Art is where you find it.
With a heads-up from Ron at Sadlacks, though I got my postcard (but mislaid it), I was off to Wendell Saturday morning. Time for another show at Lovejoy Pottery. Dan and Nancy have become old friends, but they were old guard and I was new when I first met them in the mid eighties. Dan was a big part of the Raleigh Artists Community, a late seventies art entity that I wrote a feature article about in FARCE!, the newsletter of The Paper Plant. RAC was a huge part of the development of the arts community in Raleigh, and provided some interesting memories along the way. Quoting that piece:
The house at 908 West Morgan Street [just across from Irregardless] served as gallery, studio, hang-out and apartment house to various NCSU and Raleigh artists. The atmosphere was informal, very informal by all accounts. Lovejoy, who lived in the house, described the atmosphere as “totally chaotic but a lot of fun.”
Copper Rain, Joy Haymore, Jeff Emma, Willis Williams, and Jeannie Thompson were all founding members. Later current Raleigh artists such as Sharron Parker and Madonna Phillips joined. The group organized art festivals on Fayetteville Street Mall and at Pullen Park, proposed the art center that eventually became Artspace, and in 1979 joined with the new Raleigh Arts Commission to sponsor “Downtown September,” which now goes by the name Artsplosure.
The Lovejoys proudly display this sign and continue to do their pottery. Dan paints his huge, mythical figurative acrylics. Nancy has made most of the bowls and ceramic cups in my house. They have these shows, with an open studio feel, and 6 to 8 local artisans, all well established pros, come in and display their work. Besides the Lovejoys, Marsha Owen, Nancy Redman, John Garland & Mary Paul, and Alan Tingen all participated this year. Cara and I have shown there several times in the past and probably will again.
Lovejoy Pottery is on Watkins Road, just off Rolesville Highway, off 70 East out of Raleigh. It was fun to mix purveying art and visiting with some country driving. I always take the back way home – Watkins to old Milburnie and past the Milburnie Dam. The rural scenes were nifty!
And then to cap it off, here come these young fellows, barreling along in their buggy!
Blount Street Commons and the Pell Street River
My Blount Street Project page is partly about my fascination with all construction sites – this one being across my street is particularly convenient. Moving houses is always fun to watch. This large imposing structure just made it’s move. But we are obviously watching for the pros and cons of this project with respect to our own interests. The Pell Street River is a big “current” concern. It was given that name by our children as they played years ago in the large rainwater flows that gush down our tiny side street after a big rain. With the new drainage system (at the front end, at least) and the large exposed areas of red clay, we knew there might be problems. I have written a story on the Blount Street page about the problem.
Pell Street River descends
Below are a few more house moving images. It sure is fun to watch. Progress is a back and forth thing!
- where it came from
(pictures click to enlarge)
White Squirrel Update
So I start this blog just as I’m furiously finishing my school year. Before I know it, time for a 6 day Env. Ed. teachers camp in Brevard, home of the white squirrels. I get back, and my nature blog’s been attacked by a robot hack and has to be rebuilt. Take care of that and promptly get sick. Rare visit to the doctor, start my Z-pack, and it’s time for the week of full time teaching at Artspace I’m in the midst of. So that’s why I didn’t tell you sooner,
I’M FEATURING AT ARTSPACE’S STAMMER THIS FRIDAY NIGHT!!
Stammer is a wonderful, quirky, imfamously late-running, over-packed event that very much follows in a direct line of downtown open mike traditions reaching back to The Paper Plant. Mz Julee, seen below, ministers to a fervent and incredibly diverse cast of performers. Stammer has seen experimental music, health department sex ed films, a massuese interspersing his body work with poetry, break dancers, and along the way a few poets. The audiences are usually large and appreciative. The open mike runs late in the event, but always has pleasant surprises. Doors open at 8 o’clock – an early start that will be part of Artspace’s “First Friday after July 4th” event, which is being celebrated by several other galleries, such as Adam Cave and Flanders.
I can’t wait to get back to health and time to write – it’s been a great early summer for art. Susan Toplikar opened a fantastic show consisting mostly of a deconstructed notebook of bird drawings, her husband Mike Cindric has a fascinating new structure at the Art Museum, and Artspace has an interesting artist in residence working on an installation to open later this summer. I should mention that Grimenesa Amoros had a show in Miami extended to August 31. Images of her work and more about all of the former will come soon.
And if you want more of the white squirrels, you’ll have to check Raleigh Nature – after I get caught up!!
update
the white squirrel post
and picture album
taintradio hits the netwaves
Out of Raleigh to the world, indeed. Do yourself a favor and go to taintradio.org, download itunes if you don’t have it, listen to taintradio for a few hours, and prepare to be transformed. This is radio as it should be, probably as it never has been.
Welcome to taintradio.org. We are an alliance of independent, unpaid volunteers dedicated to presenting music on the Internet 24/7. There is no format, there is no “target audience.” Each program host presents only what they want to present.
Bob Rogers and Dave Tilley have begun a revolution, and it is going great! They have a workable infrastructure in place and wonderful, wonderful contributors (including themselves). I promise you will be amazed – and have not one friggin’ idea as to what might be coming next. Not to imply it’s a random jumble. It’s just fascinating revelations, one after another, as to what is out there that you haven’t heard and are so glad to be hearing.
Bob is an old friend whose book, Non-Fiction Poems, I published in 1985. He has been in and out of professional radio for many decades, though he has been processing word data since arriving in Raleigh over twenty years ago. He once drove Buck Owen’s Cadillac around for a spell as part of a give-away promotion. That’s just the tip of the iceberg of his radio industry stories. Dave Tilley has the substantial tech chops to make this thing work, but also has a broad set of interests and has been running a stage at the (upcoming) Festival for the Eno for a while. The two of them have been plotting this thing for years. Bob’s predilection is the midnight to six audience – he volunteered weekend overnight shows at WSHA for years. Dave has been hosting a roots music radio show for 18 years. Now the two of then have undertaken what really does amount to a major new format for providing listener supported radio. Please check it out.
Person Street rambles out to the big wide world!
Here we go and you are welcome for the ride. Raleigh Rambles. A Raleigh native’s rambles. Raleighites making art and making good. The city of Raleigh rambles out to the big wide world. The big wide world rambles into Raleigh. All of the above. This is my personal blog – mostly art and culture, but whatever else as well, because it is all good, all is good. Everything we do is art – or can be. Welcome to my new blog.
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This online world is a hoot and a holler, isn’t it? It’s been fun to watch and even more fun to join. I’ve been very lucky. My school had a Nando account, allowing us to use gophers and ftp’s to look at a few data bases, before the World Wide Web came to exist. I have watched my buddy Clyde take the Net by the horns and shake it like a money tree for some time, while building his hip hop web empire. My friend Richard has been hand-rolling a blog since before there were blogs – I guess that means he helped create the blog culture. Blogs seem very much to be the universal multi-media uberform that Clyde and I dreamed about in the late seventies. I like them very very much.
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Raleigh is blessed with great local blogs. Raleighing was fun while it lasted. New Raleigh does a most professional job, as recently with their slideshow of Rebusfest, and a review of my new neighbor, Rosie’s Plate. And RDUwtf, of course, has my biased adoration, and is back in business after a nasty spamlink attack. Here, I’m not trying to review Raleigh – I’m portraying myself and my cultural mileu as a native Raleighite.
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A fine cultural mileu indeed! World class museums, enough of a city to be a city but rural scenes a ten minute drive away. Greenways galore, which I blog about at Raleigh Nature. A decent music scene, I understand, but you will not read much about any music other than jazz here. My favorite piece of Raleigh is the whole scene anchored by The College of Design -with Sadlacks’s as its lodestone. I love to run into old friends or find out what young art entreprenuers like Sarah Blackmon are up to. And I still get to enjoy catching somebody up on The Paper Plant and being reminded it is still remembered.
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So here goes my personal take on Raleigh, old and new, work and play – living the examined life in the New South. Join me when you have a chance!
raleighrambles.com
portrait by Guillermo Velasco
Raleigh Rambles 