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Getting into GHP

This past Saturday I had the pleasure of interviewing candidates for GHP’s strings program.  If my top candidates play as well as they think, Michael Giel will have a very good summer indeed.

At the end of the lunch break, I slipped over to Pebblebrook’s theatre, where art students were undergoing their interviews on the stage.  Each student had spread out the requisite number and types of pieces on the stage floor, and the interviewers were walking around quizzing them about their work.

I realized with a small shock that I underwent that same process forty years ago.

Forty years ago.

Forty years ago, I walked into a room with my portfolio, spread it out over a couple of chairs, and was interviewed by two men.  I remember not being able to answer one question about the type of drawing one of my pieces was—the answer was “contour drawing”—and I remember that the men were very entertained by my answers in general.

I remember some of the pieces in that portfolio, and I cannot believe that I made it into the Governor’s Honors Program visual arts major.  I was not that good.  However, at the time, all students had to take the Ohio Psychological, essentially an IQ test, and while academic majors had to score at least in the 90th percentile, fine arts majors could get away with the 70th. I scored something like 98, so I’m sure that tipped the balance in my favor.

On the other hand, perhaps my interviewers understood that giftedness is potential, not achievement, and they saw in my work a student who had the potential to achieve, given the training I’d get at GHP.  Certainly I hadn’t had it up till that point.  Our schools had no art classes; I took lessons out at the Rec Center from Tom Powers (of Powers’ Crossroads fame).

Clearly, though, I would be unable to get into the art major today.  Our kids are phenomenal, as you’ll agree if you’ve followed my blog for any length of time and read my posts about the art exhibits each summer.  The level of technical expertise and artistic sophistication would put my 16-year-old self—and indeed my 56-year-old self—to shame.

However, as Diane Mize, my painting teacher from the summer of 1970, has reminded me, art instruction in the schools forty years ago sucked.  I might have been better prepared, better trained, if Newnan High School had be better able to teach me.

And as she has also reminded me, whether or not I was a good painter I was at heart an artist, one that deserved to go to GHP and who took all that it had to offer and transformed his life with it.

Forty years ago.

2010 02 08 Dale Creativity
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Honey, please

I clicked on a link from my Google homepage to a news article about the teabagger convention’s deciding it would put together an organizing strategy for national elections.

Generally speaking, I’m a marketing department’s worst nightmare: I ignore context, up to and including ads, banners, and in this case, even the website I was on.  But as I read the article, I began to think that perhaps it was a bit clumsy for a news article linked from the front page of Google—the glaring apostrophe in it’s where it didn’t belong was a clue—so I glanced up at the top.

Foxnews.com.  Oh.  And then I got to the last sentence:

Don’t let anyone tell you this is not a big deal. If this gathering is unimportant and this movement is a mirage, why are it’s detractors so upset and it’s participants so upbeat?

Wow.  Let me count the ways: second person direct address, editorializing (based on schoolyard logic, no less), and two incorrect it’s.  The only thing missing is the phrase liberal media.

Honey, please.

2010 02 05 Dale Liberal Rants Comments (7) Permalink

New music

And we’re off.  This morning I heard from Wallace Galbraith, and here are the answers to my questions:

  • around 70 players  -  56 violins, 6 cellos, 2 basses, 1 accordion, 3 guitars, 1 percussionist and 1 pipe
  • 4-5 minutes
  • “it would be interesting and challenging for us to play music with its roots in your part of the world  -  please feel totally free to let your imagination roam!”  [Uh-oh.  Do we need to discuss this?]
  • “a deadline  – it would be useful to be able to start work before Easter 2011 so let’s say the beginning of March”

Let the agony begin.

2010 02 04 Dale AFO
Creativity
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New music?

The Ayrshire Fiddle Orchestra, which has visited Newnan from our sister city of Ayr before (2005), will return to these shores in the summer of 2011.  I have been asked to write a piece for them.

We’ll see.

Of course I want to, and I’ve agreed to the project, without question, having emailed their founder Wallace Galbraith this afternoon to introduce myself and get the ball rolling.

But we all know what happens when someone makes plans to perform a work of mine.  Inexplicable complications ensue, up to and including sudden, unexpected retirement and H1N1 epidemics in China.

However, we shall proceed as if no such omens from the universe were expected.

So, what shall we write?  You can hear the orchestra on their downloads page: very competent, sprightly interpretations of mostly Celtic dance pieces.  They don’t list violas as part of their instrumentation, and the photos are too small to see.  I see an accordion in their large group, and I hear a drumset on the mp3s, but the first question I asked of Wallace was what instrumentation would be coming next summer.

I also asked about length.  I’m guessing we’re not in the market for anything as long as “Blake Leads a Walk on the Milky Way.”

Finally, I asked about character: would they prefer something closer to their usual repertoire, or would they like to show off in a different direction?

My goal is to write three to five sketches based on Wallace’s response and let him pick the one he’d like to see finished.

Oh—and I asked for a deadline.  Of course.

2010 02 03 Dale AFO
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Labyrinth, 1/31/10

Today I put up the western bamboo fence:

Here’s half of it. One roll (25 feet) of the fencing neatly ended behind the tree at the westpoint.

So I used my third (of four) roll to get over to the dead tree:

I have enough of the roll still rolled up to cover the piece of fencing past the dead tree, but I need some time to think about how to get around the tree.

In other news, last weekend in Senoia, I found these:

These are cowbells, and yes, they are spraypainted gold, but they actually have a nice tone.  The two larger ones are about a half-tone apart, and the smaller one is a pleasant interval higher.  Together they will make a nice windchime, if I can figure out how to make the wind make them chime.

2010 01 31 Dale Labyrinth Comments (2) Permalink

Reading: an update

I was appalled to find that I haven’t updated my reading pages in forever.  I’ve done my best, but heaven knows I’ve forgotten something that I’ve read since last summer, and I have this persistent feeling that I’ve forgotten something wonderful.

Oh well.  It’s just electrons on a page.

I’m doing a better job keeping my reading progress up to date at school, where I print out a big poster:

I got the idea from some media specialist newsgroup and adapted it for myself.  I have to say it works.  What is it that our beloved Lichtenberg says? “If you want to make a young person read a certain book you must not so much commend it to him directly as praise it in his presence. He will then go and find it for himself.”  As usual, Lichtenberg was right.  I’ve created a run on the Dead dog book and a swelling interest in the Ember and Green Knowe series.

2010 01 26 Dale Reading Comments (1) Permalink

Labyrinth: a concept

You may recall that I’ve been thinking of something to anchor the eastpoint of the labyrinth, there at the entrance, that could reflect the alchemical identification of east with the element of Air.

This past weekend we were out in Senoia, shopping about, and came across a wireframe arbor that struck my fancy.  It was more than I can pay at the moment, so I left my card with my price point for the proprietor.

Back home, I envisioned—through the torrential rains—how the arbor would in fact look at the entrance to the labyrinth.  I didn’t like it.

However, the idea of the two columns, open, painted white, appealed to me.  What if I constructed two towers, welded pieces of wire, and placed them on either side of the steps leading down to the labyrinth?

The sketches are kind of hard to see here, but I think I’m going to keep this in mind.  The towers might need to be at least fifteen feet tall, perhaps twenty.  What say you?

2010 01 25 Dale Labyrinth Comments (3) Permalink

A short rant

A young friend of mine just announced his engagement, and we’re all thrilled for him.

Isn’t that nice, you’re thinking, but why is Dale blogging about this?

This young friend just announced his engagement. To his boyfriend.  In Georgia.

This delights me.  I have no idea if this is the new “thing” in the marriage equality movement, but if it’s not it needs to be.

Think about it: we have no laws governing engagements, there are barely any social rules any more, and being engaged certainly has no religious overtones in our society.  A steady progression of gay engagements is perfectly designed to make the right wing froth at the mouth.  I mean, what are they going to do to stop it?  Constitutional amendments?

So to all my gay friends out there, if you have someone to whom you would be married if we were a sane society—not that we ever were or ever will be—then go ahead and announce your engagement.  Send it in to the paper.  Have an engagement party.  Tell everyone you know.  Introduce your partner as your fiancé.

And when someone says, “Have you set a date?”,  just reply, “Not yet.  But we will.”

2010 01 25 Dale Liberal Rants Comments (2) Permalink

Labyrinth: the Cloud Sculpture

Just when Jeff thought it was safe to presume there would be no baroqueness, I unveil the Cloud Sculpture.

Several years ago we were in Decatur, doing their Christmas Thursdays thing, and in one of the shops they had these “cute” lawn ornaments constructed of screen mesh, painted and shaped.  I thought at the time that one could do damage with such a concept, and I promptly bought a roll of screen mesh and a can of black paint.

And what did I intend to do with this material?  I don’t know.  Something like this, perhaps?

I did this earlier this afternoon, just oil pastels on a photo of the labyrinth.

Here are some more studies, done upstairs later with gouache:

I think it extremely unlikely that I will even attempt such a thing, materials to hand or not.  But what a staggering concept, eh wot?

2010 01 20 Dale Creativity
Labyrinth
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Will you spend more money for better terry cloth?

Are you much taken by jewelry?

Why won’t the aliens step forth to help us?

Do you know the distinctions, empirical or theoretical, between moss and lichen?

Yes, they are, aren’t they?  The questions, I mean, all taken from the first four pages from The Interrogative Mood by Padgett Powell.  This book is now on my Required Reading for Sentient Beings.

Here’s a paragraph from page 4:

Can you ride a bicycle very well?  Was learning to ride one for you as a child easy or not?  Have you had the pleasure of teaching a child to ride a bicycle?  Are your emotions rich and various and warm, or are they small and pinched and brittle and cheap and like spit?  Do you trust even yourself?  Isn’t it—forgive me this pop locution—hard being you?  If you could trade out and be, say, Godzilla, wouldn’t you jump on it, dear?  Couldn’t you then forgo your bad haircuts and dour wardrobe and moping ways and begin to have some fun, as Godzilla?  What might we have to give you to induce you to become Godzilla and leave us alone?  Shall we await your answer?

This small volume is comprised entirely of questions.  I merely dipped into it this afternoon and am having to force myself to stop reading it.

Would you like to live a life that allows for frequent use of acronym, as in “Let’s proceed according to SOP?”

Can you stand Pat Boone?

Are you daft?

2010 01 20 Dale Reading Comments (1) Permalink