peel pages

A group of writers and artists committed to seeing the revelatory and transformative power of the arts and how it advances society. We believe that every facet of art has the potential to form, shape, (re)define, and move our culture for the better. var _gaq = _gaq || []; _gaq.push(['_setAccount', 'UA-24154496-1']); _gaq.push(['_trackPageview']); (function() { var ga = document.createElement('script'); ga.type = 'text/javascript'; ga.async = true; ga.src = ('https:' == document.location.protocol ? 'https://ssl' : 'http://www') + '.google-analytics.com/ga.js'; var s = document.getElementsByTagName('script')[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(ga, s); })();

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happy valentine's day! we're baaack

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I was awakened from a dream, a dream entwined with cats, by a cat's close presence. In the darkness by my bedside there had loomed a form with shining hair— squarish, immense-eyed, still. Its whiskers pricked my lips: I screamed. My daughter cried, in just proportion terrified. I realized that, though only four, all skin and smiles, my daughter is a lioness, taken as a cat.

"Daughter" by John Updike, from Collected Poems: 1953-1993. © Alfred A. Knopf, 1993.

from The Writer's Almanac on http://writersalmanac.publicradio.org/index.php?date=2013/12/17

posted by Hatty

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Peel Pages turned 3 today on Tumblr! Thanks everyone who's ever been a part of this pursuit of art and meaning. More good things are to come.

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posted by Molly

Children's literature is a great battlefield for hearts, minds, and cultural norms. So it's always good to find authors committed to creating stories about multiracial/crosscultural families. Because it's nice to see oneself reflected in the eyes of the next generation.

The interview is from APALA, the Asian Pacific American Librarians Association, a kickass group of (you guessed it) Asian and Pacific American librarians, bring meaningful diversity and Asian American issues into libraries and literature.

[peelpages]

posted by Hatty

Two years ago, I remember confessing to the Tumblr world my slight obsession with street art. I've watched a few documentaries, followed a bunch of photoblogs and posted one or two pieces on the art form myself. It's like French, this kind of curiosity--if you don't practice everyday with people who are fluent in your subject of curiosity, it goes away.

When my RSS feed started blowing up with everyone getting excited about Banky's NYC residency, I naturally felt a little sad for not keeping up my study of street art. But enough with my personal lack of commitment to creative outlets. This NPR interview of the Tabachnick family raises some excellent questions about commodification of art: who truly owns this piece, the public (meaning free viewing as I'm sure Banksy has meant to be) or a private collector who may eventually buy the wall? Should the wall be left as is and possibly "destroyed?" Should the Tabachnicks, for the sake of posterity move the piece inside a gallery? Would it even be considered "street" art then? Who decides which stroke of spray paint counts as art and which doesn't? 

Read this one and the last question becomes even more complicated. A different Banksy piece is completely "destroyed" and repurposed, politicized for the local context (yes I'm still following Cooper Union stories). I must say though, the comments section of the NPR link has the best, most humane and actually substantial discussion that I've read anywhere online.

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posted by Molly

  Caterpillar Suit I, 2007

Caterpillar Suit II, 2008

Anodized Aluminum, brass, razor wire

Walter Oltmann, South African, Natal Province, born 1960

Promised gift of the Vascovitz Family, 2008.114.1 and 2008.114.2

A caterpillar and a conquistador have mixed their exoskeletons together. Both are voracious: caterpillars eat copious amounts of leaves, just as conquistadors often ravage people in their path. But both are vulnerable--scientists issue warnings that the insect population is showing signs of decline, and the role of the conquistador alone in strange new worlds was always a tenuous one.

Subtle hints about the origin of the artist are perceptible: one of the few places that have taken inexpensive metal wire and made it into art is the Natal Province of South America, where Walter Oltmann was raised and learned firsthand how Zulu women weave wire baskets. The spikes of razor wire are a reminder of the strife-conflicted cityscapes in South Africa. Oltmann is currently a senior lecturer at the University of the Witwaterstrand in Johannesburg.

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Posted By Emily-

Today I bought a kewpie baby sans mayonnaise at the pop up shop on Broadway that has been pedaling tasteful Japanese paraphernalia in a non-oriental yet inevitably token way.

I named her Pachinko for how her rubber Aryan tummy waggled as postwar milieus do in my picturing.

A decade of neon cluttercornfed Spam, lucky strikes and Uncle Sam, now old veins in family histories hailing from Meiji genealogies.

  Dislocation though denies the gash in the opening of another lapse. It’s a matter of issei to nissei and sansei and so forth until old oddities come to broker nostalgia for notional homes.  

We are all longing to reconstitute—

—Awash in iterations inflected with flecks of intersection

rubbing shoulders with specters of imposition.

I drink my beaming sense of ethnicity out of blue bottles.

I guzzle pasteurized milk like mother’s milk. 

I leer like Wayne, bound feet to street bound

foundering in all directions of agenda,

lagging and lapsing

towards a malformed mottled coherence,

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What do we gain when we institutionalize? And of course, what do we lose? Does being paid for art give us freedom to concentrate whole heartedly on said art or does it shackle us further to diverging interests? Can something similar be said for activism as a job v. a labor of love?

posted by Molly

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So quickly to have lost the summertime Sends me home heartsick. Up the bank I climb Trampling the hidden mint. I pause, and then One breath of mint evokes all summer again. You groping poets, blinded by too much Of sea and sky, of taste and smell and touch, Come out some night of tears and feel with me How subtly mint assuages misery. For mint by day is little more than grass Tempting the causal cattle as they pass; But mint by night is like the Holy Ghost, Making its nearness known when needed most. All redolent with promises of bright Eternal summers to come is mint by night. Come out and tramp with me some field untrod When mint is like the very breath of God. Summer must go and darkness come and death, But night is heavy with God's very breath. I will remember mint when frost comes on And boughs are leafless and the last bird gone.

posted by Hatty

Mint by Night by Alfred Barrett from Strand Bookstore on the corner of East 12th Street, New York City

I picked it up without much thought, last November during my post-election vaca. Sidewalk booksales is a dangerous thing.

It's the first poem in the book and also the title. The rest quickly becomes a little less aromatic than the opening--Father Barrett likes to write almost exclusively about the life of Jesuit priests and their candlelit rituals.

But this feels fresh at the cusp of fall, I'm not ready to let summer go. Flickering in my mind are the images of blue, ocean and night sky, clear and brilliant from July glory. Happy first day of autumn everyone.

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Getting the Body You've Always Wanted

posted by Molly

Maybe this would have been more timely in spring. Or maybe it's perfect because fall is here and instead of thinking of cozy, bulky layers, we're still thinking about about skin tight jeans and crop tops. Did I say we? Let me rephrase that to me.

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Free as Air and Water

posted by Hatty

The first time I heard of Cooper Union was when my ex roommate (Lana Choi, the former Peel Pages' Artistic Director, not that you asked) told me about her trip to check out the East Coast art school scene. I knew next to nothing about undergrad arts programs in general and if Lana was considering Cooper Union, it must be a decent school (she ended up going to just as decent, I mean awesome, of an art school in Canada, not that you asked). Fast forward a year and half and this tiny college popped up on my Twitter feed via another artist friend's update: "FYI, @FreeCooperUnion is livetweeting some very important questions about the economics of higher ed right now. Go read."

Read I did. And more--I've been following the news of the occupation every day this past week and researching Cooper's history, especially since this video dropped.

I won't comment on the content of the reenactment. About 20 minutes in you can understand for yourself (all the memorable lines from the leaked Board meeting transcript are quoted via tweets: "In 2500 there will be no tenured faculty anyways." Again, not that you asked). What's noteworthy is the medium chosen for the occupiers' message to public. Not all of the 17 students in that office are theater majors; some probably have never staged a shoot before, and you can tell watching the awkward camera angles and fumbling of lines. But it's moving. I'm thinking again of the relationship between art and an alternative vision for what could be, not to mention the relationship between what’s being discussed on the screen and the future of arts education at Cooper, and maybe of liberal arts education in general.

The occupation has ended as of July 12, but these student activists have been presenting more creative works to teach one another and the larger audience who also care about higher learning for all. Check out their Tumblr here, documenting exhibits and newsletters about new cooperative ways to restructure higher education.

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posted by Molly

Looking for something to kickstart your creative process this weekend? Look no further than my two favorite drinks-- beer and coffee (although whiskey has been making some serious gains lately!)-- and let the good times roll. Just remember-- creativity is a great power, so use it for good. How can you harness mild stimulants for social change?

Infographic courtesy of ilovecoffee.jp

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posted by Hatty

So this is the year the rest of my class who has put off grad school decides to finally go the Masters degree route--four years ago it was med school, last couple years law school and public policy, fall of 2013 would be urban planning.

Aside from the fact that I have many overachieving high-achieving friends, I wonder if this trend is revealing of my local-eating, bike-riding, occupy-sympathetic generation's growing interest in understanding cities and infrastructures. Only recently has San Francisco Bay Area, along with other metropolitan areas like New York and Los Angeles, been hearing "sustainability" and "complete communities" in public discourse, not just in architecture and design elite circles. And the fascination--almost an obsession--with neighborhoods, local economy, walkability and open spaces is making into a lot of blog posts by young and overeducated hipsters everywhere.

It was through this lens I read the story of Martin Wichary's trans-American road trip in the footsteps of Robert Moses. Ironically, or maybe not, I read it on my commute via BART from downtown San Francisco to what some would call a suburbia, Berkeley. And the names of proposed freeways Moses would have built had he had his way did send shivers down my back: Golden Gate Freeway, Panhandle Freeway, Park Presidio Freeway, Crosstown Freeway, Mission Freeway...

Towards the end Wichary says some cities had to be created by and for traffic for us to understand that they weren't supposed to. He counts as his personal blessing that New York and San Francisco, two of his favorite places in the world, have escaped that fate. Without naming names from the blog post, I can think of a handful of my beloved cities that apparently have not. Moreover, I'm now thinking about the ways transit-oriented development--what Wichary and many other new urban dwellers will consider an answer to Moses' nightmarish vision of cities designed for cars--is displacing poor people of color virtually the same way Moses' freeways would have.

I haven't made the same commitment to the 1,200-plus-page biography. But I do count my blessings as I get to live in and visit the very places mentioned here, and pose the big question that Wichary stops short of asking, so how do we start believing that cities are not created by and for cars, but for people?

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posted by Molly

  Frequently. I feel the urge to wheat paste posters. All over my apartment walls. A living history of art and purpose. Buried. Constantly. Underneath itself.

This week. In honor of the clitoris. A street art campaign. Led by Sophia Wallace.

Cliteracy!

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posted by Hatty

More than the actual work areas themselves, I think it's the sometimes jarring juxtaposition of physical spaces artists occupy that strikes me. From the elementary and simple desk with just a typewriter to this richly adorned library room to a studio littered in colors, you see--and maybe agree with me--that the personal space makes the artists as much as the artists make their spaces.

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We're Back!

Like a dinosaur story.

And that's news you can use!

(Cliches, 2. Me, 0.)

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The blog returns...

September 1.