Tag Archives: Barry Johnson

General

Generation Nexus: How CAN we fund the skills our future leaders will need?

2 Comments

By Trisha Pancio Mead

Self-confidence. Poise. Complex pattern recognition. Spatial relationships. Symmetry and paradox. Good design. Leadership. Collaborative, deadline-driven, results-oriented cooperative achievement. Proportion. Scale. Balance. Discipline. Persuasiveness. Empathy. And yes, innovation.

Are these values and skill sets that we want instilled in the next generation? The generation, let’s remember, that will ultimately be responsible for running the organizations, government entities and private businesses that are the backbone of Portland’s economy?

Science meets art: Woman teaching Euclidean geometry in 14th century painting. 1309 - 1316, France;The British LibraryOr, let’s get even more pragmatic here: What percentage of our future workforce would we like to see have a high school diploma? And is it worth $35 a year to ensure that, not only do more of Portland’s students graduate, they also graduate with self-confidence, discipline, empathy and the capacity for innovation?

Because, in its simplest terms, the funding mechanism proposed by the Creative Advocacy Network is designed to do exactly that: restore arts and music instruction and increase access to arts related experiences throughout Portland. On Saturday The Oregonian’s editorial board dismissed the proposal, arguing that art and music “are low priorities.” Oregon Arts Watch founder and editor Barry Johnson quickly filed this rebuttal, and Niel DePonte –  Oregon Symphony percussionist, music director of Oregon Ballet Theatre, Grammy nominee, founder/president of Metro Arts, Inc. – followed with this rebuttal printed in The Oregonian’s opinion section.

Why, in spite of The Oregonian’s objections, is this initiative crucial?

Continue reading Generation Nexus: How CAN we fund the skills our future leaders will need? →

Bob Hicks, Books, Dance, Food, General, opera, Theater, Visual Art

From our stove to yours: small bites

2 Comments

By Bob Hicks

What’s been cooking lately in the Scatter kitchen? Well, a lovely baked dressing made up mostly of mushrooms, celery, onions and leftover bread slices (Mrs. Scatter’s clean-out-the-fridge creation). And another batch of baklazhannia ikra, or “poor man’s caviar,” an addictive eggplant/tomato/onion/pepper relish that William Grimes discovered recently in one of those great old Time/Life Foods of the World cookbooks and kindly passed along as a recipe in the New York Times.

Photo by Keith Weller/Wikimedia CommonsThings have been cooking outside of World Headquarters, too. I’ve recently signed on as a regular contributor to Oregon Arts Watch, the ambitious online cultural newsmagazine masterminded and edited by my friend and former colleague at The Oregonian, Barry Johnson. I’ve filed a couple of pieces there already:

A few other things that’ve been keeping me hopping, each of which should be coming out in story form sometime soon:

    • An evening up a dark alley to The Publication Studio for the opening celebration for artist Melody Owen‘s new book, which has something to do with mad hatters and rabbit holes.
    • An afternoon at the Portland Opera studios, where I discovered general manager Christopher Mattaliano leaping up and down with a cutout version of a gingerbread witch as singers from Engelbert Humperdinck’s Hansel and Gretel watched and nodded.
    • A morning at Milagro Theatre, talking with Dañel Malàn about the perils and pleasures of touring the country to perform bilingual plays in tucked-away spaces – and whether the world is really going to end with the Mayan calendar in 2012.

Hal Holbrook in 2007. Photo: Luke Ford, lukeford.net/Wikimedia Commons

  • An hour’s conversation on the phone with Hal Holbrook, octogenarian actor and uncanny channeler of the late, great Mark Twain, on topics ranging from politics to history to the unhappy state of print journalism and what it means to the future of democracy: “It’s a good paper. But as I remind people, it’s called the Wall. Street. Journal. Not The Journal. And it’s owned by that guy, Murdoch, who’s in all that trouble in England.”

Lots cooking, and more coming up. Last night I had an odd dream: I’d accepted an assignment from a glossy magazine to do a spread comparing two versions of barbecued pulled pork from famous Southern restaurants. This was a touchy situation for an ordinarily vegetarian/pescetarian writer, who was sorely tempted to do some serious taste-testing. In my dream I solved the problem by contacting the chefs of each restaurant and asking them to send me a towel soaked in their secret sauces. I then breathed in the aromas deeply, and began to type. If you should happen to stumble across this story somewhere in print, don’t believe a word it says.

*

ILLUSTRATIONS, from top:

  • Photo by Keith Weller/Wikimedia Commons
  • Hal Holbrook in 2007. Photo: Luke Ford, lukeford.net/Wikimedia Commons
Bob Hicks, General, Theater

No Man’s Land revisited: the podcast

2 Comments

By Bob Hicks

A few days ago my friend Barry Johnson, the guy behind the infant but swiftly growing online magazine Oregon Arts Watch, asked me to sit down with him and talk about Harold Pinter’s No Man’s Land and actor William Hurt’s starring performance in it at Artists Repertory Theatre. I said sure, and Barry brought his high-tech equipment over to Art Scatter World Headquarters, where we locked ourselves into the executive clubhouse for a half-hour and chewed the theatrical fat. The result, a 17-minute radio-style conversation, is now posted at Oregon Arts Watch. It nicely complements my own thoughts on the show in this post, and Barry’s here. If you’d like to hear the voices behind the bylines … well, there we are.

Bob Hicks, Dance, General, Journalism, Music, Theater, Visual Art

The first thing let’s do, let’s kill the critics

5 Comments

By Bob Hicks

Bless me, reader, for I have sinned.

For 40 years Moses wandered in the wilderness. And for roughly the same amount of time I have stumbled through the landmines of contemporary culture, wearing the sackcloth of the most extreme form of penitent journalist.

Honore Daumier, "The Critic"I have been a critic.

Well, apparently I have. That’s what everyone tells me. Lord knows I’ve denied it over the years. For a long time, when people called me a critic, I’d correct them. “I’m a writer,” I’d gently explain, “and these days I happen to be writing about theater.”

It did no good. No one believed me. And “Writer Who Writes About Theater” doesn’t fit in a byline, anyway.

A few years ago I was chatting with Libby Appel, who at the time was artistic director of the Oregon Shakespeare Festival. “You know, I’ve never really thought of myself as a critic,” I told her.

Libby’s eyebrow arched. (Sometimes eyebrows actually do that.) “Oh, you’re a critic,” she said emphatically.

I like to think she was delivering a description, not an accusation. I like her and respect her, even though I’ve sometimes argued in print with shows she’s directed, and I think the feeling’s been mutual. Still. There was no question in her mind. I was, without doubt, One of Those People. And Those People occupy a curious position in the artistic firmament. “Critics never worry me unless they are right,” Noel Coward once commented. “But that does not often occur.”

Then again, what exactly is right?

Continue reading The first thing let’s do, let’s kill the critics →

Bob Hicks, Dance, General

Criticism: what’s it all about, Alfie?

1 Comment

By Bob Hicks

Shoving Deborah Jowitt out the door because she’s not “negative” enough is like firing God because he took that seventh day off. It’s short-sighted, presumptuous, and bound to come back and bite you in the butt.

So, ouch to Village Voice arts editor Brian Parks, who pulled the plug — at least, in the pages of his once-vital publication — on one of the most important voices in American dance writing. Not to wish plagues of locusts in his cornfield, but what was the man thinking? (To give Parks his due, he explained his disagreements with Howitt clearly, and he didn’t fire her: She decided she wasn’t willing to do the things he wanted her to do.)

Over at Arts Dispatch, Barry Johnson tackles this troubling question and broadens it to a consideration of the nature of criticism itself: what is it we want from a critic, and why? It’s a provocative analysis, and we highly recommend you read it for yourself. Get off this blog and haul on over to AD.

Bob Hicks, Cities, General, Theater

Link: Rocco and the death of theater(s)

3 Comments

By Bob Hicks

The big cultural flap out of Washington, now that people have mostly moved on from the Smithsonian chief’s craven caving-in to reactionary blowhards over David Wojnarowicz‘s ant-crawling video at the National Portrait Gallery, comes from the flip side of the channel: Rocco Landesman, boss of the National Endowment for the Arts, has been busy telling people that there’s too much theater in America for the demand, and it would be a good thing if a bunch of companies went out of business. (That theater companies are continuously going out of business without any help or hindrance from the NEA, and starting up again in new combinations, appears to have escaped his notice.)

National Endowment for the Arts chief Rocco Landesman, March 18, 2010. Photo: Mike Linksvayer/Wikimedia Commons.Locally, arts marketing whiz Trisha Mead sounded the alarm (she was even quoted in the New York Times) and Art Scatter’s brother in arms, Barry Johnson, has been carrying the conversation forward with several posts at Arts Dispatch. Mr. Scatter has even sprinkled a couple of comments into his threads.

Barry’s worked up a fine lather, and for good reason: with friends like this, etcetera etcetera etcetera. Keep an eye on Arts Dispatch, because we have a feeling a lot more is going to be pouring out on this subject, and in Portland, AD has become Information Central on this topic.

Here at Art Scatter, we noted a year and a half ago when Congress confirmed Landesman for the top arts job that things were bound to get stirred up.

Continue reading Link: Rocco and the death of theater(s) →

Bob Hicks, General, Theater

Reviewing the review: a Moliere muddle

Leave a comment

By Bob Hicks

And so it came to pass that on the first night, Mr. Scatter went to the opening of Moliere‘s comedy The Imaginary Invalid at Portland Center Stage.

Nicolas Mignard, "Portrait of Molière as Julius Ceasar," 1658. Musée Carnavalet, Paris. Wikimedia Commons.And on the second morning he got up, made coffee, and wrote his review, which was subsequently published (the review, not the coffee) in The Oregonian. And the review praised some and quibbled some, and was not, in the terminology of the great god Variety, boffo.

And lo, the director, Chris Coleman, took issue (firmly but very politely) in an email message to the reviewer. And Mr. Coleman made some worthy points.

And on the next day Mr. Scatter replied. And Mr. Coleman replied in return, “Mind if I run this exchange on my blog?” And Mr. Scatter said, “Good idea.” For indeed, it was.

So here you have it: three parts of an exchange that is really about the way we look at theater, and think about it, and write about it (about classic theater in particular), and about the different approaches that the people who make theater and the people who analyze it take to that process. Plus, as a bonus, some thoughts about what a reviewer should do when he senses that pretty much everyone else in the audience disagrees with him.

Chris has gathered the three parts together on his PCS blog, under the title Is My Review Your Review? To get you in the mood to wade into the fray, I’ve included a pertinent teaser from each of the three parts. Comment here, or on Chris’s blog, or preferably on both (that’s what the copy-block function’s for):

  • The original review, which ran in Monday editions of the paper and online here at Oregon Live: “(F)or all its surface frivolity, something’s missing from Center Stage’s ‘Invalid’ — the sense that what’s happening inside Argan’s anarchic household is connected to the larger culture outside its doors.”
  • Chris Coleman’s response: “… I have, of late, found myself impatient with reviewers (the world over) bringing so much of their own ‘expectations’ to a production of a classic, and judging its merits based on what they walked in hoping to see.”
  • My response to Chris’s response: “With any adaptation, a pertinent question to ask is whether it is faithful to the original. That’s not necessarily a question of traditionalist versus radical …”

Already our old sidekick Barry Johnson of Arts Dispatch, who put in considerable time in the theater critic’s chair at the Big O, has chipped in with some intriguing thoughts at Coleman’s blog. Give ‘er a look.

*

Nicolas Mignard, “Portrait of Molière as Julius Ceasar,” 1658. Musée Carnavalet, Paris. Wikimedia Commons.

Bob Hicks, General, Music, Television, Visual Art

Thursday links: Trash-art TV, unkind cuts

Leave a comment

By Bob Hicks

Mr. Scatter doesn’t watch much television (especially since the Mariners have taken a dive into baseball’s primordial ooze of futility: where are you now, Edgar and Buhner and Big Unit?), and he doesn’t really go in for the American Idol model of determining cultural “winners.”

Nao Bustamante, not shocking enough for TV. Shows like Idol and So You Think You Can Dance certainly reflect the effect of the marketplace on the art world — an effect that a lot of people like to pretend doesn’t exist but is in fact crucial. That doesn’t necessarily make it a positive, only an inescapable fact of life. Still, as we’ve all become excruciatingly aware, an unchecked marketplace can be an arena for disaster, and Mr. Scatter is not convinced that his musical listening habits, for instance, should be determined by a popular vote.

This is a long route to confessing that he hasn’t actually watched an episode of the Bravo network’s Work of Art, in which visual artists advance or fall by the wayside according to a Trump-like theory of failure and success. Fortunately Regina Hackett, from her perch at the provocative and insightful Another Bouncing Ball, has watched, and thought, and written.

Her post Reality TV: artists as female stereotypes is a good read, and typically for ABB, it rattles the cages of conventional wisdom. And Hackett can be funny. Musing on Work of Art‘s judges, whom she judges to be pretty lame, she wonders whether the show couldn’t be goosed up a bit if venerated critic Donald Kuspit joined the panel: “When being fed nonsense, I prefer it to be elegant nonsense, like Kuspit’s.”

*

Hackett’s post here on Dave Hickey (she calls him “the great tap-dancing art critic of our time”) is also a refreshing read. Here’s Hickey on university life: “It took me a few years to realize you can’t talk to other English teachers about literature. You can talk to them about their pets, though. That’s why you want to learn all the names of the professors’ pets, so when you see them in the hall you can ask, ‘How’s Roscoe?’ and they will go on for half an hour, and you can nod along and think about whatever you want.”

*

Meanwhile, Barry Johnson at Arts Dispatch and David Stabler at The Oregonian have been having an interesting conversation about whether it’s smart or dumb for arts groups to  slash budgets in tough times. Should you cut budgets and programming, because it’s prudent to balance your budget? Or does that simply make you look desperate? The ping-pong has been interesting, and so have the comments by a lot of smart onlookers.

I like the latest (so far) take on the fray, by Oregon Symphony violist Charles Noble at Noble Viola: “What you cut is almost as important as how much you cut. … For example, cutting all pops programming because ‘the audience is all dying anyway’ is catastrophic cutting, whereas searching for the audience that we most want to develop and then catering to them within the general pops genre is the better route, though possibly more expensive and time consuming. The difference is what you or I might do to our prized Japanese maple tree if we just randomly hack off stray limbs instead of hiring a skilled arborist to perform careful pruning to make the tree more healthy.”

In other words: Constantly reassess, in good times and bad. And spend smart.

This is a discussion that might actually have an impact. If you haven’t already, catch up on the conversation at these links and throw in your own two Euros’ worth.

*

Illustration: Nao Bustamante’s performance piece wasn’t shocking enough for the judges on Bravo’s “Work of Art.”

Bob Hicks, General

Welcome back, Portland Arts Watch

1 Comment

For the past few months, since he left The Oregonian, Scatter founder Barry Johnson has been exploring the territory of starting an online home for good, groundbreaking arts journalism in Portland.

barrymug_biggerAs a first step he’s set up a new site, Portland Arts Watch, which continues and expands on his old Portland Arts Watch print and Web column in the Big O.

Great news for Portland. The city’s been missing Barry’s insightful viewpoints and ability to approach problems from odd angles to discover new stuff. He can be provocative, he can be funny, he makes connections. We’ve updated our old “Portland Arts Watch” link to take you to the new site. Get kickin’, Barry!

Bob Hicks, General, Journalism

My fellow Scatterers: the state of the blog

6 Comments

English: Lithograph by Edward W. Clay. Praises Andrew Jackson for his destroying the Second Bank of the United States with his "Removal Notice" (removal of federal deposits). Nicolas Biddle portrayed as The Devil, along with several speculators and hirelings, flee as the bank collapses while Jackson's supporters cheer.

On this very day two years ago — on February 8, 2008 — a fine strapping lad was loosed upon the world, and immediately started yawping. Yes, its name was Art Scatter, and it was born right here in river city: in Puddletown, Oregon, brave bubble of liberality, Do It Yourself center of the universe, fearless exposer of itself to art, curious keeper of the weird.

Call us sentimental, but we’ve been thinking a lot about our friend Art, this thing we call a blog. For one thing, why is it still here?

A lot of blogs burn bright for a while and then flame out. Many are simply places to vent steam, or casual public diaries, or vanity projects. Well, almost all, including this one, are the latter at least to a certain degree. After all, nobody’s making any money out of this thing.

English: Father Time and Baby New Year from Frolic & Fun, 1897Art Scatter has changed a lot over its two years. It was the brainchild of Barry Johnson, my friend and longtime arts section compatriot at The Oregonian, who was looking for a way to explore new approaches to journalism outside of the print world. Barry brought me and his friend Vernon Peterson, a lawyer and talented literary critic, into the project, which was planned to be not too taxing on anyone because there would be three people to fill the virtual space.

Life moved on, and both Barry and Vernon departed for other projects. That left me wondering what to do with the thing, and wondering, sometimes, whether I was letting it eat up far too much of my time. In a very real sense my wife, Laura Grimes, saved the blog when she began to post her own witty and moving observations, eventually under the nom de plume of Mrs. Scatter. How could I not keep Art Scatter going? I was fascinated by how Mrs. Scatter’s adventures were going to turn out. Besides, she injected a bracing shot of humor into the blog, the humor that I have known and loved for more than twenty years.

Martha Ullman West, the noted dance critic who had written a couple of pieces for us, began to contribute more, and that added to the conversation. But I realized that if the thing was going to keep going, it was going to be largely up to me.

So. Why was I doing this?

  • First, writing’s a habit. I do it reflexively, if not always reflectively. Just can’t seem to help myself.
  • Second, it’s fun.
  • Third, it allows me scope to write about a lot of things in a lot of ways that were rarely possible during my years in daily journalism.
  • Fourth, it keeps me connected to my community and allows me to have a voice in a few things that go on in this little corner of the world. Good lord, I’ve made friends through this thing!
  • Fifth, it helps me discover my post-newspaper writing voice. I can feel that voice waking up inside me, gradually realizing that it’s no longer bound by the newspaper straitjacket unless it chooses to be. I can hear it trying out new things, even whooping it up now and again. Good for you, voice. Let ‘er rip.

Slowly, mostly accidentally, the blog has developed its own personality. The characters of Mr. and Mrs. Scatter just sort of announced themselves. The Large Smelly Boys pushed their way into the mix. OED, the Older Educated Daughter, made brief visits. We talked about word games and secret societies and oysters on the half-shell. The League of Tough-Guy Arts Observers had its brief day in the sunshine and then wandered off to sleep in a cave: perhaps it’ll wake up and elbow back into the action again. We found we were able to be serious, and flip, and amused, and reflective, and serious and amused again, and somehow get away with it. We began to take a very broad view of just what the word “culture” means.

I’m sure Art Scatter will continue to evolve. It’s already changed in surprising and often delightful ways. It’s opened doors. I know people will drop in and out. Mrs. Scatter’s day job has been busy lately, and I’ve been missing her brilliant reports. (I’m sure you have, too.) Can’t wait for them to return.

And I’ve become convinced of one thing: The blog has to work with my writing career, not against it. I love the freedom and scope that Art Scatter gives me, and I love that it lets me try things out with a regular and forgiving readership. But I also need to make a living, and I do that by writing. This is not a hobby. It’s what I do. So if Art Scatter is my professional exploratory laboratory (and also the locus of a great deal of my pro bono work) I want it to look professional.

Which brings us to Modern, the new design theme that we’ve adopted, yes, today. And which wraps up this semi-impromptu State of the Blog address. Thank you, my fellow Scatterers. Good night, and God bless.

*

Illustrations, from top:

  • Not Mr. Scatter delivering his State of the Blog address. Edward W. Clay’s lithograph celebrates President Andrew Jackson’s destruction of the Second Bank of the United States with his “Removal Notice” (removal of federal deposits). Well done, Andy! Wikimedia Commons.
  • Not Baby Art Scatter. Father Time and Baby New Year from Frolic & Fun, 1897. Wikimedia Commons.