2008-02 Vital Source Mag – February 2008
Less is more
The Grandeur of God: Photographs by Don Doll, S.J. Haggerty Museum of Art (Marquette University) – 13th & Clybourn January 31 – April 13, 2008 The Patrick and Beatrice Haggerty Museum of Art on the campus of Marquette University is an old friend. I was there when it opened in 1984, and each spring and summer I often trek to 13th & Clybourn to review exhibitions and soak up the serenity of the Green Ash Grove on the north side of the museum. Despite the ongoing construction of the Marquette Interchange project, there’s handy free parking and a few moments of peace to be had. The Kahler-designed Haggerty has been described (endlessly) as a “jewel,” and though it lacks lake views, wings rising and falling on cue, vast marbled halls or a café, it’s a beauty. The Haggerty and the Milwaukee Art Museum both announced the hire of executive directors recently: Walter Mason and Daniel Keegan, respectively. Mason will fill the void left by Dr. Curtis Carter, who resigned in 2006 after guiding the Haggerty for over twenty years. Dr. Carter is currently entrenched in Marquette’s Department of Philosophy, but a 2007 oil portrait of him remains at the Haggerty. He’s smiling. I approached The Grandeur of God, a photography exhibition (now – April 13), with a load of baggage, for I don’t believe in a “higher power,” only in the ability of humans to overcome problems. Additionally, I feared being snookered into sentimentality by photographer and educator Don Doll, S.J., who has lived and worked at Creighton University in Omaha since 1969. The exhibition includes photographs of his work with Native Americans, plus panoramas along the Lewis and Clark trail, which he retraced in a 2003 trip from St. Louis to the Pacific Ocean. And more. Much more. As I headed west on Wisconsin Avenue toward the Haggerty, I thought about other images included in the show. Would they prove to be a promo for the Jesuits’ global mission, which is also a part of Marquette University’s overall mission? Doll’s photographs have been featured in National Geographic; his book, Vision Quest, was published by Random House’s Crowns Publisher in 1994, and even though he was born in 1937 and for many decades has been sheltered by Creighton University where he is professor of photojournalism, an image on his website shows him dressed like a guy straight out of GQ. He joined the video revolution a decade ago, and in 2006 was named Nebraska Artist of the Year by that state’s Arts Council. His work hangs in the prestigious Joslyn Museum in Omaha, a museum where I had my first “art experience” at age eight. A local photographer told me recently that the best way to understand art is to have “no understanding” of it prior to viewing. I was already on overload. A few years back, museums everywhere were in the throes of honoring Lewis and Clark’s bicentennial. An article in The New York Times (January 23, 2005) went […]
Feb 7th, 2008 by Stella Cretek
Faith Healer
A scene from Friel’s play Faith Healer, as perfomed by Next Act Theatre. Irish playwright Brian Friel casts a piercing glance into the heart of truth and belief in his three-part drama Faith Healer. Three characters played by three remarkably talented actors speak four conflicting monologues in a thoroughly satisfying script. Next Act Theatre stages this fascinating drama on the intimate stage of the Off-Broadway Theatre through the end of the month. Jonathan Smoots opens the play speaking arcane names of ancient villages buried in the antiquity of the British Isles, creating an air of fantasy. Smoots plays Frank, the title character — a man somewhat uneasily saddled with his profession. Smoots, until now largely relegated to supporting roles, here has presence and a great deal of flair at center stage. The charismatic actor embraces the stage lights with a deep, friendly Irish accent. He tells of his shaky journey from village to village — speaking of his mistress and his agent with sunny tones shaded by a clever uncertainty of his own capabilities. He’s right there in front of us, but even as he speaks simple words as clear as day, there’s an air of mystery about him. Smoots’ deft performance includes a spot-on Irish brogue that shifts to perfect Cockney when the character does an impression of his agent. Smoots shows a casually impressive flair for moving between accents without slowing down, dropping a line or fading out of character. The fact that any classically trained actor with two decades of local stage experience should be able to do this doesn’t make it any less impressive. The second character to take the stage is the faith healer’s mistress Grace. Mary MacDonald Kerr strikes a sharp figure in the role of the educated solicitor who somehow fell in with a man who took her away from a respectable middle-class life. Kerr shows a shrewd strength that is a lot of fun to watch. More than simply contradicting some of the details of Grace’s life with Frank, Kerr renders a completely new dimension to the character that builds on what the first monologue explored. She draws attention to Grace with an understated integrity, working out her story with every word she speaks. The final character to take the stage is Frank’s agent Teddy. Next Act Producing Artistic Director David Cecsarini plays the witty Cockney gentleman who handles Frank’s business affairs as a friend and promoter. He speaks about his experiences with Frank peppered with tales of other acts he’s managed. It’s the more heavily comic end of the play and Cecsarini handles it expertly. His third perspective adds respectable depth to the rest of what’s been said onstage, setting it for one last encounter with Frank. Smoots’ final moments on stage end in a beautiful silhouette brilliantly painted by Lighting Designer Jason Fassl. The lights fade. The applause sounds out. Faith Healer‘s themes reverberate through the evening. VS Next Act’s production of Faith Healer runs now through March 2 at […]
Feb 7th, 2008 by Russ Bickerstaff
Video Games Live! at the Riverside Theater
When entertainment industry icon Tommy Tallarico met fellow composer Jack Wall while assigned to collaborate on the video game Evil Dead: Hail to the King back in 2000, the two shared their dream – to bring video game music to a larger audience and bring it into its own as a veritable art form. “In Japan for many years they put on a show, not just a symphonic concert of music but a hybrid of entertainment,” says Tommy Tallarico. Their friendship and partnership developed into Mystical Stone Entertainment, which teamed up with Clear Channel in July 2005 to hold the first major video game music concert at the Hollywood Bowl in Los Angeles. The overwhelming response prompted Clear Channel to order up an ill-fated tour, which they soon dropped. That was a big mistake for Clear Channel; it allowed the original team to regain control of the promotion and tone of what is now a famous world tour that played 29 dates last year, including a historic and huge three-day run in Brazil. In 2008 the tour includes 60 dates (in 2009, at least 200), one of which is Milwaukee, Wisconsin on March 1. “I get parents coming up to me after the show or emailing me saying, ‘I finally get it now. I get why my kid is into these games – they have these sweeping storylines and graphics and sound’,” says Tallarico. The show has found great success with renowned orchestras internationally after some measure of convincing music directors that the repertoire was more than just boops and beeps – music directors who might not buy the argument that the theme music from Pac-Man (which debuted stateside 28 years ago) is as much a part of the music lexicon as Ira Gershwin and Cole Porter. “The biggest challenge is convincing people,” states Tallarico. “Gamers get it. But it’s a small industry in the symphony world and so one concert master will tell another about it and the word of mouth spread.” But behemoths like the National Symphony in Washington D.C. or London Symphony Orchestra aside, most city symphonies have been looking for ways to bring younger audiences into the concert hall seats. With Video Games Live, each show’s set list is different, and the program is always trying out new gimmicks on stage. Tallarico and Wall’s team create an event that takes on the air of Cirque du Soleil or the Blue Man Group at times with full-scale Tron cycles, big screen displays coordinated with the music and audience participation or giveaways. Milwaukee’s performance will be tailored around the Pabst venue’s capabilities. Each city is emailed the sheet music and sent mp3s showing how the themes from Mario, Zelda, Metroid, Castlevania, Gauntlet and Earthworm Jim will be translated for epic scale with horns, strings and percussion. Some arrangements are symphonic interpretations while other more modern fare like Advent Rising (which Tallarico composed) and Halo already have their compositions set from the original. The response even from non-video game […]
Feb 5th, 2008 by Brian Jacobson
The line forms here
The line: the beginning of possibilities, the basis of all art, begins at Inova/Kenilworth in an adventurous and well-balanced exhibit, which I reviewed in two prior features this week (Read part one and part two). If this prelude to spring forecasts what’s on the Kenilworth horizon, those who moan about our “dismal” art scene are perhaps looking in all the wrong places. It wasn’t too long ago that if you yearned to view art, the choices were narrow: museums and a few privately owned galleries, plus exhibitions at universities. Now that we have a tide of technology, a tsunami of art experience is readily available via the internet. Locals can peruse Susceptible to Images, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel art critic Mary Louise Schumacher’s varied offerings, MKE, OnMilwaukee and any number of blogs and logs encouraging virtual space wanderers. There are seductive sites with excellent hi-res images and mountains of information, so why leave your cave when you can tour plopped in front of a computer, maybe with some wine and cheese? Parking space abounds, and you can Google and YouTube forever in your underwear. In effect, your home becomes your gallery, devoid of overzealous gallerists rushing forth to gush, “Isn’t this gorgeous!” Online touring makes me anxious and a nagging fear lurks, neurotic perhaps, that eventually the hi-tech will white-out the experience of standing in front of a work of art and exercising the brain. The Inova/Kenilworth show is a reminder of everything computer content lacks. Yes, the irony is that you are reading this at vitalsourcemag.com. It’s my hope that it will prod you into action. During my third and final visit, I duly noted that 160 souls attended the opening reception, and I spoke at length with a 21-year-old UWM senior, Nicholas Teeple. He just started as a “gallery guard” and is enrolled in DIVAS, the university’s digital imaging, video, animation and sound program. He hasn’t taken any courses in drawing, and remarked that the computer “doesn’t lend itself to drawing and perhaps makes it less relevant, I guess.” I asked him how he intended to use a degree from a program he believes is challenging, rewarding and “full of potential.” He is particularly interested in time-based media, in the “blossoming” video and mash-up culture, and down the road may get into performance and installation art. We talked about the anxiety/paranoia content of the exhibition. “By the way,” he asked, “just who are you writing this for?” For a moment, I thought maybe he was paranoid. “Fear-mongering is just another form of control,” he said as we discussed the show’s overall theme. “It’s a form of control embraced by the media.” Claire Pentecost, one of the two artists I was there to review, has 14 pieces in the exhibition, ranging in size from 64” x 52” unframed giclee prints to framed 10”x 8” palladium prints. She teaches drawing, critical theory and interdisciplinary seminars and the School of the Art Institute in Chicago and refers to her photographs as “extracted;” […]
Feb 4th, 2008 by Stella Cretek
Twelfth Night
Alexis McGuinness and Molly Rhode in Milwaukee Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night Milwaukee Shakespeare’s impressively staged production of Twelfth Night only played for seven performances, a briefly realized event manifesting just long enough to register a reaction before its disappearance. Shakespeare’s quintessential gender-bending comedy came to the stage of the Sharon Lynne Wilson Center with a distinctly 20th century feel. Noele Stollmack’s set vaguely suggested a financial institution designed by Ikea, with minimalist stairs, platforms and bars. It provided a remarkable background for the production, and with some exquisite lighting, also by Stollmack, this production of Twelfth Night was a real pleasure to watch. The costuming by Mara Blumenfeld paired perfectly with the set, and with simple sports coats, secret service outfits, loud pinstripes and lace trim, the costuming promoted a greater period ambiguity. Brian J. Gill played a solidly charismatic Orsino, Duke of Illyria, who employs the services of a young man named Cesario – actually a disguised woman named Viola, played here by Alexis McGuinness. Viola loves Orsino, but is unable to show her love through the disguise, and unwittingly, Orsino dispatches Viola to woo Olivia — a countess played with subtlety by Molly Rhode. The plan backfires when Olivia falls for Cesario, who is of course only following the directions of the man she loves. The production fails to capture the full intricacies of the complex dynamic between Olivia, Viola and Orsino, but other aspects of the play more than made up the difference. It was a bit unexpected, for instance, to see the central action of the play upstaged by Mark H. Dold in the role of Olivia’s servant Malvolio. Dold, who has worked extensively in television, made Malvolio’s every detail sparkle with wit early on in the play. He carries himself with remarkable poise — a servant with exceptional aspirations who secretly pines for the woman he serves. His performance exemplified this production’s fascinating unevenness: the meat of the play seemed lost in exquisitely captured details from the periphery of the story. A considerably distracting subplot featured Viola’s brother Sebastian (Kevin Rich) and his good friend Antonio (Todd Denning). Rich was brilliant in the relatively marginal role, and Denning’s interaction with him carried a great deal of weight. There’s a bond between the two men that gets lost in the action of the play – perhaps because Shakespeare never found direct resolution between the characters. Under the direction of Paula Suozzi, that relationship received a well-executed resolution here that brilliantly shows a happy ending for some isn’t a happy ending for everyone. VS Milwaukee Shakespeare’s production of Twelfth Night closed February 3. Its production of Cymbeline opens March 22 for a considerably longer run at the Broadway Theatre Center Studio Theatre. For tickets or more info call 414-2917800 or visit Milwaukee Shakes online.
Feb 4th, 2008 by Russ Bickerstaff
Collections of Colonies of Bees
By Charlie Hosale The central aspect of Milwaukee natives Chris Rosenau and Jon Mueller’s musical projects has always been accessible experimentation. Collections of Colonies of Bees, thanks to an evolving and expanding lineup of musicians, have had a number of dynamically different sounds over the years. This new release finds the band on a new label with a filled-out lineup consisting of Jim Schoenecker, Daniel Spack, and Thomas Wincek. From the record’s first note, the change in the Bees’ sound and approach is palpable. Customer, released in 2004, found the group experimenting with free forms and electronics, with a focus on floating melody. Those influences are still present on Birds, but the band has shifted to a much more structured process. Instead of trying to see how far music can go, like the unconventional structure and melodic re-imaginings of Customer, they attempt to break music down to its simplest emotional form. Birds shifts to pulsing rhythms and delicately structured melodic layering to create a musical catharsis—something that, before Birds, the Bees hadn’t really done. Birds is an entirely different record for the Bees, but it still sounds like everything their listeners have come to love about them. Their songs have always sounded like instances of beauty, like a friend smiling or a tear dropping, and on Birds those pictures are still there; it just sounds like now the Bees are ready to take on the whole story, instead of only living in the moment.
Feb 1st, 2008 by Vital Archives
Bob Mould
Singer/songwriter/punk icon/former pro-wrestling scripter Bob Mould has (obviously) worn many hats during his career. With his latest solo offering, District Line, the ex-Hüsker Dü and Sugar guitarist continues hisbalancing act between modern rock balladeer and DIY wunderkind. Mould plays every instrument on District Line besides the cello, provided by Amy Domingues, and the signature drumming of Fugazi’s Brendan Canty. Canty’s distinctive dub-enhanced syncopation shines on the leadoff track “Stupid Now;” for most of the album, though, he’s content to simply lay a solid back beat. His playing echoes Mould’s songwriting; flashes of the work that made them both legends occasionally shine through what is essentially an album of sometimes competent, often excellent, generally straightforward alternative rock. Mould’s solo work is intensely personal and relationship-based. “Again and Again” recalls his 90’s alterna-pop incarnation, Sugar, with symphonic guitar driving a melancholy suicide note of dysfunctional love – “I took the bullets from the carport/tossed them in my backpack…I left the title to the house inside the piano bench/And my lawyer’s got the will.” This track, and the up-tempo (and equally Sugary) “Very Temporary,” shows the material at its strongest and catchiest. A strange fascination with vocoder (which, let’s face it, Cher ruined for everyone) threatens to undermine “Very Temporary” and otherwise fascinating tracks like the alterna-rock/disco mash-up “Shelter Me.” It’s frankly distracting to hear the voice behind incendiary punk classics like “Something I Learned Today” dabbling in NYC Eighth Avenue club music. Still, Mould’s determination to straddle the line between alternative and dance pays off more often than it stumbles on District Line. Now if only Bob would find the time to start scripting wrestling matches again. Lord knows the WWE could use him right now.
Feb 1st, 2008 by DJ Hostettler
Checkers or Chess?
Maybe no one will win this election By Donald Kaul American elections are nothing if not amusing; solemn rituals laced with equal measures of irony and hypocrisy, with a touch of absurdity thrown in for taste. The victory speeches alone are worth the price of admission. Take for example the statement of Mitt Romney after he’d been declared winner of the Michigan caucuses: “Tonight is a victory of optimism over Washington-style pessimism,” he said. Implicit in that statement is the belief, widely held, unfortunately, that optimism is a good thing in and of itself, and that to be pessimistic is somehow un-American. Balderdash. Hogwash. Fiddle-faddle. There, having exhausted my supply of 19th Century rebukes, let me tell you why the idea is dangerous nonsense. A little optimism is fine, necessary, even. It helps one get up in the morning and face the day. When it reaches the point of self-delusion, however, it masks the real problems one faces and makes a solution impossible. Romney’s victory took place at the precise moment that the national economy seems poised to plunge into a full-blown recession and in a state that has been living that recession for the better part of a decade. Michigan’s unemployment rate, at about 8 percent, is the highest in the country; its chief economic engine, the auto industry, is reeling from foreign competition and shows little sign of recovering any time soon. Plants, one after another, keep closing. It doesn’t need optimism; it needs rescue. Romney says he can bring Michigan’s lost jobs home. By cutting taxes, of course. That’s the Republican answer to Hadacol. It cures all ills. Let me say this about that: Cutting taxes does not necessarily create jobs. Rich people and corporations do not invest in plants and equipment simply because they have the money to do so. There has to be some expectation of profit. And if there’s nobody out there with money to buy anything, that expectation does not exist. I will never know how Democrats keep losing elections to Republicans. The GOP has controlled Congress for most of the past dozen years and the presidency for the past seven. Having inherited a budget surplus, a boisterous economy and a healthy dollar, they’ve managed to squander those advantages and run the economy into a ditch. And now we’re seriously considering keeping a Republican in the White House? That’s like hiring Michael Vick as your dog walker. On second thought, I think I know how Democrats keep losing elections. Their ability to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory is all but supernatural. Take, for example, the decision of the national party to ignore the Michigan caucuses. Michigan, seeking to achieve some relevance in the presidential selection process, had moved its caucuses up right behind Iowa and New Hampshire. This so offended the leaders of the Democratic party that they punished the state by stripping it of its delegates at the national convention. The major presidential candidates went along with the gag (most […]
Feb 1st, 2008 by Vital Archives
VITAL turns six with Puzzles + Games
By VITAL friends and family Download PDFs of all of our puzzles & games! Just print and play! Coloring page by Natalia Rubanov: VITAL’s birthday girl! Coloring page by Dwellephant Coloring page by Tim Edgar Hidden picture puzzle by Coth Paper doll by Tea Krulos Coloring page by Kristopher Pollard Coloring page by Jeff Noise Find the differences puzzle by J. Jason Groschopf Giant word search Giant crossword Kris kross puzzle, anagram jumble and mega-sudoku
Feb 1st, 2008 by Vital Archives
Guitar Hero
Growing up in a small, semi-rural town where broomball and shining deer were considered high entertainment (if you’re unfamiliar with these provincial pastimes, please, don’t ask), I was keenly aware of a strange, terrifying sub-set of my peers. No, not the girls who harbored abnormal crushes on Channel 12’s Jerry Taft, or even the kids who looked like circus animals (my graduating class alone had three pandas), but something much more puzzling, much more insidious: 13-year-olds with facial hair. For the most part, these freaks of nature were farm kids who drank at least four cartons of milk during lunch, had nicknames like “Goatsy” or “Yummers” and were almost always excellent bowlers. So enamored were these mutants with their precious little dirt-staches that they never once shaved them, instead opting to savor each scraggly whisker for years on end as if it were manna from heaven. Of course, much like a farmer’s field, if you fail to cultivate the land (or, in this case, your upper lip), you deprive your crops the chance to flourish and grow, leaving you with nothing but dirt. And that’s exactly what happened here: all throughout high school, these redneck goons sported the same ill-formed, uncultivated facial hair. Occasionally running into them now during drunken jaunts back to my hometown, I always take a certain amount of pleasure in seeing these grown men still rocking straight-up peach fuzz. I bring up this disturbing phenomenon because I harbor something of an ill-formed mustache myself: my sub-standard guitar playing (in the realm of facial hair, I still remain as smooth and ridiculous as a baby bird). Technically, I’ve been playing guitar for nearly half my life; this statement is entirely misleading, however, when you consider that in my case, “playing” roughly translates to “learning some basic chords when you’re 16 and strumming them to death for the next decade-and-a-half.” Perhaps it was my early frustration with never figuring out that goddamn opening riff to “Come As You Are” (something most eight-year-olds could probably lick in ten minutes) but after a while, I simply gave up. This piss-poor attitude was recently thrown into sharp relief when local tunesmiths The Danger asked me to fill in for their recently departed lead guitarist. It was understood this emergency substitution would be for a single show at the Cactus Club (opening for the criminally underappreciated Dark Horse Project), and that we would only have a few weeks to rehearse. It was also understood that I would be expected to play some of the leads – nothing complicated, I was assured – but leads nonetheless. Would I do it? After carefully considering my utter lack of time, energy or talent, I immediately said yes.(A side note: if The Danger happens to be playing near a venue near you, do yourself a favor and check them out; it’s nice to hear a band that doesn’t rely on chamber-pop chanting or lyrics about robots and zombies to get their point across.) Rehearsals went well, […]
Feb 1st, 2008 by Matt Wild
The fine art of persuasion
In fourth grade, the children at Roosevelt Elementary are taught how to write a persuasive letter. My nine-year-old, Emma, has been faithfully practicing this skill. Here’s a case in point. Recently, our cat Lucius decided to exhibit his displeasure with the humans by peeing on the floor next to where I was standing. It was a short-lived habit, occurring about two times. But in my frustration of the moment, I was overheard saying that I couldn’t keep a cat that wouldn’t use his litter box. Here is Emma’s written response to that comment. Had I been seriously inclined to drop the cat at the Humane Society I’m not sure it would have changed my mind, but in terms of sheer persuasive skills, Emma clearly found catharsis in this process of careful manipulation and has developed it into an art form. May it be a guide to all of us. You’ve got to fight for what you believe in.
Feb 1st, 2008 by Lucky Tomaszek
Allison Moorer
Elegance: if there could ever be such a thing as a one-word review, that would be it for Mockingbird. On her sixth studio recording Allison Moorer set out to record a selection of songs that she hoped would make listeners treasure, encourage and pay attention to the female songwriter. It’s a fairly ambitious undertaking, and with Mockingbird, a resounding success. Allison puts her stamp on virtually every song, spanning an impressive spectrum. Moorer and producer Buddy Miller bring overdriven drums, an acoustic guitar and some subtly delayed piano to life on “Ring of Fire,” re-imagining the entire context of this important lyric while losing none of its strength. From there, she moves easily onto “Dancing Barefoot,” the Patti Smith gem, polishing it to a gleam. There’s a bit of rocking on this one: The Joni Mitchell favorite “Both Sides Now” is gorgeous and emotive under Moorer’s own blue light. But she saves the best for last: her version of Cat Power’s “Where Is My Love” is stunning and powerful. It’s haunting. It’s captivating. And it’s so real. Moorer doesn’t just play these songs, she appreciates them in earnest. Music of this magnitude elevates its listeners. I could’ve typed the first word of this review 100 times and left it at that. It’s just that good.
Feb 1st, 2008 by Troy Butero
