Hey there - I hope this finds art lovers everywhere having a great start to 2012! Happily, 2011 was filled to the brim with creativity and exciting new projects for me, and here are a few of the recent arts-advocating ventures I've been up to.
To start, my most recent Vermont Public Radio commentaries on the arts (click on links and then the Listen icon):
Splendant Earth – Michele Ratte's exhibit at the Bennington Museum-- http://www.vpr.net/episode/51608/
Sliced Bread – live recording from 2011 VPR Commentators' Brunch, which was based on a theme I conceived (see below): "Picture This": http://www.vpr.net/episode/51879/
The Art of Gift-Giving – advocating buying original art -- http://www.vpr.net/episode/52615/guyon-art-gift-giving/
Hope you like the commentaries and stay tuned, as I'm developing what will hopefully be either a regular show or segment for VPR entirely focused on the visual arts of Vermont, with the title that VPR used as a theme for last year's Commentators' Brunch: "Picture This".
More to come and Happy New Year everyone --
Annie
I wouldn't call it schadenfreude, exactly, but at this time of year I
feel an odd mixture of glee that I'm no longer a twenty-something
urbanite scrambling to have the perfect New Year's Eve and a slightly
amused empathy for anyone who is.
When I consider what Dec. 31sts used to be like during that phase of life, it all becomes one blur of so-so entertainment, insufferable crowds, mediocre food and, all too often, anti-climactic midnights.
There was the time my friends and I piled into someone's sprawling Cadillac and drove from San Francisco to Portland, Ore., to see The Pretenders, whose concert we'd just attended the night before, only to find a hand-scrawled note on the door of the auditorium saying the drummer had hurt his wrist and the show was canceled. When the clock struck midnight, instead of gyrating to "Brass In Pocket" and reveling in our collective cool under falling confetti and a spinning mirrored ball, we were drowning our sorrows in watery milkshakes at a low-lit diner.
One New Year's Eve I was scheduled to perform with my tap troupe in an opulent bar called Oz at the top of the Westin St. Francis in San Francisco. It was a well-paying gig and, as I was putting myself through college, I needed to put the budget before socializing
Peeking out from the dressing room, I could see that already most of the couples looked as if they were ready to change partners and groups of friends appeared bored witless by each other's company. Upon discovering that the marble stage area was slick as ice, we had to simplify the entire show just to avoid breaking a limb and our cocktail-infused, companion-maxed audience seemed about as enrapt as if we were delivering a lecture on the plight of the rare and endangered crested newt.
I recall another end-of-year disappointment when my friends and I got soaked as we waited in pelting rain to get into a new club to see a ska band from London. After being herded through the front doors, we were informed that the dance floor was beyond capacity. We therefore heard, but did not actually see the band from a sardine-tin lobby and ended up heading home where we rang in the new year with tea and toast (the bread, not bubbly, variety).
Probably the strangest New Year's Eve I ever had was in New York City, when my boyfriend and I decided to forego the club scene and have a quiet meal instead. He'd dumped me just before Thanksgiving and right after Christmas announced he could not live without me, pleading with me to go on a relationship-restoration jaunt to his hometown for some earnest wining and dining (no doubt in order to help me forget said dumpage).
The restaurant happened to be at West 72nd and Central Park West, right across from the Dakota apartments where John Lennon had been shot just a few years before. After dinner, we stopped and gazed at the arched entrance to the imposing, Germanic stone building, in a sort of delayed stupor at the gravity of the sorrowful event that had taken place there.
Suddenly, a couple came rushing out of the Dakota's inner courtyard, crossing the sidewalk and maneuvering through parked cars and into the street. The gentleman, dressed in a banana-yellow three-piece suit, with a mop of black ringlets covering most of his face, instantly began whistling for a cab. He flagged one down in short order and hurriedly escorted the women, who seemed flustered and none too happy, into the back seat. He did not join her, however, but instead said something to the driver, swung the door shut and gave a quick knock on the trunk.
As we stood observing this odd scene, the man in the yellow suit remained motionless, arms hanging at his sides, gazing at the tail lights of the cab as they rushed away. With a heavy sigh of what could only be interpreted as extreme relief, he walked over to our side of the street and hailed another cab for himself, heading in the other direction. It was at that moment we realized we'd been watching Tiny Tim, he of the tip-toeing through the tulips with a ukulele fame.
The mix of sadness with celebrity sighting made an already peculiar New Year's Eve yet more disquieting. Any thoughts of heading to Times Square to join the churning masses had somehow been duly squelched and we took the subway back over to Brooklyn Heights where we were staying. Midnight had me reflecting on the dumpage, the Dakota and the resigned expression on Tiny Tim's face. I could relate, somehow, and knew that would be the last New Year's Eve I'd spend with my beau who, I realized before the first sip of champagne, wasn't the one for me.
Thereafter, my only yearly resolution has been to celebrate at home with people I love. A lovely tradition along those lines continues tonight, when I'm having a few close friends over for a low-key evening of good conversation, laughter, munchies and music while the kids play board games and compare Christmas loot. The husbands of two friends who'll be here are musicians and both happen to be playing at pubs around the corner, so at some point my beau and I will sneak out to make an appearance and toast the New Year amid the pulsing throngs of our tiny Vermont village.
Cozy soirees notwithstanding, this area offers some marvelously en masse revelry for couples and families at various venues, the highlight being a remarkably innovative and inclusive event at Stratton Mountain Ski Resort in Bondville.
Adults can join in on a group snowshoe hike from the lower slopes up to the Mid-Mountain Lodge for cocktails and then watch two spectacles take place right there on the mountain, both of which can also be viewed from the base lodge: a torch-light parade, in which up to 100 top skiers and snowboarders wind their way down the mountain bearing blazing torches, followed by fireworks that reflect dramatically on all that white stuff. There are special family dinners and kids' parties as well, so it's a wonderful way for everyone to ring in the New Year in true Vermont style.
Happy 2009, everyone. I have a feeling it's going to be full of good change. As the lesser known chorus of "Auld Lang Syne" says, "walk on, walk on, with hope in your heart."
Online: stratton.com
Annie: annieguyoncommunications.com
Tis better to shop Main Street: A holiday pitch for our local creative economy
In our current economic spiral and with the holidays upon us, it is human nature to gravitate toward the discounts, clearance sales and brand name bargains that populate the papers, airwaves and ether. Hip ads on TV, pithy jingles on the radio, coupons in the dailies and pulsating banner ads online all beckon us to save, save, save yet spend, spend, spend.
With the recent focus on big business blunders and Wall Street woes, however, I’ve begun to question just where our gelt is going and who, specifically, it supports. While I understand that the economy suffers when consumers stop consuming, I look around my own community and consider the plight of struggling sole proprietorships long before worrying about the big boys. I look at the painters, potters, poets, novelists, musicians, photographers, woodworkers, jewelers and other artisans who make a high-quality original works of art but who do not have massive marketing budgets to help sell their wares. I think of farmers who choose to keep their enterprises small and organic in support of the localvore philosophy.
I also marvel at the tenacity and spirit of these folks who could easily abandon their chilly studios for well-heated mega-stores, give up their understaffed shops and go work for a brand name competitor or trade their agricultural ideals for more lucrative crop management. That they choose to stay the course in the face of encroaching corporations is beyond commendable — it’s why we live here and why a day of supporting the economy in our historic downtowns is remarkably pleasant, pragmatic and community-building, if not soul-nourishing.
Still, I’m no saint. About once a year I give in to time and budgetary constraints and stock up on various staples in mass quantities at mega-retailers, all the while tsk-tsking my momentary failure to support small retailers the way I usually do. By the time I’ve made my purchase, whether it’s through an online purveyor of every houseware known to man or in a vast indoor city of avenues lined with oversized cleaning products gleaming beneath a fluorescent sky, I feel just a little bit unclean.
Commercial Goliaths are everywhere you look and, when it comes to warm and fuzzy packaging, it’s hard not to be intoxicated by the marketing machine and buy in, literally and figuratively, to well-crafted ad campaigns. The sorry truth of it is that, between economizing and our easily seduced psyches, at this time of year it’s hard not to get in the car or open a browser and head straight for the most obvious options.
Heck, every year I equip my kids for Vermont winters with “Made in Vietnam” outerwear, ordered from catalogue companies that have brilliantly managed to transform the cultural symbology of a down-home, homespun, rural lifestyle into multibillion dollar industries.
“Experience marketing,” as it’s known in the advertising world, has been part of the retail industry for a couple of decades now and it’s awfully hard to be impervious to its multisensorial charms. Coffee chains surround the customer with carefully chosen aesthetics, music and smells while clothing stores are furnished with enticing leather chairs, exotic plants and chic travel photography. It’s all beautifully staged and makes shopping slightly less tedious, I suppose, but the faux-congeniality that usually goes with the retail chain experience is what kills it for me.
Downtowns in New England offer something that no perfectly appointed brand boutique or bulk bargain mother ship can: a true feeling of participation, belonging and connection. When I head to Bellows Falls to do my errands — choose a bouquet at Halladay’s Florist, buy a new novel at Village Square Booksellers, stock up on light bulbs at J & H Hardware or pick up a CD at Bull’s Eye Music — merchants know me, they know my kids and they impart a feeling of comfort and familiarity that no amount of ersatz-atmosphere or über-selection can replace.
Sure, I could go to the nearby multinational warehouse store to pick up some pens and have a hundred choices but when I go to Snow & Lear office supply on the square, the value is more than just the pens. There’s Nancy, the ever-cheery clerk who will order anything I need and usually knows what it is before I do, most of the time the price is better than the competition and there’s parking right out front. Nothing can compete with that, nor the cute cartoons she clips and tapes to the counter or the paper clock hanging in the door that shows when she’ll be back from lunch.
Talk about experience marketing. This region has it oozing from every warmly lit storefront, jumbled window display and wry proprietor’s grin and it ain’t manufactured and it isn’t the result of millions of dollars of demographic research by suits in big offices. It’s just embedded in the character of the people who make our small towns and villages so unique.
At this time of year my gratitude for local merchants is especially great, whether it’s toy stores or galleries, bath shops or bakeries, and as I look at my list of holiday gifts to buy, I map out routes through nearby vintage downtowns, knowing that I’ll not only very likely find everything I need but I’ll be supporting the region as well.
My favorite thing to get for loved ones is, of course, art and Vermont is a goldmine of one-of-a-kind gifts that were made by hand by people who live and work in our communities. There are purveyors of locally made original items throughout the state, some focusing solely on Vermont artists, while others offer work by craftspeople from around New England.
One of my regular stops is Vermont Artisan Designs, in Brattleboro, where more than 6,000 square feet of space showcases paintings, glassware, jewelry, bowls, furniture and other assorted gifts, 75 percent of which are made in Vermont, with most of the remaining items from the surrounding region. Having opened 40 years ago, the store is testament to the vision and diligence of people like Suzy and Greg Worden, who have owned it for the past two decades and who are committed to supporting the work of high-caliber artists with the store, the fine art gallery upstairs and their online business, Buyvermontart.com.
Greg Worden reckons that, with prices starting at $5 and going into the thousands, it’s a great place for all holiday shoppers wanting to support their local craftspeople. “What we’re trying to do is maintain quality for the same price-point,” he explained recently, “so when you get something from here and see the paper it’s wrapped in, it’s something that everybody can feel good about.”
This type of one-stop shopping from an expansive collection of original works in a broad range of media also satisfies that urban/suburban experience that’s somewhat rare in rural areas. “It used to be a department store,” Worden attests, “so we’ve reclaimed that, in a way.”
There are numerous retail stores in the area offering a similarly pragmatic approach to supporting the creative economy, including Maplewing Artisans in Bellows Falls, the Jelly Bean Tree in Saxtons River, Frog Hollow Craft Center and the Artists Guild in Manchester, Gallery 103 in Chester and the Bennington Arts Guild, to name just a few. And don’t forget Vermont-grown, homemade foodstuffs that can’t be found anywhere else.
Give neighborhood arts and crafts merchants a look this year and ye shall come to holiday parties bearing beautiful gifts that will be loved by the receiver while simultaneously injecting much-needed fuel into our local creative economy. Be assured, too, that original art does not have to be expensive, as Worden will attest.
“Pewter pocket angels are the size of a quarter and they start at $5. You can even carry a pocket Buddha with you.”
Ah, the gift of serenity in the season of shopping. I’ll put that at the top of my list.
Annie: annieguyoncommunications.com
Posted at 11:07 AM in Art, Books, Culture, Holidays & Celebrations, Music, Personal Opinion, Social Commentary | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)