Artpace Executive Director Steps Down

The Executive Director of Artpace San Antonio, Matthew Drutt, left his position today after having served there since 2006. Under Drutt's leadership, Artpace hosted many popular exhibitions, commissioning works by Kate Gilmore, Marie Lorenz and Gabriel Vormstein, among others, for the gallery's large Hudson (Show)Room and WindowWorks space.

Drutt's vision for Artpace was international and ambitious.

"Matthew has been instrumental in furthering Artpace's history," J. Travis Capps, Jr., Chair of Artpace's Board of Directors, stated in a press release, "Under his leadership Artpace mounted the most ambitious exhibition in its history-- the statewide presentation of Felix Gonzalez-Torres: Billboards-- and developed a professional staff that provides unmatched contemporary art programming that is accessible and free to the public."

Artpace's Board of Directors has already begun a national search for the next Executive Director.

In the meantime, Associate Director of Development, Mary Heathcott, will serve as Interim Managing Director at Artpace. She will oversee upcoming exhibitions of work by artists like Tracey Moffatt and projects like Potter-Belmar Labs , for which the bulk of curatorial work has already been done.

"We on staff are fully confident Mary will make a great Interim Director," says Artpace's Manager of Public Affairs, Matt Johns, "We're really excited about the upcoming year."

Heathcott also anticipates a busy, productive year for the gallery, which showcases contemporary art year round in downtown San Antonio.

"We have an exceedingly talented staff and talented artists working with us," she explains, "Artpace continues to flourish."

Drutt has not publicized his reasons for leaving.

Contemporary Art Gallery Welcomes Readers to Zine Library

Photo by Veronica Salinas

Photo by Veronica Salinas

It's easy to pass Unit B (Gallery) without noticing it. Besides the huge backyard (furnished with cartoonish plywood cutouts of longhorn steer), Unit B looks like any other house in its Southtown neighborhood, with a chain link fence and cars in the carport. Unit B has indeed always been an extension of its Director, Kimberly Aubuchon's, home, which she relocated from Chicago in 2006. But you'd never suspect the building's spare bedroom lodges contemporary art from around the country.

It seems fitting then for Unit B to host the Trouser House Zine Library. Zines are low-circulation publications, usually intended for a specific, small community (like skaters, anarchist vegans or anarchist vegan skaters). It is a form that has incorporated eccentricity and intimacy so much into its aesthetic that it seems to resist art and literary criticism as we're used to reading it in newspapers and other mainstream sources.

The Zine Library was originally hosted by Trouser House in New Orleans, a non-profit contemporary art and urban farming project that wants to educate NOLA about food and art as a way to improve citywide well-being. Emily Morrison, who works at Trouser House, guest curated the San Antonio exhibition of the Zine Library, hanging 50 diverse zines sourced from New Orleans, Austin and Mexico City.

And by "hanging" I don't mean from hooks on the walls, but rather from 50 clothes hangers dangling from the ceiling by fishing twine. Morrison chose the hangers as a way to riff off the space's domestic qualities. The translucency of the fishing twine makes it appear the hangers are suspended surreally midair.

The exhibition is indeed an "open-stack" library: you're free to handle and read the various zines. They range from the fairly heady, artsy Pazmaker to the beer-fueled, irreverent skater zine Thing Bad to the squiggly, scatological cartoons of The Rotten Pathway Through the Painful Digestive Tract. Some are primarily literary, like Vagrancy, while others resemble scrapbooks, like the bizarre its not yours, which features mostly blurry photos and superimposed, fragmentary handwriting. Some are fine prints, silkscreened with care onto expensive card stock, whereas others are photocopied onto crookedly-bound, coffee-stained printer paper.

Walking around the exhibit, you feel like you're accessing very personal spaces. This might be a strange experience in an imposing, humidified gallery downtown, but feels totally ok in a domestic space like Unit B. By displaying work by over 50 artists in a small room in a quiet neighborhood, the Zine Library works less like a usual art exhibition and more like a low-key block party. And if you fall in love with any zine you meet there, each is for sale for $15.

The Zine Library is open to readers until March 5.

Piano Sensation to Play Majestic Theatre

Update: This concert is now SOLD OUT-- however, as the SA Symphony just tweeted, there is much more piano music to be heard locally this January.

Lang Lang in Adidas only a world famous concert pianist or Greek god could pull off

Celebrated concert pianist, Lang Lang, will perform Rachmaninoff's Second Piano Concerto this Wednesday at the Majestic Theatre. This concert represents the crown jewel in the Majestic's new season, pairing Lang Lang with the equally talented and highly respected conductor, Sebastian Lang-Lessing, who became Music Director for the San Antonio Symphony last October. The concert is sponsored by the Russell Hill Rogers Fund for the Arts.

Originally from Shenyang in northeast China, Lang Lang ranks among the world's most recognized pianists, having played with the Vienna and Berlin Philharmonics as well as with many top American orchestras. His latest recording, Lang Lang Live in Vienna, features critically-acclaimed performances of Beethoven, Chopin, Prokoviev and Albéniz. Recently, Lang Lang also recorded the soundtrack for Sony Playstation's racing game Gran Turismo 5. Time magazine included him in its 2009 "100" list, which records the year's 100 most influential people (his entry was written by the legendary jazz pianist and musical innovator, Herbie Hancock, with whom Lang Lang has extensively collaborated).

Tickets for this one-night-only event are still available. Reserve your seat for a great performance of "the romantic piano showpiece."

KPAC has also blogged this event.

Local Musicians Record Album of Iconic Video Game Music

If you play video games, know someone who plays video games or have just heard about video games, you’re probably familiar with Capcom’s Mega Man. This series of games for PlayStation, Sega Saturn, Gameboy, Super Nintendo and of course the original Nintendo Entertainment System have produced a universe of side-scrolling, platforming imagery that is almost as iconic as that of Mario or Sonic the Hedgehog. 

In the original series (1987-1993), you blast your way through a future that has been filled with violent robots by your nemesis, Dr. Wily. It’s only a matter of time before Wily and his army control the world and you are armed with only a “mega buster” (a  small cannon screwed into your arm) to stop them. The fate of the world is on your blue, pixelated shoulders.

Mega Man jumping

  

Throughout the gameplay you're spurred on by upbeat 8-bit synthesizer music, which is another of the iconic elements of the Mega Man series and has recently inspired a group of local musicians to rearrange it for live performances. 

The band, called simply Mega Man, features James Woodard on bass, Eric Sandoval on drums, Ian McIntosh on guitar and Joseph Caceres on synthesizer. Mega Man formed to play a Halloween covers night and had planned to leave it at that. But offers to play other shows and positive response to the music on the Web has kept the project alive and they are now in the process of recording an album of the songs. 

They chose songs from the six original Mega Man games for Nintendo, which tested the musicians’ abilities in unusual ways.

“The songs are easy because they were written with only three-note polyphony,” Caceres explains (which in English means that the game’s 8-bit technology only supports three notes to be played at once), “but the composers compensated by making everything really fast, so the challenge is to play everything accurately.”

The band members admit they are all “nerds” about games and retro technology, and these interests show through clearly on their plans for the recording. They wanted to do a faithful 8-bit recording of their versions, but lack the hardware. They’ve settled instead for what they think is the next best option: a 16-track reel-to-reel. 

After the tracks are mixed, the album will be a cassette-only release, packaged inside old NES cartridges, which Woodard discovered are the perfect size for holding tapes. The album will be released in early February. 

Mega Man performing at Game Stop

Despite all of the effort and creativity the members are investing in the project, they do not see Mega Man ever eclipsing the work they do with their other bands.

“Mega Man is just for fun, we don’t have to work very hard,” Woodard says, “and any money we might make from it will go to our other bands.”

There are at least fifty different games in the Mega Man series, with hundreds of original songs featured on their soundtracks. Theoretically, San Antonio's Mega Man could revamp its setlist several times a year and still have material for decades' worth of performances. But regarding Mega Man’s hopes for the future, Woodard states simply, “we just don't want to get sued by Capcom.”

For any questions about Mega Man, contact James Woodard.


Contributed by: Michael Swellander

Local Authors Talk Tamales, Community, History

What do comadres (godmothers) and hearty tamales have to do with civilization? Come explore this question tomorrow evening at Tres Rebecas downtown, where authors Carmen Tafolla and Ellen Riojas Clark will be signing copies of their book Tamales, Comadres and the Meaning of Civilization (Wings Press 2010). Tafolla and Clark wrote and collected from other writers and public leaders stories, recipes and artwork responding to the tamale’s 7000-year history in the region and the women who have made them. The event begins at 6 p.m.

Proceeds from the event will go to the non-profit organization Hispanas Unidas, which implements a teen pregnancy and teen delinquency prevention program for girls ages 8-14 in San Antonio.

A good book and a good cause: hope to see you there!

Comedy Exploring the World of Gay Conversion Therapy Has San Antonio Premiere

Straight: A Conversion Comedy examines the world of conversion therapy, a treatment intended to “cure” men and women of their homosexuality. The play will have its San Antonio premiere December 2 with the AtticRep Theatre Company at Trinity University.

Photo by Tim Summers, courtesy of The Stranger

Written and performed by David Schmader, columnist for Seattle’s The Stranger and a native Texan, the show blends journalism with elements of stand-up, resulting in a performance that balances smart comedy with serious cultural criticism.

Schmader derived the characters and stories in Straight from research he conducted in Seattle and in Texas. For this research Schmader went undercover, booking sessions with a conversion therapist and attending support groups for ex-gays. He also read many publications by Exodus International, “the largest information and referral ministry in the world addressing homosexual issues.”

Because he was unsure which tone would dominate the play, Schmader did not subtitle Straight “a conversion comedy” until he had already been performing it for several years. He recognized in time, however, that the play was a comedy, partly because communicating the play’s cultural criticism depended on humor to keep his audience entertained.

“The best way to get cultural criticism onstage without boring everyone is to make it funny,” writes Schmader in a recent email.

According to Schmader, comedy also seems to arise naturally in a project covering such a fraught subject, which involves many characters, gay and straight, making assumptions about each other, “and watching people learn their assumptions are poop,” he explains, “is inherently funny.”

Schmader and Straight’s San Antonio director, Andy Thornton, have spent the past few weeks fine-tuning the script and blocking for Thursday’s show at the AtticRep space. Working together has been a joy, because besides seeing eye to eye artistically, the two have been friends for over 20 years.

“We’ve literally exchanged mixtapes since I was 18,” says Schmader, “so he understands what I’m aiming for as well as anyone on earth who’s not me.”

Straight: A Conversion Comedy runs from December 2 through 19. Tickets are available online at the AtticRep website.

Contributed by: Michael Swellander, public relations intern for Texas Public Radio.