukeeans don’t support the local music scene.
Thanks to 88nine Radio Milwaukee I’ve heard more and more local bands get air time. Which is a good start. The results are mixed. Some of the groups are headed in the right direction. Some need to end their suffering now and just break up. But what I really want to experience is the live music.
My first night out in a long time I dragged my boyfriend across town with two options in mind, Code Breaker and Those XCleavers. We headed to the Stonefly Brewery first to check out Codebreaker. They’ve gotten respectable air time on 88nine with “Fire” and “Riviera On The Moon.“ Their music is a cool and breezy throw back to disco, laden with funk and danceable beats, so I was prepared to get up. The show was scheduled to start at 10pm. We got there at 10:30pm and the band was still sitting up. I had a feeling they’d get a late start as that seems to be the norm around here. But when you’re pushing forty and used to getting up and going to work five days a week going out on a Saturday night is a major operation. I don’t want to sit and wait for a band to start. So we got up and walked around the neighborhood to see what else was going on at the other bars.
We followed cool crowds of black clad twenty-somethings until they disappeared into nothingness. I wanted to cool like them and not care about were I was going or when I’d be home, because only the moment mattered. But it was 11pm and I was pissed and tired and still needed to justify being in a bad neighborhood late at night with a middle-aged white man who’s sweet, but not nearly tough. Only live music could justify me and there was none to be had.
We soon realized there was nothing to see but a couple of fully krausened drunks mumbling to themselves and made our way back to Stonefly. Code Breaker still wasn’t set up. I must admit my expectations were low for Code Breaker as I’d witnessed them walk off the stage mid-song once before when they suddenly decided the sound wasn‘t up to their standards.
As the night was wasting away and we still hadn’t had the chance to hear any live music we headed off to the ever crowded and lively Brady Street to the Up and Under Pub. Brady Street is like a cool dream and a nightmare. I drew energy from the crowds of younger women who remind me for myself when I was in my twenties running around in the middle of the night trying to get high, look good and searching for the secret something that only existed in clubs, beats and cigarettes smoke. The nightmare is driving in circles looking for a parking space, vaguely worrying about getting hit up for money by a homeless guy or mugged.
We were lucky enough to find a parking space after only ten minutes of driving in circles, strolled down to the spot only to find that Those XCleavershad cancelled. I have a vague memory of this band from the eighties. I was expecting to see a bunch of middle-aged punk rockers trying to make a come back. Maybe they were too tired to play. I did manage to dig up some very worn videos of “Confusion(Do The)” "Mondo Commando" and they sound better than they look.
I was fighting sleep, but didn’t want to give upon the night just yet, so we stopped in Rochambo for a game of Operation and a soda. We called somewhere round midnight. I will not give up. I want to see what the musicians and performers of this city have to offer.
During the last few weeks there has been a lot of talk about the near debacle of yet another public art project here in Milwaukee To make a long story short the project created by artist, Janet Zweig nearly fell apart due mainly to lack of communication and follow through. Who’s at fault? The arts community for not knowing about the project and supporting it? Members of the Milwaukee Common Council for not educating themselves about the artist? The artist for not showing up to explain her work to the Common Council before they made their finale vote on the project? All of the above? In the end the project survived. But that’s not what I really want to write about.
All of the debate, anger, and threats of defecating on lawns surrounding the project has got me thinking about the state of Milwaukee’s cultural scene and how that scene is tied to the over all health of the city. Most of the blogs, posts and meetings I’ve come across or attended lament the weak state of the arts in Milwaukee. Galleries open and close before anyone knows they exist. Funding for art is hard to come by and artists struggle to make a living from their art.
Then I think about the state of the city itself and wonder if the art world complainers see what I see. The poverty and segregation here are legendary. The high school drop out rate is hovering at 50%. The unemployment rate for black men is at or pushing 50%. Many of the city’s neighborhoods have not seen development in decades, and are quickly becoming slums. Milwaukee’s people are hanging on by a thread in many cases. So when the arts community comes together to plead for more funding for public art, I’m not so much against it as I’m worried they’re not seeing the big picture.
In a city with a largely black and Hispanic population that doesn’t go downtown except to shop at the mall, is it really worth it to install public art downtown if most of the people from these groups never see it? The Zweig project has been in development since the 1990’s. How many projects does the city have in the works to bring jobs to the inner city? I can’t see the black unemployed caring about the controversy over the bronze Fonz, when they’ve never heard of it and have no way to get to it. I feel more anger and concern about the lack of resources people need to survive then about a tacky statue of a character on TV.
I’m a poet and a painter so I can’t be labeled as biased against art. I care a great deal about the decline of writing poetry as a serious endeavor. I’ve struggled and am still struggling with trying to justify writing poetry when it is so isolated from the rest of American culture. What I’ve found more often then not is art is not part of everyday life. It’s being squeezed out of the “real” world. Those who try to bring the two together struggle for attention and support. I know what it’s like to not get the attention deserved for the efforts put forth to promote or produce art. But artists and galley owners can often come across as elitist without intending to, because the art community often takes for granted that everyone else is on the same page. The voices discussing art and it’s importance and what constitutes legitimate art are mostly white, middle class, educated and don’t live in the inner city. They don’t see the ugliness of poverty every time they walk out their doors. They don’t generally have to deal with law enforcement, low wage jobs, or W-2. Art, if it is going to be part of peoples’ lives and communities needs to reflect them. Art has to be of value to the majority not just the elite. Otherwise it can’t expect much support from the majority, which it needs to survive.
It’s a lot to ask artists who may not even be able to relate to someone outside of their world to reach out to those who don’t have easy access to art, but it’s happening in small ways. Just as we need those pot holes filled in and MPS fixed we need to build on the arts. We need art and jobs and decent affordable housing. The arts community needs to care about more then just getting funding for itself if it expects support from the wider world. Maybe the days of producing art for art’s sake are over. That was a dream world I certainly never saw.
If you ever wonder what goes into the creative process check out Art Babble, and see a preview of the next season of art:21 art in the twenty first century. I believe this is the only series on TV that gets behind the process of makng art, taking the viewer from inspiration, creation, to the instilation process. Some of the contemporay artists to be featured are Mary Heilmann, William Kentridge, and Yinka Shonibare
Things seem to be falling apart around me. Or at least that’s what the talking heads on cable would have me believe. I don’t want to write about the state of the economy or whether Obama is a socialist, or soon to be mass murderer as some other blogs would have me believe. I am not looking for an angle or bold head line. The problems this country faces are far too complex to summarize in one emotional, brain dead rant. Our civilization is in flux. It may be dying. We in the West may have to go back to living on less of everything and that may be a good thing for us and the planet. If the United States economy is based on consumerism and credit surely it can’t help but fall apart when consumers run out of money. And surely the world doesn’t have enough oil for two billion people in India and China to live the life style of the average American. So why are so many people shocked to find the economic system we live under is falling apart? I pray individuals will start to realize they need to change their lives before leaders have to tell them. When leaders start to be forced to face the truth it will be too late. Millions die so we can have cell phones and oil. Millions die for no reason at all. All we can do is watch Britney Spears shave her head.
Posts
