Pearls

Opie Ice Houses

In New York, art is everywhere. There are so many aural and visual stimuli that one can at once be engulfed in the detail of a particularly moving wall mural (I like this one of Joe Strummer a couple of blocks from our apartment in the East Village), and then immediately forget it as you stumble into the middle of an impromptu drumming circle. 

We have seen two notable shows here in the last couple of days. Two women artists, both portraitists using  different media- painter Elizabeth Peyton and photographer Catherine Opie.  

At first, I loved Elizabeth Peyton’s show at the New Museum on the Bowery . Her confident brush strokes and rich jewel tones on small tableaux had me straining to take in every detail. Almost all portraits, I loved the intensity of her lone subjects, the perfect rendering of tossled hair, fine red lips, and the recognition of many of the subjects at first look (Kurt Cobain, Sid Vicious, Pete Doherty, the Gallagher brothers…). 

But then those very details became annoying. I didn’t need to see anymore portraits of pouting,  gaunt, slightly vampiric young men staring out in the distance at nothing in particular. No doubt many of these subjects, including Peyton’s friends and former lovers, are interesting, thoughtful and articulate human beings, but in her portraits too many of them look like they spend their days half-sleeping in scroungy bedsheets, and evenings waiting for their next overpriced drink at the newest hipster watering hole.

Peyton’s best work in my view is her most recent – where she focusses on more current friends and family and their pets. These are much less studied Brit, and much more real Americana – scenes from everyday life.

Her modern portraits of the famous are also improvements over earlier work.  I loved the depth of her portrait of Georgia O’Keeffe - full of confident defiance. I was moved by the drawing of a young Prince Harry being trundled off to school. And her study of the film The Age of Innocence captured true passion. 

I left this show hugely admiring Peyton’s technique, and hope that as she gets older, she applies her talent to more mature and moving subjects.

Catherine Opie, an American photographer from California, is also a master technician. Or should I say Mistress Technician.  Like Peyton, Opie too rose to fame through portraiture. But instead of photographing the famous, Opie’s photographed her non-famous friends in classic style. They pose, bodies adorned with tattoos and piercings, against rich coloured backdrops – royal reds, oranges, purples and blues. These famous portraits taken in the late 1990s were a brave claiming of different gender identities. 

Watching others look at the exhibit was almost as captivating as the exhibit itself. I loved the  mom taking notes about all things Opie for her son,  who she said was doing a university paper on Opie’s work. “You could help me!,” she commanded her husband, as she wrote down the display explanations in a room featuring a giant polaroid of a heavily tatooed man dressed in a heavy velvet gown, with long string of pearls draping out of his, well, ass.

When confronted with Opie’s most chilling work -a self-portrait in a leather mask, arms pricked with dozens of hypodermic needles and the word “pervert” lavishly carved into her chest – the mom earnestly asked the tour guide how her son could explain the meaning of this particular piece at his Christian university. 

A blond German family with three small kids, led by the mother wearing pearls around her neck, ran-walked through every room. While an elderly woman in a wheelchair, pushed by a younger relative,  craned her neck to delight in each and every photograph properly. And one man couldn’t contain himself. “Freaks!” he said far too loudly as he sidestepped the collection of drag kings bejewelled with pasted-on facial hair. 

A masterpiece placement in the Opie show is the twinning of the her Ice Houses and Surfers series in a long narrow room. It’s like walking into a beautiful alternate reality of cool water and white light , created by Opie’s artistic vision and the technical mastery of her craft. (Apparently some of the Ice House series took hours and hours of setting up and standing on frozen lakes in the dead of winter).

The show also includes a newer series of empty cityscapes, and her older series of freeways. And this is one of the best things about Opie’s work - you cannot fit her into a photographic box. This fact particularly comes to the forefront on the top floor of the exhibit, where Opie focusses her lens on her home and community. Living in an ordinary lower middle-class LA neighbourhood, this collection is community and political commentary wrapped together. 

For all of its diversity and the fact it is about community, in the end, Opie’s work still left me a bit cold. Her landscapes famously contain no people, and her portraits contain little passion. Her subjects, while almost all named, too often stare beyond the lens, their faces too mask-like. Even her “Domestic” series portrays couples who exhibit very little tenderness for one another.   

Still, if you’re in New York and you want to see a photographic genius and may I even say, true maverick, see Catherine Opie’s show at the Guggenheim.

Finally, I want to take this opportunity to name a Canadian artist I really admire.  Jane Isakson is a Whitehorse-based artist, Olympic athlete, outdoor enthusiast and lovely person. She draws inspiration for her landscapes from her life in the north. She has been to remote and rugged places very few people have seen, and through her talent for shapes, perspective and light, brings you with her. I personally wanted to shrink to minature and jump into Jane’s paintings, to scurry over the hills and jump into the luminous waters. If I had a huge wall I would buy this one of migrating caribou, and imagine I could hear their feet sinking and pulling out of the deep snow.  If you are considering a landscape of the north, truly look no further and get in touch with Jane.

Water bottles everywhere

During our travels in western Canada this summer I was shocked to see the endless palettes of bottled water for sale at every gas station. I cringed when I saw people buying these flats of 24 little plastic bottles. 

In south-east Asia we bought bottled water every day because piped water might have made us sick. But in Canada?  We were relieved in Canada to be able to drink the water and like good girls, filled four reusable containers every day with the stuff from the taps. 

This bottled water frenzy irked me all summer. All of that plastic flying through the cash til and into landfills or the roadside, despite what I thought was a significant backlash against the trend.  Mayors and school boards were banning bottled water. Maclean’s published a long article about the issue last year.  

Here in New York, a city considered to have some of the best tap water in the world,  bottled water continues to be the rage. One problem is a lack of public drinking water – fountains for example.  And companies, always a half step ahead,  have flooded the market with alternative bottled waters, like “vitamin” and flavoured waters. 

With my reusable metal SIGG bottle in hand, I was happy to go see Elizabeth Royte, a writer and journalist with a keen nose for stinky environmental trends, at the famous Strand bookstore. Royte has recently published the very favourably reviewed Bottlemania: How Water Went on Sale and why we Bought It. She epitomizes no-nonsense and knows her facts. You intrinsically trust her to tell you the truth.

And she does. The links I’ve already posted here tell you more about her well researched arguments, so I won’t repeat them.  And her book takes the reader deep into the political, social and economic aspects of bottled water – like the fact that some small, poorer communities are relying on bottled water plants for jobs and that arguments about whether to let Nestle in or not, can polarize places.

A few facts highlighted last night  by Royte and a guy called Al Appleton, a former commissioner of NYC’s Department of Environmental Protection.   

•  Americans go through 50 BILLLION plastic water bottles annually  (look at MacLean’s for Canada)
• Producing these bottles requires  17 million barrels of oil
• Less than 15% of those bottles end up being recycled. No one knows how long it takes for PET plastic to break down, but it’s at least five hundred years. 
• It takes three times as much water to produce the bottle, than what the bottle holds 
• People spend $1400.00  per year on bottled water. The same amount of tap water costs 49 cents.
• NY city water is tested about 100,000 times per year and tests are made public. Bottled water manufacturers test their water a few times a week. And they don’t have to tell you what they found.
• 99 per cent of water problems in NYC  are a result of problems in the building (old pipes for eg)

But Royte is not an unequivocal supporter of tap water either. She underscores the point that chemicals leached from industrial sites and agricultural land are obviously not good for the water supply. Many rural communities – about 30 million people- cannot afford to maintain drinking water standards in the US. (The same goes for Canada, where First Nations people particularly suffer).   And Royte notes that some doctors believe the elderly, pregnant and autoimmune should not drink tap water. 

What to do? She does recommend that people use tap filters – the kind you attach directly to your faucet or under the sink. She suggests these be publicly subsidized. And she personally uses a Brita, though she says you can only rely on it to remove chlorine.

So maybe the biggest reason NOT to drink bottled water is to ensure what Al Appleton called “a triumph of successful civic vision,” – the  advent of safe public drinking water.  People in developed countries are fortunate to have it. Remember about 1 billion people in the world do not. And if we continue to lap up bottled water there will be less pressure on public officials to invest in safe tap water – to continue to improve our water, and help poorer countries with the technology they need to provide it.  

If you live in Walkerton, Ontario, I understand if you’ll never drink tap water again. But if you live somewhere where there are no problems, buy a Brita, buy a SIGG, and turn on your faucet.

The world outside your window

Barack Obama and John McCain have duked it out publicly on foreign policy twice. During both debates, McCain and Obama  talked about the same foreign policy issues: Iraq, Iran, Israel, Russia, Georgia, Pakistan, Afghanistan and Sudan,  with a couple of sentences on  China, North Korea and Cuba thrown in for good measure.  They predictably hold different views. Obama, broadly speaking, embraces diplomatic engagement and fundamentally believes that every human should enjoy dignity.   McCain, broadly speaking, embraces punishment, and doesn’t trust foreigners. 

But on foreign policy,  both candidates, during both debates, spent a lot of time speaking about military solutions, and not enough about the other ways the world’s (still) most powerful nation can work to influence the globe for good.   

What do the candidates think of the United Nations, for example? It’s an imperfect institution and is often (rightfully) criticised for its incredible impenetrable bureaucracy, its neverending meetings, its committees and sub-committees, and sub-sub committees… It also fails to achieve consensus at critical moments in history. That’s politics.  But the UN and its specialised agencies also work, effectively, to find and stop infectious diseases before they spread, to fight polio and measles, to advocate for the rights of refugees and to educate children.  

Last night, one questioner came close to squeezing out the candidates’ views about the UN  when he asked whether the US would wait for UN Security Council approval to defend Israel, if Iran attacked it.  John McCain did not hesitate: “..we would obviously not wait for the United Nations Security Council.”   But that’s all he said about the UN. McCain went on to talk about a “league of democracies” that would try to stop Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons.  Was that supposed to be a capital L and capital D? 

Barack Obama was not  so quick to the knockout punch, but said it was important that the US does “not give veto power to the United Nations or anyone else” when American interests were at stake.  He went on to talk in much more detail about conducting effective diplomacy with Iran to ensure it was never in a position to attack Israel.

And what about international development assistance? Just two years ago was the “year of Africa.” The G8, under Tony Blair’s leadership, made African development the central issue for the G8. No one asks the US Presidential candidates about this. At a time when US national security is a top issue for Americans and people on main street are suffering due to Wall Street’s follies,  most Americans aren’t asking about the ways their country can help others.  

The candidates certainly don’t bring it up as a priority area.  But scratch deeper and it is clear that Obama has given issues of international development and of the United Nations a lot of thought.

His website includes detail on all of the issues he cares about. This includes a lengthy and substantive explanation on foreign policy including the need to alleviate poverty in Africa, and a link to his strategy to Promote Global Development and Diplomacy. This includes more detail, with a pledge to double international development assistance, support debt cancellation for the most heavily indebted countries,  to increasing funding to the Global Fund to fight HIV/AIDS, TB and Malaria, and to ensure  that “best practices – not ideology” drive US funding of HIV/AIDS programming.  That means, for example, that women and men who need access to condoms can get condoms – not a Christian sermon about abstinence being the best option.

As for the UN, Obama talks about the need to strengthen the capacity of the UN “..to prevent and respond to deadly violence.” That is a start. Obama also wants to see the US provide “the political leadership required so that UN missions are backed by workable political strategies” and that the US “pays it peacekeeping assessments on time.” He also calls for more UN reform – so with Obama, the UN is by no means out of the woods.

But at least Obama has THOUGHT about the UN and his written these thoughts down and made them easy to find on his website.

Look at John McCain’s website. He doesn’t even have an “issue” called foreign policy. There are many many domestic issues including his call to have Roe v. Wade overturned, and for law-abidin’ Americans to carry guns. But the only foreign policy area he touches is “Iraq,” where he says the troops will stay as long as the Iraqis need them.

Even dyed-in-the-wool Republicans care about the welfare of Africans, and they might not like the UN, but they’ll have a view on it.  John McCain doesn’t even think it’s worth publishing a few lines about them on his website.

At the next debate, I’d like to see the two candidates asked specifically about these issues. Let’s hear how they really feel. This would be more informative than another rehash of the “bomb bomb bomb Iran” song, or the tired “naive and dangerous” line. And it might show the people of the world which Presidential candidate has thought about them in human, and not just military terms.

Put another nickel in

This blog is about music.

Last night, we saw a show at one of the world’s most famous theatres.  The Apollo on 125th street in Harlem heaves with history and the energy of some of the greatest performers of all time. It’s the place where Ella Fitzgerald made her debut in 1934, and where James Brown’s body lay in 2006.  I got a few chills just stepping into the place.  “Amateur Night at the Apollo” is something you just have to see in New York. Every Wednesday night some very talented and not so talented people dance, sing, rap, tell jokes, or play music  to an audience which won’t hesitate to boo them off the stage. Beware the executioner.   

The audience in fact is worth the price of admission alone. There are people who KNOW music – who git up and git down, swing their hips, sway their arms and holla. When the MC says “Put your hands togetha!” they do and they look great doing it. And then there are the rest. Lots of tourists, lots of, well let’s be honest, white people. Some who so want to roll with it. Some who are terrified that they’ll be pulled up on stage and asked to dance.  And some who think they’ve got “it”, but they just don’t. And the beauty is, it doesn’t matter who you are, how comfortable you are, where you’re from or what colour you are, the Apollo has a way of making everyone in the audience feel good. 

Last night there were a couple of great performances. A woman who calls herself Kande sang that old Dolly Parton favourite “I Will Always Love You.” This one can be a real eye-roller because it’s just so overdone. But Kande worked it – when she hit the big notes in the chorus my scalp tingled. Spirituals can also do that, and a young man called Christopher had the audience in tears using the incredible range of his tremourous voice.

I won’t mention the people who got booed off the stage. That’s a tough Apollo tradition.

Over the last six months we’ve had many astounding musical moments. I want to name a few more.

The Dawson City Music Festival. I’ve talked about this before. If you can go, go. Dawson is a six-hour drive north-west of Whitehorse, which in itself is a 24-hour drive north of Edmonton or Vancouver. Because it’s held in the peak of summer, there is magical twilight even at 2 am.  Dawson is a special place, replete with the history of the gold rush and humankind’s quest for wealth at all costs. The town is small so you’re likely to see the musicians in the same bar or cafe, or walking the streets. For those days everyone is part of the Dawson community. The people we especially loved there were:

Justin Rutledge: This Toronto-based singer/songwriter has the truest voice I have ever heard, even at 10  Saturday morning, in a session called “Hangover Songs.” Some of the performers in that session may still even have been drunk. Justin warned us he was feeling a little bit groggy. But he strummed the first quiet chords, and when he opened his mouth I swear angels flew out. His session in a church later that day was equally good. He can even make a singalong, with the lines “Don’t be so mean, my jellybean,” feel like a Canadian gospel revival.  Blow November blow.

Basia Bulat: When she speaks she sounds like a younger girl. She is sweet and bright, generous in her introductions of fellow musicians and just a bit shy.  And then she starts to play. Her hands cascade again and again on the autoharp, her head tilts, and she comes forth with an all embracing rich voice, and massive presence. Her band, bespeckled and underwhelming in fashion and in hairdos, keep lively time with fiddles and drums, perfect harmonies and joyful handclaps. Basia plays the guitar too. And the piano. Her songs are like scampering, sunny summer days.  

Martha Wainwright: Not just Martha Wainwright which is a treat in itself, but Martha Wainwright sings Edith Piaf, here at the Spiegeltent in New York City. The venue is so small, you could almost accidentally spill your drink on her fabulous dress.  Martha’s brother Rufus has performed his now famous “Judy Garland at Carnegie Hall” show a few times, and I was lucky enough to be at one of them (honeymoon in Paris, you know). During that magnificent show Rufus talked about practicing Garland songs in front of his bedroom mirror when he was a boy. Well if Rufus was born to be Judy, Martha was both to be Edith.

With fist clenched, her eyes closed, and her foot keeping violently contained time, Martha sang Piaf as well as Piaf ever sang Piaf. The little sparrow must have been on her shoulder. Her voice, on the brink of never faltering, brought us into a murky Paris club.  Even when she deadpanned her way through the “Hello Boys, you come with me?…”  part of C’est a Hambourg (“uh, I don’t speak German”), she had the audience hovering, waiting for the next breath, the next word.  And when she sang “Les Blouses Blanches,” she put each of us into that poor woman’s head, falling surely into a terrified madness. 

With Martha, you almost always get the added huge bonus of Kate and Anna and Rufus. I love this family. Martha, her aunt and mother sang a melancholy and moving folk song.  And though not as memorable, the siblings sang a Josephine Baker song, Rufus at the piano with his back to the audience, according Martha her spotlight.  (I do wish she and Rufus had sung “Les Amants” – the song Piaf and Charles Dumont sang together. But then I would have been a blubbering mess, because I’m such a sucker for that stuff.) 

Finally, when Martha nailed one of her encores, the rapidfire “Le Metro de Paris”, her mother beamed at her from the sidelines, looking incredibly proud.   Her daughter was singing so very well.  

Martha said she may be recording an album of Edith songs. When she does buy it. And in the meantime if you get a chance to see her perform, go.

There are some fabulous photos of the show, including the one of the set list I used in the masthead in this blog. 

Is it a coincidence that except for the Apollo the performers I mentioned here are Canadian? No. We just have magnificent talent.