Coming soon… Gray Matter

A new blog by Ted Bobrow… starting Nov 7th!

November 2007 Music Releases + Pagination

Due to a file error, the album titles in the new releases listing on page 14 are illegible. We regret the oversight. A full listing of November releases is available here. Please also note that the pagination in our Table of Contents is inaccurate. If you can’t find what you’re looking for, drop us a line — we’ll be happy to provide your favorite article’s correct location, so email us, won’t you? Or you can think of it as a special holiday-season kick-off scavenger hunt. We hope that these unfortunate mistakes do not detract too drastically from your VITAL reading experience. We aim to please! We really do!

How very exciting for us

On December 1, after almost four wonderful years in our current offices in Riverwest, we’re moving to the Arts Building in Walker’s Point, located at 133 W. Pittsburgh Ave. The space is amazing, affordable and will allow us to warehouse client materials from our distribution business all in one spot plus have secure parking, an exterior sign and a few other niceties we’ve always lusted after. We’ll also be surrounded by artist studios and other creatively-fueled small businesses, both in the building and in the neighborhood in general. We simply couldn’t be more excited. In the meantime, there’s so much to do with the build-out and the holidays and all, so I imagine we’ll all be a little tired by the end of the year. But hopefully in a good way. We’ll post pictures when everything is ship-shape and hold an open house sometime in the spring, maybe during Gallery Night. I don’t know if you all know this either, but the lovely and talented Element Everest has joined our team to help us with advertising sales and marketing. We met when we were interviewing her for a story in October’s Music Issue and she knocked my socks off. She’s a tour de force and I love how she has no fear. She believes in what we’re doing and she’s out there talking to people every day about getting involved and being part of it too. You may already know Element from Radio Milwaukee, where she continues to work in promotions and pull the occasional air shift, or you may know her from local hip hop group Black Elephant. Or you may have just picked up her new, debut solo record, Life Is A Heist. My favorite cut is “Famous.” It’s the “You’re So Vain” for the new generation- funny, biting and spot-on insightful. I’m digging it and you will too. Here’s another fun thing: I have a recipe in WMSE‘s new cookbook, WMSEats. It’s for Lunch Lady Lurlene’s Wacky Cake. I love wacky cake. It’s the best chocolate cake in the world and it’s really cheap and easy to make. Coincidentally, it’s also naturally vegan, although I ruin that with white icing or cream cheese frosting every time. The whole book is really great, filled with tasty recipes from drinks to comfort food to fancier stuff, all submitted by local WMSE supporters and listeners. You can get your own during their pledge drive, which started October 31 and goes until they raise $125k. Contribute by phone at 414-799-1917 or online. That’s it for now. I’m off to fill out an occupancy permit application and look at an artist’s portfolio. I am so lucky to have my life. Peace, Jon Anne

We’ve got to help Alan Keyes

Typically I don’t read every political email I receive anymore than I pore over my spam, but sometimes a subject line catches my attention. Recently, Alan Keyes was excluded from a Fox News-sponsored Florida GOP debate on the premise that he didn’t have the required 1% straw poll vote, even though the Iowa Poll allegedly had him at 2% just a week after he entered the race. Turns out, none of the polls used by the Florida GOP included Keyes’ name. Granted, they may have been taken before he declared his candidacy, but he’s in the race now and everybody knows it, even if his only true role ends up being to keep arch-conservative Christian issues in the debate. Keyes’ people sounded off, launching an email campaign to barrage Florida GOP chair Jim Greer with complaints. This morning I received another email from the Keyes campaign. He was recently excluded from the Family Research Council’s Values Voter Summit, reportedly because he entered the race too late to be included. His staff, however, cites that attendee Fred Thompson entered the race barely a week before Keyes. Most top tier candidates were there – unlike the Values Voter Debate held in September, where Keyes came in just behind Ron Paul and Mike Huckabee in a field absent Giuliani, Thompson and McCain. Keyes’ camp acknowledges that political event organizers have the right to invite (or not) anyone they choose, but that groups like the FRC are lying when they claim to invite ALL candidates. In the run-up, Keyes, clearly a candidate, didn’t get his invitation in the mail and when his camp called to see if it was lost, they were told that he simply wasn’t asked to participate. It seems a little sad to picture them all sitting around the office waiting for the mail and then calling the FRC, only to learn that they weren’t invited. I imagine their initial incredulity, followed by quickly rising ire and a subsequent email blast bitch-slapping the FRC, perhaps fired off in anger in the middle of the night. At the end of the day, I don’t really care about Alan Keyes’ candidacy. And it amuses me that I know so much about his campaign through official emails that dish dirt in that whiny, sanctimonious tone to which my ears have been deaf since I was a teenager tuning out my mom over dirty clothes on the floor. My first response is to tease Keyes for his picked-on demeanor and holier-than-all posturing, but in fact his situation reveals chilling political truths. Prior to the advent of email as the political machine’s communication tool of choice, citizens had to rely on the media to report stories of exclusion, favoritism and other abuses of power in a reportedly inclusive system. In Keyes’ case, there’s little chance his story would have gotten much play – he’s the quintessential fringe candidate. But by his ability to communicate with me directly, I am informed firsthand of ways in which his […]

John Riepenhoff 5 Q

It’s not easy being green, which is why John Riepenhoff, owner and curator of the Green Gallery, established the third-floor Riverwest venue expressly for fresh, emerging artists in 2004. An art school graduate and painter himself, the now-25-year-old could relate. Riepenhoff is interested in social interaction between artists of all media. The space currently hosts a monthly Movie & Masala night for neighborhood filmmakers and sponsors a culturally conscious residency program to align local and global artists, launched by the Institute of Quotidian Arts and Letters this past spring. Between a hectic show opening and a weeklong trip to London’s Frieze Art Fair, John squeezed in our five questions. Keep up with him at thegreengallery.tk. What paved your way from art student to gallery owner/curator?   Even as a student, I would question for what and for whom art was made, so exploring the gateway from the artist’s hands to the public arena was a natural progression. Running a low-maintenance space — using a model similar to DIY rock house venues — eased my start, and the playfulness of the artists I exhibited directly elevated the gallery. The more artists and gallerists I met locally and nationally, the more I realized the significance of the Milwaukee art community; that still motivates me to continue the Green Gallery project, and to experiment with methods of showcasing art and encouraging local artists. How do your personal tastes and values guide the Green Gallery cut?   The artists who show are ones that surprise me; they are making art that says “things are exciting right now” in a new way, or they are creating interesting situations that don’t yet have a venue but should. They are commenting on the conditions of art and popular culture in a way similar to a writer by critiquing aspects of experience and history, and by offering some alternatives. I like these traits in people, too. I like the meta. What are the highs and lows of your role?   I get to meet so many creative and amazing individuals, and get to be a part of their lives. Some of my all-time favorite artists are real people that I helped reach a broader audience! Supporting and empowering artists by stimulating discussion and exposing their ideas to receptive audiences is a real high. Building, sanding, painting, cleaning and fixing the space are all of the lows that make the highs feel better-deserved. What makes Milwaukee a good home for art?   In Milwaukee, people can find time for their own projects without having to pay inflated rent that many of the (other) art centers around the country indoctrinate. The art community here is small enough that one can find help for his or her projects in friends and acquaintances, as well as find other projects that might be a perfect showcase of her or his talent. I like to think that we Milwaukeeans can commit to our own personal voices without being distracted by the pettiness of mainstream […]

Thoughtless or Naive?” A response …

“I’m starting to feel sorry for the Milwaukee Art Museum,” writes Debra Brehmer in the latest edition of Susceptible to Images in an article discussing the recent controversy surrounding MAM’s marketing campaign for its current showcase exhibition, Martín Ramírez. First off, full disclosure: I worked at the Milwaukee Art Museum for nine months before signing on at VITAL, although as the Tour Scheduler, I had little to do with much of anything besides scheduling tours. But I did sit in on programming, education and marketing meetings, and watched the process of planning a show, a marketing campaign, and a schedule of coordinating events unfold from beginning to end. The complaint amongst scholars, dealers and other professionals in the academic art world, according to Brehmer, is the Museum’s “ham-fisted approach” in marketing the exhibition. Ramírez immigrated to the United States from Mexico in the 1920s and spent most of his life in a mental institution, where he created stunning, densely rendered, nearly visionary drawings on paper. Today, after decades of misunderstandings about his life, his illness (there is little proof that he had one), his biography and his work, experts in “vernacular” and “outsider” art want people to just shut up already about these tantalizing but irrelevant mythologies — which serve, ultimately, to maintain a barrier between “insider” and “outsider” — and give him what he really deserves: critical attention on the basis of his art, and his art alone. MAM’s advertising strategy, it seems, is to tantalize, with lots of color and motion, teasingly dramatic slogans, and binary proposals — “VICTIM OR HERO?” “TRIUMPH OR TRAGEDY?” — all strung together with an ultimatum for the viewer: YOU DECIDE. Does it all seem a little forced? A little too simple? Sure it does. “Would we do this with Van Gogh’s work?,” asks New York Gallery dealer Phyllis Kind. No, we wouldn’t. There would be no need. Everyone knows Van Gogh, his sunflowers, his night skies, and the dubious stories that continue to rivet — his poverty, his lunacy, his ear. “Would the museum take the same liberties with the work of Picasso?” Brehmer asks. No, it would not, although I can’t tell you how many people, during MAM’s summer exhibition of French impressionist Camille Pissarro’s early work, asked to schedule tours to see Picasso. Martín Ramírez isn’t there yet. He should be, but he’s not. So many people right now feel so disconnected from art. At the Museum I had countless conversations with urban school teachers who wanted to bring their students for tours or programs, but faced hurdles with funding, scheduling buses, or taking time out of their rigidly structured curricula. I once received a hand-written note from a kid in Kenosha who missed a field trip because his parents had not allowed him to come to the Museum, although he wrote that he enjoys frequent Brewers and Admirals games in the city. I have young professional friends who have never been to the Art Museum for no real reason […]

When It Leaves The Screen

Doubt And Misery

Damage / Repair

Fight or Flight?

Gallery Night always leaves me flummoxed. With the best of intentions, I make a big list of all of the neat things I want to do, and then have a hard time finding anyone to go with me. On the big day, I get home from work, take a nap or a run, fix a light meal, have a massive fashion crisis, throw clothes all over my room, squeeze into something acceptable, fret over footwear, slap on some eyeliner and run out the door with sixty minutes or less on the clock before galleries shut their doors and everyone shuffles into the night for a late dinner at an overpriced restaurant. Last Gallery Night, in July, I had all sorts of promises out to all of my scenester friends to hang out with them at the sceniest hotbeds, but made it no farther than my first stop, Doug Holst’s going away party and painting liquidation sale, where I drank most of the beer in his fridge, hung out with his 15-year-old greyhound Lucy, and started an unfortunate conversation with Flavor Dav about buying and selling vinyl that resulted in a very late night. This time around I vowed to do better. I made my list and recruited my companion, booked home from work for squash soup and fifteen minutes of bedrest, then pulled on some boots and a tough red jacket and plowed onto the scene. Our first stop — at 7:30, already doing very poorly on time — was the Milwaukee Art Museum for their annual staff show. It is no surprise that almost everyone who works at the Museum is an artist in some way or another, and as such the exhibition was impressive — hand-dyed silk and embroidery by Teen Programs Coordinator Shirah Apple, rich-hued photographs of grain fields and grain elevators by Director of Foundation and Corporate Gifts Frank Miller, jewelry by Director of Public Programs (and my former boss) Fran Serlin and Librarian Heather Winter, charming, industrial charcoal drawings by Assistant Visitor Services Manager Adam Horwitz, pastels of fish and insects by Security Guard Lee Siebers, large-scale and strong-minded mixed media compositions by MiNei Hetzel and bold, cheeky paintings by Mary Beth Ribarchek. And lots more. The gallerias are long and stuffed with terrific work, and we did not let schmoozing deter us from plowing through the whole show. We drove down to the south side — foregoing a stop at MIAD due to time and parking constraints — for 3 for 2 at the Walker’s Point Center for the Arts,, where I spend my whole visit consumed by one magnificent self-portrait/comic-book-diary/illustrated essay by Milwaukee cartoonist Max Estes. It hit me right in the gut. And then it was over. At barely 9:00, Gallery Night officially gives way to dining, moping or after-partying — which is exactly what’s on our plate next door at The Borg Ward, with an inaugural show of reflections on art, war and America by Paul Kjelland, John Kowalcyzk and Minga […]

Stolen Art in Bay View

These custom, one of a kind, hand-painted black high-top Nikes, with bullets around the heel and bright yellow laces, were stolen from FASHION NINJA, a small business in Bay View on Wednesday, October 17, at 3:00 pm. They want the shoes back. If you see a student wearing them, please contact the authorities or the Bay View High school principle to retrieve the shoes for us. The shoes where stolen by a Bay View High School Student. Fashion Ninja filed a police report with a description. The artist, Logan Herte, is a 20 year painting major at UWM. His collection — 12 pairs of custom painted shoes and 5 2D paintings — are up at Fashion Ninja for Gallery Night. His collection is priced between $50 -$275. Logan is taking the show down because he doesn’t feel his work is safe in Bay View. The collection was supposed to be up for 30 days. Spread the word to help Fashion Ninja retrieve the shoes. The store is accepting contributions to help pay for the loss. “We are really looking for $10 donations from all area business owners, the community and its leaders” says Fashion Ninja owner and operator Areka Ikeler. Drop by for Gallery Night to show your support, and contact Fashion Ninja if you have any information: 414-481-3865 or www.fashionninja.com.

A thought about chopsticks

We had sushi for lunch today. It came with chopsticks. I was really good with chopsticks when I was six years old and in Montessori school. It was all about multi-culturalism in Montessori school. Also, I had many Japanese classmates. I was a chopsticks phenom. I am no longer skilled with chopsticks, however. Using chopsticks is not like riding a bicycle.