2008-08 Vital Source Mag – August 2008
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
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
The Melvins
The Melvins have done it again, folks. If you’re already an admirer of this legendary experimental band, which has spawned many a Cobain in its two and a half decades, this is a masterful return to the rock. If you aren’t a fanatic, but enjoy any percentage of the underground metal, alternative, hard rock, noise, punk, hardcore, post-core, ambient or art-wave bands inspired by these eternal originators, this recording is the perfect initiation to the fraternity of Melvinites. Nude With Boots is easily up there with their incredible early ‘90s string of Bullhead, Houdini, and Stoner Witch. Since that holy trinity, the band’s creativity has spread past all previous horizons (read above), but here the emphasis is on nothing but riff and impact. Lead track “The Kicking Machine” is a Zep-boogie riff with a buzz-throated vocal melody (that’s right, melody) that’s downright catchy (that’s right, catchy). Dale Cover’s drums are monstrous throughout, per usual. But he especially shines here with some nice footwork that keeps the beat firmly at the boundary of the pocket. After this opening salvo, they steer us into the noise-scape they do so well for a few songs. But they get in and get out seamlessly, and once they light into the title track, things are back at a locomotive sound and pace, slamming it all home.
Aug 1st, 2008 by Troy Butero
Beck
Beck Hansen, indie/pop/rock’s most accomplished Cancer, has just created his most original – and perhaps most sophisticated – guise. From songwriting to production to subject matter, Modern Guilt has a subtlety that separates it from his other work and serves as its greatest charm, no doubt influenced by his full-on collaboration with Danger Mouse in its making. Examined next to his prolific, excellent, yet somewhat muse-on-sleeve output (which includes one of the greatest break-up albums ever, Sea Change), this one is certainly his most intangible. The funk, the folk and the sonic collage are all reserved by a measure from his norm, and it’s all the more intoxicating as a result. True, lead single “Chemtrails” does carry more than a few strains of Serge Gainsbourg’s “Melody Nelson” chemistry in it, but it also has faint touches of Brian Wilson at the apex of his powers. “Youthless” is anything but, and with the title track and “Soul of a Man,” this trinity serves as a microcosm of the entire collection; within these touchstones, he’s searching for the soul of our times – today’s “meaning of it all.” In the past, you could put on a Beck record and know, within the first few moments, what to reach for: your dance shoes, a handkerchief, perhaps even a spliff. This one has all the hallmarks of great Beck rolled into a fleeting 30 minutes, with exceptional songwriting and well-crafted production. But there’s a veiled something extra to it … within the jam, perhaps, is a gem. The fun this time around is finding it.
Aug 1st, 2008 by Troy Butero
I want to believe
A couple of weekends ago I painted my back landing. When I bought my house in early 2001 almost every wall was a flat white – supposedly to attract buyers – and I’ve been meaning to remedy this ever since. But time does have a way of slipping into the future and over the ensuing years my interior has devolved from boring to shabby through the hard wear only a young family can deliver. I was finally motivated to start with the hall by the relatively narrow scope of the project, seven years of little handprints that would no longer wash off and the unexpected acquisition of a cute storage cabinet rescued from my neighbors’ curb. In a fit of largesse, I also bought curtains, rugs and hanging shelves. Forty labor hours and a hundred bucks later I had the sweetest little entryway you can imagine – charming, really, in robin’s egg blue against dark wood, white and brushed stainless accessories showing off my vintage coffee pot collection to perfection. Most people enter my home through the back door, so it’s a great first impression. But now when you walk through to the kitchen, its flaws are immediately evident. Ugly, faded wallpaper peels from more than one corner, the cabinet bases are chipped, the ceiling fan is grotesque and the top of the fridge doubles as cereal box storage. The table and chairs are all wrong and there’s nowhere to put everything away. Frankly, the whole thing is a disaster and it’s making me crazy. Meanwhile, the kitchen continues to be the center of our home, piles of papers and crowded counters be damned. The peeling paper, dust in the corners and imperfect linoleum don’t seem to deter everyone from gathering there, leaving the typically tidy (and much more attractive) living room to gather dust. I’ve tried pointing out the kitchen’s flaws, but no one else seems concerned, suggesting that some well-chosen color would fix it right up. I’m less optimistic: it’s not as simple as throwing down a coat of paint when you have the organizational issues innate to an 83-year-old kitchen – a tiny, counter-less mess with (somehow) three doorways and two windows, plus ancient, energy-sucking appliances. To make any true functional improvements would cost at least a thousand bucks. And that wouldn’t even get me a dishwasher. I feel stuck. I recently opened a home equity line of credit to have my roof fixed, and there’s still plenty left to borrow on, but I’m worried about the payments. I’m not as over-extended as some people, but my apple cart could certainly tip over with a stroke or two of severely bad luck. In other words, I’m just like you, your neighbor and just about everyone else: I’m anxious about what’s still to come and have no idea how bad it’s really going to get. For now, at least, Milwaukee doesn’t have it as bad as many other cities. There’s little comfort there, I know, but at least […]
Aug 1st, 2008 by Jon Anne Willow
Cordero
“Where are you from?” Brooklyn’s answer to Latin indie rock asks its listeners this question with its latest album, which encompasses guitarist/vocalist Ani Cordero’s own personal musings on recent misfortunes. De Donde Eres, the quartet’s latest release, sheds the band’s former bilingualism and plays for keeps with Spanish, creating a deeper authenticity and a more appropriate platform for Ani’s sweet voice, paired with soft but poignant nylon-stringed guitars, horns and keys. De Donde Eres was born from difficulty, but most of these songs are anything but contrite. “Quique” is a bouncy, feisty bass-thumping song with brassy undertones, Cordero singing call-and-response style with her male band counterparts about fiestas and “bailando” over a bubbly organ line. The album transitions into introversion with “Guardasecretos,” its lilting guitar and plaintive trumpet pairing beautifully with Cordero’s husky alto. The band doesn’t forget its indie-rock roots, churning out a boiler with “La Musica Es La Medecina” which, if sung in English, might be mistaken for early Denali. Cordero does it way better than Maura Davis ever could, though, breathing life, originality and culture into every square inch of each measure of her music, her band (including Chris Verene, formerly of The Rock*A*Teens) providing a gorgeously fitting soundtrack for Cordero’s tales of struggle and triumph. De Donde Eres is for Ani Cordero an affirmation; for her audience, it’s a testament to life’s ever-swinging pendulum, as pretty as it can be made.
Aug 1st, 2008 by Erin Wolf
Heartbeat City
Photos by Erin Landry “If you were standing in this spot 150 years ago, you might have been run over by a train.” On a cul-de-sac on the Hank Aaron State Trail – fish leaping in the Menomonee River below, the breeze carrying the scent of summer wildflowers – this interpretive sign is hard to swallow. Before its industrialization, the Menomonee Valley was a natural wild rice marsh, an almost inconceivable place to build industry. “It’s like building on oatmeal,” says Corey Zetts, Project Director for the Menomonee Valley Partners. The land was so swampy that the first rail tracks Byron Kilbourn laid sunk into the marsh overnight. But engineering and ingenuity persevered, and Kilbourn’s Milwaukee & Waukesha Railroad spent years filling the valley with earth and timber to firm up the ground. By the Civil War, the Milwaukee Road had turned the city into an agricultural and industrial powerhouse. In 1895, the Falk Corporation was established in the Valley after Herman Falk’s failing family brewery, built in the Valley in 1856, burned down. Together, Falk, the Milwaukee Road and the dozens of other breweries, stockyards, mills, packing plants and factories in the Menomonee Valley would become Milwaukee’s heart center for almost a hundred years, supplying thousands of jobs to a growing metropolis and bringing citizens from all sides of the city together in labor. But by the time sprawl and technology began to suck the wind out of the Valley’s sails after WWII, what was once a thriving channel of wilderness and wildlife was left polluted, smelly and blighted. There are stories in the Valley that exist beyond the industry triumphant/industry defeated dialectic. Natural history, of course, goes so far back as to render human history irrelevant. In Miller Park’s lot is a wall of 400 million-year-old rock – a Silurian reef, actually, dating from before the time the city was above water. And a huge part of the Valley’s story is a narrative largely omitted from our national history: the site of Miller Park was a gathering place for native tribes, who would meet during the rice harvest. At the top of that hill, the limbs of a tree are bent to point the way to the marsh. The word “Menomonee” means wild rice; when Potawatomi Bingo Casino, in 1991, chose the Menomonee Valley as the site of their development, they were choosing to return to the ancestral homeland. “The history is incredible,” says Melissa Cook, manager of the Hank Aaron State Trail, which cuts through the Valley like a vein. Her mother’s family lived on 39th and Michigan in Merrill Park; her relatives worked for Falk and the Milwaukee Road. The neighborhoods surrounding the Valley were built by investors in the railroad shops; today, they are some of the most diverse and densely populated districts in the state. The Menomonee Valley – “borrowed” from its native residents and the natural order – provided the backbone for Milwaukee’s livelihood. Now, after more than 20 years of vision, planning […]
Aug 1st, 2008 by Amy Elliott
