Playtime

As is the case with the list of rules included with more conventional board games, visitors to “Playtime” -- the interactive exhibit currently open at the Peabody Essex Museum through May 6 -- are initially met with a list of ‘givens’ asserted about the art of play, etched out for us in whimsical pink:

“PLAY spurs productivity

PLAY is a catalyst for creativity

PLAY is an escape from conformity I loved this one…

PLAY reinvents the rules

PLAY empowers the players

PLAY stimulates innovation

PLAY enables exploration

PLAY is a response to uncertainty …and this one, especially!

PLAY rewards misbehavior

PLAY negotiates conflict

PLAY resists productivity”

Forty works by 20 leading contemporary artists, the installation contemplates the role of play in the creative process by beckoning visitors to come explore the multiple rooms of the exhibit.

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For starters, one entire wall of PEM’s East India Marine Hall is occupied with a found art installation by Italian sculptor, Lara Favaretto. “Coppie Semplici / Simple Couples” -- a gigantic (we’re talking floor-to-ceiling), wildly colorful compilation of rotating car wash brushes -- offers a surprisingly breezy and spirited, yet nearly hypnotic experience.

Sitting on a bench in the historic hall gazing out a window to the city beyond, the rhythmic whir and swish of brushes in the background, was as close to a Zen-like experience as I’ve had in a long time.

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Martin Creed’s balloon room installation is precisely what it sounds like -- a room completely filled with inflated pink balloons into which a PEM guide invites people to enter a few at a time, closing the door behind them.

A mild sense of claustrophobia prevented me from experiencing this particular immersive fun -- a decision that others who did participate have since convinced me I should have reconsidered.

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"One Minute Sculptures," by internationally acclaimed artist Erwin Wurm, encourage visitors to become part of the exhibit by stepping up onto platforms and striking a pose with various commonplace objects for the amusement or provocation of other visitors passing by.

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There’s an interactive piece that looks at sexism through the eyes of the popular video game “Warcraft“ and a film of performance artist Nick Cave as the flaming pink, hairy -- slightly creepy-- “Bunny Boy.”

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Much as it is with art, finding joy at play is intrinsically tied to an innate curiosity and comfort with creative risk taking. Exhibition curator, Trevor Smith, calls play “a catalyst for creativity, where we make up the rules and learn how to negotiate and resolve conflict.” And as it is with art, “play helps us possess a power for change. It’s fundamentally about human empowerment,” Smith contends.

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Perhaps it’s because names like Stoneham Douglas High School, Sandy Hook Elementary School, Pulse Night Club, and the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church still feel too raw on the tongue, but I found Pedro Reyes’ piece, “Disarm Mechanized ll” by far the most empowering aspect of “Playtime.” Using 6,700 illegal guns confiscated by the Mexican government during raids of drug cartels, the Latino artist created a band of mechanical musical instruments, which can either be automated -- as it is at PEM -- or played live by an individual operator using a laptop computer or MIDI keyboard.

“It’s important to consider that many lives were taken with these weapons; as if a sort of exorcism was taking place, the music expelled the demons they held, as well as being a requiem for the lives lost,” Reyes has said.

Agents of death and destruction transformed into instruments of creativity and vitality -- now that’s my kind of recreation!

“You can discover more about a person in an hour of play than in a year of conversation.”
-- Plato

The Threads We Wear ~ The Stories We Share

"One should either be a work of art or wear a work of art," Oscar Wilde once famously said -- a sentiment I bumped head-long into one windy afternoon in late March at the Peabody Essex Museum.

From the beginning, visitors to Georgia O'Keeffe: Art, Image, Style are invited to explore the common nexus among the 50 works of art, 50 articles of clothing, and over 100 photographs on display (Who knew O’Keeffe was the most photographed artist of the 20th century?!)

Right off the bat, this idea of connection between visual art and fashion smacks you upside the head and sets the tone for what is to follow. The opening display highlight’s O’Keeffe’s attraction to “V-shaped” themes by juxtaposing her painting, “In the Patio XI” (oil on canvas, 1950), -- an abstract of blue sky above two abutting white homes with triangular black roofs

and a white dress with two fierce, black triangle patterns hugging either side; the work of Italian designer Emilio Pucci that made its way into O’Keeffe’s closet around 1954.

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A bit further we see a picture of the artist decked out in her signature layers of androgynous-styled V-neck clothing. And so it goes throughout the exhibit…three handmade ivory blouses possessing the drape and color of a classic O’Keeffe floral painting hanging nearby them…A red and purple madras dress placed next to her “Stump in Red Hills” (oil on canvas, 1940) -- in which twists of the featured stump resembles the folds of fabric and the boldness of the red in the hills beyond harkens back to the Indian-inspired, robe-like wrap.

To be sure, fashion as art is nothing new. Yves St. Laurent’s couture reflected the cubist art movement of the 1960s and certainly took the idea of color blocking to a whole new level!

Or pair up surrealist Salvador Dalí’s 1936 creation “Lobster Telephone” with Italian designer, Elsa Schiaparelli’s “Lobster Dress” on which her friend, Dalí, collaborated with her in 1937.

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But O’Keeffe, as I learned, was different; fashion and art were a way of life. Throughout a career that spanned seven decades, flourishing both in the bright bustle of NYC and in the hush of her desert home 60 miles north of Santa Fe, O’Keeffe embraced a kind of “unified aesthetic.” The art she created connected to the fashion she wore -- and often expertly sewed -- herself, and vice versa. Heavy on natural materials -- silks, cottons and wools -- O’Keeffe’s fashion sense was like her paintings -- somehow loose and billowy, yet stark and severe at the same time.

Considered “mannish” in the 1930s and 40s, O’Keeffe’s “look” became trendy -- and ultimately iconoclastic -- as time progressed. She embraced her individuality and was definitely ahead of her time.

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As I meandered my way out of the exhibit, I couldn’t help reflecting on what Georgia O’Keeffe: Fashion Icon would think about Nick D’Alessandro were she alive today. A budding fabric artist, Nick is a recent recipient of The Pentucket Arts Foundation’s John McGrath and Margaret Duchemin Passion for the Arts Grant. The grant is helping to fund a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for the Pentucket 11th grader to participate in a Parson School of Design summer intensive held in Paris. Nick plans to develop his unique, hand painted line of clothing, “Up to Us”; and when he returns, he promises a pop up fashion show for the community this fall.

With “Up To Us,” Nick aims to challenge society’s typical definition of beauty and push for broader diversity -- starting with the fashion industry. Like O’Keeffe, he has a unified aesthetic -- the way he is designing his clothing line overlaps with the principles that guide other areas of his life.

In both cases, the artist underscores the sacredness of the individual -- a timely reminder in a society where too often the loudest voices rule and the bullies demand we all walk in lock step.

“To create one’s world in any of the arts takes courage.” --Georgia O’Keeffe

What's Your Story?

For a time during my early childhood my father would tuck me and my siblings in at night by telling us an installment of this never-ending tale he apparently made up on the spot about a brave lad named Agazzi and his trusty canine companion --whose name, sadly, I’ve forgotten. Our two heroes faced many daring adventures, the far-fetched plot twists equally doused in tragedy and triumph; and always a dramatic cliff-hanger at the end, which left my brother, sister and I dangling in tantalizing thoughts as we drifted off to sleep… 

According to the late, great, computer wiz Steve Jobs, “the storyteller is the most powerful person in the world” because, as Jobs saw it,   “the storyteller sets the vision, values, and agenda of an entire generation to come.” 

The art of storytelling is something I am grateful to say I was weaned on and which I have tried to pass on to my children and grandchildren.  But regretfully, the tales of Agazzi --a long since faded childhood memory--were laid to rest back in 1990 when Dad left us far too early.  My brother likens the loss of Agazzi to the missing plays of Sophocles -- which is perhaps a tad dramatic, except that it does feel on a personal level like a glorious family treasure has indeed slipped through our fingers forever.   

Such was the riveting manner in which we huddled closely on one or another’s bed to anxiously await each chapter our master storyteller would gin up for us fresh from his own imagination. Such was the bond created over 50 years ago as my brother, sister and I willingly gave ourselves over to the bedtime journey, replete with its subtle lessons on the value of persistence, the importance of belief in one’s self, and, ultimately, our unflinching faith in the power of goodness to triumph over evil.  

Where are our storytellers today?  In a world when too often principles are transactional and truth is negotiable, we need more storytellers to -- as Hamlet puts it --“hold a mirror up to nature.”  My recent experiences at two local theatres --first to see the documentary “Obit: Life on Deadline” at Newburyport’s Firehouse Center for the Arts, and then to hear master storyteller, Jay O’Callahan, perform as part of Gloucester Stage Company’s “Never Dark” series -- have convinced me of this truth now more than ever. 

Told in cinéma vérité style, “Obit”  captures a day in the life of obituary writers from the New York Times as they attempt to memorialize (in 800 words or less)  lives that have impacted our contemporary culture in one way or another - from Michael Jackson, David Foster Wallace, and Leonid Brezhnev to lesser known actors on the world stage --the inventor of the Slinky or the ad man responsible for those quirky Alka Seltzer commercials from  the 1960s. 

Film maker Vanessa Gould convincingly makes the case that the obit writer is a unique kind of storyteller tasked with explaining “how the world got to be the way it is,”  prompting readers to find connections with strangers through the very things that bind us as human beings --the fragility of our mortal coil, the need to be known,  the desire to live a life that mattered --in one way or another. 

Obit writer William Grimes describes what he does as “weaving a historical spell and enchanting the reader and doing justice to a life… It’s a once-only chance to make the dead live again.” After all, only a sentence or two of an obituary is dedicated to the person’s death - -the rest is a valediction of contributions made to the world of the living.  As storyteller, Grimes is empowered to decide what about a person’s life is worth remembering and retelling and underlining in red ink forever after. 

Using the oral tradition,  O’Callahan also holds the mirror up to his audiences. With masterful expressions, physicality, cadence, and language, he kept us spellbound as he shared the humor and drama of ordinary life as a young boy growing up during WWII in a working class Boston neighborhood.  There is an authenticity about O’Callahan’s craft that rises beyond mere facts, leading to the kind of truths I was still pondering long after leaving that intimate seaside theatre --about how our love for the people in our lives transcends their transgressions; how our imperfections are worth celebrating because they are woven into the fabric of who we are; how finding the good in people can be just as contagious as looking for the flaws and differences… 

I once read about a study on the workings of the human brain in relationship to language. Words like “cinnamon,” “lavender,” and “soap” -- the study suggested- not only trigger the language-processing areas of our brains, but also light up the sensory cortex areas; just as words like “kick,” “jump”, and “haul” ignite the brain’s motor cortex.  Scientists concluded that this ability of language to affect multiple sections of our brains is probably why humankind has always connected at such a visceral level to a well-told tale. Our ability to unite with one another through storytelling has forever been a fundamental part of what makes us human. It  probably explains why storytelling  is considered “the most human and ancient of art forms.”  

As I huddle close around the campfire these days I’m yearning for those tales as old as time to help calm the chaos; the stories that teach us to embrace our flaws as we celebrate our differences; the stories that remind us of our fundamental truths and collective values; the ones that restore our faith in the power of goodness to heal the world for future generations of lads and lassies-- and their trusty canine companions. 

Now more than ever, we need our storytellers to show us the way. What stories do you have to tell? 

Of Chocolate Pots and Creative Roses

Matisse, Henri. Purple Robe and Anemones. 1937. 

“There are always flowers for those who want to see them.” 

                         -French Modernist Henri Matisse (1869-1954)

Matisse -- as I discovered on a recent trip into Boston with my daughter and 10-year old granddaughter to visit the MFA’s phenomenal “Matisse in the Studio” exhibit  --filled his work space with cherished items -- familiar objects of inspiration that served as comforting, time-tested fodder for his creative process.  

Matisse, in front of window screen. Source: http://www.mfa.org/exhibitions/matisse-in-the-studio

A blue-glass vase obtained on a visit to Spain…A chocolate pot received as a wedding gift…A Moroccan wall hanging and other textiles and masks from the Islamic, Chinese, and African traditions…

Throughout his career, the Master Artist painted these personal treasures into his works over and over again -- in the same way a theatrical director might cast and choreograph a troupe of favored performers into various roles. “The object is an actor,” he insisted. Just as a veteran actor can successfully portray parts in ten different plays, Matisse believed “an object can play a role in ten different pictures."

Matisse, Henri. Blue Vase with Flowers on Blue Tablecloth. 1913.

Matisse, Henri. Interior with Etruscan Vase. 1940.

Why did this idea of turning to the familiar for inspiration feel so empowering?  Long after I’d meandered my way through the colorful palette filling the walls of the MFA’s first major Henri Matisse exhibit in 50 years,  hunting with my own exuberant 10-year old treasure at my side for signs of Matisse’s 39 most beloved objects among the paintings, drawings, and cut-out prints; and well past surviving the requisite stop at the Matisse-flavored gift shop awaiting us at the gallery’s end, I found I kept pondering his approach to the creative process. 

As chairman of a local arts foundation, I spend a lot of time during the year looking for ways to infuse our community with life-vivifying fine and performing arts experiences --those moments, however brief, that shake us from the drone of day-to-day existence and remind us of how truly amazing it is to belong to this quirky species of sentient beings filled with peaks and chasms of joy and sorrow,  profound reflection and provocation, rage and giddy nonsensicalness.  These are the feelings good art  can trigger. It’s why I spend a lot of my free time planning, organizing, and fundraising -- even, if sometimes, I may forget to stop and smell the creative roses along the way. 

This summer I’ve challenged myself to harvest some of those flowers Matisse promised are all around us. As he did with the objects in his studio, I’ve decided to seek creative inspiration from the treasure trove of local artistic opportunities nearby me. I’ve dared myself to use this space to offer a visceral response to at least one local arts happening each week for the next 8 weeks --and because Matisse’s favored objects weren’t necessarily the most expensive ones in his collection, I’ve decided to cap my artistic adventures to no more than $30 a pop.  

So that’s my challenge -- to discover just what kind of creative muses are hiding around me in plain sight here in Essex County for little or no money.  Do you know any local arts experiences that might fit the bill?  Send them my way and by the end of the summer we’ll see what blooms…

Matisse, Henri. Open Window, Collioure. 1905.