Devil’s Night seems like the right time to be posting one more spook-centric entry before Halloween is officially upon us. I caught up with this one over the weekend and immediately thought it would make for a great post. I love to watch and write about monsters, creatures and even real life killers and ghosts during the Season of the Witch, but paying attention to the roots of our modern autumnal celebrations and adapting them to our contemporary lives can add a deeper depth to these days than just the kind we get from masks and mulled wine, tricks and treats.

I really enjoy Thomas Sheridan’s contemporary magick videos because he brings so much insight into Old World paganism to his modern everyday practices. Here he outlines some of the roots of today’s Halloween celebrations and offers some great suggestions on how you can make the most of this season by embracing darkness and loss, and letting go of any extra baggage you’ve picked up over the course of the year.

Here’s your Samhain 411…

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If you read these blog posts for the druggy rockin’ weirdness I’m usually posting you might not know that I’m a film and art critic in real life. I love getting spooky on Insomnia in October, but the other night I found a great opportunity to fold in some of my critical writing as well.

If you didn’t know, horror actor supreme, Vincent Price, was also an O.G. art collector. Price was so serious about art that he curated a collection of affordable art prints, reproductions, and even originals for Sears, Roebuck to sell to its catalog customers. Here’s an amazing video of Price explaining the Vincent Price Collection of Fine Art to Sears employees…

This presentation is for the employees of Sears as they are being introduced to a new product to sell, that is, the art collection selected by actor Vincent Price. It is not focused on the customers of Sears, only the sales personnel at the various stores. It is not meant to be entertaining, only informational. Vincent Price and his wife since 1951 had been very active in introducing art to the students at East Los Angeles College. One of the galleries at the college is named after Mr. Price.

Here’s some more from Artist’s Network…

It was a surprise to us to learn that on October 6th, 1962, Sears unveiled an offering of original works of art for sale at its store in Denver, Colorado. Sears had commissioned famous actor and art collector, Vincent Price, to assemble a collection of art and gallery paintings that would be merchandised through its stores, making fine art more accessible to all Sears’ customers. They gave Price carte blanche to travel the world to put the collection together. After that first opening in Denver, the program was broadened with exhibits of art in ten additional Sears stores and after the first 1,500 pieces of art has been sold, it was expanded nationwide to all Sears stores. The program ended in 1971, but more than 50,000 original artworks had been sold during its time.

The Vincent Price Collection, as it was called, included gallery paintings and other works by Rembrandt, Chagall, Picasso, Whistler and many contemporary artists of the day. It included a watercolor by Andrew Wyeth and a painting by Salvador Dali commissioned by Price.

Here’s the video…

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After leading an art gallery talk last Thursday night I had a realization about how being able to choose to be calm and relaxed is a crucial part of any kind of performance. Whether you’re sparring in an MMA gym or performing music in public or at your day job leading a presentation, the ability to remain calm in the storm of performing is a cornerstone of any victory.

Here are some thoughts…

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David Lynch is a groundbreaking filmmaker, but he’s also maintained a lifelong studio practice as a visual artist producing paintings, prints, sculpture and photography. David Lynch: The Factory Photographs made a selection of Lych’s snaps available in book form in 2014. Lynch also published a book of photos of melting snowmen seven years earlier. The subjects of Lynch’s industrial landscapes were familiar to fans of the director’s last feature film, Inland Empire. That said, industrial spaces show up in the director’s other movies like Blue Velvet. Blue Velvet is also noted for its dark eroticism and shocking use of nudity, and in his latest photographs Lynch turns his attention to the female form in a manner that speaks to both the director’s earlier pictures as well as his filmography.

There’s a documentary about Lynch’s early films, music and paintings called Pretty As A Picture. Lynch has gifted movie audiences with some of the most memorable frames in the past 40 years of American film, but I wouldn’t call the director’s images “pretty.” Strange, surreal, disturbing, beautiful — Lynchian images undulate with deep, broad implications, inspiring the same in their descriptors. That said, Lynch’s photography is mostly a formal affair about lines and gestures, and blacks and whites whether his subjects are factory or feminine.

David Lynch’s factory photographs feature crisscrossing staircases, the looming angles of electrical towers, the spiral cycles of barbed wire looping across the top of a perimeter fence, shadowy exteriors silhouetted in golden hour light. There are senses of solitude captured in the massive interior spaces Lynch lenses, and the stillness he captures in his un-populated industry-scapes sometimes sacralizes his smokestacks and ritualizes his razor wire. But, mostly, I like these as damn fine photographs of sites most artists wouldn’t document.

Nude women are exactly the opposite of something most wouldn’t document. Female forms are art’s most prevalent subjects but Lynch’s take is mostly more stylized than sexy, more studied than smutty. There’s nothing about these photographs that smacks of pornography, but their not strict, stuffy pictures either. These hips and elbows and thighs and breasts are still meditations on line and light, and the black and white pictures in this volume clearly belong to the same eye behind those shadowy sheds and sunlit loading docks.

Among the more formal black and white photos occasional images suddenly channel the otherworldly frames found in Lynch’s films — a snap of a solitary cloud of light-filled smoke floating above a living room couch comes to mind. But the artist’s photos resemble his films most when Lynch opts for color images and gives us crimson finger nails, ruby red lips and open mouths full of cigarette smoke. These images are all cast in orange and yellow like Lynch lit his models with a bonfire, and the book’s center section of heavy glossy printed pages reads like stills from scenes cut from Wild at Heart (1990).

Here are some images from the book…

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Back in the late 1990s one of the most impressive sites in Nashville’s art scene was the Tennessee Fox Trot Carousel. The kiddie ride was designed by Nashville artist Red Grooms and it featured whimsical and even grotesque chimeras like Captain Tom Ryman fused with his own steamboat or H.G. Hill monstrously combined with one of the shopping carts from his eponymous chain of grocery stores. The carousel celebrated notable and heroic Tennesseans and it was a hit with little kids whose ride donations funded the upkeep of the beautifully bizarre contraption at its home on Nashville’s riverfront. But after Opry Mills mall stopped its water taxi service to downtown Nashville the ride became neglected, and it’s been in storage since the state museum took ownership of the Tennessee Foxtrot Carousel Foundation — and its debt — in 2003.

Of course the Tennessee State Museum is getting a brand new home, and the carousel could get a new life in its own dedicated building near the new museum. However, that’s going to take a lot of money. Catch up on the story of the carousel with this great radio report from WPLN Nashville Public Radio. And join Nashville artists and art lovers for the Free the Carousel Art March this Sunday afternoon in downtown Nashville…

Red Grooms was a pop artist who moved to Manhattan in the late 1950s, and collaborated and exhibited with pals like Alex Katz, Jim Dine and Claes Oldenberg. Fellow Nashville artist Myles Maillie is the organizer behind the march. Check out the official site for more information.

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This blog is specifically targeted to my readers in the Steemit community. If you’re a talented content creator or your just tired of the toxic Facebook scene, please consider bringing your voice to our blockchain.

Today I’m taking a break from esoteric movies, fringe drugs, rock revolutions, crypto-zoological mysteries, and UFO conspiracies to touch on a subject that’s a little more practical. Many of you know that beyond my blogging habit, for the last fourteen years, I’ve been a professional art and film critic based in Nashville, TN, and I’ve written for journals and sites across the Southeast, covering exhibitions around the region.

That said, the world of art criticism is in a long term crisis where artists have less and less opportunities to have their works spotlighted by the kind of exciting, insightful writing that can help to grow and shape artists’ individual careers and even citywide art scenes. There is a lack of outlets offering regular critical writing about art, and as a result it’s harder and harder for artists to have their work evaluated and contextualized in an ongoing cultural conversation at the individual, local, regional, national and even global levels. Serious art and serious criticism actually depend on one another, but as art journals go out of print and daily and weekly papers pay less and less money to critics or do away with visual art writing altogether the problem becomes compounded for the artist.

However, this is an optimistic post that can help any artist anywhere get the attention of whatever critical community they may have in reach. I’m going to outline some of the fundamental skills and practices that can help you get your art reviewed. I’m also going to offer a new Steemit-based solution that combines some of art criticism’s cutting-edge thinking, blockchain technology and crypto currency into a win-win for Steemit artists and critics alike.

Contact a Critic

If you have a writing in mind as you’re preparing your next exhibition attempt to contact them through publication/blog/site they write for. If its an online journal or a blog look for some official email contact. If it’s a magazine or a newspaper go to their website and search for a “staff” listing or a “masthead” link or an “editorial” roster. If you can contact the critic directly do so. Otherwise inquire with the “managing editor” — that’s the ringleader of the paper’s day-to-day business and should be your default whenever you can’t find a direct contact for a writer or a lower level “arts editor” to contact. Also, don’t be afraid to pick up a phone and call an editor or a critic directly at their publication. People are constantly calling newspapers and magazines to get their stories in print, and it’s completely legit for an artist to do the same.

With all of this in mind, do not contact a critic at personal email or phone or even through social media, and hit them with a press release, a link to your website and a dozen attached images. This person is a professional and you should be too. A critic’s personal email, phone and social media isn’t a storefront, and badgering a critic via Facebook should be a last chance move for an artist looking to get attention. Always try to contact your critic through the proper editorial channels, but if Facebook or a personal email address is your last hope, be brief and polite, and ask them what the best way to contact them is. I get flooded with press releases every month and I have one email address that’s pretty much exclusively for my art writing. If everything wasn’t all going to one spot I’d never be able to keep all my information and assignments organized. When artists send information somewhere else or start pitching me out of nowhere on a Facebook chat it only makes it harder for me. But when an artist contacts me with a polite request to communicate about their work, I’m always happy to plug them in and start a dialog.

Remember these three Ps: Professional, Polite, Persistent

Following this rule alone will bring you much closer to your goals of having your work evaluated and exposed to a bigger audience.

Timing is Everything

As artists we have to accept responsibility for our successes and our failures if we want to be empowered in garnering our rewards and improving upon our shortcomings. One of the biggest stumbling blocks for artists who want to get their work reviewed is that they don’t understand the workings of an editorial calendar. Print publications necessarily work ahead of schedule because they ultimately have to allow for printing and distribution of their product. If the cover story on the magazine that comes out next Thursday is going to be timely we have to already be working on it well ahead of the street date. Often artists will contact me about getting a notice about a show in print, but I’ve already turned in all my copy long before they reached out — I’m already working on the next week’s paper or the next month’s magazine or the next quarter’s journal. Here’s a great rule of thumb that can help you better plan your pitches to a critic:

2 X Publication Schedule = Perfect Timing.

If you are pitching a critic at a weekly paper they need your information 2 FULL WEEKS before the date of your event. If you are pitching a monthly magazine they need your information 2 FULL MONTHS before the date of your event, etc. Generally, if you send your information later than this it could be too late, but if you send it earlier it might get forgotten in the shuffle. This is another occasion where you should never be afraid to call or email a critic or an editor directly if you have any questions about how early to send your information. Whenever somebody asks me a question about how to properly pitch their work I think they’re smart and considerate.

Be that artist!

Writing a Release

You can find lots of templates and examples of press releases online. Any search will give you plenty of possible styles you can mix and match to your liking. I can assure you that critics who read tons of press releases everyday prefer them to be simple, short and easy to navigate. Here are my top tips for effective, clear, impacting press release writing:

1. Tell me the who, what, where and when of your event — including opening and closing dates — making sure all the spelling and information is accurate.

2. Embed the release in the body of the email. Don’t attach it to a message — the press release is the message.

3. If you’re including an artist statement and/or a bio keep them short and embed them after the release.

4. Attach up to three hi-resolution images to the email.

There’s a lot of room here for style and formatting, but less is always more when it comes to a good press release. Be sure to send your information in plenty of time for your event and don’t be shy about following up if you’ve had no response after a reasonable period.

Be Building Relationships

Every artist wants to get their show in print or on television or highlighted on an influential blog. I hope some of these tips will help you do just that! However, in the long run, your strategy should be to develop relationships with the writers and publications that can help you to expose your work to a bigger audience. I hope your very next email to a critic gets you a glowing review in a prestigious art journal, but if it makes a critic visit your online portfolio and remember your name, you’re already much closer to getting the attention you need to win for your work to be seen more broadly. Maximize your chances of getting reviewed by seeking out publications, sites and writers that are appropriate for the kind of work you make, but don’t get discouraged if you don’t immediately make a huge splash. Do good work consistently. Create a network and stay in contact. That’s one good way to become the kind of artist no one will ignore.

Nobody Writes About Art

But what if you live in a place where there are no art critics? It’s probably more likely than not that you live somewhere where there is nearly no critical writing about visual art on offer. Even if you have a cool alternative weekly there’s no guarantee that they take visual art seriously. The alternative weekly in Nashville is currently up for sale and there’s no guarantee that it will continue to be in print in the near future. Art critics like me are an endangered species, and that’s lead to a lot of forward thinking about how art criticism should evolve in the 21st century. I interviewed Gilda Williams about her book How to Write About Contemporary Art. This book is way more radical than its title and I have a lot of admiration for Williams visionary insights into the future of art writing. Here’s an excerpt from our chat:

What might the professionalization of art writing look like?

I fully support the creation of a new professional cast of art-writers: gifted communicators; immersed in and knowledgeable about contemporary art; possessing a natural inclination for writing; and earning a good living from their work. A precedent for this figure is Pat Hackett, Andy Warhol’s written “voice”—uncannily able to “sound like Andy” better than the artist himself. Hackett—paid decently, in direct conversation with the artist, and given a much-deserved co-author credit on Popism and The Diaries—was not an art critic but a commissioned literary spokesperson. Warhol was smart enough to recognize his limitations as a writer but hardly foolish enough to relegate “his” writing to amateurs. Thus he availed himself of professional art writers (Bob Colacello was another): this represents yet another prophetic Warholian solution in an evolving art world.

Like other art professionals, such as gallerists and curators, the art writer’s reputation would stand and fall on the quality of their work and the choices they make. The art writer would be an openly partisan collaborator, and free from the traditional conflicts of interest to which the art critic must submit. Top art writers, plainly working on behalf of galleries or artists, could be paid an advance or royalties on the sale of art; why not?

With art writing being so poorly compensated, why do people endeavor to do it?

For the very same reason that millions of low income artists carry on: they cannot help but do what they love. We bring home the bacon teaching and editing—moonlighting any art-related job that buys us time to write.

One of my insights from this interview and Williams’ book is that artists, galleries and critics should be joining forces and closing ranks and collaborating in their own promotion, more or less unconcerned about the failure of print or the support of larger commercial sites. In Williams’ world critics would simply put their words behind the artists and the work they admired while doing away with the pretenses of objectivity and tripwires of conflicts of interest. My favorite aspect of Williams’ idea is that when critics and artists work together directly there is no dependence on or interference from publishing mediation and compensation. I love print and I don’t want to see newspapers and magazines disappear. That said, the anarchist in me always feels better when gatekeepers are dis-empowered and authority is decentralized.

Of course, it suddenly sounds like I’m talking about Steemit, and I am. Williams’ vision of the future of critical art writing shares values with blockchain/crypto communities like Steemit, making this site a natural fit for experimenting with real world solutions for the frustrations facing artists and art writers alike.

Critical, I

I want to introduce a new hashtag to the Steemit art community, and bring a critical dialog to our online exhibiting.

If you are a Steemit artist interested in getting your work reviewed:

1. Post an image of your work along with a link where I can see more

2. Make the first hashtag #criticali

3. Link your post in the replies below

4. Upvote if you can, but please Resteem to help spread awareness of this opportunity

If I check out your work and find it inspiring or exciting I’ll be in touch with you about it. This would be a #steemgig, but not an advertising job. I’d never write a review I wouldn’t stand behind.

I’m offering 700 word reviews accompanied by images provided by the artist for $50 SBD. The work would be published on my personal blog, here on Steemit, and also promoted via my own social media channels. There may be an even better way to make this opportunity available to artists on Steemit, but this can’t devolve into a contest. This is a serious offer, but only for the most serious artists. I’m offering the strength of my professional reputation as an established critic, and I’ll only be able to partner with the artists producing work that I can put my full faculties and resources behind.

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I’ve been pretty preoccupied posting about music lately and I haven’t touched on anything truly diabolical or bizarre since the release of the JFK files back in November. Luckily, there seems to be no end to tales of the otherworldly and just this weekend I stumbled across a story about a woman I’d never heard of before. Her tale involves antique alien encounters, elements of the supernatural, seance trances, automatic writing, a Martian named Leopold, and a bizarre-looking written language of seemingly-cosmic origin.

Here’s a bit about Helen Smith from the Wiki…

Hélène Smith (real name Catherine-Elise Müller, December 9, 1861, Martigny – June 10, 1929, Geneva) was a famous late-19th century French medium. She was known as “the Muse of Automatic Writing” by the Surrealists, who viewed Smith as evidence of the power of the surreal, and a symbol of surrealist knowledge.[1] Late in life, Smith claimed to communicate with Martians, and to be a reincarnation of a Hindu princess and Marie Antoinette.

In 1900, Élise Müller became famous with the publication of Des Indes à la Planete Mars (“From India to the Planet Mars”) by Théodore Flournoy, Professor of Psychology at the University of Geneva. The medium and the psychologist remained very close until 1899, when “Des Indes à la planète Mars” was first published. The book documented her various series of experiences in terms of romantic cycles: the “Martian” cycle, “Ultramartian” cycle, “Hindu”, “Oriental”, and “royal” cycles.

Here’s a sample of Smith’s Martian writing…

In 1900, a certain Mrs. Jackson, a rich American spiritualist who was impressed by Müller, offered her a salary which would permit her to quit her job and dedicate herself to pursuing and documenting her experiences. Müller accepted and was able to continue with further cycles. She also began to paint her visions and particular religious images of Christ.

According to Cabinet Magazine…

Over the course of the next two decades, Smith gave fewer séances and devoted much of her time to painting. Eventually, this work too attracted significant attention, including that of André Breton and the Surrealists. At her death in 1929, nine years after Flournoy’s own passing, the Geneva Art Museum sponsored a retrospective of her work.14 In some ways, the shift away from a verbal and toward a visual medium itself constituted a new language for Smith…

Here are a few of her works…

Detail from Ultra-Martian landscape painted by Hélène Smith.

From the seven-part series “The Materialization of the Girl of Jaïrus” by Hélène Smith.

Here’s a short video from my YouTube channel with some more information about Smith. Was this remarkable woman in possession of magical powers or just gifted with a remarkable creative imagination?

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Came across this lollipop culture candy the other day and wanted to share here. I hope the new year is as absurd and unexpected as this. Here’s the set-up from Open Culture…

When it comes to music however, 80s retro tends to confine themselves to early hip and hop and electro, the synthpop of Gary Numan and Duran Duran or the cheesy hair metal of Mötley Crüe. But this lens misses the significant 60s revivalism that emerged at the time. Garage, surf, and psych rock and the jangly sounds of The Byrds inspired R.E.M., the B52s, the Replacements, the House of Love, and the Fleshtones, a much lesser-known NYC band who may never have gotten their commercial due, but who certainly appealed to 60s art star Andy Warhol.

When Warhol remade himself as a TV personality in the 80s with his MTV variety show Andy Warhol’s 15 Minutes he cast the Fleshtones as the backing band for rising theater and film star Ian McKellen, a match-up that represents another hallmark of 80s pop culture—the postmodern juxtaposition of genres, styles, and registers which Warhol helped pioneer 20 years earlier when he brought kitschy silk-screened soup cans, sexy street hustlers, and the Velvet Underground into the art scene.

Warhol’s television work turned this impulse into a multimedia circus featuring “The high and the low. The rich and the famous. The struggling artists and the rising stars,” as Warhol Museum curator Geralyn Huxley puts it. In this particularly fitting example, McKellen and the Fleshtones bring Shakespeare’s racy Sonnet 20 to young, hip MTV audiences in 1987. L.A. Weekly lists a few of the “cool points” from the clip:

A young, hot, already insanely talented Ian McKellen
Wearing awesome New Wave fashions
At Andy Warhol’s Factory in 1987
Backed by cult group the Fleshtones
Reciting a Shakespeare Sonnet

Here’s the video…

Stay Awake,

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We had a productive day today pushing big projects off of to-do lists and finishing publicity for soon-to-be announcements. I also spent part of the day promoting my new podcast, Art Fight Club. Brian Siskind and I are talking about fighting to create great art, and talking with fighters about the creativity that’s revealed in the martial arts and combat sports.

Check out the podcast at the link above. Please follow, rate and share it with your friends who love struggling for beauty.

In the meantime, here’s my favorite Shaw Brothers film…

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Usually on Fridays I just post something from my blog’s archive, and I’ll do that today as well, but first this:

I write a monthly column for the Nashville Scene that previews the First Saturday art events that happen at two different gallery crawls all over the city. I don’t get a ton of words to cover everything so I have to pick and choose. This month was extra tough as we’re going to print early to compensate for the holiday weekend. As a result some interesting looking shows didn’t make the cut if only for length or rushing, and I wanted to mention one of them here because it looks like a cool mix of poetry and images that speaks to the overlap we’ve already been seeing between Nashville’s literary and visual arts communities. My own Pikes Project mixes photography, essays and poetry so a show that combines verses with visuals automatically catches me eye and my ear.

Here’s the word on Listen:

CONVERGE is pleased to present LISTEN, a provocative group show of text based artwork curated by Alysha Irisari Malo. LISTEN celebrates the expression of the written word in the visual arts, exploring various media including painting, printmaking, installation, mixed media, and fiber art. Participating artists include Jane Braddock (represented by Tinney Contemporary), Briena Harmening, Alysha Irisari Malo, and Cynthia Marsh. The show runs from Saturday, May 6th through Sunday, June 4th, 2017, at the SNAP (South Nashville Action People) Building, 1224 Martin Street, Nashville, TN 37203. The second floor will have artwork installed for the duration of the show, while the first floor will have artwork installed for pop-up events during the Opening and Closing Reception weekends. These events coincide with the monthly Arts & Music at Wedgewood-Houston crawl and are free and open to the public. The Closing Reception for LISTEN will be held on Saturday, June 3rd, from 6:00 to 10:00 pm.

CONVERGE is a conscious collective of creative individuals interested in collaborative projects and community outreach, initiated by the husband and wife team, architectural designer Eric Malo and artist and poet Alysha Irisari Malo. The group conceives and realizes project-based art and design, lifestyle, cultural, and community programming in Wedgewood-Houston. CONVERGE currently hosts a series of neighborhood urban design workshops in Wedgewood-Houston, and is excited to have LISTEN as its inaugural art crawl event.

Find out more about this exhibition on their Facebook event page.

Now here is a poetic From the Archives Friday post featuring poet Michael McClure and a caged lion in a weird performance that I’m thinking about as a kind of farewell here at the last days of The Greatest Show on Earth…

I’ve written about 2nd generation Beat poet Michael McClure on this here slate of light before. McClure joined up with Ginsberg and Kerouac when the New Yorkers made their way to San Fransisco, setting off a poetry renaissance and a worldwide youth movement upon arrival.

It’s easy to look back at the ’60′s with rainbow-colored glasses, but that’s no excuse to. A lot of wrongheadedness and naivety ran much of the ’60s counterculture off the rails. Of course, a lot of good art, music and ideas came from that time as well.

Sometimes, weird bits of 60′s countercultural expression that still turn up from that time seem just as absurd today as they must have 50 years ago. Here, McClure is interviewed before stopping at a zoo to read poetry to a lion.

Stay awake,

Joe Nolan