Congratulations to Matt Harvey of Addison, the winner of the Flickr Photo of the Week contest! Matt’s a multiple winner of our contest; his last victory came in April. He follows last week’s winner, Jesse Scroggins.

If you would like to participate in the Flickr Photo of the Week contest, all you need to do is upload your photo to our Flickr group page. It’s fine to submit a photo you took earlier than the current week, but we are hoping that the contest will inspire you to go out and shoot something fantastic this week to share with Art&Seek users. If the picture you take involves a facet of the arts, even better. The contest week will run from Monday to Sunday, and the Art&Seek staff will pick a winner on Monday afternoon. We’ll notify the winner through FlickrMail (so be sure to check those inboxes) and ask you to fill out a short survey to tell us a little more about yourself and the photo you took. We’ll post the winners’ photo on Wednesday.

And now, here’s more from Matt:

Title of photo: Spanish Moss
Equipment used: Canon 60D w/Sigma lens
Tell us more about your photo: Recently, my wife remarked that she’d never been to Caddo Lake but wanted to visit, having heard of its primordial environment. Since my family lives in Tyler, we took advantage of a weekend trip to East Texas to visit them to take a day trip over to the lake. This was one that I particularly liked.

The great Mexican writer Carlos Fuentes died yesterday. The author of The Old Gringo and The Death of Artemio Cruz, among many other novels and stories, is being remembered around the internet today. To those memories, we thought we’d add this 1992 interview Fuentes sat for with Lee Cullum for KERA’s Conversations series.

Vigorous and animated, Fuentes talks about growing up in Washington D.C., connecting with his Mexican roots in a movie theater, realizing how that identity alienated him from his classmates in the U.S., and falling for the Spanish language.  He also touches on Mexico’s culture of Catholicism and obsession with death, and the role of myth and dreams in his work. Enjoy!

Afternoon Delight is a daily diversion for when you’re just back from lunch, but not quite ready to get back to work. Check back weekdays at 1 p.m. for another one.

As a tribute to Adam Yauch, a trio of tykes remakes the best music video ever made.

ONE lucky winner of this week’s Big Deal will receive a pair of tickets to see Kristen Chenoweth perform at the Winspear Opera House on May 24. Only Art&Seek e-newsletter subscribers are eligible. To sign up, just click here.

Don’t forget to enter our other Big Deals this week: Click here for a chance to see Lysistrata at the Bass Performance Hall, and click here for chance to win tickets to our very own KXT’s Summer Cut Happy Funtime Fest!

Enter below for tickets to see Kristen Chenoweth.

Presented by Fort Worth Opera, a reinvented version of  Lysistrata, composed by Mark Adamo, takes the stage at the Bass Performance Hall.

Here’s how the Opera describes the plot:  Something old is new again in Mark Adamo’s racy, light-hearted take on a classic Greek comedy. The men of Sparta and Athens have been at war for ages, and the women have had enough. Lysia, sung by DFW favorite Ava Pine, can’t convince her lover Nico to leave the Athenian army. In fact, he interrupts their romantic evening to heed the battle call. So she rallies the women of both cities in a “make love, not war” campaign that means no “love” until the men put down their arms. Of course, the truce can’t last—and Ares and Aphrodite themselves must intervene.

Four lucky winners of this week’s Big Deal will receive a pair of tickets to see the 2 p.m. performance of Lysistrata on June 3. You must be an Art&Seek e-newsletter subscriber to win. Sign up right here.

And make sure to look at our other Big Deals for the week: Click here for a chance to see Kristen Chenoweth at AT&T Performing Arts Center, and click here to win tickets to our very own KXT’s Summer Cut Happy Funtime Fest!

Enter below for Lysistrata.

So we may be a little bit biased, but this is something you really don’t want to miss. KXT’s Summer Cut: The Happy Funtime Fest is a one-day music and arts festival featuring awesome bands such as The Flaming Lips, St. Vincent, Fitz and The Tantrums, Clap Your Hands Say Yeah,  Telegraph Canyon, Smile Smile, Air Review, and more! We’ll also have a plethora of arts vendors and booths that you can enjoy in between sets.

We’re giving away tickets to KXT’s Summer Cut: The Happy Funtime Fest on June 1 at the Gexa Energy Pavillion. You must be an Art&Seek e-newsletter subscriber to win. Sign up right here.

Also, check out our other Big Deals for the week: Click here for tickets to see Lysistrata at the Bass Performance Hall, and click here for a chance to see Kristen Chenoweth at AT&T PAC.

Enter below for Summer Cut:

IT’S GETTING DRAFTY UP HERE: Late Monday night, the Richardson City Council unanimously approved plans to build an Alamo Drafthouse at Belt Line and Central Expressway. That’s big news for movie fans as the Austin-based Drafthouse is known for expertly curated repertory programming in addition to the usual first-run films. And Tuesday, Bill DiGaetano, who owns the franchise writes for North Texas, told dallasnews.com, “We think we’re going to be able to open four to six in the Metroplex.”

LAS COLINAS COMPLEX UPDATE: Over the weekend, Irving voters elected two members to the city council who oppose the proposed Las Colinas Entertainment complex. And after a June runoff, the council could shift to a majority of members who oppose the deal. But that doesn’t mean the deal is dead. Las Colinas Group, who is developing the project, now says it can raise more money to pay for its part, lessening the burden on the city. All the details are over at dallasnews.com.

Then Goldberger takes Johnson to school:

Why, in heaven’s name, should they have to? The Nasher was there first, it didn’t create the problem, and it is suffering from it. When there were far less serious amounts of glare coming from Frank Gehry’s Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles, the hall quickly took responsibility and made adjustments to its façade. The source of a nuisance—whether noise, or falling debris, or glare—is normally where responsibility for fixing the problem lies, not with the victim. Replacing 42 stories of glass with something less reflective, or covering the present glass with some kind of sun baffle to block the reflections, wouldn’t be cheap. But aren’t builders and their architects and engineers supposed to know the properties of a material before they use it?

Let’s face it,  your children just don’t have the same appreciation for movies as you and I did when we were kids.  I’m referring, of course, to those of you born before DVRs, DVDs, VCRs and video on demand.  Rose was shocked to learn that if we wanted to see a film made especially for kids we had to actually wait for one to come to the theaters. We couldn’t just be-bop down to Premier Video or the Redbox in front of Kroger when we had a hankerin’ for a flick.  Movies for kids on TV were few and far between, too. The only one we could count on for sure was The Wizard of Oz every spring. Ah, but when we finally did get to see that re-release of Cinderella in the theater it really was a magical sensory experience. There was the smell of popcorn (actually popping in a popcorn machine), the feel of the big, floppy, plush seats on our bare legs and the wonderful scary, exciting feeling of being in a pitch-black theater before the film began.  Sure, Cinderella is a classic, but to us in our heightened moviegoing state, it was breathtaking.

Here are a couple of picks that will help you recapture a little bit of the moviegoing magic. The first is at Studio Movie Grill. Yes, there are posher, cooler places to catch a flick, but what I love about SMG is its cozy, fun atmosphere and attention to quirky kid’s fare. Case in point: this weekend’s screening of The Beatles’, Yellow Submarine. To be perfectly blunt, your kids just won’t get it if you watch it at home, but in a dark theater with everyone singing, “We all live in a yellow submarine! Yellow submarine! Yellow submarine!” they’ll likely remember it forever.

Pile the gang in the car and head to the Brazos Drive-In this weekend.

If you really want to make a splash of the moviegoing experience, you absolutely MUST go to the Brazos Drive-In in Granbury. Granbury is a cute, little town about 45 minutes southwest of Fort Worth. You can make a day (and night of it) exploring the town square and the city beach and then head over to the Brazos about dusk. When we were there last spring, everyone came in by the carload – at $20 a car, the more you can pack in the better – and set the lawn chairs up or hung out on the tailgates. The funky little concessions building has screen doors that slap shut like your grandma’s house and a porch with metal lawn chairs where you can relax and enjoy the good weather.  But here’s the best part: Brazos makes its popcorn fresh in a real old-fashion popcorn machine. The smell of it wafting through the night air beats the pants off  movie night at the multiplex.

Therese Powell is an Art&Seek calendar coordinator and KERA-TV producer.  She spends most of her free time seeking out adventures for her 7-year-old daughter, Rose.  Tell us about your time at the movies or clue us in to your ideas for quirky kid adventures by leaving a comment. Or e-mail Therese at tpowell@kera.org.

• Dallas Morning News review (pay wall)

• Front Row review

• Theater Jones review

• Pegasus News review

• KERA radio review:

• Expanded online review:

[‘Know Your Enemy’ starts, continues under]

That’s from the cast album of American Idiot, which as a rock musical, is more or less the Hair of 2004. Green Day’s original album sold 14 million copies. It took on the familiar topics of teenage anger and desire, sex and drugs – but also, like Hair, young Americans going to war. With Green Day’s pop-punk sound (and a live band onstage), the musical reproduces the band’s sound remarkably faithfully. As a result, the show packs more roaring power than any rock musical since Tommy.

Michael Mayer, who directed Spring Awakening, had the idea of staging the album, co-writing the book with Green Day lyricist and lead singer Billy Joe Armstrong, adding songs and characters to flesh out the story. Mayer seems to have learned two things from his dark, assaultive staging of Spring Awakening. 1) Relentless, twitchy agitation is effective at conveying both rock ‘n’ roll energy and teen angst. Here, choreographer Steven Hoggett doesn’t match Bill T. Jones’ slamming, trailblazing dances in Spring, but the ensemble in Idiot seems to have been fed nothing but energy drinks. They’re pulling a remarkable, non-stop workout here, all leaps, kicks, punches and rolls.

2) One of the weaknesses with the Broadway and touring versions of Spring Awakening was that the show had been built for off-Broadway, tight and intimate. It didn’t have the visual scale for a Broadway stage (even with all the strutting and jump-kicks, it felt swallowed up in the Winspear). In comparison, it’s clear Green Day was built for the big houses. Mayer unleashes a torrent of video and lighting fireworks all across Christine Jones’ jungle-gym, fire-escape-and-scaffolding set. Vast banks of flickering TV screens may be a cliché image of our frantic, empty, media-saturated lives, but designers Darrel Maloney and Kevin Adams keep American Idiot blazing visually. They do stuff with those projections and screens you probably haven’t seen before: A snowfall of what looks like sheets of paper is particularly evocative, recalling the ashes falling from the Twin Towers. And there is a beautiful aerial ballet as well.

But like most rock musicals that started life as albums – like Tommy or Jesus Christ Superstar or Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat – American Idiot is horribly weak when it comes to character detail or storyline. Rather like Spring Awakening (or Hair, for that matter), it basically follows three buddies (and, ultimately, three couples) as they try to escape their lame existences and confront adulthood. Tunny joins the army, Will stays home with a pregnant girlfriend. And our every-punk Johnny — our “Jesus of Suburbia” — tries to become a rockstar by moving to the big city. He finds love and a heroin habit, instead.

If your memories of the story in Joseph or Jesus are more vivid than such an outline, there’s a good reason: You probably knew most of the plot beforehand (thanks, Bible!). Unless you know American Idiot’s songs from the album (which seems to be the case with a significant, younger portion of the audience), I suspect you’re not going to suss out much more than this. Things remain open-ended and blurry. Who, for instance, is St. Jimmy, the drug pusher, who hooks Johnny and his girlfriend, Whatsername? He’s clearly meant to be the ‘bad demon’ personification of mohawked glamor, success and city life, but beyond that …?

It doesn’t help that, onstage, the singers’ voices are often overpowered by the band, but then, most of the songs have already been turned into powerful, bellowed choruses. It also doesn’t help that Armstrong’s lyrics are often spittingly vehement but also elusive. Armstrong tends to write non-linear, metaphoric shout-outs (“Know Your Enemy”). They convey a free-floating attitude of scorn, defiance, admiration or angry loserdom, followed soon by regret or youthful self-pity (“Before the Lobotomy”). Little of this is rooted in direct cause-and-effect connections. They’re more like exhortations (“I Don’t Care”) or cutting observations on the passing scene (“City of the Damned”) than character portraits or character expressions — characters other than Johnny.

It’s typical, for instance, that at first, the female roles are mostly just idealized romantic projections of the males or they’re bummers for the guys (like Heather, played by Leslie McDonel — she’s the one who gets pregnant). When Johnny falls for Whatshername, performer Gabrielle McClinton (above, center, the only one in a skirt, naturally) is sexy-striking enough to provide a reason for his moonstruck response, except — who is she? What does she do? What is she — except beautiful?

Well, she’s a rebel, she’s the symbol of resistance and she’s holding on my heart like a hand grenade — all of which is a terrific song lyric but it doesn’t actually say much about her as a character. OK, then, let’s try another song: She’s like a hurricane in the heart of the devastation, she’s a natural disaster, she’s the last of the American girls. All of which is yet another way of saying, “She’s cool.” Or “Gosh, I really, really love her.”

So this is still just horny, lovestruck Johnny talking. When do we get to hear Whatsername express herself? We never really do; she doesn’t exist much as a separate human being. One of the strongest female contributions (lyric-wise) in American Idiot comes in “21 Guns” — and all the lines that are sung by the Extraordinary Girl (Nicci Claspell), Whatsername and Heather are unanswered questions (“Do you know what’s worth fighting for/When it’s not worth dying for?”)

As Johnny, Van Hughes is a boyish charmer, Scott Campbell is poignant as the wounded Tunny and Joshua Kobak makes for a  strutting, charismatic, full-tilt drug pusher. They may not make these types particularly deep or etched, but their performances are vivid and appealing.

In the end, American Idiot plays out much like Joseph: It’s more  a pageant than a full-fledged musical, a supercharged pageant, to be sure,  but it has little more than big, broad, emotional gestures, moment to moment: Get excited about being young in the city, feel empathy for the wounded vet. We’d be hard-pressed to say precisely what Mayer and Armstrong want to convey beyond, as one song says, “The innocent can never last.” [‘Wake Me When September Ends’ starts and continues under.]

Which, beneath its period anti-war fervor and tribal stylings, is pretty much what Hair had to say, too.

Congratulations again to Misti Boe for winning April’s Art&Seek Flickr Photo of the Month for her photo, Revival, which was featured as the Photo of the Week on April 25.

In case you missed it, Art&Seek has started a new Flickr Photo of the Month contest to honor our readers’ and listeners’ favorite Photo of the Week winners. The person who submits the best photo of each month will get a free Art&Seek T-shirt and be announced on the air on KERA-FM.

At the end of the year, Flickr Photo of the Month winners will be recognized with other 2012 winners at a special event, where we will celebrate the artwork and announce the Flickr Photo of the Year!

To vote on the Photo of the Month, just become a fan of our Facebook page and vote by liking your photo of choice.

Want to submit a photo for consideration? Join our Flickr group. Or just browse the more than 8,000 gorgeous pix that members have submitted from around North Texas.

Afternoon Delight is a daily diversion for when you’re just back from lunch, but not quite ready to get back to work. Check back weekdays at 1 p.m. for another one.

And now, the true story of how Toy Story 2 was almost completely deleted while in production at Pixar.

Here, Solvent member Spencer Brown-Pearn shares some thoughts on the nature of collaboration.  You can follow the artists’ work as it happens at ro2 here in this live stream. And here are some previous posts on Art&Seek from participating artist

For me, and I assume many other artists, creating art is a very personal act. We force ourselves to dig deep and find topics worth discussing. We meditate on these topics, spend hours building theories and creating worlds around them, writing statements, making sketches. Eventually, we produce artifacts of this introversion and we turn around and display our innermost selves to the public. If that’s not scarring enough, we collaborate with other artists.

In order for true collaboration to succeed, a relationship needs to be developed between the artists involved; you can’t simply paint on this after I’ve drawn on that. Discussion must unfold, ideas must be shared, battles must be fought, and wounds must heal as two (or three, or ten, or thirty) artists who may have never met, open themselves to one another, share their deepest secrets, give a little here and let others take a little there. It’s a painful process – forcing yourself to see your work from another perspective, to step back from introversion and consider how an entirely different universe than your own can coexist in the same space and time – but in the end you learn something, you appreciate someone, you create something.

Working Title celebrates this. By bringing ten artists into a space and asking them to build on top of the work of the ten artists before them, who built on top of ten more, we are developing a lot of relationships. With limited space, works are inevitably repurposed, altered and occasionally covered up entirely. The first reaction is to recoil, to defend your creations from this outside force, but once you realize the temporality of the the project itself and the inevitability that your specific, individual contribution will be lost, you recognize that something greater might be occurring than a typical chance to display your work. A dialogue is developing, discussions are taking place, and, hopefully, a community is expanding.

And as we mentioned last week, Art&Seek is sponsoring a special vendor village chock full of handmade goodies from local artisans, such as Banner Theory, MegMorgan, Dowdy Studio, folksie, Eco Armoire, OneEyeOpen and others.  And what’s a fest without food trucks these days? They’ll be on hand too.

Will you? Sure hope so.

Enter below to win a pair of  reserved seats to the show.  We’ll pick two winners and notify them tomorrow.

UPDATE: Sorry we have our winners but don’t worry. You can still have a chance to win by checking out the Big Deals this week.

Seventeen Hundred Seeds will host a picnic on Saturday at 6:30 p.m. to introduce the temporary land-art project featuring 1.6 acres of wildflowers at 715 W. Davis. The project is a collaboration between Dallas artist Robert Hamilton and Dallas curator Cynthia Mulcahy. There are plenty of details on the Art&Seek calendar.

So far, the forecast looks clear. Might be a good idea to get outside before the heat hits. More info from the press release after the jump.

Seventeen Hundred Seeds Press Release:

The public art project Seventeen Hundred Seeds, a collaboration between Robert Hamilton and Cynthia Mulcahy,
is a temporary site-specific land art project in an empty 1.6 acre lot in the heart of South Dallas.

It all began on a late Friday afternoon in March with the debris-clearing and mowing of a large, empty field
in preparation for a second day of tractor-tilling and prepping of the soil for planting. Finally, in advance
of an obliging Texas rainstorm, over seventeen hundred seeds were individually planted by an eight-member crew
in a uniform grid pattern. The seeds, all Aztec Gold sunflowers, will grow to heights of five to seven feet
with ample eleven-inch flower heads by mid-May.

Located in the busy heart of Oak Cliff off a well-traveled car and pedestrian street, the public art project
has been on view since field preparation began March 15th, offering up a daily tableau of the farmer’s life
of land tilling and seed planting, weeding and watering, and finally harvesting and sharing.

The activity in the empty lot, a form of artistic intervention or farming as street theater, has drawn many
area neighbors, passersby, and local business folk curious about what’s going on in their community. “You don’t
often see a tractor tilling soil in the city,” the very first visitor declared. Others have shared their knowledge
of the history of the land, even family photographs, or memories of flower gardens in their native Mexico. With
our farm crew in the field, laughs and stories have been swapped over as many tacos and beer during weeks of crop
cultivation. All are part of the process.

Seventeen Hundred Seeds remains on view to humans, insects and animals through the month of June and is free and
open to the public. www.mulcahymodern.com

Seventeen Hundred Seeds is generously underwritten by Courtney Rainwater. Land provided by Rick Garza, Bishop/Davis LLC.
Water provided by Juan Pablo Segura of Familia Auto Sales. Farming consulation provided by Mulcahy Farms. Graphic
Design by Lily Smith-Kirkley. Planting blueprint by landscape designer Kelley Murry.

Installation/Maintenance Crew
Juan Cano
Chanito
Efren Gutierrez
Robert Hamilton
Cynthia Mulcahy
Courtney Rainwater
Jose Tinajero
Jose Villa

More information, images and all updates, including weather, posted here:

http://www.mulcahymodern.com/Pages/aboutus.aspx

Facebook invite: http://www.facebook.com/events/343688815697856/

A Dallas conceptual artist presented a piece last weekend that was part performance art, part endurance test. For 48 hours, Erica Felicella sat in a see-through box on display to the world yet alone with her thoughts. We checked in on Felicella throughout the weekend for this report:

KERA Radio story:

Expanded online version:

On Friday afternoon, Felicella gave her support staff some last minute instructions before she would climb into an acrylic box about the size of a refrigerator for two solid days. Five p.m. Friday until 5 p.m. Sunday.

Six chairs circled the lawn behind the Kessler Theater in Oak Cliff, waiting for her round-the-clock handlers. A video camera would soon stream the event to the Internet.

If Felicella was nervous, she didn’t show it.

FELICELLA: “What time is it guys? 4:59? I’m gonna start the stream…”

The hardest part of the performance may have been preparing for it. Felicella’s a social smoker and a major coffee drinker but gave them both up in the last month. She camped in her backyard to get used to being outside. And least fun of all, she had a catheter inserted.

Friday night, she endured a thunderstorm, drunk concertgoers tapping on her box and feelings of wanting to quit. But she focused her mind on a writing project. Over and over she wrote a single sentence on a sheet of paper, crumpled it up and threw it on the ground.

By Saturday night, the lower third of the box was full of the white, yellow and blue pages.

And passers by wondered what it was all about.

ROB SHEARER: “So is it prison? Is she in prison? I think it’s interesting to think about”

MAUREEN SHEARER: “Or are we?”

ROB SHEARER: “Or are we? Who’s the warden and who’s the prisoner?”

Rob Shearer and his mother batted the point back and forth around 9 o’clock Saturday night. He jogged by that morning and encouraged his family to check it out.

SHEARER: “I think what Erica is doing and what she’s trying to experience is beautiful and interesting and confusing. I don’t know that I understand, but it’s interesting to watch.”

He wasn’t the only one.

BARRY BINDER: “We’re trying to figure out whether or not it’s anything meaningful. It may not be. But it’s keeping us here, so that must mean something.”

That’s Barry Binder. He and Tracie Dockwell stood Saturday night discussing the project with Erika Ellis and David Oliver. They had only just met at a convenience store across the street. They all had their own theories about what it all meant, and it was enough to keep them there drinking beer and talking. For three hours.

BARRY BINDER: “Whether it’s meaningful or not … there’s something that’s happening in the middle of the neighborhood that’s drawing people to a spot to interact with each other.”

ERIKA ELLIS “And then discussing whether or not that’s the point of the whole exhibit in itself – is just drawing people together and then seeing what people do when they’re drawn to a spot. … This kind of strange experiment, whatever it might have been, drew us from across the street, and we’ve never met them before.”

So what was it all about? Felicella said she wanted to spend two days thinking and feeling with nothing to distract her. The sentence she wrote more than 1500 times?

“To see myself, I went inside my own shell.”

She hoped to inspire people to spend some time processing their own thoughts and feelings.

But that’s the thing about performance art. Meaning is usually discovered when the artist and audience intersect.

At 4:30 on Sunday afternoon, 25 people gathered to witness the end of the performance. In the next half hour, that number tripled.

At exactly 5 o’clock, two of Felicella’s minders approached, drill in hand, to free the artist from the box and the mound of crumpled paper at her feet. Applause erupted.

For someone who had just survived two days in a cramped space on a liquid diet and a few short catnaps, Felicella seemed impossibly energetic.

Friends hugged her and gave her flowers. And an impromptu news conference broke out. People wanted answers to their questions.

FELICELLA: “The thing that I want to take away from this the most is what a rockin’ community we have. I didn’t acknowledge you, but I saw everybody that was here and their families and kids and a crowd that doesn’t normally come out to galleries. They were all here through the whole project. I cried … the whole weekend. I haven’t slept, so I’m going to be really emotional… (laughs from crowd).”

What began as an exercise in thought and reflection evolved into a greater appreciation of what’s around all the time. For 48 hours, she may have been isolated.

But she was never alone.

TALKING ‘TOSCA’: This year’s Fort Worth Opera Festival is in full swing, with two classics and a pair of contemporary works. One of the classics is Puccini’s Tosca, which is receiving mostly positive reviews. “This particular production offers everything a lover of traditional opera could want,” Wayne Lee Gay writes in his Front Row review, giving special props to the sets and costumes. “Soprano Carter Scott is a powerful singer and a compelling actress in the title role, her rich voice reverberating through the hall and her handsome presence commanding the stage the way a diva should,” Martha Heimberg writes on theaterjones.com. The only negative review I could find comes from Olin Chism, who calls the show, “disappointingly inconsistent, with powerful dramatic scenes only partially compensating for vocal shortcomings,” in his dfw.com review. The next performance is Sunday.

QUOTABLE: ”I believe things of great lasting beauty know their owners. I’ve always been grateful that there are two things that can never be destroyed: great beauty and great memories. I may be parting with things, but I still see them forever in my home as they are.”

- Van Cliburn, ahead of an auction of furniture and silver pieces in his collection, in an interview with startelegram.com.

Afternoon Delight is a daily diversion for when you’re just back from lunch, but not quite ready to get back to work. Check back weekdays at 1 p.m. for another one.

You listen to him Sunday nights from 8-10. Now get to know the man behind the mic.

Here, Solvent member Jason Parry shares some thoughts on what the group is up to.  You can follow the artists’ work a s it happens at ro2 here in this live stream. And here are some previous posts on Art&Seek from participating artists.

During the interview scene of Godard’s Breathless, the articulate romancier Parvulesco claims that his greatest ambition in life is “to become immortal…and then die.” Coming from a serious man of letters, none ought doubt the sincerity of this remark. For this truly is the oath of the spiritual tightrope walker: the one who, desirous of both the heights and the trenches, attunes his senses to time’s rippled surface. After all, any artist of some stature has—at some quixotic point—risked eternal fame in the face of certain death.

This point, this elusive tragicomic moment, comes at the culmination of a lifelong sharpening of the intellect. Just as a telescope requires focus to discern celestial spheres, a process of attunement prepares the seeker for a first glimpse of promethean flames.

But could such a process be formalized? Could such a sacred bridge be built?

The credulity of such a question betrays ignorance of the ancient Orphic rites, the workshops of Titian and Tintoretto and the ashrams of India. But such is the damage done by the prevailing attitude towards the creative life. Chance, mystery, and a stubborn flabbiness have flourished in the study of the arts as if pursued there from the clear-sighted realm of science. One does not court inspiration, as the contemporary mood would suggest,by catching the zeitgeist by the hem of its garment. Rather, by study and searching, one discovers how to tame it.

Such an undertaking requires solidarity. Not, however, as the good Marxists might suggest, a one as might be found in the hollow claims of class identity. This task requires solidarity of place.

Take, for example, the recent work of the Dallas-based art group Solvent Collective (the exhibit Working Title, at Ro2 downtown, is entering its third week): on the day of its last opening on May 19th,  30 artists from the Dallas area (arranged in three ‘generations’) will have contributed to the evolutionary installation. It would be more accurate, given this peculiar configuration, to consider the exhibit as a single event unfolding across space and time.

Stretching the visual arts into the traditional domain of music and literature is not without precedent. Set designers have been experimenting for centuries with the narrative capacity of space-making, and it would not be too far amiss to suggest that Working Title has something distinctly theatrical about it.

Artists have always made for great characters, and their lives have inspired innumerable chronicles; but it is the story arc generated by the very conditions of Working Title which transforms it into drama. Site specificity, perhaps more important to the stage than any other aesthetic experience, reaches similar levels in this project. The very moment in which a visitor crosses the threshold initiates one more participant intothe rising action. Likewise, every addition from each artist adds new subplots to the emerging metanarrative.

The benefits of such a practice are the same as those of any live performance. The performer quickly develops tools of improvisation, and also, establishes in his or her work an aura of preciousness. This is because each artwork created in the space is fated to be different, in one way or another, form any before or since. Time itself, and the uniqueness of place conspire to make it so.

The fact that the artists’ every move is broadcast via a live stream makes the performative aspect all the more blatant. By privileging the act over the product, these artists re-situate the creative mindset, bringing the focus back to presence and the singular act of ‘being there’.

Tintoretto would be so proud.