Midweek News, Temple Glass is 50, Black Like That, Nosebleed in print, Frances Beaver, Closer Together, Coronation Drag King, Heather Cox Richardson and more

Roberta: Hi everyone, it’s Roberta.

Ryan: And this is Ryan and this is the Midweek News

Roberta: On Artblog Radio. So well, it’s a good time to have a party. I’m glad you’re having a party because everybody needs something to look forward to and to celebrate at a time when we’re not all celebrating. In fact, we’re mourning for the most part.

Ryan: Yeah, I think there’s a lot of that mourning happening, but I think there’s a lot of reasons to celebrate. There’s a lot of reasons to be excited.

Roberta: I think so too. And I am seeing a lot of people, a lot of artists on my Instagram feed who are mourning, but they’re also very positive, saying, ‘I could give up, but I’m not going to; I could give up making art, but I’m not going to do that because I believe in art. And I like that — it’s such a positive rebound.

This negative thing that happened. We all have to acknowledge that it happened. It did happen. There’s no turning back, sadly. But there’s ways of dealing and how many days of mourning do you do and then you snap. I don’t know that you ever snap out of it, but you just change your orientation to something more nuanced and still positive.

Ryan: The irony is that if it was the other side, they would be denying it. Which is ironic, I find, and then…

Roberta: and fighting it too.

Ryan: And fighting it. Exactly. Sometimes I question whether or not there’s something to actually be learned from that perspective, but then, there’s so many people that I know who have gone through so much greater hardship than I have, especially in my last few years when I’ve experienced hardships. They’re the people that you actually say, ‘Come over to dinner and teach me your skills.’ Quite frankly, especially the Black women that I know. I’m like, ‘You have to come over and show me how you are handling this.’ In a society that, pick a demographic, Black women, traditionally, consistently here over years are the least represented, the least taken care of. The least valued the least powered again and again and again. And they’re like, ‘We’re not giving up.’ And they haven’t given up and they’re continuing to fight. I’m like, ‘Okay, then, you have to teach me your skills because I have a hangnail and now the world is over and I don’t know what to do with myself.’

So I have to have greater resiliency. And so it’s a skill that we all need to learn. There’s a really interesting documentary. You know, we don’t talk about Syria anymore for whatever reason, but Syria is still happening (war). And then I think about this documentary I saw called For Sama.

These are people who fall in love and get married and have children all while bombs are falling. It’s like, We can still live. We can still love, more importantly, and we can still fight for the things we want all simultaneously. We can hold…I feel like quoting the ‘we contain multitudes’ (Walt Whitman – I am large, I contain multitudes.) cliche, but we can contain these divergent feelings, complex things simultaneously.

Roberta: It helps to have community. I don’t think any one person can do it alone, but you know, the people who fall in love when the bombs are dropping, they have each other. And they probably have family members. Hopefully and that will boost them. So to do it on your own is really a harder thing. Black women, I think there’s a history of black women collectivizing, you know, quilting, sewing, church activities, school activities and families I and neighborhoods. I think these are the sorts of things that help people get through when they’re being downtrodden.

Ryan: I think so too. The arts and like you said, specifically crafts. What we think of crafts are really not just cathartic and helpful in those ways and helping us process, but the, the works are pieces that we hold for generations. You know, the rings, the rings on the tree. ‘Oh, remember when this happened?’ Or the drought or too wet, or fires, or…Quilts can, you know, or crafts and things of that nature can really be, for me, rings on the tree and experiencing generations past.

Roberta: That’s a nice way to put it. I like that. And they get passed on from generation to generation. If it’s something that can be passed on, not all crafts are going to make it. You think of the things that people buy. I was in Michael’s, the craft supply store, because I’m buying stuff for this workshop doing. I’m going to do a collage workshop. Michaels was packed with people, so many people looking for so many craft things to do. And this was just like on a Wednesday afternoon. It was after work hours, like five o’clock, six o’clock, and it was packed with people. They were shopping, they were buying. And not only in the yarn area for crocheting and all that, but all over the store. But a lot of that stuff is not going to last the test of time. You just look at it and see that it will not. That the materials are not really high crafting materials as much as they are populist crafting materials, they will work, but they’re not going to be archival so much. Yeah. I think so. But, I didn’t look on every shelf of every aisle to see and, and test that. But what I was looking for seemed to me to be Okay product. Not the best ever product, but Okay product. You would buy it. I bought it. But I do like your take on crafting and making. The tree rings. That’s good. Yeah. So should we get down to the news?

Ryan: Let’s get into it.

Roberta: Okay, so I had trouble this week. There are a lot of things I want to talk about, but I’m going to triage it.

First, I want to say things are happening at Tyler School of Art and Architecture at Temple University. Tyler is a big art school, nationally recognized. Their glass program is now 50 years old. They’re celebrating their 50th anniversary. So congratulations, all you glass guys. And the PR that I got says that when they started the program in 1974, there were not glass supplies, things to make fine glass pieces with, and the students and faculty, I’m quoting, “had to melt marbles and Pepsi bottles to get usable glass.” Isn’t that a great little factoid? And now they of course, have this state-of-the-art facility and their alumni have gone on to do great things. We at Artblog happen to love Kristen Neville Taylor, she’s a glass artist. There’s a podcast with her on Artblog and she’s been teaching at Tyler for a long time and very active in the eco-art realm, and Alexander Rosenberg, who of course was on the first season of Blown Away, I believe it was called the Competition, the Glass Competition on Netflix, and he’s now heading up the Glass program at Wheaton Arts in New Jersey. And there’s a podcast with Alexander too. 50 years of glass – congrats!

Also at Tyler, Black Like That is having a convening. We told you about Black Like That a while ago. It’s a Pew funded exhibition and project that involves black people telling their stories, telling historical stories, telling personal stories, and they’re having a day long convening on November 14th from 10:00 AM to 5:00 PM at the school, Tyler, which is 2001 North 13th Street. All kinds of people are going to be speaking, including the artists involved, which are Tiona Nekkia McClodden, and Karyn Olivier. Oh, Patrick. There’s a person named Pat Phillips, who is in this project but he’s not speaking at the convening. They’re also having Mike Africa, one of the Move people who survived the MOVE bombing tragedy. Eric Battle, who — and actually it occurs to me that we’ve done podcasting with a lot of these people. Eric Battle was the one who organized the BLAM book. Black Lives Always Mattered, which is a graphic novelization of important Philadelphia Black heroes and leaders. And Mark Thomas Gibson, who teaches at Tyler, he’s going to be there. There’s podcast with him. Fabulous artist. Makes very astute political commentary on his Instagram. Samantha Hill, who’s an artist who, Libby and I followed a long, long time ago. She did a personal sort of storytelling from growing up black. Very interesting. Karyn Olivier, we love Karyn Olivier. She teaches at Tyler. She’s done many good public art projects in Philadelphia. Definitely very interesting artist to to see speak. She’s a great speaker.

Christopher Rogers, Sinatra Smith and Risa Wilson. So anyway, I believe it’s free and they just would like you to register. We can put the registration link in the transcript.

Next, getting out of the Tyler School of Art, we have something from Artblog, Nosebleed made by Derick Jones, our wonderful artist, and his wonderful series of comics on Artblog. Nosebleed book 2 is now available. Book 2 is a compendium of every Nosebleed episode that is on Artblog in 2024. The book is available in a print form from Fantagraphics (Correction – publisher is Reptile House Comics) and also from his own Etsy site, and he’s got a long sleeved, really nice looking Nosebleed t-shirt. If you’re interested in that, we’ll put in links to that. (Ed note: Partner & Sons link for the book) So congratulations to Derick. We’re very proud that we have you on our site, and thank you for all your hard work. Great artist.

Then I’m on a mailing list for Frances Beaver. Frances Cordelia Beaver, who’s an artist, singer, performer, and writer, and barista who was involved, if I remember correctly, in the unionizations of one of the coffee shops in Philadelphia. I forget which one, if it was Elixir or what.  Anyway, union activist. Frances is playing at a place called Upstairs at Abyssinia, November 14th, that’s this week, 7 to 10:00 PM. It’s 21 and over $10 to $12 at the door, and this is what Frances said in their announcement. “Stuff is rough. I know these days I wake up with fear, but go to sleep with gratitude. Trying to stay aware, stay positive, holding it all at the same time. We’ll make it through this one too.” And I highly encourage you to look at Frances’s website. They have a visual diary that is drawings, beautiful little drawings, and writing, heartfelt writing. It’s diaristic, but it does have this art component to it that is lovely. And there’s a nice piece, an interview that Imani Roach did with Frances Beaver back in 2018. That’s on Artblog, so if you want more information, we’ll put that link in too.

Finally, and that’s going to be it for me. I’m going to cap it off with this and sorry to go over my three. I got a random piece from a Toronto-based duo, an architect, former architect, and an educator, arts educator who make art together. Their new piece is called Closer Together. And Coryn Kempster is the name of the former architect who’s part of this. And what they’ve done is, you know how the stadium arrangements in high schools have bleachers on one side of the field and on the other side are the other bleachers for the opposing team. Well, they brought the bleachers together so that you’re sitting knee to knee almost with your opposing side.

I don’t know exactly what happened exactly, what transpired among the people participating, metaphorical opponents brought closer together, but I thought that was a really nice visualization and participatory project about something that we all should think about very long and hard these days, about getting closer together with each other — even and maybe especially with those on the opposite side. Anyway, we’ll put a link in (soo above paragraph). It has some nice visuals that you can see of people sitting on the bleachers.

Ryan: That sounds really nice.

Roberta: Yeah, so go Toronto’s Coryn Kempster and Julia Jamrozik.

Ryan: Great. And we’ll put links into all that too.

Roberta: Anyway, that’s it for me.

Ryan: Okay.

Roberta: Ryan, what you got?

Ryan: So I have three that I want to shout out. Firstly, I want to shout out the Coronation an all Black Drag King show and art exhibit. I mentioned that before. And then I had an interview with Cyrus Stratton. So I’m really excited to get that up on Artblog and have you see, hear, and read the interview.

And the show is November 16th, doors are at 6:30, show’s at 7:30, but between the 6:30 and the 7:30 is the art gallery opening as well. So they’ll have all of their art exhibiting in their gallery space there. It’s going to be at Prism Arts, so that’s 10th and Hamilton. So it’s 1021 Hamilton. That’s in the Chinatown neighborhood, north Chinatown area. So take a look at that. That looks like a really great show. I think you will not be disappointed with how that turns out. (Ed. note: The show is sold out)

So this is obviously getting later into November, but this is second Thursday. So I wanted to shout out Automat’s show, curated by Kimi Pryor, it’s going to be really interesting, exciting. There are six artists that have work in the show. This Thursday will be the opening for that at Crane Arts. I think is well worth seeing. It’s called Becoming a Field. It’s about space and landscapes within us, within ourselves and each other. I think there is going to be some really interesting work in that show. And this is second Thursday, so there’s going to be a lot of things happening at Crane as well.

Roberta: I want to say that Jim Strong is in that show and there’s a really wonderful, very lengthy interview with Jim Strong that Lane Speidel did that we published recently. So, yeah, Jim Strong’s work is always worth a shout out and a look. So go take a look.

Ryan: Exactly. Yeah, he’s going to be in the show and there’s five other artists as well that are going to be all worth seeing.

Then I’d like to give you a theater pick and my pick this week is going to be Amsterdam. It’s going be at Neighborhood House, which is 20 North American Street. It’s four performers, and it looks to be a really interesting show. I’m not entirely sure the theme of it is, but it’s described as a thrilling and imaginative story. A mystery surrounding the possibilities of devastating origins, of a gas bill. So…

Roberta: of a what? Gas?

Ryan: A gas bill.

Roberta: Gas bill, like BILL, bill…

Ryan: Bill. Like an unpaid debt.

Roberta: Oh, an unpaid debt. Okay,

Ryan: So this is it. It’s set in 1944 with expat Israelis, so it’s going to have some of those (World War II/Nazi?) tie-ins as well.

So look for that. But it looks like an interesting show. Again, that’s Neighborhood House that’s running from November 15th to the 23rd, so it’s a fairly short run, and that looks to be a great show. Those events are available on ArtblogConnect…I also, speaking of theater, I also went to Moreno.

I was a little bit on the edge of whether or not I would be interested in seeing Moreno, and I went and I was really pleasantly surprised by the Interact performance. I can’t think of a show that has been quite as professional. Well done so smooth. The audio worked really well. The lights worked really well. The production was really solid. The acting was top-notch. So anyway, look for a forthcoming review of Moreno.

Roberta: Moreno, I don’t have a reference for that. But you were worried about going to see it?

Ryan: It is based on the Colin Kaepernick story. So I’m not a huge sports person. I don’t follow football a lot. He’s the person who took the knee during the national anthem as a political act.

Roberta: He’s from Milwaukee, so that’s my connection to Colin Kaepernick (San Francisco 49ers Quarterback when he took the knee during the national anthem to protest police brutality and in solidarity with Black Lives Matter.)

Ryan: Of course there is a Wisconsin connection.

Roberta: The world revolves around Wisconsin…Wisconsin radiates out its goodness.

Ryan: Anyway, the production was really great. It was a lot funnier than I expected because some of these you get, you are like, okay, I’m going to get preached at, it’s going to just be an ethical conundrum, or it’s going to be a political fraught, conflict ridden piece.

But it, it really did cover a lot of those gamuts, fun archetypal roles, but in a pleasant way so you didn’t feel like you were bored or have seen it too frequently. So anyway, that was Moreno. That’s ongoing, that’s Interact. That’s at the Drake. Take a look at that as well. That’s my sneaky fourth pick because we have a review coming in.

That’s why I’m going to sneak it in this time. Okay. So take a look at that as well. So those are my three-plus picks of the week. Great.

Roberta: Yeah. I’m glad you’re reviewing theater, Ryan! You reviewed the Rothko show recently, Everybody, take a look at Ryan’s review of Red. It is a show about Mark Rothko and his studio assistant. So good to have that covered. I love that.

Ryan: There’s great theater in this town. There’s great performers in this town. There’s great art in this town,

Roberta: great music in this town.

Ryan: Great music. Yeah. Politics does not dictate what we produce in this town.

So there’s amazing work by amazing people happening every day.

Roberta: Correct. Correct. And we’re going to cover it. We, we want to cover it.

Ryan:  Yeah, exactly.

Roberta: We will, we will. Yes. We’ll bring it to you.

Ryan: Cool. So those are my picks of the week.

Roberta: All right. I did a wander into Substack this morning. This will be my outtake. I have known about it for years. I know it’s the refuge and the salvation for a lot of journalists who got downsized from newspapers and have a lot on their minds. And it operates like — I believe you subscribe at a certain level to get a certain level of coverage/access to material. Anyway, someone, a friend of mine, my friend Kitty from Milwaukee, had recommended to me the John Stewart YouTube with Heather Cox Richardson, a historian public thinker, public writer, and they had a marvelous YouTube conversation. (See links list above) It was like an hour long, and I didn’t listen to the whole thing, but I went in for about 20 minutes and I said, this is great. I wonder if she is anywhere online that I can read her. And of course she has plenty of books. Lots of books.

She’s an educator and you know, a historian, so writes books, but she’s about the big picture of going back in history to digest what’s going on today and pulling it all together. And I like that kind of thinking. She’s speaking truth based on fact and not based on finger to the wind and opinion based on that.

Anyway, she’s on Substack. That’s one of the first things that come up in a search, and she’s got like, I don’t know, a million subscriber followers. So I’m not the only one, and I’m sorry I’m late to the party, Heather, but I found you and I signed up and actually I only tiptoe into the internet because I feel that for me, the internet is sort of a wasteland that I will spend all my time in if I let myself do that.

So I have to be very judgemental about how long I go in and how much I do and where I go. I found Heather’s writings (and my goodness, she’s prolific! daily postings!) on Substack and I’ll be there (maybe not daily). I thought that was interesting and I would recommend the John Stewart, Heather Cox Richardson conversation. It’s a very nice conversation, and it’s free.

It’s on YouTube and you can find it. John Stewart — maybe this is his main gig now — he has something called the Weekly. Which is on YouTube. I guess it’s his podcast. Audio Video podcast. I still need to think about things (post election). I mean, we’re all still thinking, everybody’s thinking about things in terms of what’s coming and what happened and why and how do we move on, and I’m finding that I’d like to know a little more history.

Ryan: You know? Yeah, that makes a lot of sense.

Roberta: Helps contextualize things. And I just got a book, another book, if I can prattle on a little bit more. Paul Lynch, Prophet Song. (See link list at the top) He won the Booker Prize in 2023 and the book finally became available through my library and Libby, so I signed up for it immediately.

And it’s really interesting. It’s a Kafka-esque story to begin with. Something’s happening to people, the Secret Service are coming to someone’s house at night. He works for a union. He’s an organizer, for a teacher’s union, and his colleagues are being surreptitiously, sort of sequestered somewhere. They’re disappearing. And so it has this suspense right from the first page on, and it’s written in this interesting way where there’s no paragraph breaks and little punctuation and it’s all like together. And the first page I looked at and I said, I don’t even know if I can read this wall of text, but it just goes on like that.

It’s all the one graph, breathless, the whole thing together. Or at least as far as I’ve gotten, which is not terribly far. Maybe it changes later, but it’s about our times, obviously. Not trusting the government, not having any power, what do you do?

Ryan: Sounds interesting. Yeah.

Roberta: And I also got the Miranda July book from the library — finally that came in. So I’m going to wade into that too.

Ryan: Yeah, that one’s pretty easy to get into and out. Yeah, I mean, it’s a quick read, I mean, it won’t take long to read.

Ryan: And I just got notice that I got the the third ebook for the Three Body Problem series is available, and I’ll send that to you.

Roberta: Did you read the third book?

Ryan: Yeah. Okay.

Roberta: Yeah. I can’t wait. I can’t wait.  I’m rereading the second volume now and, enjoying it all the same.

Ryan: Okay, great. Yeah, and I’ll send you that third one.

Roberta: Thank you. Thank you. All right. Thank you for listening everyone. Thank you for talking, Ryan, always a pleasure. This is Roberta. Saying Bye-Bye.

Ryan: Thanks, everyone. And this is Ryan, and this has been Artblog’s, Midweek News. We’ll see you next time.