Books - Tina Fey

I hate to admit that my first real introduction to writer/actress/general-asset Tina Fey was through that lame movie Date Night, but that's the sad truth.

Since then I happened across her funny Saturday Night Live version of Sarah Palin.  Then - only embarrassingly recently - I started watching her weird and wonderful TV show 30 Rock.  (I've finished season two and heading on into the more-recent-past of season three.)  Now I've finished reading her very funny memoir Bossypants.  Good stuff.  Some very funny, serious, life-as-I-recognize it ridiculousness.  I would seriously suggest you read it - like, last week already.

Paperback cover of Bossypants by Tina Fey

In case you need a more authoritative version of my "Read this! Read this!" plea, HERE's the NY Times review.

Good Art Review Site

In doing my earlier posts (Here and Here) on the Impressionist show at the Kimbell, I found this worthwhile Dallas Arts Revue blog HERE with great photos.  Take a look!

No new photos, but the Kimbell building addition is proceeding...  The world's deepest hole is now almost filled with basement stuff of the new building: work and storage spaces and what I hope will finally be adequate visitor parking.  Concrete is just now starting to rise above ground level.  It's hard to see much through the construction fence of chain-link lined with blue tarp, though I did notice that the two huge white tents that I'd thought were for fund-raising parties are now being used as construction staging areas.  The workers will be glad of a little shade as the weather heats up.  I'll try for photos through the fence on my next trip.

Meanwhile Kimbell-addition architect Renzo Piano's lovely museum in Dallas, The Nasher Sculpture Center, is having problems: the still a'building new Museum Tower, 40+ stories of condos that get their multi-million dollar cache' from being in the Arts District and, specifically, from looking down on the Nasher's garden... well, it's reflective new glass west wall is reflecting light into the Nasher's carefully solar-screened-till-now skylights - cooking the art - and baking the garden too.

LA's reflective stainless steel Disney Symphony Hall had a similar solar oven effect on its neighboring condos; the symphony building got (essentially) sanded to become less blindingly reflective.  Not sure how this problem will get resolved yet in Dallas.  I'd suggest adding non-reflective brisolei screen to cut the reflections and, incidentally, save the condo owners a ton of air conditioning money.

West facing glass in Dallas?  In our supposedly "greener" age, how did that sound like a good idea?

I Promise...

This won't be a regular thing, but my friend Jim McMahon is soooo close to reaching his fund-raising goal for his film Perfectly Normal on Kickstarter - and it's an all-or-nothing deal  with only three days to go - so I'm putting out one last call for help. Any amount you feel you can afford maybe the dollar to push this over the top:

Please join me now in supporting this worthwhile project by a couple of outstanding filmmakers! If everyone seeing this pledged $10 today, they'd hit their goal. It all adds up! Please give them a hand. Thanks! http://tinyurl.com/PerfectlyNormal

Indie Art - the only way to go!

Good Reviews!

The Whipping Man is getting very good reviews.  Always nice.

As a set designer though, you shouldn't necessarily expect to set your set in any review, good or bad.  (I've mostly been pretty lucky.)  Here's my take on how reviews work:

1)  A review will always identify the theater venue and company, the show, and its creators (playwright, composer, etc.).  If the show has credentials - Broadway, megahit, recent film staring Justin Beiber, Tonys, whatever - that gets mentioned toward the top.  And there's at least a brief explaination of what the show is about and its type: musical. drama, comedy etc.
2)  A review will always discuss the acting.  Almost always the direction.  The amount of detail depends more on the space allotted to the text, than to any other factor.

And then... I figure the  reviewer has room for one more thing...

3)  If the show is a new work, then the reviewer needs to spend much longer explaining the story than for, say, Hamlet.  This usually exhausts all available ink.

But then - all in a rush...

4)  The reviewer will try to throw in a fast mention of set/lights/costumes/props (ha! as if).

If the new show happens to be easy to explain or if there is extra room because the actors' names are short, the reviewer may elaborate on production values or on some other aspect of the production that catches his or her fancy - maybe the remodeled theater lobby.  Online critics get more room (blog-inches and pixels for words not being in short supply), but mostly they forget that fact or follow the traditional formula or get tired and want to go to bed.  Once in a great while, a reviewer will get excited about a set or costume or lighting effect and will steal words from the other stuff.  If a "technical" aspect of the production pops to the top of the review, then the critic really loved or hated it!

So far The Whipping Man is getting good mentions for the playwright and play, the actors and direction, and "production values" have been discussed mainly online.  (Nicely.)  In print though, there was apparently only room to discuss the fire drill.

Sigh.

Public domain image.

In fairness to the critic, maybe the fire drill was added as in-fairness-to-the-actors?  They were very cool about it, actually.  

Call For Backing

Jim McMahon, the producer of my one and onliest film credit, Ciao, is raising money for a new short film called Perfectly Normal on Kickstarter HERE.

A good guy.  I haven't read the script, but I can guarantee the film will be professionally made.  So, if you've ever had the urge to support thoughtful indie film, here's your Big Chance!  This is his last week of fundraising and getting close to the goal...

Please consider pledging even a small amount.  I have.

-Clare

Gesture Sketches

Yeesh.  Yesterday's POST  about my visit to the Impressionist exhibit at the Kimbell got complicated.

So... In lieu of pretty colored photos of those paintings, here are my fast gesture-drawings of them.

You'll see that these sketches are much more limited - no color for one thing - and there's little attempt be accurate in proportion or complete in detail.  But the nice thing about gesture-drawing as I was taught it is that it can catch a surprising amount of the feeling of subject.  These particular sketches weren't intended for publication, were meant as memory joggers, but yet... they do that job surprisingly well.

Portrait of Madame Monet by Renoir, gesture sketch by Clare Floyd DeVries

With this sketch I wanted to catch the Madonna-icon-like composition and the dark emphasis of Madame Monet's head (oddly enough, both aspects are less obvious in photos).  I think this is one of the reasons artists are taught to study by and through drawing - it makes you LOOK and NOTICE.

Various paintings from the Clark Art Institute at the Kimbell Art Museum, sketches by Clare Floyd DeVries

On this sketchbook page you can see my slap-happy composition of notes and sketches.  

I have a post card of Berthe Morisot's The Bath in front of me as I type; my scribble actually catches the interrupted-in-motion pose of the woman fixing her hair pretty well, but misses her challenging stare.  It's a lovely painting, all pastel-like pinks and that distinctive Impressionist blue, so much a part of Renoir's palette.  (The audio tour calls the bathtub "white" but its lining looks darn blue to me, its outside copper or rust).  Despite the pretty "feminine" colors and pose, this girl might be a tough cookie.

Also on this page is a fast-fast gesture drawing of Renoir's Sleeping Girl which, for me, ought to be titled Striped Socks.  There's something wonderfully real and quirky about those socks with blue stripes.  Cradled by the warm red chair, the girl's head, sleepy pose, drooping chemise... all standard loose woman issue... she could be anyone; but the sleeping cat is quite particular and those socks?  Unique.  I believe in this girl because of her socks.

You'll note that I wrote about Renoir's Onions but did not sketch them.  A B&W sketch would miss everything important: the wonderful brushwork and the color - the shimmer and translucence of coppery onion skin, the creamy, shadowy folds in the white cloth, the blue of the wall.

Saint-Charles, Eagny by Pissarro, Clark Art Institute at the Kimbell, sketch by Clare Floyd DeVries

Here I tried to catch only the tones of Pissarro's landscape - the darkness of these slender trunked trees against the sunlight.  There was a thin, thin, thin golden edge to the crest of the hill that I could not sketch, only label.  This view is painted at a long-shadows time of day (feels like morning to me) so that trees and hills are backlit and edges are gilded.  Unusually for Pissarro, this is painted in Pointillist style - an insanely slow way to get paint on a canvas.  No wonder Pissarro moved on to other methods, but this painting is very beautiful.

Okay.  There's the  Impressionists illustrated.  

Good show - at the Kimbell Art Museum - go see it!

BTW About copyright for my own sketches and photos.  Anyone who wishes to use them electronically (as in a blog) or Pin to them, or copy them for personal use or, heck, for trading cards! is welcome - though no selling them, please.  If you would credit them to me and link back, I'd appreciate it.

Art Weekend - Kimbell Art Museum

REVISION: Due to copyright confusion, I have removed the images from this post.  If you're curious, please look online (just Google TM the mentioned paintings and you'll find LOTS of copies). Link to following POST.

Saturday was the opening for The Whipping Man, so I spent most of the day in Fort Worth.

The Impressionist show at the Kimbell Art Museum was, um, impressive.

Its great strength was in Renoir's work.  Some very beautiful paintings.  Probably my favorite was his Portrait of Madame Monet.  She was reading, her arms and the paperback book she read making an angular frame for her pale face and dark hair, while the blue and cream-floral-embroidered Turkish kaftan she wore seemed to merge with the blue wall and cream-floral-and-bird patterned sofa...

Her pose, with the stiff angularity of the kaftan and her central placement, reminded me of icon paintings, M. Monet as a little blue Madonna; while the similarity of color and pattern between costume and setting simultaneously melted her figure into the background as in Whistler's Symphony in White or Klimt's Adele Bloch portraits.  (In the actual painting face, hands, and book appear whiter, hair darker, so that they pop out more than in REVISION they do in e-versions.) 

Truth is... I'm not really a big Renoir fan.  There's something about his soft-focus and the pastel-like fluffiness of his brushwork that drives me nuts.  I think it's just that I can't see the world like that: for me it's crisp edged and defined, not... mushy.  Personal taste.  Plus I prefer the bolder colors of the Post-Impressionists, really, or the Expressionists, or even the Fauves.

One of the fascinations of this particular show is how the collectors who gathered these paintings for the Clark Art Institute could have such a refined taste that, even in choosing works by other painters of the period, could choose those individual paintings that most closely matched the aesthetics of the Renoirs... and not just any Renoirs either, those from his "middle" period, rather than most of his late work.  Very refined sensibilities.  But I do agree with Mr. Clark in loving his favorite canvas, Renoir's painting of onions:

Highlights of this show, for me, were Renoir's Sleeping Girl, Berthe Morisot's The Bath, and a gorgeous light-dissolving pointallist landscape by Pisarro titled Saint-Charles, Eagny.

Afterwards, the enchilada dinner on Joe T. Garcia's patio and the opening of The Whipping Man.  More on that later...

Reminder: The Whipping Man Opens Saturday!

Just a friendly reminder that my show The Whipping Man opens tomorrow at Circle Theatre in Fort Worth.  Tickets should go fast since this play was an off-Broadway hit... and, besides, it's terrific.

(Don't look too hard at the set in this photo - not done yet.  Waaaaay cooler now it has texture, destructo-scenic-paint etc..)

Photo courtesy of Circle Theatre

HERE's more at the Dallas Morning News.