#i learned that hes artistic. went to college for theater. learned about set painting and that type of art. likes to write | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

mkstrigidae · 3 years

Note

This might be a lot since there’s so many characters in APWH, but could you share something secret about each character that no one else knows or maybe just a fun fact?

I am so sorry I’m answering this so late- I try not to be a human disaster, but inevitably end up being one most days.

Oooooooh this one is very interesting- they might not all be secrets, because for some characters, that would be giving away major plot points, but fun facts I can do! Let’s see what I’ve got (below the cut):

Robb: Has definitely licked a bone on a dare before, is actually a decent artist (much like Sansa) and does a fair amount of sketching in the field, and has an engagement ring for Tal in his work locker that no one knows about yet :) Inherited Catelyn’s ability for leadership, and is really good at dealing with Logistics, management, and the bureaucracy involved in his job. Hangs out with the experimental archeology students a lot (he’s like the accidental older brother for half the department) and would definitely wear handmade linen armor from someone’s project and let an undergrad shoot arrows at him to test it. (For those of you unaware, linen armor is next to impossible to cut without an extremely specific and sharp type of electric saw). Is good friends with Sarella, who’s going through grad school in Oldtown as well. Has been reluctantly dragged into the feud between the archaeology/anthropology and paleontology departments.

Aegon: is a fairly talented piano player, has always liked to cook, but got really good at it when he was dating an adjunct professor in grad school (none of his family knows about the relationship, but Theon does). Has been taking night classes recently to try and learn the Old Tongue bc he and Lyanna are particularly close. Dates casually, and volunteers at a community center for at-risk kids in Kings Landing on weekends. Is the only Targ sibling emotionally aware enough to spend time with Viserys, and is his grandmother Rhaella’s favorite.

Rhae: Actually really likes listening to heavy metal, especially when she’s working, and is really into the Westerosi equivalent of late night comedy. Will get really invested in hobbies for like, a few months and then move on to something completely different. Is her grandfather Aerys’ favorite, and has him wrapped around her finger. Makes a game of antagonizing Viserys at Targ family functions, and has been inseparable from Margaery since they met in college. Thought her cousin Obara was the coolest person in the world when she was a kid. Most likely of all the characters to do a triathlon without breaking a nail.

Bran: Might be one sociology class away from identifying as an anarchist. Kind of wants to be a professor and will probably write novels someday. Is really into flea markets and will go antiquing with Ned and Elia and sometimes Cat. Loves kayaking and decorates his wheelchair elaborately for holidays. He’s won several costume contests at school for it. Very snarky. If Sansa had been raised by the starks, they would have had a standing Saturday lunch date to snark and gossip about the rest of the fam.

Jon: wanted to be a forest ranger for the longest time and then a writer, but felt like he had to choose a more reputable career, and is kind of jealous that Robb decided to say ‘fuck it’ and become an archaeologist. Really wants to travel, although he picked law after His Valyrian is passable (the targ sibs spoke it anytime they were with Rhaegar and fam), but he speaks Rhoynish fluently and is close to his cousins on the Martell side of the family. Really likes hiking and will often go with Cat, who is also fairly outdoorsy. Likes epic high fantasy novels and would really love LOTR.

Mya: is weirdly into dream interpretation, is bisexual, and has fallen into one of the canals in Braavos before on a school field trip. She was born in the Vale, and her mom moved to Braavos when she was five. Would definitely eat a bug on a dare. More tomboy than anything, but really enjoys getting dressed up and being feminine. Likes painting her nails fun colors. Who gives a shit about gender expectations? Not Mya.

Sansa: the first person she kisses in APWH isn’t going to be Jon…;) If she’d been raised by the Starks, she might have gone to school for journalism or become a novelist. Hates math, but is a passable accountant because of what Baelish taught her to help him with the books for his restaurants. Doesn’t like to ever wear her hair down, and has a collection of decorative bobby pins for updos that she’s acquired from flea markets in Braavos. Really loves to swim. Pushed the boy who knocked Mya into the canal in after her, but none of the teachers believe him when he accuses her, because it’s sweet, kind, well-behaved Sansa.

Robin: Secretly likes to listen to musicals and is a fairly good singer. In a group chat with Doree and Loree who are drastically improving his social skills and the three of them are parent-trap level plotting. Really dislikes doctors and hospitals. Used to ask Sansa to draw birds for him a lot when he was younger and still has most of them.

Rickon: is actually better with computers and smarter than anyone realizes, because he’s such a jock on the surface. Very used to going with the flow and adapting to change. His favorite classes are chemistry and bio, but he doesn’t really like writing. Is really popular and well-liked among his classmates, but can have a temper when he thinks an injustice is occurring. Is generally just good with animals.

Catelyn: Grew up going hunting with her uncle and always had a stronger stomach for it than Lysa and Edmure did. Is half-estranged from her father because of a disagreement they had regarding Catelyn’s inability to move on after the kidnapping, and a tense relationship with her brother after he married Roslyn Frey (The Freys were vocal supporters of Roose Bolton’s politics and had a hand in publicizing the rumors about the Starks being responsible for Sansa’s disappearance- Walder Frey owns several prominent southern newspapers), but they’re working on mending fences. Takes fairly long walks outside regularly, and would be a bruce springsteen fan. The most intimidating of the entire family.

Arya: Went through a true crime phase. Really enjoys learning languages, her favorite classes this past semester were her Ancient Ghiscari course and her global politics seminar, because they got to debate current issues every week. Like Sansa, she really likes people-watching. Will probably end up at the Olympics for fencing at some point, but was also a sprinter in high school on the track team.

Ned: Probably dropped acid at least once in college. Really enjoys skiing. Learned how to play the guitar as a part of his midlife crisis. Met Cat after she went on two dates with his brother Brandon and they decided they were better as friends. Brandon brought her to a party, and Ned ended up giving her a ride home after his brother found another girl to chat up. They quickly found out that they had a lot in common, and she got along famously with his mother, who Ned was extremely close to. Has a serious sweet tooth

Elia: Likes to paint, but doesn’t think she’s very good at it. Grew up speaking Rhoynish with her family, and taught it to the kids. Has forgotten more about art than most people will ever know, and is extremely efficient when set loose in a flea market. Really likes theater and ballet, and took ballet classes through college.

Lyanna: is working on a book about money in Westerosi politics that’s tied into her current investigation of the Boltons, but only Elia knows about it. Grew up far north, and her first language was the Old tongue rather than Andali, but didn’t want her kids picking it up, because the accent is stigmatized. Keeps notes for her articles in the Old Tongue to keep her nosy kids from reading them.

Theon: Is doing a psychiatry residency in King’s Landing currently. Does a fair amount of biking, and 100% does a polar bear swim in the ocean every winter (Aegon always shows up to cheer him on and they go out for drinks afterwards- his girlfriend, Jeyne, thinks this is insane). Refuses to eat blue foods and was actually a decent French horn player in high school.

Thank you- this was a fun one!! :)

#APWH #ask memes #Anonymous #ask answers

14 notes · View notes

365days365movies · 3 years

Text

February 24, 2021: Annie Hall (1977) (Part 1)

Well...Woody Allen.

I, uh...OK, look, I could get into the whole Woody Allen thing, but INSTEAD of me doing that, I’ll just say this: look into it. Because there is a LOT on this subject, and it’s controversial as HELL. At the end of the day, I’ll recommend this upcoming series on HBO, and just recommend that you look into it.

Because, uh...yeah, it’s not great. That’s all I’m gonna say, because I need to educate myself on it more as well. Instead, let’s talk for a few seconds about divorcing the art from the artist. But ONLY for a few seconds.

I understand why some of you might be surprised I’m doing this one. Because, again...Woody Allen. But, yeah, I always try to do my best to divorce the art from the artist. Because some people suck, but they still make nice things, or at the very least, things that should be open to interpretation and appreciation.

“Superfreak” is a classic song of 1981, and everybody’s heard at least some of it, but Rick James fuckin’ kidnapped two women and kept them in his basement, WHERE HE TORTURED THEM. Edgar Degas made beautiful paintings of ballet dancers, and was also A MASSIVE ANTI-SEMITE. And before he was (RIGHTFULLY AND JUSTIFIABLY) outed as a roofie-ing piece-o-shit...I grew up with - and genuinely enjoyed - this guy’s comedy.

And you can judge me for this, but...I still think his stand-up was and is genuinely funny, and I still appreciate the cultural impact that The Cosby Show had on society’s perception of African-American families, divorced from the stereotype of the ghetto. Fact of the matter is, works themselves deserve to be separated from the artist who made them. That’s my philosophy, and I’m sticking with it Entirely fine to disagree with me, by the way, I get it.

But in that spirit, I’m watching Annie Hall, despite its creators likely transgressions. After all, this is technically his magnum opus, and it’s a good look into the man himself. And so, with that in mind: Annie Hall! SPOILERS AHEAD!!!

Recap (1/2)

youtube

Alvy Singer (Woody Allen) is talking directly to us about his outlook on life, and his view on the potential future. He tells half of a joke, then an amusing anecdote, and a bit more until telling us that he’s broke up with Annie, and he’s still thinking about it, trying to figure out exactly where things went wrong. He goes back to the beginning, which is punctuated with flashbacks.

He grew up in Brooklyn in World War II, and a young Alvy (Jonathan Munk) is with his mother (Joan Newman) at the doctor’s. He’s depressed after learning that the universe will one day end after a period of expansion, and is having his first real existential crisis. I had mine around the same age, actually, went I learned that the Earth will one day get swallowed by the sun. And THEN came the realization that I’d be dead by that point. AND THEN came the realization that I’d die one day, and that was a WHOLE NEW crisis to...anyway.

He grew up under the Coney Island rollercoaster according to him (although his analyst says that he exaggerates), and that’s what he blames for his “nervous personality. He’s also got an active imagination, often blurring fantasy and reality. His Dad ran the bumper cars on Coney Island (a place that I’ve never been, but desperately want to go).

He continues on talking about his former schoolmates, and not really that well. While in class, young Alvy kisses a...little girl...ahem. And then, when reprimanded by the teacher, current Alvy notes that he was always...like that...and he also says this to the little girl, and they talk about Freud’s latency period, and Alvy said he never...had...one...that’s uh...that’s fuckin’ SOMETHING, now isn’t it?

OK, well, shoving that forcefully aside as hard as I can, Alvy wonders aloud on where his classmates now, and one of them says this:

This also involves a little girl saying she’s “into leather,” which is...awkward as FUCK, but WE’RE GONNA MOVE THE FUCK ON. Alvy recounts his paranoia, and was so even after he became a famous comedian (which we say after a VERY good joke about qualifying for the army as a hostage). He speaks to a friend, Rob (Tony Roberts) about potential anti-Semitism from a person in a passersby meeting, then heads to meet Annie.

Annie Hall (Diane Keaton) arrives at a movie theater, late and in a bad mood. The two are late to their intended film, argue briefly, then head to another film that they’ve already seen, The Sorrow and the Pity. In line, they’re in front of a man loudly soliloquizing on film, much to Alvy’s annoyance.

Annie and Alvy continue to argue a bit, while Alvy openly berates the casual film critic. In the middle, he talks to the audience about it, only to be followed by the crtiic himself, who also acknowledges the audience! Huh! Anyway, he’s a professor at Columbia, and starts continuing his line speech, this time on the work of Marshall McLuhan, one of the most important early media theorists ever. And then, Alvy brings out Marshall McLuhan (Marshall McLuhan) to debate him on it, only for Alvy to turn to the audience and wish aloud that life could really be like this!

I’m beginning to understand why people like this film. It’s metacontextual before metacontextuality was really a thing in film. It’s a fourth-wall breaking movie in some fantastic ways. But will it still hold its muster after breaking the fourth wall’s become so commonplace? we’ll see, I guess.

After a showing of the film, the two return home, and Alvy tries to initiate sex. But Annie’s not really into it at the moment, and Alvy complains that they used to have sex all the time, and it’s been a while since. So, I guess that retroactively awkward scene at the school was meant to foreshadow Alvy’s high libido, that will probably cause some conflict in the film. Anyway, Annie notes that Alvy once went through something similar with Allison, his first wife. Who’s Allison? Flashback!

Allison Portchnik (Carol Kane) is a graduate student in political science, working for a campaign that Alvy’s about to perform for. He’s nervous, as he’s going on after another comedian. She comforts him by saying that she thought he was cute, and he does well. But we flash-forward to a night after they’re married, shortly after the death of JFK, which Alvy’s obsessing over, entertaining various conspiracy theories.

However, Allison rightly points out that his obsession is simply a way for him to avoid having sex with her, which mirrors the present-day situation him him and Annie. Flash forward TO Alvy and Annie, and there are just lobsters...everywhere, on the floor in their kitchen. After that commotion, they talk about Annie’s past romances.

And by talk about, I mean they LITERALLY WALK THROUGH her memories. And I gotta say...I fuckin’ love this method of storytelling. One of her previous boyfriends is an actor (John Glover), and his over-dramatic prose sickens Alvy. We see a second marriage of Alvy’s to New Yorker writer Robin (Janet Margolin), who’s dragged him to a stuffy high society party of intellectuals that he has no interest in going to. Same her, Alvy. I bet the caviar’s canned.

He tries to initiate sex with her - in the middle of the party, mind you - and she turns him down. later, when they get to it in their apartment, she’s unable to, uh...reach satisfaction. From there, we flash-forward after that marriage ends to a tennis match with Rob, where he meets one of his mutual friends: Annie Hall.

And for the record, Annie’s pretty obviously got a crush on him, and she’s adorable as fuck. Also, that outfit, real talk...that outfit rules. She offers to give Alvy a list, during which he’s quite worried about her driving, but the two still get along well enough. Annie’s an amateur photographer, during a time period where photography is considered a relatively new art form. The two go to her apartment, and share familial anecdotes and personal stories about themselves. And as they talk, we also see a set of subtitles on top of each of them that betray their inner feelings and thoughts.

I do genuinely like the stylings of the movie, goddamn. This conversation leads to Alvy asking her out on a date, although they end up scheduling it after Annie auditions at a nightclub as a singer. And while it doesn’t go great, Alvy tells her she was fantastic, and they share a kiss before they head to dinner. They head to her place afterwards, and we cut to later that night, post-coitus.

And then, we get a flash-forward back to the next day, where the two are at a bookstore, and Alvy speaks on his personal philosophy of life.

I'm obsessed with uh, with death, I think. Big - big subject with me, yeah. I have a very pessimistic view of life. You should know this about me if we're gonna go out. You know, I - I feel that life is - is divided up into the horrible and the miserable. Those are the two categories, you know. The - the horrible would be like, um, I don't know, terminal cases, you know, and blind people, crippled. I don't know how they get through life. It's amazing to me. You know, and the miserable is everyone else. That's - that's - so - so - when you go through life - you should be thankful that you're miserable because you're very lucky to be miserable.

Iiiiinteresting.

Shortly into their relationship, they admit they’re in love (or “lurve”, as Alvy says). She moves in with Alvy, which he initially isn’t the biggest fan of, having been burned in two previous marriages And already, their relationship is showing a few bumps. Alvy’s also always trying to push her to take college classes, while she uses mariuana whenever they have sex, which Alvy doesn’t agree with.

But as they have sex one night, without the marijuana at Alvy’s urging, Annie’s mind wanders - LITERALLY.

This film...this film has a VERY unique style of visual storytelling, and I am HERE for it! Seriously, I genuinely love this method of storytelling and comedy, it’s extremely engaging to me.

Soon enough, Alvy gets an interview to write for a talk show host, which he ABSOLUTELY despises. But in doing so, he decides to go into stand-up for himself, and is actually quite successful at it! But before we get to that, we’re at the halfway point! See you in Part 2!

#annie hall #woody allen #diane keaton #tony roberts #carol kane #paul simon #shelley duvall #christopher walken #romance february #romance movie #romcom #romantic comedy #user365 #365 movie challenge #365 movies 365 days #365 Days 365 Movies #365 movies a year

15 notes · View notes

dreaminginthedeepsouth · 3 years

Photo

* * * *

INTERVIEW: SAINT MISBEHAVIN’ WAVY GRAVY

by Richard Whittaker, Dec 21, 2010

One day I got a note from ServiceSpace founder, Nipun Mehta offering me tickets to a new documentary movie about Wavy Gravy. Would you like to go?

I went. Although I was aware of Wavy Gravy as a cultural icon, I really knew very little about him. The film is a eye-opener. Michelle Esrick’s loving documentary, Saint Misbehavin’ - 10 years in the making - is a real introduction to this remarkable man. I'd never heard about Hugh Romney, the man who later became famous as Wavy Gravy. And what a story. I'll mention just one of its surprises: earlier in his life, Hugh Romney was Lenny Bruce's manager.

A few weeks after seeing the film, at Mehta’s urging, I had the chance to interview Wavy Gravy himself.

Richard Whittaker: How are you feeling about Saint Misbehavin’?

Wavy Gravy: Oh, it’s a swell movie. I’m honored to be so well-documented, and the review in the New York Times was embarrassing. I’m not that good.

RW: You said in the film that you’re an “intuitive clown.” Would you mind saying something about what that means?

WG: I’m trained in the art of acting improvisation. That means acting on the spur of the moment rather than doing, say, the focused slow burn and all the traditional clown moves. I don’t do any of that.

RW: So that would be about sensing the moment, what’s there, and taking in who you’re with.

WG: Absolutely—and sensing what’s going on. I was, for a number of years, with The Committee in San Francisco. I taught improvisation at Columbia Pictures. Harrison Ford was one of my students and I’ve taught improvisation at Camp Winnarainbow for over thirty years.

RW: I wanted to ask you about your history. For instance, in New York in Greenwich Village, you wrote poetry, right?

WG: Yes I did.

RW: Is any of it available? And is it something you’d want people to find?

WG: There are a couple of slender volumes out there. I think you’d have to go to Amazon or eBay to find them. I don’t even have copies myself. But other people do and will lend them to me when I need them.

RW: Do any titles stand out for you?

WG: Kaleidoscope and there’s Joe’s Song, which is taught in a poetry class at the University of California at Berkeley. Would you like to hear it?

RW: Please.

WG: Okay. It goes like this: “Once upon and ever since I was a child in a child’s world. I have wept a child’s tears and built a child’s wall of clay and stone and colored years of poems in paint and virgin gold. I sought to build a wall so tall from lion eggs from Gallilee, a brick of song among the dregs of silver nails and lesser men a mile long to kiss the sun and climb again. Once ago and ever now I stood a man on a child’s wall. I stopped and prayed to spider webs and roses of the sea. I spoke as one with all the earth and knew the pain of birth and death to be the same without my wall. Once upon and ever furled I stand alone with all the world.”

RW: That’s beautiful.

WG: I wrote it in 1960 or about then. I don’t write lyric poems very often. These days I mainly write haiku, usually when friends pass away, which is happening more and more frequently from natural causes. Also I’ve been having the good fortune to have my art exhibited, and I do a haiku to go with each piece.

RW: I’m imagining that, as a younger man, you had certain visions and deep feelings that could have been a liability for living the conventional life.

WG: I don’t think I ever had to contend with that one [laughs]. I live in the land of one thing after another. [speaking with an east Indian accent] “The sand only goes through the hourglass one grain at a time,” as some Hindu sage proclaimed. I’ve discovered that to be true.

RW: Did you have mentors who supported you in Greenwich Village?

WG: It was kind of amusing. I was going to theater school at Boston University, which was an amazing theater school. The finest directors in the world would come in and the whole college would read for a part. A freshman could get a lead. It was extraordinary. And if you weren’t cast in the production, you would be cast in the lighting crew or the costume crew or the stage crew. Then there was an upset about theater students not doing their social studies and the university attempted to move the campus of the theater school over to where the rest of the university was laid out. Just at that time, the teachers who had all been hired during the McCarthy blackball because they couldn’t work on Broadway, well, the blackball ended and they all quit. They went to work at the Neighborhood Playhouse in New York City, and they took me with them.

But while I was at BU, I had read in Time Magazine about jazz and poetry in San Francisco. I thought, hey, I’ve written a couple of poems and I know some musicians. I can do that! So I got together with a bunch of artists from the museum school and we proceeded to take the basement of a bar called The Rock on Huntington Avenue. The place in the basement was called The Pebble in the Rock. We put in black tables and black clothes and mobiles and paintings and began doing jazz and poetry. It was the first jazz and poetry done on the East Coast. So I had the privilege of inaugurating the East Coast to jazz and poetry. I persisted in doing it for years in, of all places, Hartford Connecticut. On every Monday I would grab a bunch of musicians and go to Hartford and make substantial money. Otherwise I was going to the Neighborhood Playhouse and reading my poetry in the evenings at the Gaslight Café in Greenwich Village, as you saw in the movie.

RW: That’s an amazing story. There was another thing you said in the film, “put your good where it can do the most.”

WG: Which is the advice I gleaned from one of my mentors, the author and adventurer, Ken Kesey.

RW: Did that kind of focus something for you?

WG: Well, it lit up. It lit up. I had discovered that, somewhat. Whenever I would do a good thing, it made me feel good. I think I heard a preacher of color on television in the late fifties. He said, “It’s nice to be nice.” And that kind of hit a chord for me.

RW: Do you think there’s a mix in what artists do? That in your poetry, part of it was trying to give something?

WG: Hmmm, I don’t know. I was just trying to get out of the way and let whatever was inside of me come to the surface. In the early days, I was not all that consciously altruistic—although, in the early days of poetry, the poets were not paid. We used to pass a cornucopia around after an hour or so and people would put money in it. We made an embarrassing amount of money that way. Myself and Len Chandler, who was one of the first folk singers I brought into The Gaslight, he and I put on these capes with hoods—Len was an African-American and he had a motor scooter. And we would jump on the motor scooter at the end of the evening and drive down into the Bowery and find somebody passed out on the sidewalk. We’d stuff his pockets with money and drive off and find somebody else until we’d given away at least half of what we’d made in the course of the evening. It was a lot of fun.

RW: That’s incredible. What do you think led you to do that?

WG: I don’t know. It just seemed like a fun thing to do. We didn’t need all that money.

RW: Do you remember the moment when Ken Kesey said “Put your good where it will do the most good”?

WG: No. But he told me a lot of stuff—like, “You should honor your mother and your father.” This comes out of the Bible. As soon as I learned that Kesey had written that, I forget how he worded it, I immediately called my mother and my father and honored them verbally as best I could. And it was illuminating for them and for me. Afterwards, I called Ken up to thank him. He said, “Well, it’s just so darn simple.”

RW: I want to ask about giving and receiving. Do you have any thoughts in general, let’s say, about giving?

WG: Giving seems to be easy for me. Receiving is the thing I’m just beginning to learn how to do with grace. It’s a work in progress, like the rest of me. Over the last thirty years I’ve experienced considerable physical difficulty, having had to receive a series of spinal surgeries and spending amounts of time in body casts. You have no alternative, or you starve. So it was necessary. I tell people I learned patience in the hospital. [there’s a pause] That’s a pun.

RW: You’re right! [laughs]

WG: And as my infirmities persisted, I learned to acquiesce to the moment and accept, with as much graciousness as I could muster, the assistance of people who offered it.

RW: I bet this is true for lots of people, that it’s easier to give than to receive.

WG: Right, but as I pointed out, I didn’t have much choice, as with a lot of the stuff that has happened to me in my life. Life situations have presented themselves and it was either sink or swim.

RW: This reminds me of another part in the film. This is at Woodstock. You and the other members of The Hog Farm were brought there to be the police force for the whole event. You called yourselves “the please force.”

WG: We were the Please Force. And we had also set up what we called the Trip Tent.

RW: And there’s a part in the movie where you describe helping a young man who was having a bad acid trip.

WG: As he came in ranting, this three-hundred pound Australian doctor laid on top of him and said, “Body contact. You need body contact” [said with an accent] and then a psychiatrist leaned in and said, [using another funny voice] “Just think of your third eye, man.”

Then I figured it was time for me to make my move. I said, “Excuse me. I’d like to try something here.” And they all backed up. What’s this hippie going to do? That’s when I said, “What’s your name, man?”

RW: And he mumbled something…

WG: I said, “No, your name.” He told me his name and I said it back to him. In fact, I said it back to him several times.

RW: I noticed how very clear and emphatic you were when you got his name. “Okay, Bob. Bob, that’s your name.”

WG: Your name is Bob.

RW: Where did you get the knowledge of using that simple directness?

WG: We’d spent some time on the psychotropic frontiers through the prankster days and beyond. It was not unfamiliar territory.

RW: You knew something about being really concrete, and focused.

WG: And through the greatest professor of them all, professor experience; and from courses at hard knocks university.

RW: You’ve had a lot of hard knocks university experience, I think.

WG: Yes. Well, that’s how you learn things.

RW: You said in the film how you’d found you could get high without the psychotropic assistance. Could you say something about that again?

WG: There are many ways to alter space. I do lots of breathing exercises, and I do mantras. Different people have different recipes to get to a space of consciousness and then to dwell in it for as long as you can, I guess. My own way is an amalgam of many different practices from many different lineages.

RW: You evolved from Hugh Romney doing the poetry to where you were wearing a jester’s hat.

WG: Between poems I used to talk about the bizarre things that happened to me during the day because it was really tedious just reading all these poems night after night after night. Then a guy came along and said, look, skip the poetry. Just talk about your bizarre experiences. That’s how I got into doing stand-up.

Lenny Bruce became my manager. I put out a couple of albums and toured the U.S. —and in fact, something of the world—doing stand-up before these other things came along.

RW: Somewhere you left the jester’s hat and started dressing as a clown.

WG: I was asked, when we had moved to Berkeley in the mid-seventies, to go the Children’s Hospital in Oakland and cheer up kids. On the way out the door of my house, someone handed me a red, rubber nose. I discovered it enabled me to get out of myself and be entertaining to the kids. After awhile, I began to paint my face up as a clown. Somebody gave me a costume, and a clown who was retiring from Ringling Brothers gave me his giant shoes. I worked with kids, with kids who were terminal, even, and did this almost every day for about seven years.

At one point I had to go to a political rally at Peoples’ Park and I didn’t have time to take off my clown stuff. I discovered that the police didn’t want to hit me anymore. Clowns are safe.

RW: Can you say more about what your experience at Children’s Hospital working with kids was like?

WG: I discovered that not only was I helping the kids, I was helping myself. As I began to do this work, I’d gone through three major back surgeries and was in quite a bit of pain. But working with the kids I discovered that as I focused on the children and the pain they were in, I lost track of my own pain.

RW: Is the clown an archetype you can inhabit?

WG: Sure.

RW: Do you think, “I’m a clown?”

WG: I don’t know. I can’t see you.

RW: [laughs] No. I have a long way to go. If I evolved, I might become a clown.

WG: Well, you need to go to camp Winnarainbow. They’ll teach you to clown. It’d be good for you. I think John Townsend said it most brilliantly in The Book of the Clown, “A clown is a poet who is also an orangutan.” But clown comes from the word “clod” or bumpkin, and the red nose indicates they were drunk. But I found all this out later. Suddenly I have these big shoes on and [laughs] a nose and I’m painting my face up, and where does it all come from? I began to study it, and it’s very fascinating, the path of the clown and the jester.

RW: What have you found out about being a clown? What has been revealed?

WG: It enables me to go places I couldn’t go as a regular kind of guy. People feel challenged by people going where I go. But when I put on the patina of a clown I’m no challenge to them in any way.

RW: What do you wish for people when you become a clown?

WG: I wish that they would find joy in the moment. It’s like I expressed in the film, laughter is the valve on the pressure cooker of life. Either you laugh at stuff or you’re going to end up with your beans on the ceiling.

RW: At camp Winnarainbow in the film it showed the labyrinth you have on the grounds…

WG: It’s a unicursal Cretan labyrinth. The oldest one is 3000 years old and was found on the island of Sardinia. The more common labyrinth, like the one you see at Grace Cathedral came about during the 11th or 12th century when Europeans could not go to Jerusalem on pilgrimage. So they developed this other labyrinth, which is different from the Pagan labyrinth, which made it to Scandanavia, to India and somehow to Peru and to the sun temple at Mesa Verde. That’s where I first encountered it when I spent time living with the Hopi Indians for a few months.

RW: How did that happen?

WG: I was enamored of the Book of the Hopi by Frank Waters. And that’s where I first saw the labyrinth. According to the Hopi if there was a condition of planetary emergency the different races would gather on this mesa for instruction from the spirit world. So I showed up. They said, “You’re pretty early.” But they took pity on me and I got to hang out with them for a while.

RW: Was anything given to you?

WG: Not something that I would feel comfortable talking about, but yes—not so much from the people as from the geography.

RW: So you brought this labyrinth to camp Winnarainbow, then?

WG: Yes. I asked Minalanska, who was an elder, what that was. She said, “Oh Wavy Gravy, that’s just the master plan of the universe.” So I borrowed a pencil and wrote it down, and I’ve brought it everywhere I’ve gone ever since. I learned to draw it. Even with my first book, I’d sign it and draw that labyrinth.

RW: Now how do you make use of the labyrinth at camp for the kids?

WG: A teepee at a time, in the evening, the campers get to walk the labyrinth to beautiful music under the stars. If they do good things, they get strokes. If they do bad things they get strikes. Three strikes and you’re out. You can always work off strikes, but you can get enough strikes to be sent home, too. By doing things above and beyond the ordinary camper—for instance, if you get eight stokes in a two-week session, you get to walk into the center of the labyrinth. In the center, there’s also these crystals. You get to take a crystal out of the labyrinth and take it home.

RW: Do you talk to the kids about the labyrinth?

WG: Oh, sure.

RW: What do you tell them?

WG: I tell them that the labyrinth is not a maze. Mazes are designed to get you lost. Labyrinths are designed to get you found. And I ask them to think of each step as a prayer for peace. I tell them you go into the labyrinth and that there’s an energy in the center that I call the spirit of Gaia, the earth mother. I say that if you have cares or problems you can leave them in the labyrinth and come out perhaps lighter than when you went in. And that is sometimes helpful to young people.

RW: In the film you made a comment to one kid that the labyrinth is inside of you.

WG: Oh, I tell all the kids that. The true labyrinth is inside you.

RW: That’s powerful. From the film, I see that your life has been a journey. Do you feel it that way?

WG: Absolutely. It’s been a great adventure.

RW: What are some of the changes from where you were and where you are today?

WG: The things that are the most significant for me in my life are the circus and performing arts camp that I’ve run with my wife Jahanara for over thirty years. We do nine weeks for kids and one week for grown-ups. And the Seva Foundation is another. Through it I’m able to raise funds to help the blind regain their sight. Eighty percent of the blind people in the world don’t need to be—they can get their sight back.

When we first started doing the work it was about five dollars for a cataract operation. Now it’s close to fifty dollars for the operation in third world countries. If you go to SEVA.org you can find out all about us. We’ve helped to orchestrate—it’s going on three million sight-saving operations. I get to put on concerts to raise funds to do that. I’m going to be seventy-five years old in May and I’m looking forward to doing a concert in the Bay Area at the Craneway Pavillion in Richmond and in New York City at the Beacon Theater. And also I’m facing another basic spinal surgery in January. So I’ve got a lot of stuff on my plate.

RW: I know we don’t have much more time, but …

WG: Eternity now, I always say. That’s one of my favorite quotes. And we’re all the same person trying to shakes hands with our self. I think that’s a good one, too.

RW: I like those quotes. It’s clear that you’ve spent a lot of time doing forms of service. Camp Winnarainbow seems to be a service.

WG: Well, my greatest legacy is the children that have come out of camp over the last thirty years. Lots of the kids who started camp when they were seven are now running the camp. And I’m sure it will go on long after I’m gone.

RW: Is that something one begins to learn, that the deepest gifts come when one can look beyond personal wants to take in the needs of others?

WG: That is my want! [laughs] Put your good where it will do the most. I can’t say it any better.

[WORKS AND CONVERSATIONS]

#Works and Conversations #Interviews #Wavy Gravy #Clown #Camp Winnarainbow #service #improvisation

10 notes · View notes

blackfreethinkers · 4 years

Link

Harold Newton did something that took guts.

An African American artist from Georgia, Newton in 1955 walked through the front door of a well-known white artist’s home in Fort Pierce, Florida, to ask A. E. Backus for advice.

“Backus had a reputation here in town for being inclusive and open to people no matter their gender, no matter their beliefs, no matter their race,” said J. Marshall Adams, Executive Director of the A.E. Backus Museum and Gallery in Fort Pierce. “Backus was very encouraging of his work, gave him critiques, gave him demonstrations, gave him art supplies to help encourage him.”

Newton soaked up everything Backus taught him.

Selling paintings along the highway

But Newton had one more hurdle to overcome if he wanted to sell his own landscape paintings.

“He couldn’t set up his own gallery, his own space in those segregated times and attract white clientele to a black studio so he had to figure out a way to get his art to his clients, to his customers,” Adams said.

Newton's solution: sell his paintings out of his car along U.S. 1. That method spread and was adopted by more than two dozen artists in the area, leading to more than 200,000 paintings and a vibrant African American art scene up and down the Treasure Coast. The artists were later given the name: Highwaymen.

Historical and museum photos of Florida's Highwaymen Artists

Alfred Hair wasn't the first Highwaymen artist, but he was seen as the African American art movement's charismatic leader whose hustle to sell art out of the trunk of his car led to a successful career before his life was cut short when he was shot and killed at a local hangout in Fort Pierce, Florida.1 of 47 Highwaymen artist Al "Blood" Black with one of his paintings in 2014.

Highwaymen artist Curtis Arnett with Attorney General Pam Bondi, left, and curator Jeanna Brunson at the Museum of Florida History in Tallahassee in 2011.

Fort Pierce Highwaymen Artist James Gibson brings one of his paintings into the Sunrise Theater to be hung in preparation for the 2007 Highwaymen Florida Artist Hall of Fame Artist Award Celebration held in November 2007.

R.L. Lewis standing in front of his Highwaymen art in 2008.

Mary Ann Carroll, the only woman of the 26 Highwaymen artists in the Florida Artists Hall of Fame, poses for a photo in her garage studio at her home on Oct. 7, 2014, in Fort Pierce. Vero Beach painter Ray McLendon shares a laugh with fifth-grade students on March 2, 2017, at Beachland Elementary School as he signs autographs after giving a talk about Florida Highwaymen art. Florida Highwaymen painter, R. L. Lewis puts finishing touches on painting while attending the Tallahassee Museum's (Jr. Museum) annual Market Days fund raiser held at the North Florida Fairgrounds in 2006.

Highwaymen artist James Gibson at the Tallahassee Museum of History and Natural Science's annual Market Days fund raiser at the Leon County Fairgrounds in 2007.

Highwaymen artist R.L. Lewis painting at the Tallahassee Museum of History and Natural Science's annual Market Days fund raiser at the Leon County Fairgrounds in 2007.

A. E. "Bean" Backus working on one of his paintings sometime in the 1980s.

Robert Butler, Highwayman Artist, working on a painting at the Old Capitol - Tallahassee, Florida, in 2006.

Each year the A.E. Backus Museum in Fort Pierce holds an exhibit celebrating the works of the Florida Highwaymen artists. Backus is credited for giving lessons to Harold Newton and Alfred Hair, two original Florida Highwaymen artists. The 2020 exhibit looked at the art of the Hair, who was considered the charismatic leader of the African American art movement in the area.

The A.E. Backus Museum in Fort Pierce celebrates the work and life of one of the great early Florida landscape artists. Backus also is credited for giving lessons to Harold Newton and Alfred Hair, two original Florida Highwaymen artists.

Doretha Hair Truesdell, widow of original Florida Highwaymen artist Alfred Hair, with Marshall Adams, the executive director of the A.E. Backus Museum, in Fort Pierce. Alfred Hair was considered the charismatic leader of the African American group of artists from Fort Pierce and the surrounding areas. The Backus museum has a permanent display of Highwaymen art.

The Florida Highwaymen were a group of African American artists, generally from Fort Pierce and the surrounding areas, who drove up and down U.S. 1 selling the landscape art during the 1950s and 60s.

The A.E. Backus Museum in Fort Pierce has a permanent display of Highwaymen art, and each January into February, expands that collection to encompass much of the museum. This is part of the expanded 2020 exhibit called "Driving Force."

The story of Alfred Hair

One of the artists considered to be the scene's leader was Alfred Hair. When Hair was 14 years old, he, like Newton, fell into Backus' orbit.

Hair went to the nearby segregated school in Fort Pierce — Lincoln Park Academy. It was Hair’s teacher who suggested Backus take him under his wing.

Backus taught Hair how to paint landscapes and how to make frames. Hair started to believe he could turn painting into a career, something unheard of for blacks of the time.

"The only jobs you could get was working in the fields, that was your job, in the orange groves," said Hair’s widow, Doretha Hair Truesdell. "Alfred didn’t see himself doing that. He said painting is what I’m going to do. This is my job. This is my employment."

As Hair grew in the industry, he knew he would have to do things differently from his white mentor, who could set up in galleries and share his paintings with mass audiences.

So Hair came up with his own business model.

A new business model

“What he could do is lean into his talents, and one of those talents was painting fast,” Adams said. “If he could learn how to paint faster and paint more volume he would have more to sell — he would sell them for a less expensive price point than an established artist — but at the end of the day make as much money.”

Soon, Hair took a page from Newton’s playbook. He began driving up and down the highway selling his paintings.

It worked. During the early part of the 1960s Hair, and many other artists with a similar painting style, thrived.

“On Oct. 16, 1965, we moved into our house that we had built from those paintings,” said Hair Truesdell. “When we moved into that house that’s when we really exploded. We could produce about 20 paintings a day. We hired salespeople. Some of the people that are Highwaymen now were our salespeople. They sold for us, so we were really making a lot of money for that time.”

Hair and Newton’s practice of selling art out of their cars came to be used by many African American artists along the U.S. 1 corridor on Florida’s Treasure Coast.

Many found success.

More: Harry T. Moore helped thousands of blacks register to vote. It led to his assassination on Christmas night

More: Mary McLeod Bethune was born the daughter of slaves. She died a retired college president

When everything changed

However, in 1970, the African American art scene lost its charismatic leader when Hair was gunned down in a bar. He was only 29.

“Overnight, everything dies," said Hair's widow. "Nothing is left.”

Many of the African American landscape artists continued to paint, but waning interest after Hair's death coupled with new tastes and styles in the 1970s and 1980s saw much of the success fade away.

“We survived it all,” Hair Truesdell said. “We’re still living. Still standing and still we have the memory and we will always have the memory of Alfred, of his vision.”

In the mid-1990s Jim Fitch, a Florida art historian, discussed the African American painting movement of the 1960s in the St. Petersburg Times, using a label to describe their art.

How the 'Highwaymen' came to be

“That term is ‘The Highwaymen,’” Adams said. “The name came from the artery of U.S. 1 being the chief way to go up and down and sell your works of art. So it’s easy for us to, now that we have a term, to describe these artists.”

This created a new interest in their art, which is estimated to include 200,000 paintings.

One of the distinctive things that make the Highwaymen art unique is the frames and vibrant colors of the landscapes.

Especially early on, because they lacked the resources and supplies, Hair and others would paint on upson board. They framed paintings with crown molding and brushed them with gold or silver to give them a rustic look.

“I really think the board that we painted on, I just think it gave it vibrancy that you don’t get from canvas,” Hair Truesdell said. “Also, we shellacked our board, and then we put a sealant on the board, and then the paint just adhered to that sealant and I just think that it gave it life.”

The true number of Highwaymen artists has been debated, with some being considered second or third generation Highwaymen.

However, in 2004, the number of identified Highwaymen was set at 26 when they were inducted into the Florida Artists Hall of Fame.

They include: Curtis Arnett, Hezekiah Baker, Al "Blood" Black, brothers Ellis Buckner and George Buckner, Robert Butler, Mary Ann Carroll, brothers Johnny Daniels and Willie Daniels, Rodney Demps, James Gibson, Alfred Hair, Isaac Knight, Robert Lewis, John Maynor, Roy McLendon, Alfonso "Pancho" Moran, brothers Sam Newton, Lemuel Newton and Harold Newton, Willie Reagan, Livingston "Castro" Roberts, Cornell "Pete" Smith, Charles Walker, Sylvester Wells and Charles "Chico" Wheeler.

“Even though they might be painting similar subjects in a similar manner they each have their own individual viewpoints,” Adams said. “I think it’s important to honor these individual artists as well as the collective group. The collective story is really important, but it shouldn’t obscure the idea that these are individuals who are looking at subjects and painting with their own style. If you look closely you can see a wide range of different perspectives of how they approached a single subject.”

Highwaymen paintings can be seen at the A.E. Backus Gallery & Museum in Fort Pierce, as well as the Museum of Florida History in Tallahassee.

Many can be purchased at various websites in their honor.

There are also some pieces on display at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture.

“It’s wonderful that these artists are being recognized today and they’re continuing to be recognized,” Adams said. “These works have a timeless beauty. They are of a certain time and there were certain social and political and cultural forces that shaped how they were made and how the people made them, were able to make them. They really speak beyond that.”

2 notes · View notes

artistlove17 · 4 years

Text

This was my Nana at my second birthday party!

She and my Papaw bought me a new swingset that year.

My mom gave me some old pictures the other day on my 21st birthday from my 2nd birthday party, so this picture of my Nana is 19 years old... that's wild.

I've been thinking a lot about my Nana and my Papaw and my mom. And I realized that most of the people around my age act the way they do (fucking crazy) because of their parents and the environment they were raised in. Most of them had parents who either wouldn't allow them to do things (or couldn't afford it) or the opposite, where they forced their kids to play a sport or like a certain thing. (The amount of fathers I've seen get pissed off when their boys don't want to hunt deer or play football... I cannot tell you! Extreme Christian men are fucking bonkers about their children not being exactly how they want them...)

And it occurred to me that I actually didn't really have to deal with that. Not to any extreme level anyway...

I've seen a friend cry and scream and have several mental breakdowns because her dad would steal her journals and read them and told her that as long as she lived under his roof she wouldn't keep any secrets from him. He told her that reading was a waste of her time and money and refused to let her mom buy her the books she wanted. He told her that art and writing were also a waste of her time and practically beat it into her head that all she would ever amount to was a housewife who stayed at home raising babies and caring for a manchild/husband.

And he absolutely hated my guts because I tried my DAMNDEST to get her out of that mindset and to get her to see that she could be or do whatever she wanted (she WANTED to teach elementary school). (It all ended up with us falling out and her reverting back to being his little puppet and following every order he spit at her.) And so he ended up forcing her to go to college on a small grant and a student loan... but made her take the nursing program. Which she ended up failing out of almost immediately because nursing programs are extremely competitive and she was an average student with barely passing grades. (Not trying to make fun of her, but the standards compared to her actual grades were EXTREMELY unrealistic, even she knew it. But her father insisted.)

She ended up dropping out, marrying a criminal (also one of the ugliest dudes I've ever seen, like no joke.. his creepy eyes make me nauseated) and had a baby with him. Now she's constantly back and forth from "I love him, we're a happy little family, I'm a stay at home mom!" and "I hate men, both parents need a job, I can raise my child by myself!"

It just kind of eats at me because while we were friends I could see her finally getting away from her dad and the shit he was constantly shoving her way. But as soon as we stopped being friends... it just seemed like she gave up. And I don't blame myself or anything like that (after all, you can't help someone who refuses to believe they need help)... but it was just crazy to watch it all happen and to think about it now with a new outlook and probably a good bit more maturity.

While we were friends she was more open and out there and we could go hang out with the "weird kids" and party in our own way (usually at the arcade like the nerds we were). We would paint together and make friendship books together and just have fun as kids should... but then I moved away and watching her social media was like watching someone take a leap off a cliff. She even tried to steal my fiance and my friends from me amidst all of this insanity... just out of spite and jealousy that I got away and she stayed trapped in her own personal hell...

And one day it was like her dad finally got into her head. She started hanging out with people we used to hate. She started giving out blowjobs like candy on Halloween (to the point that guys were asking her for blowjobs for their 18th birthdays). She was constantly partying and drinking and doing who knows what kind of drugs. She got married to a guy she met while he was on the run from the police and they ended up having a baby and she became a stay at home mom. (Which she tried her hardest to pretend was fine by her in the beginning, but later had a meltdown over it and got a job again).

She gave up everything she said she wanted to do. Every dream she ever had. And became exactly the person her father was always telling her she would end up being.

Watching all of this happen and seeing how she ended up... was is so fucking surreal to me. It's just so... fucked up.

I surely didn't have the BEST childhood and I plan to raise any children I might have in the future very differently than how I was raised. But I did have a mother and an amazing set of grandparents who made sure I could do whatever I dreamt of.

When I decided I wanted to try out for basketball, my mom signed me up and made sure I went to every practice and game when I made the team. (Though I only played for 3 years before getting bored of it.)

When I wanted to play Tball as a toddler, mom signed me up and made sure there was always someone to take me to my games.

When I started dancing and doing cheerleading my grandparents paid for everything I needed and took me to and from every event and cheer camp.

When my Uncle started learning the guitar they bought me a small one to practice on. When he later started learning the keyboard, they bought me one of those too. I wanted to learn everything he did.

My mom let me get a couple of piercings and dye my hair crazy colors and wear whatever I wanted (except for when it was WAY too revealing for my age, then I was only allowed to wear it inside the house.) She allowed me the freedom to pick things out for myself and make myself look however I wanted. My Nana actually put hot pink streaks in my hair when I was 8 and I loved having colored hair after that...

And during the periods that I didn't want to be active... they let me do that too. They bought me notebook after notebook and sketchbook after sketchbook. They let me write and draw and sing and dance to my hearts fucking content. My Nana kept a wall in her house covered in my art. She loved that I was an artist and made sure to always support me.

My papaw even bought me my own pair of roller skates because for literally 5 years straight the only thing I wanted to do on the weekends was go to the movie theater.. and the skating rink! He and my Nana let me roller skate THROUGH THE HOUSE so I could practice without being in front of everyone. And then they'd take me to the skating rink and let me skate for hours. And now that I think about it... it's kind of crazy that they just let me skate in circles for hours by myself and never once tried to force me to make friends or talk to other kids. As long as I was happy and content, they didn't care.

They supported me and loved me no matter what I wanted to do and I honestly feel like that's why I don't just sit back and follow orders. I don't just do whatever someone tells me to do (unlike so many people around me who I've seen try SO hard to fit their parents expectations, only to fail almost every time.)

I did feel that pressure a little bit. Everyone expected me to do good in school and go off to college (because I was always good in school and made good grades, so it became an expectation). And I think that's why it hit me so bad to quit college... because I felt like I was letting everyone down. But then my mom reminded me that she gave up college so she could keep me and that college really isn't for everyone (even people who are good at school).

My Papaw supported my choice (I could tell he was a little unhappy) but he never voiced that he was in any way disappointed in me. He believes that since I earned my scholarship by myself, then I get to decide what to do with it... which includes not using it.

My Nana fully supported my decision. She thought similar to my Papaw, that I had earned that scholarship on my own and so I got to decide what happened with it. She was also one of the only people who really knew how mentally and emotionally fucked up I was while trying to attend college and fully supported me leaving that stress behind if it made me happy to do so.

I've seen kids fall apart because they never had people like this in their lives. They were never allowed to be themselves or just enjoy whatever it was they liked. They were constantly pushed and pushed until they finally went over the edge.

And that's really fucked up.

And I'm really thankful for my mom and grandparents who always allowed me to be myself and make decisions for myself.

I'm really thankful to have been allowed to be me (at least for the most part). 💛

#nana #family problems #family #mom #grandparents #grandpa #grandma #papaw #thankful #bad parenting #good parenting #letkidsbekids #livehowyouwant #followyourdreams #notyourparentsdreams

2 notes · View notes

rckfllrs-blog · 5 years

Photo

☁ * ⋆ : aw, look at this photo! it’s ORION ROCKEFELLER with their family! they’re an ARCHITECT, right? this photo must have been before HIS SON WAS BORN, but after HE RENOVATED ROCKEFELLER MANOR. i heard that when they were younger, they used to DRAW/PAINT – i can’t imagine them doing that now! man… i wonder if their family knows they ARE SUFFERING FROM UNDIAGNOSED PTSD. ( c, 18, pst. )

hellllooo everybody! i’m c ( the shawn mendes mascot on the main ) and this is my dorito of a muse, orion rockefeller. i’ve been working him up in my mind ever since we started working on goldstone and i am so freakin’ hyped to be able to finally write him with u all <3 so pls, keep reading for some info about him! ( and buckle up, bc it’s kind of a wild ride! )

tw: death, mentions of ptsd.

orion was born on february 14th, 1979 which makes him an aquarius, and also a valentine’s day baby

he's a GIANT goofball. ever since college, he's always been sort of a social butterfly and a people pleaser

genuinely one of the most caring people on the planet??? as a kid he'd get into fights with bullies who were picking on the smaller kids

has the DEEPEST divide between his private and public life. even his own son is mostly unaware of his childhood/background

he's an architect, and designs buildings/infrastructures for communities and stuff like that. he's won tons of awards for his work and travels a lot for conferences and things like that

his mother passed away during childbirth, so he never got to meet her, but her name was emily rockefeller ( originally adams ) and from what his father told him about her, she was a lovely, kind, but passionate woman and she would’ve loved him fiercely. ( his father also often told orion when he was being particularly stubborn that orion reminded him of emily, and that he has her eyes. )

his father was james “jimmy” rockefeller, a decorated US airforce pilot. he was also a descendant of the rockefeller family ( if you’re not from america/not too versed in american history, the rockefellers are considered the richest family in american history — john d. rockefeller was a stupid wealthy man! )

growing up without a mother was difficult, but he and his father were extremely close, and james made sure that he was close with his mother’s family, especially her sister and her parents. as for his paternal family, he didn’t know much about them growing up, besides the fact that he’s distantly related to america’s first millionaire. he was also pretty close with a lot of his father’s friends from the military and their children as well.

orion had a relatively normal childhood, save for the slight melancholy around mother’s day every year. his father did his best to deter him from any sort of toxic masculinity, and made sure he was getting the best education possible. when his father was away on assignment, he was usually in the care of his mother’s sister. he rarely got into trouble at school except for the occasional fight when he’d stick up for the smaller kids who were getting picked on.

his father was rarely away on assignment, maybe only once or twice, and when he was he usually returned within a few months. in the summer of 1990, he was deployed to iraq to serve in the gulf war, and he promised orion it would be his last deployment.

in february 1991, when orion was about to turn twelve, his aunt picked him up early from school one day, and said they were going to see one of his father’s military friends. orion thought it was odd, but he wasn’t going to complain — what kid doesn’t want to leave school early? when he got there, the home was full of people he didn’t recognize, all with solemn looks on their faces. his aunt had to turn away as they bore the news.

that afternoon, one week before he turned twelve, orion learned that his father had passed away. he was spared the details, but learned later in life that the plane he’d been piloting had been shot down in a freak ambush.

orion doesn’t remember much of the next few years of his life. they were a blur of a young boy learning how to mourn all over again, and trying to grow up at the same time. at first, he was placed with his mother’s sister, but as a traveling artist, she was deemed unfit to care for him. he was then sent to a distant uncle on his father’s side somewhere in rural Iowa who treated him like he wasn’t even there. orion attempted to run away twice, and succeeded on his third try when he made it all the way to chicago. he survived there, somehow, for a few weeks before he was found by a few federal agents — lo and behold, his uncle ( who probably wasn’t even his uncle, but orion doesn’t remember ) refused to take him back. so, orion, at the age of fourteen, was put in the foster care system.

on paper, nobody would’ve wanted him. riddled with the deaths of his parents and a habit of running away, coupled with the fact that he missed the “desirable adoption age” by about thirteen and a half years, most people didn’t even want to try. the ones that did, decided he would be too difficult to handle after they met him and saw the cold isolation in his eyes, and the stubborn set to his jaw.

he was moved from foster family to foster family over the next four years, all over california, and had been re-placed five times by his eighteenth birthday. but all the while, he managed to get through school and save as much money as he could, selling five-minute portraits in downtown LA and getting small gig jobs here and there. by the time he turned eighteen, he was determined to have enough to go to college — or at least move out on his own and finally do something on his own volition for once.

little did he know, someone would come knocking on his foster home’s door asking for him a few days after he turned eighteen. they represented the rockefeller estate, and they wanted to have a chat with him about his father.

james had left him his entire estate. all of it. every penny, everything he’d ever owned, all of his mother’s belongings — and on top of it all, the massive manor passed down through the rockefeller family located just at the edge of goldstone, california. his hometown.

he used some ( a relatively small portion ) of the money to accept his offer at university of california, san diego as an architecture major, and was at the top of his class there all the way up until he graduated as part of the class of 2001.

in his junior year of college, like any other guy, he slept around a bit, and thought nothing of it — up until a girl he’d slept with months ago approached him in the middle of his senior year and told him she was pregnant. she didn’t want to keep it, but it was also too late to terminate the pregnancy, so she was thinking of putting the baby up for adoption. immediately, memories of his entire adolescence flooded back to him, and he begged her not to — instantly, he offered to take full custody of the child, and she could visit whenever she wanted, if she wanted to at all. she agreed, and lo and behold, branwen rockefeller was born. ( he named him branwen after somebody his father had told him about when he was a kid — he doesn’t remember the story, or if he was related to him, but he remembered the name. )

he then went on to pursue a masters in architecture, and his main project was actually renovating the rockefeller manor — obviously, after 22 years of being owned by a bank, and many years before that of no upkeep, it needed some renovation. orion spent his entire MA studies renovating it and actually presented the whole process to receive his masters degree, which he did.

he spent the next few years traveling — with branwen by his side, they’d stay in goldstone for most of the school year, but every chance they’d get to take a vacation, orion would take them somewhere he’d always wanted to go as a kid.

finally, in 2014, when branwen was starting high school, orion figured it would be a good time to completely settle down in goldstone, stop travelling so much and pour his attention into the one thing he’d left unfinished — the manor. it wasn’t unfinished from a construction perspective — it was stunning actually, fully furnished with a gym, a home theater, countless bedrooms, and fully ready to be lived in — but for orion, there was one thing he’d always wanted to do when the timing was right: give kids who felt lost a place to call home. give kids who were like him, back in the day, a place to call home.

so that’s what he did. he spent months gathering the proper licensing and credentials to finally open rockefeller manor to the public. he’s a licensed social worker now, and rockefeller manor offers a place to stay to anybody between the ages of fourteen and twenty one, so long as they display a significant need for help. ( orion often ends up taking the “tougher cases” — the ones with nowhere else to go. and sometimes, kids just show up on their own, nobody to represent them — and who is he to turn them down? )

now, he divides his time between architectural projects for work ( he’s designed countless buildings all over southern california, and is incredibly busy designing new projects all the time ) and taking care of the manor, whether that be the kids that live in it or the building itself.

( as for his secret, he’s experienced symptoms of ptsd ever since his dad passed, but never really knew what it was. it worsened when he began moving around, unable to ever really call one place home, and now that he’s completely boxed away the memories of his adolescence, he’s completely compartmentalized it and honestly made it worse whenever he does get around to thinking about what he’s been through. he’s also never told anybody about his background -- the furthest he’ll go is that his father was an air force pilot, and he grew up in goldstone. he’s always just tried to push through it and ignore it, but when he’s under significant stress or there’s a lot on his plate, he’ll tend to shut down or even spiral into a panic attack. he keeps himself so busy because he can’t be by himself for too long, as his past has drilled into him an innate fear of being alone. during these episodes, he’ll often shut himself in his office with the door locked until it passes, terrified that one of the kids will see him like this — too stubborn to let any of them, especially the ones who look up to him, see him as weak. )

WANTED CONNECTIONS:

obvs, the kids from the rockefeller manor !! he's definitely a parental/paternal figure to them and runs a pretty tight ship to keep everybody in line, but he also knows when it's time to just let them be.

childhood friends?? he lived in goldstone until he was twelve and then disappeared after his father passed until he was in his thirties, essentially. so it would be interesting if there was somebody who knew him as a kid and can see the huge difference in him now (he used to be really irreverent and rambunctious and is now a Certified Gentleman)

his personal assistant !! this one is on the wc page on the main, but he has an assistant that helps him organize his work as an architect. they're probably the closest person to him other than his own son, so maybe they've caught glimpses of his ptsd episodes??

friends!!! he def has a lot of friends around town, he's a pretty familiar face throughout goldstone

perhaps??? a past love interest??? he swore himself off from dating after he had branwen, at least for a while, bc he wanted to focus on being a dad and taking care of the manor, but uh .... love doesn't work like that buddy pal ! hehe

literally anything else i am a heaux for plots

#goldstoneintro #this got ... agregiously long !#i apologize #it's also very sad #am sorry

4 notes · View notes

filmjrnl365 · 5 years

Photo

#112 Funeral Bed of Roses (1969)

Director: Tashio Matsumoto

Director of Photography: Tatsuro Suzuki

Japan

Gerow: While you eventually ended up a filmmaker, I heard that you originally wanted to be a painter. I wonder if you could talk about the relation between cinema and painting and why you decided on a career in film.

Matsumoto: Well, I loved painting. I had been painting since middle school, but Japan was very poor at the time I was about to enter college in the early 1950s. To do painting meant you weren't going to eat. Even so, I wanted to paint, but my parents were bitterly opposed to me going to an art school and said they wouldn't pay for art school examinations or tuition. In those days, there weren't part-time jobs around like there are today, so there was no way I could have done it on my own. So I gave up on art school and entered the medical course at the University of Tokyo because I was interested in the brain and problems like schizophrenia.

But even though I didn't necessarily grow to dislike that, I thought I had only one life to live and I wanted to pursue art. Without telling my parents, I changed my major half-way through to art and art history in the literature faculty. Tokyo, however, didn't really have any classes teaching you how to paint, so I studied art theory and history in school and learned painting on my own. In my studies, I learned for the first time that there was an avant-garde cinema in Europe in the 1920s that visually was deeply related to contemporary art--a fact that struck me like a bolt out of the blue. Though I couldn't see these films in Japan, I was strongly stimulated by foreign books and articles about them. I felt that this, an area where issues of art and cinema overlapped, was what I had been searching for.

Of course, I loved movies and went to see them a lot from the time I was in middle and high school. I was even treated like a juvenile delinquent and was arrested twice by the Shinjuku police because I skipped school. Well, I was that much in love with film, and I asked a friend of mine who had a stock holders pass--his father was in the theater business--to lend it to me, telling him I'd return it whenever he wanted to go. I'd go to school until noon and then go straight to Shinjuku where I'd see one movie after another, going into every first-run theater in Shinjuku from one end to another. To see all the first-run films in Shinjuku meant that I was seeing almost all the releases.

Source: yidff.jp: Matsumoto interview with Aaron Gerow

I’m not going to reconstruct the plot, because it might be more helpful for a first time viewer to reign in their expectations. So here’s my shopping list of divergent visual cues / associations that I encountered in this film:

Andy Warhol’s factory, Twiggy, Psychedelics, Victor Moscoso, Stanley Kubrick, Oedipus, Slasher films, Dada and Surrealism, Transvestites, Cinema verite, Pop art, Porn movie sets, Yukio Mishima, William S. Burroughs, David Lynch, Kitsch, Men as Geishas, Drug culture, and acid rock / carnival soundtrack.

Now, splice all this up into a non –linear narrative, and capture it in great black and white cinematography, and that’s what you’re going to get hit with for the duration of the film. Funeral Bed of Roses is an unforgettable movie on several levels.

One: This is a movie way ahead of its time. As a film that puts homosexuality front and center, this movie was half a century ahead on a topic that has only now made it safely into mainstream media, the fact that it emerges from Japan, is in some ways more startling. True, Japan does have a rich artistic tradition of merging sexuality, violence and the grotesque, but it is also known as a very traditional and highly repressed culture. Japan was also a culture struggling to artistically re-identify itself after being leveled by the fire bombings of World War II. Japan had to come to grips not only with its own past cultural heritage, or what was left of it, but also come to terms with its immanent and rapid post-war modernization.

Two: As an example of taking a somewhat bizarre and unorthodox approach to a classic myth (Oedipus), it’s not the first work of art to excavate this ominous Greek tragedy, but certainly one of the more unexpected adaptations you’ll ever see. The Oedipus translation emerges more clearly toward the end of the film, but our main character, Eddie (Pita) has issues with his condescending / abusive mother and his absent father. Because of the collage format of the film, these connections at first appear as abstract visuals with no context, but the story slowly gathers the fragments together into narrative cohesion.

Three: Stylistic treatment. From the opening visual, and really through to the finish- the cinematography is excellent. It is strong in terms of image, tonality, composition, cropping and graphic innovation, where it puts its black and white palette through a strobe -like psychedelic montage. If that wasn’t enough, there are passages of film where the male / female actors are interviewed about their homosexuality, and how they fit into this rarified part of Japanese subculture. These passages are quite beautiful, and rather disarming when we hear the blunt and deliberate answers to probing, personal questions. But these narrative and stylistic breaks add to the overall variety of visual texture in the film. Additionally, the movie is a joy to watch when it spills out onto the Tokyo streets, camera in tow. The reactions of bystanders as transvestites are filmed in a mock gang fight adds yet another unique layer to an already bizarre scenario.

Four: Picturesque eroticism. While not straightforward in its graphic representation of sex as a film like Realm of the Senses ( #31), it does treat the theme of eroticism and obsession in a visually alluring manner. Making sexuality and its accompanying psychic impulses into a visually intriguing confrontation has been with art forever, but in this film, its close stylistic counterpart is Surrealism. Literary stories like Georges Bataille’s Story of the Eye, or the sexual juxtapositions of the paintings of Rene Magritte, or Marcel Duchamp, come to mind when viewing this film. I’m not sure of the weight Matsumoto’s gives to his visual references, but whether he was channeling them or not, the Surrealists would have embraced this film immediately. They would have loved it, not only for its taboo subject matter, but for its cut-up compositional methodology.

The onset of the twentieth century saw the artistic avant–garde in both Europe and America taking the position to critique industrial culture, conservative institutions, and adapt the language of the machine age to explore emotional / sexual /psychic territory that culture uniformly tagged as forbidden. Abrasive content and uncomfortable depictions became the means for modern art to divest itself of sanitizing its messages in nineteenth century classicism, and confront its audience, however small, with some of the tangible and psychic brutalities of the modern era. With Matsumoto’s initial calling as a painter, for a film like Funeral Bed of Roses to emerge during the 1960’s makes perfect sense. At the last half of the twentieth century, two world wars, and conflict in Asia provide perfect conditions for this avant-garde film to freely pull from the file cabinet of counter-cultural iconography to piece together its unique contribution. The fifties and sixties saw the emergence of counter-culture and drugs making their way into mainstream consciousness, and this film is clearly a byproduct of this phenomenon. From its cinematic, self-referential passages to its historic allusions, it is in many ways a fledgling product of post modernism. This category /term would have been in its infancy at the time Matsumoto made this picture, but the historical and stylistic earmarks are there. Andy Warhol is often cited as the first post-modern artist. One who consciously adapted to and utilized images from commercial mass media, not merely as process, but in terms of content as well. They are very much products of the advertising / television age. Funeral Bed of Roses comes across in much the same manner, a transvestite geisha on a street corner as traffic speeds by serves as a very modern study in contrasts. Scenes of drug use and sexuality form a good deal of footage, topics and images that only a few decades prior would have been met with stringent censorship.

We get comfortable with certain expectations we have from movies. We want them to deliver certain things in certain ways, and to break these expectations is to invite scorn from the audience, or even worse, all out neglect. This is not always an easy movie to watch. Many won’t like the subject, many won’t like the treatment, many will be confused, some won’t even be patient with it being in black and white. But, this film is unique and certainly has more than its share of kooky and beautifully alluring visuals. It might be better to see it while you’re on psychedelics, I’m not really even sure about that, but that’s yet another layer this quirky film has to offer.

One of a kind.

https://filmjrnl365.tumblr.com

#tashio matsumoto

5 notes · View notes

not-so-innocent-bi-sander · 7 years

Text

His Artwork

So this is a Human/College/Soulmate AU because…. I dunno. It made sense to me. Here we go!

(Idea from @thomassandersownsmysoul)

Premise: Anything your soul mates write on their skin appears on your own

Pairings: LAMP/CALM, polysanders

Tags: @twentyoneparades-to-panic-at @celiawhatsherlastname @de-is-me @authordreaming13 @introverts-assemble @lilylunalovegood2002 @musicwitchthomas @spoooky-bird

Virgil laid back on his bed, his arms out and his legs spread, clad in only a pair of basketball shorts. It was late Saturday morning, and this was what he normally did during that time. He knew any moment now… There it was. A little tickle on his forearm, it felt like.. butterfly kisses, if he had to describe it. He lifted his right arm, seeing words appearing there.

/Milk Eggs Sugar Brown Sugar Frosting x 3 Baking Soda/

Saturday was grocery day for his Butterfly. He didn’t know them, but he liked the feeling of their spirit. Most people had a soulmate but Virgil.. He had at least three. Three that regularly wrote on their skin at least. Technically there could be more if they were shy, like he was, and never wrote on themselves. His soulmates didn’t know about him… As far as he knew at least. He didn’t think he had ever written on himself. Like clockwork, his left arm began to tingle. This always happened. His second soulmate, who he nicknamed Teach, began to write.

/You know you need to get more than just ingredients for sweets./

Virgil chuckled to himself. While Butterfly’s writing felt like gentle tickles, Teach’s writing felt like someone literally writing on him with a pen. The handwriting was also very perfect and precise, like a teacher writing on a white board in contrast to Butterfly’s which was sweet and loopy. Finally, his right leg began tingling as well, it was warmer… More.. purposeful somehow. In fanciful calligraphy a paragraph began to appear. He assumed the Royal did some kind of acting, or was just obsessed with Shakespeare. Saturday seemed to be the day that they their wrote down their lines or… Just wanted to share monologues with them?

Virgil hesitated for a moment… Maybe today he could… He tentatively walked over to his art supplies and grabbed a paintbrush and some black paint. Pulling up his shorts to uncover his bare thigh he began to paint. Large, beautiful, swirls and contrasting thinner lines, turning his entire left leg into a canvas. Virgil loved painting patterns, it calmed him. He eventually added more colors, the colors he associated with his soulmates. Within the swirling black designs that represented him, he added robust reds for his Royal, a calming navy blue for Teach, and a cheery yellow for his Butterfly.

He was so lost in his painting he didn’t realize he had filled his left left and had unconsciously moved to his other limbs, using just that soulmates color to make the swirls and designs. When he finally looked up at the time it had been hours. All of his limbs were coated in paint, most of which had dried. For a final touch he went and looked in the mirror, adding small designs on his chest. A yellow butterfly, a red crown, a blue pair of glasses… and he paused with the black. What was he? He felt warmth again as what felt like his Royal adding below the three insignias, a black paintbrush. Virgil smiled and felt a blush spread across his cheeks. In a bold move, next to the paintbrush he added in a small “-V.” Most people didn’t like to use their soul-markings to find their soulmates so specifically, it was considered something that should be left up to fate. So hopefully he didn’t upset them.

Almost instantly he felt all three of the others adding to his chest. They suddenly had each other’s initials. P, R, L, and his V. He smiled to himself and gazed at the art all over himself before once again looking up at the time. “….Crap.” He stated out loud to himself. It was his college’s art show tonight and he needed to get over to help set up. He was an art major, and this was one of his big assignments. He normally didn’t like to draw attention to himself. But at least he could just sit in the corner and people watch.

He quickly threw on his favorite skinny jeans and hoodie, effectively covering all the painting on his body, and headed back to campus. After a couple hours of set up, he found himself hiding in the corner watching people walk around and look at the art. Every so often he’d pull his sleeve back to his wrist and see his swirls still there. They made him smile, finally definitively showing a part of himself to his soulmates. He simply sat back against the wall and watched as people drifted around the gallery, smiling inwardly when people talked about his pieces, he sat just far enough away that it wasn’t obvious which art installation belonged to him. Two people caught his eye. A young couple, by the way they seemed to interact with each other. One slightly taller, he stood straight and stiff, his arms crossed over his chest as he viewed the art pieces. The shorter one had a smile stretched from ear to ear, eagerly pointing out different pieces to his companion and explaining what he liked about them and how they made him feel. The taller one seemed amused about the other’s antics, smiling at him with a quiet earnestness. They both wore the same large black glasses but while it gave one the air of an astute learned type, the other seemed to look cuter and more innocent by the addition.

Virgil watched them from afar as the smaller one continued to spend time on each and every piece and the taller began to scan his eyes over every installation in the room, as if choosing what would catch his eye. He suddenly froze, his eyes widening.

“P… Patton.” He spoke.

“What is it, Logan?” the innocent one spun to face him. Logan shakily held up a hand and pointed at a nearby art both. “Look… Look at those.” His voice was just above a whisper. Patton eagerly looked to see where Logan was pointing. Virgil’s eyes followed their line of sight and realized, it was his art they were so shocked by.

“LOGAN.” Patton suddenly said, his eyes huge. He grabbed Logan’s hand and they quickly walked over to Virgil’s art.

He watched all of this happen, unsure what was going on. Did they hate it? Did he offend them in someway? How could that even be possible? Virgil began to scan his own artwork to see if he had done something he shouldn’t have. It was just more of his usual pattern work. The only things he felt confident enough in to show people. He suddenly was brought back to reality and tuned back into their conversation.

“Logan… It has to be. There’s no other way. It looks exactly the same. It just has to be…” Patton said, he began wildly looking around the room, scanning over everyone. Logan was as close as possible to the art without actually touching it.

“These designs, they are so intricate. So purposeful… The colors… Such specific choices. I believe that you are correct, Patton. It’s too perfect. It has to be.” Logan said quietly, his eyes still trying to take in all of what was before him.

Did they think his work was plagiarized? It sounded like they did… Virgil didn’t think he had gotten the idea from anywhere.. But.. What could they be talking about? It didn’t click in his head until Patton pushed up the sleeve on the cardigan he was wearing and got closer to the art in question. There was no denying the soft yellow swirls matched the ones on the canvas. Virgil’s eyes opened extremely wide as he watched them now, they matched his artwork. They found him.. He found them. Two of his soulmates. Logans eyes began to scan again, stopping on Virgil. He was staring back, his eyes huge. Logan leaned down to whisper to something to Patton.

The smaller one immediately turned to Virgil, his entire face lighting up before he bounded over toward him and sat immediately next to him, their thighs touching.

“Um.. Hi?” Virgil managed, Patton being even more adorable up close.

“HI! I’m Patton! What’s your name?” He asked, his voice cheerful and warm.

“Uh.. I’m.. I’m Virgil.” He responded shakily. Patton somehow managed to get an even more excited look in his eyes.

“You know.. Names that start with V are pretty uncommon… Although I guess i’m one to talk. Patton is kind of an unusual name too.” Patton managed to temper his excitement a bit and the two began to talk. Logan stayed near the artwork letting the two get acquainted for a bit, which Virgil was rather happy about. Patton was nearly overstimulating just on his own. Logan smiled fondly as he watched the two meet one another. A large amount of movement out of the corner of his eye distracted him for a moment, however. A relatively large crowd of people filed past the art gallery windows. It struck him that there was a big play happening next door in the college’s theater and it must have just gotten out. It was interesting, he saw a couple glance inside, a few actually walked in to peruse the artwork. But strangely he saw a small group of three, a taller boy and his two smaller friends look in and look over the art. Their eyes also grew large and the three ran back toward the theater. Logan watched their antics with confusion.

Before he could draw any hypotheses, he saw another running past the window and burst through the door. He must have actually been in the play, he hadn’t even had time to change out of his Prince costume. The Prince looked around frantically before finding the art Logan was standing in front of and he made a beeline for Logan. He paused when he reached his destination, placing his hands on his knees to catch his breath. Patton and Virgil watched as this Prince ran up to Logan. Both of them glancing at him and then back at each other. The newcomer stood, acting as though he hadn’t just done that entire scene. “Hello! Are you the artist responsible for this magnificent display?” The Prince’s eyes were full of hope.

“I... Am not sadly. But.. Allow me to ask you this..” Logan stated, his cheeks flushed. The bespectacled one began to recite, from memory, the Shakespearean passage that all four of them still had written on their thighs. Roman’s face lit up and he threw his arms around Logan. He looked surprised but smiled and hugged the Prince back. Virgil stood and tentatively held out a hand to Patton, who took it with a smile, and lead him over to the other two.

As Roman and Logan pulled apart, they saw they had been joined by the other two, Roman realizing who they must be. To break the silence, Virgil spoke up..

“I uh… I painted these.” His cheeks blazing red.

“And I bought more than ingredients for cake today! I also bought pre-made cake!” Patton beamed, causing Virgil and Roman to burst out laughing while Logan simply rolled his eyes.

#sanders sides #thomas sanders #polysanders #polyamsanders #calm #lamp #roman sanders #patton sanders #logan sanders #virgil sanders #tsfic #human au #college au

3K notes · View notes

cmyknoise · 6 years

Text

Sanders Sides College AU

Oof, this is long, it spends more time on high school and backstory than college, but that is because the college part is supposed to be open ended I guess. Feel free to write/make art on this !

They've all known each other from at least high school Logan and Virgil have known each other since 6th grade Patton and Roman have known each other since kindergarten, and are like brothers.

Virgil didn't have the best life growing up, neglectful family.

He was alone until he happened to meet Logan in 6th. Logan noticed Virgil alone on the playground, he being a nerd and also alone, decided to go join him. He noticed that Virgil had a ton of marks on his wrists and arms, and he was picking at old scabs. Logan immediately vowed that it was going to be his job to keep this dark kid safe. Virgil got over picking at around freshman year, Logan helping him throughout middle school.

Roman first met Patton in Kindergarten. He had been playing dress up, he was the prince of course. He noticed a certain kid eating play dough, and he decided that he needed to go save him! He did, and after Patton inevitably got sick, Roman offered him some chocolate chip cookies from his lunch. They were inseparable since.

Elementary school, middle school, they were ALWAYS together, and it seemed the principal noticed as they year after year had the same class. Patton had been 'out of the closet' since 6th grade, and he helped Roman come out in 8th, constantly being the support and motivation he needed.

Logan had first met Patton in 7th grade. Logan was on the spelling and math bowl teams. Patton had always been a kid who went to every event/meet to support, no matter if he knew someone there or not. He often helped with clean up of these events too. Logan had just helped his team win the tournament, and despite leading the team, wasn't one who wanted to go to the celebration. He stayed back, cleaning and organizing. Patton ran into Logan (he may have slipped), knocking them both to the ground. Logan was winded and Patton was apologizing. Logan caught his breath and looked to Patton, holding a glare but he couldn't keep it. He recognized Patton from around school, he was always helping around, going to events, several of which Logan was apart of. Logan got up and helped Patton. They talked as they cleaned up, and quickly clicked as friends. Patton was around Logan so much, that Virgil quickly got to know Patton. He had friends, two, and he couldn't ask for anything more.

Virgil didn't meet Roman until their freshman year. He knew of him, he knew his name since Patton talked about his best friend all the time, but he had never met him. Virgil quickly became the goth/emo kid in school, getting names thrown occasionally, but with help from Logan he had learned to ignore them. He still had marks and scabs on his arms, but he promised Logan that this year he would stop, or try to. (Patton joined in on the cause of helping, as he would draw things on Virgil's arms in sharpie, He couldn't bring himself to pick at his friend's art) Virgil had joined art club, and took art classes. He even joined theater/drama, doing the background sets. He really wanted to do something with his life, he really wanted to make art... Cartoonist? Painter? But it never...stuck with him. While doing the sets, he had someone walk up and watch. He payed no mind to the other student, not looking back, just painting the sets. The kid walked away after awhile, and Virgil was left alone. He went to his art class, and a couple students came in to chill from study hall. One with brown hair, wearing red and white came and sat near Virgil. Virgil was just sketching in his sketchbook, when this kid asked if he could draw on his arm. Virgil wasn't doing much, so he agreed, getting marker and pen, drawing carefully on this kid's arm. He introduced himself as Roman. This was the Roman Patton spoke of? They talked, Virgil found Roman pretty cool, but something he said would stick with him all throughout high school, "You should be a tattoo artist."

All four were good friends throughout the whole of high school, becoming an Icon of sorts. A Nerd, a Theater/Drama/Band kid, an emo and art kid, and a bubbly kid who was really good at helping people and volleyball.

Logan ran the chess club, as well as debate and math team. He ended up graduating top of his class (and finishing up school a month early) Patton continued to help with every even, even helping with the counselor and nurse during school hours. He also found he had a talent in volleyball. Virgil was in art club and worked with the sets all throughout high school, and took as many art classes as possible. Roman stayed in theater/drama, being the head of the department by his junior year. He also took part in band. Patton and Roman both helped Logan come out during sophomore year. Virgil didn’t come out until his senior year.

Virgil did indeed stop picking at himself in freshman year, but he had marks and scars from not letting wounds heal

All four stuck together like glue after high school.

Logan took business and career courses, and very quickly was able to buy a small bookstore at the edge of town.

Virgil took art classes, landing a job at a local tattoo parlor. Roman almost teared up when Virgil said it was him who helped him find his dream.

Roman took acting lessons, taking courses. He wanted to do small performances, maybe one day make it to Broadway.

Patton wasn't sure what to do, and he had a late start (taking a year leave off of school. he started college a year after his friends, but he had been the one to find them all an apartment, and had been the one to get a job in order for them all to live as roommates comfortably). He eventually decided that he just wanted to help Logan, so he took similar courses to help run his business, also getting a small culinary degree to turn that bookstore into a cafe-bookstore.

Roman does local shows, and occasionally sings at the cafe.

Virgil becomes a really good tattoo artist.

Patton bakes and makes the drinks and food, Logan organizes the books and general business.

This is set up for like, you can have any ships you want I guess?

Also the idea that Thomas is maybe Logan or Roman’s actual brother, and he decides to join in/help is also a possibility?

Deceit is also allowed in here somewhere, perhaps Virgil’s older brother who was sent off/disowned or something?

This can go anyway, anything can happen, its just a jumble of stuff.

#sanders sides #college au #roman sanders #logan sanders #virgil sanders #patton sanders #roman #logan #virgil #patton #thomas sanders #thomas #janus sanders #janus #au #logan writes

36 notes · View notes

frederator-studios · 6 years

Text

Derek Iversen: The Frederator Interview

Derek Iversen began his unlikely career in animation as a PA on the very first season of Spongebob Squarepants. You might say he was got by The Hook: he spent about a decade with the show, on the production staff before becoming a writer on Seasons 6-9. Since then, he’s written on countless awesome TV shows, become an elected official in the neighborhood of Valley Glen (business card and all!), and created his own Nickelodeon short, “Carrot and Stick” inspired by his dog Rosie, whose image blesses the end of this interview. In honor of his episode of Bravest Warriors premiering tomorrow (5/18), Derek and I sat down to discuss sketch comedy, time travel, and a certain absorbent (and yellow and porous) friend.

Did you always want to be a writer? What’d you want to be growing up?

First I wanted to be a fireman. Then a police officer - huge jump there. Then I wanted to be an astronaut, until I realized I get motion sickness. So I thought I should be an astronomer - a little safer, little less barfing. But in 5th grade, my English teacher Mrs. Carrol gave me high marks on a short story assignment. I got really encouraged by that; I thought, “Hey, maybe I’ve found something I’m good at!” So pretty much from then on, I wanted to be a writer.

Wow, 5th grade? Were you a wunderkind, writing a ton as a kid?

Nah, I wasn’t that ambitious. In high school I took Theater with another great teacher, Mrs. Carrick. She encouraged us to write our own scenes and monologues. So I had the opportunity to try stuff out with my fellow students, and hopefully crack them up with idiocy. Then in college at University of Arizona, I joined a group called Comedy Corner and got really into sketch comedy. I thought if I could make a living doing that, THAT’s what I want to do. There’s nothing like doing live comedy before an audience. It’s thrilling.

Did you stick with comedy after college?

Some friends and I formed our own group! The People Who Do That. We became the kings of Tucson comedy… which, shockingly, didn’t pay the bills. So some of us decided to truck it out to LA to try to make it in the big city.

Did you have a job when you got to LA?

Nope, but I got a really stupid one: phone customer service for a pager company. Let me just say, the introduction of cell phones was NOT the only thing that killed off pagers… but I had a friend working at Nickelodeon, so I managed to get a job as a driver on The Angry Beavers. This was back in the olden days, when if artists needed reference materials, someone had to actually go pick them up from libraries or - RIP - video stores. Soon after, I got a job as a production assistant on a show that Nick had just picked up: Spongebob Squarepants. At the time we all thought, ‘This is a strange little show that hopefully will get a cult following.’ It did a little better than that. So that was kind of my ‘big break’. But it took me 7 years of working on the show to become a writer on it.

How did that path look?

Long and meandering. Because for some time, I thought I wanted to do sketch comedy, and that animation was my day job. I was a PA on seasons 1 to 3 and a coordinator on seasons 4 and 5. In that time I started chipping away at animation writing, because I had to actually learn how to write cartoons. I was used to writing for the stage, and animation is a visual medium. Much more so than even other kinds of TV, let alone theater, so I had to learn to tell stories visually. And stories that kids could relate to—I’d always written for adults, so my stuff went right over kid’s heads. But I wanted to write and kept knocking on the door, and in season 6, became a staff writer. I was one until season 9.

Do you think your background in sketch comedy aided that transition?

Oh yeah, absolutely. When you do a sketch in front of a big throng of crazy college students, it’s clear when it works and when it doesn’t. Sketch taught me not to waste the audience’s time: you get in, do the joke, and get out.

How was working on Spongebob? Any stories, secrets, lore?

It was a wild ride and a lot of fun. I’ve gotta be the only one who remembers this, but I swear it’s true: back in the first season, Steve (Hillenburg, creator) had a sign on his door that read, “Have fun or you’re fired.” It sounds cruel, but it actually set a good tone. We did have a lot of fun! And there wasn't much firing—it’s not like the hatchet fell every time somebody frowned. The crew had awesome camaraderie, and I think that’s reflected in the show. I sincerely believe the environment of a show, how it’s made, affects how it turns out. If a show is made with a tense crew where everyone fears the creator, it shows on-screen. Conversely, if the crew has fun and makes each other laugh, that’s clear on-screen too.

(Season 1 Christmas party: Ennio Torresan, Carly Benner-StClair, Bruce Heller, Mica Nataami, Carl (CH) Greenblatt, and Derek with the devil horns.)

So despite the sign, no one was afraid of Steve Hillenburg?

No, no, the sign is misleading. He’s a total sweetheart. Success couldn’t have happened to a nicer guy: just a thoughtful, funny, sincere human being.

That’s exactly what you wanna hear about your heroes. What’s your favorite thing about the show?

Well Spongebob is definitely a reflection of Steve! As are the other characters, but mostly Spongebob. And to me, the greatest thing about the show, and the reason I think it’s been such a huge success, is that Spongebob is genuine. He’s without guile. He’s enthusiastic without any reservation. And I think, especially when the show came out, a lot of cartoons in the kid realm starred adults disguised as kids. And Spongebob was never that; he was always for kids, always had a kid’s spirit. That’s part of why we never defined his age: he has kid and adult qualities. He’s just sincere—and sincerity is underrated.

Do you have a favorite Spongebob episode?

Man... that’s like choosing a favorite child. But I’ll go ahead and do it. I have several favorites. One is “SB-129”. I’m a bit of a sucker for time travel - it’s part of why I enjoy Bravest Warriors so much. “The Fun Show” is awesome too, it’s a classic. Of episodes I wrote, “Not Normal” was my first and still a favorite. It’s a bit autobiographical: I was a weird kid and always felt like I needed to conform to some idea of normality. After a while, I decided that didn’t matter and I was going to accept being my weird self. And the same is true of Spongebob.

(Mr. Lawrence (aka Plankton), Vincent Waller, and Derek.)

How did you come to write for Bravest Warriors?

After Spongebob, I was a staff writer on Sanjay and Craig, which Will McRobb and Chris Viscardi executive produced. They’re great guys and a blast to work with. They'd also produced Bravest, so I found out about the show through them. I watched it and just thought it was madness in the best possible way. Last year Will mentioned they were looking for writers, so I gave it a shot. I really wanted to be part of the show and feel lucky that I got to be!

What are your favorite things about Bravest Warriors?

I love time travel and sci-fi, and you get both of those in BW. That’s a treat. But I love that it also goes right to the heart of teen angst. That’s a sandbox I don’t get to play in a lot, as I’m usually writing for kids or preschoolers. It’s a lot of fun to deal with broken hearts, romantic attraction, all that gooey hormonal stuff.

Do you have a favorite character from the show?

I like Danny a lot, because he’s kinda pathetic. I just want to help him out. But I can’t resist Catbug. He’s amazing. And I’m a big fan of Impossibear. Something about his gruffness... he’s selfish in a way that reminds me of Bender from Futurama. If I ever got to do another BW episode, I’d want it to be about Impossibear. Finding the mushy heart he hides inside.

What is your episode, “A Apple, B Banana, C Chili” about?

I did a sort of anti-consumerist screed cleverly disguised as a Bravest Warriors episode. The team succumbs to the power of marketing. They have to escape the clutches of a Costco-like superstore. It seemed like a uniquely weird challenge they hadn’t faced before. I think that’s why it was chosen from the ideas I pitched—when you’re pitching on a show with a lot of episodes, you’ve got to find the part of the floor that hasn’t been painted yet.

Aha - don’t they go in that store to grab Wallow a snack?

Haha yeah. Wallow gets hangry on a mission so they go to buy him some chips or a granola bar or something and it goes terribly wrong. I love episodes like that - we did it on Spongebob too - where it’s the simplest possible objective. The goal of the episode is one tiny thing, and then it balloons out from there and becomes ridiculously huge in a way it never deserved to be.

What would you be if you weren’t a TV writer?

Maybe a lawyer. Or a crazy activist trying to make the world a better place and not getting very far. I’d probably be quitting my job at the EPA right now out of sheer frustration. At least writing cartoons, I can express the absurdity of our world—but hopefully to make people laugh, instead of cry.

What are your favorite cartoons?

Well, Spongebob’s pretty darn good. I always loved Ren and Stimpy, the latest news notwithstanding. I’m a simple man: I love Road Runner. I couldn’t resist the simplicity of the gags. You always know what’s going to happen - Road Runner’s gonna get away and Wile E. Coyote is gonna eat it. But you don’t know how he’s gonna eat it. The magic is in the details. I’m a big fan of The Simpsons. And I enjoyed Aqua Teen Hunger Force; Master Shake cracks me up. I love how stupid and petty he is.

After writing for so long, is it ever still challenging?

Absolutely, it’s always a challenge. I think a lot of people struggle with being too precious with their ideas. It’s a collaborative medium: stories change and change and change again. You can accept compromises and look for the good in them, or you can fight against them. My view is, you have to choose your battles. Even the creator doesn’t have complete control. And the best creators and showrunners delegate responsibilities. They trust the people they’ve hired.

Do you pitch show ideas around?

I haven’t as much lately; I’m busy story editing a preschool show now called Hanni and the Wild Woods. But I made a Nickelodeon short a few years back with my friend Miles Hindman, called “Carrot and Stick,” about a pair of buddies who live in a junkyard. Their nemesis is a dog named Rosie, based on my own dog Rosie. It’s a mixed media show - a combination of puppets, live action and 2D - so we wanted her to play herself. It didn’t work out. She’s cute and all, but cute doesn’t make you a good actor…

(Rosie, sweet and perfect in every conceivable way aside from acting ability.)

What else are you working on?

Well besides Hanni, I just got back from teaching an Animation Writing class in Jamaica for a few weeks - that was amazing. It was through The World Bank; they’re trying to build an animation industry over there. I’m glad they found me, it was a ton of fun and some of the student’s ideas were really cool. I also have a YA sci-fi book I really want to write. The trick is finding the time to do it; it keeps eluding me. Earlier I said animation is very collaborative - not so with this book. I have a very specific vision, and I’m excited to tell exactly the story I want to tell. I also write as Spongebob and Patrick on their Twitter accounts - which is a tougher gig than it sounds! All of the 140 character zingers have to be contained to their universe. But it’s fun and keeps me connected to the characters, and I love that.

Thank you for the interview Derek! So much fun talking with you. Good luck on all your many projects, I’ll be on the lookout!

- Cooper

30 notes · View notes

md3artjournal · 2 years

Text

Ranting about gods know what o_o;;;;;?????

While I was studying as a Studio Arts major, I remember going to galleries and being faintly aware that my professors were training us to enter the art gallery world, and I felt...I hated the gallery world. Not only did I not dream of having my art up in a gallery, I felt a bit of disdain at the idea.

Art gallery art wasn't what touched me, inspired me, got me through my depression and suicidal stints. It was pop art, like manga, anime, even fanworks, that meant something to me. But that professional art world seemed so full of an air of elitism. And what's more, they scoffed at all that art I loved, just because it was "popular" subculture. I did not dream of getting into a gallery.

Even though I would learn years later through social media and things like TheArtAssignment, that pro artists are actually pretty down to earth, I remember going to galleries, even the small ones, and feeling this artificial pretentiousness. Elitism, sterility, everything feeling framed too important to have a personal experience with it. Gallery opening events full of fancy people, in fancy clothes, while I tried to eat brie before it got too warm and started to taste funny, while everyone else went for the wine. It was a weird time. And nothing as emotionally, personally impactful as all the pop art produced by geeky subcultures. In retrospect, maybe it was just the dean of my art college who projected that pretentious elitist attitude, but he did effectively create that sense of the gallery art world for me, which lead me to decide, that I did NOT want to be a part of it.

I can only count a few times I actually enjoyed a gallery visit. Takashi Murakami's Superflat exhibition at MOCA Los Angeles was fun. I love flat, graphic, hyper stylized art styles, and he was inspired by anime/manga, even though the whole exhibit felt like a sarcastic jab at the entire subculture. I still loved it. Cute mascot characters, an anime short in a small theater with floor seating, giant ecchi statues, etc. It was a great time. Then there was a small indy gallery showing that my cousin and his friends opened a little art show at. Very industrial, grimey, dark, DIY garage feeling. It was great. An exhibit by one of my professors, at a gallery unconnected to the school. Her art was good, but I can't say I felt comfortable. That sterile, white-walled gallery space again, so quite, while the art asked you to interact...I just didn't know what to do. The space made me too intimidated to feel, let alone interact---Even though one of the art pieces was candy! I love candy! Still too afraid to have some in that setting, even though eating it was the point of that art piece! ~_~; Honestly, I can enjoy even the big pro gallery spaces sometimes. I remember wandering through LACMA (perhaps a children's museum section?) with its natural or varying light and private atmospheres in some spaces, and that felt more like an introspective walk. In that exhibit, I felt like the big open spaces were not encroaching white walls glaring to put me on the spot. It just felt like the wandering I like to do when relaxed and introspective. And a few rare times, I've felt like that in even the big white-walled elitist galleries too. Like the Getty Museum, when I could just sit and stare at a painting. Though, only when big crowds of school field trip students weren't crowding me out. So I have to wonder if museums with less modernist design are personally more comforting to me. Granted, an overly ornate and filigreed room can make me feel just as disconnected, as a modernist interior can make me feel unallowed and out of place. I guess I just have to find that right mix. And it'd really help if I don't have to feel the eyes of gallery owners watching me so they can make a sale. I'm not going to buy your giant paintings or write an article about your exhibit. My professors made me pretend to do the latter.

I don't even know what I'm journaling about anymore. My problems with the pro art gallery world? I was watching another video explaining the industry of financial tax subversion through art collecting, and I just remembered too much of my personal gallery experiences to pay attention to the video. Maybe I just wanted to vent that I could maybe enjoy meditating in a gallery, staring at art, but the idea of joining all the elitism and condescending atmosphere? Ugh. No thank you. I'll be over here with manga, anime, comics, and sword&sorcery novels. And have you seen videogames? There so much good art out there in the pop culture world, but the art gallery world looks down on it all. ...Or maybe it was just that dean of my art college. He certainly did project that. (And then he tells us in our senior seminar that if we aren't willing to trade sexual favors to gallery owners to showcase our art, then *we're* the ones being snobs??? You're a priest, for gods' sake! Don't tell me to whore myself out!!! JFC) I remember when I was younger and suicidal MUCH more often, I used to look up at the tall bougainvillea flowers overhead on the staircases at school, whenever I could, because it was the one objectively beautiful thing in that place, amidst all my mental/emotional torment. And that beauty would force my depression away, at least for a few moments. Then when I got older and away from all that school and environments that made me depressed and suicidal, suddenly it wasn't just one or 2 places that seemed beautiful. Suddenly, everything looked beautiful. There was beauty everywhere. It was in all the small, everyday places that no one had time to really look at. All he manga that gets thrown out everyday, promo posters with fantastical concept art, every bit of pop culture and packaging had someone trying to to make it as pretty and effective as possible. There was beauty everywhere. From tiny flowers in the backyard, to the graphic design on label packaging. And it really irked me how the elitist attitudes that my art dean projected about the pro art gallery world, would never recognize the miracles and beauty of the every day. Anyway, I just wanted to vent/reminisce a little, about how much I didn't want to be apart of the pro art gallery world.

---And maybe also how I hate artificial scarcity and planned obsolescence. I know these terms are more applicable to the current designs of tech, like smartphones. But I was a printmaking student, and one of the reasons why I loved printmaking, was the easy production of multiples. I have an anxiety over losing things and the feeling of things not being there for me when I need them. So having multiples, having the ability to create a surplus supply, has always comforted me. To this day, it's difficult for me to start a project until I know I have extra supplies in stock, to give me room to make mistakes and try again. But printmaking, photography, and all the other reproduceable art in the pro art world is strange. They're more concerned with artificial scarcity, *constructing* rarity, in order to make items "more valuable". I had people tell me that they would buy my blockprints if I'd destroy the blocks that I took so long to lovingly carve. I loved carving those blocks. They are physical memories I want to keep. And you want me to destroy them, destroy their ability to produce more art, just so the prints I sell you can be "rare"/"valuable"? It didn't have to be rare! That's an artificial rarity! In my book, that's dumb! I'd much rather there be enough copies of art for more people to enjoy, for copies to survive through time and disasters, for more memory of my art (accomplishments, ideas) to exist, even if just for me. I'd rather the ability to produce more would always be there for me if/when I'd ever need it. I'd much rather be mass producing pop art, functioning like ukiyo-e in its day, than monoprints for artificial scarcity, just for rich people to ascribe arbitrary amounts of money. At least in the pop culture, I know that art means something to the buyers. When I buy fanart from artist alley or official art merch, it's because I love those characters, that story, and the impact, experiences, and emotions they've given me. I won't be some artificial scarcity elitist, generating tax loophole investments for condescending Mundanes, who don't even care about the art, that they ascribe arbitrary costs to.

#rambling #random thoughts #venting #please ignore my idiocy #ranting?#ranting #nostalgia #reminiscing #art major #geek pride #otaku pride #galleries

0 notes

the-adaa · 6 years

Text

Gallery Chat: The Founders of Corbett vs. Dempsey on Elevating Midwestern Art, Why Collectors Should be Obsessive and Fall in Love with Art, and More

By Stephanie Strasnick

Jim Dempsey and John Corbett. Photo by joe mazza / brave lux inc.

“The thought of having a gallery didn’t occur to us until five minutes before we had a gallery,” recalls Jim Dempsey, who co-founded Chicago’s Corbett vs. Dempsey gallery 14 years ago with business partner John Corbett. The two had first met at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and developed a friendship off campus at various film and music events, connecting over their shared interest in the mediums. After collaborating on a series of screenings at Dempsey’s art-house movie theater, the pair toyed with the idea of dealing rare, historic and curious works by Chicago artists in a storefront. Their real estate search brought them to the sprawling top floor of a friend’s record store, which was too large for the small enterprise they first envisioned, but just right for an exhibition space. “If we’d have gone home and thought about it, we would have talked ourselves out of it,” remembers Dempsey. Instead, they committed to the space on the spot with a handshake, marking the beginning of a fruitful 14-year partnership.

In the early years of Corbett vs. Dempsey, the gallery’s program was deeply rooted in the history of art in the Midwest. Together they uncovered what was in many ways a forgotten generation of artists and the two became known for their exhibitions of mid-century Midwestern art. Their first show featured WPA cityscapes by Modernist painter Eve Garrison, and the second highlighted works by erstwhile Chicagoan Jimmy Wright. Though the lifelong Chicagoans haven’t lost touch with their Midwestern roots, their program has evolved to include artists from across the country (such as Joyce Pensato, Christopher Wool, and Charline von Heyl). Currently, the gallery has a solo exhibition by Josiah McElheny. “Cosmic Love,” his second show at the gallery, features all new work and offers a teaser of his installation at the upcoming Carnegie International. Corbett vs. Dempsey is also participating in Condo New York, a gallery sharing initiative developed in London in 2016. Bortolami, a fellow ADAA member, will be hosting presentations by gallery artists Rebecca Morris and Ed Flood.

Josiah McElheny, Color Time—Model One, 2014, handblown molded and polished glass, marine plywood, red oak, AC gear motor and inverter, Variac control knob, electric lighting, electric wiring, sheet glass, mirror, hardware. Courtesy the artist and Corbett vs. Dempsey, Chicago.

The Chicago-based duo talked with us about their decade-and-a-half-long collaboration, the multi-faceted history of Midwestern art, and why the key to collecting is “falling in love with things like you fall in love with a person.”

What first attracted you to visual art?

Corbett: When I was a kid, my father turned me onto painting. He took me to an art museum, sat me down in front of two very different paintings, and made a point that you may like one or the other, but they’re both worth looking at. That was really interesting to me—this idea that they could be so different, yet both so engaging. That stuck with me from then on.

How did this interest in painting manifest itself into a career in the arts?

Corbett: Well, I was really a closet visual art person all along, in terms of the things that I was doing, listening to, writing about and so on. I started teaching at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 1988, mostly focusing on sound and music then migrated my way through the school as my interests shifted. When the chair of the Exhibition Studies program went on sabbatical, I filled in for a year and that was a bridge to curatorial for me—and then I met Jim.

Magalie Guérin, Untitled, 2017, oil on canvas on panel. Courtesy the artist and Corbett vs. Dempsey, Chicago.

How did you two first meet?

Corbett: We knew each other because we were both culture vultures. Although we were both at the School of the Art Institute at the same time, I was there teaching while in graduate school and Jim was there going to art school. We were theoretically in the same space, but we really knew each other from the music and film scenes.

What inspired you two to start a gallery together?

Corbett: Jim and I started getting interested in the history of our own city’s visual art and why we, as lifelong Chicagoans, knew so little about the art history of Chicago. We began exploring that angle through our exhibitions because at that time, there were big holes in the scholarship, and in the exhibition history. That curiosity was kind of what lured us into the business. The path to the gallery was a little different for Jim, though, so I’ll let him tell his version of the story.

Dempsey: I didn’t grow up in a family that went to museums—art was a bit of a mystery to me. But in school I became sort of a marvel at making things, I always cut the best looking pumpkin at Halloween. I wasn’t involved in the real art world until after high school, when I took a painting class at a community college. I went to art school, had a lot of studio practice for many years, and I used to run an art-house movie theatre.

Once, I was programming a series of Sun Ra films. I knew that John was an authority on the extraterrestrial musician Sun Ra and invited him to help me. We became friends through that experience and started working together on other projects after that. Then at some point, we decided that we need to kind of pair up and actually try to curate some exhibitions.

Barbara Rossi, Rose Rock, 1972, acrylic on Plexiglas in artist’s frame. Courtesy the artist and Corbett vs. Dempsey, Chicago.

John mentioned that we were very interested in the history of the Midwest, and the more we learned the weirder it got. We realized that there was a great story to tell through art—a puzzle we could put together in a logical way. When I got out of school, I started doing research and started finding out more about the work of some of my former Art Institute teachers, who were artists, and it just felt like we were really doing historical—almost anthropological—work. It was endlessly fascinating.

Tell us about your first official exhibition at Corbett vs. Dempsey.

Corbett: Our first exhibition, in 2004, was WPA cityscapes from the late 1930s to the early 1940s by an artist named Eve Garrison. She was a Chicago painter and the head of a group called No-Jury Society, which fought for exhibitions at public institutions to be selected without judges. She was a really great Realist, figurative painter and, in the 1940s, she started to shift to a very strange kind of homespun Surrealism.

When and why did you start showing more artists from outside of Chicago?

Corbett: Originally, we were digging things up that collectors hadn’t seen yet. We ended up building a small market for mid-century Chicago art and we showed about 70% Chicago artists, 30% artists from outside Chicago. In 2008 we felt that was no longer the right mix. We were showing Chicago art to Chicagoans, which had been done before. It seemed like a better idea to broaden the reach, to show historical Chicagoans to the rest of the world and give interesting contemporary non-Chicago work a Chicago venue for the first time.

Cauleen Smith, Stop, 2017, satin, poly-satin, upholstery, wool felt, silk-rayon velvet, embroidery floss, acrylic fabric paint, and sequins. Courtesy the artist and Corbett vs. Dempsey, Chicago.

What sets Chicago apart from other cities? How would you describe the Chicago aesthetic?

Dempsey: The Midwest in general can be a place where you see some great things that don’t look like anything anywhere else. If you’re going to compare Chicago to, say, New York, the market pressures are much different. Historically, artists here were freed from those pressures and could explore things that move them—they just followed their muse. They followed each other and supported one another. I think this city also benefited from the incredible collections that were here, particularly the private Surrealist collections. Surrealism made its way into the museums, and then it got into the blood of some of the artists and the students, and ended up in their work.

One of the unique features of your gallery is that it also has its own record label. How did that happen?

Corbett: I had a record label before we started the gallery and it made sense to pull the label over from where it had been operating to the gallery. We changed its name to Corbett vs. Dempsey to be consistent. We put out 10 CDs a year—ranging from experimental jazz to free, improvised music—and we present live music in our gallery space periodically.

Various CDs published by Corbett vs. Dempsey. Courtesy the artist and Corbett vs. Dempsey.

You’ve been working together for 14 years. At this point, are you typically on the same page when it comes to your program?

Dempsey: We respond to things in similar ways. When you find somebody who you jive with like that, the work can be easy. But you know, there are times when we do hash it out. We made a pact early on that we would only show work that really resonated with us and that really moved us. We wouldn’t make a show that we secretly didn’t like just for economical reasons. We can only be truthful to ourselves so we have to work with stuff we love. Now, there are things that John has championed that maybe I was not quite as keen on, but we trust each other’s instincts.

Do you have advice for aspiring dealers?

Dempsey: Don’t think more than five minutes about it, otherwise you’ll talk yourself out of it.

Corbett: I’d actually think long and hard about starting a gallery now because it’s a different world than it was 14 years ago. To start a gallery in New York or Los Angeles—just to keep the door open—is very difficult. Give it a long think—or do what Jim said and don’t think about it at all.

David Hartt, Carolina I, 2017, archival pigment print mounted to Dibond. Edition of 6 + 1 AP. Courtesy the artist and Corbett vs. Dempsey, Chicago.

Words of wisdom for budding collectors?

Corbett: I come at collecting from having collected something of a lesser monetary value—vinyl records. I’ve been a collector since I was a kid and my idea about collecting is to be obsessive about it. I get obsessive about things and want to find them and want to sometimes find unusual examples of them—rarity is key for record collectors. So, my advice? Become obsessed. The most interesting collections are the ones where you walk in and that collector knows a lot more than you do about their stuff.

Dempsey: For young collectors, it’s about falling in love with things like you fall in love with a person. Some of the most amazing experiences John and I have had are seeing well-honed, lifelong collections. They weren’t created by people who were following trends or treating their art collection like the stock market. When you see a Warhol next to a work by somebody you’ve never heard of, that means the collector loved both of those things equally, and that’s when you see somebody’s true soul, who they are, and what they want to surround themselves with.

Diane Simpson, Apron X, 2005, aluminum and leather. Courtesy the artist and Corbett vs. Dempsey, Chicago.

#Gallery Chat #ADAA Galleries #Corbett vs. Dempsey

3 notes · View notes

frustratedcastingdirector · 7 years

Photo

THE WAITER - AFTER A DECADE OF BIDING HIS TIME BUSING TABLES AND POURING DRINKS, RED-HOT ACTOR MARK RUFFALO IS FINALLY STARTING TO CLEAN UP.

September 4, 2004

Author/Byline: William Booth - The Washington Post

Mark Ruffalo is sitting alone in the back of Victor's Deli in Los Angeles in late afternoon sun, a weekday, the place dead. He is wearing a blue velour jacket, jeans and a loose, white button shirt. The silver chain around his neck holds a St. Christopher medal, patron saint of protection. He is rumpled, hair and clothes, like he just came out of the dryer. He waves hello.

Not too long ago, during his decade as a struggling actor, this was the kind of place where Ruffalo punched a time clock. He was a busboy at the faux-'50s malt shop Ed Debevic's, where 10-year-old girls have their birthday parties. He was a waiter, doorman, caterer, bartender at a series of now-shuttered watering holes where he slung martinis and Midori cocktails to the Hollywood swells. He painted houses. And dug holes and stuck plants in the ground, and thought a lot about going back to Wisconsin to work for his dad, where he would make a new life sandblasting water towers. He acted in more than 30 plays in 10 years. At the bars he worked, Ruffalo would hand fliers to customers; they never came to see him on stage. "You're totally invisible," he remembers. "You're just a conduit between them and a drink. Like a drug dealer. Of course, 99 percent of what people say in bars is absolute crap. Girls come to understand this rather quickly." Ruffalo laughs; he laughs a lot, a slurry heheheheh. It's a good thing he didn't quit because now he's one of the most interesting actors working in Hollywood -- appearing in both the thriller Collateral and We Don't Live Here Anymore, an intense film opening Friday based on the short stories of Andre Dubus in which he cheats on his wife (Laura Dern) with his best friend's spouse (Naomi Watts). Maybe because he was trained in the theater, Ruffalo, 36, can actually act, and his work in even mediocre films is often singled out. He repeats a mantra: You serve the material. He possesses the craft to disappear into his characters, and some of them are not very appealing, but they are not dull. Ruffalo -- say "rough," not "roof" -- broke into the public consciousness by going east, earning an off-Broadway rave as a slouchy, funny, nihilistic brat in Kenneth Lonergan's 1997 play This Is Our Youth. A New York critic compared Ruffalo to a young Marlon Brando. That's the kind of press that changes a career. Ruffalo followed it with the lead in Lonergan's film You Can Count on Me (2000) for his turn as Terry, a boy-man, lost but redeemable. The kind of man women cook eggs for in the morning. Then he worked beside Robert Redford in The Last Castle and Nicolas Cage in Windtalkers. Then, just as he began to orbit, Ruffalo plunged back to Earth. It was almost like a movie: The talented young man had a very bad dream that something was growing inside his head. And when the surgeons laid him out on the cold table, and opened his skull, they found that he was quite right. He had a brain tumor that was, mercifully, pronounced benign. He's OK now. But he is also a changed man. And, he thinks, probably a better artist for it. But what a way to learn. He orders lemonade with iced tea. "I can't bring myself to call it an Arnold Palmer," he says.

A STREET-FIGHTER TYPE

To describe Ruffalo as good-looking doesn't do it. He is handsome in the Italian way, lean and lithe and hairy, dark meat to Brad Pitt's white, with a Roman nose and a full mouth and emotive eyes that, in his movie roles, register confusion and wound and hunger. "For all those years it felt like Los Angeles just didn't get me," he says. "This one casting director told me they don't look for guys like you out here in L.A. They look for guys like you in New York. ... Out here, maybe episodic TV turns out a beautiful, easily accessible type. I was blue-collar, street-fighter type. The darker tones, you know? That's what they said." He pauses. "Although you never really know what anybody is talking about. That's one of the problems with language." In his press clips, he's often referred to as the thinking woman's sex symbol, and as the New York detective in Jane Campion's kinky In the Cut (2003), he gives good reason for the rep when he sets upon co-star Meg Ryan like a starving man at an all-you-can-eat buffet. Ruffalo didn't go to college, instead attending the Stella Adler Academy, the well-regarded Los Angeles acting school that trained Robert De Niro and Chris Cooper. Benicio Del Toro was the star pupil. Ruffalo estimates that he went to more than 800 auditions in eight years. "I wasn't getting anything. I tried for voice-overs, commercials, TV, everything," he says. What he eventually got was a Clearasil commercial. Then he won a couple of parts in little horror movies. They were not good films. "It is so hard. Not a good job for depressives. For manics it's OK. I'm really envious of the manics," Ruffalo says. "I only got one-half of the equation." His talent agency dumped him. "I wasn't making them any money, so who could blame them?" he says. "I was doing whatever I could to get before a camera, even to the point of lying to do a non-SAG, nonunion movie so I wouldn't get bounced out" of the Screen Actors Guild. "But I got thrown out anyway because I didn't pay my dues for two years. I went to them and threw myself before the board: Man, I haven't been working. I'm starving. I'm depressed. They were like, cough it up." Ruffalo must have thought of quitting. "All the time," he says. "A lot of times where in the darkest night of the soul, you wanta give up everything. You work so hard, it means so much, and so little return, or encouragement, and you're just, screw this, I can't go on like this. It's too hard on me. Something about it, it's maddening. I mean, you go a little crazy from this total absolute wall of rejection." But Ruffalo kept working in his little plays. Twenty people in the audience, half of them friends. Casting directors would promise to come, then blow him off. He wrote; he directed. He says he isn't bitter. "Frankly, I probably wasn't very good at that time, so there was probably a reason I wasn't getting parts," he says. "I often think back to what would have happened if I had gotten all the things I wanted. I wouldn't be the actor I am today. I tell you, it was 10 years of acting before I began to have any sort of -- I don't know really -- interesting stuff going on in my work. It was only out of really difficult times that I grew the really deep roots I needed to be the actor I was hoping to become."

THE THING IN HIS HEAD

He never experienced headaches, blurred vision or problems with balance. There was a slight, almost imperceptible hearing loss in his left ear. He was newly married to the French actress Sunrise Coigney, and they had a baby, Keen. One night, "I dreamt I had a brain tumor, of all things. It was such a real dream, I followed up on it, and wham, bam, thank you, ma'am," he says. "I thought that was it for me."

The operation lasted 10 hours. He reacted badly to the anesthesia. Six months of recovery. He lost 40 pounds. Another 10 months before he worked again, in In the Cut.

"All these crazy things go into it when someone tinkers with your brain. What if they took away something important, that was talent? What if that was what made me special? I wasn't sure I still had it."

In many interviews now, he declines to talk about the brain tumor, saying he doesn't want to be seen as some kind of medical miracle. "But it is part of my life, you know? A big part," he says. "It focuses your attention and your intentions. It makes you aware of a lot more. The choices. The way you appreciate things."

It made him focus on what he wanted to do with the rest of his life. "If, you know, I survived and everything." Then the laugh again, heheheheh, and he exhales a long, drawn-out expletive.

STEADY WORK AT LAST

In the past few months, Ruffalo has appeared as Jennifer Garner's dreamy boyfriend in the frothy 13 Going on 30, the tech geek bouncing on the bed with Kirsten Dunst in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, the cop Fanning in Collateral, and now the cheating heart in We Don't Live Here Anymore. His performance in 13 was actually a challenge for him. "I usually play parts where I'm able to hide behind the character. I can disappear. But in that one, I was this nice, stable, normal, decent guy. And that was hard, man. I kept wondering, what do I do with my hands? Do I just keep them in my pockets?" We Don't Live Here Anymore is more of a Ruffalo movie. Took 25 years to get made. "The subject matter scared them," Ruffalo says. Originally, Dustin Hoffman was signed to play Ruffalo's part -- back in the 1970s. The movie is brutal. There are scenes that may remind some couples of their worst moments; but there is also something almost funny in the struggles of these mortals. "These humans are raked over the coals," Ruffalo says. "Can two people come back from such painful misdoings? This season of infidelity? I felt it was an honest and mature look at marriage in crisis, and everybody is afraid to make these movies nowadays. Everyone wants to be entertained, to make things easy." This was a chance to make a movie that is very much like the plays he spent his decade performing. "It's a script and it's acting. There's no tent pole, no set piece, no action sequence, no mystery, no suspense, and so I'm really proud of it as an acting piece. It had to be pitched just perfect. "What I like about it here are these people. The characters. The actors. They're on the line. They're vulnerable, out there, in the moment, no safety net. And what they really have to do is count on each other."

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Forgot to make a note on a needed correction in the article. Ruffalo GAINED 40 pounds during his recovery from brain surgery, not the opposite. It was a side effect of the steroids the doctors put him on. Of course later, he had to lose the 40 pounds....

#mark ruffalo #wedontlivehereanymore #2004

15 notes · View notes

blackfreethinkers · 4 years

Link

Harold Newton did something that took guts.

An African American artist from Georgia, Newton in 1955 walked through the front door of a well-known white artist’s home in Fort Pierce, Florida, to ask A. E. Backus for advice.

Newton soaked up everything Backus taught him.

Selling paintings along the highway

But Newton had one more hurdle to overcome if he wanted to sell his own landscape paintings.

Historical and museum photos of Florida's Highwaymen Artists

R.L. Lewis standing in front of his Highwaymen art in 2008.

Highwaymen artist James Gibson at the Tallahassee Museum of History and Natural Science's annual Market Days fund raiser at the Leon County Fairgrounds in 2007.

Highwaymen artist R.L. Lewis painting at the Tallahassee Museum of History and Natural Science's annual Market Days fund raiser at the Leon County Fairgrounds in 2007.

A. E. "Bean" Backus working on one of his paintings sometime in the 1980s.

Robert Butler, Highwayman Artist, working on a painting at the Old Capitol - Tallahassee, Florida, in 2006. Each year the A.E. Backus Museum in Fort Pierce holds an exhibit celebrating the works of the Florida Highwaymen artists. Backus is credited for giving lessons to Harold Newton and Alfred Hair, two original Florida Highwaymen artists. The 2020 exhibit looked at the art of the Hair, who was considered the charismatic leader of the African American art movement in the area.

The Florida Highwaymen were a group of African American artists, generally from Fort Pierce and the surrounding areas, who drove up and down U.S. 1 selling the landscape art during the 1950s and 60s.

The story of Alfred Hair

One of the artists considered to be the scene's leader was Alfred Hair. When Hair was 14 years old, he, like Newton, fell into Backus' orbit.

Hair went to the nearby segregated school in Fort Pierce — Lincoln Park Academy. It was Hair’s teacher who suggested Backus take him under his wing.

Backus taught Hair how to paint landscapes and how to make frames. Hair started to believe he could turn painting into a career, something unheard of for blacks of the time.

As Hair grew in the industry, he knew he would have to do things differently from his white mentor, who could set up in galleries and share his paintings with mass audiences.

So Hair came up with his own business model.

A new business model

Soon, Hair took a page from Newton’s playbook. He began driving up and down the highway selling his paintings.

It worked. During the early part of the 1960s Hair, and many other artists with a similar painting style, thrived.

Hair and Newton’s practice of selling art out of their cars came to be used by many African American artists along the U.S. 1 corridor on Florida’s Treasure Coast.

Many found success.

More: Harry T. Moore helped thousands of blacks register to vote. It led to his assassination on Christmas night

More: Mary McLeod Bethune was born the daughter of slaves. She died a retired college president

When everything changed

However, in 1970, the African American art scene lost its charismatic leader when Hair was gunned down in a bar. He was only 29.

“Overnight, everything dies," said Hair's widow. "Nothing is left.”

Many of the African American landscape artists continued to paint, but waning interest after Hair's death coupled with new tastes and styles in the 1970s and 1980s saw much of the success fade away.

“We survived it all,” Hair Truesdell said. “We’re still living. Still standing and still we have the memory and we will always have the memory of Alfred, of his vision.”

In the mid-1990s Jim Fitch, a Florida art historian, discussed the African American painting movement of the 1960s in the St. Petersburg Times, using a label to describe their art.

How the 'Highwaymen' came to be

This created a new interest in their art, which is estimated to include 200,000 paintings.

One of the distinctive things that make the Highwaymen art unique is the frames and vibrant colors of the landscapes.

The true number of Highwaymen artists has been debated, with some being considered second or third generation Highwaymen.

However, in 2004, the number of identified Highwaymen was set at 26 when they were inducted into the Florida Artists Hall of Fame.

Highwaymen paintings can be seen at the A.E. Backus Gallery & Museum in Fort Pierce, as well as the Museum of Florida History in Tallahassee.

Many can be purchased at various websites in their honor.

There are also some pieces on display at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture.

1 note · View note

wroef · 7 years

Note

how would you characterize the finches (as in who are they a person, what is their personality like, their aesthetics, etc). you don't have to write essays, i'd just like to know what you think of each of them. that would really interest me.

mod milton just went to go get food which has left me unattended so (peace sign emoji)

(EDIT MOD MILTON GOT BACK FROM GETTING FOOD AND IM ONLY ON WALTER, you can’t tell me to not write essays i will anyway im trying to be as brief as possible this is just how i AM)

milton is the aesthetic dude so he can either reblog or go back and edit this with what he thinks everyone’s aesthetics would be, i’ll just give descriptions of them and their personality. also im only gonna do the ones with portraits!!

odin - probably has an attitude a lot like dawn? i mean, he uprooted his whole house to sail to america to try to escape the curse. so like, paranoid family man that wants to keep his family safe. also probably likes boating/fishing or something. he’s probably sorta like my dad in that he cares deeply about his family, doesn’t like really anyone else, and can almost be sorta hotheaded when it comes to something getting in the way of him and his family. i sorta get that vibe? idk

edie - probably like how mod milton has described her before, like a kooky but weirdly lovable grandma? like the kind that would babysit the kids and then give them a bunch of chocolate and candy just before sending them back to their parents or something. probably a sweet old lady but also the kind that’s like ‘youre too nice wtf’ because she’d also be weirdly paranoid and such because of the family curse. definitely a person you could sit with and hear all of her stories though.

molly - i feel like she’d be the kinda kid who’d eat bugs and stuff as a kid and break her toys to figure out how they worked. she reminds me a lot of me as a kid, just more happy? and more interested in sea stuff. i feel like she’d be the kinda girl that you’d have to drag away from the beach whenever yall had to go home. just super bubbly and sweet but with sorta a weird fascination with dissecting things and figuring out how the innards of stuff work together. also probably spends more time eating than doing literally anything else

barbara - definitely the cute blonde that everyone said ‘she’s gonna be big one day’ and she did. she probably woulda loved watching child star stuff and when she had the opportunity to be in a movie she begged edie to let her audition. as she got older and america ‘grew out of her’, she probably was a theater kid type in high school, just waiting for another big break and auditioning anywhere she could. definitely the kind to roll her eyes whenever she had to babysit her little brothers, but she still cared a lot about them.

calvin - the kid to have probably gotten his head stuck in a fish bowl pretending to be an astronaut more than once. he was probably a big nerd growing up about space, begging for stuff like a telescope or astronomy books or anything he could get his hands on. he was the kid who said ‘im gonna be an astronaut when i grow up’ and was actually gearing to do just that. he was probably amazing as heck at school and sam might have even had him do his homework more than once. so smart kid, very hardheaded. think of like, how the majority of the fandom portrays clay terran from ace attorney (if anyone around here plays AA?)

sam - perfectly content staying on the ground, thanks. total one-with-nature type kid, probably wanted to be a nature photographer before calvin died. after the fact, he probably geared himself more toward military because he figured the thought of achieving your ‘true dream’ was all bs since he had then lost two siblings trying to achieve their dreams. so he dropped the photography except for recreational usage, and focused on gearing toward the military probably because this is vietnam war time and he didn’t really have a drive to go for anything else. he liked the structure that being in the military gave him and raised his kids with the same strict schedule, but it was probably a combination of his general stubborn pessimistic personality (which was never shown around the kids, of course) with his history and being away from the kids for a lot of their younger years because of the USMC that lead to his and Kay’s divorce. i feel like ive rambled a lot about sam for someone who doesn’t like him. tl;dr bad dad but also sad dad?

walter - my poor, sweet, paranoid delusional baby. he was probably the type to, like molly, enjoy the sea a lot. he probably wanted to be a marine biologist growing up, and when barbara died because of the supposed ‘monster’, being exposed to that kind of trauma of literally hearing your sister’s last words as she screams while being killed, that would kinda fuck you up. i could see him locking himself in his room for days on end, eventually forcing edie to have to drop him out of school and homeschool him. it probably took him months to even be able to step outside of his room. when calvin died he probably re-shut himself in, just terrified of everything. it said in game he had been down there for 30 years, and since he died at 53, that would mean he retreated to the basement at 23 years old. possibly, when no one else was living in the house aside from edie, she and him worked together to create the bunker that took a few years to make before it was livable.

dawn - she probably took after her dad a lot, not in the fact of the hunting or other activities he enjoyed but more in the pessimistic view of life. she’s seen in his story reading a lot and i feel like that’s because she’s the quiet type that would rather submerse herself in a fantasy world in a book than she would interact with the real world. sorta like how the whole “sam seemed to go out of his way to meet [death]”, conversely, dawn tried to stay away from it as much as possible. she probably grew up wanting to explore and ‘see the world’ before she died, which was why she started joining volunteer programs to help people in other countries. she probably became more religious after her dad passed but hid it more when she got close to sanjay because of religious differences, which was why she and sanjay would have decided to raise their kids without religion. she cared a lot, but she showed it in a weird way; she was angry and paranoid, sure, but she did care. sorta like how i wrote odin.

gus - rebel kid. probably grew up with a resentment for his dad and saw him as the source for ‘mom leaving’ and such. gregory died when he was around 8 years old, which is just around the time hormones are about to go wild and puberty sets in, so he probably launched himself into a punk rock lifestyle to sort of rebel against his parents and deal with his grief in his own way when he felt no one else really understood him. since dawn was pretty hardheaded and stern and pessimistic like their father, gus probably didn’t feel all that comfortable talking to her, so he just bottled a lot of stuff up. sad baby

gregory - i feel like his story sums him up personality wise pretty well, idk, hes a baby

lewis - stoner kid. he probably grew up in india learning both english and hindi from his parents, and was generally a normal happy kid until his dad died. when he did and they moved back to the states, he would have been about 14, with milton at 10 and edith at 3. milton and lewis probably got along a lot for the year they were together in the finch house and while they were being homeschooled, and when milton disappeared he probably fell into a depressive state as he had no one else to really talk to around his age about the losses he experienced. not to mention as another anon said, he was the only finch to not really show any artistic talents, which further ostracized him from his family and everyone else. he probably took to drugs as a means to cope, which became a habit. when he graduated and isolated himself in his room to smoke and occasionally talk to edith, that’s when dawn signed him up for a job at the cannery to try to help coax him out and into a more healthy life, which of course backfired. overall though, he would have been a really nice person, if not sort of standoffish emotionally. he loved spending time with his siblings and his dad, though never really had much attachment to his mom. nice dude, 10/10, would smoke a bowl with him

milton - (in the words of mod milton: college art student doesn’t get sleep) ok thanks mod milton. ok so like. i see milton as being the super artsy kid in class, the one who’d say ‘i wanna be an artist when i grow up!’ and fucked around with paint all the time and stuff. as he got older he figured out how to make stuff work better (might have even been signed up for art classes) and figured out how to make landscapes and animate (with flipbooks) and such like that. he was probably a kid very eager to learn and discover new things, like how in an entire year he managed to find all the passageways in the finch house and disclose that information to lewis before he disappeared. very smart kid, practically a prodigy for his age in the world of painting and art

edith - sweet sweetheart baby child. probably grew up like the others, wanting to learn and figure out as much stuff as she possibly could. she took to drawing a lot and maybe even took pointers as a young 4 year old from her 11 year old brother milton before he disappeared. when he disappeared this probably raised a lot of curiosity in the young child and she wanted to learn more about her family history, but dawn wouldn’t allow it and edie wanted to respect her grandchild’s wishes despite her great-grandchild’s arguments. once they stopped being homeschooled (which idk what age that would be, i’d have to do math) and edith started going to public school, she may have been kind of insecure and introverted and kept to herself a lot of the time. when lewis died and she had to switch schools she probably gained more confidence from being in a place where no one knew her or her family history anymore and got herself a boyfriend which would lead to current situations in game.

I KNOW YOU SAID TO NOT WRITE PARAGRAPHS BUT THIS IS JUST HOW I DO MAN SORRY

-mod lewis

#wroef #how do i tag this #mod lewis #mod milton add aesthetics #Anonymous

8 notes · View notes