Blog Post
No Fixed Narratives: Bassist James Ilgenfritz at Kerrytown Concert House
by christopherporter
Whether he's reframing William S. Burroughs' cut-up prose as opera with his long-running Anagram Ensemble, fusing progressive rock riffing with avant-jazz in electric trio Hypercolor, or bowing his strings with multiple bows and springs on his own, bassist James Ilgenfritz is regularly questioning perceptions and pushing back against sound barriers.
"Music is a fundamentally abstract art form, as it does not have the type of figurative quality words or images can communicate," Ilgenfritz wrote in an email, describing what inspired him to transcribe the work of composer and saxophonist Anthony Braxton for his 2011 debut solo album, Compositions (Braxton). "But we often give in to the temptation to shoehorn music into fixed narratives and the illusion that meaning can be an absolute."
The Brooklyn, New York-based musician grew up in Monroe and studied music at the University of Michigan. He played with several Ann Arbor and Detroit-based groups, including Bill Brovold's experimental rock troupe Larval, before moving out of state to further his musical path.
In January, Ilgenfritz led a string section playing arrangements he'd written for composer and performer M. Lamar's Funeral Doom Spiritual in Brooklyn. The new monodrama written by Lamar with musician Hunter Hunt-Hendrix (of "transcendental" metal band Liturgy) takes place in the future and "explores radical historical expressions and futuristic longings for destruction of the white supremacist world order."
This month, Ilgenfritz is releasing his second solo album, Origami Cosmos (Infrequent Seams), featuring four new solo works for bass written for him by four different New York composers.
On Wednesday, March 15, Ilgenfritz will give a solo contrabass performance at Kerrytown Concert House featuring music from his new album, his Braxton transcriptions, and an old favorite from his Ann Arbor days by a U-M professor.
Q: Growing up in Monroe, how and when were you exposed to enough jazz and improv music that you knew this was what you wanted to study in school?
A: The environment was absolutely not one that would foster this type of musical growth. All forms of the arts were strongly discouraged. For me and my friends and the few adults able to offer some guidance, it was an act of defiance to even show an interest in the arts.
My parents sent me to Interlochen to study visual arts in the summer, and it was there I heard the music of Eric Dolphy and John Cage. It became an ongoing adventure to find ways to hear and learn about this music. WEMU was at that time very supportive of progressive jazz, and I would go to Rusty's in Toledo to sit in, and I started driving up to Ann Arbor to hear concerts at Kerrytown. So for me, coming to play at Kerrytown always has a certain reverence about it, knowing the important role it played in helping me on my path.
Q: How did your time in Ann Arbor and Detroit, playing with groups like Larval, etc., inform the direction of your playing? How did that compare with what you found when you moved to New York?
A: Working with Bill Brovold in Larval brought me my first touring experiences and first-hand information about what was happening in New York, while he lived there and after. Bill also hipped me to No Wave, Brian Eno, and Arthur Russell -- indispensable influences that are essential to me.
The New York he told me about is the one I experience now, minus some of the challenges of urban blight and, instead, the problem of unchecked development. There are a lot of changes to the overall environment, but the community is still what it is. The difference is the folks who were youngsters then are now the guiding forces.
Q: For the new solo record, how did you come to work with these four composers? Was the idea always to put the pieces together as an album, or did it come together after the fact?
A: The project started at the Roulette holiday party in December 2012. Annie Gosfield, Jim Thirlwell, and I were chatting, and it struck me that a logical next step as a solo performer was to create a portrait of the porous, interactive community of artists in New York -- the one that led me to do what I do. Bill Brovold would always emphasize the way post-punk, the classical avant-garde, performance art, and avant-garde jazz overlapped in NYC. I wanted to make a record that reflected that reality.
Annie, Jim, Elliott Sharp, and Miya Masaoka are all composer-performers; all have made an indelible impression on how music is made. They all knew my work as an improviser, and I knew they would interface with what I'm doing in a way that would create a sort of "hybrid dimension," where the artistic practice is both conceptually and practically something that could not exist without the integration of our respective visions.
Q: What was it like "getting into the head" of these different pieces and what unique challenges did each pose? As different as they are, they all work really well together, and as out there as they can get, there's always something for the listener to hold on to.
A: I see this project as an effort to challenge myself, primarily, while presenting something enjoyable, educational, and inspiring for the audience. I always want my work to point to something beyond -- to lead people to go on an exploration of their own. I hope this sense of discovery comes across in the music. All these pieces were built on unusual things the composer and I found together looking under rocks. The various strategies the composers used were like a treasure map.
Annie loaded all my sounds into a sampler and transcribed the combinations she created. As a performer, that involved a lot of sounds I already knew how to make, but I'd never put them together the way she did, so I got to experience my own work in an unusual way.
Jim Thirlwell mixed a lot of interesting sounds he found with some of the improvisational environments I created, and we often blended them together, so the boundaries are quite porous in that piece.
Elliott's use of multiple bows is something he's explored with many bowed instruments, but this was a first for the bass, and it led to some very otherworldly discoveries.
And Miya Masaoka's use of Just Intonation ratios creates a sea of beautiful chords, executed entirely using harmonics. The bass simply does harmonics better than any other string instrument in the world. Miya's work, "Four Moons Of Pluto," conveys a sense of terrestrial bodies floating in space.
Q: For the Braxton record, what appealed to you about transcribing his work for bass and what keeps you interested in playing this music?
A: For me, Braxton's work still serves as the archetypal interface between sign and action. Braxton's notational systems inherently call the relationship between symbols and sounds into question, calling on the performer and listener to consider the hidden complexities between a thing and whatever that thing could mean. I saw the process of adapting his work to my instrument as a way of encoding his ideas into the fabric of my musical vocabulary.
Moreover, I'm doing this on the bass, an instrument whose role and sonic potential has repeatedly been redefined by various bassists who've worked with him over the last five decades. Dave Holland, John Lindberg, Mark Dresser, Rufus Reid, my good friend Carl Testa, and many others have all contributed to the growth of this instrument's vocabulary. I hope this record adds something to that as well.
Q: You recently worked with M. Lamar and Hunter Hunt-Hendrix on their Funeral Doom Spiritual project. This seems like a really intense, timely work with a lot of personalities involved. How did you get involved and what was the experience like?
A: I've known M. Lamar for a long time, since we were both still younger and getting our feet wet in the arts community in New York. He brought me in to lead a special version of my group The Anagram Ensemble, one focusing on drone, using low strings and brass to compliment Hunter's electronics and M. Lamar's beautiful falsetto.
I've always seen some relationships between Hunter's approach to harmony, rhythm, and texture in the constant speeding up and slowing down of tremolos in the guitars and drums in his band Liturgy. I absolutely wanted to communicate that in the string arrangements.
The work itself is so profound and so timely. It seems that everyday forces are pushing us closer to some time of terrible day of reckoning. M. Lamar's music offers a vision that has beauty along with the destruction.
Q: It seems like you keep plenty busy with collaborative projects of varying size and scope. What do these solo performances allow you to explore that gets you excited?
A: My interests are so vast, and our society's ability to access information is at such a high capacity right now. I don't see how anyone could possibly not respond to what's going on by diversifying their work as they refine their skills. For me, every single day presents a new challenge to get better at what I already know how to do and to push beyond my comfort zone into areas that will force me to reevaluate the limits of my perception.
This type of activity depends on collaboration. I have skills and discoveries that I can share with others, and they have something to share with me. Together we can find something new.
Q: This is a homecoming of sorts for you. Anything special planned for the Kerrytown show?
A: I do have one special treat in mind: I will be returning to a piece that professor Stephen Rush wrote for me in 2007, which I played at Kerrytown 10 years ago and will play again a few times on this trip. The piece is a tribute to Jimmy Giuffre, "Synchroma I (or 18 Ways)." The piece also offers references to Stockhausen, Braxton, Wilbur Ware; there's so much in this piece. I can't wait to play it again!
Eric Gallippo is an Ypsilanti-based freelance writer and a regular contributor to Concentrate Ann Arbor.
James Ilgenfritz plays Kerrytown Concert House on Wednesday, March 15, 8 pm. For tickets and more info, visit kerrytownconcerthouse.com. For Ilgenfritz's music and more, visit jamesilgenfritz.com.
Blog Post
The expanding light of British artist and Alternative Miss World founder Andrew Logan
by christopherporter
Artist Andrew Logan is probably best known as the founder, organizer, host, and hostess (he wears a costume split down the middle) of the Alternative Miss World, a "surreal art event for all-round family entertainment" he started 45 years ago in London.
Since then, he and a team of volunteers, including longtime partner Michael Davis, have staged a dozen more events for contestants of "any species, any size" competing in a dog-show-and-TV-beauty-pageant inspired dress-up party of daywear, swimwear, and eveningwear judged on "poise, personality, and originality." This longstanding celebration of transformation, imagination, and adult silliness is well-documented in the highly entertaining 2011 film The British Guide to Showing Off.
Some contestants -- many of whom are Logan's friends and family -- return year after year. Better known participants, serving as contestants or judges, have included film director Derek Jarman, artist Grayson Perry, and musician Brian Eno.
Logan is also a prolific visual artist who transforms metals, plaster, glass, and thrift-store finds into objects of "happiness and joy" in his U.K. studio with blue-collar dedication and eccentric flair. His works include large commissioned monuments, portraits of close friends, and wearable sculptures we might call jewelry. In the 1990s, he set up a small permanent display of his work in a remote part of Wales.
On Thursday, March 9, Logan will speak on his artistic adventure, the Alternative Miss World, and his "little museum" at the Michigan Theater as part of the Penny Stamps Distinguished Speaker Series.
Q: What first drew you to sculpture and making these fantastical things that you make, and what keeps you going?
A: I started making objects in my last two years of college, and my path was set.
Q: What were those first objects like?
A: I have one of the very early pieces that I made and it was called Homage to Megrit. It's basically a little prince, about two foot tall, covered in marble fablon, which is that plastic stuff, and on it sits a mannequin's bust. I studied architecture and my fellow students were using the bust. They lived in the country and they were using it as a target, so they were shooting it. So it had these wonderful explosions all over it. I rescued it and I painted clouds inside with blue sky and a little grass, so when you look inside the bust you see this little landscape.
The other one that's also in the museum is the Wave Pillar. We had something called "jumble sales" in the U.K., which were held in local church halls. I used to collect a lot of things, and one of the things I collected was a 1930s pink shell light. It was cast pink glass in the shape of a shell with a light in it. I got some cardboard and some UHU glue, and I had this mirror, and I took [the shell light] out into the road and smashed it, and then stuck it on this mirror, so it expanded the light enormously.
These are some of the first objects. When I came to London, I partook in an exhibition called "Ten Sitting Rooms" at the Institute of Contemporary Art. There were 10 of us, and we were given 100 pounds each and told to make an environment. Mine was all artificial grass everywhere. I had a sleeping horse as a [sofa]. I had a waterfall with huge flowers as lights and a coattail cabinet covered in artificial grass. Basically, I was bringing the country to the city.
Q: There's a lot of glass and reflective surfaces in your work. When and why were you first drawn to glass as a medium and what is its significance to you?
A: I was drawn to glass first because it glittered and now because it is a material of the cosmos and reflects universal light.
Q: Does spirituality play a role in your work, then?
A: Even though I do portraits and objects and all sorts of things, they're all very spiritual. I don't really do drawings for my sculptures. Everything comes from the cosmos. It just comes swinging down through space right down to my little studio, where I'm sitting waiting for answers, and they're given to me and I start work. I work virtually every day.
Q: I understand you've been traveling in India. What brought you there?
A: [Fashion designer] Zandra Rhodes brought me to India in 1982 and I’ve been going back every year since. I share a house in Goa. It's beautiful and warm. England is extremely cold and dark and wet, so I escape the winters. And I do a workshop in Jaipur for a week. It's called the Wonderful Workshops. I do something called "sparkling surfaces," and they also do miniature painting and cooking and [textiles] dying. Jaipur is the center of textiles and jewelry and things in India. It's called "The Pink City."
Q: It sounds like you have a lot of opportunities to work there. What other projects of note are you working on now?
A: I completed a large one last year for the new Mumbai Airport. It's a 45-foot-long installation. A friend of mine, Rajeev Sethi, has curated about 1.5 kilometers of art in this airport. It's designed by Skidmore, Owings & Merrill architects. It's very beautiful. But in it are these canyons of art, of which I have a piece. It's called The Guardian Angels of India. It's basically those that sort of formed India, so Ghandi and Satyajit Ray, Ravi Shankar, Krishnamurti. They're these wall portraits that I do. This year I'm possibly working on a mobile for a hotel in Aros City, which is next to the Delhi Airport.
Q: Talking about public art, you once said, "Contemporary art is very clever, but it just leaves me cold … what we need is joy, which is what my work is about." Why do you think so little joy is expressed in public art?
A: Interest in most public sculptures is formed by committees. The committees are usually people who are very involved in the art market world, certainly in this country. I never thought the markets were very joyous. We have a few years on this earth, we should be celebrating it, not fighting and doing everything everyone does. It's a bit wrong, really. Anyhow, that's my message.
Q: That celebration plays really well into this happening you've been doing with the Alternative Miss World. I'm not sure if you really compare it to Andy Warhol, but I see Warhol's happenings as being a little colder and yours being more inclusive.
A: I think in a way you're right; I mean, I do come from that period. I used to go and visit Andy in the '70s when I used to go to New York. Very much so, I think it's that feeling that he was much colder. That didn't really interest me.
Q: What keeps the Alternative Miss World interesting? You've done it all these years and you have another one planned for next year.
A: It won't be done till I die. I think I'll be carried out on a stretcher or something, still as host and hostess. It's just a magic event. There's no rehearsal, so you never know how it's going to turn out. It's always only for one night, so it's really six-month's work for only one night. I create all the alternative crown jewels, and I find the venue, but there are lots of people involved and no one ever gets paid, really. It's always just done purely for the joy of living.
Q: What do you have planned? Do you have a theme?
A: I do have a theme: "Psychedelic Peace." I thought peace was a good one. I usually have these themes, and I thought this was a bit needed. It will be held at Shakespeare's Globe. The actual dates are yet to be confirmed.
Q: One scene that struck me in The British Guide to Showing Off is when someone suggests more celebrity involvement in the event, and you stand your ground, saying it has always been about real people. Why is that so important to you?
A: The people who have always been involved in the event are not there because they're a celebrity; it's because of what they are, what they do. They could be a celebrity, but that doesn't mean anything to me or to the event. People would suggest I get a celebrity to raise the profile of the event, and every time I tried I would come across this brick wall, and rather unpleasant as well, and I thought, "Life's too short for this. I don't want any of that."
Q: How has the Alternative Miss World adapted to changes in society over time?
A: It's always remained constant in its approach. It's just fascinating. Logistically, things like finding a venue, which in the '70s was extremely easy, now it's more and more difficult to find. I've always tried to change the venue every time. It sort of comes down to practical things.
Q: But on the inside you're trying to maintain a certain timelessness.
A: Definitely timeless. That just comes by the nature of how I put the event on and everything. Some of the early ones could be now. You can't really identify dates as such.
Q: Why do you think it endures so well?
A: People never forget it. The children of people who entered the first one have entered and even their children are now involved. It's just passing from generation to generation. It's so fleeting; it's just those few hours, and everyone remembers it. Whether it's for good or for bad is another matter, but they never forget it.
Eric Gallippo is an Ypsilanti-based freelance writer and a regular contributor to Concentrate Ann Arbor.
Andrew Logan appears at the Penny Stamps Speaker Series, presented by the Penny W. Stamps School of Art & Design, at the Michigan Theater, 603 E. Liberty, on Thursday, March 9 at 5:10 pm. The event is free.
Blog Post
Get H.I.P. with Kahil El'Zabar's Ethnic Heritage Ensemble at Kerrytown Concert House
by christopherporter
After graduating college and spending a year abroad in Ghana, Kahil El'Zabar came home to Chicago excited to tell his dad what he wanted to do with his life.
"I’m gonna play in a badass band," El'Zabar recalled telling him. "No bass, no piano, no guitar, no chromatic chordal instrument to set the tonic sensibility of the music."
His new vision called for a tonal center set by the "various rhythmic impulses" and "harmonic syntax of the music," African influences, and "urban contemporary expression" from his own experience.
"And he says, 'Man, it sounds hip, boy. But you’ll never make a living.'"
Forty-some years later, the jazz percussionist, composer, and bandleader's "hip" project, The Ethnic Heritage Ensemble, is still going, as is his Ritual Trio. El'Zabar's resume also includes work with jazz giants Dizzy Gillespie, Cannonball Adderley, and Archie Shepp as well as stints with Stevie Wonder and Paul Simon. (His dad came around, too, by the way).
The Ethnic Heritage Ensemble, which for this tour includes longtime collaborator Corey Wilkes on trumpet and new baritone saxophonist Alex Harding, plays Ann Arbor's Kerrytown Concert House on Monday, February 27, as part of its "EHE, Let It Be Free 2017" tour.
At 63, El'Zabar doesn't seem to be slowing any. Talking by phone from a hotel in San Francisco earlier this month, he laid out his itinerary for the next few days: a second Bay-Area gig followed by a red-eye flight to Chicago and a drive to Champaign-Urbana for a show the next day, then back-to-back dates in Chicago, Cincinnati, Pittsburgh, and Montreal.
"I think I’m very lucky, " he said. "I’m pretty healthy at my age, and I’m doing something I love to do."
It's a good time of year for the Ensemble to be on the road, where El'Zabar has spent every February since 1973.
"It became Black History Month about that time, and I had a band called 'The Ethnic Heritage Ensemble' that kind of fit everyone’s MO for what they wanted, so it ended up being a period where it was easy to book 20-plus concerts," El'Zabar said. "Especially in the '80s. It was like everybody had to have that band at that period."
Some cities and venues -- like Oakland's Eastside Arts Alliance -- have been on the tour every year from the start. Other stops, such as Washington, D.C., and Erie, Pennsylvania, are going on 20-plus years.
“We’ve really developed community, friendships, [and] relationships, and watched generations develop listening to The Ethnic Heritage Ensemble," he said.
El'Zabar credits early demand for the group to its range, clarity, and flexibility with limited instrumentation ("basically just two horns and a drum") as well as its commitment to relevant themes and historical references that connect with people.
"And we were fun," he said. "In the early ‘80s, before the classical jazz marketing idea came in, the so-called ‘avant-gardes’ were the heroes of the music, because people considered [us] really in the tradition of Charlie Parker or [Thelonious] Monk or pioneers that took a different approach than what was known. Toward the later '80s, the marketing of the 'correct way' to play the music was so heavily presented, and young players had almost a corporate sensibility at that point. I mean [they] even physically looked like bankers and accountants and lawyers, and things really, really changed."
El'Zabar played his first gig at 16, drumming with tenor saxman Gene Ammons, and he cited work with guys like Eddie Harris, Adderley, and Gillespie when he said, "I understand the importance of tunes, of bebop and hard bop, the importance of swing, which I think has been one of the successes of my music. At the same time, I didn’t see it as the badge of authority in regards to my value as a creative exponent of the music. What I learned from those obvious masters was a desire to extend the voice, to transcend the information into a new possibility, and to take pride in originality and individuality."
In the early '70s, El'Zabar joined Chicago's famed Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM) and became its chairman in 1975. The nonprofit organization is best-known for fostering new takes on jazz, classical, and world music as well as its ties to great "out" players like Anthony Braxton, The Art Ensemble of Chicago, and cofounder Muhal Richard Abrams.
But it was a Chicago big-band leader named Bill Abernathy who, as a teenager, set El'Zabar on the atypical path from percussionist to composer and bandleader.
"He said, 'You have a real keen musical insight, and you’re a good percussionist, but if you learn to read and you learn theory, you can take your musical ideas and convey them to other people," El'Zabar said. "That stuck with me."
Drummers have often led bands -- Buddy Rich, Art Blakey, Max Roach, and Tony Williams to name just a few -- but percussionists are often sidelined to auxiliary, accompanist status.
"I try to bring the value of a kalimba or an African hand drum; that it can be a leading voice in a compositional setting, that it can be played off in terms of its melodicism," El'Zabar said. "There are several compositions where you’ll hear patterns that are structured, where they become the syntax of how the melody and, eventually, the solos reference from what I’m playing. And many times I’m the soloist in those kinds of settings as well."
With Harding in the mix for the first time on this trip, the group benefits from a fresh but familiar perspective. The Detroit-born, New York-based saxophonist was a student of Hamiet Bluiett, another of El'Zabar's longtime collaborators who has played with the Ensemble, and Harding's been playing in the Broadway production of Fela! about iconic Nigerian musician and activist Fela Kuti for years.
"He’s got all the Afrobeat stuff obviously down, he’s got all the trad-jazz stuff down, he has avant-garde sensibilities," El'Zabar said. "And what I love about him is that he’s a very loving person; that you can feel that energy in his playing, and he's extremely supportive with his instrument. My instrument a lot of times is associated with the rhythm section, so the pockets have been bananas, man."
Concertgoers can expect the group to cover a lot of ground, but there's a good chance they'll hear at least one familiar bebop number. For the last several years, the Ensemble has been doing its take on Dizzy Gillespie's "Bebop," but this time out, the trio is digging into the "extraordinary changes and progressions" of Sonny Stitt's "The Eternal Triangle."
"The bop cats to me are just the epitome of what I call, 'The Highly Intelligent Perspective: H.I.P.' They were hip beyond being hip," El'Zabar said. "So we always try to investigate the hipness of that form and play it structurally, but with different instrumentation than people might be familiar with."
Another tune he's excited about is an original composition penned more than 25 years ago called "Great Black Music" that's never been fully realized until now.
"It’s always been a vamp, you know, just this groove, but I could never actually find the guys that could play all the nuances of the composition," he said. "We’re doing it now on tour, and it’s been knocking them out."
El'Zabar started booking this current run of gigs last August, but he says the subsequent election and recent national events have proven his instinct correct by naming the tour "Let It Be Free 2017."
"It’s a time to really value, and for Americans to educate themselves to, what the political significance of being free is supposed to be in accord with our constitution," El'Zabar said. "It’s really hit home with a lot of people, just a mantra of 'be free.'"
The tour name's original intent was more about breaking free from mediocrity, conspicuous consumption, and the mundane, and El'Zabar still hopes to encourage listeners in that way, too.
"It’s a consciousness-raising time," he said. "Any way I can be instrumental or useful or helpful in that way, I am a community servant."
Eric Gallippo is an Ypsilanti-based freelance writer and a regular contributor to Concentrate Ann Arbor.
Kahil El'Zabar's Ethnic Heritage Ensemble plays Kerrytown Concert House on Monday, February 27, 8 pm. For tickets and more info, visit kerrytownconcerthouse.com. For El'Zabar's music and more, visit kahilelzabar.net.
Blog Post
Behind the Black Star: Jonathan Barnbrook's Stamps talk at the Michigan Theater
by christopherporter
Designing album covers for a legendary musician has its perils and its perks. According to Jonathan Barnbrook, they're sometimes one in the same.
"Can you imagine how scary it is to have David Bowie sitting next to you when you're listening to his album?" the British graphic designer asked the audience at Ann Arbor's Michigan Theater on Thursday, February 9. "He's going, 'What do you think?'"
As the crowd laughed, Barnbrook's tone shifted from comedic to grateful: "It's actually fantastic."
The self-described "non-designer" was in Ann Arbor as part of the Penny Stamps Distinguished Speaker series. In addition to his collaborations with Bowie, Barnbrook's often-humorous talk covered highlights from his career, including his anti-corporate work with Adbusters magazine in the early '00s, the creation of several well-known fonts, and political and socially minded exhibits and campaigns, including his logo for the Occupy London movement.
Barnbrook is probably best known for designing the covers of Bowie's last four albums, including 2013's The Next Day and 2016's ★ (which Barnbrook clarified is not named Blackstar, as it's commonly known), released just before the musician died of cancer last year, and he bookended his hourlong talk with stories about the creative process and the very different public reactions to each.
The divisive The Next Day artwork infamously repurposed the cover of Bowie's 1977 classic Heroes with a big white square covering the singer's face in the iconic black and white portrait. Many critics and fans complained the cover looked slapped together and even accused Barnbrook of trolling them with it.
But Barnbrook explained, and showed the drafts to prove, it took several rounds of revisions and back and forth with Bowie to come up with the simple design that played on the artist's 10-year absence from music at the time and also nodded to Bowie's time in Berlin in the 1970s.
For ★, the artist shared he was partly inspired by a conversation he'd had with a drunken William S. Burroughs while he was in still college. He had asked the famed beat poet and novelist, "What is the future of typography?"
Burroughs replied: "Something between Egyptian hieroglyphs and airport pictograms for the next 10,000 years."
The typefaces and graphics from the artwork -- its fragmented star shapes below the main image star actually spell out "Bowie," Barnbrook noted -- were made free to download for non-commercial use, and fans around the world have used them to pay tribute to the singer, some going as far as to have it tattooed.
Acknowledging the mostly student crowd, Barnbrook warned that a lot of design work is being asked to lie and "kiss corporate ass." Many of the jobs he and his firm take are in the cultural sector because it "does the least amount of damage."
In 1999, Barnbrook and 25 other designers signed the First Things First 2000 Manifesto, speaking out against some of that damage they saw being done.
"Design suddenly was catching onto globalization and introducing this idea of paying celebrities millions of dollars for endorsements, but the [products are] made in a sweatshop," Barnbrook said."To me, this is a vile, vile way of working."
Barnbrook encouraged the designers in the audience to "be brave" and do the work for which they want to be known and hired for instead of compiling a portfolio they aren't happy with and will be expected to replicate later. He also reminded them that nearly half of the job is getting people to see your work and said young creatives can't expect people to find them.
"You have to write to people you want to work with; you have to be active," he said.
To read about the rest of this season's Penny Stamps series, read our preview, "From Rubik's Cube to Roller Coaster: Penny Stamps Speaker Series, Winter 2017."
Eric Gallippo is an Ypsilanti-based freelance writer and a regular contributor to Concentrate Ann Arbor.
Blog Post
Shock Values: Duane gets political, goes electric as Jet Black Eel
by christopherporter
If there's any doubt what Detroit musician and performance artist Duane Gholston is up to with his new look and sound, the snippet from a Don King speech that opens his recent single, "When the Eel Accepts Your Invitation" is a pretty solid clue.
"You got to try to imitate and emulate the white man, and then you can be successful," the notorious boxing promoter -- and Donald Trump supporter -- is heard saying, before a classic honky-tonk shuffle and meandering lap-steel lick ushers in Duane the Jet Black Eel, the 24-year-old's latest persona and "first truly conceptual project."
"It's a young queer person of color taking on the classic vision of America (when it was 'great,' according to some red hats, LOL)," Duane wrote in an email to Pulp. "A bunch of rock 'n' roll songs taking on both conservative and neoliberal politics, homophobia in the black community, and systematic racism in America."
Blog Post
From Rubik's Cube to Roller Coaster: Penny Stamps Speaker Series, Winter 2017
by christopherporter
For the last 12 years, Chrisstina Hamilton has been working out a puzzle of sorts for thousands of people to enjoy. As director of visitors' programs for the University of Michigan's STAMPS School of Art & Design, Hamilton organizes the school's popular Penny Stamps Speaker Series.
"It's sort of like this 3-D Rubik's Cube kind of thing when you're trying to put it together, and it's incredibly difficult because you lose pieces here and there," Hamilton said. "People want to line up, and you think, 'We can't have this come after that.' But somehow, miraculously, it ends up all coming together."
The free guest speaker series takes place Thursdays at Ann Arbor's Michigan Theatre (with a few exceptions) and features artists that represent a spectrum of media, backgrounds, and viewpoints.
The winter 2017 season gets underway this week and follows on a successful fall 2016 run, which included a surprisingly chatty Mark Mothersbaugh (Hamilton had been told the artist, composer, and Devo frontman could be shy in front of crowds, but not so here: "He just told story after story," she said. "We could barely get him off the stage") and the series' first foray into hosting satellite events in neighboring Ypsilanti.
Hamilton said the big challenge every season is making it "incredibly diverse" in terms of mediums people work with and perspectives they offer, as well as gender, and race.
In addition to breadth, the series goes for depth, Hamilton said, poking at the big questions of gender issues, race, science, and technology, and how those affect all of us, "so we can have a conversation about it, before all of a sudden we find ourselves in the middle of everything."
For example, the biohacking work of artist Heather Dewey-Hagborg, who creates portrait sculptures based on analyzed genetic material left behind in public spaces, like old gum or cigarette butts.
"This work using people's DNA is really sort of cutting edge and making people start to think about things they haven't thought about before in terms of what we're unlocking with all of this," Hamilton said.
And then there's stuff that's just really cool, like Jonathan Barnbrook, the graphic designer best known for his work with David Bowie over the last 30 years.
Barnbrook designed the critically acclaimed art for Bowie's last and final album, Blackstar, which was released on Bowie's 69th birthday, January 8, 2016. The iconic rockstar died two days later from liver cancer.
"I'd actually been talking to him before Bowie passed, but in that moment, all of a sudden the whole thing takes on a whole nother meaning," Hamilton said.
Blackstar's artwork is nominated for a Grammy, and Barnbrook's talk is the Thursday before the awards ceremony.
"We always love it when those kind of things line up, and it feels like the Penny Stamps season has got the pulse of the moment here," Hamilton said. "Some things are planned, and others are just serendipity."
Another serendipitous moment comes this month, when comics journalist and graphic novelist Joe Sacco talks about "Galvanizing Social Justice Through Comics" on the eve of president-elect Donald Trump's inauguration.
Best known for his foreign correspondence in the Middle East and Eastern Europe, Sacco teamed with author Chris Hedges for 2012's Days of Destruction, Days of Revolt. Documenting the plights of America's Indian reservations, inner cities, manufacturing centers, farmworkers, and coal miners, the book could have been a collection of headlines from 2016.
Hamilton said a similar, unexpected connection was made by chance last November, when Stamps hosted three events by Athi-Patra Ruga, all during election week. The South African performance artist's playful, colorful, work explores themes of cultural identity, utopia, and dystopia.
"It ended up that Athi was sort of the perfect antidote to all of the topsy-turvyness of what happened at the election," Hamilton said. "I think people that attended those events really got a lot out of that."
For some lesser-known names that shouldn't be overlooked this season, Hamilton points to Andrew Logan, an art scene veteran and something of a creative guru to the likes of Bowie, Brian Eno, and several other musicians and celebrities over his long career.
"He's really just an incredible, eccentric individual who has lived a very creative life in art and has inspired a lot of people to follow their creative path, and I'm super pleased and honored to have him on the season," she said.
By chance, Logan's talk is followed by Saya Woolfalk, who Hamilton sees as a sort-of spiritual successor to him. The New York-based artist is said to "create worlds" using science fiction and fantasy to reimagine societies.
More surprises and unexpected connections are sure to come, but you may have to forgive Hamilton if you put her on the spot to name them when the season's wrapped, especially with a new one around the corner to tend to.
"Once a season starts it's like a roller coaster," she said. "By the time you get to the end of it, you feel like you've got whiplash or something."
Penny Stamps Speaker Series, Winter 2017
Events are free and held at Michigan Theatre on Thursdays starting at 5:10 p.m. unless noted otherwise; each speaker's name below is hyperlinked to the Stamps' page for the event:
➥ Jan. 12 - Robert Platt, interdisciplinary artist and STAMPS assistant professor of Art & Design,
➥ Jan. 17 - Meredith Monk, composer, singer, director, choreographer, and filmmaker (Tuesday)
➥ Jan. 19 - Joe Sacco, graphic novelist and comics journalist
➥ Jan. 26 - Hank Willis Thomas, photo conceptual artist
➥ Feb. 2- Sara Hendren, artist, designer and researcher
➥ Feb. 9 - Jonathan Barnbrook, graphic designer
➥ Feb. 16 - Ping Chong, director, playwright, and pioneer of media use in theater
➥ March 9 - Andrew Logan, artist and "scene maker"
➥ March 16 - Saya Woolfolk, multimedia artist and "world builder"
➥ March 20 - Tracey Snelling, installation artist (Monday, at UMMA Helmut Stern Auditorium)
➥ March 23 - New Negress Film Society
➥ March 30 - Karim Rashid, product and commercial designer
➥ April 6 - Heather Dewey-Hagborg, transdisciplinary artist and educator
➥ April 19 - Doug Miro, screenwriter (Wednesday, at Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit)
Eric Gallippo is an Ypsilanti-based freelance writer and a regular contributor to Concentrate Ann Arbor.