2008-08 Vital Source Mag – August 2008
The Misanthrope
Boulevard Theatre opens its season with a modern twist on an old comedy as it presents its production of Moliere’s The Misanthrope – moved from 17th-century France to contemporary Quebec, set in an art gallery and spiced up with a liberal dose of gender-bending. The new floor of the renovated Boulevard is a rich, deep wood that suits the setting well. A single bench sits center stage, in tune with the clean, modern set dressing and costuming — a nearly flawless visual presentation from beginning to end. The rhythm of Moliere’s story may not be perfectly rendered, but the production more than redeems itself elsewhere, in jovial performances and impeccable presentation. David Flores stars as Alceste – in this production, a visual/performing arts critic falling for Cesarmene (Cesar Gamino), a flirtatious gallery owner. “Cesarmene” is the Boulevard’s male adaptation of Célimène – a coquettish young lady in the original script. As the play opens, Alceste is having a philosophical discussion with his friend Philinte – another gender-swapped role, played with charisma by Beth Monhollen. Philinte and Alceste discuss the difference between tact and honesty in modern society. Dramatic presentation usually offers a more casual introduction to characters before barreling into abstract philosophical debate, and with less sophisticated treatment, this conversation might be an immediate turn-off for a contemporary audience. But Flores and Monhollen deliver Moliere’s rhythmic rhyming couplets with understated drama and intellectual passion, making the first scene bearable and even exciting. The Misanthrope was selected as a vehicle for Flores, and he justifies the choice marvelously. Joe Frasee delivers a fun performance as Oronte, a poet in the original play framed here as a “spoken word/performance artist,” a flamboyant gentleman every bit as enamored with Cesarmane as Alceste. Oronte demands Alceste’s frank impression of a sonnet he’s written, and Alceste, despite his better judgment, agrees to hear the piece – which Oronte performs wearing nothing more than a pair of shiny red underpants. Cesar Gamino as Cesarmene plays Alceste’s decisive opposite. There is balance between opposing forces in the ensemble, but the balance between Gamino and Flores as Alceste and Cesarmene is most striking. Alceste’ longing for truth and honesty is matched by Cesarmene’s innate desire for pleasantly flattering dishonesty. Their dynamic is captivating and carries the tension of the play. We’re no longer at the point in art history where gender-bending is a shock, but even more conservative theater-lovers should be pleased by this production – besides the gender and name changes and cheeky choices, this is Moliere’s original Misanthrope – performed with total respect and deference. VS The Boulevard Theatre’s production of The Misanthrope runs through August 24. For more information, call 414-744-5757 or visit the Boulevard online.
Aug 20th, 2008 by Russ Bickerstaff
Well
Milwaukee Chamber Theatre opens its season with the Milwaukee premiere of Lisa Kron’s Well — a pseudo-meta-theatrical drama. Angela Iannone stars as Kron, who is trying to develop a theatrical exploration into the nature of health and illness in modern society. Ruth Schudson plays Lisa’s mother, who has unsuspectingly been framed onstage as Lisa’s case study in human health. In spite of Lisa’s persistent affirmations that she is not doing a play about her mother, her mother slowly takes over the production, leaving Lisa to wonder what she was trying to say in the first place. The set, designed by Lisa Schlenker, splits the stage down the middle. On the right, the set is furnished and domestic, with bookcases, knickknacks, furniture and – at the outset of the play – Lisa’s mother, asleep. Stage left is bare, with a video screen high above the floor. Angela Iannone’s stage presence is fascinating – she deftly portrays Lisa Kron ass a magnetic, witty playwright. Ruth Schudson, who has taken on a great many roles over the years, looks absolutely at home onstage, rendering Mrs. Kron’s wizened confidence with comely clarity. The supporting ensemble includes local stage veterans Bo Johnson and Tami Workentin, rising talent Travis A. Knight and relative newcomer Marti Gobel. All performances here are well-executed, but there seems to be something missing, and it isn’t due to any lack of skill on the part of talented director Laura Gordon. There’s a level of cohesion that the script never quite manages to attain. Through its post-modern construction, it directly addresses Well’s lack of cohesion, which grows to become the central conflict of the play. But simply making note of the disconnectedness of scenes doesn’t make them any easier to bear. A lack of cohesion is a lack of cohesion, even if you choose to make it the play’s driving conflict. Kron’s script is clever, but it fails as a piece of meta-theatre on a fundamental level. Throughout the play, each character in the production is revealed to be the actor or actress playing them except Lisa herself, who is never completely revealed to be Angela Iannone. Iannone excels in the role of an artist who is losing track of her statement, but the production is never allowed to acknowledge that a talented actress is playing the role of the playwright. In this respect, every production of Well that doesn’t star the real Lisa Kron in the female lead is limited. Make no mistake – this is a satisfying production, but in a play so narrowly focused on striking the ore of human emotion, the play’s central figure is merely speaking the same lines all the rest of the actors are. It’s a flaw that cuts to the heart of what Kron is trying to say. VS Milwaukee Chamber Theatre’s production of Well runs now through August 24 at the Broadway Theatre Center’s Cabot Theatre. Tickets can be purchased by calling 414-291-7800 or visit the Chamber Theatre online.
Aug 20th, 2008 by Russ Bickerstaff
A portrait is an image of a person
J. Shimon & J. Lindemann, Elise at Work, Manitowoc, Wisconsin, 2007. Inkjet pigment print from 8 x 10 transparency, 20 x 16 in. Ed. 2/10 What is wrapped up in a portrait? We see so many each day that we never really stop to think about what the creation of a person’s image encompasses and implies. When you make a portrait, whether it’s a marble bust, a painting, a professional photograph, or a snapshot of a friend, you are capturing the essence of a real, live person: someone that lives and breathes, that works and feels and exists in the world. A portrait is an image of a person. Unmasked & Anonymous: Shimon and Lindemann Consider Portraiture brings this most basic and oft-forgotten aspect of portraiture to the forefront of our consciousness. A portrait is an image of a person. Through works of their own and carefully culled works from the Milwaukee Art Museum’s collection of photographs and daguerreotypes, John Shimon and Julie Lindemann (with help from hotshot MAM curator Lisa Hostettler) bring us face to face with all of the ambiguities and inherent contradictions of taking a portrait, an image of a person. While there are many threads of meaning to pluck at, perhaps the central theme is in the exhibition’s title. A portrait is an image, and an image is also the conscious projection of a person. An image is a mask we put on to make ourselves anonymous, to prevent others from knowing us. When faced with a camera, either consciously or unconsciously, we put on a face, a mask, that we think hides us. We smile big, or we glower threateningly, or we smirk, or purse our lips. We stand up straighter, or perhaps slump deeper into a hunch. Regardless of the image we are attempting to project, we are projecting an image, and it is this image the camera captures. James Van Der Zee, Distraction, 1930. Hand-colored gelatin silver print, 9 9/16 x 7 9/16 in. Milwaukee Art Museum Purchase, African American Art Acquisition Fund, Photography by John R. Glembin And yet this mask often reveals as much as it conceals. In “The Hanson Brothers,” for instance, one sibling is slightly in front of the other, and both stare directly into the camera, serious expressions that show how seriously they take this business of sitting for a portrait. This seriousness, their gravitas, is affected, though. It is belied by the playful Hawaiian shirt and Captain Hook mustache of one brother, and by the ironic tilt of an eyebrow and the hint of a smirk at the corner of the other’s mouth. Some of the posturing we do in portraiture is unconscious. We become accustomed to having our likeness taken at young ages, inured to the process by the ritual of school pictures. We learn head up, chin down, eyes on the camera but face tilted slightly away from it. We learn sitting up straight and the acceptable ways to cross our arms and hands and […]
Aug 18th, 2008 by Ryan Findley
DJ Rock Dee
Photo by Erin Landry We just received the heartbreaking news that DJ Rock Dee — 88.9 Radio Milwaukee on-air host, all-around DJ-about-town, consummate family man and hugely loving force in the community — died on Friday. He was 40 years old. Rock Dee was one of the first true personalities I met when I moved to Milwaukee. We worked together at Guitar Center in Brookfield, where I was the door girl, the first and last line of shrink defense. It was a job I’d done in Detroit for two years at one of the biggest Guitar Centers in the region, a hub for the city’s estimable population of hip-hop producers and performers. In Milwaukee, the store was small and patronized mostly by sweaty teenage shredders. I didn’t know anyone, and Brookfield was a haul. It was lonely, disillusioning and nowhere near as fun with a college degree and rent to pay as it was when I was an amorous 20-year-old. But from the get-go, Rock Dee, a diminutive bundle of dynamite, was explosively welcoming, greeting me every shift with a huge smile, a booming greeting and often a big hug. He called me “the pretty pitbull,” going out of his way to tell our coworkers that it was impossible to get anything past me. As a coworker he was helpful, patient, and warm; he was always moving, talking, selling, shouting, connecting with people, just brimming over with energy and positivity and soul. There was a wisdom and a confidence in everything he did, and his love of life, his zeal for it, was evident in every gesture, every holler, every reassuring grin. He was truly, more than anyone I have ever encountered, larger than life. It was a great joy over a year later to hear his voice in the morning on Radio Milwaukee, full of that same positivity and kinetic energy, more exciting than a giant cup of coffee. In VITAL’s October 2007 Music Issue, we ran a profile of Rock Dee in an article called “Know Your DJ.” When we asked him about his worst night as a DJ ever, he said, “God bless – none yet.” It sums up, I think, the grace and the gratefulness and the positive energy he lived by. It’s always painful to let people go, especially before their time, but it is a comfort to know that he lived large, he lived well and he brought so much joy and happiness to the lives of his family and friends and the countless listeners who listened to his radio show and saw him perform. He will be hugely missed. VS A benefit for Rock Dee’s family will be held at the Wherehouse, 818 S. Water St., on Sunday, August 17, from 1 pm to close. De La Buena, The Rusty P’s, Cache, Fever Marlene and dozens of DJs will perform. More information available at the 88.9 Radio Milwaukee Soundboard. This Wednesday, August 6, a memorial for Rock Dee will be held at Bradford […]
Aug 5th, 2008 by Amy Elliott
Photographs by John Heymann
At a Moment’s Notice: Photographs by John Heymann Charles Allis Museum August 6 – September 21 Opening Reception: Wednesday, August 6, 5:30 – 8:30 pm John Heymann, “Lantern, Antelope Canyon, Arizona.” 1999. What a month for admirers of fine photography! The Milwaukee Art Museum unveils a major exhibition August 14 – Unmasked and Anonymous – with a run until November 30. Now through September 28, 100 prints by Stephen Shore will be at the Haggerty Museum of Art, and if that isn’t enough, John Heymann’s show of photographs opens August 6 at the Charles Allis Museum and runs until September 21 as part of their on-going Wisconsin Masters Series. I met with Heymann, who was in town to oversee the installation of his photographs, but the email information he forwarded gave me a generous preview: born in 1947 in our town, he graduated from UW-Madison in 1970 with a degree in comparative literature, intending to shape a career as a poet. A course in photography at UW-Milwaukee set him on a new path. It’s wasn’t long before he departed for Boston to begin an internship with a weekly politically-oriented newspaper. Basically, he learned his craft by hanging out with other photographers, looking at the work of established photographers, and (perhaps most importantly) by “taking photographs every day for years.” Teaching photography in the Boston Community Schools and at shelters for homeless teens heightened his interest in his chosen profession. He keeps that interest fresh by meeting for critiques with two groups of photographers. Decades have passed since his student days. Would the “poet” in him speak through the 50 photographs at the Charles Allis? I already knew that he admired the work of photographers Bresson, Weston, Lange, Winogrand and Friedlander, plus other photographers he knows personally. Heymann’s work has been published in the New York Times, the Boston Globe, Downbeat Magazine, and various other media venues. He’s certainly not just another chap roaming about with a camera. John Heymann, “Shadows on a Building, New York City.” 1986. John Heymann is as cool and crisp as his elegant photographs. He came in out of the heat of a blast furnace day and walked me through the Great Hall and floor two where his work is displayed. Friendly and open, he talked about his abstractions – none more lovely than the outstanding “Boatjacks,” a lush color slice of a Maine boatyard. It reminded me of a masterful painting by Klimt. He told me he often studies paintings and extracts from them what he wishes to express in his photographs. Indeed, several of his black and white minimalist depictions recalled paintings of Motherwell or Kline, but are distinctly Heymann. On floor two, an 8” x 12” black and white photograph of a skylight blew me away. On Sunday, you can hear him talk about his work (yes, it is poetic) during a gallery walk-around at 2 pm. It will begin in the Great Hall on the first floor, where his larger abstractions are […]
Aug 5th, 2008 by Stella Cretek
Spotted at Warped Tour
On August 1, I find myself heading to the Vans Warped Tour for the second year in a row. Ah, the Warped Tour, where good old fashioned rebelliousness meets capitalism at its worst: overpriced food, water, and t-shirts. I am chaperoning my 14 year old goth/emo/punk rock sister and her friends. “Just make sure they don’t get in trouble.” My Ma tells me. “You know how teenagers are.” Sure, Ma. I know. Kinda. If there is anything that makes me feel like an old, old 30 year old, it’s the Warped Tour. The median age here must be 16, and the only people older than me here must be Pennywise. I feel like someone trying to be a hip dad, or like a creepy middle aged man who’s really into Britney Spears. Wait, did I say “middle aged”?! What if I die at 60? I could be having a mid life crisis! Maybe now is the time to hang out with the youngsters and see what they’re up to . 1:24 PM My sister Marg and I arrive at the gates of the Marcus Amphitheater grounds. I immediately feel like a crotchety old man when I express my disgust for the incredible amount of flyers littering the ground. Most of them are from Turner Hall Ballroom and the Rave (with those annoying two drink minimum tickets stapled to the flyers); it looks like a semi-truck full of these flyers has exploded, blanketing the ground. The litter inside the gates is just as bad and gets worse as the day wears on. Warped Tour is all about swag, and most of it ends up on the ground. It may be the punk rock thing to make a mess, but shit, someone’s got to pick it up. I see a couple of interesting handmade t-shirts while waiting in line to buy a pair of $37 (!) tickets. Two girls wear shirts that say “I kiss emo boys” and one guy has a shirt that says “Sober Man: Protector of car keys, defender of lost memories.” 2:00 PM Marg meets up with her friends, who are on a half-crazed shopping high, toting bags stuffed with the latest thing. Marg wants to venture off with them, so I decide to go check out gothabilly band The Horrorpops at the Hurley.com stage. I end up at the Hurley stage instead of the Hurley.com stage, where The Devil Wears Prada is starting their set. The group should not be confused with the book/Meryl Streep movie of the same name. They also do not dig the dark lord as they are a Christian thrash act. They sound pretty silly to me, so I wander around another 15 minutes before I finally find the Hurley.com stage, inside the Amphitheater. I catch the last half of the Horrorpops set and it is really good. 2:30 PM I run into Marg and her friends and Marg points out two young women, dressed almost identically, each with dozens of rainbow-colored beaded […]
Aug 4th, 2008 by Tea Krulos
Sing out, Milwaukee! My column could be your life!
In the press release for their recently released album, Stay Positive, Brooklyn-based rock band The Hold Steady offer up this positively barf-inducing nugget: “A great American philosopher once said ‘Our band could be your life.’ We think that is true. But ‘Your life could be our band’ is also a true statement. We know this because we have lived it. These are our lives. These are your lives. This is our fourth record. Stay Positive.” Christ, are they fucking serious? (In case you were wondering, that loud groaning sound you heard after reading the above paragraph was you.) For those not in the know, The Hold Steady are a critically adored and rarely enjoyed band that fancy themselves the indie heirs to Bruce Springsteen. They’re indie-rock populists, you see, because they write songs about getting high in boring towns, getting drunk at all-ages shows, passing out and making out in “chill-out tents,” and a whole bunch of other dumb shit you probably forgot you did when you were 17. Their albums have titles like Boys and Girls in America, and they use the word “we” a lot – a lazy writing trick I admit to using in the past, and one that I vow to never use again. Promise. Anyway, in the interest of science, I recently decided to conduct a wholly unscientific experiment. I would listen to nothing but Stay Positive for a week – taking in all the songs about townies, cutters, and, um, staying positive – and compare it to a week spent listening to another seemingly indie-populist album, Decibully’s Sing Out America! Would I get drunk a lot and make an ass of myself? Would I stumble across some heartbreaking revelation that would define a generation? Would I just stay at home and decide to listen to some Allman Brothers instead? Well Milwaukee, the results are in. These are my words. These are your words. This is my fortieth column. SubVersions. Week 1 The Hold Steady “We’re gonna build something this summer!” So ends Stay Positive’s leadoff track, “Constructive Summer.” My summer – far from being constructive – has been all sorts of crazy, filled with enough drinking and general high school-level drama to cripple your average pre-teen. Fittingly, during the first week of my experiment, I got fucked up even more. I drank. Christ, did I drink. I blacked out on two occasions and threw up on one. Most nights involved the Y-Not II, Jamo’s, The Social, Fat Abbey’s, Landmark, Foundation, and Jamo’s again. I passed out in the back of a pickup truck and did a fair share of ill-advised moped riding. I also took a lot of cabs. I went to my second roller derby bout in as many months, and remained clueless as to what a “lead jammer” is. I continued drinking. I lost track of how I got home most nights and ended up blowing half a paycheck on Patty Burger. I alienated friends, family, and the occasional house pet. Like […]
Aug 1st, 2008 by Matt Wild
Good for baby, good for the Earth
Everyone who knows me is well aware of my fervent and ongoing lactivism. I have written about the supremacy of breastfeeding every August for the last five years. It might seem like I would eventually run out of fresh material, but it simply can’t happen. The subject is so broad, so deep and so full of political and cultural implications that it’s a bottomless well of topics. This year seems like a good time to talk about breastfeeding and the environment. For decades, breastfeeding advocates, lactation consultants and La Leche League leaders have been saying “Breastfeeding is good for the environment.” It’s on almost every “top 10 reasons to breastfeed” list I’ve ever seen. First, there is no discernible negative environmental impact from breastfeeding. It’s an almost perfect system with no by-products to dispose of, no waste, and very few resources used. This can’t be said of feeding artificial baby milk (ABM) from a bottle. Pollution The most obvious effect of ABM feeding on the planet is massive pollution. Our landfills are clogged with empty formula cans, baby bottles and lids, rubber nipples and nipple rings. In this country, there are four million live births per year. About forty percent of our babies are never breastfed. One study estimates that babies fed from a bottle use an average of 12 bottles during their first year. This means that on average, the U.S. consumes and disposes of nearly 20 million baby bottles per year. Each ABM-fed baby needs about two cans of powdered formula per week, for a total of over 167 million cans per year. Just in the United States. That’s a lot of garbage. But pollution is more than throwing out our used-up stuff. ABM manufacture creates a lot of industrial pollution. Water is polluted with sewage from dairy cows, fertilizers used to grow cattle feed and through the dumping of waste at the manufacturing site. Air is polluted, as the production of ABM requires the milk and additives to be heated and cooled several times. Natural resources Those 20 million baby bottles I mentioned are mostly made of plastic, a petroleum product. And as we know, petroleum is a limited resource. Most bottles are not recyclable, which means once we’ve produced the bottle, that petroleum is out of the cycle. Baby bottle nipples are often made from silicon, also not recyclable. Disposable liners require the user to consume even more plastic, as the liners aren’t reusable at all. Even more petroleum is used as tanker fuel and gasoline. Most of the milk comes to us from third world countries. Once harvested from the cows, it is put on boats and shipped to the U.S. From there, it is trucked to various outlets for sale. Very, very often, it gets shipped back to the third world countries it came from originally. Then there’s paper. Each year in the U.S., 600 tons of paper is used just to make the labels on the cans of ABM, and it’s estimated that […]
Aug 1st, 2008 by Lucky Tomaszek
Spinning Into Butter
By Jill Gilmer Every once in a while, a play comes along that reminds us why we love independent theatre. Bold. High-energy. Daring. Provocative. Transforming. Pink Banana’s Spinning Into Butter is such a play. Award-winning playwright Rebecca Gilman has created a fresh examination of the usually taboo subject of race by peeking into the lives of four faculty members at a liberal arts college in Vermont. Spinning Into Butter follows the administration’s attempts to quell the firestorm that erupts on campus after an African American student receives a string of hate mail at his dormitory. The story centers on Dean Sarah Daniels, a self-described cynic who came to Vermont to escape black people and the intense emotional turmoil they elicit in her. The climax of the play is a 20-minute monolog in which Sarah reveals her true feelings about blacks – a toxic mix of guilt, loathing, compassion, anger, empathy and disgust. The play presents a rare look at the attitudes of educated whites toward race. Through a series of conversations that take place in Sarah’s office, we observe myriad attitudes toward minorities and the actions that emanate from them. What is interesting is that these conversions take place almost exclusively between the administrators, a fact at the core of the racial problems on campus. Indeed, there is only one minority character in the play. Instead of seeing the minorities with its own eyes, we hear about them through dialog between white people. Through this dialog, we learn that minority students feel talked about, talked around and talked down to by the administration – everything except talked with. The administration’s lack of genuine understanding and respect for these students leads to adverse consequences for the students and aggravates the campus’ racial problem. In one of several scenes that are rich with insight, Sarah accuses one of her colleagues of idolizing a homeless man on the bus. She says: you see him as many things, but none of them is “peer.” The genius of this play is its gentle probing into the antidote for racial conflict. Gillman suggests that the solution lies in forging real relationships between people of differing backgrounds. This requires less talking and more listening among all parties. It allows for all of us to hold racial biases, which is as unfortunate as it is inevitable. But the real tragedy is when we focus our energy on ourselves and our self-interests as opposed to attempting to get to know another group on a personal level. It’s a solution that can be applied to conflicts of all kinds. Pink Banana brings Spinning Into Butter to the stage on a shoestring budget, but uses its resources wisely. The Tenth Street Theater, housed in a church, provides an appropriately prim backdrop for its New England college setting. Set details reveal little about location, encouraging the audience to resist the temptation to dismiss the disturbing messages as unique to a particular time or place. The cast is as passionate about the play’s […]
Aug 1st, 2008 by Vital Archives
Wrap and Roll
Wraps are perfect for summertime – they require little cooking and pack up easily for boating, picnics and other excursions. Don’t be put off by Christopher Miller’s (no relation) lengthy instructions and ingredients – it’s all quick and easy to do! My recipe has just a few ingredients and has always been a crowd pleaser for me. VS REFRESHING GRILLED FUSION AHI TUNA WRAP Christopher Miller General Manager and Executive Chef Sake Tumi 714 N. Milwaukee St. 414-224-7253 sake-milwaukee.com Photos by Lynn Allen Christopher Miller, General Manager and Executive Chef of Sake Tumi, came into the Asian food market as fresh clay. He had lots of experience with Italian food working for the Bartolotta’s, the Balistrieri’s and Johnny Vassallo, but had to learn the aesthetics of Asian cooking when he moved into his current position. To learn how to wrap and roll the Japanese way, he studied with Ken Sung at Yokaso in Brookfield. Beyond the food, working at Sake Tumi has been a cultural awakening for Miller, who has learned “a whole new way of communicating” with an emphasis on respect for age, gender and hierarchy. It’s a sensibility that will no doubt follow him into his next adventure and beyond. 4 10-inch flour tortillas 1 8 oz. Ahi (yellow fin) tuna steak (#1 plus/sushi grade) (any protein may be substituted) ½ cup cooled prepared rice of choice (long grain, instant, jasmine, etc – leftover take-out is fine!) ½ whole pineapple or 16 oz. can sliced pineapple 2 jalapeño peppers 2 vine-ripened tomatoes 1 small head of iceberg (your favorite, more nutritious variety may be substituted) 1 small sweet onion 10 springs cilantro 1 lime 1 thumb-sized lobe of ginger ¼ cup soy sauce Salt and pepper PREP Clean skin off tuna. Mince ginger and mix with ¼ cup soy sauce. Marinate tuna in mixture for one hour. While tuna marinates, skin, core and slice pineapple. Season with salt and pepper. Set aside. For the lettuce mix, finely shred lettuce and onion and chop cilantro. Mix with lime juice and add zest from lime for extra kick, if you wish. Season with salt and pepper. (My signature mix: goes good with anything! burgers, tacos, sandwiches etc) GRILL Grill tuna rare to medium rare. Slice into thin slices and let cool. Grill pineapple, cut into chunks and let cool. Grill jalapeños until blackened. Soak in ice water until cool. Peel off skin. Slice in half, clean out seeds and Julienne. (Great technique to add flavor without lots of heat!). Grill tomatoes using same technique. WRAP Grill 4 tortillas. Layer with tuna slices. Load with rice, pineapple, jalapeño, tomatoes and lettuce mix. Wrap it up, eat and enjoy! Makes 4 wraps. MIDWEST MIDEAST WRAPS Catherine McGarry Miller Event planner, author, book editor and VITAL columnist This recipe comes from my love for Mideastern food, which I was introduced to as a ten-year-old by my aunt and uncle. It is part of my cookbook in progress called The Gutless Gourmet. 1 8-oz […]
Aug 1st, 2008 by Cate Miller
Random Exposure
By Bridget Brave To quote Ansel Adams, infinitely more knowledgeable about photography as art form than I: “There are no rules for good photographs, there are only good photographs.” For the third annual Random Exposure photography contest, VITAL’s judges honored that exact notion, finding in each of our winners something striking, something amazing. Photographs capture a certain moment in time, and thereby capture the emotion behind that moment. Joy, despair, victory, heartbreak – a well-timed photograph can place the viewer inside the moment, freezing it forever in time. Whatever that image might make you feel, the fact that it makes you feel something is a testament to its power. That power is what distinguishes a picture from a great picture. Each of the selected winners brought one of those amazing moments to light. Children frolic and play; we see beauty, isolation, adoration. Amateur photographer next to professional, the images on the following pages were created with similar purpose: to record an instant in time that forces a response. Black and white and color photographs were judged in each category: action, abstract, landscape/still life, portrait and motorcycles, with a separate winner for amateur and professional in each. We’d like to extend our eternal gratitude to the distinguished panel of judges who carefully evaluated nearly 300 entries: Tim Abler, Chair of the undergraduate department of art at Cardinal Stritch University; Scott Krahn, a veteran Creative Director at BVK; and highly accomplished commercial photographer Scott Ritenour. Many thanks also to Cori Coffman, Executive Director of the Eisner American Museum of Advertising and Design for doing so much to ensure that both the judging and the upcoming celebration maintain the highest possible standards and for providing one year Eisner memberships to all of our winners. To experience and respond to these photographic moments firsthand, please join VITAL at the Eisner on Thursday, August 14 for Random Exposure: The Show. The winners, jury selections, and VITAL’s staff picks will be on display, and you’ll have an opportunity to vote for your favorite as well as win prizes.VS BEST OF SHOW Best Portrait – Amateur Nikki McGuinnis, “Keep Refrigerated” Best Action – Amateur Nikki McGuinnis, “Lennox” Nikki McGuinnis began by watching. Then she took to documenting what she saw – or imagined. She has studied shape, symmetry and balance through drawing, painting and most keenly through photography and image manipulation. She is most moved by saturation and intimacy and works to recognize opportunities to capture images that offer the brightness of life with the promise of pain – a bruised beauty. meancamp.com Best Action – Professional Nathaniel Davauer, “The Main Event” Born and raised in the countryside of southern Wisconsin, Nathaniel Davauer spent his formative years working on the family farm. He left the cows behind to earn an art degree at UW Madison in the 90s. His love for photography developed while living and working in China. He photographs people, weddings, sports and kids but his passion still lies in fleeting, mysterious moments captured while […]
Aug 1st, 2008 by Vital Archives
