LET'S HAVE A ROUND OF APPLAUSE FOR THE RISK TAKERS

We have tickets this weekend to the Opera Carolina production of “Madam Butterfly.” Ordinarily, I would pass the ads right by. After all, who hasn’t seen “Butterfly” a million times? This staging is special - it’s the one designed by Japanese artist Jun Kaneko.

Kaneko was invited by Opera Omaha to design sets and costumes for its 2007 production of “Butterfly.” The show got rave reviews and tons of publicity in great part because of its artistic originality. The art museum exhibited Kaneko’s sculpture in conjunction with the opera, himself on hand for a lecture and special fund raising event.

The package was a winner – a total sensory immersion. Since then, the Omaha set has moved to stages in other cities and now it’s come to Charlotte. I can’t wait!

I don’t know much about opera in spite of years of piano lessons. Looney Tunes cartoon figures introduced great opera melodies to kids like me. But I totally believe that a city’s value is largely measured by its cultural health. And I don’t believe that vital cultural activity is achieved without risk taking and extreme commitment – even when it’s hard to justify.

“Go big or go home.” The sound bite sounds good but mighty hard to attach these days to non-essentials. Everybody knows that needs are great and somehow, my fellow Americans have turned into tightwads and toads just when it seems to me that the world is bursting with opportunity.

So the next time a start up opera company forms in Rochester, I hope the first thing they consider is asking our beloved painter Robert Marx to design sets and costumes…or Garth Fagan to set the entire trite opera to contemporary movement…or you get the idea. Go out on a limb.

No guts, no glory.

Romare Beardon at the Mint/Kathryn Clark Quilts

We visited the Mint Museum (downtown Charlotte) last Saturday. It was the last weekend to view the Romare Bearden retrospective and the joint was hopping! Kids, families, live jazz music – there was nothing HUSH about the place. Those of us who came to see the artwork were civility itself in spite of elbows gently prying bodies out of the way for better viewing.

Bearden was a native of Charlotte – an African American artist (1911-1988) – who migrated to Harlem and spent his life illustrating the sights, colors, and spirit of the black experience. And this was a BIG SHOW. Nearly 100 collages, paintings and works on paper were assembled from collections across the country and sprawled throughout the entire 4^th floor of the museum.

I love collage – I love quilts and mixed up materials - marriages of glass, metal, wood and the exuberance of pattern and texture. I’m also a sucker for pictorial narrative. Bearden was a master of all that so it came as an emotional stomach punch to see these works in person. They simply took my breath away and I stood in front of the collage on loan from Buffalo’s Albright-Knox Museum and wiped away tears.

Imagine! It was free – but priceless.

(The show will travel nationally. Don't miss it!)

Few of us live in an information free environment and if you do, you are not reading this blog. For the rest of us, the news is bad and for some of us (me, for instance) who follow real estate, it’s just crazy-bad! More than one theoretical pundit states that unless the foreclosure mess is cleared up, our country will continue to struggle against the quicksand of this horrible economy and if you think you are immune, think again! That rock under which you crawl is not saving you; every one of us is being touched by this depressing historical time.

Kathryn Clark is an urban designer/architect turned fiber artist who lives and works in San Francisco. I found photographs of her quilt series- “Foreclosures” - on a design web site that I follow. Her work is artistically beautiful – a wonderful balance of color, shape and texture – imaginatively clever and thematically relevant.

Not bad for a “mere quilt maker,” eh?

(Please find her at http://kathrynclark.blogspot.com/ You’ll be glad you made the effort.)

Another New Year Already?

2012 has slunk in under the doorframe and already looks tired.

“Well,” say I “sit down. Put your feet up. Rest awhile and think about how you want to spend the next 11 months, 27 days.”

I do not do long range planning well. I’m more the spontaneous type – slightly obsessive/compulsive but in a good way. That probably helps to explain why we’ve bought and sold seven houses in the past forty or so years and why even as I write this, the restlessness has descended and I’m looking around at real estate listings.

My beloved sweetly suggests I maybe should look for another outlet for my “creative spirit.” I’m positive he speaks from pure concern for me and not his dwindling retirement accounts. (?)

As I go through the search – inward and outward – I share with you these saved images from my laptop. The ostriches are my latest favorite wallpaper and the wall of windows is the potential “bonus room” in our Rochester townhouse - at least, in my dreams. One of my bff’s and I just finished the painting for my brother – a rip off of Cy Twombly – and the doll sculpture is a rip off of that talented Bliss lady.

May we all have a thoughtfully creative 2012.