2

3

“Whosoever isdelighted in solitudeis either a wild beast

or a god”

–Francis Bacon

4

8101422263436424448

Subscribe now at: www.undefinedmagazine.com

substance

strokes

American Gun

Michaela Pilar Brown

Piccolo Spoleto Festival

undefined magazine is copyrighted and may not be reproduced in any manner, in whole or in part, without the publisher's written permission.Write us at: undefined Magazine 709 Woodrow Street : 321 : Columbia, SC 29205 803.386.9031

©2011 All Rights Reserved

These pages are the labor of many talented hands, from writing, design and editing, to sales and marketing. We encourage youto contact us with any feedback or story ideas at our website. Please support the artists, your community leaders andadvertisers. For advertising information please contact us at: 803.386.9031 or ads@undefinedmagazine.com

Kendal Turner

Ed Madden … Poetry Editor

Kyle Petersen … Music Editor

Jay Quantz … Lead Photographer

Michael Miller … Writer

Scott Bilby … Photographer

Thomas Hammond … Photographer

Jonathan Sharpe … Photographer

Laura Bousman ... Design Intern/Logo

contributors

on the cover: Alex Smith photographed by Scott Bilby (mua: Jade Johnson)

Stephen Chesley

Andi Hearn and Davey Mathias

Alex Smith

Cynthia Boiter … Associate Editor

Mark Pointer … Associate Editor

Kristine Hartvigsen … Managing Editor

Reliquarium for a Dream

Poetry

Book Twelve : 2011

5

A message from the editors.

On March 21st, local Columbia dancer and musician StevenFerguson was unloading books from the back of his car to returnto the Main Branch of the Richland County Public Library when,out of the blue, an automobile hit the car behind him, pinninghim between the vehicles, twisting and crushing his legs in theprocess. It was the kind of freak, horrible accident that shouldn’thappen to anyone, least of all someone whose legs are sofundamentally connected to his livelihood.

Many of us in the arts community had seen Steven on thestage before – either playing the trumpet or dancing as a guestartist with a local company or his own group, Culture Splash.His dancing is powerful – athletic and gently lyrical at the sametime. Though he came late to dance and doesn’t have a lifetimeof classical training behind him, the energy he brings to hisperformances makes him one of the most moving and beautifuldancers we have seen. A man of integrity and sweet spirit, too,Steven’s combination of talent and character make him evenmore valuable to our community of artists, arts lovers,and friends.

The news of Steven’s injuries spread quickly, and cries went upalmost immediately from different segments of Columbia’s artscoterie with questions of how we could help. Steven’s closefriend, film producer Lee Ann Kornegay, became the pointperson and liaison between Steven and his concerned friends. Ina matter of days, three fundraisers were organized: one in whichchildren would dance, another for professional artists toperform, and one more for those of us who sometimes have tostand and watch.

The results? Well, with the shameful costs of health care,certainly not as much as we wish it could be. But more thanmoney, the aftermath of a circle of likeminded people coming tothe aid of one of their own benefits so many more than just therecipient of the gesture. It reminds us not only of the fragility ofartistic aptitude but of its fervor and capacity. It reaffirms theoutstretched branches of our family of artists and arts lovers and

makes us look a little more appreciatively and, yes, a little morelovingly, at one another.

It is not an exaggeration to say that we at undefined are bothhonored and humbled to be a part of this growing body of artistsand individuals who have made the conscious effort to make thearts a part of their lives. We are committed to making our ownunique contribution to the efforts made by so many fine artspeople before us, and so many artists and patrons workingdiligently in that direction today. It’s not that hard to do.

Because like the chef in his kitchen and the tailor in her shop,the product of our work is only as good as the raw ingredients wehave to work with. Like the man once said, “you can put lipstickon a pig, but …” Luckily, the local artists we feature inundefined need no adornments at all – we’re just happy to beable to present them in their natural glory.

It all goes back to the old adage about the whole being greaterthan the sum of its parts. If this magazine is good, it is goodbecause of the artists and projects we profile in our pages. Visualartists, performing artists, writers, and designers from Columbiaand beyond are not only flourishing individually, but they arecoming out of the caves of their studios – and their disciplines –to support one another and become patrons of theirfellow artists.

Much like Steven Ferguson and the other talented peopleprofiled in the pages of this issue of undefined – there is anauthenticity to the artists who are making names for themselvesin Columbia and the Carolinas. If undefined magazine can helpto build a platform on which this community of outstandingartists and art lovers can continue to grow and thrive – well,we’re just happy to hold a hammer.

Thank you for picking up another issue of undefined.Donations continue to be accepted for Steven and may be sentto Steven Ferguson Gift Donation, P. O. Box 1321, Columbia,South Carolina, 29202. We’ll see you next issue – in themeantime, take care of one another, and take care of yourselves.

undefined magazine

6

7Photograph by James Quantz

8

Among the recipients of the 2011 Elizabeth O’Neill Verner Governor’sAwards for the Arts is the Columbia-based artist, Heidi Darr-Hope.

One of the 14 original artists who moved into Vista Studios at 80808 LadyStreet back in the day, beginning the familiar cycle of gentrification of an areafrom the sketchy part of town that it was to the almost-too-hip district it isnow, Darr-Hope was a trail-blazer then and continues to make her own pathby walking it today. Her art and workshops on spiritual centeredness andhealing icons have touched innumerable lives. With a talent for excavatingand interpreting the sacred and the profane, and all that dwells between,Darr-Hope has built a career of significant consequence in the arts that allowsher to do good work and share it with others, both in the US and abroad.

The annual Verner Awards for outstanding achievement and contributionsto the arts in South Carolina are the highest honor given by the state to anyartist or arts organization. The awards were presented on May 5th at a noonceremony at the State House and celebrated the evening before with a gala atthe Grand Hall of 701 Whaley Street. Others individuals honored includeTommy Wyche of Greenville, Mary Jackson of Johns Island, Terry Hunter ofOrangeburg, Steven Rosenberg of Charleston, and Linda Stern of Columbia.

For more on the artist Heidi Darr-Hope go to: www.undefinedmagazine.comand turn to page 64 of Book 2.

Michaela Pilar Brown is the kind of visual artistwhose work makes some viewers squirm. Unafraid ofthe difficult and sensitive social issues so many of usavoid, Pilar Brown bravely confronts our culture’smost challenging questions regarding equality, andthe lack thereof, taking on sexism, racism, ageism,religion, beauty, and class as these issues form thefoundations of social stratification. Her work ispotent and profound, often alarming, and sometimesintimidating. Invariably, it is beautiful.

For these reasons and more, Michaela PilarBrown is the winner of the 2011 ContemporariesArtist of the Year undefined magazine Award. Herphotograph, Pugilist, was chosen from 100submissions by 50 artists on May 5th by the editors ofundefined magazine. The Contemporaries of theColumbia Museum of Art is a membership division

comprised of a large group of youngish professionals with the explicit goals of promoting the museum and diversifying its member-ship. Charleston artist Dorothy Netherland was awarded the Contemporaries Artist of the Year Award by judges Karen Ann Myers, J.J. Ohlinger, Robert Lange, and Wim Roefs. Bryan S. Burgin was selected by popular vote as the winner of the People’s Choice Award.

For a more in-depth look at Brown and the ideology behind her work, read Kristine Hartvigsen’s article on page 14 of this issue ofundefined. For more information on the Contemporaries of the Columbia Museum of Art, go to www.columbiacontemporaries.com.

2011 Verner winner Heidi Darr-Hope

strokes

We choose Michaela Pilar Brown

9

Devereaux is the home recording project of Heyward Sims,one of Columbia’s most agile and pummeling guitarists. Mostlyknown for being the six-string master behind the jagged-yet-catchy indie rock of Death Becomes Even the Maiden, Sims hasalso played with the now-defunct prog rock group Bolt andbacked up the comedy hip-hop duo Sweet Vans. While recenthome recording successes in Columbia from Toro y Moi andComa Cinema might have you thinking this is where Sims isgoing to let loose some reverb-laden slice of retro-pop goodness,think again. Devereaux is a home recording with a sound that ismore fittingly described as “big,” “bold,” and “epic.”

Using entirely original drum beats and loops, Sims clearlyretreats back to his earlier work with Bolt here, as these fiveKraftwerk and Dirty Projectors-inspired tunes make use ofprominent, wide-angle lens synthesizers that hypnotically riffand play off one another. There seem to be any number of thembeeping and blurping in the mix and Sims introduces hissignature guitar riffs only as a counterweight, not the main act.The sparse lyrics and vocals are used for color and effect – somuch so that it would be silly to call this anything other than aninstrumental record. Brawny, thumping drums and gigantickeyboard lines are clearly the order of the day – this is music thatwants nothing to do with “chillwave.”

The opening composition “Perestroika” sets up both the sonic

template and modus operandi for the record with its title andopening dialogue making a nod towards Kraftwerk beforemoving into a Daft Punk-like dance tune, replete with a thump-ing back beat and catchy, melodic synth line. The second cut,“Capri,” sounds like a highly experimental and long-lost cut froma classic New Wave band from the 1980s, with vocals so heavilyfiltered and digitally garbled that they completely blur any linebetween machine, human voice, and instrument. Tracks threeand four both move in more of a rock direction, with the formerusing live-sounding drums and a monster guitar riff that splitsthe difference between rock crowd nodding and head-bangingand the latter using synthesized horns and a Latin feel andbacking chants to great effect. The closing cut is the one thatfeels the most like Sims’ work in DBETM, with its gnarly post-rock guitar lines and loud-soft dynamics.

Despite the one-man, home recording nature of this project,this is large-canvas music just begging for some kind of publicperformance. It’s not so far from straight dance music thatit couldn’t be worked into a DJ set, but here’s to hoping thatDevereaux can move from recording project to live actsoon, because this kind of energy and ambition belongs on stageand played in a pulsating crowd of sweaty, living, breathingmusic fans.

Devereaux – Cacti Pace EP

–Kyle Petersen

H. apocalyptusMore than one hundred years in the future,

and after the inevitable Zombie Apocalypsehas ravaged humanity by turning most of usinto flesh eating thugs, three survivorscontemplate their prospects in a Dean Poynerplay giving its American premiere at thePiccolo Spoleto Festival 2011, in Charleston.Billed as a futuristic campfire tale aboutzombies, survival, and the meaning of family,H. Apocalyptus, formerly titled HomoApocalyptus, was developed in 2009 at TheStudios of Key West and read at the GarageTheatre in San Francisco in April 2010.Presented as a work shopped production atThe Cairns Festival in Queensland, Australialast August, The Charleston production isdirected by Katherine Brook and featuresColumbia artists Paul Kaufmann, MonicaWyche, and E. G. Heard.

See H. Apocalyptus at the Footlight PlayersTheatre at 20 Queen Street on June 8th and11th at 8 pm, June 9th and 10th at 9 pm, andJune 12th at 6 pm. Tickets are $19. For moreof undefined Magazine’s Piccolo SpoletoFestival picks turn to page 22.

10

One of the songs on the back end of

American Gun’s new album, released

May 10, 2011, is about

the joys and travails of being in a loc

al rock band—and it’s called, in a som

ewhat tongue-in-cheek

fashion, “Breakin’ Up.” It’s a sneer

ing punk-rock tune, full of careenin

g guitars and a biting

cynicism about band mates, club da

tes, and alcohol. But halfway throug

h the song, something

striking happens. In the space of ju

st a few beats, the guitars fall out

and the drums go from

pummeling forward to marking out a

muscular half-time groove that lifts

the tune from a sweaty

barroom into the rock-and-roll arena

. The instruments build the song ba

ck up again, eventually

renewing their lunge forward with

a new purpose. Lead singer To

dd Mathis goes from

bemoaning his problems to elegant

ly summarizing the whole reason fo

r this venture. “But you

keep going forward because it’s all y

ou know to do/ the music makes you

happy, nothing else is

true,” he sings, half full of desperati

on, half full of a blind assuredness t

hat this is, in fact, what

he is meant to be doing.

American Gun is in Therapy

story: Kyle Petersen Photography: Th

omas Hammond

music

11

Any band is almost defying theodds just by releasing a fourthalbum. As “Breakin’ Up”suggests, rock bands face aunique set of challenges andproblems in staying together.Rock music is often a

dangerous cocktail of rebellion, alcohol, andpersonal expression that makes for rathervolatile situations. True to form, AmericanGun has seen members come and go, causingthe music to shift and evolve in an effort tomaintain the delicate balance that keeps theengine running.

The group started out in 2004 with thestated purpose of writing “three-chordsongs you could get drunk to” and quicklybecame Columbia’s go-to alt-country band.They released two LPs, Dark SouthernHearts in 2006 and The Means and theMachine in 2008, that mixed stone-coldrockers with tear-in-your-beer heart-jerk-ers and borrowed the talents of a bevy ofoutside musicians and producers, mostnotably pedal steel player Al Perkins, whohas played with Bob Dylan, Garth Brooks,The Flying Burrito Brothers and ChrisStamey, who has worked with both AlexChilton and Whiskeytown. The bandtoured throughout the Southeast, flirted

with a number of regional record labels, and even got a fewsongs licensed to cable television shows. Still, the going washard. Two thousand nine saw the group changing up guitaristsand adding and subtracting a keyboard player, and, following therelease of their third LP Devil Showed Me His Hand, thedeparture of co-leader Donald Merckle.

Merckle’s departure, as disappointing as it was, pushed theband in new directions. In tandem with the songwriter’s leavingwas the arrival of local record producer and engineer PaulBodamer, who began serving as an unofficial “fifth member” andwhat drummer Andrew Hoose refers to as the “catalyst” for thenew record. Bodamer himself describes his role as merelypushing a different approach to arrangements and vocals in anew direction and providing some technical expertise—thingslike “figuring out tone, whether you want the guitars to be darkor bright on a particular song, what snare to use, what cymbalsto use—subtle things that serve the particular song.”

Bodamer’s tech-savvy approach to recording and energeticenthusiasm for the band pushed the members to try newcreative approaches. “This was the most pre-production we’veever done,” Mathis says. “His level of expertise, as far as

engineering and stuff, and creating really well-donepre-production recordings, made a big difference on thisrecord.” Bodamer went out of his way to talk to each bandmember individually, which they all agree was a big part inmaking the new record more of a “straight-up rock and rollrecord” than they had in the past. “It sounds exactly like the fourof us,” lead guitarist Noel Rodgers says, the pride made clear inhis voice. “If you don’t sound like who you are at this point [inyour thirties], you’ve missed something along the way.”

This subtle stylistic change-up was something of a consciousdecision, as the group was determined to present a more“honest” document of the band this time around. “It was theidea early on to have an album unlike our other albums, withhalf the songs we didn’t want to play live,” says bassist KevinKimbrell. Rodgers concurs. “A lot of times we would findourselves trying to twang up something and Paul would say‘Stop! You are being a great rock band right now. Just be a greatrock band!’” This input and approach, along with the extensivepre-production, gave the record a different bent from the start.

Pre-production kind of seems like a pseudo-professional termfor “band practice,” but what it really means is “band practice formaking a record.” In this case, during the spring and summer of2010, as the band was hashing out some new tunes, Bodamer setup a makeshift recording room in the band’s practice space inthe Rosewood area of Columbia so they could play the musicback and shape songs more constructively. “We did a lot ofrecordings, and a lot of listening and thinking back on it,” whichwas something new, says Kimbrell. This approach freed up theband to both have “Todd walk in with a chord progression andlyrics and, by the end of practice, have a badass song,”says Rodgers, remembering the creation of the album’s titlecut “Therapy.”

This freedom also meant the group could re-imagine and trydifferent approaches to tunes like “Movin’ Down the Line.” Thesong was brought in with Mathis’s sole directive to make sure itdid not turn out “a white boy blues song.” After several attemptsat finding a satisfying arrangement, the band was almost ready todiscard the song. However, the next practice Kimbrell cameacross a fuzz-toned bass line that locked in perfectly with themid-tempo rock groove Hoose was playing at the time. Bodamerlit up at this casual creation, and the band began re-building thesong around it. The end result is a dark, noisy tune that owes asmuch to Tom Waits and Black Rebel Motorcycle Club as itdoes to rowdy Southern rockers like Lucero and theDrive-by Truckers.

On the whole, Merckle’s departure also had anotherunexpected benefit in opening up new space in the band’ssound. While all of the band members will attest to thesongwriting chops and talent their former co-leader brought tothe band, his acoustic guitar presence “cut out a lot of thehigh-end stuff that me and Kevin are doing,” Noel points out.

story: Kyle Petersen Photography: Th

omas Hammond

12story: Kyle Petersen photography: James Quantz

Kimbrell and Hoose also felt somewhat tethered rhythmically byhis style. “We just sonically have more space,” Kimbrell explains.

Propelled by this new approach and Bodamer’s gentleprodding, the band geared up for another first—an out-of-town,around-the-clock recording session at the Fidelitorium inWinston-Salem, North Carolina. The recording setting wasanother of Bodamer’s ideas—he had already built a relationshipwith Mitch Easter, the studio owner and legendary musician andproducer behind the classic early R.E.M. records Murmur andReckoning. Part of the decision was purely technical – the drumsounds in a big room like the Fidelitorium are a definite plus –but there were other advantages as well. The band could reallyspread out in the large recording space, and having a separatehang-out room helped defuse any tension or sense of beingcooped up. Easter’s role as a second engineer meant a livingrecording legend, with all of his accompanying gear, was makinga significant contribution to things like guitar tone (also Easter

ultimately ended up laying a guitar solo on the ramblingcountry-rock tune “1500 Jessicas”).

The band would come out of the weekend with 11 songslargely completed, with just the vocals left to be recorded inBodamer’s home studio and a few tracks awaiting organ and keysoverdubs. Most of the credit for this goes to the pre-productionapproach, since the band laid so much of the importantgroundwork down ahead of the recording time.

When asked about their ambitions for the record, the bandlaughs at the long odds of becoming a big rock band. Mathisremains optimistic about the licensing possibilities for his musicbut puts the emphasis on the fact that “this is what I like to do. Ilike making records in general. I like hanging out with theseguys and, whatever we come up with, if it’s good, I want torecord it.” He also asks of listeners new and old that “whateveryou’ve heard about American Gun before, just toss it out thewindow. This is what we sound like now.”

13

14

Michaela Pilar Brown leans across the café table to be heard more clearly.

“It’s OK,” she offers sympathetically. “My voice is small.”

It’s true that the beguiling, doe-eyed artist speaks softly. But a small voice?

Hardly.

The Many Voices (and Faces) ofMichaela Pilar Brown

artist

story: Kristine Hartvigsen Photography: Michaela Brown

15

16

Brown’s recent Midlands shows have been alternately

enchanting, insightful, shocking, and, at times,

in-your-face confrontational − tackling issues of

feminism and body image, historical bias, religious

hypocrisy, and race.

One of her most powerful creations is a recurring character

she calls “Tinkerbell,” a curvy black woman made up in

blackface with exaggeratedly large, bright red lips and an

ever-present set of fairy wings. In her photographs, Brown

models for the character herself, mostly nude. But she doesn’t

consider them self-portraits.

“For me it is not ‘blackface’ but a mask of ‘blackness.’ Like I am

playing a role,” she explained. “I knew I could catch some flak for

the blackface, but I also felt really empowered.”

Brown sees this striking character as a powerful masked

avenger. Like Disney’s sprite, Brown’s blackface Tinkerbell is

silent, communicating primarily through bold gestures and

facial expressions. Both have a core personality that can be

alternately angelic and feisty. The similarities end there,

however. While Disney presented a white, blue-eyed blonde

fairy with an exaggeratedly sexual hourglass figure, Brown’s edgy

creation is deliberately black on black with a contemporary real

woman’s body and occasional giant prosthetic “man hands.”

Younger audiences who may be unfamiliar with the term

“blackface” should know that it was a form of makeup originally

worn by white actors in mockingly derogatory stereotypical

caricatures of black characters, a form of entertainment

common to traveling minstrel shows in 19th century America.

[White men in blackface also often portrayed black female

characters as mannish and grotesque, which could explain the

blackface Tinkerbell’s “man hands.”]

Fortunately, over the years this form of “entertainment” on

stage and screen − perpetuating an image of all African-

Americans as buffoonish, lazy, stupid, and inferior − eventually

declined, although the blackface icon later gained success in

advertising and product branding. Even though now considered

widely offensive, this “darky” iconography, used to sell toys,

soap, and many other products, still can be found all over the

world. In fact, there’s a thriving niche market worldwide for

vintage blackface “negrobilia” pieces.

Brown’s blackface Tinkerbell is a darkly enigmatic superhero

who vacillates intermittently from seductive to dangerous to

defiant to ornery to spiteful, and more. Hers is a multifaceted

personality that seems to change on a dime.

Some theorists argue that continued white support for black-

face images in vintage products and advertising is perpetuated,

consciously or otherwise, to counter black progress. Another

view is that stereotyping a stereotype, as Brown has done with

Tinkerbell, can have the effect of canceling it out, robbing the

icon (in this case, overt blackface images) of the power to cause

hurt or harm.

“The character is still evolving and changing,” Brown said.

“I’m not finished with her.”

To use herself as the nude model for Tinkerbell and another

character in her “pedestal envy” photo series is an interesting

choice. But it makes a lot of sense the way Brown explains it.

“My work has always been kind of autobiographical,” she said.

“I had to work through some personal issues, things related to

beauty and value and self-worth. Not that I am not comfortable

in my skin; I have always been comfortable with who I am. I was

an adored child. But it was about how the outside world related

to who I am.”

Another character in the series is an unnamed, faceless nude

black woman with an enormous blonde afro (obscuring her

downward-gazing face). Her hands are tied up with a noose.

“The blonde image is about identity and finding beauty in who

you are. Her hands are bound with a noose,” Brown explained.

“It’s a sort of suicide. Every time you destroy part of yourself

to pursue some idea of beauty, you are killing yourself. That is

why the face is gone. You are no longer yourself. For black

women in particular, it is the antithesis of who you are

naturally to do that.”

The artist concedes that, like many women in modern society,

she once briefly experimented with blonde hair color. She has

worn her head tightly shorn for nearly two decades and

completely shaved now for two years now. It suits her. However,

she completely separates herself from the fictional characters

she creates in her art.

“I have a hard time seeing myself in images,” she said. “The

work that really gets to the heart of what you are trying to say has

to be honest. I need to tackle it from an inside source. I need to

put myself in those images first. It is difficult. ... I also have to

deal with my own vanity, seeing myself honestly as I am seeing

myself transformed, confronting some ugly ideas.”

One of the biggest challenges, Brown said, is allowing her

mother and other family members to see the images. It’s less

about the nudity than it is about the controversial nature of some

of the imagery.

“My mother is pretty open,” she said. “She was always

exposing us to art.” However, some of the racial issues and,

particularly, the religious commentary, tend to run counter to

the sensibilities of her mom’s generation.

“I point out hypocrisy within the black church, which

denounces homosexuality from the pulpit, but if you look at the

choir stand, every man is gay,” she continued. “My mother is 78

years old. She has said, ‘I don’t like that.’ My mom is from the

culture and generation where you don’t air your dirty laundry.

You don’t talk about it in public.”

Everything Brown does with her art − whether it’s

photography, painting, video, installation, sculpture, or

performance – comes with an unspoken objective of engaging

the viewer and inspiring meaningful dialogue.

“I want to have real, honest conversations, and I think you

have to be brave in order to do that,” she said. “I am probably also

I point out hypocrisy within the black church, which denounces homosexualityfrom the pulpit, but if you look at the choir stand, every man is gay.

Fuck Tinkerbell

18

a little foolish. I want to do what I want to do. There is a little

tomboy in me who says ‘you can’t tell me what I can and cannot

do.’ But that is my personality. …

“I think part of the reason people can’t move forward is that

they absolutely refuse to face the hard questions.”

The Call of FamilyThe youngest of five children and the only girl, Brown left

home to attend Howard University in Washington, DC. As a

freshman, she came under the tutelage of a master ironworker.

Just 18 years old, Brown had her first professional show,

featuring her sculpture of a metal bust with swollen abdomen,

titled “Pregnant With An Attitude.” That piece today resides in a

private collection in Wisconsin.

“After I took some art classes, I became convinced that I would

never do anything else,” she said. “My family never once

discouraged me from pursuing art. My mother worked in a

museum. I knew professional artists when I was growing up.”

Brown loved DC and decided to stay, working in a series of

nonprofit administrative positions focusing on education and

the arts. But in 2003, a family crisis called her back home to

Great Falls, SC, near Winnsboro. Her beloved father, suffering

from advanced Alzheimer’s, needed full-time, hands-on care.

“I came here kicking and screaming. I didn’t want to leave my

life in DC. But sometimes you just have to face up to your role in

the family,” Brown explained. “I was a woman, unmarried

and without children. I was considered available for the role

of caregiver.”

Brown put her artistic pursuits aside to care for her father at

the family’s rural compound. It proved to be a holistic and bitter-

sweet experience that brought her back into the close fold of

family and afforded her a chance to experience a memorable

farewell with her dad. He died in 2007.

She soon began to chronicle the family’s history, which took

on a life of its own.

“The last year of my father’s life, my brother and I basically

documented the process of the goodbye,” Brown said. “He

stopped eating and wasn’t taking any fluids. Despite the

Alzheimer’s, he knew who his children were. He knew we were

filming him. He first gave us the camera.”

That planted the seed for a larger oral history project, the idea

for which had taken firm hold. After her father’s death, Brown

won a grant-funded curatorial position at the Fairfield County

Museum, where she introduced her oral history project,

focusing on the African-American midwifery legacy, to advance

the museum’s exhibit schedule. For six months in 2008, the

museum exhibited “Birthing a Community: Fairfield County

Midwives.” It covered midwifery from slavery into modern

Troopers charging the Johnson

19

times. Financial challenges eventually ended the run, but the

fact that it happened is progress.

“It was a very white museum in a very black community. They

were trying to bridge that gap,” she explained. “Ultimately,

it didn’t get fixed. Part of that is economic. Cultural

institutions are habitually given small budgets. They simply

couldn’t do more.”

Meanwhile, Brown rediscovered a deep love for the rural

South and her family’s “19th century way of life” on 250 rolling

acres of land and four houses. Everyone in the community, she

said, is related in some way.

“There are things about rural life that are beautiful beyond

words. I can trace my ancestors back to 1775,” she said, adding

that her ancestry includes Irish, Catawba Indian, and English.

“My family turned color in one generation. … Daniel Brown was

a white man who took a black woman as a spouse and not just a

concubine. In one generation, we became a black family. …

“There is something about living here that I love. I love

southern culture. I love the food. I love all the weirdness that is

racial politics in the South. It is not all hate, and it is not all love.

It’s a weird relationship. It helps define who you are. When I

started working again, those were issues I wanted to tackle.”

Brown cites Chicago-based abstract metal sculptor Richard

Hunt as a major inspiration in her eventual decision to become

a professional artist. The internationally renowned Hunt, 75,

was the youngest artist to exhibit at the 1962 Seattle World’s Fair

and was appointed by President Lyndon Johnson to the govern-

ing board of the National Endowment for the Arts. He also

served on the boards of the Smithsonian Institution. He is said

to have completed more public sculptures than any other artist

in the United States. She had an opportunity to work with Hunt

once in one of the first real professional projects of her life, and

she said the experience lent real validation to her growing

artistic ambitions.

Hunt’s influence is clear, particularly in the personage of

Brown’s aforementioned winged Tinkerbell character. Many of

Hunt’s sculptures visually echo writer Toni Morrison’s themes of

flying, often with bird or angel wings.

“My own use of winged forms in the early ‘50s is based on

mythological themes, like Icarus and Winged Victory,” Hunt told

Sculpture Magazine in 1998. “It’s about, on the one hand, trying

to achieve victory or freedom internally. It’s also about

investigating ideas of personal and collective freedom. My use of

these forms has roots and resonances in the African-American

experience and is also a universal symbol. People have always

seen birds flying and wished they could fly.”

Brown has taken a hiatus from metal sculpture for purely

practical reasons.

“It’s not like I lost my love for it,” she said. “I felt very

powerful. I liked bending the metal to my will. I like physical

labor. I am a builder. That’s why I was so excited about the

‘Change for Change’ art project using decommissioned parking

Fairy Goth Mother

20

meters (a 2010 fundraiser for the Climate Protection Action

Campaign). I was so excited to weld again. … But metal

sculpture does require a very specific kind of space and often

some assistance. I do hope to return to it.”

Installation art always will have a special place in Brown’s

heart. She connects to the degree of compromise installation art

requires. She feels it has a sort of spiritual connection to the

African Diaspora.

“I like installation because I think the ability to compromise is

something that is unique to African-Americans,” she said. “It is

the idea that you are making it happen right on the spot. You

make a rhythm and stick with that rhythm, moving people

through environments and ideas through installation.”

Most recently, Brown has had an installation showing in

“SC3D: an Exhibition of Three-Dimensional Art from

South Carolina” running through May 29 at the 701

Center for Contemporary Art. It combines video and

fabric sculpture.

“I am attracted to the theater of video. It gives my

work dancing light and movement. I am really

attracted to storytelling and narrative, and I think

video does that in the most concise and clear way,”

she explained. “I really like the idea of being able to

paint with light. That’s really what photography is.”

This summer, Brown has a solo show running from

June 24 to July 24 at Le Cochon Noir, an upscale

Philadelphia restaurant and gallery. It will include

images from her “frock” and “pedestal envy”

collections. Private showings of the adult-themed

Tinkerbell series are planned, and Brown is

scheduled to give a salon talk on July 14. She also is

scheduled to give a second salon talk June 25 at The

International House on the campus of the University

of Pennsylvania for an organization called Fourth

Wall Arts.

“Twenty years ago, I was told never to hang work in

restaurants and bars, but it’s different now,” Brown

said. Using social media, it’s possible to rally people to

turn out for an exhibit. “In a restaurant, there is a

quiet environment, and people spend time with your

work. And this venue has had a lot of success; artists

have been selling out.”

Brown also looks forward to living and working for

three months as the Harvey B. Gantt Artist in

Residence at the prestigious McColl Center for Visual

Art in Charlotte from September 6 to November 22,

2011. While there, she also will exhibit at the Gantt

Museum for African-American Arts and Culture.

“What I need to do right now is to talk about my

work, to be in an engaging environment where there

is rich dialogue,” she said. This residency fills the bill.

“When you are isolated, you can get stuck. Your

output atrophies.”

The McColl Center’s mission is to connect artists

with the community, and it draws artists from all over

the world. Columbia-area alumni include Deanna

Leamon in 2010 and Marcelo Novo in 2009.

Because the Center asks its artists to include an outreach

component to their work, Brown hopes to connect with people

through a victim’s assistance program for a photo series on all

forms of trauma − physical, emotional, and spiritual. Years ago,

Brown’s brother suffered a brain injury in an accident. She plans

to begin the series with photos of the physical scars he now has.

They are surprisingly small scars compared with the internal

trauma he suffered.

“His personality changed after the accident,” she said. “He was

an athlete but now has no interest in sports.” She also is planning

to focus on a disfigured woman who was attacked in her home

but has no memory of it. The perpetrator remains at large. “I’m

going to use all real people and real stories,” Brown added.

Blonde Ambition

21

Nothing to LoseBrown looks easily 10 years younger than she is, but she is coming to

embrace the benefits of aging.

“I think everyone who tries to make art is brave. In order to be brave, I

have to face myself as I am. Part of that is facing my age,” she said. “I am

40 years old and deciding to go back to a career in art. I have got nothing

to lose. I also think there is comfort in being 40 and not 20. I have

something to say.”

After her father died, she reached a crossroads. It was decision time. Stay

or go back to DC.

“It was a shit-or-get-off-the-pot moment. What I have gained is the

ability to keep growing. So I started working and showing again. Now I can

never imagine doing anything else,” Brown said. “I felt an intense fire to

get moving. … I have no apologies about my life. It is not the life that I

imagined, but I am happy to be working as an artist.”

Self-Portrait

The Pugilist, pages 14-15, was chosen for the undefined magazineemerging artist award at the 2011 Columbia Museum of Art’sContemporaries Artist of the Year Gala in April.

22

Best Dance Bets HHH Annex Dance Company’s Encounter is aprogram “inspired by chance meetings and thehuman connection” and choreographed by artisticdirector Kristen Fieseler. Fieseler is part of a newwave of professional dancers who, rather than enterthe job market straight out of high school as wasonce encouraged for talented young dancers, contin-ued her education, receiving an MFA and a muchmore mature outlook on dance and chorography.Encounter is being offered as part of the Dance atNoon Series with one showing on June 12th atFootlight Players Theatre, 20 Queen Street. Tickets are $16.

event

Piccolo Spoletois not your mother’s Spoleto Festival

In some ways, Charleston’s annual Piccolo Spoleto Festivalis to its big sister, the international Spoleto Festival USA,what tailgating is to college football. But don’t make themistake of relegating the surprisingly well-organized fringefestival that is Piccolo Spoleto to the category of

afterthought. The reality is that Piccolo Spoleto is a little morecasual than the main festival, a little less serious, significantlyless expensive and, like tailgating, attendees almost always findthemselves drinking adult beverages with their friends andneighbors at the gatherings. But here’s a not so well-kept secretabout both tailgating and Piccolo Spoleto Festival – in many

ways, they’re a lot more fun than the main event.With hundreds of dance, comedy, film, theatre, music, visual

and literary arts events – some designed specifically to appeal tothe whole family, others not so much – spread out over a 17-dayperiod of time, choosing which performances to attend mayseem daunting. To that end, undefined offers an overview of thefestival with a friendly rating system – with three stars meaningdon’t miss and one star meaning why not? – to help readersdecide how best to allocate their Piccolo Spoleto Festival time. Ifyou don’t see what you’re looking for below, check out the wholeprogram at www.piccolospoleto.com.

DanceIt would almost simplify matters of dance at PiccoloSpoleto Festival if the series of performances werecalled the Jill Eathorne Bahr Show, given how manyevents are rooted in either her choreography or theCharleston Ballet Theatre, where she is residentchoreographer. The recent Verner award winner hasher hands all over everything dance in Charleston,and that is evidenced in the festival’s dance offerings.Many of the Piccolo dance events are performed bystudent companies, which is not the case withCBT-affiliated shows. The only other professionalorganizations performing are SidewaysContemporary Dance and Dancentre SouthCompany – both out of Atlanta – and Annex DanceCompany, a modern troupe from Pennsylvania thatmoved to Charleston in the winter of 2010.

story: Cynthia Boiter

Annex Dance Company Photo: Matthew Wright

23

Best in Drama HHH Though bordering on the pedantic, David Mamet’s Race, a play about two male attorneys, one black and one white, and theiryoung, African American and female assistant attorney, is a heady study of the things that separate us as a society, couched in thepotential trial of a mixed-race alleged rape. At one point, the female attorney comments that their case is not “about sex, it’s aboutrace.” To which one attorney replies, “What’s the difference?” See it at Pure Theatre at 334 East Bay Street on May 28th and 31st andJune 1st at 7:30, or on May 29th and June 5th at 6 pm. Tickets are $21.

HH David Auburn’s 2001 Pulitzer Prize-winning play, Proof, was, unfortunately, made into a film in 2005 starring Gwyneth Paltrowas the daughter of a mentally ill, mathematical mastermind grappling with the legacies left her by her sick but enlightened dead father.Forget that. Instead focus on the original four characters written into this brilliant play about the fine line between insanity andgenius, and how much control humans actually have as characters in our own lives. You’ll have to drive out to James Island to see itat the Charleston Acting Studio, 915 Folly Road; June 1st and 10th at 7, June 11th at 6, June 9th at 8, and June 12th at 5. Tickets are$18.

H Shakespeare’s R & J, presented by the College of Charleston Shakespeare Project takes the angst of the Bard from ElizabethanEngland to a repressive parochial boarding school while at the same time removing the constructs of gender and sexuality from thedrama. The result is fresh and real. See it at Simons Theatre at 54 St. Philip Street on May 27th and June 3rd at 8:30; May 28th and June 2nd at 6, May 29th and June 4th at 3, June 8th at 5 and June 8th through the 11th at 8. Tickets are $16.

Best in Comedy HHH For the kind of New York City comedy you don’t always find in South Carolina – seriously, we’re talking Saturday Night Livehere – grab a fast ticket for Ted and Melanie, a sketch comedy show performed by Jet Eveleth and Paul Brittain on June 3rd at 10:30pm and June 4th at 9 pm OR catch one of the Upright Citizens Brigade Touring Company’s improvisational comedy shows on June4th and 10th at 10:30, June 5th and 6th at 8:30, June 8th and 9th at 10 pm, or June 11th at 7:30. Both shows are at Theatre 99, 28Meeting Street, and cost $16.

TheatreWhile in years past, Piccolo Spoleto may have presented more comedic theatre thandramatic – attending a comedy performance may be one of the best aids in digesting theheavy menus of Spoleto Festival USA’s higher brow art – the 2011 festival demonstratesa pleasant balance of laughter and gloom, with some shows offering the chance to bothgiggle and weep for one ticket price.

Local theatres and comedy troupes are well-represented, as are a handful of one-person shows including Pure Theatre’s The Gentleman Pirate, Mandy Schmieder’sSeparation Anxiety, and the entire Lord of the Rings trilogy presented in one hour byCharles Ross, who is, happily, no longer being sued by the company that owned therights to LOTR. A handful of previous presentations are back on the docket as well.Some, such as Mary Kay Has a Posse, an ensemble of irreverent and hilarious women,make sense given the improvisational nature of the performances. Others, such as thenot-that-funny-the-first-time Banana Monologues, are a disappointment and surprise,given the plethora of good comedy and improv at home at Charleston’s Theatre 99.

HH Also part of the Dance at Noon Series, Sideways Contemporary Dance presents Breaking Bounds, which uses contemporarychoreography and spoken word to inspire social and political awareness. Breaking Bounds will also only be performed one time – atnoon on June 8th, also at Footlight Players Theatre, 20 Queen Street. Tickets are $16.

H For the best bang for your buck, attend the free showing of Charleston Ballet Theatre’s Sunset Serenade, which is part of theCharleston Symphony Orchestra and the Piccolo Spoleto Festival Orchestra’s annual pops concert. Charleston Ballet Theatre willperform Jill Eathorne Bahr’s original works, Wings and The Lark Ascending, May 27th at 8 pm at the US Custom House at Concord and North Market Streets.

Hedwig and the Angry InchPhoto: What If Productions

24

MusicWith more choral music than you can shake a tripleshot espresso at, not to mention a surprising numberof organ recitals, there really are other musicalofferings at Piccolo Spoleto Festival that will notmake you feel like you’re paying to go to church. Notthat there’s anything wrong with church or churchmusic; but it takes a special kind of devotion to theart to crowd into a hot auditorium during the middleof a sweltering Charleston afternoon when the barsare open and there’s a breeze on the waterfront. Trueto form, there are myriad opportunities to take in theblues and jazz concerts that seem to provide thesoundtrack to most Charleston summer visits, andmany of those concerts take place while boatingaround the beautiful Charleston harbor.

The bottom line with festival music offerings isthat there are numerous chances to hear scores of thesame kinds of music – not just choral, blues, and jazz,but assorted classical and baroque music, pianoconcertos and duets, a quartet of violas, chambermusic, antiquarian music, music by fresh youngartists, and music by boring old artists – that youhear all the time at arts fetes and events. Here arethree equally enjoyable opportunities to appeal to theout-of-the-ordinary arts aficionado in everyone.

HH The bit of time travel that is Flight Out of Time: a Dada Cabaret is billed as surreal comedy – and that it may be. But more thananything it is a revisiting of sociologist/philosopher/actor Hugo Ball’s Cabaret Voltaire as it was created at the beginning of World WarI in Zurich, soon after he had written his 1916 Dada Manifesto. Flight Out of Time begs the question whether anything has changedin the last almost one hundred years, via poetry, sketches, comedy, and more. Comedy for people who want to think while they’relaughing, it plays at Theatre 220 at the Simons Center, 22 St. Philip Street, on May 27th, 28th, June 3rd and 4th at 9:30 pm, May 29thand June 2nd at 8:30. Tickets are $16.

H The Understudy is a backstage look at the uncertain yet witty world of the theatre told from the perspective of a lovesick stagemanager of a newly discovered Kafka play and written by the Pulitzer Prize nominated author/writer/producer/screenwriter/playwright, Theresa Rebeck. It’s at the Chapel Theatre at the Simons Center, 22 St. Philip Street, May 27th and June 3rd at 6,May 28th at 9 pm, June 4th at 8:30, June 2nd at 3, and June 5th at 8. Tickets are $16.

The Best of Laughing Until You Cry or Vice VersaHHH Tracy Letts, who previously gave us such odd and wonderful plays as Bug and the 2008 Pulitzer and Tony winning August:Osage County, also gives us Superior Donuts, a play about confronting change in a sweet and peaceful way – and laughing about it.See it at Pure Theatre at 324 East bay Street on May 27th and June 3rd at 7:30, May 28th at 4, May 29th and June 4th and 5th at 2.Tickets are $21.

HH Hedwig and the Angry Inch, a poignant combination of stand up routine and rock concert, written by John Cameron Mitchell,is a must-see for everyone at some point in their lives. The story of a boy who loved a man and lost part of himself – literally – for thelove of that man, Hedwig and the Angry Inch uses rock music and the absurd to make the audience not only confront provincialstances on sexual orientation, but also to examine sexuality and gender identity as the continuum that it is rather than thedichotomy we create, all the while grooving to some seriously good tunes in a live concert setting. American Theatre at 446 KingStreet on May 28th and June 3rd at 10 pm, May 31st and June 6th through 8th at 8 pm. Tickets are $23.

HHH Na Fidleiri is a Celtic fiddle ensemble made up of 20 fiddles pluspercussion and the odd whistle and dulcimer. They play the kind ofScottish and Irish dance music that command the feet to move and theheart to throb. See the group twice at the Circular Congregational Churchat 150 Meeting Street; June 3rd at 7 and June 5th at 3. $11.

HHH Oil lamps light the way for foot-stomping, hand-clapping music bestsung in Gullah to set the soul afire. Wash your sins away at the old-timeyCamp Meeting at the Mt. Zion AME Church at 5 Glebe Street on May29th, June 3rd and 10th at 8 pm. $13.

Na Fidlieri

25story: Cynthia Boiter photography: James Quantz

Three more for good measureHHH Kcymaerxthaere is an exhibition of how the artist EamesDemetrios, (designer, TED lecturer, chairman of the board of directors ofthe design-centric Eames Foundation in California, and grandson of RayEames, famously of the 1940s era Case Study House Program for Arts andArchitecture Magazine), has created a parallel universe – complete withlaws, living beings, and everything that comprises a culture – and how heattempts to connect that created parallel universe to our linear world viathe installation of bronze plaques throughout the planet. Confused? Checkout www.kcymaerxthaere.com for a little more clarity, and then visit theexhibit at the Halsey Institute of Contemporary Art at 161 Calhoun Streetfrom 11 am to 4 pm, Monday through Saturday from the start of thefestival until July 15th. Free.

HHH Israfel: The Ordeal of Edgar Allen Poe is a new play by JohnMacNicolas and part of the Southern Arts Celebration Series whichhighlights the work of one Southern artist each year – this year focusing onPoe. Watch a rehearsed staged reading of the play, followed by a paneldiscussion featuring playwright MacNicolas as well as Poe scholars ScottPeeples and Jim Hutchisson, on June 4th at 2 pm at the Footlight PlayersTheatre, 20 Queen Street. Tickets are $16.

HHH Visual art abounds during Spoleto Festival USA and Piccolo SpoletoFestival. There is outdoor art at Marion Square at the corner of King andCalhoun Streets daily from 10 until 5, and there is a juried art exhibit at theCharleston Visitor’s Center at 335 Meeting Street daily from 8:30 until 5.Both events are free and easy and, like most Piccolo offerings, a perfect wayto relax, reflect, and decompress from the heat of the city and the happyoverload of art that both Spoleto festivals bring.

Hailing from Atlanta with a Mardi Gras state of mind, the Seed and FeedMarching Abominable is a ragtag group of professional non-musicians whobring out the joyous nerds in all of us. The group was founded by KellyMorris in 1974 as a guerilla-type marching protest band to play at politicalevents and demonstrations. A special fixture of the Piccolo Spoleto Festivalduring Memorial Day weekend, check out any or all of their threeperformances: the Children’s Parade on May 28th from noon until 1 atMarion Square; the Pajama March on May 28th from 11 until 11:55 pm onthe steps of the US Custom House; or the Patriotic Concert, also on thesteps of the US Custom House, on Sunday May 29th at noon. Free.

26

27 undefined : book eleven

Here’s a fun way to spend a summer afternoon –ask local artist Alex Smith to tell you about one ofthe many plays he has directed. Tell him you wantto know all about it. Then sit back and prepare to beentertained. It’s not just the animation in his face,or the way he slips in and out of various characterswithout realizing it as he describes them – whetherhe has ever played the role or not. Alex Smith, themulti-disciplinary artist, brings something akin totranscendence to most any artistic mission hetakes on, be it acting, directing, filmmaking,playing music, writing, or, his latest endeavor,visual arts. Smith’s unique take on whatever artform he embraces may result from the fact that hisartistic career has developed like an organicflowchart; the near mastery of one disciplineleading naturally to an embarkation on the next.Whether he is behind the camera or in front of theaudience, in the wings or wielding a paintbrush, themostly self-taught Renaissance rogue brings adistinct and analytical slant to his disciplineartistique de la journèe, requiring friends andpatrons always to question,

Alex Smithis a student of the 20th century

for Smith and how will heturn it on its end?

what’s next

artist

story: Cynthia Boiter Photography: Scott Bilby

28

Smith’s ability to execute his art well is even more

interesting given that he became involved in the arts

primarily because he wasn’t doing something well at

all – going to high school. Born 37 years ago in

Springfield, Massachusetts, in the same hospital Dr.

Seuss had been born in almost seventy years before, Smith soon

moved to Charleston with his mother and naval officer father

and eventually attended Miss Mason’s private school, where he

remembers “always painting and drawing.” He continued to

dabble in the arts that children do, despite losing the ability to

see blue and green at a very young age. Like many artists, Smith

didn’t find school challenging – it gave him little stimulation and

seemed “silly” to him in so many ways.

Another family move brought the adolescent Smith to

Columbia, where he found no improvement in his academic

situation. “By the time I was 14, I was failing in school,

misunderstood, and all that typical, tortured other shit kids

complain about,” Smith recalls. “Let’s just say I didn’t thrive in

the public school system.”

But the arts made sense to the boy – in large part due to some

specific and meaningful influences early in his life.

“I met and was deeply affected by Scot Hockman, who was the

art teacher at Irmo Middle School,” Smith says. Hockman, who

is now with the South Carolina Department of Education, had

an “invaluable influence” on Smith, supporting and challenging

him, as did his stepfather, Mark Harons.

“I have to give my stepdad credit,” Smith says, tracing much of

his aesthetic sense back to early exposure to popular music. “He

steered me away from hair and metal music and introduced me

to groups like R.E.M., U2, and English Beat … the whole punk

scene. Coming to understand that kind of music affected the way

I looked at the creative process, even as a kid. I can’t thank him

enough for that.”

Despite his positive role models, Smith says that he continued

to fail in school, “because I knew what I wanted to do. I knew I

was not dumb … I just didn’t want to learn the way they wanted

me to, but I didn’t know how to convey that to my teachers. I

mean, a 15-year-old boy is basically a walking boner, you know.

But my mother came up with a brilliant idea.” She enrolled him

in an acting class at the local independent acting company,

TRUSTUS Theatre.

“My mom went up to Kay Thigpen, [co-founder and managing

director of the theatre group], and said, ‘Will you please do

something with him?’”

“I met Jim and Kay and fell in love with them and with what

they were doing,” he says.

Smith’s first break came when he was cast to play the part of

Evil Elvis #2 in a late night production of The Adventures ofButthole the Clown. After that, he was hooked on theatre and

the creative process. “I had found my home,” he says, recalling

learning how to tech performances and watching as local actors

transformed themselves before his young eyes. Though his

grades continued to plummet he finally felt happy and

understood. At the age of seventeen, and halfway through his

senior year in high school, he made the difficult decision to drop

out and get his GED. “It was absolutely the right decision for

me,” Smith still says today.

With more time to devote to his newfound passion, Smith

soon found himself cast in a number of local productions

including Bahram Beyzaies’ political play, Four Boxes and,

eventually, even trying his hand at directing.

“Jayce Tromsness has to have been the person who influenced

me more than anyone else,” Smith says. Tromsness, who, in addi-

tion to his work as an actor and behind the scenes at TRUSTUS,

also founded several South Carolina theatre groups including

The Distracted Globe Theatre Company in Greenville and

Columbia’s now defunct The

We’re Not Your Mother

Players. “Jayce gave me my

first shot at directing. He

taught me so much more

than I ever could have

learned in school and he

instilled in me a tireless work

ethic. He taught me that if

you’re going to do anything

you have to know everything

about it – with theatre that

means props, sound, lights –

you have to know and under-

stand it all.”

This attention to detail fol-

lowed Smith as he grew into

a young actor and director

who spent as much time in

the wings as on the stage,

developing a resume that

reads like a primer to twenti-

eth century theatre – think

29

Sam Shepard’s Fool for Love, LeRoi Jones’ (aka Amiri Baraka)

Dutchman, Nicky Silver’s Free Will and Wonton Lust, and

Lanford Wilson’s Home Free! In March 2000, at the age of twenty-six, and after taking a

brief hiatus to start a garage band with his friend and fellow

actor Steve Harley – (it wasn’t his first foray into musical arts –

Smith learned violin in the Suzuki method as a child and regu-

larly played music with friends) – he directed his first main stage

show at TRUSTUS: Moisès Kaufman’s Gross Indecency – TheThree Trials of Oscar Wilde, featuring local veteran actor, Paul

Kaufmann. Working with Kaufmann also impacted Smith.

“I can’t say enough about Paul as a human influence and a

friend,” Smith says. “He was my closest ally when we were

working together. I grew so much through working with Paul

and watching him work. And I grew so much by working on this

play.

The years that followed saw Smith take on one demanding

play after another, including Suzan-Lori Park’s Pulitzer Prize-

winning Topdog/Underdog, Kaufman’s The Laramie Project,and David Lindsay-Abaire’s Fuddy Meers. But it was when the

artist first directed the East German rock musical Hedwig andthe Angry Inch in Columbia, and then starred as the

androgynous title character in the same play in Charleston, that

Smith began to see his life and art taking on a new form. Not

only did the part require him to be on stage almost constantly,

singing well and speaking candidly with the audience, all while

dressed as a woman wearing a wig and low breasts in a tattered

I [heart] NY T-shirt; it also demanded an emotional

commitment with which the actor was unfamiliar.

“Performing the role of Hedwig opened up something inside

of me that I didn’t even know was there,” the actor says, his face

reddening and his eyes unashamedly misting over. “It was just so

human. I had spent an extended time in my life during which I

virtually never cried; it didn’t matter what happened. But when

I sang in the song Hedwig’s Lament that ‘I gave a piece to my

mother,’ it was incredibly cathartic. I sobbed. And I became a

much fuller person then.”

That experience prompted the artist to become even more

serious about his art and move to New York City, where he took

several jobs, including dog walker and barista, as well as actor,

By the time I was 14, I was failing in school, misunderstood, and allthat typical, tortured other shit kids complain about...

30

but where he also found himself drawn to film. “I kept hearing

myself saying that I wanted to make a film, and I began seeing

the world not as an actor or the director of a play, but from the

perspective of someone who was creating a series of images and

interpretations from scratch,” he recalls.

A trip back to South Carolina over the Christmas holidays in

2003 gave Smith the opportunity to begin work on a screenplay.

“It was terrible,” he says. “But it showed me that I needed to

figure out how to do it – how to make a film.” To that end, he

began buying and watching the Criterion Collection of classic

and contemporary films and, auto-didactically, learning what

made them great. His next screenplay was written over a six-day

period of time with little to no sleep.

“Writing for film is all about the power of the subject … you

have to focus on what’s not said,” Smith explains, admitting that,

of all the art forms he enjoys, writing is the hardest. “I almost

leave my body when I write,” he continues. He rubs his eyes and

pushes his hair back on his head displaying a decidedly Jack

Nicholson-esque hairline and profile.

But Nicholson he is not, nor is he any of the other characters

he channels so well.

“I used to allow what I created to define me,” he admits. “But

that is so dangerous … you lose who the fuck you are. I act and

direct, and I make films … but I’m not an actor or a director or

a filmmaker. I’m not an artist. I am a student of the twentieth

century, nothing more.”

It is in his devotion to the analysis of the last century that the

essence of the visual artist Smith denies he is surfaces the most.

He constantly assesses the situation, looking for symbolism and

interjecting complementary stories either from his own past or

from a past created via scripts and stage directions, literature, or

scenes from a film. He sees the meaning in everything around

him. It was almost inevitable that he would eventually pick up a

paint brush and bring the icons in his head into reality. “It’s time

to make our own new myths,” he says. “Jesus, Mohammed,

Vishnu … in a thousand years will be what the Dead Sea Scrolls

are to us now. We have to get busy.”

Which is what Smith did in late 2010 when he began painting

again – he got very busy.

Some visual artists tend to work for extended periods of time

on their paintings, patiently waiting for the unique insight that

will allow them to finish a project to their slow and

contemplative satisfaction, while others tend to work in spurts,

spitting out a completed painting in no time flat. An efficient

and prolific artist, Alex Smith doesn’t adhere to either practice,

but rather works in splats – taking on several projects

at once and moving between them until they are whole.

His influences and subject matter come from diverse

directions – literature, theatre, philosophy, Biblical

references, social commentary, politics, his childhood,

and parenting his own child, with whom he is clearly

and profoundly in love.

With an uncanny facility for capturing emotion in

realistic facial features set against improbable faces,

Smith has a knack for eloquent poignancy. His two

large paintings, Didi and Gogo, for example, inspired

by Samuel Beckett’s tragicomedy, Waiting for Godot,depict the main characters from the play, Vladimir and

Estragon, respectively, in boots and bowlers, with

tattered clothes and pensive expressions, and Gogo, or

Estragon, looking away from the viewer, perhaps

pondering his next meal or more recent ache or pain.

Like the characters from the play, Smith also

references religion frequently in the subject matter ofSmith as “Hedwig”

31

his paintings but from a distinctively more irreverent angle. His

mute-colored Saint Sebastian, for example, created on paper

cut from the inside of a box of Special K cereal, shows the

martyr in creamy beige against a background of black, a single

smear of blood on his shoulder despite the multitude of arrow

wounds rendered by the archers of the Roman emperor

Diocletian. Hollow cheeked, the saint’s blue eyes look

disappointingly upward and the words, “HI DEFINITION SET”

appear above the blood, and “WASTE” along the

lower left of the painting. The phrase, “A CRACK IN

THE VENEER OF HYPERBOLE,” has been crossed

from the upper left border of the painting but is

still legible.

Other Biblical references include the artist’s inter-

pretation of The Vision of Saint Augustine,Annunciation, The Unrepentant Sinner, and TheHoly Family in which the baby Jesus is depicted with

a stylized smiley face, typical of the icon created by

the commercial artist Harvey Ball in 1963.

Not shy of making socio-political statements,

Smith often veils his messages in incontiguous

lettering, dividing the words among spaces and lines.

In The 9th Hole, for example, a foursome of golfers is

represented on a knoll in thin white lines against a

background of black while a single man looks on in

the forefront of the painting, with the following

statement spelled out in large irregularly spaced

letters: “Your fears and suspicions are absolutely justified. The

old white men just don’t care.” And in a response to South

Carolina state budgetary threats to cut funding to educational

television, Smith created a painting of a small green Kermit-

like figure spray painting the graffiti words, “Humans do not

despair – the Muppets will prevail.”

“I wanted to make a statement,” Smith says, “but I didn’t

want to be preachy.”

Make-up and prep for Hedwig and the Angry Inch.

32

That’s just Smith’s way. He takes in

elements of the world around him,

processes them carefully, and then

returns them to his audiences newly

formed in unique and provocative

ways.

“If it doesn’t come from the great

book of the twentieth century, then it

comes from inside me,” he explains

about the subjects he creates in the

newly re-purposed Tapp’s Building on

Columbia’s Main Street. “Being here

is a dream come true for me,” he

says, explaining that his personal

mission now is to expand the former

department store space into a

multidisciplinary arts arena that will

promote the arts at the same time that

it builds the city’s community of artists

and arts patrons.

The irony is that Smith is somewhat

re-purposed himself.

From actor to director, to vocalist

and musician, to writer and filmmaker,

all the hats he has worn surface in the

newly formed iteration of Alex Smith

as a visual artist. Not unlike his

previous artistic proclivities, he has

tackled visual arts like a madman just

barely under control. He is driven,

fervent, attentive to the most miniscule

detail and, not surprisingly, he is good.

With less than a year of production

under his belt, and given the

cumulative impact of all his years in

other fine arts, the possibilities of what

Smith may have in store are nothing

less than thrilling.

33

3434undefined : book eleven

Ghosts

Someone fought for this, do you remember?Daddy tucking you in and night,swirling your dreams with a touch on the forehead, asmother rocked your fever into submission.The kiss behind the swing set in elementaryschool that lit your tiny heart on fire. The firsttime you said "I love you" and meant it.The first time you said "I'm leaving" anddidn't look back.

Hold me like breath until my lungs burst and I tell you the mystery behind family photographs. Muses passed from parents seep intocooking and the way we carry our fishing poles.Tattoos of ghosts filling our skin with ancestral messages,oujia board proclamations that Yes, we can hear you. Wefollow your footsteps daily and are proud that youlearned from our mistakes and added your own twist.Don't let our memory haunt you. Use it as a guide todirect though the mountains of life, a pathway in the dark unknown.

The eyes carry the family bible, pagesformed from the family tree, a religion of where we came from and where we are going.Finality is fictional misdirection that makes uslive fast and hard. The truth, a slow river, which takespause in the body before pouring around the afterlife.80 years is nothing in the timetable of forever.

When our spirits unwrap thepackage of skin we'll use heaven as a landing pad.Stars stuck in teeth from driving around this universe like

we have no where to go and forever to get there.

poetry

3535 undefined : book eleven

Treadmill Trackstar is a Columbia-based band of four inordinately talented musicians whotake the phrase art for art’s sake seriously. A not-for-profit organization, every penny the band

raises goes directly toward the recording of a new album – once they accumulate enough cash,they cut another record. It’s as simple as that.

In an effort to keep the community aware of their on-going project, Treadmill Trackstarrecently held a contest in which they sought out original poetry from the Southern gothic genre. Adjudicated by undefined magazine poetry editor, Ed Madden, the winner of the contest isKendal Turner for her poem, Ghosts.

Raised on the shores of Lake Murray on property that her grandfather bought for fiftydollars an acre in the nineteen-fifties, Turner attended Wells College in Aurora, NY, back whenit was an all-women’s school, graduating with a degree in English and minors in Theatre andWomen’s Studies. The 28-year-old self-identified troublemaker began performing poetry incollege and continued when she moved back to Columbia, often taking the floor at the nowdefunct Red Tub’s Open Mic Night. Her passions include cooking, swimming, napping,Verseworks every Tuesday night at the Art Bar, and performing with and writing forColumbia Alternacirque.

For more information, or to become a part of Treadmill Trackstar’s next album, visit theirwebsite at www.treadmilltrackstar.com.

Kendal TurnerSouthern Gothic Poetry Competition Winner

3636undefined : book eleven

3737 undefined : book eleven

Stephen Chesley has something to say story: Kristine Hartvigsen photography: James Quantz

artist

38

While he supports himself with his art, he’s been asavvy investor to sustain himself through theeconomic peaks and valleys of the sometimesfickle arts market. But on the whole, Chesley’slivelihood is a byproduct of his lifestyle.

“I paint for myself,” the 58-year-old artist says from a relaxedspot in his studio at Vista Studios Gallery 80808. “I do it regard-less of whether it sells. It makes no difference to me. This is sortof a priesthood. When is a priest not a priest? If you paint for thepublic, you end up with mediocrity. If you paint for yourself,your artistry will stand out eventually.”

That’s not to say he isn’t pleased if someone purchases a piecebecause of the sheer joy it elicits or because it moves them tointrospection. But Chesley understands that more prurient orsuperficial motivations often drive sales in a culture ofconspicuous consumption. It’s just the reality. Prospectivecustomers actually have asked to see “sofa-sized” art or inquiredwhether Chesley had “anything in happy colors.” It’s true thatcritics have described Chesley’s well-known landscapes as “darkand moody.” And the artist acknowledges he uses a darker,earthy palette. “Natural umbers and ochres are just a realisticchoice of colors,” he says.

“You need to stay true to the art. If you are doing it solely forthe money, your product is not going to be really good, nomatter what it is. It will be second-rate,” he says. “The art muse-ums are not full of paintings by people who painted just for themoney. Their paintings are theirs and not like anyone else’s. Youronly goal should be to paint your paintings better than anyoneelse could.”

Having a conversation with Chesley is like watching a tennis

match between the right and left brain. The handsome,grey-eyed artist volleys easily between topics ranging fromspatial intelligence and polycentrism to emotional nuance,romanticism, and even haiku. Growing up in Virginia Beach,Chesley longed to change the face of coastal development. Afterearning multiple degrees focusing on urban regional planning,he worked briefly as a city planner, only to abandon theprofession in frustration. “Two of my favorite disciplines werescience and art. The idea of combining science and art led to cityplanning,” Chesley explains. “My idea was to have centralizedareas of development and areas of wildness along the coast. Butthere is a polarization with the ultra rich that caused problemswith beach houses. I was very unhappy with that. … There isn’tany creativity in urban planning. That is why I got out of it.”

So Chesley threw his wristwatch away and spent five yearsliving simply off his savings, painting mostly sea islands,swamps, and rivers without any consideration of time. “I lived bymy natural biorhythms,” he says. “I wanted to paint and stillbe free.”

It was that period, perhaps, while painting in solitude withnature, that led to some of Chesley’s less-than-politically correctperspectives on overpopulation and the fragility of the world asit exists today. He believes the world’s overpopulation problemis, on one level, the result of a “campaign of fertility.” Achievingeven a sense of solitude in modern times is becoming more andmore difficult. Therefore, he feels an urgency to paintlandscapes, essentially to record our most beautiful landscapesfor posterity.

“This planet is an island, and we are dying on the margin −one calorie at a time,” he says, recalling a moment of clarity he

He really doesn’t care whether you buy his paintings.

“Near the Sea”. Oil on masonite. 8x20”. 2007

39

had upon purchasing a cut of flounder in a Charleston grocery.“The label, said it came from Chile. Now think about all thecalories it took to get that fish to the Publix in Charleston andpackaged, of course, in plastic.”

A fisherman in Chile expended calories to catch the flounder,Chesley posits. Then more people expended calories packagingit up. Then even more calories were burned, along with fossilfuels, to ship the flounder across the ocean to the United States.Then more calories were burned trucking the flounder to thestore and marketing it to the public. “Easily 15,000 calories wasspent to get 500 calories in the food that’s purchased,” he says.“We are in this horrific position where, economically, it’s cheap-er to ship that flounder to Charleston. But, energy-wise, it’stragic. Nature doesn’t make excuses. If you spend more caloriesthan it takes to get food, you are dead. In urban culture, itdoesn’t work that way. It’s a lesson that’s completely lost.”

This leads easily into another scenario from the depths ofChesley’s vivid imagination. He talks rapid-fire as the thoughtstumble out of his head.

“I am a human being in the year 2011. I am anearthling,” he says. “Imagine Saturn 5,000 yearsfrom now. Someone may pull out one of mypaintings and say, this is a picture created by ahuman being living on Earth in the year 2011. Thiswas called a tree. This was painted by one of ourancestors. … I don’t think we would recognize thistoday. The comfort I get from all of this (theplanet’s decline) is that it’s a natural response to us(humans). We can’t see the life-or-death struggleof the plants, for instance. They fight tooth-and-nail for that sunlight. It’s combat, an all-out fightfor survival. It’s just part of the mechanism ofnature. Our demise or evolution into somethingelse through this is just part of that.”

It might be easy to dismiss Chesley as anothertalented intellectual loner. But he would takeexception with the “loner” label. “I enjoy solitude,but I also can be in a crowd,” Chesley says. “Thetruth is that you never really can be alone. It’sa practical impossibility. You can’t be a loner. Weare moving towards unified communication atall times.”

Chesley expands on this thought with examplesof new technologies, social media, and GlobalPositioning System capability incorporated into somany products that can pinpoint where you are atall times. “It puts a different light on solitude. Theterm may even be antiquated already,” hecontinues. “You can be ‘alone in a crowd,’ but it’s amental state. The physical ability to do that isalmost impossible.”

Just because he likes his solitude, don’t write offChesley as antisocial. He has skills, to be sure. He’sabsolutely charming and, unlike the stereotypicalcreative star, does not monopolize conversationswith self-aggrandizing tales. He navigates the

obligatory crush of fund-raisers and openings with aplomb. “In asocial situation, I listen more. I don’t talk that much becausethere is no point in talking about overpopulation stuff. It doesn’tmake any difference,” he says. “I can be animated. I like to getpeople thinking. I have a lot of the anthropologist in me. I studybody language. It’s funny to see what people think is important.”

And for many, acquiring wealth and possessions is high ontheir hierarchy of needs.

Chesley cites retail giants like Kmart and Walmart withfeeding the “caloric imbalance” that comes with our culture ofconspicuous consumption. “This neon and plastic crap, we needto live with it knowing it’s insane. You have to develop copingskills and roll with it,” he says. “It’s manufactured wants − ashowcase of capitalism. You can have all these things but be themost miserable person in the world.”

He likened the modern-day pursuit of “stuff” to a dog chasingits tail. But doesn’t Chesley, too, sell goods to consumers? Thecontradiction, of course, is not lost on the opinionated artist. Hehas made a name for himself in the region, and for some,

“Bather”. Oil on masonite. 14x10”. 1986

“Tide”. Oil on masonite. 18x48”. 2007.

42

owning “a Chesley” could be considered a status symbol and bethe impetus for a purchase decision − above and beyond one’spersonal affection for a piece. Chesley would not have even amoment’s hesitation selling to a buyer in this mindset. “I don’tmind because the piece is working on them all the time,” he says.“That little piece of aesthetic, that portal to the creativeuniverse, is open for them.” Chesley maintains that art buyers,whatever their motivation, will get something from the artwork,even unconsciously. And, over time, maybe one day they willappreciate it for reasons he would want.

Though mostly self-taught in art, Chesley has taken his mostprominent cues from masters such as Rembrandt, GeorgeSeurat, Robert Henri, Edward Hopper, Franz Kline, and JacksonPollock. What’s perhaps most striking about Chesley’s thoughtfullandscapes is their vivid contrast between light and dark. Inmany scenes, the flames of a distant nighttime fire or thedramatic backlighting of the sun behind dark clouds seize thecanvas, making it seem to glow from some inner light. He usesthe technique to create a sense of “temporal ambiguity” that hesays is reminiscent of works from the Ashcan School’sspontaneously rendered, color-saturated, darker-hued scenesfrom ordinary life that can leave the viewer unsure whether it’smorning or evening, coming or going. “I often name mypaintings ‘twilight’ or simple things like ‘trees, field’ − one-line

haiku poetic titles,” Chesley says. “You don’t know whether theday is starting or ending. That came from the Ashcan School.You see the tree, but when you get up close to it, you see it’s anabstraction. That is something I strive for. I really don’t want topaint the tree, per se, because the camera does that better. I amafter a narrative.”

“While Chesley’s scenes are realistic and representative, theyoften have an abstracted quality. He combines colors of similarvalues and shuns clearly drawn lines, forcing the viewer to studythe soft-edged planes to detect what exactly they represent,”Columbia art curator and gallery owner Wim Roefs wrote in2008. “Chesley may not paint the trees but the space betweenthe trees, which still results in trees emerging from the canvas.”

Though he produces primarily landscapes, Chesley seldompaints via plein air any more. One reason is the increasinglycrowded planet and humans’ annoying tendency to claim everyremaining bit of space. “You get so much crap from landownersasking why you are there,” he explains. “I used to paint early inthe morning when there was nobody around.” These days, heoften does field sketches or takes photographs and later paints athome or in the studio. Over the years, however, Chesley hasdiscovered painting from memory to be the best method. “Ifound that painting from memory is superior to all else. Thereason is because, when you remember, you remember why the

“Street Sky”. Oil on masonite. 10x14”. 1995-1998

43

place was important − not how it looked but how it felt,” hesays. “You can paint night, but you can miss painting thefeeling of night.”

Chesley’s approach to the fundamental process of painting isto let nature take its course. “If we cleared a field, the treeswould grow without a plan,” he says. “So I put a random mark,a Franz Kline-kind of brushstroke, on the canvas. Then onething leads to another. I try to lock into the emotional content.It is usually about solitude.”

In addition to paintings, Chesley also has produced animpressive inventory of abstract metal sculpture. It comprisesabout 15 percent of the art he creates. Chesley knew hewanted to work in metal sculpture from the moment he sawthe work of the late sculpture artist David Smith. Smith’sinfluence is evident in Chesley’s three-dimensional works,which are bold, geometric, often stacked shapes that, whenwelded together, comprise a completely individual identity asthe sum of their parts. Like Smith, Chesley experiments withthe idea of “abandoning the core” in sculpture, giving hispieces an organic, visual quality that seems to defy gravity. Andperhaps in homage to Smith, many of Chesley’s pieces alsohave a reverential, totem-like appearance. His smallersculptures often are assembled from five pieces he calls little“haiku sculptures.”

For many, Chesley’s paintings are front and center. Theyalready seem to have a “brand,” at least locally. “One day, afriend told me he had seen a ‘Chesley sunset,’” Chesley recalls.“That is a great reward when that happens.”

Chesley has a very Zen-like attitude about his vocation. Hesays he can paint at home as easily as he can paint at thestudio. He comes to the studio if he feels like it. And he stilldoesn’t wear a watch. So what does he do for fun? “I just be,”he says. “I get away from the popular crises of the day and theinsanity of the world and get into this animal mode. Animalsdon’t care about the value of gold or anything. They exist dayto day in that rhythm of nature. I try to go there.”

Indeed, Chesley is unconcerned with the value of gold, ormoney for that matter, beyond meeting his basic humanneeds. “If you equate income with happiness, of course you arenot going to be an artist,” he says.

And asked when his next show will be, Chesley repliessimply, “I will have a show when I have something to say.”

44

Start waxing poetic about the nostalgic charms of traditional Irishmusic, its emotional depth and ability to transport you to anothertime and place, and you’ll get a nod of agreement from Andi Hearnand Davey Mathias.

But then you’ll get a gentle rebuke, too.“Yes, but it’s also a living tradition,” Andi says. “You might not

realize that the tune transporting you is not necessarily from the(distant) past.”

“It could have been written a year ago,” adds Davey.Irish music is certainly not frozen in time for these two. It’s a

living, breathing, ongoing art form that’s as vibrant today as it everwas. “It’s not just about St. Patrick’s Day or ‘Irish Washerwoman’ or‘Danny Boy,’” Andi says. “It’s just a huge thing that keeps growingand growing.”

The traditional Irish music Andi is talking about is comprised ofreels, hornpipes, and jigs played on fiddles, pipes, whistles, guitars,tenor banjos, and accordions. It migrated to America with Irishimmigrants during the 19th and early 20th centuries, and receiveda rejuvenating kick in the pants during the American folk musicboom of the 1960s. And Andi’s right. It has grown in popularityever since.

Andi plays the fiddle and sings. Her partner Davey plays guitarand tenor banjo. Together, they are South Carolina’s most ardent

Irish-music emissaries. They teach, travel, and promote Irish musicat every opportunity, and for the fifth year, they will stage the S.C.Irish Arts Weekend in Columbia June 17-19. “We’ve been aroundthe Columbia music scene for a lot of years, and we’ve always heardpeople say nothing ever happens in Columbia,” Andi says. “But Ifeel that to some degree we can all make cool things happen here,and a lot of people do. That’s why we started the Irish Arts Weekend… and also to lure some of our friends to town to play musicwith us.”

They’ve lured some musical luminaries for the 2011 festival.While not household names in America, guitarist Patsy O’Brien,fiddler James Kelly, and flute-and-whistle player Turlach Boylan areall renowned practitioners of Irish music, and they’ll be bringingtheir talents to Columbia for the festival in June.

Kelly’s participation will have special meaning for Andi andDavey, because he’s one of the primary reasons they’re playing Irishmusic. It was back in 1995 when Davey, a punk rocker who wasalways looking for new chordal paths on the guitar, brought homea CD called “Traditional Music of Ireland” that featured Kelly onfiddle, Paddy O’Brien on accordion, and Daithi Sproule on guitar.

Davey was mesmerized by the driving rhythm of the guitar, andthe fiddle sounds caught Andi’s ear. They were hooked. “Wejumped in with both feet,” he says. “Dove into it and startedexploring and traveling.”

“Taking lessons whenever we could and going to sessions,”says Andi.

“Going to workshops, going to concerts,” Davey adds.It was a total immersion into Irish music for the duo, and they’ve

never looked back. It’s led them to performing concerts across the

“For the good are always the merrySave for an evil chance,And the merry love to fiddle,And the merry love to dance.”

–“The Fiddler of Dooney” by W.B. Yeats.

Andi Hearn and Davey Mathiasare Taking Timeless Irish Music into the Future

music

story: Michael Miller photography: Jonathan Sharpe

45

Southeast and the formation of their own music school here inColumbia, the Redbird School of Irish Music. “This is it, the centerof the Redbird universe,” Andi says sitting at a big table in theliving room of a grand old mill house in Olympia. Two dogs, Pollyand Piper, are curled up on the floor, stringed instruments waitpatiently in their stands, and in an adjoining room shelves are linedwith records and CDs. “We have Irish recordings on one wall, andpunk rock on the other wall,” Davey says.

“We’re both music nerds, no doubt about that,” says Andi.Davey is from Lexington. Andi was born in Charleston but grew

up in northeast Columbia. She was the bookkeeper at ManifestDiscs & Tapes for 15 years back when the store was owned by CarlSingmaster. Davey has worked as a cook, dishwasher, and for 17years he manned the ticket booth at the Yesterday’s parking lot inFive Points. All the while he has been a punk rocker and still playsin a punk band today – a trio called The Wage Slaves.

It was his search for new guitar sounds that led him to Irishmusic. “I’d been playing acoustic blues for years and was alwaysexploring different guitar tunings,” he says. “Then around 1994 Istarted listening to this guy on WUSC who was playing some greatstuff, a lot of Irish music. It had the same kind of drive that I’dlooked for in other types of music. The guitar strumming, I reallyliked the openness of it. It’s similar to punk in some ways, andsimilar to bluegrass and the old-time music I grew up listening to.”

Like Davey, Andi has roots in punk rock as well. She played pianoas a kid, drums in middle school, and has tried her hand at variousother instruments over the years. But when Davey brought homethe disc of traditional Irish music, she zeroed in on the fiddle.“I just really got hooked,” she says. “It’s such fiddle-driven music,so full of melody. I was totally in love with the idea of playingthe fiddle.”

Folks who knew Andi and Davey started scratching their headsand wondering why these two rockers had roared off down the roadof reels and jigs. “A lot of people still have that reaction because westill have this big connection to punk and rock and other kinds ofmusic,” Andi says. “But to me, there’s a common thread in all themusic I love, whether it’s Eastern European fiddle music, the blues,punk or whatever. I just really love honest music. I have no betterway of describing it. Irish music is real honest music.”

“Yeah, it doesn’t sound like they spent a year in the studio tryingto come up with a sound,” says Davey. “And that’s the way it soundsin a real good session. You could record a good session, and itwould sound just as great as a studio album.”

There’s an old Irish proverb that says, “The most beautiful musicof all is the music of what happens,” and that pretty much capturesthe joy of an Irish-music session in a nutshell. (For the uninitiated,a session is a gathering of Irish musicians, who, through theirshared knowledge, can launch into a succession of tunes at themere mention of a song title.) “A fiddle player might bend over andsuggest a tune to another fiddle player, and someone will call thekey for the guitar player and bam, we’re off and running,” Daveysays. “You can sit down with people from all over the country andhave 300 tunes in common and just play all day. It’s amazing.”

“Everyone’s working together to get this one idea out there,”says Andi.

“They’re all tuned in together,” says Davey.

“Right. That’s the lovely thing about it,” adds Andi. “You’rehaving this musical conversation with all your friends. You getthat energy.”

And when you get a lot of friends together, there are invariablynew tunes to learn. “If we ever stop learning, we’re done,” Daveysays. “Like Andi said, it’s a living tradition. It just keeps on going,keeps on unfolding.”

“I love that about the music, too,” Andi says. “I feel like I’vegot …”

“All your life!” says Davey.“Yeah, a lifelong challenge to achieve this inward thing. Even

though I know the differences are subtle between this fiddle playerfrom County Clare or that fiddle player from County Sligo, to mejust thinking about that and enjoying all these different accents inthe music, it just makes me want to represent it as authentically asI can,” says Andi.

The music will certainly be authentic at the S.C. Irish ArtsWeekend, which will take place on Main Street at the ColumbiaMuseum of Art and the White Mule. (There will also be a bigSaturday night party at the Knights of Columbus Hall.)

In addition to lots of sessions, there will be workshops,mini-concerts, dancing, and a singers’ session. Attendees areencouraged to bring their instruments and rub shoulders withtop-notch players such as Mike Simpson, who plays flute, fiddleand bodhran (and Irish percussion instrument), and AlexReidinger, who plays harp, fiddle, and concertina.

Andi and Davey met many of these musicians during their visitsto vibrant Irish-music communities in towns such as Asheville,Knoxville, Atlanta, and Washington, D.C. One of their main goalsis to create a similar Irish-music community here in Columbia. It’sone of the driving forces behind their Redbird School of IrishMusic. “We’re always excited when we get new students, someonewho might really get into the music and take off with it,” saysDavey, who teaches guitar and tenor banjo.

“Sometimes you see that spark go off in their eyes when theyrealize this is a living tradition like jazz and bluegrass,” Andi says.

There are very few fiddle teachers who specialize in Irish musicin the Southeast, and when Andi started getting requests forlessons a few years ago, she wasn’t sure she was up to the task.“I thought, ‘Wow, I’m comparatively young at this thing. Do Ireally have something to share?’ But when I realized that I did, itbecame such a joy to teach, and now I’m really hooked on it.”

It’s just another way Andi and Davey can share their love for Irishmusic and hopefully create one of those “little pockets of Irishmusic,” as Davey calls them, here in Columbia. It might be a smallmovement now, but it certainly doesn’t lack energy or passion.

“Irish music has come through a lot of obstacles and a lot ofhardship, but it’s enjoyed a lot of prominence, too,” Andi says. “So Ilove the idea that I can feel some small part of this great livingtradition. Yes, it might give you the feeling of being transportedsomewhere else, but to me that makes it feel timeless.”

For more information about the S.C. Irish Arts Weekend and theRedbird School of Irish Music, visit www.cornerhousemusic.comor call (803) 254-3461.

46

As a society, all of us are pieces of a larger community.Sometimes, these pieces can be broken, lost, or forgotten.Individually, we form emotional attachments that can bebonded, severed, and sometimes glued back together. Ashumans, there is inherent beauty in each of us. And together,there is no limit to what we can achieve. This is part of theidea behind the Reliquarium Garden Mosaic Project, thecreative brainchild of Morocco native and Midlands residentKhaldoune Bencheikh.

An MFA candidate in studio art at the University of SouthCarolina, Bencheikh became interested in the plight ofColumbia’s homeless after sketching a series of charcoalportraits of the samesubject. When complet-ed in 2012, theReliquarium project willbe a 300-foot-long com-munity mosaic con-structed on the outerwall of Transitions, aMidlands HousingAlliance facility to helphomeless people movefrom the streets intopermanent housing andself-reliance. FrontingMain Street, the color-ful wall will be highlyvisible public art.

“I want to raise aware-ness about the issue ofhomelessness, to letpeople know about ‘theother Columbia,’” Bencheikh explained, adding that, like variousforms of art, people often don’t know how to react to thehomeless. “We don’t know how to react to public art here. Itempowers the community, brings them into the democraticprocess.” In other words, it’s about being counted.

In developing the project, Bencheikh has been workingclosely with Oscar Gadsden, founder of Keepin’ It Real Ministry.

“Khaldoune poured his heart out to us,” Gadsden said. “Whenyou think about the homeless, you don’t think about a face.Seventy-five percent have lost their jobs. Up to half are addictedto drugs or alcohol. They are hurting. … He took out a charcoalpencil. To see one homeless man’s face in that charcoal –Khaldoune captured his soul. God has blessed this manwith talent.”

Gadsden said that homeless individuals will be recruited tohelp construct the mosaic. It’s a skill they can learn. AndBencheikh was planning to hold a workshop this summer to

train them. The estimated cost of the entire project is about$30,000, and that mainly covers supplies. But the mostprominent need right now is ceramic artifacts to be used in thisvisual jigsaw reflecting the lives and times of Columbians.

Reliquarium represents an exceptional opportunity in theMidlands for the community to actually participate in a majorpublic art work that will both beautify and add character to thecity. Bencheikh is seeking ceramic donations of plates, mugs,teacups, knick-knacks, tile, and sculpture. Each piece shouldhave some sentimental value to the donor, which Bencheikh willrecord before it is integrated into the wall.

“These pieces are like people. Some have very interestingstories,” he said. “Peoplecan get so connected totheir artifacts. It’s likethey are part of them.When people releasethese things to me, it islike they are releasingtheir emotion.”

Sometimes it isdifficult to let items go.Bencheikh shared sto-ries of a man who donat-ed a ceramic clock hisartist mother made backin the 1960s. He’s kept itall these years and want-ed something of hismother’s on the wall. Ayoung woman con-tributed a ceramic birdthat she’d picked up at a

flea market several years back. She had a strong feeling that thebird was lonely and felt happy that it now would be in good com-pany.

“What makes this project unique is the participation of thecommunity,” Bencheikh said. “Without your donation, I can’tmake this work.”

Donations of ceramic artifacts for the Reliquarium project canbe dropped off in the lobby of the Columbia Museum of Art orthe Tapp’s Center for the Arts, both on Main Street downtown.Bencheikh said he has enough artifacts in hand to begin the firstof three panels to be constructed for the project. He will beginthat process in June at the art museum.

For more information, visit www.khaldoune.com or e-mailthe artist at contactme@khaldoune.com.

Reliquarium for a dream

project

story: Kristine Hartvigsen

Detail from an inaugural panel of the Reliquarium mosaic.

4747

"I am convinced the only peopleworthy of consideration in thisworld are the unusual ones. For the common folks are like

the leaves of a tree,and live and die unnoticed."

— L. Frank Baum

48

Return

A crow walks along the fencerow—hedge of wet against the spring wind.

Its wings shine black, dark shimmerin the green light, the sky grown white

with grief and hunger. The crow is a bruiseon the green hedge, it shines.

Across the field, the light liesin scattered parcels of white and brown,

the plow’s work persisting, the tractor’ssmoke rising in the green air.

The crow calls out to passing cars,it calls out to you as you drive by

slowly in the light rain, toward home,drive slowly in the green light

to a house where someone might be waiting, a house where no one is waiting.

Sacrifice

When my father bound me, I submitted,

closed my eyes to the lifted knife in his fist.Even now, the cords still hold my wrists,

rough ropes of love. My chest is bare,my heart lies open. He loves his god more

than me. I open my eyes, watch my fatherraise his fist against a bright and bitter

sky, no angel there to stay his hand.

poetry

by Ed Madden

Ed Madden is an associate professor at the University of South Carolina. He is the author of Signals, which won the2007 South Carolina Poetry Book Prize, and his work was included in Best New Poets 2007. He is also the poetry edi-tor for undefined magazine

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This is not the postcard for the monument to J. Marion Sims

That lies in a leafy corner of the groundsof the state capitol in Columbia, South Carolina.

That card would describe the graceful curveof the marble line surrounding the niche,which holds the heroic bust, and the Hippocratic oath,above the tributes to the father of gynecology.

On paper, as in stone,no other names would appear,no paean to Anarcha, Lucy and Betsy,the slaves who succumbed to his scalpel and speculum,

no encomiums for the Irish destitute of New Yorkwhose names were lost after his work was finished.

The engravers have packed up their own tools.As if the stone cannot bear the true weight of that history.

by Dan Vera

A poet from Washington D.C., Dan Vera visited the Sims monument last summer. He is the author of The SpaceBetween Our Danger and Delight (Beothuk Books), as well as a co-founder of Vrzhu Press and publisher of SouvenirSpoon Books. He also edits the gay culture journal White Crane, co-hosts the Capitol Hill reading series, and helpedto create the new poetry incubator Poetry Mutual of America.

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AX

Like death,leaves will dropat their own pace.And the childrenwho crush themunder foot, needto know that theirtime will come too.

(from Red Dirt Jesus)

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