Scenic Painters

One of the perks in being a set designer is that sometimes you get to work with wonderfully talented painters.

It's not uncommon for "fine" or gallery artists to moonlight doing large scale work like murals or, occasionally, scenic painting.  (One painter I know does it as a sort of charitable help-theater! donation because, of course, the pay is terrible compared to rich folks' decorating fees.)

Since I've recently been asked to recommend artists who would feel comfortable working at a large scale (yo! theater!), this morning I've been going through old contact lists looking for emails etc.

I found one painter's very cool website: CatheyMiller.com

Painting by Cathey Miller - copyrighted! (also sold)

I was lucky enough to have her paint a couple wonderful circus-sideshow-like banners for my show Slasher a few years back.  Made the set.

Slasher, Kitchen Dog Theater

PS  When the show was struck, one company member took the painted blonde home - I understand she now startles guests who turn the corner of the hall, looking for the bathroom!

The Trend in Photography

Remember my little musing on the future of photography?  (HERE)  Well, this morning I read on BoingBoing:  "...the Chicago Times has fired their photographers, issuing iPhones to their journalists: a move which is either very prescient or very foolish, but which shows which way things are going. "  ???!

The newspaper fired all their full-time photographers including a Pulitzer Prize-winner.  At Forbes, there are doubts about this move working out and a mention of the importance of a photographer's "eye."  (Having an "eye" myself - though not for photography - I second that objection.)  Talk about creatives not feeling valued at work!  

Public domain image

And here's an early result of this decision: compare front page photos HERE.

Lost, Looooooossst!

For a few days there I lost my sketchbook!

No, no.  Look more devastated.  This was serious - I lost my sketchbook!

The thing goes everywhere with me.  I buy purses specifically to fit my sketchbook IN.

What's so special?  This particular one is perfect for my uses - the 5.5" x 8.5" Strathmore Sketch with a spiral binding and 100 crisp white sheets of fine-tooth surface paper (preferably recycled).  It's small enough for purses but with a big-enough page and it's fat enough to last - usually 3 months - yet not too heavy.

I live with and in my sketchbook.

It holds a lot more than sketches.  I make notes and tuck things into its pages... whatever needs recording in my design-life, overlapping into life-life.  My sketchbook's been known to carry exact measurements for those new drapes, though I draw the line at wasting it on grocery lists.

This lost sketchbook is reaching the end of its three-month-ish life span so it holds... well, three months of my life.  For the four days it was lost I only needed to consult it five times.

Inside this papery Rememberall there are: design notes and sketches for three shows; notes from a playwriting seminar; notes on writing projects; a Rilke poem; a museum show flyer and those notes and sketches; ALL my notes from the NYC Scenic Masterclass; scribbles from the Metropolitan Museum of Art (including the name John Haviland, an 1800s American architect who embezzled his clients' funds and whose portrait is especially self-important); notes from a LEED/Accessibility architectural continuing ed. seminar; more play notes; more seminar notes, this time on "Through-Wall Flashing" (lunch was good)...  You get the idea.

Losing all this - even for four days - was a real wrench in the works here!

But my sketchbook is safe back home now, thank goodness.

Where was it?  Locked in a car at the airport.  I guessed it was there... but finding the car...?

Believed public domain photo messed with.

Turning Down Work

It's a sad fact that you can't actually design everything.

(In our hearts most designers really want to design everything though.  World domination through Design!  Wahahahaha!)

Image found HERE

But the world being the ill-organized place that it is, sometimes the offered show is just at a bad time and can't be shoe-horned into your schedule.  That's the usual reason to have to turn down a design job.  More rarely the show might be one you've already designed and don't want to repeat; or one you dislike; or one you see doomed to failure due to some circumstance you alone  can foresee; or the theater company or director may be one you prefer not to work with; or you know you're wrong for this show; or something else in your life demands your full attention for a while and you have to turn down every offer; or, you know, you've planned a vacation.

And any show you have to miss instantly feels like The Coolest Show Ever!

Turning down work...

Don't you just hate it?

(See more of the brilliant Pinky and the Brain cartoons HERE.)

Film Festive - Despicable Me II

Needed cheering up so went to see Despicable Me II.

The correct prescription!  The credits are a the funniest thing I've seen on film in ages.  Okay, the story isn't quite as good as the first film's, but there's plenty to entertain and Gru, his daughters, and the Minions are in great form.  (And those credits!)

The Pritzker Prize and Fairness

The Pritzker Prize is presently THE big award in the field of Architecture.

Sure there's the Gold Medal from the American Institute of Architects.  But that, as the label says, is purely American (well, U.S.A.), while the Pritzker is world-wide.  Founded in 1979, this award is notably more inclusive in the nationality/religion/skin-color departments and has even, in 2004, started awarding awards to women.  Zaha Hadid was the first female to win, followed by Kazuyo Sejima (who shared that year's prize with Ryue Nishizawa).

The AIA, I'm sorry to say, has never awarded a single gold medal to a single woman.  Ever.  Not in 106 years of existence.

So obviously there have been no women in the practice of architecture in the U.S.

No?  Well, obviously no women who were any good.  Okay, well not until just lately, far too recently to have won medals.   Though...  Julia Morgan?  Early 1900s.  Designed 700 buildings  in California, including Hearst Castle.  Or, jumping to today's crop of wrong-gender American architects, how about Jeanne Gang of Studio Gang? Won a MacArthur "genius" grant.  (Earlier post HERE.)  Or how about that eminent and widely influential architect and theorist Denise Scott Brown?  No gold necklace?

But misogyny is tomorrow's topic.  Today's controversy is another injustice:

In 1991 architect Robert Venturi won the Pritzker Prize.  His architectural partner (of 22 years then, 44 now)  was Denise Scott Brown.  She was co-author with Venturi and Steven Izenour of the seminal book Learning from Las Vegas which put them all on the architectural map.  "Denise Scott Brown is my inspiring and equal partner,"  Venturi writes in the public petition asking the Pritzker Committee to acknowledge her contribution to the work Venturi alone is credited with.

Photo of Denise Scott Brown and Las Vegas  from the petition page HERE.

Architecture is a collaborative design field.  Just as theater or film is.  It's obviously unfair to single out one member of a partnership and ignore the other.  Co-authors are self-acknowledged equals.  But even when creative contributions are less comparable, credit is due where credit is due.  In film a director gets prominent billing, but gaffers get credits.  Theater programs credit a wide range of contribution and ought - and sometimes do - credit the carpenters.

Scott Brown herself asks, "Let's salute the notion of joint creativity."

Please consider signing the petition asking the Pritzker Prize committee to remedy their omission of two decades ago, giving credit now where it's due.  Read the petition HERE.

I am grateful to Metropolis magazine for bringing this to my attention.  Read the article "Architecture's Lean In Moment" by Alexandra Lange HERE.  (BTW, Metropolis is one of the few architecture rags worth reading.)

ADDENDUM:  The Pritzker last year stiffed another female collaborator, when they failed to recognize Lu Wenyu when honoring her husband Wang Shu.  (He signed the petition.)  Two other partnerships have been recognized however.  At best it's... inconsistent.  Architectural Record article HERE.

Magically Confusing the Audience

Yesterday I had a great time chatting with set design colleagues.  One of them mentioned seeing the show Flashdance when it came through town.  When set changes happened, he said, up to twelve different set pieces would move at once!  (Maybe more, he lost count at twelve.)  This reminded us of my earlier post on The Rule of Three (HERE), about the inability of the human eye and brain to track more than two things at once when you want to confuse the audience.  Fifteen?  Overkill!  Flashdance also had a downstage piece or two - fabric or a couple scenic panels - cross the stage to deliberately catch the audience's eyes, guaranteeing that no one would notice whatever they were hiding.

This is a different  way of covering scene changes than that used, for instance, in La Boheme at the Met, designed by Franco Zeffirelli.  He just dropped the curtain.  This, I must say, interrupted the drive of the story and led to extended stare-at-the-curtain breaks for the audience that were enlivened only by a few mysterious bulges and quiverings of the heavy velvet.  Well and, each time, another curtain call... a series of ovations that began to get more and more amusing; just how much applause can an opera singer stand to listen to anyway?

La Boheme is absolutely gorgeous! with dramatic set changes well worth a little wait... but it was designed in 1981 and, with its curtain drops and highly romantic scenery, it feels a little old-fashioned.  (No artist ever starved in a lovelier Parisian garret.)

This modern trend to never to close a stage curtain, however, relies on sleight-of-hand.

Magic!

By one of those funny coincidences, as I was driving away from this meeting and thinking about the magic of manipulating the audience's attention, a talk show on my car radio was interviewing the author of the book Fooling Houdini.  This talks about magic and, in part, about the glitches in human perception which make magic work.  I'd read the book!  Unfortunately, it didn't have a chapter titled "These are Things a Set Designer Needs to Know."  When reading the amusing travails of the author, I suppose I should have taken notes.  I enjoyed the book; it turns out, we're all very easy to fool.

Optical illusion - believed public domain, found HERE.

Speaking  of the quirks of human perception...  Seen this video of a classic example of the (embarrassing) gaps in human perception?  Have fun with "The Selective Attention Test":  HERE.

Alice on Sale

A summertime sale on books at my printers!  Here's your chance to stock up on my theater set design how-to Alice Through the Proscenium.

I'm happy to say that I recently got more fan mail on Alice.  This time it's from this area.  (In the past one thrilling email actually came from Kuala Lumpur.  No kiddin'.)  I've redacted the "where" from the comment until I get permission to identify the writer:

"It's a really fantastic guide to scenic design, simple, thought-out and funny. As the Assistant Technical Director at [hum, hum hum], I am going to suggest our set design professor read and think about including it as a text book in the Spring Semester when she teaches design. I remember the books I read in undergrad were full of information but often confusing, focusing on the minutia of carrying out the technical aspects and wasn't really written for someone looking to design. I hope everyone is reading your book." 

There you have it - a satisfied customer!

Anyway, HERE's that sale.  Use the secret code Socius to save at checkout.