Artists:
paul anders, illustrator/animator
christian canady, writer
jim brunberg, songwriter/producer
tim combs, artist
gabe flores, artist
nathan miller, musician
lena munday, A/V performance artist
nora robertson, writer/poet
mark russell, writer
mark saltveit, comedian/palindromist
gary wiseman, artist
returning SHARE artists: daniela molnar, illustrator; noah nakell, sculptor; alyson osborn, actor; hannah pass, writer; matt sipes, sculptor; kathleen lane, writer; margaret malone, writer
Gary Wiseman (left) and Gabe Flores.
Zoo
by Hannah Pass
Hannah: With the word prompt, FORCE, I immediately thought of all of us artists forced to create together in one room. All from different backgrounds with different mediums, etc. It reminded me somewhat of wild animals in a zoo.
There is a place where all the animals go from failed relationships. This place is not “his” or “hers,” but somewhere in between with no memories. If you were to force them all together in one room, they might begin to riot. They might begin to howl or cry. Or they might even laugh. This is because they are used to being tied on leashes. That secure, stylish band buckled underneath the rolls of their necks, symbolizing love. The dogs,they carry stories in their fur. A braid twisted by a twelve year-old who now lives with her dad. Lives with her dad in an apartment in the city with Grandparents who don't believe in Santa or divorce. The dogs are uncomfortable with the cats who are uncomfortable with the birds who are uncomfortable with the Guinea pigs whose mothers used to call Rats. Parakeets, they are good listeners. They are also the only animal that speaks like we speak. They have eyes deep and blunt like nail heads forced into wood. They squawk, “I don't understand.” They squawk, “So this is it?” They squawk for as long as they live. For as long as they live in this room of other animals who listen with their eyes and ears, but could not speak like us if they tried. Sometimes, it is quiet in this room. As quiet as the cats move. These cats who are used to walking on the inside of walls and between feet. Cats, who used to be held in arms. You could carry them everywhere against your chest. Then pass them to others like a baby. All these animals are babies. Lets not judge them for that. The iguanas just lie there for no reason. Lets not judge them for that either. Who could blame them? Who could blame these animals in a house where there is no need for running.
There is a place where all the animals go from failed relationships. This place is not “his” or “hers,” but somewhere in between with no memories. If you were to force them all together in one room, they might begin to riot. They might begin to howl or cry. Or they might even laugh. This is because they are used to being tied on leashes. That secure, stylish band buckled underneath the rolls of their necks, symbolizing love. The dogs,they carry stories in their fur. A braid twisted by a twelve year-old who now lives with her dad. Lives with her dad in an apartment in the city with Grandparents who don't believe in Santa or divorce. The dogs are uncomfortable with the cats who are uncomfortable with the birds who are uncomfortable with the Guinea pigs whose mothers used to call Rats. Parakeets, they are good listeners. They are also the only animal that speaks like we speak. They have eyes deep and blunt like nail heads forced into wood. They squawk, “I don't understand.” They squawk, “So this is it?” They squawk for as long as they live. For as long as they live in this room of other animals who listen with their eyes and ears, but could not speak like us if they tried. Sometimes, it is quiet in this room. As quiet as the cats move. These cats who are used to walking on the inside of walls and between feet. Cats, who used to be held in arms. You could carry them everywhere against your chest. Then pass them to others like a baby. All these animals are babies. Lets not judge them for that. The iguanas just lie there for no reason. Lets not judge them for that either. Who could blame them? Who could blame these animals in a house where there is no need for running.
Our first palindromist! Mark Saltveit edits The Palindromist Magazine and is also a writer and comedian.
Mark's palindromes:
Ow! Trap! Golf? Never even flog. (Par two.)
(Never force your golf game.)Stiff! O, snot! Slag! Eva Green's sneer gave gals tons of fits.
(Kind of a mean girl, it sounds like.)
Gigolos, aloof Eva Green's sneer gave fool a solo gig.
(Someone tried to take her home and struck out.)
Pals, a booby trap! Eva Green's sneer gave party boob a slap.
OR
Pals, tuna booby trap! Eva Green's sneer gave party boob a nut slap.
Murder, brawn, or iron?!? War bred rum.
(as in the song "I Bombed Korea" by Cake.)
Hell, or a noted ace? Both, sadder. Brawn or iron? War bred dash to be cadet on a roll, eh?
(A lot of palindromes are spoken by Canadians, for some reason.)
We, Latina demander, fret. Fast? Ah, no. Sexy? No. Di put stupid onyxes on hats after Fred named Anita "Lew."
In honor of the hostesses:
How I define Margaret to my Mom:
A Malone, Margaret: awe, water, a gramenola, Ma.
(a gramenola is either a gram + half the name of the plane that dropped the first atom bomb, or granola with men in it, which is much more Oregony.)
How I define Margaret to my Grandma:
Margaret "Nape" Malone: no lame Pantera, Gram.
Tony, K. Lane = zen alky? NOT.
Tim Comb’s "In the Center of it ALL the Crows Rochambeau over the Fate of the Folk."
Tim: One of the things that intrigues me about SHARE is the safety to create work outside my normal medium and outside my normal process. For the prompt, Force, I started thinking about the powerful and connected and how most people have Choice, but don't really have Control over the basic structure of our society. And though I do draw, I usually draw as a means, one of many steps in an involved process, rather than as an end. Unable to elaborate and edit and rethink the themes because of the two hour time constraint dictated spontaneity, and amazingly, led to unexpected allegory and a comfortable play with compositional elements.
A collaboration between writers Nora Robertson and Mark Russell
Nora: Our process was that we started from the idea about force as a rule or change forcing you to do something. Mark began to write satirical airport rules so I started to think of a narrative that would play off of the airport setting, and then we juxtaposed the two pieces without looking at what each other were writing.
If you have any objections or concerns regarding the rules and standards of the Federal Aviation Administration, please direct them to the public relations desk at the end of Concourse C where we have assembled a team of lawyers, public officials and other moral relativists schooled in the art of making you feel stupid and inadequate. If questions persist, please refer them to the man in the gorilla suit.
Nora: Our process was that we started from the idea about force as a rule or change forcing you to do something. Mark began to write satirical airport rules so I started to think of a narrative that would play off of the airport setting, and then we juxtaposed the two pieces without looking at what each other were writing.
The night before I went home to the US, Matt and I got to the Budapest airport completely out of cash. It was a boxy white space with high ceilings and concrete pillars and looked Communist. It looked like it would have rules. We had enough cash to stay in a hostel when we got to town but had decided it would be more fun to stay up all night drinking, so now we had to sleep in the airport. It’s the kind of thing you do when you’re not really getting along. Going out had been Matt’s idea but got no argument from me. If I held a plastic cup of red wine and coke in a dark cellar bar blasting the Pink Floyd, it was easier somehow to ignore the way his brown eyes never seemed to meet mine, the way he always seemed to be looking away from me.
On behalf of the Federal Aviation Administration, welcome to the United States. Please remove any metallic objects, belts, electronic devices, toiletries, shoes or prosthetic limbs and place them in the eight ounce cup provided to your left. Please note that as part of the new American Culture Preservation Initiative, a fine of forty-eight dollars will be assessed on anyone discussing the Broadway production of Spiderman, sporting a tribal armband tattoo or reading a Harry Potter book if you are over the age of thirteen. I mean, really people.
It was amazing to me that we had survived a year of living in Romania and stayed together and now that we were going home, things weren’t working out. Sometimes it’s like that. The little tragedies keep you together. The time we called Matt’s mom in Michigan to say hello and also ask if there was any way she could mail us some food and then the phone company announced a 150% retroactive rate hike. It’s like having something to overcome together gives you a project, and every relationship need a project. The 350% inflation after the Romanian government decided Ceacescu had been gone long enough and it was time to privatize the economy. One day I’d go to the store and bread would have doubled in price. The next week, the price would double again. Our Romanian friends didn’t seem too worried. They just made sure they laid in enough potatoes. They were used to the rules changing.
Anyone not wishing to submit to the full body scanners can demonstrate their fealty to our nation with their choice of trials by ordeal, including standing in a hole while engaging in combat with a child armed with a club, “torture eels” and the always popular Trial by 72 Ounce Steak.
Matt yanked his sleeping bag out of his blanket and laid it down on the bench. He was stocky and actually almost fit on the bench. My legs were probably going to dangle. I was a lot taller than him. We never did seem to fit as a couple, friends even told us we looked funny together. Me with the tall and curvy and blonde and him about to my shoulder and red-headed and built like a wrestler. Me with the worrying and the sharp tongue and miser and him with the charm and happy go luck. The easygoing. In the town on the way here, Szeged, he told me he was breaking up with me. We were staying in this older woman’s apartment that he had met at the train station and somehow gotten her to offer us her spare pile of blankets on the tiled kitchen floor, so we had to go into the garden to have our argument. “But I had always meant to break up with you,” I said.
Once you are past the security gate, passengers will be selected at random to be mauled by a man in a gorilla suit. This is done to test your agility and crisis response awareness. It is also done to see if you have any bananas. Should you make it past the gorilla, your in-flight movie will be Highlander 2: The Quickening. Your snack will either be a fruit cup with non-fat yogurt, or a poppyseed muffin with fair trade butter spread. But not both! There can be only one.
I leaned my pack against his bench and sat on the ground, hugging my knees. The ground was comforting. Now that we were talking about it, everything was different. I kept thinking about the trip into Romania on the way here, the way Matt came to get me from Budapest because he couldn’t stop thinking about me. The way at the time, getting upset about him spending his money on pizza and beer at the pub with our friends seemed really logical to me. I’m not sure why he came back with me instead of breaking up back in Romania. Maybe it was just what he was used to doing for me. Matt slid his solid butt down onto the ground next to me and put his arm around me. He fingered the cuff of my right coat arm. For right now, the warmth and cinnamon reek of his armpit was still familiar to me. Right at the end of the winter, I was lining up at the cashier’s window to get my pay which they counted out to you in cash. You lined up outside in the outdoor corridor of the stucco school building and the cashier office was like a little guard station with a carved wooden window. It was below zero and all us teachers were shivering with our hands in our armpits. I was thinking about buying some of that black caviar with the sour cream they had at the deli for a payday treat. The cashier ran her long red fingernail down the ledger and stopped. She looked up at me through thick black plastic glasses. “Nothing.” She said. “What?” I asked. “You have nothing this month,” she said. I looked up at the sky behind the willow tree in the courtyard and it was perfectly flat, no clouds on the horizon at all.
Daniela: "Force" – the force of love, the force of hate. You might feel the impact. I let my unconscious rule this one, using collage as a means to undo some of the over-thinking.
A/V performance artist Lena Munday: My work is created in real time using the space around me as inspiration. Generally this in a live performance context that involves movement, sound and video components. For SHARE I ended up making a more formal "composition" from 4 pieces of audio: 3 bits that I recorded that night (including the "silence" of everyone working) and combined it with a sound collage I had made from field recordings in Madrid (and forgotten about until I found it when looking for something to sound check.) So it was pretty loose, and then I performed the mix that you've got here live for the gathered group. I'm really pleased with how it turned out. Fun stuff, and fun to focus on just one strand, sound, of my multi-disciplinary work.
Dear Georgia,
Is being allowed to do what you want to the opposite of being forced to do something you don’t want to?
I know…I’m over thinking and you’re too old for this. You wish I would just go in the other room and get to work. You stopped teaching a long time ago. Humor me. These letters take time, they are work.
I miss you. I miss your Ghost Ranch. I miss the bones and wish I had brought them, even though it seemed sacrilege at the time to carry them off. I wish I had your resolve and your dedication to the work. I am so busy thinking.
Let me try a different question: Do we force ourselves to work, to create, and force them to accept it—or is it a matter of allowing the work to force us (and them)…and surrendering to it?
Ok, I’m done for now.
Tell Juan thank you for sending the photo of your last piece. I love it, of course. I’m so glad you started sculpting. Juan is right that it has helped you keep your “voice” even if you have lost your sight.
Yours,
Christian
***
Dear Georgia,
I worked yesterday. Here’s what I wrote. It took me all day.
If you force us, you do it with the patience of a river shaping a canyon. You are insistent steady eternal energy and all our choosing leads to one choice: stand still or surrender. So, with that in mind I give up. But I think there must be places in me that don’t move, places that I keep still, places that you must work around. I think we must hold some ground, demand that the river move around us. At the root of beauty is a holy struggle.
I know, it’s a little serious. But that at least I can count on you to understand.
I have to run, but I wanted you to see that I did something. I want you to be proud.
Yours,
Christian
The seed and the sun and Sunrise over the earth from the moon by returning artist Matt Sipes.
The seed and the sun
This little sculpture represents the power of growth and a singular need. The force of even the smallest organism pushes aside mans best laid foundations in its reach for the sun. Searching for a ray of the star that feeds us all it weaves through rock and earth and bone and will not be stopped.
Sunrise over the earth from the moon
This is a nod to gravity, that mysterious force keeping the planets dancing around the sun, the tides sloshing around the world, light bending around stars, us from flying off to infinity and marbles from rolling up hills.
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