Waylon 4

I went driving around the area today, interacting with the Island to get material for my next video. My first stop was Walmart – the Centereach Walmart. Now the Walmarts in my area each have a different personality, and I think the difference has to do with the average income of the clientele. The Walmart on 347 must draw a crowd from the 25A region – the people who could stand going to a more expensive store every once and a while, but we’re thrifty and go to Walmart. Centereach seems to draw a crowd whose economics, for whatever reason, need to shop there.

While I was driving around, I popped on the public radio and listened to an Expert talk about how great cities are. I can’t remember his name, or where he works, or what his book’s called, but he spoke with an authority that exuded Expertness. He posited that urban poverty is actually a good sign. He argued this by saying that impoverished people move to the city for greater economic opportunities. The part he leaves out is whether the people were poor when they got here, or were born here into poverty and stay poor. I don’t know what the case is in Long Island, but it would be worth finding out.

I could even expand the question to ask, “Where do all these people come from? Are they really just overflow from NYC, or is there something else going on here? What is it, exactly, that makes Long Island such a desirable place to live?” I’m here for Stony Brook University and the proximity to the City, but I’m a non-permanent visitor. How does one become a Long Islander, and why does one start the process?

A Feminist Nation

Our discussion about feminism in class today got me thinking about how the lives of women have changed over the years. The woman's right movement clashed with the liberal movement. This lead to women acting out in ways never accepted before. They were labeled "sexual deviants" by their elders even got pills to prevent pregnancy. This was an outrage because not only was sex supposed to take place only in marriage, but the purpose of it was to procreate. Woman have become liberated.
Previously we had to obey our husbands no matter how badly they treated us, because without them we would have been old maids with 20 cats working as a secretary if we were lucky. The husbands were out in the public sphere working and interacting with others. Woman were stuck in the private sphere bored to tears. I should not speak for all of them because I am sure many felt very fulfilled cooking, cleaning and providing comfort for their families. I assume that I would be jealous of my husbands adventures outside the home. Yes, being a lady of leisure would be very stress free, very different from the world of woman today, who work full time and continue to do the work a housewife in the 50s did. However when a person is in a state of "idle" for a long period of time, depression is likely to occur.
A lot has changed in the lives of woman, but the double standard still exists. Yesterday at work I learned about the "red lobster whore". A girl I work with apparently sleeps around. Everyone, including myself were gossiping about her lack of virtue. Why is it that we did not bring up the guys she was sleeping with? What about one guy I work with who slept with two people we work with that I know of..why doesn't anyone call him a whore? I do not think the double standard will ever change because it would have already.

Creative Live Workshops - Annika deGroot

I wanted to turn you guys on to a great online education-oriented company called Creative Live. On their website are offerings for free webinars on how to use software programs like Adobe's Creative Suite and learning photography stuff like studio lighting techniques and how to photograph children. The one catch is you have to tune in when they are actually giving the webinar; if you do, it's free. If you can't, you can always buy their webinars later.

Tomorrow is a workshop for mastering the Canon T2i. If you've been thinking of purchasing a Canon Rebel T2i, you might want to tune in, but remember to register first by going to FREE Workshop: Canon Rebel T2i / 550D - DSLR Fast Start
. I'm a big fan of these people and have learned some great stuff from them over the past few years, namely how to create iPhone applications, a refresher course on CSS, and how to up my skills in Photoshop and InDesign. I even sat through a weekend-long workshop on Studio Lighting techniques because my knowledge of studio lighting for still work was woefully outdated. I took 56 pages of notes during that weekend!

I've been thinking of giving back to them by teaching a jewelry-making course with them if they think there is a big enough audience world-wide for such a thing. I know they've done workshops in watercolor...

Annika1

I'm possibly the oldest grad student in this department at Stony Brook University. Yup, older than God. I can’t remember a time when I wasn’t blissing out creating something or another. I’m passionately intrigued by glassblowing , holography, pinhole photography, marbling paper and silk, calligraphy, watercolors, bookbinding, medieval illumination, and jewelry design; it took me a couple of decades to realize I was an interdisciplinary artist. Who wants to wallow in artistic monogamy anyway?

I've been through several incarnations career wise, from film producer/editor to Website Manager at Microsoft, to jewelry crafts book author and now as a candidate for the MFA in Dramaturgy at SBU.
Yup, still leading a remarkable life.

Lately I’ve been fascinated by spool knitting thin-gauge copper wire (28 to 32) and have been cranking out jewelry pieces and household items like beaded wire lampshades. I’ve got this current obsession to create new fabrics in my life, stringing elements together in a continuum that keeps going and going.

Thinking about using this wire mesh fabric for the inset panels down the front of Elizabethan gowns, or perhaps using freeform lace like this panel:

Waylon 2

And I got to see the Thunderbird American Indian Dancers annual winter concert again last night! It was as good as last time, and pretty similar. I’m pretty sure Louis Mofsie can moderate it in his sleep. But what were new (at least to me) this year were the storytellers – Elvira and Hortensia Colorado of the Chichimec and Otomi people in Mexico. I talked to them a bit during the intermission, and they suggested that I get in touch with the American Indian Community House here in New York. They told me that when I have a show I should let AICH know so they can put an announcement out about it. I don’t know if American Decameron would count, since it’s not Native theater, but I can always check.

Like a painter can learn about her craft by looking at paintings, or a musician about his by listening to somebody else play, I love to see other people tell stories. It seems like here in the SBU theater department there’s a huge focus on strong and exciting visual staging. But, when I see other storytellers perform, I’m reminded that a good and charismatic performer with a simple and subdued backdrop is really all you need for compelling staging. Elvira and Hortensia’s strongest visuals came from their acting out their stories on stage. They did have some augmenting staging from their Mexican dresses – indicative of their people, and the Northwest-patterned blanket hanging in the back, left over from the Caribou dance at the top of the evening.

So I’m not as drawn to vivid visuals as many of my colleagues here at Stony Brook. But I do wonder what all my options are in terms of the subtle staging that I prefer. That is the major reason that I’m in Philip’s class: while I may not be sold on his affinity for the internet and other new media, I do see in it a potential to strengthen the theatricality of my own storytelling. Last semester I used backdrop projections of old family photos from the Klamath River in the Stony Brook version of “Stories of Our People.” What else can I do? The next logical step from photos, in my mind is video. What if I created a kaleidoscope of Klamath River basket designs to project on every surface for a telling of “Greedy Father”? I’m thinking about using photo and video projections of I-80 for a telling of “Coyote Hunts the Sun”. I could also use, in version of “Stories of Our People,” a juxtaposition of Western films (a white telling of the stories of Contact) with the oral narrative of those same events that Julian and I used in the initial versions of “Stories.”

Waylon 1

I just got started looking at grants on COS this morning. This grant-writing aspect of the course is a surprise for me – a welcome surprise. When I was in San Diego with “Stories of Our People,” my collaborator Julian Lang said something that I’ve been thinking about since. He said, “Every artist needs a business wing to their operation.” It makes sense, I’d just never thought of it that way before. Julian’s an expert, or course – he’s the one that wrangled up the funding for our airfare to get to San Diego, and he’s an expert on finding grants to fund his various projects. But where am I to learn these lucrative skills?
I got on to Solar this winter and thought about changing my schedule around to take a small business start-up class here at SBU. But they didn’t offer that exact thing, and the closest alternatives required me to be a business student. So no dice there. Then I got a little frustrated at our program. Don’t get me wrong, the theory and practice classes are useful, and they get me started on some neat projects like “Stories of Our People.” But if we don’t know how to fund ourselves then we’re going to end up folding sweaters at Bloomingdales, and then what’s the point of grad school? I thought, “What our program really needs is a business class.” So imagine my delight when Philip tells us that we’re going to learn how to write grants in his class!
But, returning to COS, I did my initial searches on “Native theatre,” and “Native theater,” and “Native (or) Native American (or) Indian storytelling,” and “folk (or) ethnic performance.” There’s a lot of interesting possibilities, but one in particular looks pretty enticing. It’s an “Expressive Arts” grant through NMAI for collaborations between Native artists for up to $10,000. If Julian and I decided to continue with “Stories” and start dramatizing other families’ oral histories along California State Highway 96, this could just be the dollars to do it.

Waylon 1

I just got started looking at grants on COS this morning. This grant-writing aspect of the course is a surprise for me – a welcome surprise. When I was in San Diego with “Stories of Our People,” my collaborator Julian Lang said something that I’ve been thinking about since. He said, “Every artist needs a business wing to their operation.” It makes sense, I’d just never thought of it that way before. Julian’s an expert, or course – he’s the one that wrangled up the funding for our airfare to get to San Diego, and he’s an expert on finding grants to fund his various projects. But where am I to learn these lucrative skills?
I got on to Solar this winter and thought about changing my schedule around to take a small business start-up class here at SBU. But they didn’t offer that exact thing, and the closest alternatives required me to be a business student. So no dice there. Then I got a little frustrated at our program. Don’t get me wrong, the theory and practice classes are useful, and they get me started on some neat projects like “Stories of Our People.” But if we don’t know how to fund ourselves then we’re going to end up folding sweaters at Bloomingdales, and then what’s the point of grad school? I thought, “What our program really needs is a business class.” So imagine my delight when Philip tells us that we’re going to learn how to write grants in his class!
But, returning to COS, I did my initial searches on “Native theatre,” and “Native theater,” and “Native (or) Native American (or) Indian storytelling,” and “folk (or) ethnic performance.” There’s a lot of interesting possibilities, but one in particular looks pretty enticing. It’s an “Expressive Arts” grant through NMAI for collaborations between Native artists for up to $10,000. If Julian and I decided to continue with “Stories” and start dramatizing other families’ oral histories along California State Highway 96, this could just be the dollars to do it.