Archive for the ‘People’ Category
Art as Ritual – An Interview With Megan LaBonte
“This is what rituals are for. We do spiritual ceremonies as human beings in order to create a safe resting place for our most complicated feelings of joy or trauma, so that we don’t have to haul those feelings around with us forever, weighing us down. We all need such places of ritual safekeeping. And I do believe that if your culture or tradition doesn’t have the specific ritual you are craving, then you are absolutely permitted to make up a ceremony of your own devising, fixing your own broken-down emotional systems with all the do-it-yourself resourcefulness of a generous plumber/poet.”
― Elizabeth Gilbert, Eat, Pray, Love
Everyday Magic
Many people swear by certain rituals to their art, certain music they have to listen to in order to create, certain times of day they have to work, or even certain shoes they have to wear. Some artists, however, know the mere act of art itself as a kind of ritual; a way for each of us to rent the fabric of the ordinary and transform our everyday life.
Since the dawn of humankind, art has served to heighten the experience of everything it touches from our most holy rituals to our most mundane of tasks. From the ancient shamanistic cave paintings on the walls of our ancestral homes, intended to inject magical visages to prehistoric gatherings, to the war paint of celtic tribes to the ceremonial feathers adorning Native American warriors, art has been used for countless centuries to transform the world – to bridge the gap between the physical realm and the realm of ideas
Holidays are the best place to look for the ways the ritual of art transforms our world. Christmas finds us adorning sprawling living room totems in hopes of a joyful season. Without the baubles and decorations, the cards and wreaths hung from our walls each December, Christmas would lose much of it’s essence. Art as ritual creates the season. Halloween allows us to escape even ourselves for one night, by literally transforming ourselves with masks and garments which normally exist only in our individual or collected imaginations in the form of costumed heroes and villains from myth, legend, and more modern media.
Through The Looking Glass
One local artist has been exploring these very themes all her life. Megan LaBonte – who many Valley residents may already know as, “The Hoola-Hoop Girl,” a moniker Ms LaBonte picked up in the early aughts for her public impromptu Hoola-Hoop parties on the steps of the First Congressional on Main, has spent the last decade exploring the boundaries between art and life, most notably with her installation pieces placed in Northampton shop windows in which she turned blank white mainline heads into exquisitely detailed fantastical faces. This last year however, Ms LaBonte took the plunge, emerging her world in an everyday ritual to produce images of worlds which exist right on top of our own.
The 366 Program asks artist to take a picture of themselves every day for a year (in this case a leap year hence the 366). This seemingly simple task has blossomed into a treasure trove of opportunities for Ms LaBonte to explore reoccurring themes such as nature and the woods, femininity and sexuality to name just a few. Each day she uses her camera to become a kind of portal, allowing her each day a moment to transcend the every day. One day may find her transformed with brightly colored scales rippling across her face, while another a satyr deep in a green wood complete with horns and elven ears.
In the following podcast interview with Megan LaBonte, I discuss her ongoing 366 project, her past work and touch on some of the ideas discussed above.
Megan LaBonte-interview by Skytemple
View more of Ms LaBonte’s work at her online gallery here.
Local Designer Scout Cuomo Talks Etsy, Self Promotion and Taking Chances
Brave New Art World
The artist’s life is uncertain to say the least. The artist, by nature, operates in a world removed of the practical restrictions of the everyday. The painter chooses the color pallet with which to paint their sunset, free -if they choose- of the restrictions of what others see. Many people use art as an escape – a way to get away from the practical problems that sometimes seem insurmountable. Art allows us to imagine impossible ways to do just that. The artist is bound only by their imagination.
But selling art is a different beast. The ups and down of the public’s whim and fancy often dictate what design or painting sells from week to week. Making money sculpting or painting whatever one fancies does not often pay the bills. In the past, the artist might look to a gallery owner or private patron to fund their art. Much of Western culture’s finest early art was paid for by private donors for private courses. Painting of kings and family of royalty or commissions from the church. But much of the artist’s work, including often the style itself, was dictated by these patrons.
Today however, in a kind of ultimate democratization – just as sovereignty is now each citizen’s responsibility, so is, patronage. And the modern incarnation of democratized patronage is the internet. Now the artist is their own sales team, their own reviewer, their own accountant, their own banker. The artist is freed from the restrictions of suits interfering with ‘pure art’ but they are also forced to take into their own hands the mechanisms of the marketplace which many purists in the past have considered vulgar.
I recently had the opportunity to sit down with local designer and artist, Scout Cuomo. Scout has been running an Etsy shop for a number of years from her apartment. Etsy allows her to sell her art work and design goods in a free environment online, while still providing technical support and a platform for advertising. Ultimately, however, everything in her store is hers. And, beside the minimal transaction fees, the money never has to go through a third party vendor.
Etsy shops have become a very popular way for people to sell everything from homemade pottery to hand knitted mittens to prom dresses to fine art.
In the following interview, held at the Haymarket, I spoke with Scout about the difficulties of balancing the artist with the business person.
Scout Cuomo on Her Art, Self Promotion and more. by Skytemple
VISIT SCOUT’S ETSY STORE TO PURCHASE ANY OF THESE ITEMS OR BROWSE LOTS MORE HERE
Dan Cashman’s Video Velveeda
Video Velveeda, Found Media and Privacy in Art
Recently, as part of their weekly midnight movie showing, Pleasant Street Theater screened a unique film produced by Valley artist, Dan Cashman. The movie, entitled, Video Velveeda, features Cashman himself as well as highlights from more than thousands of hours of found VHS footage. Footage which Cashman collects and repurposes. Thousands of hours worth of old VHS footage which Cashman finds everywhere from Video Liquidation sales to Tag Sales and more recently, YouTube.
Dan Cashman’s Video Velveeda by Skytemple
And watch the trailer for Video Velveeda HERE
Austin Stowell in Dolphin Tale
Austin Stowell helps a boy save a dolphin with the aid of prosthetic’s doctor.
Stowell, originally from Berlin, Connecticut has known he wanted to pursue a professional acting career ever since his high school days in Austin.
It was during his years at Berlin High he met and formed a strong relationship with Skytemple’s CEO, Curtiss Hayden. Stowell went on to graduate Berlin High School in 2003 and was accepted to the University of Connecticut where he pursued his love for acting in more depth, participating in many productions including, Julius Caesar, and It Can’t Happen Here. Currently, Stowell is well known through his acting on the ABC Family show, The Secret Life of the American Teenager. In his new movie, Dolphin Tail, Stowell finds himself playing oposite veteran actors such as Harry Connick Jr, Ashley Judd and Morgan Freeman. It is an exciting and robust new role for Stowell who plays a disabled war veteran in the film.
The movie itself is based on a true story concerning a young boy named Sawyer who finds an injured dolphin washed up on shore. His dogged pursuit of helping the dolphin, who eventually loses it’s tail (providing the obligatory family film titular pun), leads him to one Professor Cameron McCarthy, played by Morgan Freeman, who’s work had been, up to that point, concerning human prosthetics.
As only a young boy with no money trying to save an aquatic animal in a family film could, Sawyer convinces the doctor who then convinces a prosthetics manufacturer to help his dolphin at no cost. At first the Dolphin rejects the tail, smashing repeated rebuilds until a new padding for the sock holding the tail to the dolphin is developed using a gel like material. A material that is now currently used to attach prosthetic limbs. The film itself has a wonderful message about determination and thinking outside the box and is at heart an incredible true tory of technology helping nature. Dolphin Tale is currently playing in theaters and in some places in 3D.
Michael Roud’s First Short Film
Friend of Skytemple Michael Roud is at it again!
Having premiered his first short film at various film festivals, he’s quickly becoming one of those few to successfully migrate from photography to directing and producing film. We’re rooting for you Michael!
