Strength from the Void

What is it that gives a bowl its usefulness? It's the vacant space where there is no bowl, no substance. That's where you pour the cereal or the milk, or whatever.

What makes the wheel useful? The vacant space where the axle goes through.

A room is essentially a vacant area within a building. Imagine a doll house that was a solid block of wood with no spaces within the exterior walls. Kind of a strange picture, but you can probably grasp it. The vacant spaces enable a child to put doll furniture in place, and re-enact imaginary scenes.

I recently spent a day in New York City. What a bundle of energy! I have to believe that to survive in such a place one needs to create voids, spaces to close oneself off from all that frenzy of human interaction.

In the business world we've become increasingly aware that computers and technology are not lightening our workload to give us more time. Instead, we have more connections, more emails, voice mails, tisks and tasks and tusks twisting our time into a torrent of energy-draining output.

In order to survive, we need to create voids, little spaces where we can hibernate, even briefly, to recharge our emotional batteries. Let's not be deceived into thinking that doing more and more is the way to accomplish more. The truth is sometimes counterintuitive. By doing less we may accomplish more because we are not just busy, but busy doing the right things.

Make sure you carve some space for yourself today. You'll be a better person for it, and will likely enjoy a longer, fuller life.

Featured eBook of the Day: The Breaking Point and Other Stories  

This blog entry has been recycled from March 2008.

Gwen Hoberg Answers Questions About UMD Publishing Conference

This spring the University of Minnesota-Duluth is hosting a conference on publishing in the 21st century. It’s a one-day event called “21st-Century Publishing: Industry, Media, and the Future of Print." The event will take place on Friday, April 12 on the Duluth campus of the University of Minnesota. Gwendolyn Hoberg is one of the organizers of this event. You may recognize her name from the column she writes for The Reader.

EN: What is the purpose of this conference?
Gwen Hoberg: The UMD master of English program has an emphasis that I believe is fairly unusual, publishing and print culture. This conference is an opportunity for local and regional students, professors, and publishing industry professionals to have conversations about what publishing is like now and what lies ahead. Because it's the first conference the UMD English Graduate Student Association has helped plan, we decided to keep our focus fairly broad, rather than choose a particular field of publishing or solicit only academic research presentations, for instance. Future UMD students may want to narrow their focus if the conference becomes an annual or biennial event.

EN: What kinds of people should try to attend?
GH: We welcome anyone with an interest in 21-century publishing to attend, whether that's staying for the whole day or going to just one panel or roundtable.

EN: Where did the idea for this conference come from and how did you personally get involved?
GH: On the drive back from a conference in Madison this past September, David Beard of the Writing Studies Dept. floated to me the idea of our graduate student group organizing a conference. When I asked him if he had a theme in mind, he encouraged me to pick something I was interested in. I'm on the publishing and print culture track and have been researching self-publishing, so I felt the broad theme of publishing was a place to start. After talking to my fellow grad students to figure out if they were interested as well, we began brainstorming participants, dates, and panel ideas.

EN: What does the English Graduate Student Association do?
GH: Some of our activities focus on professional development, and others focus more on socializing, moral support, and relaxation. Most months we have a meeting with a guest speaker from the English or Writing faculty. Some past topics were how to prepare a CV and how to manage your online presence as you enter the job market. This year we had our second winter tea for students and faculty, and we've done a few outdoor poetry readings. I'm pushing for another outdoor reading when it gets a bit warmer.

EN: Dorothy Parker once wrote, “I hate writing but I love having written.” How about you? Do you ever feel that way?
GH: She puts it so well, as usual. Writing is hard work, partly because it involves making decision after decision about sentence structure, organization, word choice, audience, and so on. As I tell the students in my Beginning College Writing classes, you can't write well if your brain is on autopilot. So yes, when I'm tired, anxious, or frustrated because my ideas are unorganized, I don't enjoy writing. But having written is a wonderful thing. I haven't yet written anything I'd consider a masterwork, but I love re-reading or just remembering pieces that are evidence of all the thought and care I put into them.

EN: Where can people find out more about the conference? Do attendees need to register in advance?
GH: We do want people to register in advance. People are encouraged to visit the conference website for a full schedule of events and panelists. Follow the Registration link on the left column or along the bottom to register.

EN: Thanks for all your work on this. I know a lot of people who are looking forward to it.


Featured eBook of the Day: Unremembered Histories

THAW Opening Tonight In Superior

THAW, a late winter art event, is opening tonight. Phantom Galleries Superior is hosting four exhibitions that explore environments in vacant downtown storefronts.The opening night receptions begin at 5:00 p.m.

The four locations are once again on Tower Avenue in Superior, Wisconsin. Each has its own theme and flavor.  The titles and exhibits are as follows.

‘Allusions’
1112 Tower Ave
Paintings by Alison Price
Ambient Music by Rachel Nelson from 5-6:30 pm
Artist talk….. 7:30

‘Suspended Animation’
1215 Tower Ave
Mixed media installation by Colin James Wiita
Artist talk…. 6:00 pm

‘Familiar Waters’
1302 Tower Ave (window only)
Mixed media fabric paintings by Hope Thier

‘Snowdog Tales’
1412 Tower Ave
Oil paintings by Judie Phillips
Artist Talks: Hope Thier and Judie Phillips…. 7pm

I peeked into the windows yesterday and saw some pretty interesting work. Someone described Alison Price's paintings as "a long drink of color." Based on what I saw that's a pretty good description. Within Colin Wiita's space I'm only expecting one thing: the unexpected. Looking forward to exploring there later this evening.

Hope Their's fabric paintings are stationed in the large window space that several previous exhibits have occupied. Dutifully positioned like guardians they are easy to enjoy by day or by night.

Judie Phillips' large snowdogs evoke the special relationship our Northland has with this time of year, not shackled indoors but roaming free and eager and energetic. Sled dogs fascinate us when we're young and later when we have children they, too, become fascinated. Phillips' passion for sled dogs comes from her experience of training, showing and racing Siberian huskies. 

All this to say, if you're able to swing by there will be some cool things to see, and people to meet. The artists and their friends will be there to make you feel at home in the empty spaces they've brought to life through creative expression.

See you there!

Wordless Wednesday: Art in the Alley

A Space in Time with Film Artist Jacob Swanson

I think cinema, movies, and magic have always been closely associated. The very earliest people who made film were magicians. –Francis Ford Coppola

In recent years I’ve become aware of the benefits and power of collaboration. Most writers and artists work in isolation. On the other hand, filmmakers are fully aware of the dynamics of a team production. Jacob Swanson’s collaborative works have involved an interesting cross-section of local actors and artists, and have begun catching the attention of a widening audience.

EN: Your dad was an art teacher. How did that play out in your home when you were growing up?
Jacob Swanson: Growing up I would watch my dad dress up as different characters before teaching his elementary art class (I didn't go to the school he taught in). The characters that come to mind are Dr. Yrag Nosnaws (gary swanson backwords), Quick Draw Mcgraw and Superman. These corresponded with lessons about printmaking, free drawing and primary colors. I think he mostly had an effect that made art a fun activity to take part in rather than a mystical thing that was only open to certain people. My mother was also a choir teacher which also helped art and music to be something I've always been participating in.

EN: What do you do for a living? How do you balance art and life?
JS: Right now I'm a filmmaker and freelance videographer by trade. I've recently started doing commercial work with Walter Raschick (Walt Dizzo) under the name Lakefront Films and we focus on doing creative, professional and cost effective videos. So far our niche has been doing video for live music performances. We've worked with artists such as David Bazan, Low, The Murder of Crows and Southwire. For my personal art, I've gotten grants from the Jerome Foundation and Minnesota Arts Board to make my first feature film "Walk Amongst the Living" which is currently in production. Balancing art and life has been a struggle for me, especially when I had a full time job and that dilemma is actually what provided the inspiration for my feature. It's about our devotion to institutions in our lives vs. our desire and need to live for ourselves. Living in Minnesota has actually greatly diminished this dilemma for me because of the great grant opportunities available.

EN: You've been working in film quite a bit. What is it you find so fascinating about film?

JS: The thing I find most fascinating about film is the manipulation of time, space and reality. When you're holding a camera, you are using reality to create your art. You're in a real space, with real people/objects to tell your story. It's up to you to decide how to you want to capture this reality and make it tell the story you want. It's an incredibly familiar and popular medium to the general population and can be viewed very naturally. As a filmmaker you get to choose how you display your own personal manipulation of reality to an audience and your audience gets to choose how they interpret that reality. My films and video installations tend use surreal environments, single characters and loose metaphors. This allows for drastically different interpretations from an audience and I always enjoy finding out what people take away from my work.

EN: Who are the film makers you’ve drawn your inspiration from?
JS: The most obvious influences on my work are David Lynch and Guy Maddin, who are also two of my favorite filmmakers. My first college short that I made, people asked me "how much David Lynch do you watch?" and at the time I didn't even know who David Lynch was. So I feel that much of my natural aesthetic leans in that direction to begin with, and of course now I've seen plenty Lynch and don't mind the reference (though I would never compare myself with him.)

EN: Can you talk about the feature you’re working on? What’s the genre? Is this also an “art” project or something designated for theaters? Where will you be distributing the completed project?
JS: The feature that I'm working on is called "Walk Amongst the Living". It's my first feature film and is currently in production. It is designed for theaters but I'm hoping to blend live performance at select screenings. It's a (mostly) silent film and I've been referring to it as an Experimental Narrative. It's about a woman who feels trapped by all of the institutions that affect her life. Early in the film she dies and has the opportunity to walk through and observe aspects of her life and these institutions.

EN: What are some of the risks involved in film making? 
JS: The biggest risk, as I see it, is that you can't make films alone (of course there are exceptions where you can.) It's a long process and keeping everybody and yourself motivated and on the same page is a hard task.

Most of this interview originally appeared in The Reader.

Featured eBook of the Day: The Red Scorpion

Scratch and Sniff: Art That Smells

When it comes to art, beauty is in the mind of the beholder, usually after the eye hands it to you. Now what about smell? Can smells be a form of art? I recently read about an art show where the artist had focused on the creation of works that employed varieties of smells. We know texture has a place in visual arts, even when we're instructed by museum guards not to touch it.

Wired magazine recently did a story on New York artist Martynka Wawrzyniak who told journalist Hugh Hart,  “I follow my nose in terms of how I read and react to other people, so I’ve always been obsessed with olfactory senses.” Her art is proof that anything is possible in the post-Duchamp art world. I think "Don't see me or feel me or touch me, just smell me" pretty much sums it up since the artist's aim was a self-portrait "completely stripped of the visual prejudice that we usually associate with judging a person, or judging a woman specifically,” 

Wawrzyniak isn't the only one fascinated by the art of smell. Sissel Tolaas has a personal collection of over 7,000 smells and 2500 molecules related to smell. Jenny Holtzer and Helmut Lang collaborated on an art projected related to smell and skin. Scent is beginning to makes sense for other artists as well. This Pinterest page includes Clara Ursitti, Andrea Mack and many other artists who are incorporating scent into their art. 

Of course landscape artists and people who maintain flower gardens have been doing this for centuries. It's not just for visual  consumption. As you draw near a spectacular garden the fragrance can make you swoon. If you're ever down in Sarasota visiting Ca' d'Zan and the Ringling Museum, be sure to stop and smell the roses. 

Meantime, life goes on all around you. Breathe it in through your nose.

The Ever-Growing eBook World

Yesterday I read that Forrester Research estimates that the eBook market will reach $13.7 million by the year 2017. Those may seem like somewhat astonishing numbers to some, but during my last several years of travel I've seen a growing number of Kindles, Nooks and iPads amongst the passengers I'm in flight with. I've seen it where my entire row is occupied by people with reading devices. The usual reason is that "I can bring five books with me on my trip instead of just picking one."

There is still a role for magazines since the stewardess requests that we turn off our devices during takeoff and landing. But the reach of electronic publishing is extensive and I was thinking about new channels for the future.

I love libraries, and one of my favorite events each year is the annual Friends of the Library Book Sale. Do you think libraries will one day have sales of used eBooks? I know it sounds strange, but we're already seeing some libraries acquiring eBooks that can be borrowed without even going to the library by using a free app.

Libraries are free to the public, but the closer you live the less gasoline you need to get there. With this new method of borrowing, library users can take books out on loan without ever leaving their homes. 

The notion of used eBooks may seem strange to you but according to SingularityHUB Amazon has already obtained a patent titled Secondary Market For Digital Objects. I don't know about you but I buy a lot of used books online, primarily from Amazon.com, and I don't mind a few dog-eared pages or worn cover when the price is right. But I'm having difficulty picturing what a used eBook will look like. It won't have any torn pages.

If the concept of used eBooks is hard to wrap your mind around, you're not alone. Jeff O'Neal of BookRiot raises a lot of good questions in his response to this new concept. How different are used eBooks from used print volumes? Why can't I sell my eBooks after I buy them since I can sell my used print books? Is there a market for used eBooks?  And so on....

We're travelling into some pretty unfamiliar terrain with this digital future we find ourselves in. If you need to comfort yourself with a good book, maybe you can start by downloading one of mine. :-)

Featured eBook of the Day: Unremembered Histories 

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