Milwaukee Press Club Rain Barrel Revealed!

I was asked by the Milwaukee Press Club to paint a rain barrel for their big soiree this past week at Discovery World. A bunch of real artists and me created fabulously decorated rain barrels that people got to big on and then take home and stick under a drain pipe.

I had fun, the woman I dropped it off with at the event the other day said, "Oh, yes, I think I've heard of your art,", that comment made me laugh because I clearly caught her in a lie because everyone knows I'm simply a hack writer, and the whole rain barrel affair helped raise some bucks for journalism scholarships. All good, all around.

Here's some pics of my creation. I was feeling happy, and, yes, a little faggy. It's good to feel faggy, fellas. The colors are brighter and happier.

The top...



The side...



The other side...



The otherer side (cylinders are hard to pin down, sidewise)

Questions from Cultural NonProfit Forum on Creative Community for you (which you can respond to, for me)

Here are all the questions that were posed as points of discussion at the Cultural NonProfit Forum on Creative Community at the Italian Community.

I'm going to the Greater Milwaukee Committee's Creative Community Summit on February 4 and 5 where I will be trapped in a room with a handful of other locals talking about art and culture in our sector (or playing board games if we quickly decide the arts and culture in the region don't matter).

Though I am a middle aged white guy, I have the soul of a teenage Latino rebel. So I want to be well equipped with many takes on these questions so that I can be an honest (I imagine at times, contrary) voice at the table during this 2-day summit.

You can offer your responses at the bottom of this post or e-mail me at jonathanwest@artsyschmartsy.com.

El questions (okay, my soul isn't pure Latino teen rebel):

1. What are the unique assets of the greater Milwaukee arts and culture sector?
2. How does the public beneift from the unique assets of the arts and culture sector in greater Milwaukee.
3. What are we doing now that we should continue or strengthen in order to sustain a high quality arts and culture sector in Greater Milwaukee? And, what if anything, should we consider discontinuing?
4. What are some examples of innovative practices that arts and culture organizations have implemented or are thinking about implementing in order to survive and thrive?
5. What are some ideas for collaborative action that might strengthen the arts and culture sector in the great Milwaukee area?
6. What are the core principles and values of the greater Milwaukee arts and culture sector that need to be preserved?

Late in the game, I'd like to talk about the Cultural NonProfit Forum on Creative Community thingee that happened the other day

There were lots of people that participated in the Cultural Alliance and UW-Milwaukee Center for Urban Initiatives and Research (whew, that's a mouthful...or fingerful if you're typing) forum at the Italian Community Center on Monday. There were even more people that participated in the Cultural Alliance's listening session on Tuesday. I've read much on the local MARN on-line ramblings. Crickettoes has a good synthesis of the Monday morning artistic cluster fuck. I've heard from many that the listening session on Tuesday night at Walker's Point Center for the Arts didn't suck.

Yeah! I've been a fairly vocal critic of The Cultural Alliance in the past, but I must tip my hat to them for kicking some ass lately. Nice job Alliance peops. You're lighting some good fires.

Now, I turn the mirror to the arts community. Yep, I'm kicking my own ass this morning.

You may have noticed that I've slowed down my posts in recent weeks. There's a simple reason for this: I had to get a job.

Yes, after years of freelance work and patching things together, I took a job when my wife lost hers so that my family could continue to pay our mortgage and afford hospital stays if we were to snap our tibia in half (something my youngest daughter seems prone to doing).

In doing so (and I took a job in the arts, mind you), I began to suck a little. As an engaged artist, I just started to take things for granted. I forgot my responsibility to continue questioning how we do things in the arts community here in Milwaukee, which really is the responsibility of all artists in Milwaukee (or anywhere, for the matter).

So, I'm going to try again to be an annoying pest. I'm sticking my tongue out as I write, trust me.

That's why I ultimately like what the Cultural Alliance clam bake on Monday was all about. I don't foolishly believe the Cultural Alliance is going to solve all of our problems. Hell, one of their main objectives is simply to be A CONNECTOR. Connectors, connect. The connectees need to pick up the ball at that point.

In a separate post, I'm going to post all the questions that we were asked to comment on at Monday's meeting. You can do your own homework on them, and e-mail me your own responses if you like. This Monday meeting and the Tuesday Walker's Point listening session were all in anticipation of the Greater Milwaukee Committee Creative Cultural Summit that happens February 4-5 in Delavan at one of those businessy resort places. I'll be there along with about 40 other artistically minded citizens wanted to figure something out about culture and the arts in our sector (such a Star Trek term, don't you think).

So, I've applauded the Cultural Alliance, and said I'm holding the ugly mirror up to myself and other artists in our community. What the hell does that mean, right? Well for me, that means I need to recommit myself to continuing dialogue about how arts can be better in Milwaukee, and, more specifically, how I, with my overblown ego, think arts would be better in Milwaukee (when, oh, when, will the powers-that-be realize that I am always right!).

I'm a little ticked off with the fact that at our Monday conference on culture and arts at the Italian Community Center, discussions of economics always preceded the discussion of the quality of arts in Milwaukee. I'm a little hacked off that actual artists I was sitting with in that room were scared to "ruffle feathers" and say non-flattering things about the way money is shuttled around to arts groups in mind boggling inefficient ways because there were funders in the room. I feel a little throw up in the back of my throat because many artists in our community still equate success with institutional perpetuity (hello, folks, some arts groups should never be run like "efficient businesses" and hear me now--"EVERYTHING HAS A SHELF LIFE!").

We're at a great time for change. We as artists are not only capable of riding along with that change, but we can actually shape that change. But we need to keep showing up at the table. And we have to be honest. Brutally honest. Don't follow the buck. Be brave. If you want to work for an institution (I do, and I like it) then embrace that, but don't believe that is the ultimate formula for a healthy arts community (its only part of it--I believe there are many arts movements that should be sloppy and poorly run and unbelievably thrilling).

Right now, I don't believe the hype. Milwaukee isn't a vibrant arts community. I look at my primary artistic forum (theater) and all I can do is yawn. There's spurts of risk (and I don't just quantify risk as naked people on our stages or bloody stump kind of visual art) popping up in our community, but frankly, we are all too staid, and all too conservative. I'm not asking any artist to change their ethical genomic makeup, but I am asking for the quality of bursting open the community as a rapidly evolving place of openmindedness for all forms of expression.

How do we do it? Just start doing it. Stop talking...okay, talking isn't the enemy, but it's only a start...and start doing. Something. Anything.

And the financial conversation is just, frankly, getting fucking old.

Let's make things. Lots of things. And let's not be afraid of pissing people off. Or boring them. The important thing now is volume of expression. Bring it on artists. Bring it on.

While dropping my painted rain barrel to Milwaukee Press Club party, I was called a painter. Snowed that chick.

Gone to Man Camp...may be back, may not if we don't get through the fried chicken.

I know it's Barack's day...

...but let it be known, I'm gaga in love with Michelle Obama. Gaga.



Hail to the hottie.

Hold the phone, I kind of misspoke about Madison Rep!

They're still closing...I'd wager money on that one.

But, The Wisconsin State Journal reports that they are actually looking for that BAILOUT kind of thing I was talking about. They're not humbling themselves they way I think they should with a big, balls to the wall, wailing to the community-at-large. They're being a bit more discreet about it. I'll help them be loud mouthed.

Madison Rep needs $50,000 by February 1 or they close their doors. If you're so inclined, send them money. Here's their address:

Madison Repertory Theater
1 South Pinckney Street, LL100
Madison, WI 53703

They'll also take your money on-line by clicking this link.

I think they will close because they say that they need another $300,000 in the coming couple of months. If, and this is a big IF, they really, really want to stay open, it would make sense to me to really slow down the ship and make some tough decisions. Cut the remainder of the season. Put together a restructuring plan. Do a detailed 3 year budget that projects real doom and gloom. If some of those things happen, maybe, maybe, maybe, Madison Rep has a chance of making it. Maybe they then need another $50,000 instead of $300,000. I don't know. I'm not close enough to it, of course. I'm just a blogger some I get to offer oodles of uniformed opinions.

More than anything hard charging responsible change would show our community (and fresh from an Obama inaugural address, I consider our community to be the world) that the folks behind Madison Rep are so serious about keeping the thing alive that they'll painfully tough choices to do it. I know they've already made a lot of tough ones with big staff cuts, but now it's zero hour. Now the really hard work begins.

They've got my check coming. I may be a dummy to do it, but at least I'm given the option to help make a difference in this case.

Oh, yeah...

...I'm also depressed about the closing of Heinemann's.



Where, oh where, are the old ladies and I going to get a chicken salad sandwich and a 3 PM dinner deal?

Harry W. Schwartz, Madison Rep...yeah, the economy stinks.

Today I opened the newspaper (well, read it online, thus contributing to the death of print media) and found out that all four local Harry W. Schwartz stores were closing. I have a book coming out on April 6. I simply wanted to walk into a Harry W. Schwartz on April 6 and buy one copy of my book. Of course, I feel like a heel right now because I can't remember the last time I walked into a Harry W. Schwartz bookshop. It shouldn't be every time I write a book. That would mean at least a couple months between trips (I'm being ironical folks.) Thank goodness the Downer shop and the Mequon shop are being reopened independently by current Schwartz types (I for one know Lanora at the Mequon shop and know that one is in very good hands.)

Tomorrow I have found out, the death of Madison Rep will be made public. This venerable institution is closing its doors. Not maybe a huge surprise as we've seen them cut huge amounts of their staff in the past few months, but certainly a blow to the state's theater scene.

Let's see, since October two major Equity theater companies in Wisconsin have announced their closing (Milwaukee Shakespeare and Madison Rep). During that time other major institutions around the country have cried "Help!" faced with ginormous deficits and the wolves barking at the door. In many of those other cases (Shakespeare Santa Cruz and Magic Theatre being the prime examples) there's been a big push from the institutional forces (Board and staff) to come clean and say, "We're fucked, we need your help, and then we'll fix how we're doing things so we're not going to the well for more bailouts." But that doesn't happen in Wisconsin I guess.

What's the deal? Is our Midwestern niceness just plain meekness? I'm not advocating continuous bailouts for arts groups, but I'm just amazed at how we don't ask for help in big creative ways more around these parts. Now, I am, of course, the world's biggest hypocrite because I once closed a company with somewhat of a whimper (Bialystock & Bloom for those of you just tuning in). But I'm getting fed up with all the closing without at least a, "Yeah, we crashed the car, but we'd like another chance to drive it." Give us all the chance to say, "Hell, no!" or "Oh, okay, just this one more time." It should be the choice of the public to help saving a sinking ship since it is the choice of the public to not support those ships in the first place, thereby sinking them.

Sigh.

Thank God tomorrow someone is going to Crawford while someone else is getting new keys to The White House.

Secretary of the Arts - Sign the Petition!

Quincy Jones thinks it's a good idea for Barack Obama to have a cabinet level Secretary of the Arts. If the man who has worked with Sinatra and Michael Jackson thinks so, so do I.

The Secretary of the Arts Petition that is circulating the internet right now is a start in focusing that agenda. Click way to go to the petition now.

Secretary of the Arts Petition Online

Ray's Five: Day Twenty-Eight

R.I.P. Ray. Kind of.

Ray's Five: Day Twenty-Seven

Today Ray reads a basketball blog and tries to solve the cultural crisis in America. He doesn't solve it, but he does come clear on a real unspoken truth: there is always a cultural crisis in America. See, I told you Ray's rivers run deep.

Ray's Five: Day Twenty-Six

In a few days, Ray and I won't see each other thar much. We'll drift apart. Eeek! So today, we get real, real close. And talk about family.

Ray's Five: Day Twenty-Five

Happy New Year. Today, Ray is resolute. Hope you are, too. Have a grand 2009.