Bulletin Board of the Brain » Art

Narrative Cocktails

Kj — Mon, 26 Jul 2010 11:11:50 +0000

Time for another round up of Intiman Theatre’s specialty cocktails, some from last season and some we’re serving right now. I created a lot of these. I did not create the cute little quotes.

Try these at home.

The Year of Magical Thinking
By Joan Didion

The Gin Didion –
A mature, refreshing drink with the strength of a martini and a cool finish.
Muddle cucumber and lime and one sugar cube (peeled & blended cucumber works best)
6-count of Tanqueray Gin
Shake
Serve up
Top with Soda
Garnish with cucumber slice

The Ordinary Instant
A beautifully layered drink, pleasantly sweet but tempered with citrus and tonic.
Make directly on rocks
4-count Citrus Vodka
1.5-count Tonic
.5-count Chambord, poured over spoon to settle
Garnish with lemon

Abe Lincoln in Illinois
By Robert E. Sherwood

Drinkin’ with Lincoln
As comfortable as a slice of homemade apple pie.
Put a solid dash of bitters on a sugar cube, muddle with orange.
4-count Applejack
.5-count Goldschlager
Shake
Serve on rocks
Top with soda
Garnish with a cherry

The Mud Wagon
A drink fit for a Postmaster — or a President.
3-count Kahlua
2-count Dewar’s Scotch
2-count Drambuie
Shake
Serve up
Top with a generous amount of soda
Garnish with lemon

Black Nativity
Book By Langston Hughes
Music Direction by Pastor Patrinell Wright

The Poinsettia
Add a little sparkle to your holiday.
½ flute of champagne
1-count of Grand Marnier
Fill with cranberry juice
Garnish with lime twist

The Winter Warming
A cozy drink for a cold winter night.
Splash of honey in a cup/mug
Fill ½ with hot water
Stir with cinnamon stick to dissolve
Squeeze a lemon wedge, drop in
4-count of Makers Mark Bourbon
Stir & serve

Paradise Lost
By Clifford Odets
The Gold Standard
This smooth concoction is worth its weight in gold.
4-count Jameson’s Irish Whiskey
1-count Peach Schnapps
Serve on rocks
Top with Izze Sparkling Clementine juice
Garnish with lime

The New Deal
Find your own cure for the recession with this tart delight.
Muddle pink grapefruit
5-count Tanqueray GIn
1-count Campari
1-count Grapefruit Juice
Dash of bitters
Shake
Serve up
Top with soda
Garnish with grapefruit

The Thin Place
By Sonya Schneider 
Conceived and Directed by Andrew Russell 

The Shaken Rainier – Featuring locally-made Dry Soda
This elegant blend of muddled lime, Tanqueray gin, Green Chartreuse, and Juniper Dry Soda evokes the verdant forests of the northwest mountains.
Muddle lime
5-count Tanqueray Gin
1-count Green Chartreuse
Shake
Serve up
Top with 2-count Juniper Dry Soda
Garnish with lime (or rosemary)

The Sound – Featuring locally-made Dry Soda
Calm your senses with this delicate combination of lemon, Smirnoff citrus vodka, Chambord, and Lavender Dry Soda; rose-tinted like the sunsets over Puget Sound.
Muddle lemon lightly
3-count Citrus Vodka
1-count Chambord
Shake
Serve on the rocks
Top with 2-count Lavender Dry Soda
Garnish with lemon (or lavender)

Ruined
By Lynn Nottage

The Karibu (Welcome)
Let us welcome you with this delightful concoction. You’ll feel right at home.
Muddle lemon
2-count Captain Morgan Spiced Rum
2-count Brandy
2-count Sweet Vermouth
1-count Red Apple Schnapps
Heavy splash of cranberry juice
Shake
Serve up
Garnish with a cherry (dropped in)

The Sunbird
Fly into the sun with this smooth, refreshing mix of muddled lemon, Smirnoff Citrus Vodka, Amaretto, and Chambord. It’s like rich berry lemonade.
Muddle lemon
3-count Citrus Vodka
2-count Disaronno Amaretto
1-count Chambord
Shake
Serve up
Top with soda
Garnish with lemon

William Emmert On My Wall

Kj — Thu, 22 Jul 2010 07:04:46 +0000

While at MHGS, I spent three years on Student Leadership. Part of what my particular team (Sacred Space) did was to curate the two art galleries in our building. The main floor gallery is for local artists and the upstairs gallery is for artists from the MHGS student body. For my final summer as a student, I was stoked to get to bring in my buddy William Emmert as the main floor gallery artist.

Having worked with William for two years, I’ve been witness to the many hours he spends meticulously drawing and painting the images that fill his extensive body of work. I love the mix of nostalgia, strangeness and specificity in what William does. The materials he uses, the images he collects and his crafting process all contribute to the themes of identity, absence and American culture that his work engages. You can see most of his work on his flickr page.

Many of his pieces he showed at MHGS are not framed, but rather, constructed in actual desk drawers hung against the wall. This effect is especially cool for his pieces that use baseball cards. Its art but its also just a drawer full of someone’s card collection.

I enjoy William’s work for a lot of reasons, many of which have to do with my own obsession with nostalgia, collections, pop culture, repetitive images and adaptive reuse, but I also enjoy his work because of how much I enjoy William himself. He’ll be leaving to get his MFA in San Francisco in a few weeks, and I will absolutely miss how much he lets me annoy him with loudly sung pop songs in his very close proximity. Lucky for me, he let me pick a piece to keep! I choose this two piece work which utilizes a 1930’s yearbook. I can’t believe how good it looks in my room! Thank you William.

“Fast Times” By William Emmert

On my wall

More William Emmert links:

The Weird World of William Emmert on ThinkFaest

Unstage.com

Beautiful/Decay

Kj’s Corner: Real Presences & Adaptation

Kj — Sat, 19 Jun 2010 09:38:16 +0000

This summer I had the opportunity to serve as research assistant to Dr. Chelle Stearns for her course on “Theology & the Artistic Impulse.” This meant I got to give two lectures on the class material. (At MHGS we don’t use student TA’s due to dual relationship concerns- so research assistant is a kind of newish thing). Struck with the utter surprise and amazingness of this opportunity, I sort of wondered out loud about it to Chelle, and her response was, that since I’m likely heading into academia moreso than ministry proper, it makes sense that as I got to practice pastoring in my program, I should also get a chance to try on teaching before I graduate. I guess its a good sign that the thought of having two whole hours of class to do with what I wish felt like receiving a ticket to DisneyWorld. Frankly- i would have loved even more time, but two lectures was PLENTY work for this crazy final term. So twice I got to facilitate classtime, focusing on any aspect of the readings- through whatever lenses I felt like bringing to it. Chelle dubbed the time “Kj’s Korner.”

1st lecture: The week’s reading was George Steiner’s “Real Presences,” an incredibly difficult but fascinating text. The amazon review gives a good idea of what I had to work with: “Steiner asserts moral and metaphysical issues are the basis of all art and that our experience of meaning in music, painting and literature presupposes the existence of God as a “necessary possibility.” Dense, difficult, rewarding, this passionately argued essay ranges fluently over aesthetics, linguistics, philosophy, post-structuralism, the range of Western culture.”

As I do with all things, I read, asking myself, “What else does this bring to mind? Where do I see this applied in a way that makes sense to me?” I quickly landed on Charlie Kaufman’s film Adaptation. I used quotes from the book to explore scenes from the film and scenes from the film to explore concepts from the book, etc. Here’s some images my my lecture, as well as the opening scene of the film.

When You Visit A Tattoo Parlor Alone…

Kj — Sat, 24 Apr 2010 08:28:22 +0000

…it’s inevitable you’ll end up playing Monopoly on your phone while your skin is purposefully wounded.

Otherwise known as…I went to get my tattoo touched up (pretty standard for foot tattoos to need touch ups), and I passed the time taking video of the experience.

Yay for Matt Sawdon and the crew at Sunken Ship Tattoos in Everett. 5 stars for atmosphere, and 5 stars for the sweet tattooing. If all goes well, I hope to see you again before graduation Dot Dot Dot

Time to Talk Twilight

Kj — Fri, 02 Apr 2010 09:31:29 +0000

For about eight minutes, at least.

Anyone in Seattle who’s interested, some of us from my MDiv cohort will be presenting our Integrative Projects

Wednesday, April 7th at MHGS from 3-5.

You would be most welcome.

Theology Collage- Literally

Kj — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 09:02:00 +0000

For my current theology class, we were invited to share our “vision of the Church”, in audio or visual if we preferred, rather than writing a paper. I made a little collage which will really only make sense to me. I’m not still not used to being graded. Thanks Bennington.

gotta click on it I guess

New Record: One Film, Three Onscreen Viewings, Three Days in a Row

Kj — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 07:08:13 +0000

In Search of Lost Time

Kj — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 22:46:48 +0000

I’ve been feeling pretty chaotic inside lately- both overwhelmed and un-tethered–trying to find strucutre and a rhythm, but just sort of floating, ever more anxiously, into the vacuum of dark outer space. Basically, it’s my usual Jan-March challenge when Intiman goes off season and 35 hours of my week float away into the ether. I spend three months trying to find my sea-legs of having more time, only to hit my stride at the time I have to go back to work. Four years, and I haven’t gotten better at this dance.
But I made a little movement forward this week in realizing that perhaps this sense of lost/untetherered/un-strcutured time could be alleviated slightly if I stopped letting December 2009 stare at me from my wall. I needed a new calendar: literally and figuratively. This has never proved so challenging. My search started to resemble to quest for the grail, when I found my dream calendar only to discover it’s been sold out for a month. So here’s the round-up of runners up, good enoughs, the Grail and the chosen.

The Unattainable Holy Grail of Calendars

Nikki Mcclure

I still plan on finding this one.

The “Sold Out”

Atherton Lin

I love this illustrated and essentially narrative calendar. At the end of my search I managed to find what looks to be some available copies, but ultimately, I wouldn’t be able to see the details well enough where I hang my calendar. Poor reasoning, but I just felt it wasn’t a perfect fit.

The Runners-Up

Penmanship Practice 2010 Eco Wall Calendar by Hammypie

black, white, script

2010 The Illustrated Wild Foods Recipe Calendar

Umami

The “Almost Bought Them Even Though They Weren’t Monthly” Calendars

Nate Duval

Sticks, barns, lines

Serie Project 2010 Wall Calendar

Soda, turquoise, orange

The Chosen

Purl Soho

Technically this calendar is smaller than my qualifications for calendar purchase but it wins out for color, concept, aesthetic and the project patterns it features. I’m a devoted Purl Soho customer back from my NY days, so I’m glad to support their creativity and smart handcrafted style (rare to find Yale MFA folk behind yarn and quilt company design). So I bought this and added two Cascade 220 skeins to my order for good measure. Still hoping to stumble over a full-size calendar to love as well. Thanks for all those who made great suggestions.

“Facebook, Roadside Attractions and the Atonement” or “Vince on the Cross”

Kj — Wed, 20 Jan 2010 04:52:45 +0000

I was allowing myself to be distracted by Facebook one day, following friend’s links haphazardly to see what quizzes they’d scored 83% on or what pictures they took on their vacations. One link trail took me to a photo album of a friend from high school. No doubt it was the photo album title, “Holy Land USA” that drew my eye. I clicked through photos of Vince and his traveling companion at what was clearly an obscure, low budget and creepily earnest American roadside attraction depicting biblical locations such as Herod’s palace, along with awkward statuary and hillside messages from the gospels. It was an ironic kitsch-lover’s dream. I admired Vince’s bravery/whimsy for marching onto such strange territory. Personally, it would freak me out, or at least, I’d be afraid to be seen laughing at it…or taking it seriously.

But towards the end of the photo album, one image caught me off guard. Amidst the goofy images of hillside dioramas and “Holy Land” signage, was Vince—on a cross. His arms outstretched, head hanging calmly, sunlight casting a divine glow onto his shoulders: Vince pulled off a surprisingly skillful portrait of the crucified Christ.

Friends’ comments below the photo jokingly celebrated Vince’s irreverent boldness. One’s person’s comment, “Kinda amazing that you fit it so perfectly, eh?”, struck me as more truthful than they may have realized. Something about Vince on a cross felt truthful in a profound way. To consider both the US’s current “Roman Empire” status and the power exhibited by conservative Christian political and cultural leaders these days, its really not a far stretch of the imagination to see a young gay man on a cross, and think “Yep, he fits.”

Seeing Vince on the cross immediately made me think of the writings of James Alison, a theologian whose writing on the atonement has had a profound effect on me over the past year. In Undergoing God, he writes, “The ideal ambassador for Christ would be one who could put words to the experience of undergoing the place of shame and invite others to inhabit that space by showing that it is possible to inhabit it non-toxically.” As an openly gay man, Alison explores Christ’s crucifixion as a disarming event against violence and shame, more than a God-decreed sacrifice. He writes that Jesus:

“is also ‘victim’ in the modern, ethical sense, an entirely innocent person who was killed so as to assuage the wrath of people who needed a victim in order to keep their system going. And it was because he voluntarily chose to occupy this space of being a ‘victim’ in the modern sense that he brought to an end sacrifice. Indeed it is perfectly possible to say that his giving himself up to death wasn’t a sacrifice at all in the traditional sense of the word, but rather, by showing that at the root of what we call ‘sacrifice’ there is a simple, mendacious mechanism of murder, that is, by revealing that there is nothing holy at all in all our mechanisms for creating victims, [Jesus] brought the world of sacrifice to an end.”

By occupying the place of shame and ultimately, overcoming the mechanisms of shame and violence, Jesus revealed the absurdity of that system. It is this willingness to survive and overcome the place of shame that brings to mind both the beauty and frailty of this image of a young gay man on the cross. Instead of the typical loincloth and crown of thorns, the man on this cross wears sunglasses, a plastic band bracelet and designer jeans. Without forcing Vince to represent gay men everywhere, there is something humbling and awakening about his Christ-like posture there on a cross at a roadside attraction—humbling because it is indeed the very posture so many gay men have been forced into by our culture and largely, by the church. Humbling and awakening also when I think of the gay men in my life who have exemplified Christ’s love, strength and integrity in the face of rejection from families, internal doubt and cultural marginalization and stereotyping.

But I find hope in Alison’s understanding of Christ as the one who takes over the place of shame and violence so others no longer have to—that it is not God who required sacrifice, but us. Jesus walked into the space of our hate and showed us our folly. Alison says: “My thesis is that Christianity is a priestly religion that understands that it is God’s overcoming of our violence by substituting himself for the victim of our typical sacrifices that opens up our being able to enjoy the fullness of creation as if death were not.”

Both Christ on the cross and Vince on the cross are reminders to me of how foolishly I demand victims for my own violence and sacrifice others to cover my own shame, when ultimately, God would have me set down both violence and shame and choose instead to stand with Christ on behalf of those who’ve been forced into the place of shame and have suffered at the hands of violence. The cross should not be a symbol of sacrifice God required, but instead, a proclamation from God, saying, “No more”. Vince may remind us of those who “fit” on the cross, but it’s us, not God, who put him there. Will we say “No more”?

Family Tree

Kj — Wed, 16 Dec 2009 22:11:59 +0000

Bridget made this for the little one she’s carrying right now.

It was so beautiful, I had to share it.

Joyous Advent To You and Yours, Kj