Arts & culture
I’ve interviewed and written about writers like Ursula LeGuin and Canada’s oral historian Barry Broadfoot for Vancouver’s Georgia Straight. I’ve also published profiles and arts features of photographers, artists, sculptors, actors, filmmakers, and musicians. Creative souls are my kindred spirits; I love hearing their passionate tales, anguish and triumphs, learning what drives their work and them.
Here are a few artists I’ve interviewed and covered in a variety of media:
- Judy Chicago, artist and creator of The Dinner Party and The Birth Project
- Deena Metzger, California poet and author of many books including Writing for Your Life
- Joy Coghill, Canadian actor and playwright
- Ferron, Canadian songwriter and musician
- Lorraine Segato, lead singer of the group Parachute Club
- P.E.T.A., members of this theatre group from the Phillipines
- Stas Namin, a Soviet rock musician
- Charles Lillard, the late author of B.C. history books
- Paul Wong, a video artist
Some of the publications that have published my arts-related articles include the following:
The Vancouver Sun
The Edmonton Journal
The Georgia Straight
BC BookWorld
BC Parent
Common Ground (Vancouver)
Quill & Quire
Reel West
PhotoMedia
Vancouver Parent
The Sun (North Carolina)
I wrote about the arts and entertainment scene in Vancouver, BC, Canada for the 2009 guidebook Vancouver, Victoria, and Whistler, produced by Formac Publishing. Click here to read the article.
Here are some artist profiles I’ve done:
Celso Machado: His Brazilian beat thrums through world instruments (Sunshine Coast Life magazine)
Carver Bradley Hunt and his sons cherish their Pacific Northwest Coast native art traditions (Sunshine Coast Life magazine)
I won’t have more writing samples here until I get time to sift through and scan much of my published material. In the meantime, here are two features I wrote for PhotoMedia magazine, based in Seattle, WA:
John Lund: Empire of the silly
http://photomediagroup.com/?m=200410 (second article from the top)
Top photography in black and white
http://photomediagroup.com/?m=200506 (third article from the top)
Click here to read book reviews that I have written
Click here for my film and TV work
Click here for my personal essays
Click here for my books
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Click here to read on my blog about writing
Click here to read on my blog about creativity
Click here to read on my blog about film and TV
Cultural Creatives unite
A member of the Cultural Creative Network,TM I am part of today’s thriving Cultural Creatives movement. Who are we? More than 50 million people in North America and Europe are “redefining what success means, away from success at work and making a lot of money, toward a more soulful life focused on personal fulfillment, social conscience, creating a better future for everyone on the planet.” Find out more at www.culturalcreatives.org.
This month’s featured Cultural Creative book
Field Notes on the Compassionate Life: A Search for the Soul of Kindness (Rodale, 2005) by Marc Barasch, an award-winning writer, editor and television producer
How well do we value artists?
Here’s a story to ponder, which someone forwarded to me from the Internet:
A Violinist in the Metro
A man sat at a metro station in Washington DC and started to play the violin; it was a cold January morning. He played six Bach pieces for about 45 minutes. During that time, at rush hour, thousands of people went through the station, most of them on their way to work.
Three minutes went by and a middle-aged man noticed the musician playing. He slowed his pace and stopped for a few seconds, then hurried to meet his schedule.
A minute later, the violinist received his first dollar tip: a woman threw him the money. Without stopping, she continued to walk. A few minutes later, a man leaned against the wall to listen to the music, looked at his watch, and started to walk again. Clearly, he was late for work.
The one who paid the most attention was a three-year-old boy. His mother, hurrying, tugged him along, but the kid stopped to look at the violinist. The mother pushed hard and the child continued to walk, turning his head repeatedly to see the man playing music. Several other children repeated these actions. All the parents, without exception, forced them to move on.
In the 45 minutes that the musician played, only six people stopped and stayed for awhile. About 20 gave him money but continued to walk their normal pace. He collected $32. When he finished playing and silence took over, no one noticed. No one applauded.
No one knew but the violinist was Joshua Bell, one of the best musicians in the world. He played one of the most intricate pieces ever written with a violin worth $3.5 million. Two days before performing in the subway, Bell had sold out at a theater in Boston where the seat price averaged $100.
This is a true story. The Washington Post arranged to have Joshua Bell play incognito in the subway station as part of a social experiment about people’s perceptions, tastes, and priorities. Do we perceive beauty in an everyday environment at an inconvenient time? Do we stop to appreciate it? Do we recognize talent in an unexpected context?
Consider this: If we do not take a moment to stop and listen to one of the best musicians in the world playing the best music ever written, how many other things are we missing?
“You are only as free as you are in your heart”