Clarion Content

Muhammad Ali: The Photographs of Sonia Katchian

2012-01-31T09:00:00.000-05:00

The Clarion Content is delighted to welcome back a bon vivant whom we hope will be a regular contributor, Catherine Howard. Ms. Howard is a whirlwind of activity and very much in the middle of the Durham artistic milieu. She is a visual artist, an art history instructor, and a curator.

To see her artwork, check out www.catherinejhoward.com, and to see more of her writing, check out catherinejhoward.wordpress.com.

Read her first piece on the Clarion Content here.

Muhammad Ali: The Photographs of Sonia Katchian

at Focal Point Gallery in Chapel Hill, NC

as seen by Catherine Howard

Walking into the artist’s reception at Focal Point Gallery on Sunday, January 15th, a sumptuous spread of cookies, sheet cake, cupcakes, and snacks left no room for doubt that we were joining a jovial celebration of Ali’s 70th birthday already in progress. Although Sonia Katchian’s “The ALI Folio” includes a smattering of images of Ali in the ring, this exhibition glorifies an intimately human Ali, the gentle man known to his family and close associates.

This living legend, a symbol of boxing, charisma, Islam, and now Parkinson’s disease, captivates our collective imagination. His public persona inspires awe and reverence (after all, the man is The Champ), but with a career veiled in bravado, who is the man behind the façade?

Now, we do see Ali’s physical prowess in various photographs of his warm-ups and sparring. The piercing gaze he flings at an off-camera opponent in “Deer Lake, PA Training Camp 1974)” chills the blood. However, of the mixture of fighting, preparation, and candid shots, the most captivating photos only tangentially allude to his “job”. Ali’s unwavering intensity, a quality that made him such a formidable fighter, surfaces in a photograph of him conversing with a tailor, entitled “Los Angeles 1981”, but his piercing gaze is softened with a poised deference.

On another wall, the dichotomy of man vs. idol is perfectly encapsulated: “Deer Lake, PA Training Camp 1974”, depicting two small boys gazing up at a life-size chalk drawing of The Champ surrounded by promotional boxing posters, is placed right next to “First Class to Detroit, 1981”, in which Ali is sprawled out, jaw slack, exhausted, on an airplane.

The vulnerability and trust required to fall asleep around someone else is a testament to the warmth and dedication inherent in Katchian and Ali’s relationship. During our conversation, she reiterated the gentility Ali exuded toward his inner circle. “He was so modest, soft-spoken. His public persona was all for show.”

Ali’s public conversion to the Muslim faith made him a lightning rod during the Civil Rights movement, but regardless of how his religious beliefs were portrayed in the media, Katchian tenderly mused, “He is a very spiritual person; his relationship to God is so deep and important to him.”

This multifaceted glimpse at such an iconic figure sparks nuanced conversations about race, fame, and religion. While there may not be any cupcakes left, Ali’s candid smile will still welcome you. Bring the kids and neighbors, and join in the celebration!

On display until February 28th, “The ALI Folio”, a connoisseur’s boxed edition containing fourteen of Katchian’s and Ali’s favorite photographs, can be purchased by visiting Focal Point Gallery at 1215 East Franklin St in Chapel Hill. Posters and postcards are also available. Call 919-636-4557 or visit www.chapelhillfocalpoint.com for more information.

Mary Duke Biddle Trent Semans

2012-01-30T12:00:00.001-05:00

Mary Duke Biddle Trent Semans passed Wednesday in Duke Hospital at the age of ninety-one. The Clarion Content could not have said it better than the Duke Chronicle, "Mary Duke Biddle Trent Semans shouldered the legacy of the Duke's founding family with remarkable grace, unwavering commitment and indiscriminate love."

As long time readers know, it is the Clarion Content's contention that Durham is what is because it is built on what was. There are few better examples of those who laid the foundation of this great cultural city we share than Ms. Semans.

The members of the Clarion Content editorial board who had cause to interact with Ms. Semans found her remarkably gracious and kind. She had no reason to treat us as anything other than anonymous minions and she did nothing of the sort.

We are grateful for her life and works and we join those who mourn her passing.

State of the State

2012-01-26T18:15:00.004-05:00

Wait a minute! Is the Clarion Content mistaken or did Obama just start down a path to lose an un-loseable election?

Is he really running the Al Gore 2000 populism playbook?¹ Against a Republican field that makes former scion, George Bush II, look like a thoughtful, articulate candidate? Against a a Republican field that Senator Bob Dole could have beaten with one arm tied behind his back?

What gives, Mr. President?

Has no one told you that the only way you can run against the Man in this country is with less regulation, not more. The Reagan narrative, "Get the Man out of lives and off of our back" is alive and well, in the Tea Party freshman of Congress and the Ron Paul zeitgeist."²

But the populist left, Mr. President? This country has been tarring and feathering the populist left as lily-livered commies since before Senator Joe McCarthy was a teenager. The last Democrat to win the Presidency with a true people's mandate from the left was Franklin D. Roosevelt.

And there was a depression. Now, while there is economic malaise, and there are worrying signs of deflation in the United States economy, there is no depression.

Absent times that bad, campaigning from the populist left is a surefire recipe for defeat, Mr. President.

Notes
¹ None of this should imply that there are not dangerously high levels of income inequality in America. It is just that a Democrat can't win a national election crowing about it.

²Note that in both these canons the Man is far more likely to refer to the government than big corporations.

Fire on Markham Avenue

2012-01-26T17:29:00.003-05:00

The Clarion Content's intrepid Durham correspondent, Cady Childs, captured this shot of the scene at the fire at Danser Guitar Works last night on Markham Avenue. No one was hurt. There was significant damage to the building and contents.

Old North Durham Park

2012-01-24T20:35:00.005-05:00

Durham's disputed pitch

The battle over Old North Durham Park was taken up by the Durham City Council this week. According to the News and Observer the council the approved a resolution, which essentially endorses the Durham Park's and Recreation department's plan, for repairing the park's dysfunctional drainage system and replacing the athletic field's rocky surface with topsoil and grass.¹

The council, while hiding under the cover of the Parks and Recreation plan, controversially agreed that the size of the field could be reduced by up to 10,000 sq.ft., much to the chagrin of local residents. The residents, despite generally supporting the Central Park School for Children's plans for nature trails, a butterfly garden and picnic spaces, are suspicious about the reduction of the size of the athletic field, the frequent site of community soccer games. The pitch, one of the only public fields of any size in downtown, has been hotly disputed.

The N&O reports Old North Durham residents and their supporters claim the city is cooperating with real-estate interests to discourage the park's use by blacks and Hispanics. Among the organizations lobbying on local residents behalf, the Durham Coalition for Urban Justice and El Kilombo. The school's coalition is represented by the Friends of Old North Durham Park.

The Clarion Content has heard much about the merits of both sides of this difficult debate. It promises to be repeated as downtown and Durham's gritty reputation grapple with avoiding gentrification.²

Notes
¹If you have ever had any interaction with Durham Park's and Recreation Department, that alone could make you suspect of their plans for anything.

²It won't be easy. There is resentment, not only among haves and have-nots in Durham, but also between those who invested in the community when it was down and those who could not afford to do so.

Job Searching advice

2012-01-24T20:01:00.001-05:00

This isn't your usual job searching advice. Rather this is the Clarion Content's Practical Advice, simple heads up tips that we have heard and want to pass along. In this case the advice we heard concerns job searching and personal privacy.

When replying to Craigslist and other job search websites, one of the most irritating pieces of the process is the spam that it produces. Our job counselor recommended creating a new separate email address for your job search. GMail, Yahoo and Hotmail are all free. By creating a new email address, you don't jam up your existing email address, the one that all of your friends and relatives have, with unwanted spam.

This technique also makes you more focused on your job search, because when you are checking emails about job searching, there won't be any goofy forwards or angst ridden emails from long lost relatives to interrupt you. If no one but parties related to your job search has the email address you are using, you won't be distracted by frivolous and/or social email.

Another job searching tip, along these same lines that we heard for responding to internet job ads, send your resume without your street address. Again it cuts down on junk mail, employers who will have your email and phone number from your resume, are not upset not to have your street address, especially if you still include your city, state of residence. Legitimate employers are not looking to mail you anything and if they are, they will have reached out and made personal contact long before then. Spammers and junk mailers trolling for addresses won't be bothered to look you up, if you don't give it away.

Not a done deal yet

2012-01-24T09:35:00.004-05:00

"No, there is another..."

The Clarion Content heard CBS's Bob Schieffer bandy it about on the Monday morning news round table. Now Clarion Content fave, Nate Silver, over at the 538 has written a column about the possibility of it.

What is it?

A brokered convention.

A brokered convention results when a nominee is picked at the convention, through multiple floor votes, after there has been no clear winner from the primary results. The 2012 Republican Convention will be held in Tampa, Florida, during the last week of August.

How might the Republicans arrive at this precedent breaking scenario? (We say precedent breaking as the last time the Republicans had a brokered convention they nominated Thomas E. Dewey in 1948...who went on not to defeat Harry Truman.)

But the times, they are a changing and shuffling. The Democratic nomination race of 2008 between President Obama and Secretary of State Clinton felt unprecedented in its length.

Will this be the year? Schieffer's colleagues noted, he was hoping for it. He wondered if the pundits even remembered how to cover it. Silver speculates that a brokered convention could produce a last minute dark horse candidate like Wisconsin's Paul Ryan or the latest Bush scion, Jeb.

And what might it mean for Ron Paul?

Click through on the various links to read more.

A Report from Centerfest Focus Groups

2012-01-23T09:00:00.002-05:00

Are you curious about those focus groups on Centerfest the Durham Arts Council has been holding, dear readers? Us too!

Fortunately, we have a special guest columnist who attended the first meeting and generously gives us, Durham, a sense of the room. Please welcome to the pages of the Clarion Content, for what we hope will be the first of many dispatches, LiLa front man and Durham native, Eli McDuffie.

Durham's Five Points, once the heart of Centerfest

Centerfest Focus Group One

observations by: Eli McDuffie

Durham Arts Council head, Sherry DeVries, moderated and guided the group toward three questions:

1)Which artists do we invite?

2)How do we publicize the event/artists?

3)How do we attract the large crowds?

The first question was the easiest to answer. There was a solid consensus on the demographic of artists. Mentions of inclusion of young student artists and discussions ratios of local to national artists were met with overall agreement.

As the audience touched on different ideas I observed an unmistakable wealth of wisdom being shared, but I also sensed a cautionary undertone. The artists present were seasoned not only in their art, but also in testing economic climates. This was no naïvely optimistic crew. The Durham Arts Council and the artists shared a similar concern for the festival: how can Centerfest best be carried out to maximize its entertainment value to the community, without leaving someone to foot the bill?

The finer details of whether or not to have a juried competition for the artists and where resources would be deployed were still unresolved as the small blue stickers got passed out to the audience to vote.

As the voting commenced and the results were reviewed by Ms. DeVreis and the panel, the common theme, the point of agreement, amongst the artists was publicity...How to bring as much public awareness as possible to the artists and their mediums.

There is no doubt that all the important pieces were present, one only has to look at the title of the focus group sessions: Creative Community, Food, Music, Performing Arts, Site-Venues, Format… But undertones of caution still lingered, tinged with worry. Durham has fallen short in recent years of creating a sustainable event. Organizers emphasize that profitability or at least reasonable cost control must be a priority. Just hinting at the range performers and number food trucks that could grace Centerfest provided some reassurance to the audience, but that topic was left to be resolved in another focus group.

See you next time, Room 209, Durham Arts Council.

Michelle Gonzales-Green: a sense of place

2012-01-21T11:00:00.000-05:00

The Clarion Content is delighted to welcome aboard what we hope will be a regular guest contributor, Catherine Howard. Ms. Howard is a whirlwind of activity and very much in the middle of the Durham artistic milieu. She is a visual artist, an art history instructor, and a curator. She worked with the Durham Storefront Project. She will be traveling to Cape Town, South Africa in 2012 for a collaborative public art residency. She graduated with a degree in Art History from Barnard College. To see her artwork, check out www.catherinejhoward.com, and to see more of her writing, check out catherinejhoward.wordpress.com.

Today she tells us about the newest installation at the Carrack Gallery.

a sense of place by Michelle Gonzales-Green

at The Carrack Modern Art

from Catherine J. Howard

Canvas on the floor, gold piano keys, wire sheets hanging from the ceiling... When I walked in, "a sense of place" was still very much in-progress. Upon entering the space, Michelle Gonzales-Green’s effusive energy sweeps you into a menagerie of interactive installations dedicated to personal space, faith, and identity. She has taken the entire week to paint/sculpt/create within The Carrack’s space, giving her the flexibility to reflect the surrounding environment and subsequent experiences in her work. Chronicling her creativity only since January 1, 2012, this seemingly piecemeal array explores the wide variety of facets prompted by Gonzales-Green’s meditations on “home” and “self”.

First, we run into “Wonder Clock”, a combination of the album sleeve for Stevie Wonder’s “Songs in the Key of Life” and black and gold piano keys refashioned as clock hands. Gonzales-Green gushed that “Pastime Paradise” was the genesis of her self-awareness, and as such, the rest of the show in essence stems from that album. [While writing this piece, I listened to “Pastime Paradise” on loop. It was only fitting.]

Next, a resurrection of Grandma’s wooden wall paneling and flowered couch welcome you to sit down for a spell. The framed photographs reverse our expectations, focusing on pride in Grandma rather than in the grandkids. Memories, both comfortable and of loss, nostalgia and pain, surface in waves. A trio of sculptures explore female empowerment, gender ambiguity, and the afterlife. A seductively sensuous “Tree of Knowledge” refashions femininity as the origin of paradisaical knowledge, rather than it’s downfall.

Now, to be fair, I have to leave a few surprises, but I can at least say don’t be afraid to get down and dirty in your experience of heaven and hell. Oh, and, be prepared for a journey back in time.

The visual language between individual installations may not be consistent, but the entire exhibit’s energy is intoxicatingly genuine. Not even a hint of irony or sarcasm in sight. Gonzales-Green eloquently summarized the motivation behind "a sense of place": “We only know what we choose to be. To have a sense of place, we all choose, but why do we choose what we choose? How do we know what we’ve never experienced or never been?” This inspiring sphere of reminiscence and nurturing gives us a chance to step outside our personal history and experience a viscerally powerful alternative perception of “home”. Allow her to enfold you and whisk you away on this fantastical journey.

Meet the artist and enjoy homemade Puerto Rican food at the opening reception THIS FRIDAY, January 20th from 6-9 pm at The Carrack Modern Art, 111 West Parrish St, Durham, NC 27701. For more information about The Carrack Modern Art, visit http://thecarrack.org.

Liberty Arts Live Aluminum Pour

2012-01-20T12:17:00.002-05:00

by: Cady Childs

If there’s one event to be sure not to miss on tonight’s art walk, it’s Liberty Arts live aluminum pour at their old foundry adjacent to Durham Central Park.

The pouring will occur between 6pm and 7pm tonight.

“It’s a new year, and we want to show we’re still here,” Jackie MacLeod, of Liberty Arts, said. “Pouring is always very sparkly and very dramatic- you won’t want to miss out.”

For more information on the Liberty Arts group, visit their website at LibertyArtsCasting.org. And check out their new location at the Cordoba Arts Center, located in the Golden Belt District. Durhamites, get a peek at the new space before the grand opening March 16th. Right next to Scrap Exchange's huge new spot. Perfect to hit up after a Friday night stroll through Golden Belt's studios.

The Clarion Content is hoping to persuade Scenes from my Lunch Hour to take some photos of tonight's pour.

Duck and Cover 01.18.11

2012-01-18T15:14:00.001-05:00

Our thanks to "Duck & Cover" and creator Storey Clayton.

Check out his other projects, here, at the Blue Pyramid.

All ideas and opinions are those of the cartoonist and do not necessarily reflect the view of the Clarion Content.^*

^*But we usually agree.

The Carrack, the latest

2012-01-15T20:40:00.000-05:00

from the Clarion Content's Art, Style, and Fashion columnist
on the Durham beat...
Cady Childs

From the opening of the Wendelbo-Malo-Digiulio exhibition
All photos courtesy of Scenes from my Lunch Hour

The Carrack Modern Art Gallery, located at 111 West Parrish Street, directly above Loaf, is one of those aesthetically addictive spaces you just don’t want to leave. Exposed brick, warm wood floors, comfy, familiar armchairs, and massive windows gazing idly down to the street below lay the backdrop for what happens when two creatively inclined, organized people put their heads together.

“This all evolved in a way we didn’t expect,” Laura Ritchie, co-founder and co-director of the Carrack, said.

At the gallery
All photos courtesy of Scenes from my Lunch Hour

The gallery functions in a way not often seen in today’s art world. The Carrack is not a co-op. Artists do not pay out a commission on pieces sold during exhibitions, there are no membership fees, and, other than being available for rent to the public for special events, the space is maintained completely through donations and community faith. In December of last year, a KickStarter campaign culminated with a $12,000 pool of funds, securing the space for the entirety of 2012, and confirming just how vital an entity the Carrack has become to the Durham community.

After working together at the Carrboro Arts Center, John Wendelbo, founder of the Durham Sculpture Project, brought Ms. Ritchie on board to take his vision to the next level.

"The community wanted a space like this, and we needed to put together the funding, space, and work to do so," said Ms. Ritchie, a graduate of UNC-Chapel Hill and native of North Carolina.

"We wanted to make the Carrack it’s own entity from the Durham Sculpture Project, but they will always be intrinsically linked.”

From a curatorial perspective, Ritchie has already laid the foundation to secure the Carrack a space in the now crackling Durham art scene. One of the first places the Carrack popped up on the Clarion Content’s radar, if you’ll forgive the pun, was last October’s PoPuP III organized by Richie and Durham artist and bon vivant, Adrian Schlesinger. Now, the gallery is almost completely booked through December 2012, with just about every medium imaginable represented at least once during the course of the year. Richie’s verve and energy are a driving force.

The current Wendelbo-Malo-Digiulio exhibition features a collaboration of three artists (including John Wendelbo, the Carrack's co-founder). It is on display now through this Friday, January 13th, featuring large-scale sculptures and paintings coloring between the lines of abstraction and realism.

Wendelbo-Malo-Digiulio exhibit at the Carrack gallery
All photos courtesy of Scenes from my Lunch Hour

Michelle Gonzalez Green’s ‘A Sense of Place’, opening January 16th, explores the ‘inner sanctum’ of finding one’s creative place, and what settings artists choose to put themselves in during that search. The exhibition will be an inner look at seventeen days of creating in Green’s studio, using original materials that inspired, infuriated, or entranced during the time recorded.

Other upcoming exhibits include works by Gracelee Lawerence (January 30th-February 10th), Dipiki Kohli (February 10th-February 12th), and Melissa Smith (February 13th-February 24th).

The Carrack, named after a type of European ship from the 15th century that lead to the discovery of new worlds, is living up to it’s metaphorical name. It is giving artists a new paradigm, truly modern, post capitalist insatiability, a new take on a collaborative, community-run space, and providing a supportive environment. In exchange for the free space, the artists are expected to largely manage their own staging and promotion. When these individual artists needed a space, the Carrack was there. Ritchie and Wendelbo are in for one exciting year.

For more information on the Carrack’s exhibitions, calendar, booking, and rental, visit their website at www.thecarrack.org.

Wendelbo-Malo-Digiulio exhibit at the Carrack gallery
All photos courtesy of Scenes from my Lunch Hour

Catherine Howard

2012-01-15T09:00:00.000-05:00

Catherine Howard's "Courting Love & Violence" was specially commissioned for the Clarion Content's holiday party celebrating the Rodney Derrick Art collection.

Close-up
All photos courtesy of Scenes from my Lunch Hour

It is black paint on white gessoed canvas. The women are pin-up girls of an ilk a little bit more raunchy than your average Vargas girl¹. The men are soldiers from outside our standard mental imagery as well. No G.I.'s or Doughboys here, rather they are soldiers of the Apartheid regime.

Howard deliberately juxtaposed these suggestively dressed women and their bodies with soldiers who represented the sovereignty of the nefarious. One cannot help but mix the violence with the sexuality. This is Howard's admitted intent. She believes it mirrors the imagery and actuality in our modern society where violence and sexuality are constantly part of the same brew. Cutting stencils and posing the actions of those involved gave Ms. Howard an opportunity to literally play with her creations like dolls. This metaphor, too, was deliberate, Howard believes it is not much past the time that little girls stop playing with dolls, when men begin to look at them differently.

In our society, permission to ~~look~~ leer is largely granted only to one gender. Thus men are often willing and able quote the proverbial, "I'm married, not dead. Of course, I am still allowed to look." Whereas women who look at men in the same way are castigated as sluts, whether they follow through on their lusty glances or not. Our society holds that the look of wanton sexual desire is normal male behavior. The look wanton sexual desire is improper female behavior. Howard's work lashes out against these strictures.

Night of the party
All photos courtesy of Scenes from my Lunch Hour

Sexual objectification is inherently violent. Violence is implicit in the directionality; the what I to do "to" you, rather than the what I want to do "with" you. The object is used, subject-subject relationships are mutual, subject-object relations are unidirectional. The objectified is not a participant in a relationship, but rather a tool for use. In the context of human sexuality, the objectified learn that one's body is a tool for other people's benefit. Self-image becomes distorted, bent, misshapen.

Afternoon light
All photos courtesy of Scenes from my Lunch Hour

Howard pared down her figures to the few picture here from an original thirty. She has worked extensively with body imagery in her previous art. You might remember the Clarion Content covered her collaboration with The Duke Center for Eating Disorders at the Carrack Gallery. Howard's figurines suggest the beginning of a tapestry or comic book. She says there is more of the tale to be unfolded in future images.

Catherine, we look forward to it.

Notes
¹Vargas girls are iconic WWII pin-up girls. Originally commissioned for Esquire magazine, they were frequently painted on the sides of military planes.

Duck and Cover 01.12.12

2012-01-12T11:11:00.003-05:00

Duck and Cover 01.11.12

2012-01-11T08:00:00.001-05:00

Duck and Cover returns from Winter Break hiatus...

Ridin Wit' Joe Crack

2012-01-10T17:43:00.000-05:00

The president and founder of the Campaign for Change, Otis Lyons, is also the writer, director, producer and driving force behind, "Ridin' Wit' Joe Crack."

It is a one night engagement, for now, tomorrow night, at 7pm at the Durham Performing Arts Center (DPAC).

Our advice, Durham, do not miss this show.

This is the eighth year in production for "Ridin Wit' Joe Crack." Each year Lyons adds an element of showmanship and drama, raising the game and the excitement level. This year one hundred and twenty-five members of Hillside High School Marching Hornets band and dance team will be joining the cast of Joe Crack on-stage at the DPAC.

From what we have seen in rehearsals, Durham, do not miss this show...

Steve Collins is Joe Crack
All photos courtesy of Scenes from my Lunch Hour

The Clarion Content is fond of the maxim, truth trumps fiction. It is a mantra that Otis Lyons has lived so empirically that he needs no reminders of its veracity. Lyons was a talented student according to peers and acquaintances, but he was rolling with the wrong crowd. His role models were leaders in the streets, not the classroom. Like the tale he tells in Joe Crack, Lyons was a gang member who made his living selling drugs.¹ As Joe notes, "Few live and survive life's ride to tell this story."

Otis Lyons aka Vegas Don (standing)
All photos courtesy of Scenes from my Lunch Hour

That is the sad truth for Lyons old crew, as the man they affectionately call Vegas Don looks back from the far side of forty, by some estimates as many as two-thirds of his high school "crew" may already be gone. Twenty out of thirty young men, waylaid, doing life behind bars or dead. Lyons is doing all he can to prevent this outcome for others in our community, Durham.

Left to right---Orishio Williams, Otis Lyons, Steve Collins, Monte C.
All photos courtesy of Scenes from my Lunch Hour

Lyons is not only spreading the message through the show itself, but literally picking up people along the way. For many members of Lyons cast, the story of Joe Crack is personal. Nick Alejandro, whose performance as Joe Crack's running mate, T-Money, sends shivers down the spine says, "This [role] touches me because its so real."

The mantra of truth trumping fiction rings authentically for cast members who have experienced much of the tale of life on the streets that Lyons and Joe Crack unfold.

Alejandro admits before the birth of his daughter Amaya, five, his life was headed down a dangerous path. He has been working with Otis Lyons and the Campaign for Change three years. Campaign for Change is Lyons non-profit organization dedicated to anti-gang, drug and crime education through youth empowerment, positive role modeling, goal-setting and outreach.

It is this same gripping reality that captures the minds of audience members young and old alike. Lyons narrative, his ability to show the truth of what is happening in the streets, opens eyes and moves hearts. The show incorporates live music, from modern hip-hop to R&B to Carmina Burana, spoken word, and a powerful personal message from a wheelchair bound former gang member², it is a raucous wall of sound and an explosion of energy, with highly stylized blocking and elaborate choreography.

The vignettes depict scenarios that many young people face: peer pressure, street life, relationships, family interactions, girlfriend/boyfriend dynamics. They are deliberately archetypal without sounding corny or shying away from the real.

Lyons is a demanding taskmaster of his cast, often sounding like the basketball coach³ he is.

Drilling and honing the tiniest details, he demands, "Why is he sweating?" looking at Joe Crack, played by Steve Collins, who is literally dripping with the intensity of his effort.

Lyons answers his own question, "Because he is giving 110%. Why isn't everyone else sweating?"

His voice reverberates and his actors dig deeper.

Lyons knows he is tough. It is because he is about the message. He states firmly and forthrightly, it is not about the song and dance for him. It is not the spotlight of the production that drives him. It is the message, "We are changing lives here. We can't play. We don't have the time."

The earnestness of his intensity mixed with his record of success breathes fire. His people want to run through walls for him, uncomplainingly repeating takes, working as their own stage crew humping pieces of set and props on and off stage again and again.

Steve Collins, a NCCU theater graduate, playing the lead, Joe Crack, has no problem declaring it is so, "I gave up everything for this. My car. My place. I am sleeping on a friend's couch. I am willing to forgo everything else."

Collins is a veteran of professional theater who has been working with Lyons for several years. The cast is stocked with talent. Older actors like Orishio Williams and Johnny Foster stride the stage like the streets to create a seamless illusion of the world where Joe Crack dwells. Younger performers like Moriah Williams, Fred Jones, and Rahim Royal aka the DeFacto Thezpian, shimmy and strut with confidence and feel. Williams plays a "street girl" like she owns her character's diary. Jones, as the comedic junkie, has touches of everything from Jimmy Walker to early Damon Wayans. Royal's body control and movement in a non-speaking role is mesmerizing.

It would be impossible not to highlight the powerful, ebullient, vibrant performance by Jakayla Hart as Keisha, Joe Crack's girlfriend. If there is one cast member whose passionate work rips at the fabric of your very being, it is Hart. She stands strong next to the virtuoso intensity of Collins's Joe Crack and Alejandro's T-Money. In a male dominated cast, about a male dominated milieu, Hart might not be able to save Joe Crack and T-Money from themselves, but the emotional strength and harmony of this triumvirate under Lyons direction will touch you.⁴

Jakayla Hart as Keisha
All photos courtesy of Scenes from my Lunch Hour

"Ridin' wit' Joe Crack's" message is powerful and inspirational.

Among the memorable lines from the production:

"Real G's don't hurt the people they love."

"Visiting a living corpse behind steel bars."

"The thin line between walking it, talking it and living it. Giving it or just pretending it's all right."

Steve Collins as Joe Crack and Jakayla Hart as Keisha
All photos courtesy of Scenes from my Lunch Hour

Steve Collins as Joe Crack and Jakayla Hart as Keisha
All photos courtesy of Scenes from my Lunch Hour

Durham, you do not want to miss this show.

Originally published January 5th, 2012.

Notes
¹Read Otis Lyons's Durham story of poverty, violence, high school, family, gangs, prison, and ultimately redemption here.

²Lyons often uses former gang members as speakers. In this case, it is a personal family friend, Mike Spain. Mr. Spain, a wheelchair bound casualty of gang violence, tells it like it is. He warns young audience members, "You don't have to end up this way. You have a choice. I have to have help to take my pants off. I might spend twelve hours or two days waiting for someone to come by my house to get me, to go anywhere."

³Word is Lyons, aka, Vegas Don coaches the Carolina Don's youth basketball team in his spare time.

⁴We defy you to go and not cry. This, too, is Durham. Too ignore the reality of it is a moral failure.

Duck and Cover 01.10.12

2012-01-10T08:30:00.002-05:00

Duck and Cover returns from Winter Break hiatus...

Interesting Links

2012-01-08T21:08:00.008-05:00

It is January and we have a new batch of interesting links for you, dear readers. If you haven't seen'em all, check out old posts by clicking here and scrolling down. There are hours and hours of semi-captivating material, time wasting Alice fell down a hole and landed deep in the internet stuff.

This week we bring you a fascinating video from one of our teen contributors who regularly sends the Clarion Content good material for our "What are They Watching" column. This video can't qualify for "What are They Watching" status because by the standards of the Google-verse, it has a mere 32,000 hits.

It is nonetheless amazing. Watch as the woman below makes a beguiling transformation.

Into Drake with just make-up

The next two interesting links are both politics related. The first is more important than the second. From Robert Wright, a senior editor at The Atlantic, it speaks most cogently and succinctly about why Ron Paul is an asset in the political debate, whether one agrees with his views or finds him repugnant. Essentially Ron Paul is the only candidate from either major party who attempts to, "imagine how the world looks to people other than Americans." Those folks and their perspective make up 95.5% of the world's population. Read Wright's whole take here.

The second politics links is more of an inside baseball piece about the New Hampshire primary and the latest Republican Presidential debate. Long time Clarion Content fave and Esquire veteran, Charles P. Pierce, wittily dissects the milquetoasts¹ that make up² the Republican party field. It is hilariously laugh-out-loud funny, "[Romney] running through all four of the expressions of which his face is capable, beginning with 'Lordly Disdain' and ending with 'Flog The Butler'."

It gets more caustic from there and while it is perfectly safe for work the language is distinctly PG-13. Just fyi. Read the whole piece here.

Share your interesting links with us at ClarionContent at gmail dot com and read about them in our next edition.

Notes
¹Michelle Bachmann took the Republican's last personality off the campaign trail to the sidelines after Iowa.

²Just couldn't get away from that word in this piece.

L.A. Arson follow-up

2011-12-31T17:00:00.003-05:00

There is an arsonist or something else still afoot in Los Angeles. The Clarion Content wrote about it yesterday when it was a string of nineteen overnight blazes. L.A. police and fire officials are now reporting there have been more than thirty suspicious fires in the last twenty-four hours. More than three dozen vehicles have been burned from Hollywood to the San Fernando Valley.

It would be awfully hard for a single individual to cover all that ground geographically.

To the Clarion Content, it feels more like the work of somebody like ELF (the Earth Liberation Front).

In almost all cases the fires started with a single vehicle being set afire.

Down goes Twitter

2011-12-31T12:28:00.006-05:00

We suppose if you are a fellow Tweeter that you have noticed, Twitter's website and service has been down for the better part of two hours. No information from the company is available. Their website merely says, "Users may currently be experiencing some site issues; our engineers are working on resolving this issue."

No word whether the site is simply overwhelmed with tweets and users or is experiencing a denial of service attack.

Stay tuned.

Read more here in Mashable.

L.A. Arson

2011-12-30T11:11:00.001-05:00

We saw that there was a slew of suspicious of fires set last night in Hollywood, CA. Los Angeles Fire Department officials today described a series of nineteen arson fires overnight in the Hollywood area as "highly unusual," according to the LA Times. This has the Clarion Content wondering. Single suspect acting alone? A political protest? A criminal?

What does the destabilized, highly charged situation that is America today mean we should expect for this New Years eve? Will there be a bunch of lone gunmen trying to personally fulfill their demented Mayan visions?

We are going to make a rare concession for us: we rather hope the cops are on high alert, paying attention to this sort of thing.

What aren't they watching?

2011-12-28T17:01:00.002-05:00

One answer is, apparently, Rebecca Black.

You might recall, dear readers, the teen phenom who burst on the scene this past Spring with the pop ditty, "Friday." Audiences were captivated with Ms. Black because of the rags-to-riches story that accompanied her hit. She was not promoted by the multinational companies that run the record industry. Her Mom paid a local recording studio $4 grand and young Rebecca picked a song that "felt like her personality." Although derided in many quarters, she was a YouTube viral sensation with over 170 million views of the original video.

The song was no worse for the wear when we viewed it again today.¹ We did not understand the vitriol Ms. Black generated then, and we still don't get it now. We found her generally charming, for example, this mature, composed appearance on the Tonight Show that belied her age and newness to stardom. Having grown up in era when Tiffany, Debbie Gibson and Paula Abdul hit the charts, we couldn't find a significant qualitative difference between typical bubblegum pop and Ms. Black's music.²

However, as the title of the post indicates, her fifteen minutes must be up. How do we know? For one thing, she was recently contracted to play AOL's employee holiday party. Is there any less hip company than AOL?³ And the YouTube event of that little soiree, it truly tells the tale. Check it out here. And note the 57,000 hits, less than 3 one-thousandths of the hits she got for her original video. To give you, dear readers, a dramatic conceptualization of that kind of drop-off: it is the equivalent of the following, if the Sun, which is some 96 million miles from Earth, were suddenly less than 3 one-thousandths of that distance, it would be some 30,000 miles away and we would all be fried crispy.

Like Ms. Black's career?

¹According to Wikipedia the original video was removed from YouTube in June after almost three million "dislikes." It was re-uploaded in September.

²Don't even try to go with that Autotune card, dog. Plenty of legitimate musicians, even those with great voices, let them play around with their sound on the Autotune... okay, okay we concede she can be kinda hard to listen to, but that never stopped many stars.

³Don't say Time Warner, we were looking for un-hip, not down right evil.

Ron Paul, Ron Paul, Ron Paul.

2011-12-27T17:56:00.001-05:00

The odds have been and continue to be Ron Paul will not win the 2012 Republican nomination for President.

However, his poll numbers in Iowa, where the first delegates will be awarded, have been steadily improving. It is no wonder, as our friends over at the 538 note, he is running some sharp ads.

The 538's guru, Nate Silver, shows however, even if Congressman Paul wins Iowa, the odds of him winning the Republican nomination are slim. He needs a deeply divided race to have a chance. What success by Paul more likely does is one of two things, either: unites the Republicans behind Romney, the "Shoot, we had better close ranks or Ron Paul could actually win" scenario, or, causes a last minute candidate to come off the bench, Jeb Bush, Paul Ryan, etc., the "Sheesh these folks all suck we had better find somebody else" scenario. The 538 examines both possibilities here.

Either way, more Ron Paul looks to be a win for Obama.

One thing Ron Paul is doing, he is burying the Newt Gingrich candidacy.

The bad news for America, the politicians continue to fiddle whilst the economy immolates.

What are they watching... Episode XXV

2011-12-27T17:12:00.001-05:00

Our look at what the teens and tweens of America are watching. We peer into their world through the lens of Youtube. You may have caught some of our earlier episodes, if not, follow this link [and scroll down past this post].

This dance video, filmed on the Great Wall of China by Xceltalent, is blowing minds across the local school districts. The debate around our office, was any of it filmed in slow-motion? Feel free to weigh-in.

Foreclosure victims

2011-12-27T17:07:00.001-05:00

Dear readers, are you asking yourself, if the current economic tumble is as bad as the Occupy folks say it is, "Where are the breadlines?"

Are the foreclosure crisis and the current economic collapse victimless events?

Dateline Colleyville, Texas... At the Clarion Content, we wonder in response how many of these kind of tragedies are allegedly in no way connected to the economy.

LiLa III: Hip-Folk

2011-12-21T17:00:00.008-05:00

The Clarion Content presents:

An album debut press conference...

LiLa III comes to life and comes to the public this Monday, December 26th, at the MotorCo. The band spent more than three hundred hours in the studio creating their newest album. Lead singer Eli McDuffie warns, "it will bite you."

Bassist Rosean Alexander notes the band's diverse musical backgrounds feed directly into their sound, which spans the ever shrinking chasm between hip-hop and bluegrass...

The band has been grinding and attempting to make the leap. Banging away in the practice room and putting themselves out there for the Spring and Summer festival season. Hoping to play as many gigs in as many places as possible...

Forged in the fires of Durham, LiLa is bringing Durham's positivity, Durham's love and Durham's creative energy to a wider audience.

Drummer Griffin Wade assessing the band's musical drive, and why they worked so long and hard on this new album, "That's why your such a perfectionist, because you enjoy it, because you love it, you have to get it that way..."

Trombonist Mikey P. says the band has been reaching new heights, and the album has opened up their repertoire, "the music has to breathe and the music has to have room to breathe."

LiLa is Eli McDuffee, Griffin Wade, Rosean Alexander, Kyle Cox, Michael Petersen, and Jonathan Le Sueur. Come checkout the album premier, LiLa III debuts Monday, December 26th at the MotorCo.

Look for a Clarion Content exclusive interview with LiLa on these pages in the next few days.

Special thanks to all those who collaborated with the Clarion Content to make this fantastic photoshoot a reality. Stylist and Fashion Coordinator Cady Childs, Photographer Jessi Blakely, Bernard's Formalwear who provided the tuxedos, The Cordoba Center for the Arts and Julio Cordoba, Liberty Arts Foundry and Tim Werrell and Jackie MacLeod and Big Mike (who made everybody on the shoot custom bottle openers, too...) The Scrap Exchange and Ann Woodward, along with Reality Ministries, Brittany King and Mary Joan Mandel. We couldn't have done it without you!

Interesting Links

2011-12-21T11:55:00.001-05:00

A long time Clarion Content feature, "Interesting Links and Links of Interest," returns. Check out old posts below. Click here and scroll down.

The purpose of our Interesting Links pieces is to steer you to the entertaining, if off-beat, the fascinating, if less than earth-shattering, memes that populate the interwebs. Surely there are interesting links and fun stuff happening everywhere. If you see an interesting link you would like share, email it our way ClarionContent at Gmail dot com. (Type @ for at and . for dot. We are hoping to avoid additional junk in our in-box by switching up the nomenclature.)

Our first interesting link is to a piece by one of our favorite rock and roll interviewers, Chuck Klosterman. Klosterman has interviewed everyone from Bono to Noel Gallagher.¹ He is also a sports fan. He has an acerbic, intellectual take that is frequently absent from the monosyllabic and cravenly devotional work characteristic of much sports writing.²

Here Klosterman takes a look at the Tim Tebow phenomenon and what it says about the fissures and bigger debates American culture. Tebow is polarizing. Why? It is a fascinating read, as interesting a cut on Tebow-mania as we have seen anywhere. If sports is a microcosm of society... then Tebow and the media's coverage of him hold an important mirror up to our collective selves. It asks questions about our cultural position on faith that are very relevant, especially on the precipice of a presidential election. Read the whole article here.

Our next interesting link is for those of you looking for something to do on the day after Christmas. Don't let the Monday blues get you down. December 26th is a day to get up and get down. Get out and dance around... LiLa will be hosting a CD release party at the Casbah on Main Street in downtown Durham. Check out this hilarious promo video. Hear music from the new album, "III" here.

Next up, more cool stuff to know about... The Nation's Restaurant News selected the winners of its 2011 Hot New Concepts award. Crave, FöD (Food on Demand), Mixt Greens, True Food Kitchen and Twisted Root Burger Company. These restaurants span the gamut from an American take on sushi to a concept from Sodexo, wherein guests place their orders on touch-screen kiosks, watch their food being made-to-order, and are alerted via their smart phones when their food is ready. 

Our final interesting link is cat science related. The Clarion Content has long supported the widely held notion that cats are more elegant than dogs, now comes evidence from the New York Times Science section to prove it. Did you know cats lap their water faster than the human eye can see?³ Maybe not, but you surely knew that cats don't make those unseemly slurping and slobbering sounds that dogs do when drinking water.

The NY Times reports... "the cat’s lapping method depends on its instinctive ability to calculate the point at which gravitational force would overcome inertia and cause the water to fall." The study's author Dr. Roman Stocker said, "Three and a half years ago, I was watching Cutta Cutta [his cat] lap over breakfast." According to the Times, "he wondered what hydrodynamic problems the cat might be solving. He consulted Dr. Reis, an expert in fluid mechanics, and the study was under way." Rest assured, cats' inherent grace was verified. Read the whole article here.

Share your interesting links with us and read about them in our next edition.

¹Don't worry, in searching for an appropriate name to pair with Bono, we had to look up who the heck Gallagher was too...the lead singer of Oasis.

²Bill Simmons, Nate Silver and Charles Pierce excepted.

³Four times per second.

Duck and Cover 12.19.11

2011-12-19T09:28:00.000-05:00

Our thanks to "Duck & Cover" and creator Storey Clayton.

Check out his other projects, here, at the Blue Pyramid.

What are they Watching... Episode XXIV

2011-12-18T21:01:00.000-05:00

Our look at what the teens and tweens of America are watching. We peer into their world through the lens of Youtube. You may have caught some of our earlier episodes, if not, follow this link [and scroll down past this post].

This Korean group, Girls Generation, has been making inroads into the American high school consciousness. Their Wiki says they are considered the top Korean Idol group, a category Americans might analogize to a boy band of a different gender. And while the music is clearly fluffy pop, record sales are blowing up and the VMA's are rolling in. Check'em out here...

Teen Twitter Wisdom

2011-12-17T20:59:00.001-05:00

Little shouts out of teen Twitter wisdom. Real quotes from real teens.

Making out in college is the equivalent of a handshake.---Morgan

i h8 when my dad doesn't call me back/ answer my texts. uhm hello what if i was dying? #cool #realcool---Hailey

May your finals be as easy as you are #ExamWeek---Hannah

All quotes are directly from real Twitter accounts and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Clarion Content.

Human Rights Asserted

2011-12-15T09:07:00.004-05:00

All photos courtesy of Scenes from my Lunch Hour

This past Saturday was International Human Rights Day. Durham marked the occasion with a march organized by the “Historic Thousands on Jones Street,” an umbrella community organization that assembled a variety of traditional and newer groups to raise their voices on behalf of the 99%.

All photos courtesy of Scenes from my Lunch Hour

The marchers met at the CCB/People’s Plaza, home of the bull statue downtown. The very dichotomy of the name spoke to the protesters cries and the omnipresence of the debate.

Is the area around the bull, in an Occupy inspired renaming, the People’s plaza? Or is it named after a bank, the CCB plaza? The dominant paradigm inveighed a long time ago. The Occupiers implicitly weighed-in on that issue, too, with flyers referring to meetings and meet-ups at the People's Plaza. The physical terrain represented the meta-debate: Corporations vs. Government vs. the People.

Marchers chanted, “How do we stop the deficit? Stop the wars and tax the rich!” as they walked down Main Street to First Presbyterian Church. There the marchers broke into small groups to talk about issues within the specific framework of human rights. Group leaders facilitated a discussion about how human rights issues have implications that are global, regional and local.

The topics broached ranged from jobs and transportation, to voter registration and schools. The groups represented mirrored the array of themes. The head of the Durham, NAACP, Fred Foster was in attendance, vociferously spreading the message, “Social justice begins with the word ‘We’.” There were also folks from “Occupy Durham,” “The Durham Local People’s Assembly,” as well as the “Mental Health Workers Campaign,” the “Durham Coalition for Urban Justice” and “Health Care for all of NC,” among others.

The questions and challenges raised were as myriad the groups. The underlying feeling across the board was that now is the time. “If you don’t act, you will be acted upon,” was a common thread woven through the conversations. The turnout was not large, just over 100 by our estimates, but the enthusiasm was intense. It was mirrored by the public, numerous cars honked and waved in support as they drove by the march.

Speakers and citizens merged without hierarchy. The spirit of collaboration was evident. Many in attendance contrasted it with the bureaucratic instinct to suppress dissent. Attendees raised multifarious examples of tacit and active government suppression. They ranged from suppression of the right to freely assemble, one protester had been arrested peacefully sitting in her chair in a public park in Raleigh the week previous, to impediments placed in the way of the right to exercise one’s vote¹, to arbitrary limits on public comment at public hearings, School Board meetings and similar nodes of interaction between the public and their sometimes elected, sometimes selected representatives.²

The government, of course, was only one of the villains protesters raised their voices against. The other common ogre was big corporations. Numerous members of the assembly expressed frustration with a frequent Clarion Content theme: the absurdity of corporate personhood, a fiction that allows faceless entities to fiat onomatopoeia their existence onto the human playing field.

The all-encompassing irony of the complexity and pervasiveness of the systemic issues in play was made clear by one organizer, who under his breath wistfully sighed, that many if not all of these signs were made possible by, “adhesive tape, brought to you by 3M and their friends.”

All photos courtesy of Scenes from my Lunch Hour

All photos courtesy of Scenes from my Lunch Hour

¹The Reverend Curtis Gatewood spoke passionately and eloquently about this topic.

²The Clarion Content noticed this very phenomenon when we attended the Durham Cultural Forum and board members spoke for so long that after four or five public comments the facilities people were flashing the lights to empty the auditorium.

Duck and Cover 12.14.11

2011-12-14T09:30:00.000-05:00

Our thanks to "Duck & Cover" and creator Storey Clayton.

Check out his other projects, here, at the Blue Pyramid.

Holiday Hostess Gifts

2011-12-13T12:33:00.006-05:00

A romp through Parker & Otis

by Cady Childs
our lead columnist for Durham, Culture, Fashion and Style

It's that time of year--- the two weeks of mid-December where all our holiday get-togethers are suddenly upon us. Whether you're hosting, attending, or both, the stress of planning and preparing, while searching for the perfect host gift can build added tension into the already frenetic pace of the holiday season. Not everybody can be perfect (but some can get pretty darn close).

A case in point. Walk into Parker & Otis, one of downtown Durham's fine meccas of good eats, unique gifts, stationery and notebooks, and what many call the best cappuccino in town. You will most likely see Jennings Parker Brody, the store's founder & owner, multitasking between stocking ever more impossible-to-leave-without merchandise, saying hello to everyone she passes, delivering food orders to tables, showing customers new items, and managing a bustling, packed place at the peak of the season. If she can manage all of that, surely we can bake a decent pie and find a gift for our second cousin's fiancee's dinner party, right?

Luckily, for those of us that may get a little lost in our to-do list at this time of year, Jennings found a few free minutes out of the hustle-and-bustle that is Parker & Otis in December to give us some advice. We sat down amidst this scene, silver bells on the stereo, sheets of holiday paper laid on spools, mothers attempting to drag their children away from the Wonka-worthy candy display, the smell of red velvet, spice, and espresso in the air, and rows upon rows of gifts for every party host on your list. Here are a few of her favorite tips and tricks of the season, and picks from the store to guide you through New Year's and into the relative calm of January (don't worry, you're not the only person to get tempted to buy everything).

Le Creuset Mini Pie Bird, a time-honored baker's tool

A good gift should be something that makes the receiver think of the person who gave it to them afterward. Something you know your host will enjoy using, and use regularly, like fine soaps and lotions that provide a chance to treat themselves after a job well done, or a unique accessory to one of their known specialties, kitchen tools for chefs, stationary for writers.

"Something that lasts will keep that reminder of your thank you around a little longer," Brody said.

Of all the cookbooks and holiday guides to choose from in the store, Jennings took me to the Canal House collection first. She tried out their rhubarb syrup recipe for cocktail hour with her cookbook club, and personally recommended it. P and O's shelves are sure to yield great picks for your own gathering.

"One of my biggest tips to remember while hosting is not feeling pressure to cook everything from scratch¹, or over cleaning your house. Only do what you have to, and focus on enjoying yourself," Brody said.

"It makes it a lot more personal if you attach a special note to a bottle of wine or oil. Especially with things that they may use months later, and than see again," Brody said.

Stocking up on these items and adding little touches like notes and adornments later make it much easier when trying to get gifts together quickly, and is always more personal than stopping off last minute for something rushed on your way to the party.

¹The Clarion Content can verify that Jennings learned this one from personal experience too... ;)

Duck and Cover 12.13.11

2011-12-13T12:06:00.002-05:00

Our thanks to "Duck & Cover" and creator Storey Clayton.

Check out his other projects, here, at the Blue Pyramid.

Fashion Drive-by: Watts-Hillandale

2011-12-12T21:00:00.000-05:00

The Clarion Content was delighted with the response to our first Fashion Drive-by. Perhaps you heard about it? If not, check it out! We love(d) Lakewood.

Up next Watts-Hillandale! Here is the lowdown on how it works. The Clarion Content partners with local businesses, clothiers, boutiques, salons and others to help share their wares and tell their stories. We supply the models, the staging and coordination, as well as the fabulous photographer. Durham provides the setting.

So here goes...

**********************************

Watts-Hillandale is among Durham's most famous old neighborhoods. The neighborhood was originally built to surround Watts Hospital, which is now the North Carolina School of Science and Math. (We would like to thank Open Durham, a highly interlinked archive/inventory of information about people places, and history of Durham for providing a treasure trove of old photos and detailed history. Click through on the links for additional back story.)

Our fashion partners for these photos, to whom we are very grateful, and we literally could not have done the shoot without, were Vaguely Reminiscent who provided all of the accessories pictured, and Runaway Clothes, a new Southern lifestyle clothing brand with a hip urban feel.

Vaguely Reminiscent is located at #728 9^th Street, just down the block and around the corner from the Clarion Content offices. They are a favorite of numerous local fashionistas and hipsters in our circle. In all the ensembles the accessories shown on the models are pieces from this amazing store, where creative and reasonably priced jewelry finds aplenty are mixed amidst unique gifts, fabulous stationary and cards, Durham commemoratives and other styling stuff, including-- in true Durhamanian style --shirts and toboggans from Runaway Clothes.

Runaway, our other partner, is the brainchild of Gabriel Eng-Goetz. Mr. Eng-Goetz is a graduate of Syracuse University with a degree in illustration. He is also a Durham native who attended Jordan High School. After college Eng-Goetz initially explored his art through painting and landed several gallery shows. But he felt some of his core supporters were being cut out of the loop, high price points for his art work deterred his most loyal, but young and less than affluent fans. This is part of why he made the move to clothing. As he told the Clarion Content in a September interview, "A t-shirt is a piece of art, but it also goes to a bigger audience," he said. "It's more interesting sometimes to show your art on a different level, in a different way."

Runaway has launched its terrific new winter line. There is much to check out here.

Cady Childs, the Clarion Content's Pop Culture, Durham, Art and Style columnist, was both the stylist and the fashion coordinator for this shoot. Jessi Blakely of Tamara Lackey Photography took all of the amazing photos. Cady Childs and Jessi Blakely collaborated on layout and design of this piece with the Clarion Content staff. Special thanks to our outstanding, hard-working models, Jonathan LaSuer of local music phenoms LiLa¹, Jen Phelan from one of our favorite local watering holes, Dain's Place² and Gabriel Eng-Goetz of Runaway Clothes.

Also our special thanks and gratitude to all of the local business owners and Watts-Hillandale neighborhood residents who patiently let us photograph in and around their homes and in some cases let us photograph them. Thank you to one and all who contributed.

**********************************

These photos were taken at three locations in historic Watts-Hillandale. First, Oval Park, which is wedged between Oakland Avenue and Oval Park Drive, these shots were captured on the south side of Club Boulevard. Save for the bottom right hand corner, which was shot at our second location, the famous bathtub house at #2003 West Club Boulevard.

Location #1: Oval Park
Club Boulevard and Oakland Avenue

Nuevo Durhamanians may not look at Oval Park and know. Oval Park as it is today is a sculpted beauty, with packs of moms pushing strollers, and kids running every which way. It hosts food trucks on Thursdays, a fabulous Fourth of July Festival, a kid-friendly Halloween and plethora of other neighborhood events.

Once again, Open Durham is instructive. You know our mantra at the Clarion Content, "Durham could not be what it is, without having been what is was." Watt-Hillandale is a neighborhood that was bravely and actively preserved through Durham's down years, but even here, there is a was, and there is an is. These amazing photos courtesy of the Herald Sun and Endangered Durham show Oval Park as it was.

It is because of those who helped make it what it is now that the Clarion Content was able to collaborate with fellow Durham culture movers, Vaguely Reminiscent and Runaway Clothes to make these beautiful photos in that same Oval Park.

As we said, the second location we shot at on this gorgeous Fall day was Club Boulevard's famous bathtub house. Where in typical Durham style, one of the renters rolled up on her bicycle as we were sprawled out in her front lawn's bathtubs, photographer, lights, stylists, extra hands on deck---cast and crew, with no more permission than we told the neighborhood association we would be shooting in Watt-Hillandale, and she shrugged with aplomb and said in so many words, "Cool."

And, Durham? How cool is that? Photoshoot on your front lawn? No problem. Let's rock.

This second location provided a fabulous set-up for Dain's famous proprietor bartender, Jen Phelan. The Clarion Content team, Cady Childs and Jessi Blakely, nailed it. Jen is shown wearing Vaguely Reminiscent's accessories and Runaway's shirts and toboggans. Now we are cheating a bit here, because the middle shot is from our third location, up the block from Oval Park on Oakland Avenue.

Location #2: The Bathtub House
#2003 West Club Boulevard

This third location, though not as historically notable, perhaps, as the first two places we shot was just as Durham: Warm and welcoming. Simply knocking on the door of the house with coolest decorations on the block gained us two young partners in photography and fashion. As in our first Fashion Drive-by of Lakewood, there are many more shots than seen here. Keep your eyes on this space in the coming weeks to see our youngest partners, as well as, lots more photos of Vaguely Reminiscent's fabulous accessories and Runaway's fashions on your local bartenders and resident rock and rollers.

In this panel, Jen Phelan and Gabriel Eng-Goetz are seen first at #2003 West Club Boulevard, then on Oakland Avenue amidst the Fall colors beneath the delicately constructed Halloween decorations.

Location #3: Oakland Avenue
the 1000 block of Oakland Avenue

Up next, Fashion Drive-by fans, all the extra photos and background from this Watts-Hillandale adventure. Then our next shoot!!! Amazing Durham eateries and night spots host ladies in fabulous evening wear.

¹LiLa is a local Durham music phenomenon that straddles the ever shrinking gap between hip-hop and blue grass, carving out an appealing new territory that one might call hip folk grass. It is an explosive wave of energy that must be absorbed live and in-person.

²Dain's Place is a famous local watering hole, with a top-notch have it topped your way burger, conveniently located on the 9th Street strip, down the block and round the corner from our offices.

Duck and Cover 12.12.11

2011-12-12T16:00:00.001-05:00

Duck and Cover 12.02.11

2011-12-06T09:00:00.001-05:00

Money, what's it good for?

2011-12-01T14:00:00.002-05:00

Clarion Content fave, and perhaps the most insightful pop culture commentator today, Stephen Marche takes on the American dollar in last month's Esquire magazine. Who is Marche, you ask yourself, dear readers? Only the kind of man who can cite Milton Friedman and Kanye West in the same article and have you nodding your head.

As he says in this, his latest blast, "As sound as the dollar," once proverbial, now sounds ironic. And while at first, this might feel unsettling, as Marche concludes, it is ultimately liberating.

Read the whole piece here.

Duck and Cover 12.01.11

2011-12-01T09:44:00.000-05:00

Occupied

2011-11-30T23:11:00.000-05:00

The mainstream media's interest may have waned, but the Occupy movement is not over and done. The fundamentals that brought people to the streets have not changed. It is our perception that a great cauldron of systemic frustration is still burbling and only a little bit of steam has been released.

Read here a Chomskian perspective from Naomi Wolf in the British newspaper The Guardian. In her view, there is most definitely a coordinated effort underway to supress the Occupy protests.

Duck and Cover 11.30.11

2011-11-30T09:37:00.000-05:00

Duck and Cover 11.29.11

2011-11-29T09:00:00.001-05:00

Durham Holiday Art Walk installations

2011-11-25T07:41:00.003-05:00

If you are like us, over here at the Clarion Content, and you just can't enough Durham, we have a few more nuggets for you. Durham's Holiday Art Walk installations were an amazing celebration of our city and public art. We were resplendent.

We would like to offer our grateful thanks to all the artists who participated, the Durham Arts Council, the Durham Storefront Project and all the local businesses and citizens who found a way to be involved.

If you just showed up and looked at the art, you count! You were a member of the audience, one of those who made clear, our city is the kind of place where we do this stuff and folks appreciate it.

Here courtesy of Scenes from my Lunch Hour are a few more shots of some of those installations.

Taken out of context, fallen from their perch, the nests represent the idea of impermanence---Cici Stevens

From Cici Stevens installation in the former Baldwin Furniture space
Photo by Scenes from my Lunch Hour

Masks have a story to tell rather than an identity to hide---Helen Seebold

From Helen Seebold installation at #108 Morris Street
Photo by Scenes from my Lunch Hour

From Helen Seebold installation at #108 Morris Street
Photo by Scenes from my Lunch Hour

Treat yourself to a celebration of families and food by Catherine Howard

From Catherine Howard installation at Scratch Bakery
Photo by Scenes from my Lunch Hour

From Catherine Howard installation at Scratch Bakery
Photo by Scenes from my Lunch Hour

LiLa rocks the Casbah

2011-11-21T15:00:00.001-05:00

Local Durham favorites, LiLa and Toon rocked the Casbah Friday night. It was an all ages show, and as you can see from the picture below LiLa's fans went wild. The show featured a couple of great new songs off of their upcoming album "III," scheduled for release December 20th. They blew the doors off the room, the walls dripped with sweat. Their fans literally screamed for more when they thought it was over, and the ladies charged the stage when given permission by lead singer Eli McDuffie.

Eli in the mob
Photos courtesy of Scenes from my Lunch Hour.

And while we know a LiLa never disappoints, this was our first opportunity to see local hip-hop impresario Toon. He was terrific, filling the room with his energy. See more pictures and read more about both, as well as Beatnam, at Scenes from my Lunch Hour

Art Walk's Storefront Installation Preview

2011-11-18T15:00:00.001-05:00

We've been running around town this week visiting the artists installing for the newly minted Durham Storefront Project which is running in conjunction with downtown this year's Durham Holiday Art Walk. The Durham Arts Council's Catherine Howard, coordinating the event for the DAC, hooked with up with the Durham Storefront Projects' co-organizers, Chris Chinchar and Jessica Moore. The result? More than fifteen installations in all that can be seen on the streets of downtown Durham, so be sure to look out for displays everywhere you turn as you walk between stops on the Art Walk this weekend. Thanks to all the artists and business owners for letting us get in your way for a few minutes, and for allowing a peek into your process.

photos by Cady Childs & Beth Mandel

The Durham Art Walk

2011-11-18T14:03:00.003-05:00

by Rebecca Yan and Aaron Mandel, special to the Clarion Content

At the re-opening, "Durham, the operative word in this city, is: We."
Photos courtesy of Scenes from my Lunch Hour.

Durham Art Walk, the bi-annual event, described as “a kickoff event for the holidays,” by Catherine Howard takes place weekend in downtown Durham.

A group of Durham artists and Downtown Durham Inc. originally started the Durham Art Walk in 1999 as an event to promote the arts in Durham, long before our dear city became the nationally recognized social and cultural hub that it is today.

It started small and as recently as 2004 its future look shaky. But Durham has rallied around it, even in these troubled economic times. Yesterday saw the triumphant reopening of the Durham Arts Council Building and the Carolina Theater.¹

Parade celebrating the re-opening.
Photos courtesy of Scenes from my Lunch Hour.

“We really tried to beef it up for this winter,” said Catherine Howard, a local artist and Durham Arts Council's coordinator for the event. This year's event is mammoth with over 200 participating artists at forty-seven sites.

“It seems a bit ambitious,” said John Wendelbo, a local sculptor and participant of the art walk. “It’s way better organized [compared to last year]. I’m already seeing the signs on the streets, stuff in the windows, artist starting to set up the shows. People are talking about it. There’s way more vibe this year.”

Wendelbo will be painting at one of the sites on #320 East Chapel Hill Street along with a visiting New York sculptor, Carlos Mare1 Rodriguez.

Along with artist of all stripes, there will be musical performances and new features such as live painting sessions at two sites. The Art Walk signs are everywhere. Stroll the Durham streets this afternoon and they are buzzing. Abandon storefronts explode with a profusion of Art.

Another new feature Ms. Howard helped bring to this year’s event is the Durham Storefront Project. Howard along with co-organizers, Chris Chinchar and Jessica Moore, they connected the Art Walk, the artists, the spaces and the suppliers. The Durham Storefront project features fourteen storefront windows that have been decorated by local artists in part using supplies donated by local businesses such as Jerry’s Artarama, the Durham Art Guild and The Scrap Exchange. There are nine more student-created windows sponsored by the Art Institute. These two collaborative, but independent, efforts are a magnificent display of public art for art and the city’s sake. (The Clarion Content’s pictures will blow you away. Check’em out here.)

“Students created installations of artworks just for the business,” Howard said. “It’s a collaboration between artists and businesses that brings some excitement to downtown because we have a lot of storefronts that doesn’t have stuff in it. Just empty spaces.”

“It’d be great if we have a Macy’s window thing, but it doesn’t fit Durham,” Howard, a former New York City resident, said. “Pop-up [art] windows are a great next step. It really fits what a lot of artists are thinking and businesses are getting involved with the art through that way.”

Luis Franco, a local visual activist, will be part of the show for the first time.

”A friend of mine participated in the show last year and gave me the info to sign up online,” Franco said. “I’ve been doing a lot of different events and have decided to get involved in the Durham Art Walk to further promote my artworks.”

Franco will be selling prints, magnets, buttons and t-shirts in the Durham Armory.

“It’s specific to Durham. They’re trying to put people in various historical buildings in Durham such as the armory and the Carolina Theater. It attracts people to check little galleries around downtown.”

There is a reason why the words “Holiday Market” are included in the name.

“It’s a way for the artists to get people early before they spend money for non-artwork things,” Howard said.

But most importantly, the event is about supporting the community.

“People come out, look at art, and have a good time,” Wendelbo said.

Durham hosts and supports all sorts of fun!
Photos courtesy of Scenes from my Lunch Hour.

¹Though once again the devil is in the details of the renovation which spent $6.9 million of its $14 million city arts rehab on the Convention and Visitors Bureau.

Duham Cultural Forum

2011-11-18T11:19:00.001-05:00

Your Clarion Content’s correspondent attended the Durham Cultural Advisory Board’s meeting last Monday, November 7th. This meeting, at the Nasher Museum on Duke's campus, was a fascinating coming together or perhaps collision would be more accurate, between Durham City government, the non-profit world, and the public. The Durham Cultural Advisory Board is the successor to the Durham Cultural Master Plan.

The event brought the City Council appointed chairman of the Cultural Advisory Board, along with representatives from Durham City government, most notably, Councilman Mike Woodard, and E’vonne Coleman Cook of the Durham Convention and Visitors Bureau, together with the leadership of the biggest arts non-profit in Durham, the Durham Arts Council (DAC) and its Executive Director, Sherry DeVries. The public was also invited to attend.¹

Michael Schoenfeld, Vice-President for Public Affairs and Government Relations at Duke University, and the Chairman of Durham Cultural Advisory Board, was invited to speak first. In a data heavy presentation, Mr. Schoenfeld briefed those in attendance on what the Cultural Master Plan had been and what might be up next. As he rolled through slide after slide dutifully narrating his Powerpoint presentation, Mr. Schoenfeld, who noted he had only moved to the Durham area three years earlier, laid out a lot of facts and figures.

He broke down the $222k budget of the Cultural Master Plan. The two biggest numbers were $60k for "Festivals" and $43.5k for "Arts Education." And on the face of it, it is hard for Durham art supporters to begrudge either of those numbers. Of course, there are always devils in the details. How, and on what, is that money spent? Later, when we got to the public forum portion of the evening, we realized we weren’t the only ones worried about those kind of questions.

The other number that the Clarion Content found oddly noteworthy in the line item budget Mr. Schoenfeld rapidly recited was $13 grand for a Business Committee. This was more than the Durham Cultural Master plan spent for our dear city on either public art or planning for the Durham Historical Museum. Mr. Schoenfeld, who moved to Duke and the Bull City from Vanderbilt and Nashville, Tennessee, noted: we in Durham are part of the largest city in North Carolina without a dedicated historical museum.

We hope that the committee was up to some important business.

Mr. Schoenfeld didn’t say. He did say something about a sixty-three member steering committee having been assembled to form a committee that wrote the Durham Cultural Master Plan. It is a wonder under the momentum crushing weight of all of that bureaucracy that anything happened at all.

But happen it did, as Ms. Sherry DeVries, the Executive Director of the Durham Arts Council, who was up next, demonstrated. She had all the facts and figures about Durham’s renaissance at her fingertips. Despite the national trend, recession and economic stagnation, Durham saw 10% job growth in the creative industries.² DeVries also noted Durham exceeds the national average for jobs classified as creative by 75% and the North Carolina state average by 218%, with more than 6,600 jobs classified as high creative generating an estimated economic impact of $103 million.

Taking the podium from Ms. DeVries, Ms. E’vonne Coleman Cook of the Durham Convention and Visitors Bureau, who spoke smoothly and without notes, briefed the assembly on some of the work done at www.Durhamculture.com This is a website, the Clarion Content admittedly, had not accessed previously. Now that we have, what a resource! It is worth the time and visit for the events calendar alone. Ms. Coleman Cook also told the group that it was easy to register, and then, one would be able to update the collective calendar personally. This openness is a double-edged sword because it does not lend itself to specificity. The calendar is jam-packed with information and the list format is somewhat unwieldy. But, these are petty complaints for what the site offers.

Ms. Cook disseminated her valuable information succinctly and handed off to Mark Lee, a local radio host and the emcee of the Durham Blues Festival to moderate public discussion. Mr. Lee, a man with the sweetly resonant voice of an on-air personality, spoke only briefly, the coterie who proceeded him having gone on for nearly an hour and fifteen minutes of the forum's allotted hour and thirty minutes. He spoke about his personal experiences with Durham residents who had gone on to greater artistic success. He mentioned, though didn’t elaborate on, an encounter he had with the Raging Grannies and their singing number at Occupy Durham. And then turned it over to the public for questions.

This was both the briefest and most fascinating part of the evening. There was a passionate crowd. There were questions about how to best make contact with students and young people. There were concerns raised about reaching youth who might not be able to afford transportation to and classes at the Durham Arts Council.³

What did the numbers reflect about arts spending and the arts economy in Durham beyond the building of facilities? The public wanted to know.

There were real concerns amongst the arts supporters in the audience about reaching young people effectively. One Durham teacher noted that an amazing opportunity to learn to make documentary films on the public schools-arts nickel had been taken up only by four students. Not for lack of interest, she suspected, but rather because of the struggle to communicate the opportunity available to students and their parents.

The Clarion Content, among many others in the audience, chanced to bemoan the lack of effective use of social media by many of these organizations, including, and perhaps especially, Durham Public Schools (33,000 students, an estimated 57,000 parents and 238 Twitter followers? Really??) and the Durham Arts Council too (1279 followers, two tweets since August.)

More questions were raised about how to face these and other challenges in the light of shrinking state and local school and arts budgets, especially by Ms. Coleman Cook, but by that time the Nasher security personnel were flashing the lights in the auditorium and attempting to shoo people out of the room and into the lobby for catered snacks.

The unanswered questions echoed loudly as the audience began to filter out of the room. It could not fairly have been directed at Mr. Lee, he was only charged as the moderator. Ms. Coleman Cook posed the questions. Mr. Schoenfeld moved here in just 2008. Ms. DeVries shuffled her notes. Councilman Woodward, the only councilman who had been in attendance to hear a City Council appointed board talk about spending the public's money, had already left the building.

What is to become of the arts in Durham? Obviously, authority does not have an easier answer. The reality is that it is up to each of us.

¹De-emphasis of the public is deliberate in this context.

²Albeit with backward looking data from 2006-08. But there are two ways to look at that older data, because, although it mostly predates the Bush II recession, it also does not include Durham Performing Arts Center, which most certainly created jobs in Durham.

³Here an opportunity was missed to mention the amazing work being done by KidZNotes with at-risk families and their children. The Walltown Children's Theater could have also been cited as reaching out into the community answering the claim that all the arts programs are based at the center of town as the questioner, incidentally a Wake County resident, stated.

Duck and Cover 11.18.11

2011-11-18T08:03:00.001-05:00

Our thanks to "Duck & Cover" and creator Storey Clayton.

Check out his other projects, here, at the Blue Pyramid.

LiLa plays along

2011-11-17T21:05:00.010-05:00

This Friday, one of Clarion Content’s favorite Durham musical acts, LiLa, will be performing at the Casbah, along with Beatnam and Toon, two other groups you’ve probably heard around town as names to be on the look out for.

The Clarion Content is particularly excited for Toon. He is a Durham School of the Arts graduate, known for his live energy and beats that stay stuck in your head for hours. The first time he crossed our radar, he rapped to the Parlour for ice cream. And they gave it to him! His blend of personal charisma, pop piano, catchy lyrics, and bass on ‘Be Famous’ shows an intuitive grasp of people, what we want to hear and how we hear it. Visit his Reverb Nation site to take a listen.

Of course, most of you, dear readers, already possess a story about a great night that starts with a LiLa show. Their concoction of well-written, quick-witted lyrics, intense musicianship, hip-hop beats and sensibilities, set in a plush musical pastiche that ranges from modern jazz, to Sublime-like riffs and back to melodic swing notes, has a way of forcing even those who hate to dance to sway their hips.

And you know what we always say around here, if you can’t keep your hips still, it is a darn good sign for the music.

LiLa is a show you simply cannot miss. Period. If not now, when? If you wait, you will only ask yourself why later.

Their newest album, ‘III’ is set to release December 23rd, but you can listen to the first single, ‘8-bit kid’ here. The Clarion Content’s sources say that they will be dropping another single today. Check here. They have also partnered with Clarion Content's electric creative team, Cady Childs and Jessi Blakely, to stage a fabulous faux press conference shot in the Cordoba Center for the Arts in conjunction with Liberty Arts Foundry and featuring Bernard's Formalwear. But you know what they say---it’s not true 'til you see it in writing. Still, a picture is worth 1,000 words…

A preview of the upcoming LiLa photoshoot...Keep an eye to the Twitter for the full set soon, music fans.

Tuxedos courtesy of Bernard's Formalwear.
Space courtesy of the Cordoba Center for the Arts and Liberty Arts Foundry.
Photo by Jessi Blakely of Tamara Lackey Photography.
Styling by Cady Childs of the Clarion Content.

LiLa is playing the Casbah tomorrow night. Don't wait, pre-sale tickets for the show are available through e-tix here. Doors open at 8pm, and the show starts at 9pm. For more information on the Casbah, visit their website here.

Article by the Clarion Content's lead columnist for Culture, the Arts and Durham, Cady Childs.

Duck and Cover 11.17.11

2011-11-17T12:10:00.001-05:00

Durham Holiday Art Walk

2011-11-16T09:00:00.008-05:00

Matt Zigler installing in the windows of Coulter, Jewell, Thames PA, at #111 W. Main Street, Durham

Photo credit and layout by Cady Childs

Durham’s annual holiday Art Walk, sponsored by the Durham Arts Council, strikes the streets of downtown this weekend with a fresh new look.

Thursday (November 17th) a ribbon cutting ceremony at 4:30 p.m., marks the highly anticipated official re-opening of Carolina Theater and the Durham Arts Council (DAC) building after a multi-year renovation and kicks off a weekend celebrating the arts and the revitalized, vibrant downtown of Durham.

“These renovations are beneficial to the council, the theater, the city, and of course, artists, all at one time,” Margaret DeMott, an institution at the DAC, said. “It’s a great, fulfilling, collaborating process.”

New additions to this year’s Art Walk include twenty-two installations and displays in the windows of bustling downtown Durham, in business storefronts such as Scratch bakery, Coulter, Jewell, Thames PA, and Center Studio Architecture, as well as in under-utilized spaces, such as the former Bargain Furniture building. Many of the displays are built from materials provided by Durham’s Scrap Exchange and Jerry's Artarama, as a part of what is being billed as the Durham Storefront Project, an independent group of artists and art supporters organized specifically for this project.

Musical performances will be happening all day Saturday and Sunday along the Art Walk route, with performances by among many, many others, Rebecca and the Hi Tones and the Willie Painter Band.

The result, amazing free public art, shows what happens when organizations like the DAC, the Art Institute, the North Carolina Songwriter’s Co-Op, Vega metals, and more come together to put together an event of this magnitude. New venues and cool spaces abound in downtown Durham these days. The entrepreneurs that are flocking to Durham in droves love that their community puts art at their fingertips and in their footsteps. Art builds community and brings people back to the revitalized downtown loop. It is just one more example of how when Durham comes together, it is better than ever.

“We are interested in what new partnerships and components we can create,” Sherry Devries, director of the DAC, said. “There are so many entities in this town, it makes it a good time for revising and adding.”

DeVries also noted that more than 6,600 jobs in Durham are classified as highly creative and even during this time of economic stagnation and recession these jobs have increased by 10%.

With over forty-seven locations involved, 200 artists, an entire day of music, and everything else now happening in downtown, the Durham Art Walk is certainly something that you won’t want to miss. Spend a day and you will know why Durham’s reputation as national center for arts and music is being noted near and far. The event kicks off Saturday at 10 a.m. till 5 p.m., and continues Saturday from 1 p.m. to 5 p.m. Visit the Durham Art walk website here for a complete list of venues, entertainment, and sponsors.

Duck and Cover 11.16.11

2011-11-16T08:04:00.001-05:00

Things that make you go, hmmmm...

2011-11-16T06:15:00.003-05:00

Long time readers know, that the Clarion Content is fascinated by the blurry lines separating the realms of the real and the imaginary. This means we are fans of both science and science fiction. We are glad when the real world smacks us in the face with the old proverb, there is more to this here than meets the eye.

This side by photo, maybe not so new to you, but new to the Clarion Content's editors made us stop and go, hmmmm...

Duck and Cover 11.15.11

2011-11-15T11:01:00.000-05:00

This day...

2011-11-11T10:00:00.002-05:00

The Clarion Content's editorial board is darned near pacifist. But that has never stopped us, nor will it ever stop us from humbly and gratefully thanking our soldiers and all those who serve male and female. Today is a day to remember those folks; those who serve and those who have served. And those who have made the ultimate sacrifice.

Do not distance yourself from their work. They come from your state, your city, your town, down the road and up the block. They are your friends and neighbors.

And until pacifism triumphs, we are in awe of this sacrifice. We are suffused with gratitude for those who make it, and thereby enable us to live in a mostly free, constitutionally governed country.

Duck and Cover 11.11.11

2011-11-11T09:23:00.002-05:00

Durham Family Theater

2011-11-10T09:05:00.003-05:00

special to the Clarion Content from guest columnist Rebecca Yan...

“Community-rooted”, “volunteer-nourished” and “alive” are the words that Jenny Justice used to describe Durham Family Theatre in downtown Durham.

Justice co-founded the theatre in August 2010.

“In a city that is about 45 percent African-Americans, 45 percent White and 10 percent Hispanic, going forward without diversity would be to fail in our mission, and if you don't live your mission, then why do you exist?” Justice said.

The theater’s first show, “Alice! A Mad Musical Adventure,” which she co-wrote with Ryan Gunzel, included actors ranging from eight to sixty-eight years old.

“Everything we’ve done has affirmed our mission,” Justice said of the first play. “It was exactly as we had envisioned.”

The theater is performing, “As You Like It”, a play with a 50 percent African-American cast, but it did not start out that way.

The audition for the play consisted only of Caucasians.

“People think it’s a white people’s play,” said Justice, “but I wanted to broaden the possibilities and cross boundaries.”

Justice found her lead actors after attending a theater class at North Carolina Central University (NCCU).

“I think if you want people to be involved, you have to reach out to them,” Justice said. “So we made a policy that if our show doesn’t have diversity, we don’t go forward with it.”

The cast now includes not only students from NCCU, but also a teacher and high school students from Durham School of the Arts who are working as apprentices to Justice.

“Half of the cast is African-Americans and most of the cast hadn’t even read Shakespeare,” said Justice. “They downloaded films and scripts to their iPhones and worked every minute for two months.”

Sherena Siler, a senior theater and psychology major at NCCU, plays Celia, the emotional daughter of Duke Frederick and Rosalind’s dearest friend.

“I have done one Shakespeare before, Romeo and Juliet, in high school,” Siler said. “Being an aspiring actress, Shakespeare is something that you have to do once. It’s one-of-a-kind.”

“We’ve been working since the end of August, four nights a week with pretty intense rehearsals,” Siler said. “The vocabulary and dialogue is really not in this period and before you can act, you have to interpret first and it brings a level of difficulty, but Ms. Jenny really helped a lot with the dialogue. She’s a Shakespeare guru.”

All the hard work paid off during their opening night last Friday.

“It was really successful from the audience’s perspective,” Siler said. “They were able to understand and were laughing, which tells us that the dialogue was interpreted well.”

Tehila Rosenblatt-Farrell, fourteen, started taking acting lessons with Justice after seeing the theater’s first play, “Alice”, and performed in a major role in a play put on by the theater this summer.

“Jenny really cares about the students and takes time to figure out what they need to work on, “said Rosenblatt-Farrell.

Rosenblatt-Farrell learned more than acting skills from the classes.

“She became more confident,” said Tehila’s mother, Coco Rosenblatt-Farrell. “It wasn’t just intellectual learning. She got it in her bones, in her daily life, in her school life.”

Coco Rosenblatt-Farrell said that her daughter’s acting skills actually helped her once when she was preparing for a performance at friend’s house.

“I take singing lessons and I was going to be doing a performance at a friend’s home,” said Rosenblatt-Farrell. “Tehila came in and sat down and coached me to being on stage, the body language and postures to use, and she credited it all to the Durham Family Theatre.”

Justice said that the theater could not have started without the help of the community.

“We wouldn’t exists without them,” Justice said. “I didn’t start the space at all. This theater was started completely on community volunteers.”

The Hayti Heritage Center provided the stage for the current play while Trinity Presbyterian Church provided space for the theater’s summer camps.

“We’ve really been blessed,” Justice said. “It’s taken a lot of pavement pounding.”

“I’m a big believer in building community through volunteer efforts,” said Justice, “and I want this to be a place where families can create together.”

Durham Family Theatre has performances of the current show, “As You Like It” this Friday and Saturday at 8:00 p.m. in St. Joseph’s Performance Hall at the Hayti Heritage Center.

Duck and Cover 11.10.11

2011-11-10T08:40:00.000-05:00

Durham passes Transportation sales tax

2011-11-10T08:30:00.002-05:00

The way the train used to roll into Durham...
Photo courtesy of Old West Durham Neighborhood Association

Durham passed a half of a cent sales tax increase yesterday designed to augment mass transportation in the area. The program includes improvements to Durham's bus system beginning in 2012, including more buses on high rider-use routes, expanded regional bus service and expanded bus service to RDU Airport. Of course, the plan's authors sold it the public as a light rail program, knowing that despite its practicality and relatively low cost, nobody loves the bus.

The trains are in the plan, too. It calls for thirty-seven miles of commuter rail between Durham, RTP and Raleigh. This portion includes the construction of four new commuter rail stations in Durham, beginning as early as 2018. It also includes the much publicized seventeen miles of light rail between Durham and Chapel Hill, with as many as twelve stations scheduled to begin construction as early as 2025.

Long time readers know, that like many, the Clarion Content has a hard time advocating in favor of more taxes and increased government spending. But even in our limited government preferring hearts, we can see where a common good like mass transportation infrastructure is the kind of thing that the classic social contract calls for government to do. Build infrastructure so our individualistic, car-loving neighbors don't so clog the roads, and thereby pollute the air, that our little neck of the woods becomes the next sprawled out Atlanta or Los Angeles.

The Clarion Content gets especially edgy when the plan's advocates will not entirely disavow the use of eminent domain to construct the mass transit system they envision. We recall the very first time we heard about light rail in the Triangle, it was more than a decade ago, and it was because the word on the street was that they were going to close Sam's Blue Light.

We were opposed then and we are still concerned now and not just about our beer supply.¹ Eminent domain has a history of being used diabolically to help the strong take advantage of the weak. We believe in the good intentions of the authors of the Durham Bus & Rail improvement plan. We think they genuinely want to help the community. And our area needs the help, some projections show regional population is set to increase by nearly one million more people in the next twenty years. If folks continued to use their cars at the same rate that we do now, the Durham/Raleigh/Chapel Hill area would be among the nation's most congested.

And all those cars would continue to gobble up open space, encouraging development to spread further out. Conversely trains drive development to city and population centers, preserving outlying and rural areas by default. The Clarion Content is not totally sold on this rationale. This is especially because we have heard that existing plans call for the construction of a rail station in the heavily wooded area on Farrington Road between NC 54 and US 40. We can, again, see the good intentions and the utilitarian logic of building a station in this location. We cannot ignore geography or demography.²

The kicker, the tiebreaker as it were, is the economy. In good times, there might be better rationale to debate against this kind of government investment, but in these times of stagnation and persistently high unemployment, infrastructure spending that yields jobs is welcome. Initial estimates by the plans authors project both a significant number of new jobs related to years of construction, and permanent professional service jobs, perhaps as many as 6,400 new positions in total. These jobs would be huge boon to the community.

Furthermore, there is some smart planning that is part of what has us convinced of the good intentions and aims of the authors of the proposal. The buses are an important piece to the Clarion Content. Buses are disproportionately used by the neediest members of society. Additionally, in an effort to minimize the regressivity of the new sales tax, it exempts gas, food, housing, utilities and medical bills. This we approve of, and, it gives us a good opinion of those moving the plan forward.

The jobs and the economic impact combined with heading-off potentially gruesome sprawl and congestion are enough to tip the Clarion Content's scales in favor of this proposition. We will be watching and covering its implementation closely.

We would note that it is our contention that far too many Americas take lightly what we have, and we don't just mean the loot/material things that we call our "stuff." We mean the very houses that we live in and streets that we walk. America has a massive amount of infrastructure and development. Somebody³ built every bit of it: roads, bridges, sewer systems, the electrical grid, etc. Although he has been blithely ignored by Congress, we did agree with the gist of the argument that President Obama made in his now nearly forgotten jobs address.⁴

Our grateful thanks to Bo Glenn without whom this piece would not have been possible.

¹This plan, under the auspices of the Triangle Transit Authority, failed for lack of local government investment.

²This area has already seen a tranche of new homes built. And there will be far more downtown stations and downtown construction than there will be in rural and outlying areas.

³Immigrants.

⁴Three years too late, but right idea, finally.

Duck and Cover 11.09.11

2011-11-09T11:03:00.000-05:00

Watts-Hillandale Art Walk

2011-11-08T10:00:00.001-05:00

Although we did not make it to the Watts-Hillandale neighborhood Art Walk this weekend, our sources once again reported good things about this delightful Durham nook. The Clarion Content has sent correspondents along on the Watts-Hillandale house tour previously. This photo is from one of those house tours.

Check out more photos here. Scroll down. It is a neighborhood of wonderful old houses.

Duck and Cover 11.08.11

2011-11-08T08:07:00.000-05:00

Watts-Hillandale: Fashion Drive-by preview

2011-11-07T09:15:00.006-05:00

The Clarion Content's second Fashion Drive-by is coming soon. This time we partnered with a 9th Street institution, Vaguely Reminiscent, as well as, the up-and-coming clothing line, Runaway Clothes. Like the our first amazing shoot, which you can check out here, we could not have done it without our partners and collaborators.

Also like our first shoot, all styling was done by our phenomenal fashion and culture guru, Cady Childs. All photos were shot by Jessi Blakely of Tamara Lackey Photography.

So here is a little teaser of Fashion Drive-by #2, shot in historic Watts-Hillandale, just before Halloween...

Spooky.

Check out our full Fashion Drive-by shoot #2, appearing here, in these pages, the week before Thanksgiving.

Keep an eye out shortly thereafter for our Faux Presser photoshoot with local Durham music sensations---LiLa.

Duck and Cover 11.07.11

2011-11-07T09:00:00.001-05:00

Duck and Cover 11.04.11

2011-11-04T09:29:00.001-04:00

Barricades Battle

2011-11-03T08:26:00.004-04:00

What does "to the barricades" really mean?

The Clarion Content has largely been a support of the Occupy movement, we feel a certain solidarity with their grievances. It is inarguable that the rich-poor gap in America is growing, that the ultra-rich are advancing faster than anyone else in our society, that the globalized movement of capital has once again tilted the balance radically in favor of investors. (Labor can not move freely in the same way.)

The nature of protest is always complicated, frequently during times of wrenching change things get worse before they get better. Is there the stomach for such change? Our New Jersey based political commentator, Storey Clayton, noted that increasing unemployment and underemployment has given folks more time and energy to examine the fine print of the social contract as it is now playing out. No surprise, people don't like the way the man is putting the screws to them. The question is: Can protest achieve change?

We read a sad story of a battle playing out at the barricades in Lower Manhattan. This battle, unlike Occupy's successful forays in Oakland, is amongst the 99%, rather than worker versus investor.

New York based DNA Info reports that Marc Epstein, the owner of the Milk Street Cafe, at #40 Wall Street, laid of twenty-one employees last week. He says he supports the protesters right to assemble and air their grievances, but feels his employees are collateral damage.¹

The Milk Street Cafe says the biggest problem is that police barricades have lined Wall Street since September 17th. This makes it difficult for people to see the restaurant and cross the street to get to it. Local subway entrances are also closed and numerous police checkpoints dot the area.²

Not surprisingly the cops and the administration blame the protesters. Mayor Bloomberg, auditioning his head for a nifty place on stake said, "Protesters are trying to destroy jobs."

Occupy spokespeople noted, "The NYPD makes the decisions on the part of police barricades."

The owner of the cafe said no one from City Hall will return his calls about removing or reducing the barricades. In the most uniquely American twist to it all, he has asked his landlord to intercede with the city on his behalf.

And who might that be? Why, it's Donald Trump.

And the beat goes on.

¹Better to be collateral damage on Wall Street than in Iraq or Afghanistan where the phrase is usually code for "Sorry about how that missile killed your family."

²Remember how the Palestinians are always saying that scads of checkpoints choke off their economy's ability to function normally? Well apparently when it happens on Wall Street, it's for real.

Duck and Cover 11.03.11

2011-11-03T08:00:00.001-04:00

Outsiders Art and Collectibles

2011-11-02T10:00:00.009-04:00

Special to the Clarion Content by featured guest columnist: Rebecca Yan

Photo credit also to Rebecca Yan.

Despite the economic downturn, Pamela Gutlon of Outsiders Art and Collectibles strives to make community her priority.

Located on Iredell Street in the nook between the vibrant by-ways of 9th Street and Broad Street, hers is a gallery that features traditional Southern outsider art, that is, art work made by untrained artists.

Gutlon founded the gallery in November 2009 due to her longing to be part of the city’s emerging art community, and because of her desire to share with Durham, artists who are sometimes “outside” the mainstream art community.

“It probably wasn’t the smartest thing to do in the middle of a recession, but I feel so much better now that I’m part of the community,” Gutlon said.

The gallery's location between the busy thoroughfares has its downsides, such as the trickling flow of visitors on most weekdays. Gutlon says that there are days when she may get only one or two visitors.

Gutlon tries to boost her exposure by hosting numerous community events throughout the year, such as this week's two-year anniversary party. She coordinates these events with the local food trucks like the Pie Pushers and Only Burger. Outsider Arts and Collectibles events often feature live music as well.

Gutlon uses her art network to help outsider art get on the walls at local landmark restaurants like Fullsteam Brewery, Parker and Otis, Rue Cler and Guglhupf.

Jennings Brody, the bon vivant and owner of Parker and Otis, said she chose to display outsider art because she “wants to support a local business and... [said that Gutlon] shares the same commitment to help local businesses.”

The benefit is mutual.

“If a restaurant wants art and they can’t afford it, I’m happy to give them art,” said Gutlon.

The partnership between the two has been established for a year and a half, and it has benefited both.

“She’s really good about partnering with me…bringing the art that I like,” Jennings said. “Her gallery is something off the beaten path, and if we can garner her more exposure, we’d be glad to do it.”

Gutlon said that she has had many people call her to purchase the art work that they have seen at the restaurants.

“Durham is one of those communities where if you build it, they will come,” Gutlon said.

It is also with the goal of helping outsider artists garner more exposure that Gutlon opened the gallery.

Outsider art has traditionally meant artworks created by backwoods, uneducated, African-American artists. The term has now evolved into the artwork of untrained, emerging artists from diverse sociological and economic backgrounds.

Kathryn DeMarco, a local artist, who received her Bachelors of Fine Art (BFA) in painting from Boston University, identified outsider artists as “somebody who hasn’t had a formal education in art and uses found objects.”

“They really have a great sense of aesthetics…but no BFA,” DeMarco said. “Like a collage…it’s technically different, but not much different.”

One of the main aesthetics that drives the form, DeMarco said, is that, “[outside art is] kind of whimsical and innovative. There’s work, [such as that of] The Masking Tape guy, that’s kind of funky.

Kathryn, we could not have said it better based on our experiences at Outsiders Art and Collectibles. Kind of funky.

Photo credit Rebecca Yan.

This week, Wednesday night, November 2nd, Bart Schultz aka The Masking Tape guy will be featured along with Chris Milk Hulburt at the Outsiders Art and Collectibles Two-year Anniversary Party, #718 Iredell Street. (They share the building with the Happymess Art Studio.) Food trucks expected include Only Burger, Ko Kyu and The Parlour. Live music will provided by Down River and the Bulltown Strutters.

Duck and Cover 11.02.11

2011-11-02T08:42:00.002-04:00

Our thanks to "Duck & Cover" and creator Storey Clayton.

Check out his other projects, here, at the Blue Pyramid. All ideas and opinions are those of the cartoonist and do not necessarily reflect the view of the Clarion Content.^*

^*More often than not, we totally agree...

Fashion Drive-by: Lakewood

2011-11-01T21:45:00.000-04:00

The Clarion Content has been trumpeting this idea about town for many weeks now. Perhaps then, dear readers, you have already heard about our Fashion Drive-by's? If not, here is the lowdown. The Clarion Content is partnering with local businesses, clothiers, boutiques, salons and others to help share their wares and tell their stories. We supply the models, the staging and coordination, as well as the fabulous photographer. Durham provides the setting.

Our first Fashion Drive-by takes place in Durham's Lakewood neighborhood. A historic, still under-appreciated, rising star in our local firmament, Lakewood is home to a thriving microcosm of our Durham community.

It is bustling with local businesses, it is multi-ethnic, it is built in and dwelling amongst the old, it has a fascinating story. (Throughout these pieces we are grateful to the resource that is Endangered Durham for providing a treasure trove of old photos and Durham history. Click through at each location for additional back story.)

Our fashion partner for these photos, to whom we are very grateful, and we literally could not have done the shoot without, was Dolly's Vintage. They are located at #213 West Main Street, just down the block from Clarion Content fave, Toast. All ensembles are composed of borrowed pieces from this amazing store, where the best vintage finds are already all laid out for ones perusal, mixed amidst gifts and other magical tsotchkes.

Cady Childs, the Clarion Content's Pop Culture columnist, functioned as a dual stylist and model for us, and will continue to do style work for our future Fashion Drive-bys. (Watts-Hillandale, you're up next!) Jessi Blakely of Tamara Lackey Photography took all of the amazing photos. Cady Childs and Jessi Blakely collaborated on layout and design of this piece with the Clarion Content staff. Special thanks to our outstanding, hard-working models, Cady Childs, Amy Blakely and Kelly Clark. And our thanks and gratitude to all of the local business owners and Lakewood residents who patiently let us photograph in and around their spaces and shops and many cases let us photograph themselves. Thank you to one and all who contributed.

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Location #1: Renn-Vickers House
#1812 Chapel Hill Road

We started at the Renn-Vickers house at #1812 Chapel Hill Road. This house was built in the 1890's by railway conductor Captain Joseph Renn. It is a beautiful old Queen Anne. Today it is home to Capital Analytics. Click on the photos to see even more Fashion Drive-by shots from this location.

Clothes from Dolly's Vintage, styling by Cady Childs, photos by Jessi Blakely of Tamara Lackey Photography, models Amy Blakely and Cady Childs.

Location #2: old Duke Surplus
(former Center Theater)
Lakewood Shopping Center

Did you know that there was once a rollercoaster where the Lakewood Shopping plaza is? Maybe you knew that there was a Woolworth's at one point, but a rollercoaster? It was the home of the Lakewood Amusement Park, opened in 1902. You could hop a street car from Five Points and roll over to Lakewood. Ahhh, Durham, you surprise us daily.

These photos were taken at the far end of the Lakewood Shopping plaza in a building that one generation might remember as the Center Theater and another might remember as the Duke Surplus Store. Click on the photos to see even more Fashion Drive-by shots from this location.

Clothes from Dolly's Vintage, styling by Cady Childs, photos by Jessi Blakely of Tamara Lackey Photography, models Kelly Clark and Cady Childs.

Location #3: Former Roll's Florist
2001 Chapel Hill Road

Roll's Florist was established by Fred Roll in 1937 on the corner of Lakewood Avenue and Chapel Hill Road after he served as the resident florist at the home of Brodie Duke. The greenhouse flourished for many years closing in the 1970's. The property is still in the family and the former retail store, right on the corner, #2001, is a highly recognizable neighborhood landmark, though no longer a functioning shop. Once again click through to Endangered Durham to see some amazing pictures and read even more about the history of the site.

The far right shot in this series of photos is the mural painted on the side of the Institute for Southern Studies. Click on the photos to see even more Fashion Drive-by shots from this location.

Clothes from Dolly's Vintage, styling by Cady Childs, photos by Jessi Blakely of Tamara Lackey Photography, models Amy Blakely and Cady Childs.

Location #4: Azteca Grill
1929 Chapel Hill Road

The Azteca Grill, on the corner opposite Roll's Florist, is a family business that was established by Magaly Arguelles-Espriella and her husband, Ruben Godinez. They chose the name Azteca because they wanted to signal to Durham's burgeoning Mexican community, and us gringos, that unlike many of our terrific, local Mexican establishments, they do not specialize in the cuisine of one particular region of Mexico. They started their business out of a food truck back in 2002, before Durham's food trucks were so eponymous and hip. The restaurant was a long-time family dream.

They know this Durham community and our health-conscious ways, everything is made in-house and fresh, no artificial preservatives are used. The Azteca is famous for its super tender Carne Deshebrada, a special family recipe for slow-cooked, highly seasoned, shredded beef. Azteca Grill also has free wifi. Click on the photos to see even more Fashion Drive-by shots from this location.

Clothes from Dolly's Vintage, styling by Cady Childs, photos by Jessi Blakely of Tamara Lackey Photography, models Amy Blakely and Cady Childs.

Location #5: La Favorita de Oaxaca (former Davis Bakery)
2022 Chapel Hill Road

La Favorita de Oaxaca is a panadería (bakery) in the highly recognizable former Davis Bakery building. Endangered Durham has some amazing shots of the building back in the day. They include one of the mural that is still faintly visible on the north side. The original bakery facility dates back to the 1920's. Some of the ovens that were in use during World War II are still inside the shop (and functioning).

Unlike Azteca, La Favorita is a Mexican panderia that does indeed specialize in a regional type of baked goods, Oaxacan. Owners Estella and Erasto Bernabe bought the shop six years ago after visiting her mother in Durham from California. Erasto and his family had been bakers in Oaxaca for many generations. Estella is El Salvadorean. Their store reflects their wider interests, selling a variety of goods, from bottled water to pinatas, candy to votive candles and everything in between.

The baked goods alone are worth the trip. Not only are they delicious, but for those used to paying the rate in some of Durham's tonier establishments, the prices will knock your socks off, they, too, appear to be from the World War II era. You will quite literally not believe how far $3.00 will go.

Clothes from Dolly's Vintage, styling by Cady Childs, photos by Jessi Blakely of Tamara Lackey Photography, models Amy Blakely and Cady Childs.

Click here for a gallery for Lakewood Proprietors and residents from the Clarion Content's Flicker.

Thanks again to all our team; unbelievable work by Cady Childs, Jessi Blakely, Kelly Clark, Amy Blakely, and thanks again to all of our partners; Dolly's Vintage, Azteca Grill, La Favorita de Oaxaca, the Ensminger family, and Capital Analytics.

Durham is because Durham was

2011-11-01T12:29:00.002-04:00

The Clarion Content does not buy the idea we have heard espoused in various contexts lately, that there is a distinction between an old and a new Durham, a way it was and a way it is. Our thought is, that’s facetious, where we are as a community is a continuation of where were, it is only possible because of those unique circumstances, across a panorama of contexts that make Durham uniquely what it is: from institutions to architecture to individuals, this Durham is built on the Durham that was. There is a continuity.

This is a complicated narrative for many Durhamanians to face up to, transplants and long term residents alike. Those beautiful, brick and solid beam tobacco warehouses would not have been available to redevelop, if the jobs hadn’t left town. Those stately old homes would not have been available to renovate, if families hadn’t left them behind. There was an era when Durham wasn’t just quiet, it was desolate, and in many parts dangerous. Those broken windows took down neighborhoods. Durham’s reputation as unsafe dates to this era and was exacerbated by the media’s exploitation of it for their own ends. Durham’s problems were fodder for simple stories. Unfortunately, solutions were a lot more complicated and long term.

Durham is on a tremendous run. One of the recent peaks on a curve that has no clear end in sight saw our city named by the New York Times one of the forty-one must visit places in the world. Using population as a proxy, the city saw almost no change in population between 1970 and 1980. Then in the 80’s experienced a 35.5% jump in population, an additional 36,000 residents. The 90’s kept it up, the population of Durham was up a further 36.9% and 51,000 residents. Even in the decade of the 00’s when so much of the rest of America struggled to tread water, Durham grew steadily, population increasing by a further 22% and 40,000 plus folks.

But Raleigh and Cary grew even faster than that, and the Clarion Content surely doesn’t know too many Durhamanians who would trade what we have for what they have. So population is not a perfect proxy for cultural growth, Durham’s culture didn’t emerge from a vacuum. It was built on something. The Clarion Content would posit institutions and individuals.

Duck and Cover 11.01.11

2011-11-01T12:00:00.000-04:00

Our thanks to "Duck & Cover" and creator Storey Clayton.

Check out his other projects, here, at the Blue Pyramid. All ideas and opinions are those of the cartoonist and do not necessarily reflect the view of the Clarion Content.^*

^*More often than not, we totally agree...

Occupation

2011-10-31T08:18:00.004-04:00

Clarion Content political cartoonist and resident New Bruinswick philosopher, Storey Clayton, walks us through the occupation, eviscerating the media myths behind it. Why have people occupied? What has changed? From whence did they come?

Storey dredges his personal memory to deposit us all, readers and editors alike, in a profoundly thoughtful place. What might Occupy mean? Where might Occupy go? This piece doesn't have all the answers, but it will surely leave you reexamining the questions.

It is long, but very, very worth it---Ed.

Read more of Storey Clayton's work here at the Blue Pyramid. Check out the insights of his famous cartoon Duck and Cover, here on the Clarion Content.

**************************************************

I used to counsel “emotionally disturbed” kids in a group home, the Seneca Center. That was my occupation. We used this system generally known as “behavior modification” whereby we rewarded good behavior and punished (to a degree) bad behavior, usually by changing the meter on what kinds of activities someone could do. There were behavioral levels someone would start out on in the morning based on their behavior the previous day. They were color-coded, running red, yellow, green, and then purple and finally gold, which could only be earned after sequential days on purple. For example, you couldn’t watch TV on red. You couldn’t watch TV after dinner on yellow. On gold, you didn’t have to stand at each doorway announcing yourself and waiting to be permitted to cross a threshold, as long as you told the staff where you were going and responded if they asked you to stop.

There were also behaviors which would warrant an immediate “level drop”. Contrary to my ex-brother-in-law’s assessment, this did not indicate that we would dump a kid off the stairs, but merely that they’d go from yellow to red or gold to purple if they swore or made a threat or tried to make a peer act out. And then violence meant “R&R”, a term I guess we were trying to reclaim for the bad, which would be resolution and restitution in this instance and prompt spending the rest of the day on red, usually after long periods of sitting time to calm down.

A lot of our job, other than navigating and assessing people through the process of earning their levels, was about keeping people motivated to meet their goals and make their level. After all, most of the kids had grown up in households where, de facto if not overtly, bad behavior was rewarded and good behavior was punished. If you were quiet and humble and polite and got your homework done, you’d get neglected. If you set the house on fire and kicked the family dog and yelled and screamed at the table, then you’d get some attention. And in the world of six year-olds whose parents are addicts, any attention is good attention, because it means you get fed or talked to or even physically contacted, even if it’s to be hit.

The hardest part of this engagement and motivation was finding ways to get people on red to believe that tomorrow would be a new day and they’d have some way of climbing out of their bad level. Often they’d be on red after spending significant portions of the day in R&R, which meant no points were being earned toward the next day’s level while they were in the quiet room (an Orwellian term if there ever was one) or restraint or sitting staring at a corner thinking about what they’d done. Usually this meant they’d spent the day not only being unstable and unhappy, but they knew that the next day was doomed to be another day on red – that it’d be 36 hours before they could watch TV or even think about going on the computer. And 36 hours is long enough for a well-adjusted adult human – for an anti-social adolescent, it’s an eternity.

One of the things my boss – an ex-drill-sergeant (literally) and college football player the size of a small house with the voice of an irate seal – was very good at was advising us what to do with these kids in these situations. He told us that the key to their motivation and improved behavior was engagement. Keeping them interested, distracted, putting their minds to something. In a word, keeping them occupied. The man was often a blunt instrument, but he had incredible insight into the mindsets of these kids, having worked in mental health facilities like ours and/or juvenile hall for the better part of two decades. And he implored us to, when times were stable, engage and stimulate the kids who were on red with the few activities always allotted to them – playing outside, playing board games, reading, talking with peers or staff. And there, over time, I learned a fundamental truth: that people act out when they’re bored. It’s something to do.

The human mind despises boredom. Probably more than pain, certainly more than sadness. The brain is too complex, too creative, too active, to tolerate monotony and absence of objects. It will create things to think about where none exist, it will foment processes and possibilities in a vacuum. The only antidote to this is another element of our strategy in engaging red-level kids: exhaustion. Playing outside was not only good because it kept someone occupied, focused, and not-bored, but it also meant they came in too tired to create a ruckus. Adolescents have restless unspent energy in the best of times – abuse/neglect victims triply so. A kid who comes in tired from his day will be disinclined to take offense at a peer’s comment or a staff direction to a time-out. One who has nothing but seething surging energy beneath the surface will be ready to rumble.

This difference of exhaustion is why so many people can put up with assembly-line jobs or grocery-checking or long commutes, but buckle under the universally feared torture of solitary confinement. The capitalist structure of our country went through a really glorious period of getting humans to willingly accept and even embrace monotonous boredom because the tedium of their jobs created the byproduct of wearing them down. So even if they were getting repetitive stress injuries from twisting the same widget the same way and almost falling asleep from the 3,275th time making the same commute, they would arrive at home too beat to complain about it, having only just enough energy to awaken the next day and do it again. Meanwhile, those confined to small dark boxes alone with little or no exercise were slowly driven insane in their prisons.

Something’s been happening in this country the last three years. People have lost their occupations. No matter how small and crappy and minimally engaging their jobs were, they were still jobs that carried the heavily taxing byproduct of exhaustion. They were still something that took enough mental and physical energy to negate the urge to rebel, to foment discontent, to hold out for something better. But one-by-one and in droves, they were turned out of the opportunity to spend their energy flailing in the capitalist mill and instead made to consider the walls and corners and televisions and want-ads of a solitary existence.

Some have turned to creativity. Some have expanded their minds to accept the lack of occupation as a gift and driven themselves to occupy themselves instead. Most have not. Most people turned out of work by downsizing or offshoring or consolidation or automation have turned forlornly and blankly into an abyss of disinterested blandness. They wake each day not even sure what to do without someone telling them. They wander aimlessly through a directionless day, storebought distractions no longer working for them in light of the fact that they are only sufficiently entertaining or engaging for an exhausted person, but not someone with all their faculties at disposal. No longer exhausted, they become restless, agitated, rumbling with a soul-deep longing for something to do, be, create.

This, my friends, is the fundamental root of the Occupy Wall Street movement. It is the quest for occupation. And despite my framing the question in the context of a job where I tried to modify violent kids’ behavior toward the more productive, I am very much in agreement with the principles and methodology of this budding revolution. The powers that seek to maintain order, stability, and the status quo in America have overlooked some fundamental tenets of how to stave off rebellion by controlling the masses. They have forgotten that bread must join circuses in sufficiently distracting the people, insisting instead on a system which puts bread at a premium as a mechanical rabbit to hold in front of the racers. They have allowed the attitude of those at the top to become perniciously elitist, rubbing superiority and greed in the face of all society. But most fundamentally, they have forgotten that people must have something to do or they will find something to do themselves. That people accept the terms of their social contract when they are too occupied or too tired to read the fine print, when people have nothing else to do but read the fine print because they are so bored, they will realize what they are forfeiting and rail against it.

What is most exciting and inspiring about the Occupy movement is that it does not overtly seek political solutions. Naysayers and corporate threshers want the occupiers to write their Congresspeople and go to the polls, knowing that anyone accessed in such a way has been bought and paid for to the point of complete imperviousness. Even those not explicitly on the payroll of corporate America are believers in the fundamental tenets of a system that rewards greed and punishes altruism, a way of aligning society to maximize the consolidation and stratification of wealth and power. It is blindingly obvious why this is so, as any student of history (from age eight on) could tell you: those in power like being there and will rig the game so they can stay there. And capitalism is one very effectively rigged game.

I myself have struggled mightily with the advent of the Occupy movement, feeling pulled almost inexorably to the front lines of its tent encampments and yet not even setting foot there, as yet, in the wake of my overwhelmed exhaustion at my full-time job. For me, unlike most, it is not the gun-to-my-head need for the pay of a job or even the expected pressure of finding fulfillment in one’s occupation, but rather the true motivation of actually loving my work and wanting to devote sufficient time to it that it brings me to the brink of capitulation and illness. I hung out with Ariel and discovered yesterday that I may be her only friend whose problems wouldn’t be largely or entirely solved by money. Which itself is no small factor in the Occupy movement, that reality. For me, I work because I want to and I love to, but it has thus far kept me off the sidewalks and streets of a rising tide that could sweep the whole world.

It is hard to feel twin obligations that are mutually exclusive and equally compelling. Even at Glide, I think I might have begged out of work to go join the protests, though there I may have felt the pull of alleviating the suffering that was driving so many to this brink. But I also must self-examine and recognize that each marginal person could be part of a tipping point in creating more change in this country than anyone born prior to this year could have imagined was possible. When I first saw the most recent Zeitgeist movie, I chuckled at the slightly naive vision of hordes of people gathering around Wall Street to give their money back in rejection of the system that printed it. Now it’s underway. And it feels wrong to not only not be a part of it, but to not be a spearhead.

And yet it feels like a hedge is in order too. It is unclear the direction or power the movement will have, whether it can be co-opted by money and politics and all the American powers that have resisted internal change before. And throwing away the best job I’ll ever have, one I created from scratch, and all my obligations to people I feel a deep personal bond with, for what could be a week and a jail term depending on how things bounce, seems crazy.

But it only seems crazy because I am occupied. Were I not, it would be the most obvious thing in the world.

I will continue to wrestle and struggle with the question, continue to dance on the razor’s edge of conundrum. I can’t really see myself abandoning everything to go live in the encampments, at least not yet, so the Rutgers debaters reading this should let out their breath. But there’s a big part of me that feels I should anyway. And I know it’s not zero-sum – I know I can go try to participate without sacrificing it all. And I will. More than anything, though, we need to develop a way that people who are occupied can still Occupy. We need a day where everyone who still wants or has to go to work can show their solidarity and support. Sometimes revolutions can’t all involve defection from the military, because they need people in the military to be quietly sympathetic so they can make sure that institution changes with the rest of society. This revolution needs occupied people too in order to make all the changes necessary.

If those on top of this precipitous pyramid know what’s good for them, they will create new incentives and occupations. They will come up with some way to motivate the masses and make use of their time and brains. But it can’t be through capitalism, at least the way it’s been manifest in society so far. The market is editing out jobs, ensuring they never return. We need a new system to occupy our minds. Until then, we must occupy the streets.

Duck and Cover 10.28.11

2011-10-28T09:00:00.001-04:00

Our thanks to "Duck & Cover" and creator Storey Clayton.

Check out his other projects, here, at the Blue Pyramid. All ideas and opinions are those of the cartoonist and do not necessarily reflect the view of the Clarion Content.^*

^*More often than not, we totally agree...

Duck and Cover 10.27.11

2011-10-27T09:55:00.001-04:00

Our thanks to "Duck & Cover" and creator Storey Clayton.

Check out his other projects, here, at the Blue Pyramid. All ideas and opinions are those of the cartoonist and do not necessarily reflect the view of the Clarion Content.^*

^*More often than not, we totally agree...

The Scrap Exchange

2011-10-26T13:00:00.002-04:00

A few months back now... The Scrap Exchange just moving into the new space.

Surely Durhamanians know that The Scrap Exchange, an old community stand-by, a veritable institution, has moved to a new location, the Cordoba Center for the Arts. But have you been there yet? Have you given a thought to just what a valuable, local resource it is? Ask yourself, is it really a coincidence that we have the kind of creative, burgeoning artistic community that we do here in Durham? What Durham is, it is built on what Durham was.

Clarion Content Arts & Culture columnist, Cady Childs, digs deeper into the story, reminding us, pooling our collective recollections with the latest news about what's going on at 923 Franklin Street, Durham, 27701.

Keep an eye out for her upcoming piece on another Durham institution that has moved into the Cordoba Center, Liberty Arts.

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As a child, if I made it through a trip to Northgate Mall with my parents without spending too long drooling over carousel globes and sparkly shoes, my reward was always a $5 grab bag at The Scrap Exchange store. Bins taller than I was, filled with millions of metallic scraps of paper, plastic nozzles and keyboard keys, floppy disks and pieces of fabric, bins full of the ideas rolling around my bright little mind that hadn’t brought themselves to fulfillment till I stepped in to the store. I couldn’t widen my eyes enough.

Now, The Scrap Exchange, owned by Ann Woodward, is located in the new Cordoba Center for the Arts, next door to East Durham’s Golden Belt, with space for studios, free workshops, and enough aisles and raw materials to seed and yield more projects than could fit into most childhoods.

“The expanse really shows how materials can occupy the space in so many different ways,” Woodward, who manages over thirty employees in the new location, said. The shelf behind her built from dozens of old VHS tapes stacked like bricks certainly flourished her point.

Since the original relocation in mid-June, the Scrap Exchange has been spreading it’s fingers and stretching it’s limbs more and more into the new opportunities provided by such a massive building.

Among the new projects and endeavors Woodward has been putting together is a woodworking shop, with classes taught by local artisans and a tool library free to the public, as well as craft workshops, often lead by Woodward herself. An artist’s marketplace, featuring over sixty local artists using reused, sustainable pieces provides retail space for craftsmen, as well as examples, for those of who aren’t sure where to start.

These endeavors give Durham residents a chance to experience, first-hand, how far their imagination and inspiration can truly go.

“There is so much potential in the world of reuse as a job creator,” Woodward said. “It is an unlimited opportunity in so many ways, individuality, resources, the environment. It’s a big resource to any community.”

The importance of reuse and the creativity it brings is clear to patrons of Scrap Exchange, both young and old.

“From the containers I use in my garden to the wreath on my door, I was able to build it out of what I got at the Scrap Exchange, “ Amber Crews, Durham resident, said. “Whether you are looking for materials for collages, fabric scraps, buttons, or just some inspiration, they have it all.”

The creative opportunities in these multifarious mediums are certainly motivating to anyone artistically inclined, but to a child’s eyes these items simply are more pliable, more malleable, more cross-applicable, one’s artistic inclination in adulthood is shaped by these kinds of memories.

“Scrap Exchange gives a question to kids in Durham that every child should be asked,” said Eli McDuffee, lead singer of Durham band, LiLa, “They said ‘Here are the objects---now tell me what you want to make out of this.’ It can be whatever you want, but it’s got to be all you.”

The creative stimuli in the air between the walls of The Scrap Exchange's new location is so strong you can smell it as soon as you walk in the door. On the way out, a small girl in a tie-dyed tank top and cut off pink shorts sits on the ground, sorting buttons into piles of similar shapes, holding each one inches from her eye, clasped tightly between her fingers, taking in their character fully before filtering them into their respective genre. Though we don’t know yet what she’s making, even she may not, we know what Woodward and The Scrap Exchange are helping her build- an outlet for her young mind to speak through. I can’t help but remember I used to have almost the exact same shorts when I was her age.

Duck and Cover 10.26.11

2011-10-26T07:40:00.000-04:00

Our thanks to "Duck & Cover" and creator Storey Clayton.

Check out his other projects, here, at the Blue Pyramid.

Duck and Cover 10.25.11

2011-10-25T14:16:00.000-04:00

Our thanks to "Duck & Cover" and creator Storey Clayton.

Check out his other projects, here, at the Blue Pyramid.

Durham triumphant!

2011-10-24T09:00:00.006-04:00

Painting by Diana Ciompi from "Homegrown: under 35" at the Craven Allen Gallery, photo courtesy of Scenes from my Lunch Hour."

What a weekend for the Durham arts and culture scene! It was vibrant, exciting, invigorating and inspiring. Friday, when the Clarion Content rolled up to the Carrack Gallery at 111 West Parrish Street for the PoPuP 3 art show, they were literally hanging out of the windows. Cars of Durhamanians, young and old, were spilling their passengers on to the street.

We took the long walk back down the hallway and up the stairs to the second floor to discover a room bursting with people, burbling with sound. Joyous expressions and happy murmurs were everywhere. Not the least, on the faces of Adrian Schlesinger, the organizer of PoPuP 3, and Laura Richie, the director of the Carrack Gallery. It was their doing, their combined efforts that brought us and this crowd here.

And here we were, on what mere months ago, might have been accurately described as lowly, West Parrish Street. Now on a beautiful Fall Friday Durham's art scene was here, as they say, "blowing up." An all ages crowd delighted in the works from more than twenty local artists. The PoPuP 3, like all the PoPuP art exhibits, was a fundraiser. All of the artists donated a percentage of the proceeds from the sale of their works. The Carrack is a commission free space so these donations are crucial to keeping the gallery open. (Even the cash box was being run by a brave art-loving volunteer.)

We in Durham know well the slogan, "Arts creates jobs." The Carrack Gallery and the vibe it has brought to sleepy West Parrish Street is the proof in the pudding. Peter's Design Works is now selling its wears just up the block. Loaf Bakery, known from the Durham Farmer's Market, is reportedly opening beneath the Carrack. The boarded-up building across the street suddenly has a sold sign across its frontage.

And that was just Friday night...

Saturday the Clarion Content ventured just up the block from our Broad Street offices to the Craven Allen Gallery and another celebration of Durham arts and culture. Here sixteen homegrown in Durham, under thirty-five artists were opening an exhibit. This exhibit and the theme generated tons of press from the old stand-bys, like the fishwrap: the News & Observer and the Herald Sun, to new media like the Clarion Content and Durham Magazine, to Durham institutions using new channels to express their delight. Durham Public Schools has a Twitter feed! And they proudly tweeted about sixteen of their alumni showing their works.

Much like the PoPuP 3, "Durham Homegrown: under 35" was wall to wall with Durhamanians when we arrived. An all ages crowd sipped white wine, and under their breath could be heard the repeated whisper, in voices that combined pride and wonder, "Durham." It was in Durham and of Durham. Even the subject matter, from rural northern Durham County farmers fields to street scenes from Watts-Hillandale, was this place, our town. And the 2^1/2 degrees of separation that we love to brag about in our community was clearly in evidence, as hugs and smiles were shared, while acquaintances were made and renewed.

Unlike the one night explosion of artistic energy that is PoPuP, where we at the Clarion Content, like you dear readers, have to wait for the word from Ms. Schlesinger about her next conquest for charity and the arts, "Durham Homegrown: under 35" runs through November 26^th at the Craven Allen Gallery at 1106^1/2 Broad Street. So if you missed the opening Saturday, you still have plenty of time to check out the work. It will resonate with you, Durham.

Craven Allen opens Homegrown under 35

2011-10-21T09:09:00.000-04:00

Artist Jeff Israel...all photos courtesy of Scenes from my Lunch Hour

This Friday, October 21st, Craven Allen Gallery, on Broad Street, opens a show called “Homegrown-Under 35 “ featuring sixteen young artists who all built their foundations in the Durham Public Schools.

Helen Griffin, curator of the show, was the art teacher at Riverside High School for over two decades and worked with all of these artists in their educations. “A teacher’s goal is for the students to go beyond what we teach them,” said Griffin, the 2011-2012 recipient of the Durham Art Guild’s Artist-In-Resident Award, “It’s special when you get to see that happen first hand.”

Artists featured in the show include Chris Alton, Harlan Campbell, Diana Ciompi, Mark Coffman, Jermario Couch, Bryan Crabtree, Jeff Israel, Whitney McDonell, Joe McDonough, Hannah Reed, Damian Stamer, Jacob Streilein, Robert Talley, Lizzie Tucker, Tyson Watson and Leigh Werrell.

A reception with the artists and Ms. Griffin, Saturday night from 5 P.M. to 7 P.M., officially kicks off the exhibition, which will be on display through November 26th.

Craven Allen, 1106^1/2 Broad St....all photos courtesy of Scenes from my Lunch Hour

A quick preview of the works shows a diverse, impressive collection of mixed media, sculpture, photography, painting, and graphic arts. It is a mélange of challenging works befitting the diversity of Durham. The echoes of this place ring true from scenes of Ninth Street institutions in a snowstorm to much more personal memories and iconography. The rich textured array of images, burbled forth from the wellspring of memories in these young minds: Durham.

The artists’ ages range from 18-35, all in different parts of their careers and creative discoveries, much like what is happening in our dear city, the ideas of ‘emerging’ and ‘established’ are becoming interchangeable. The new is rooted in the old. What is would not be possible without what was. Ms. Griffin’s years in the classroom, and her one time students fruits of their labors, bear literal testament to that truth.

The importance of arts education is a more heated topic than ever for our school systems, with the North Carolina General Assembly cutting $800 million from state public school spending this year alone. Arts programs across the state are under fire. A place like Durham, with our institutions and our individuals, is ever more important as a cultural reservoir, valuing, preserving, nurturing the arts in these challenging times.

“These artists are all homegrown- they all came from here, and part of them will always be here,” Griffin said. “It can be hard for artists to find their niche- but Durham will always be home to them.”

Artist Harlan Campbell...all photos courtesy of Scenes from my Lunch Hour

Craven Allen Gallery is located at 1106^1/2 Broad Street in Durham. Gallery hours are from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Monday through Friday, and 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. on Saturday. For more information on the show visit www.CravenAllenGallery.com, or call the gallery at (919) 286-4837.

See more photos of the exhibit here.

Special thanks to Scenes from my Lunch Hour for the photos.

Duck and Cover 10.21.11

2011-10-21T08:29:00.001-04:00

Our thanks to "Duck & Cover" and creator Storey Clayton.

Check out his other projects, here, at the Blue Pyramid.

Duck and Cover 10.20.11

2011-10-20T16:37:00.001-04:00

Our thanks to "Duck & Cover" and creator Storey Clayton.

Check out his other projects, here, at the Blue Pyramid.

Haymakers to debut at Man Bites Dog

2011-10-19T15:05:00.000-04:00

All photos courtesy of Allie Mullin Photography

About a year ago, Emily Hill was visiting Durham, N.C. with fellow Haymaker company members Akiva Fox and Dan VanHoozer. She found a $20 bill on the ground, and took this as the universe confirming what they already were starting to pick up on.

They were looking for a town that was growing. The kind of place where the community was positive and excited, the audience was diverse, where people liked to say yes. They ran through a long list of the usual suspects, Portland, Seattle, Baltimore and Philadelphia. They felt they would know the place when they found it. The energy in Durham rose up to meet them first through twenty bucks on the sidewalk, then Dan VanHoozer popped into the Manbites Dog Theater and was greeted with open arms.

The Haymakers say this has been the story throughout their year in Durham. Support and encouragement everywhere they turned, genuine generosity and warmth, a spirit that says: to assist you is to build our community, organically, from within. It started with Jeff Storer and Edward Hunt at the Manbites Dog Theater. The Haymakers found the same kind of help from artist Julia Gartrell on the design of their media material and logo. Likewise their promotional photographs, some of which accompany this piece, were taken by Allie Mullin in the same spirit. “How can I help?”

VanHoozer and Fox noted to the Clarion Content that in many places, including Washington, D.C. where they moved from, power is aggregated by saying no. The people in power try to deny access and opportunity to the up and coming, distrust, fear and negativity permeate the system. In Durham, they found, “everyone was so much nicer than they had to be.”

All photos courtesy of Allie Mullin Photography

And what is Durham’s reward?

This Thursday, October 20th marks the group’s first performance at the Manbites Dog Theater at 703 Foster Street, a three-week running showing of the self-written, self-starring, and self-produced work ‘Living with the Tiger’.

The play starts with a young couple in need of a change. Their mutual dream of owning a tiger lends to the group’s exploration of the ideals behind our ‘pursuit of happiness’ society, of the self-devouring urge for more and the constant chasing of these often fatal aspirations, of what happens when something is simultaneously captivatingly beautiful and heart-stoppingly terrifying.

“We like to start with something that grabs us by the throat, and punches us in the gut,” Akiva Fox said, when asked about what prompted the subject, “There are five-thousand domesticated tigers living in America, and only three-thousand left in the wild. A lot of these people [the owners] live in apartments, in cities, and areas where a tiger just isn’t meant to be.”

There are two sanctuaries for rescued tigers in the Triangle area alone, making this subject even more relevant to Durham than some might initially realize. These sanctuaries are home to tigers that were eventually given up by their owners, because they discovered, too late, just what they were getting themselves into.

“It shows you the good and bad side to the land of wonder,” Dan VanHoozer, who also works with the Playmakers Theatre Group, said. “Where is the end, satisfaction, if we’re always chasing?”

"Living with the Tiger," directed by Colin Hovde, at Manbites Dog, as part of the theater’s "Other Voices" series, will run three weekends, starting October 20th-23, and continuing on through Saturday, November 5th. For more information on the show, visit the Haymaker site at www.gohaymaker.com, or the Manbites Dog site for box office inquiries and other productions from the Other Voices series at http://www.manbitesdogtheater.org/.

Look for a review in the Clarion Content next week.

Edit. note---Please forgive our misspelling of the Manbites Dog theater in the title of this post. Our error. Unfortunately, changing the title of the post now would break any existing links posted with the old title. We humbly beg your forgiveness. Manbites Dog Theater! Sorry.

Duck and Cover 10.19.11

2011-10-19T15:00:00.000-04:00

Our thanks to "Duck & Cover" and creator Storey Clayton.

Check out his other projects, here, at the Blue Pyramid.

Duck and Cover 10.18.11

2011-10-18T09:00:00.001-04:00

Our thanks to "Duck & Cover" and creator Storey Clayton.

Check out his other projects, here, at the Blue Pyramid.

Have you heard about the PoPuP art shows?

2011-10-18T06:36:00.000-04:00

Artist: FRANCO, top left: Uhura, digital art, 28” x 22”, top right: Kidney Beans, digital art, 16” x 22”, bottom left: No Droids Allowed, Digital Art, 24” x 20”, bottom right: Sriracha, digital art, 16” x 20”
For sale, 1-Night Only: At PoPuP 3 Community Art Reception to benefit The Carrack Modern Art Gallery

One more sign of the artistic and cultural renaissance that is flourishing in Durham: have you heard about the PoPuP art shows? If the answer is no, it is not too late. The third PoPuP art show is in Durham this Friday, October 21st, at The Carrack Modern Art Gallery, 111 West Parrish Street.

Read about the Carrack's current exhibit, up for two more days, here.

These wonderful PoPuP art shows are coordinated by Durham resident Adrian Schlesinger. They are designed to benefit either the venue hosting the work or another cause. Ms. Schlesinger takes no commission. But there is so much more to this art crowdsourcing brainstorm, read the whole story below from Clarion Content special guest columnist, Rebecca Yan.

*****************************

Impromptu art shows at barber shops are a rarities, but they exist.

Excelsior Barber Shop in downtown, Durham hosted, PoPuP, a curatorial project designed to benefit its venue.

Rory Golden, a visual artist from New York, got a haircut from Excelsior during his visit to Durham and saw that the barbershop could benefit from community arts support. Wanting to help, he came up with the idea to put together an art show to benefit the barbershop.

Golden met Durham based artist, Adrian Schlesinger, for the first time through an event at the Durham Arts Council (DAC) later that evening. Golden presented his popup idea to artists at the DAC and asked Schlesinger if she would assist him in organizing the show, as he would be out of town during until the day of the event. Adrian Schlesinger, a Bachelor of Fine Arts student at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, agreed to take on the project and organized the show with Golden in only four days. The show successfully raised money for Excelsior and gathered the local community for a cause.

Schlesinger never would have thought that this single event would morph into her personal curatorial project and current thesis.

“I thought it was a one-time event, but people wanted it to continue,” said Schlesinger. “It took me almost a year before I thought I was ready for the second show [as the first show was organized in such a rush].”

She hosted the second show at Monkey Bottom Collaborative in downtown Durham to benefit The Scrap Exchange after the non-profit lost its space at the Liberty Arts Center due to an infamous roof collapse in May.

“I wanted to do something to help,” Schlesinger said.

She contacted Joe Galas, the founder of Monkey Bottom, about hosting a benefit show for The Scrap Exchange.

“Adrian approached us about it… [The show was to] benefit The Scrap Exchange, which we support too,“ Galas said.

Schlesinger said that the shows are open calls to artists and are usually made up of artists who “want to show their work in the community [and] beyond the confines of a museum or traditional gallery.”

PoPuP2 included both two-dimension and three-dimension art forms that ranged in price anywhere from $1 to $200. Artists freely price their own work and choose the percentage of the proceeds they want to accept and the percent that they wish to donate to the events' selected cause.

“PoPuP is different in the sense that [it’s made up of] a variety of artists [that want] to show their artwork,” said Luis Franco, a visual activist based in Durham. “It [gives] people a chance…[especially the] young artists.”

Franco participated in the second show and donated 100 percent of his profit to help The Scrap Exchange.

“I just wanted to help out The Scrap Exchange,“ Franco said. “He sees the non-profit as an integral part of the Durham community and wanted to support it during its difficult transition to its new location.

Ann Woodward, the executive director of The Scrap Exchange, said that Schlesinger contacted the non-profit to do the fundraiser.

“She was passionate about helping us,” said Woodward.

The second show tripled in size, in terms of the number of art pieces, participants, musical performances and funding raised.

“Everyone was super excited about it, “ said Nicole Hogan, the assistant manager of The Scrap Exchange. “The art was amazing…. I was really pleased to see so many people interested in displaying their art and offering. I was surprised by how much of the community feel it had…[everyone was] introducing themselves and people were [coming from all parts of] Durham. “

“I would love to have future collaborations with her,” said Woodward. “I’m interested in people who are creative. I consider what she did… helping to keep us in operation… that’s why Durham is so great.”

Franco also helps Schlesinger with graphic design work such as flyers and posters to spread the word and plans to continue his voluntary support.

“As long as she keeps doing it, I’m interested in staying involved… especially because there’s a cause behind it.”

Schlesinger said that the shows are not confined to the Triangle, but can take place anywhere in the country, and that she is working to put on a show in New York City next year.

What started as a benefit show in a local barbershop in downtown Durham with thirty attendees might “pop up” in San Francisco one day. And why not? Durham is renown the world around, one of the New York Times "Forty-one Places to go in 2011, ours is an artistic culture on the move.

Schlesinger recalls Golden telling her that PoPuP was “her calling.”

“He was so encouraging and so supportive of me,” said Schlesinger. “It was magical…and I’m so thankful that we met that day.”

PoPuP3 will be a one-night only reception on October 21, 2011 in one of at The Carrack Modern Art Gallery, 111 West Parrish Street, inside the downtown Durham Loop. The show will benefit the venue and will be part of Durham’s Third Friday Art Walk events. Works by more than thirty artists will be represented and there will be musical performances by Shana Tucker, Kim Arrington, and Jeghetto (Tarish Pipkins). The event is free and open to the public.

Artist:
ASHLEY FLORENCE, untitled work.
For sale, 1-Night Only: At PoPuP 3 Community Art Reception to benefit The Carrack Modern Art Gallery

Twitter Scam

2011-10-16T08:00:00.003-04:00

Warning! Warning! There is a Twitter password stealing scam rocketing through the ether. Please be careful. The Clarion Content just gotten taken in and nearly had our account hijacked. The bot scam comes at your Twitter through a direct message that says, "I found a fun photo of you" or a "cool photo of you," and there is a tiny url, that one might presume to be the photo.

Watch out!!! It is not. It redirects you to a site which asks you to verify your Twitter username and password. Type that data in there: and BAM! It is stolen. The redirect from that site after you give up your username and password takes you to a generic sales site. There is no picture of you. No. No. No. Nada. Don't get duped.

Warning! Warning!

Occupy, one view

2011-10-14T11:11:00.001-04:00

Thinking about the Occupy movement?

Duck and Cover 10.14.11

2011-10-14T10:41:00.000-04:00

Our thanks to "Duck & Cover" and creator Storey Clayton.

Check out his other projects, here, at the Blue Pyramid.

Duck and Cover 10.13.11

2011-10-13T20:19:00.001-04:00

Our thanks to "Duck & Cover" and creator Storey Clayton.

Check out his other projects, here, at the Blue Pyramid.

Facebook's evolution

2011-10-12T14:06:00.003-04:00

An insightful note we saw in the Duke Chronicle on the changing nature of Facebook,

"Facebook in its earliest form started out by showing all the information you would share with someone within the first five minutes of meeting. It was then expanded to all the information in a fifteen minute conversation. Now it has progressed to your entire life story."

Reading that in the light of a column by Clarion Content favorite, Stephen Marche, this month in Esquire arguing that the pendulum has swung as far away from personal privacy as we are likely to get and is in fact swinging back the other way makes for interesting grist for the mill. Marche argues that, "the terrible journey to the recognition of our own nastiness has been long and embarrassing. The violation of personal boundaries has always been at the core of celebrity culture..."

Are things really about to head in the other direction? Have we finally had enough?

Duck and Cover 10.12.11

2011-10-12T10:40:00.002-04:00

Our thanks to "Duck & Cover" and creator Storey Clayton.

Check out his other projects, here, at the Blue Pyramid.

Duck and Cover 10.11.11

2011-10-11T10:17:00.000-04:00

Our thanks to "Duck & Cover" and creator Storey Clayton.

Check out his other projects, here, at the Blue Pyramid.

Time waster

2011-10-11T10:14:00.004-04:00

One of the Clarion Content's Allentown, Pennsylvania readers sent this link our way.

The game is called 33. All you have to do is mouse over the numbers from 1 to 33, in order, one at a time, as quickly as you can.

It seems so simple. Why would you want to do it over and over again?

It goes to those fundamental whys underlying game theory. Why do we as people play? Why are we entertained by games? The interesting twist, too, of the mimicry of society by its games---much to delve into there.

Or you could just mouse over the numbers 1 to 33 as fast as you can. Clarion Content record? 40 seconds.

Click here to play.

Violence flares in Egypt

2011-10-10T10:24:00.003-04:00

Reports out of Cairo indicate there have been violent clashes between Egyptian demonstrators and the Egyptian army. Government sources told Stratfor that demonstrators outside the state television station began firing on soldiers patrolling the area, and that two soldiers were reported dead and twenty-five wounded. Statfor goes on to note, "the military now has an opportunity to use the incident to justify an increased crackdown..."

Conflicting reports from the BBC indicate that plainclothes state policemen instigated violence with peacefully marching Coptic Christians. They say the violence began outside the state TV building and quickly spread to Tahrir Square, where there were reports of thousands joining in the street violence, attacking both sides. Rioters tore up the pavement and hurled stones.

The BBC says that the march was to protest against an attack on a church in Aswan and that many of those who were injured were protesters not soldiers. The Copts make up about 10% of the population of Egypt. The governing military junta has been lenient on, and possibly even tacitly encouraged, the perpetrators of a string of anti-Christian attacks. Reports of protesters in Cairo being crushed by military vehicles have further heightened tensions.

Searching for Ringside, Chapter IV

2011-10-08T09:09:00.002-04:00

Picture credit to the kickass folks at Carpe Durham

The Clarion Content is delighted to invite you to come along on a magical ride as Pop Culture columnist, Cady Childs, once again takes us "Searching for Ringside." This fictional look at life in Durham explores the common trials, travails and misadventures that so many Durhamanians face. The metamythical characters, Andrew, Vita, John, and Megan, and their sordid but bemusing stories will resonate with those of you who carouse in Durham. Cady knows our collective experience, she shines a light on it and relates it back to us with a laugh and a smile.

Check out earlier chapters here [you will have to scroll down]...

**********************************

Chapter IV, "What do you mean, relationship?"

John was on strike from his own head. He was stoned, bleary eyed, and watching Boardwalk Empire, trying to ignore the pulsing in his hand, that wanting to reach out to the pillow on the other end of the couch. He could faintly sense the smell of cloves and sex it was giving off, a scent he was lusting to bury his head in so badly it may as well have been crack.

Under normal circumstances, she would have been gone after two hours of hanging out, he would spray his house the minute she left with Slatkin & Co. room spray, Spice, and that would be that. And he wouldn’t be so tempted by this damn pillow. Or her mouth. Or her knowledge of hyphens. He went into his bedroom to read Martin Amis, a man who always helped him to think clearly.

Megan had accidentally run into this guy in a leather jacket the other night, and she ended up kissing him on her porch while motorcycles streamed by whistling and hooting, leaving the biker bar up the block. It’s not like she regretted it, but sometimes she wished her soul could be a little more Catholic so she had the option of making herself feel guilty. The leather jacket had done her in, but she refused to expect him to call (it had been four days, and he wasn’t going to). The funny thing was, what she was wishing for wasn’t far from the truth- she held herself back so much, she might as well have denied herself the experience if she wasn’t ever allowed to feel it.

Her leather jacket was hanging in the closet, and she thought about putting it on and going out to kiss a stranger. She cleaned the kitchen instead.

Andrew’s roommate was out of town. This meant he didn’t have to feel self-conscious whenever his bed creaked, and he could play Minecraft while blasting Nas all evening to his heart’s content. He drank cheap scotch and put up a Red Light District-esque alley in his medieval town, completing each window with the newly added feature that inspired his modern European tribute in the first place- red torches.

He didn’t want to talk to anyone, especially the junior from campus who had been making his phone buzz and twirl and jump like a cheap carnival ride every ten minutes, since 2 A.M. Thursday night. He’d dropped her off and nearly licked off her lips they made out for so long, but it was clear in the first five minutes she wasn’t going to give it up on the first date, which meant she wouldn’t on the second, or the third. He really didn’t have time for all that, and he should have listened when his older brother advised him ‘never give out your number’.

Vita was sick of compromising. Her roommate (who wasn’t as good at quoting Dylan Thomas as she was, but her hair was longer) had been almost permanently camped out at her flavor of the month’s place for the past two days. It was too quiet in her empty apartment- but she gave it roughly two more days before her roommate would be sobbing in her arms again, swearing off assholes between sips of cheap sparkling wine and changing the music about forty-five seconds into every song.

She knew it was better not to be like this, but she missed the tumble and tangle of affection and rage rolling together so often, and so quickly. In other words, actually saying it out loud- she needed to let guys treat her like dirt to write something truly great- it was the stupidest shit that she had ever mumbled under her breath. The moment she uttered it, she jumped up, knocking two magazines off the arm of the couch in her zealous haste to get dressed and go out, as soon and as fast as possible. There had to be something left to do in this town.

Open Letter to the News & Observer

2011-10-07T14:01:00.002-04:00

Are Facebook status updates the new poetry?

Is texting vernacular just e.e. cummings shaken and stirred?

Hardly says Clarion Content guest columnist, poet and writer, Amber C. Crews. Ms. Crews pulls no punches with her take on an article penned by Taryn Oesch here in the Raleigh News and Observer. Ms. Oesch blithely asserts, "I've decided that 21st-century communication - email, Facebook, text messages - aren't a breakdown of human interaction and relationships, but a form of poetry." Like Ms. Crews, our editor's instinctive reaction upon reading that line was, "Wait. What?" We love that there are people who feel passionately about the state of poetry in our era.

Stretching the limits of Facebook...

We warn you, as we often do, dear readers, the following letter, which is from the heart and the gut, is PG-13, like a lot of excellent poetry.

*****************************************************************
"You’ve got to be kidding me, or we are all fucked."

-Amber C. Crews

If the opinions of Taryn Oesch in her article "In our text updates, we are making poetry and connections" are at all representative of our cultural attitude towards art and community, then we are all fucked. (Read it here.) As a poet and writer, I have a close relationship with words and meaning. Ms. Oesch proposes that "[t]he purpose of poetry is to get as much meaning and feeling across as you can in as few words as possible. Aren’t texts and Facebook statuses the same concept?"

I don’t want to get into an argument about the definition of art and its purpose. It has been debated ad nauseam and art is becoming increasingly difficult to define in the 21st century. But you have to be kidding me. Facebook status updates and texting are poetry? I have looked over the shoulders of more than a few friends, just curious about the whole Facebook thing, not having a personal account, and I remember a bunch of pictures, random quotes, and song lyrics, and status update gems like "like if you have That one friend who will borrow stuff from you & never give it back" and "that awkward moment When you have too much lotion on and don`t know where to put it."

Looking at my own text inbox now, I see "Please tell me you are enjoying this gorgeous day!" "Yep!" and "Can I borrow one egg pleeaaasseee!?" Grammar is largely out the window, context an idea of the past, and nothing exists that is not instantly forgettable.

I don’t know how other poets work, but when I’m creating a poem each word, punctuation mark, and even every space on the page is labored over, thought about, tweaked, laboriously re-written, all in the search for the perfect combination that will express the precise image, feeling, and meaning that I intend. I highly doubt that is what’s going on with the light speed, verbal vomit that litters cell phones and internet pages. Ms. Oesch states that “Some say it’s ridiculous, the need to put everything on Facebook. I say it’s fundamental self-expression. It’s art in its most basic form.” If Facebook and text messaging represent our cultural “self-expression,” our creative power, our ability to reflect and propose new ways of seeing the world, then again, I say, we’re all fucked. Art, writing, and the courageous exploration of new thought are what balance all the depression, debt, death, and darkness of this chaotic universe. To see the human spirit soar in something challenging or moving, anything that gets you to think, gives meaning to life. If I am looking into a future where all that is boiled down to unconscious streams of cyber-messaging . . . I can’t think of a more desolate existence pretending to be connection.

Veil Tease opens at Carrack Modern Art building

2011-10-06T09:00:00.001-04:00

Photos thanks to Scenes from my Lunch Hour

The opening reception for artist Catherine J. Howard’s ‘Veil Tease’ art installation and exhibit at the Carrack Art gallery building will be this Thursday, from 7pm to 10pm.

Hosted by the Duke Center for Eating Disorders, this exhibit creates a story of women’s struggles to balance between their internal illumination and the way society views them, their public "pose" and their hidden "veiled" personalities. The work, using fifteen fabric scrolls, combining graphite pencil outlines and oil painting, highlighting the stark contrast between these two mediums, lends itself to the emotional transparency and sensitivity of this subject and its long history. The tall, fabric pillars, standing alone and exposed, allude to the ‘vulnerable interior self’ that we all try to keep hidden away. Areas of body and self-image awareness observed and addressed by Ms. Howard include racial ambiguities, emotional abuse, failure, and self-preservation.

For a more detailed peek into the artist’s motivation and outline for the project, as well as an opportunity to discuss intended messages and misconceptions with Howard and other female artists from the area, the Duke Center for Eating Disorders is hosting a guided tour and panel discussion this Saturday, October 8th, from 1pm to 3pm at the Carrack at 111 West Parrish Street.

Photos thanks to Scenes from my Lunch Hour

In addition to these two special events, the space will be open from the hours of 2pm to 8pm, Tuesday through Friday, and every third Friday from 7pm to 10pm. For more information, visit the Carrack’s website here.

Duck and Cover 10.06.11

2011-10-06T08:33:00.000-04:00

Our thanks to "Duck & Cover" and creator Storey Clayton.

Check out his other projects, here, at the Blue Pyramid.

Duck and Cover 10.05.11

2011-10-05T09:32:00.003-04:00

Our thanks to "Duck & Cover" and creator Storey Clayton.

Check out his other projects, here, at the Blue Pyramid.