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{substance} undefined : Book Ten : Feb-Mar : 2011

features:

Helen Hill: Experimental Animator

Skipp Pearson is the face of SC Jazz

Amanda Ladymon reflects on giant vaginas

Poetry Society of South Carolina

undefined magazine is copyrighted and may not be reproduced in any manner, in whole or in part, without the publisher's written permission.Write us at: undefined Magazine 709 Woodrow Street : 321 : Columbia, SC 29205 803.386.9031

©2011 All Rights Reserved

These pages are the labor of many talented hands, from writing, design and editing, to sales and marketing. We encourage youto contact us with any feedback or story ideas at our website. Please support the artists, your community leaders andadvertisers. For advertising information please contact us at: 803.386.9031 or [email protected]

Blue Sky

Ed Madden … Poetry EditorKyle Petersen … Music EditorJay Quantz … Lead PhotographerSarah Kobos … PhotographerScott Bilby … Photographer

Betsy Newman … WriterSumner Bender … WriterRobert LeHeup … WriterTom Poland … WriterLaura Bousman … Design Intern

contributorson the cover: Blue Sky by James Quantz

Drift Fences by Tom Poland

Wendell Culbreath is THE Dubber

David Axe is a regular guy

Ivan Popov is the Russian who belongs here

South Carolina Poets on the New Year

Cynthia Boiter … Associate EditorMark Pointer … Associate EditorKristine Hartvigsen … Managing Editor

We know we aren’t the first to say that growth means changeor that the absence of growth is death, but we would bet apretty penny – if we had one – that no other local artspublication is as dedicated to the concepts of growth andadaptation as we are at undefined.

The great Southern author, Ellen Glasgow, said that theonly difference between a rut and a grave is their dimensions,and we think about that a lot as we balance on that thin railthat separates consistency from the mundane. We realize thatour readers would not be our readers if what you wanted wasmore of what you can already get from picking up anyperiodical from the top of the piles of the other finepublications around town. Over the past year of ourconsistently published bi-monthly magazine – something weare proud of, and you know why – you have told us that youlike being able to count on us to keep you on your toes whenit comes to cutting edge artists and their projects. We take thisseriously. We like it that you depend upon us to surprise you.

That’s why, in the interest of keeping things interesting, weoffer you surprises, changes, and consistencies in this issue ofundefined.

We welcome two talented additions to our editorial staff:Kristine Hartvigsen, the former editor of Lake MurrayMagazine among others, who is acting as our new co-conspir-ator and managing editor, and Kyle Petersen, our editor ofmusic. You’ve read the works of both Kristine and Kyle in ourpages before. While their roles have changed and their dutiesincreased, the character they bring to the magazine remainsthe same.

This issue also takes a look at a couple of promising youngartists who are just starting out, as well as some establishedartists who are doing anything but resting on their laurels. Inresearching the lives of two of South Carolina’s art pioneersand living legends, jazz musician Skipp Pearson and visualartist Blue Sky, we learned a lot about the tenuous tasks ofgrowth, changing without fail, and being dependable aboutshaking things up.

We learned that, despite whatever obstacles lay before us,staying true to our vision will help us surmount them.

We learned that being poor and exhilarating is better thanbeing rich and boring.

And we learned that this magazine, its makers, and ourreaders could find no greater models for living a good life inthe arts than these two gentlemen from our hometown.

To our artists, their patrons, and our readers, Happy NewYear from undefined.

A message from the editors.

5 undefined : book ten

Special thanks: Jenny Thompson @ Bombshell Beauty Studio

Andrew Zalkin @ the Army-Navy Store{ {


“Cartersville“ James Quantz

story: Betsy Newman


This year’s Indie Grits Film Festival will feature the premiereof The Florestine Collection, the final film of SouthCarolina animator and DIY filmmaker Helen Hill. Hill was

murdered by a home intruder in her adopted city of New Orleanson January 4, 2007. Her husband, Paul Gailiunas, has completedThe Florestine Collection, which explores the life and work ofFlorestine Kinchen, a seamstress from New Orleans.

Helen Hill was born in Columbia in 1970. She began makingfilms in the 5th grade, inspired by documentary filmmaker StanWoodward, who served as a visiting artist with her class at BrennenElementary School. In her short life she made nearly 20 films, andwhile she was not a famous filmmaker, her 1995 film, Scratch andCrow, is included in the National Film Registry of culturally signif-icant works at the Library of Congress. Only 36 when she died, shewas a respected member of a dynamic group of independent mediaartists.

Hill was a teacher and an activist as well, and her desire to be anagent of social change manifested itself early on. In her applicationto Harvard, where she was an undergraduate from 1988 to 1992,Hill stated that she wanted to learn more about film, as a way “tohelp society recognize its faults and see solutions.”

She met Paul Gailiunas at Harvard and, following graduation,the couple lived in New Orleans for a year. They left to pursuetheir respective graduate degrees in separate cities. After Hillearned her MFA in experimental animation at CalArts, they werereunited in Halifax, Nova Scotia, where Gailiunas was studyingmedicine. There Hill joined the Atlantic Filmmakers Cooperative(AFCOOP) and helped found a women’s film festival, Reel Vision.She began teaching animation workshops and conducting “filmbees,” at which she helped members of her community make Super8 and 16mm films.

In December 2000 Helen and Paul returned to New Orleans,where they settled in a low-income, predominantly African-American neighborhood. Hoping to benefit the city they loved,Gailiunas opened Little Doctors Neighborhood Clinic, offeringlow-cost medical care to the poor, and Hill became active in the

film


New Orleans alternative mediascene. She advocated low-budget filmmaking techniquesand taught classes in experi-mental animation, encourag-ing her students to “create hisor her own vision, to animatehis or her own revolution.” Inher 2001 movie MadameWinger Makes a Film: ASurvival Guide for the 21stCentury, the animated charac-ter of Madame Winger “assuresher audience that you don’tneed computers, big money, orthe latest digital gizmo to makea film. You just need a goodidea.”

Hill began work on TheFlorestine Collection in 2001,after finding more than a hun-dred of Florestine Kinchen’shand-sewn dresses in a trashheap in front of the dressmak-er’s home in New Orleans. Notknowing the identity of theseamstress, Hill nonethelessrecognized the singular beautyof the dresses and sensed a profound story behind them. Shetook them home and spent several weeks hand-washing andrepairing them. Ultimately, she was funded by the RockefellerFoundation to make her film.

In her application to Rockefeller, she described Kinchen’s work.

She worked with no sewing machine, making loops of embroi-dery thread instead of buttonholes. She often pieced togetherparts of skirts or shirts to make the dresses. One dress is a man’sshirt on top and a hand-sewn bottom. Even though a wide vari-ety of fabric styles is used, there are some unifying aspects. Eachdress has a decorative edge across the bottom and a decorativeend of each sleeve. Even her simple hand sewn slips include adecorative strip of black fabric along the bottom. The dresses arestrikingly unique and reflect a true individual style.

The dresses resonated with Hill.

I washed the dresses and tried them on. They fit. They not onlyfit, but in a very particular way that I prefer: loose on top and cutjust above the knees. And they were quirky and lovely, just mystyle.

She recognized in Kinchen’s work a familiar sensibility.

Working at Recycle for the Arts, I met many artists who piecetogether recycled objects to create unique styles of art. Many of

the aspects of Florestine Kinchen’s dresses are similar to the do-it-yourself (DIY) style of eccentricity common among theseNew Orleans artists. … She was quite resourceful, often usingparts of the same fabric in several different dresses.

Seeking to find out more about the maker of the dresses, Hillbegan to make inquiries among people in the neighborhood.

I talked to an older neighbor of Florestine Kinchen as she sat onher porch. I learned Florestine Kinchen’s name and that she wasan African-American woman who worked as a seamstress. Shehad lived alone since her sister’s death and had died in her 90s.Among the dresses was one photograph of three people. I believethat one of the women is Florestine Kinchen, wearing one of herdresses.

Hill located the church to which Florestine Kinchen belongedand recorded interviews with her friends and family. Sheplanned to include these recordings in the film, which would bea combination of animation and live-action film.

The character of Florestine Kinchen would be portrayed as a sil-houette figure. Pioneered by the German animator LotteReiniger, this style of animation is the movement of hingedpaper cutouts, cut from black paper and sometimes lead. Ibelieve the delicate, old-fashioned style would be appropriate.Also, the absence of details seems appropriate since I never metMs. Kinchen. I would animate her sewing the dresses and walk-

A still from The Florestine Collection.


Helen and Paul

ing through the neighborhood we shared. I will also includesome colorful drawn animation because the dresses are so amaz-ingly colorful.

The Florestine Collection was to be a celebration of the dress-maker, whose legacy Hill had almost literally stumbled upon.But she envisioned the film as a political piece as well.

As a white person and a community activist in a predominantlyAfrican-American city, I feel it is important for me to take partin breaking down racial barriers. This film will be one way forme to address these issues in a film, which will be watched bythe people of New Orleans.

Hill began pre-production work on The Florestine Collection,storyboarding it with the silhouettes that she planned to ani-mate. Then Hurricane Katrina emptied their New Orleansneighborhood and drove Helen and Paul and their young son,Francis Pop, to Columbia, where they moved in with her moth-er and stepfather, Becky and Kevin Lewis. The Katrina refugeeswere frequent attendees of the Nickelodeon Theatre during2005, before returning to New Orleans. When Helen was killed,the family had a special screening of her work at the Nick, aspart of her funeral service.

Dan Streible, professor of Cinema Studies at NYU and directorof the Orphans Film Festival, has written about Helen in a newbook titled Old and New Media After Katrina. In Streible’s chap-ter “Media Artists, Local Activists, and Outsider Archivists: The

Case of Helen Hill,” he describes the New Orleans alternativemedia community to which Helen belonged.

The traumatic events wrought by Katrina floodwaters in 2005exposed painful aspects of the social fabric of New Orleans andthe nation generally. Class- and race-based inequities were laidbare. The failure of the government at every level becameobvious. Yet the post-Katrina spotlight also inadvertentlyilluminated a small but significant community of independentmedia artists working devotedly in old and new media forms.Some are amateurs, in the purest sense. Others are working pro-fessionals making small films as an avocation. Still others cobbletogether piece-work and part-time projects that allow them topursue their creative talents – getting grants, work-for-hire,teaching gigs, and freelance projects. Neither dilettantes norcareerists, they integrate homemade media into their everydaylives, often affiliating their practice with local social and politi-cal activism. The filmmaker Helen Hill, we now understand, isa radiant emblem of this community. (from Old and New MediaAfter Katrina. Diane Negra, Editor. Palgrave Macmillan, 2010).

The Indie Grits Film Festival will feature multiple screenings ofThe Florestine Collection on Saturday, April 16. The first screen-ing will be private, for family and friends, with at least two moreto follow that evening. The 2008 McKissick Museum exhibition,titled The Dresses of Florestine Kinchen: A Tribute to HelenHill, will be on view during Indie Grits as well. Featuring thirtyof Kinchen’s dresses and interpretive panels, the exhibition doesan excellent job of contextualizing the film. (At this writing, the

location of the screenings and exhibition werestill being determined).

Earlier that day, as part of the Nick’s FamilyFilm Series, the theater will host a handmadefilm class; that afternoon, in front of the Nick,there will be a sewing workshop in the spirit ofthe Florestine dresses as part of Crafty Feast, anindie festival focused on handmade crafts. Theworkshop will be free of charge.

"Helen Hill was an artist, filmmaker, community activist and subversivesouthern belle…Her life was an inspired art project."

icon

story: Kyle Petersen photography: James Quantz

Skipp Pearson

Perched on the edge of Columbia’s Finlay Park, overlooking the vistaof the city he calls his home, Skipp Pearson, affectionately known as“Pops” to hundreds of friends and fans, sits in the newly re-openedLe Café Jazz. Seventy-four years young, and ready for the future.

Le Café Jazz is just one of the latest in the many projects the SkippPearson Jazz Foundation has embarked on in its quest to turnColumbia into “Jazz Town USA.” The café boasts plentiful outdoorand indoor seating areas with an expansive view of Finlay Park, and itsParisian-themed décor and menu is designed to create an atmosphereof enjoyment and appreciation for jazz music – Pearson’s quintet playsthere every Friday and Saturday evening as part of their ongoing effortto bring as much live jazz music to the city as possible.

Since retiring from teaching in 1997 with “the desire to dosomething else,” Pearson says he has been singularly dedicated to thepreservation of live jazz music in South Carolina. Beginning with hisweekly jazz series at Main Street Columbia’s Hunter Gatherer Breweryand Alehouse, the Thursday Night Jazz Workshop, an infamous jamsession that has seen marquee players from across the country andaround the world drop in to play, Pearson eventually started afoundation in his own name to further his efforts to preserve thetradition of live jazz music. Pearson routinely operates jazz workshopsin public schools, gives an annual free performance on the StateHouse lawn in May, and spearheads the celebration of National Jazz

is the face of South Carolina jazz


Appreciation Month in April. The foundation has grown into aclearinghouse of sorts for all jazz music happenings in the state.

Since the foundation blossomed in the early 2000s, Pearsonhas been awarded numerous awards and accolades for hiscurrent efforts and past achievements. In 2003 he was given the

Elizabeth O’Neill Verner Award for the Arts, the state’s highestarts award, and has been awarded the title of “Ambassador ofJazz” for the state as well. In 2010, Conn-Selmer Paris, one ofthe premier instrument makers in the world, asked Pearson tobecome an “endorsing artist,” a prestigious position which alsoopens up a variety of financial opportunities for the foundation.

“I'm trying to keep the art of jazz in the mainstream so it canbe passed on for generations to come,” he says. Pearson sees jazzas “part of the learning institution of life” and wants people tounderstand the importance of preserving the musical tradition.“We have a lot of different entities in music these days.Technology is ... I'm not gonna say causing the problem, but ittakes away from the human art form.”

While Pearson’s concern about technology might sound likethe grumblings of a Luddite, there is a definite rationale to theideal of jazz that the perfectionist wants to preserve. Pearson canwax poetic about the beauty and importance of seeing musicperformed live. “Live performance is like looking at a play….It's the musician in his natural environment, doing what he issupposed to do as a player. It's very emotional. For example,many guys close their eyes and don't open them until they arefinished. Others have body movements that they use to expresswhat they are doing at the time. When you see a [visual] artist’swork …you have to … figure out ... and study … the brushstrokes and things like that... But when you listen to a jazzperformer [live], you have the opportunity to watch an artist [atthe time of creation].”

The sax-man’s other favorite metaphor for understanding jazzmusic is that of a public forum. Pearson sees the song itself asthe common subject to all the players, with each improvisation-al turn as a personal contribution or point of view on the subjectat hand. “It’s about how you feel at the time you are playing it,”he says. “Tomorrow, ten minutes later, you may do it again, andyou may not approach the conversation the same way. You maynot say the same words every time you play the tune.”

Pearson also emphasizes the connection between educationand music, with the idea that jazz is both educational andedifying. While he acknowledges that “mostly the roots of themusic originally inspired people to dance,” he wants people torecognize how “[jazz] became a listening music; it became astudy. [This] created something else, an art form.” As an artform, Pearson wants jazz, as one of the great cultural products ofthe country, to be an integral part of what the next generationlearns. Art is part of the culture of any country or continent, andyou have to value that, and be able to put it where it is availableto the populace,” he says. “Jazz came from the people, so it

should be given back to them. It shouldn't be isolated to anyethnic group or any economic level. It should be available to all.”

Pearson was into music from the very start. Starting out ondrums and later switching to saxophone, he began taking fiftycent private lessons in the sixth grade. By the age of 15 he had

organized his first commercial band, a move that presages whatwould become a lifetime of getting bands together at the drop ofa hat. After he graduated from high school, his parentsencouraged him to go to college, but a brash sense of restlessnessled Pearson to join the Air Force at the age of 19 – he wouldremain in the service for exactly four years, the majority ofwhich he was stationed in Ipswich, England.

Instead of taking a break from music, his time in the serviceproved to be a catalyst to make more music – he formed a bandwherever he was. One of his regular gigs was a Wednesday jazznight at a café similar to Le Café Jazz in Columbia. Pearsoncredits this regular gig with creating an atmosphere of jazzappreciation in Ipswich and fondly recalls the large crowds andsense of community his trio inspired. More than anything, hisearly music ventures in high school and in the Air Forcedeveloped in him the idea of jazz as a fluid mode of communica-tion between people, giving Pearson the confidence to becomethe quintessential guy with a horn, organizing bands with easeand sitting in with bands of every shade and stripe.

After retiring from the Air Force, Pearson settled inWashington, DC, where, after working for the SmithsonianInstitution, he took the leap to making music full-time. “I wentout and tried it,” he laughs, “and once I found out that it wasn'tas secure as I needed it to be, I decided to come back to my rootsin Orangeburg.” This was not before he built a reputation fororganizing a wide range of jazz and R&B bands, including housegroups that backed Patti Labelle and Otis Redding, amongothers. Even after he returned to South Carolina, Pearsonbecame known as the horn player in the state who could makegigs happen – making him a de facto “ambassador of jazz” longbefore the state legislature made it official.

With the decision to return to South Carolina, Pearson foundhimself pushed toward education by his soon-to-be wife, whowas pursuing a degree in secondary education at VoorheesCollege in Denmark, and his mother, a lifelong public schoolteacher who had just taken a job at Claflin University. Pearsonsmiles when he tells the story of why he started at Claflin at theage of 28. “My mama said ‘you got a wife, she's smart; she'strying to get her degree, and you still out there trying to rundown the road with the horn. You better get an education,’” herecalls. “I said ‘okay mama.’”

After his first year at Claflin, his performance was so impres-sive that he was offered two part-time jobs organizing bandprograms for the school districts in Bamberg and ClarendonCounties. Although progress toward his degree was temporarilystymied while he worked to support his wife’s education, he

“Technology is ... I'm not gonna say causing the problem, but it takesaway from the human art form.”


eventually went on to graduate with a Music Performancedegree and to teach in those two school districts for another 24years.

At the same time, Pearson always remained busy as aperformer playing as many as five nights per week. After gradu-ating from college he joined the National Guard Army Band, agroup he would perform with until his retirement in 1997.Between his professional gigs, his steady performance schedulewith the military band, and his duties as an educator, Pearsondeveloped a seemingly limitless range of musical contacts,coming to play with the likes of Wynton Marsalis, the trumpeterand artistic director of jazz at New York City’s Lincoln Centerwho is often considered “America’s Musical Ambassador.”

“He was at the Spoleto Festival living at the hotel I wasplaying at, called the Omni back then – I was in the house triothere for almost three years,” says Pearson, who slipped thebellhop a few dollars to get Marsalis’s room number, then simplycalled him up and invited him down to play with his band in the

hotel restaurant. Marsalis came down to play with Pearson thatnight, and ever since then, when Marsalis comes into the region,he invites Pearson to play a number with him. The Marsalisconnection has led to multiple appearances at Lincoln Centerfor the saxophonist, as well as the opportunity to bring thefamed trombonist Wycliffe Jordan to Columbia’s Thursday NightJazz Workshop.

Such is the life of a horn player with Pearson’s longevity andstature. Building these kinds of connections has been his life’swork, the endless pursuit of keeping jazz music alive in SouthCarolina. “What we’re doing, we plan to continue,” Pearsonpromises. “[This is] a lifetime thing. As I say sometimes, I gotless time to be here than I been here already, but if I can standthe time, and have the energy for it just a little longer, it will bedifferent.” Really, thanks to Skipp “Pops” Pearson, it already is.While Columbia may not be the epicenter of jazz music, the artform is alive and well thanks to his efforts.



“If we are to change our world view, images have to change.The artist now has a very important job to do.

He's not a little peripheral figure entertaining rich people, he's really needed.”

– David Hockney


When she moved to Columbia four years ago, artistAmanda Ladymon left her giant plaster vagina on hermother’s back patio in Dallas. Could the abandoned

sculpture be a symbol of Ladymon’s leaving behind her feministsensibilities? Don’t bet on it.

The only child of a single mother, Ladymon has always been aquiet feminist. So when an arts reviewer recognized feministthemes in her Urban Organic show last September at Compass 5Partners/Art + Cayce, it came as a bit of a surprise.

“I was stunned because I never talk about that,” Ladymon said.“I love feminist artwork. That’s what I focused on when Ifirst started.”

Ladymon remembers being pulled over by a highwaypatrolman while driving that 100-pound vagina home in theback seat of her car. The officer kept looking at it with a puzzledexpression before finally asking what it was. As an abstractpainter, sculptor, and installment artist, Ladymon is used to such“what-is-it” queries. And she is happy to let people draw theirown conclusions.

“With all my work, I love that when different people look at it,they see different things,” she said. “There’s always somethingrooted in the human body or in nature.”

Indeed. Ladymon’s work is unmistakably organic, its formsalmost visibly contracting with the pulse of life being conveyed

through their winding curves and worm-hole synapses.Inspiration for the dramatic images comes straight frommodern medicine.

“My interest in biological forms started when my grandfathergot lung cancer around 2003,” she explained. At the time, sheread every medical book she could get her hands on. “I wastrying to understand why our bodies destroy themselves.”

Since then, many of Ladymon’s visual and thematic cues havecome from highly scientific sources. With earnest, shescrutinizes cellular elements captured through an electronscanning micrograph machine. She’s equally enthralled viewingordinary fruit fly larvae through the lens of a simple laboratorymicroscope. That is not to say Ladymon was a sciencewunderkind in her formative years. She took no joy in biologyclass dissections.

“I’m very squeamish,” she admitted. “But a lot of medicalimages, once they become digital, don’t look real to me becausethe color changes.”

Ladymon’s favorite scanned and magnified images aredendrites – the wiry appendages that extend from neurons toconduct electrochemical impulses from cell to cell in the body.They are critical to neurological function.

“They look like these beautiful webs,” she said. “They haveorganization but also chaos.”

Amanda Ladymon

artist

reflects on giant vaginas and multiple organisms

story: Kristine Hartvigsen photography: Sarah Kobos

Organization and chaos converge across a five-panel paintingfrom Ladymon’s MFA thesis exhibition that she completed at theUniversity of South Carolina in 2009. The work currentlyresides in the Tapps Center for the Arts on Main Street inColumbia. It is lovely and colorful and intricately rendered. Theinstallation combined the two-dimensional imagery of thesepanels with enormous three-dimensional hanging forms thatcould be perceived alternately as entrails or umbilici. Either way,they suggest channels of varying dimension for conveying life

energy. While their symbolism is left to interpretation, Ladymonsays that medical professionals often see something at the cellu-lar level that they recognize in her works.

Ladymon insists that, with the exception perhaps of somewayward gene from her absent father, there are no artists in herbiological family. That she should become one, and an award-winning professional at that, is a bit of an anomaly.

“I feel like an oddity in the art world. I was raised in a strictfamily setting. My grandparents were like second parents. Theyhad old-fashioned values. No one in my family was artistic.Nobody,” she said. “I was a weird kid. I had a strangeimagination. I spent a lot of time by myself, and I guess I had alittle rebellious streak.”

The arts captivated Ladymon from a very early age. As soon asshe could walk, Ladymon wanted to sing and dance on the stage.Her mother took her to children’s theaters and enrolled her inworkshops. She learned to play the piano. By fifth grade, she wasplaying clarinet. In high school, she started in the marchingband – something she would continue for 11 years, through herundergraduate years at the University of North Texas. As afreshman, she first majored in interior design but switched to artin her sophomore year.

“I was just not excelling in my interior design classes. Therewere too many rules,” Ladymon recalled. “After about a year anda half, I knew I needed to change my major. Mom wanted to besupportive in anything I decided to do, but I know she wasdisappointed when I switched to art from interior design. For awhile I don’t think she knew what to say about my art. She cameto my shows and was encouraging, but she is not the artsy typeat all.”

Reading the 1987 book A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism andSchizophrenia by Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari profoundlycontributed to the evolution of Ladymon’s biological forms. Itelevated her thinking on the physical body and the intricateminutia of its mechanics.



“What is a body without organs? Every livingcreature has to take in energy to survive and releasethat energy in different ways,” she said. “A lot of mystuff tends to have embryonic shapes to it. Red as acolor for me conveys strength and energy. It is notnecessarily blood.”

Ladymon sees many similarities between the humanbody’s neurological and circulatory systems and theorganic structures she observes in nature.

“The roots of a plant look very much like the arteriesand neural parts of the human body. That is veryinteresting to me,” she explained. “I developed acertain aesthetic that came out as these forms, which Iuse to kind of invent my own organisms now.”

One of Ladymon’s biggest influences in contempo-rary art these days is innovative British painter andsculptor Matthew Ritchie of New York City. It is easy tosee parallels in Ladymon’s work. Both draw fromfundamental science in their hybrid regurgitation ofmulti-dimensional spatial relationships that not onlyprovoke but also amuse and ultimately spark deepercontemplation.

Robert Lyon, who taught Ladymon studio art andsculpture during her graduate studies at the Universityof South Carolina, feels that Ladymon’s innateconfidence in her own ability and creative instinct areher strongest qualities.

“One of the things about Amanda that impresses meis her tenacity,” he said. “Being an artist is not an easyoccupation. She is pursuing it with everything she’s got.That is really important. Nearly 95 percent of peoplewith MFAs are no longer involved in art 10 years later.That is pretty daunting.”

A self-described “control freak,” Ladymon juxtaposes the yinand yang of her existence quite simply: “My life is totallyorganized, yet my work is totally organic and messy. It has to bethat way.”

At 29, Ladymon today is an adjunct professor of art historyand art appreciation at Augusta State University and MidlandsTechnical College. In addition to preparing for solo exhibitionsfrom Tennessee to South Korea, she volunteers as arts educationcoordinator for the 701 Center for Contemporary Arts, as well ascurates exhibits and teaches art workshops at S&S Art Supply onMain Street. In fact, she and S&S co-owner Eric Stockard areplanning their wedding for April 22 – Earth Day 2011. They metwhen she came into the store (then on Rosewood Drive) todistribute posters for a 701 CCA workshop.

“I fell for her the minute she walked through the door,”Stockard said. “I went home that evening and told my dad abouther. I said I was going to ask her out the next time she came inthe store.”

“Being with Eric is perfect,” Ladymon gushes. “He is very‘chillax.’ He takes things day by day. He mellows me out, and inreturn I keep him a little more task-oriented.”

“We are not necessarily opposites,” he said. “We complementeach other.”

Like Ladymon, Stockard is an artist. He says that when he firstsaw Ladymon’s artwork, he was captivated as much by it as bythe artist herself. As someone who was raised in the arts andwho embraces abstract expressionism, he noted that few peopleappreciate or even understand how much work truly goes intoabstract art, and Ladymon achieves a depth and personalinvolvement that is quite unique.

“I wish my abstract stuff looked like that,” he said. “I am apart-time artist and haven’t really practiced in a very long time.Most of my schooling was in industrial design.”

From her unheated studio that doubles as a dog house for thecouple’s two pets, Noir and Oreo, Ladymon braves the cold towield an eclectic array of materials that comprise her super-sized3-D installations. Using anything from fabric and wire to plasterand metal, Ladymon delights in the process of creativeexploration. And the scale rather defines itself.

“I think the goal for me is to do large installations,” she said.“I am a pretty claustrophobic person. I don’t like small spaces. Ihave to work big. Otherwise, I feel confined.”

That appears to be the case in Ladymon’s life as well. She doeseverything big – including supersized vaginas.

“Everyone has two birthdays,” writes poet Billy Collins (citingEnglish essayist Charles Lamb): “the day you were born and NewYear’s Day.” One marks the “joyous anniversary” of existence, hesays, but the other “marks nothing but the passage of time”(“New Year’s Day,” from Ballistics, Random House, 2008). [Seepages 48-49 for poems by South Carolina poets on the new year.]As this new year begins, the Poetry Society of South Carolina iscelebrating the passage of almost a century – and two birthdays –and Billy Collins, the former U.S. Poet Laureate, wasin Charleston for the gala celebration.Founded in Charleston in November 1920,the Poetry Society of South Carolina(PSSC) is the oldest state poetry soci-ety in the nation. On January 21the Society celebrated the 90thanniversary of the first member-ship meeting with a gala event,a sold-out banquet for mem-bers and their guests featuringa reading by Collins.

According to SouthCarolina’s state Poet Laureate,Marjory Wentworth, theSociety was known for bringingin the nation’s greatest livingpoets – “that’s part of its history,”she said – so it made sense to cele-brate the anniversary with a promi-nent poet like Collins. The author of 12collections of poetry, Collins was dubbedthe most popular poet in America by the NewYork Times in 1999, and served as the nation’s PoetLaureate from 2001 to 2003. (The Poet Laureate – originallytitled the Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress – hasincluded such literary luminaries as William Carlos Williams,Elizabeth Bishop, and Robert Frost, as well as prominentSouthern writers such as Robert Penn Warren and James Dickey.)

Collins joins a long list of famous writers who have been guestsof the Society – Robert Frost (who read for the PSSC 3 times, in1929, 1951, and 1954), Carl Sandburg (4 times), Gertrude Stein,Marianne Moore, Padraic Colum, Carl Sandburg, SherwoodAnderson, Edna St. Vincent Millay, W. H. Auden, and RobertPenn Warren, to name just a few, and Harriet Monroe, thefounder of Poetry magazine.

The Poetry Society of South Carolina was founded in late 1920

by DuBose Heyward, Hervey Allen, and John Bennett, all promi-nent writers living in Charleston who championed a regionalistaesthetic and the use of local lore and regional culture—especial-ly African American culture—in the arts. (Though criticized nowfor racial stereotypes and the appropriation of folk culture,Heyward’s novel Porgy and later the musical Porgy and Besstransformed literary representations of African Americans;Heyward was influenced by Bennett, a pioneer in the study of

African American and Gullah culture. Allen co-edit-ed with Heyward a special 1922 Southern edi-

tion of Poetry magazine that highlightedregionalist and dialect verse) PSSC was

modeled after the Poetry Society ofAmerica, founded in 1910.

There were 250 people atthe Society’s first meeting thatJanuary evening in 1921 – itwas a who’s who, says JamesLundy, the current president,since Heyward had invited thecream of Charleston society tojoin. Membership was limitedto 250, says Lundy, since that

was the seating capacity for theSociety’s meeting hall, and there

was a long waiting list of would-bemembers.

Historians such as Walter Edgar (inhis 1998 South Carolina: A History) and

Harlan Greene (in the South CarolinaEncyclopedia) argue that the Poetry Society of

South Carolina was at the forefront of the SouthernLiterary Renaissance. Edgar calls it the most significant of thecultural organizations developing in the state in the 1920s and1930s, and Greene not only credits PSSC with the “first flower-ings” of the Renaissance but also says that as an umbrella artsorganization it both “fostered the cultural rebirth of the area” andcontributed to the development of other cultural organizations,such as the Preservation Society of Charleston.

PSSC was also known nationally for its contests and cashawards that Lundy says were significant for the time. The organ-ization still offers writing contests that draw entrants nationwideand publishes a literary annual featuring the prize-winningpoems. While it may not have the national prominence it oncehad, PSSC remains the first and oldest state poetry society in the


Poetry Society of South CarolinaCelebrating 90 Years of Southern Culture

poetry


nation, and it continues to promote the reading and writing ofpoetry, hosting regular writers groups for members since theearly 1920s, as well as readings by both local and visiting poets.

Along with monthly readings, the Society has also sponsoredpoetry walks in Charleston that bring to life – through onsitereadings, sometimes in costume – the literary history ofCharleston. More recently the Society hosted a Dead PoetsCelebration at Magnolia Cemetery, again to highlight the literaryhistory of the region.

Membership now is less a social registry than a community ofpracticing writers. Members boast about the value of the read-ings, but even more so about the value of the writing communityPSSC offers them. “PSSC has done a great job of inviting excep-tional poets to read and teach workshops,” said Susan Meyers ofSummerville, winner of last year’s undefined poetry contest.

Wentworth, who has been involved in the organization sincethe early 1990s, credits PSSC with her first introduction to thearts communities of South Carolina after moving here in 1989.Among her favorite memories are the society’s Christmas partiesat John Bennett’s house in downtown Charleston when she firstjoined. “It was just like being in a movie,” she says. Everyonebrought a favorite Christmas poem to recite. “It was magical.”

Denny Stiles, a member for 15 years (and president twice),credits the organization with his own productivity: “WithoutPSSC contests and writers groups, I would probably have writtenonly about half as much as I have since 1994.” But Wentworthsuggests further that the organization has grown into a real com-munity, “abnormally nice and generous.”

Present at this year’s anniversary gala was John Ziegler, at 98the oldest member of PSSC and the last living link to the Society’sfounders. Originally from Manning, Ziegler attended his firstPSSC Writers’ Group meeting in 1931 while he was a student atthe Citadel. Later, after serving in World War II, he and his long-time partner, Edwin Peacock, settled in Charleston and cofound-ed the Charleston bookstore, The Book Basement. (Ziegler andPeacock are the subjects of a fascinating documentary history byJim Sears, Edwin and John: A Personal History of the AmericanSouth [2009].)

Lundy, Wentworth and Myers are all concerned about the needto extend the influence of PSSC throughout South Carolina, andWentworth about the need for more coordination among thestate’s various literary organizations. “My main wish,” saysMeyers, “is that we could find a way to make the programs avail-able to more poets across the state.” But for now, the Societyremains a Charleston-based organization, with about half of themembers living in the Charleston area

Phebe Davidson of Westminster, a member of the Society for 19years, thinks the organization is well on its way to alleviating con-cerns about the organization servicing only the lower portion of thestate. "When I came on board, the organization was prettyCharleston-centric, but it still afforded some publishing opportuni-ties statewide." She insists there's a real shift these days though."Since that time, it's become a more genuinely statewide operationthrough workshops and readings sponsored in partnership withother organizations. I find that especially heartening,"

For more information about the Society, see: www.poetrysocietysc.org.

story: Ed Madden

story: Robert LeHeup photography: Mark Pointer

David Axe

interview

is a regular guy

If you met David Axe at a coffee shop or bar in the Midlands, you likely would find him open and engaging, funny and opinionated,

just a regular guy. You’d never imagine that he is a freelance war correspondent and comic book writer from Columbia, where he’s

lived for well over a decade. You wouldn’t know that Axe has been a correspondent for BBC Radio and C-Span or that he used to write

for the “War Room” column at Wired.com. You probably wouldn’t know about the many books he’s written, including Army 101:

Inside ROTC in a Time of War, a nonfiction work about University of South Carolina Reserve Officers Training Corp students that

was published in 2007 by the University of South Carolina Press; or about War Fix, a graphic novel he wrote in 2006 about his own

personal war while he was in Iraq battling an addiction-like fascination with the carnage of battle and published by NBM Publishing.

It made Amazon’s 2006 Top Ten List.

He might not tell you about his new book published bythe New American Library, War is Boring: Bored Stiff,Scared to Death in the World’s Worst War Zones,

which he co-wrote in 2010 with Matt Bors; or his other newbook, Love and Terror, a sequel to War Fix which will bepublished by NBM. He also has a book coming out in late Julycalled From A to B: How Logistics Fuel American Power andProsperity. He was kidnapped twice in Chad in the summer of2008 and was caught in an ambush in Afghanistan in the fall of2009. He would likely say nothing of the Taliban shooting at himeither. He won’t mention any of these accomplishments andclose calls any more than he’ll demonstrate the kind ofbattle-shocked demeanor one might expect from a 32 year-oldman who has experienced the sights and sounds and shit that hehas. No sign of a tumultuous past, no paranoia, no thousand-yardstare. David Axe – just a regular guy.

Having recently returned from a month-long trip toAfghanistan, one of many, Axe shows no signs of trauma tohimself or his psyche, a far cry from the war-torn mentalities ofso many returning from war zones. His nonchalant demeanor israre indeed, born from the ability to disconnect that he hascultivated after so many trips to places most of us can’t evenimagine – Iraq, Lebanon, East Timor, Afghanistan, Nicaragua,the Congo, Chad. Since 2005, Axe has visited eight differentwar-torn countries, all tallied, if you include the time that hespent hunting pirates while on the USS Donald C. Cook offthe coast of Somalia. That’s right. Pirates. When asked if he wasscared at all, he responds like he doesn’t really want to talkabout it.

“There are millions of square miles of ocean, and you’re not

likely to find any pirates,” he says.Why would a young man put his life at risk in the com-

pany of people who have as much interest in killing himas they do keeping him alive? Money? Hardly. Axe livesbelow the poverty line like most of us, realizing morethan most that “below the poverty line” for Americansis “the executive suite” in most other places. Fame?Have you ever heard of him? Granted, in the field ofInternet-based war correspondence, he’s one of the bet-ter-known scribes. In a 2010 article on the writer,Rolling Stone described his work as “hot” and gave Waris Boring major play. Axe is more under the radar than the IEDs he routine-

ly dodges on correspondent duty in the Middle East. Infact, the most attention he receives is from people whoread his blog, War is Boring, which focuses on his workand the potential psychological effects of war reportingon journalists. His blog receives roughly 60,000 hitsa month. And who reads his blogs? “Mostly fucktards,” Axe says. “There’s like 40 percent

constructive criticism and 60 percent are people wholive with their mom and masturbate in the basement.” Axe’s motivation is simple. He writes so that he canunderstand the world around him. He uses his craft tominiaturize life in order to separate the important bits

and see how they interact. He chooses war because that’s wherethe most important minutia reside. In hot zones, no one caresabout spilling their coffee or getting into a fender-bender. Topeople at war, those issues are laughable.

This wide disparity in cultures allows stories to practicallysplatter onto the page, permitting details to fall like JacksonPollock paints, leaving awritten canvas that is bothrelatable and abstract to mostwho view it. This point ismade all the more real whenyou stand in line with Axe ata local coffee house or bar.He laughs more freely thanmost people who know whathe does would ever think hecould, essentially unfet-tered by concern for theinconsequential dramasfrom which the rest of uscannot seem to escape.

To set himself even far-ther apart, Axe has chosento write his war stories ingraphic novel form, amedium too often ridiculed anddismissed by non-readers as sophomoric. Inspired by suchauthors as Ted Rall (To Afghanistan and Back) and Joe Sacco(Palestine), he grew roots and found success in an industry noto-rious for being practically impenetrable.



“My comic books I’m really proud of. The other stuff is justwork,” Axe says. “Books like From A to B, they’re boring. If I’mlucky, there are probably 10,000 people who may want to readthat book. I wrote (From A to B) because I like it and because it’sanother job. Somebody’s got to write them, and not everyoneneeds Harry Potter or Twilight.”

Why did Axe choose to report wars rather than to fight inthem? To use cameras rather than M-4s? The man has spentyears touring war-torn countries, years wading through anarchicmaelstroms to tell the true stories of the brutality he haswitnessed daily.

“I don’t trivialize our soldiers,” he says “The tragedies are byno means lessened by those involved. It’s simply that there areworse wars being fought right now.”

But coming from these violence-riddled places, surely he hadfelt the bloodlust that so many eventually succumb to in the darkheat of aggression. Asked if he’d ever be tempted to pick up a gunand join the orgy of violence, Axe replies thatany weapon he owned would be more a philo-sophical point than a practical one.

“I don’t believe that any one group orperson should have a monopoly on violence,”he explains. “I just don’t want to kill anyone.”

That said, it is worth mentioning that Axehas a fully functional, matte-black BulgarianAK-47 mounted in his kitchen. Ironically, heviews himself neither as a war correspondentnor an artist, though, by definition, he isboth. He’s become an integral and welcomeaddition to the Columbia art scene, which heregards dismissively, not in arrogance butfrom a belief that Columbia doesn’t caremuch about its writers. Axe believes that theother artists, though sparse, barely funded,and rarely prolific, are still very capable andfilled with potential.

“But,” he adds, “this is Columbia. Ourstandards are reduced.”

Though some would argue that there is atragedy in this statement, it hasn’t stoppedAxe from staying in the city. He graduatedfrom the University of South Carolina with amaster’s degree in English and found love,friends, and enough time and space to fulfillthe niche he’s made for himself, acknowledg-ing that this is what he very well may be doingfor years and years to come. This is, of course,contrary to what Axe has been doing andwhere he is going next.

“I’m fucking retired,” he exclaims. “I have adeep affinity for my job and for extreme trav-el, but I don’t feel a dark drive to go gallivant-ing around shithole war zones. I’ve done it.”

You see, this is only a ritual Axe goesthrough every time he returns from a combatzone. He returns from the hell his art has

compelled him to visit, relaxing with the catharsis he’s been ableto wrest from his work, but only for a day or so. Then there arethe TV spots, magazine articles – think The Village Voice,Esquire, C-Span, Popular Mechanics, and Rolling Stone, forexample – deadlines, and scripting. After only a few weeks, thewar-lust kicks back in without fail, and off he goes. Axe plans toreturn to Afghanistan in March of 2011, for example, to reporton the impact of the U.S. military’s withdrawal, both on thetroops and on the Afghanis. Once more into the breach, DavidAxe style.

For this reason, Axe is an artist in the truest sense of the word,driven to attempt an understanding of the riotous world aroundhim. His talent and passion have brought him to the deadliest partsof the world, and he’s returned with stories of both beauty andatrocity that move us to contemplate the horrors that some maybelieve to be innate in us all. Yet to watch him stroll down MainStreet talking on a cell phone, he’s clearly just a regular guy.

story: Cynthia Boiter photography: James Quantz


Blue Sky

artist

If the painter, muralist, and installation artist WarrenEdward Johnson bristles at the moniker of local artist tohis hometown of Columbia, South Carolina, it is notbecause he doesn’t love his home – it’s primarily becausehe is so much more than a simple local artist to theveritable United Nations panel of fans in foreigncountries who follow his work devotedly; a reality toomany of Columbia’s local art lovers fail to appreciate.

30

Known as Blue Sky sincelegally changing his namein 1974 while absorbed in

a period of celibacy, vegetarianism,a type of meditative consciousnesscalled Nirvikalpa Samadhi, and thetutelage of a couple of fairlyintense hallucinogenic substances,Sky built a reputation based notonly on the paintings and muralshe created in South Carolina, buton those he designed and installedthroughout the United States.Duplications of the artist’s workshave been featured in dozens ofinternational books and journalsover the past 30 plus years.Examples of his art, particularlyhis (literally) world-famoustrompe l’oeil mural Tunnelvision,located on the external wall of theAgFirst Farm Credit Bank onTaylor Street in downtown

Columbia, appear in periodicals alongside those of suchluminaries as Johannes Vermeer, René Magritte, and HansHolbein. If Blue Sky is not a megastar in South Carolina, restassured that, in many other places in the world, he is.

One of four children born to Jesse Johnson, who grew up in anorphanage on Columbia’s Millwood Avenue, and an anxious butartistically gifted mother named Linnie Rae Aiken, Sky grew upin a home that was short on money but long on art. When timeswere tough, Linnie Rae painted with shoe polish and taught herson how to sculpt with clay dug from the backyard of the houseon Woodrow Street that the Johnsons shared with anotherfamily. Sky’s artistic talents presented themselves early and, as aboy, he drew everything from abstractsketches to World War II aircraft withprecise detail, often along the pages ofhis notebooks and homework. A HandMiddle School teacher noticed his youngtalent and encouraged the boy to enterart competitions and poster contests,which he tended to handily win.

Upon entering Dreher High School,Sky fell under the mentorship of the artteacher, Moselle Skinner, whointroduced Sky to the AbstractExpressionism she had learned aboutduring her studies in New York City.Recognizing his almost precocioustalent, Skinner offered Sky his own artstudio behind the school’s art room andmade it available to him at any time. Itwas while in this private studio that Skyfirst began to paint with oils as well as toleave the studio behind to experiment

with techniques in plein air painting – a practice he continues tothis day.

“Nothing rivals the experience of painting outside onlocation,” Sky says. “I do it now and I think about theImpressionists and the direction that those innovators took artin back then; it amazes me. Impressionism may well have beenthe greatest period in painting because of the way it openedpeople up to seeing the beauty in everything around them.”

Sky reminisces about his early days of plein air painting whenhe was one of a gang of young artists who would pile into carscarrying paints, easels, wine, beer, and bread.

“We would head out to the park and paint for hours, and someof those paintings actually turned out pretty good,” he says.“Besides, there’s nothing more fun than partying with a group ofartists.”

Though passionate about art at an early age, the lack of bothmoney and, sometimes, confidence proved to be obstacles in theyoung man’s realization of becoming a professional artist. Inaddition to serving as a technician in the Air National Guard,Sky also worked at various jobs including typesetting and layoutfor R. L. Bryan, designing fluorescent signs inside and out,designing and building parade floats, drafting large scaleblueprints, and instructing others in the art of ballroom dance.Though he enrolled at the University of South Carolina in 1958,he frequently skipped semesters due to a lack of fundingfor tuition. Much of his success at the university can be creditedto his mentor and chairperson of the Art Department,Edmund Yaghjian.

In 1944, Yaghjian was living an elite life in New York City,where he had studied under John French Sloan and Stuart Davis,leading members of the Ashcan school of realist artists, and wasteaching at his former alma mater, the Art Students League ofNew York. But in 1945 he left New York to enter academics, firstat the University of Missouri, then at the University of SouthCarolina. Sky was impressed by the fact that Yaghjian’s art had

undefined : book ten

Freshman drawing project by Warren Johnson


shown at places like the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 1944and the Carnegie Institute in 1945, but he was more moved byhis mentor’s lack of affectedness when it came to his talent andthe way he respected the various talents and temperaments ofhis students.

“He was a well known and immensely talented artist and wewould sit for hours in Yaghjian’s office just talking and looking atart magazines,” Sky remembers. “One afternoon I was sitting inhis office reading a magazine and Yaghjian walked in andwanted to know why I wasn’t in class. I told him I didn’t have themoney for tuition. Yaghjian reached for his checkbook and hand-ed me a check, and that’s how I went to school that semester.”

It was also Yaghjian who got Sky his first New York job in 1961illustrating books for Harper New York; an exacting practicethat proved financially successful but taught the young artistthat he was less interested in precision design and moreinterested in being true to his own artistic purpose. “I thinkYaghjian planned it that way,” Sky says, cutting his gaze to thecorner of his eye and smiling.

Upon graduation from USC, Sky was already freelancing forWest Columbia’s Colite Company designing large scale signs andgetting comfortable working with the kinds of heavy dutymaterials and tools he would one day use in his sculptures. Hisfrustration with oil paints’ lengthy drying time led him to workwith not only watercolors but also automobile paint, a processhe learned from Yaghjian. Still discovering his own style, hefocused on paintings of room corners with their commonplacefurnishings for a while. Then in 1963, during one of his belovedgroup plein air painting sessions, he created Round Sound, arealistic watercolor painting of a pair of railroad signal lights thathe mounted in a contextualized mixed-media frame. The paint-ing first won the 1963 Motorola Regional Art Show and then, outof hundreds of entries, caught the eye of Henry Geldzahler,judge of 1964’s Sixth Annual Springs Mills Art Contest, whoawarded the painting Best in Show and lauded it in a pressrelease for its “technical ability and freshness of vision.”

At the time, Geldzahler was serving as the curator of theMetropolitan Museum of Art in New York and, over the years,he developed a pattern of moving in close social circles with theartists he endorsed – artists like Andy Warhol, Willem deKooning, Frank Stella, David Hockney, and South Carolina’sown Jasper Johns – who had also studied under Yaghjian forthree semesters at the University of South Carolina. UponGeldzahler’s discovery of Blue Sky at the Spring Mills ArtContest, he invited the artist to travel to New York where heplanned to introduce him to various gallery owners and artpatrons “in the know,” Sky says.

“I went to New York during the summer of 1964, andGeldzahler took me around, and I met the people he wanted meto meet. But they didn’t really impress me,” he recalls. “I knew Iwas meeting people who were important and who, I guess couldhave helped me out in my career. But I didn’t like the lifestyle –we weren’t communicating. I just never felt comfortable.” Skyand Geldzahler lost touch after their summer visit.

Sky did return to New York City the next year, however, andhe worked there as an industrial design draftsman for wages on

which he could barely subsist while he also studied at theillustrious Art Students League of New York. The crowds andnoise of the city bothered him though and his long mass transitcommute took time away from his art. In April, a long anddisappointing Sunday afternoon drive to the city’s nearby JonesBeach, with its traffic and small, over-crowded plots of sand,proved to be the last straw for the young Southern man who, thenext day, resigned from his job, packed his belongings in his car,and headed home to South Carolina.

“It was like a rebirth for me,” he remembers. “At 27, I’d alwaysdreamed that one day I would be a New York artist painting inan apartment somewhere, happy and productive. I expected it,and maybe I was on the way to making it happen, but it didn’tfeel right. I don’t think it ever would have.”

Sky drove directly to the beaches of Pawley’s Island where hestood on the sand that stretched as far as he could see, and thencried most of the way home. But the experience of living and

“If you look at my painting priorto 1967, prior to LSD, then look atit afterward, you’ll see an amazingtransformation”

working in New York served him well. “It told me something – how much I love

South Carolina,” he says. “A lot of peopleblame their failures on where they live.They think that if only they lived in amore progressive place or if only thepeople around them were different, thattheir lives would be different, too.Suddenly they would be successful andhappy and everything would be perfect.I’m here to say, ‘not necessarily.’”

Time back in South Carolina found Skyin graduate school at what was USC’sHilton Head Island arts campus work-ing in watercolors, devoting himselfto representational art – his subject almostalways being the Southern landscape that he had sobitterly missed while in New York – and antagonizing almostevery authority figure who crossed his path. “I think I was apretty sarcastic SOB back then,” Sky wryly admits now.

But within a matter of just a few years, a pattern began toemerge in which the artist would experiment with new paintingstyles and subjects and, quite often, the patrons who saw hisworks would scoop them up as fast as he could make them. DaveCuthbertson, owner of Columbia’s now defunct Laurel Gallery,

invited Sky to stage his first solo show there in 1967; which wasfollowed by a successful student show at Hilton Head Island;and, in 1968, a request from publisher Robert Wilkins to sketcharchitectural landmarks for Sandlapper Magazine. Blue Sky’sfirst truck back painting – literally a painting of the rear of anindustrial vehicle and the first of many automotive creations tocome – was chosen for inclusion in the 1970 AmericanWatercolor Society exhibition in New York City, despite theartist’s absence from the organization’s official ranks. A paintingof a 1957 Cadillac, painted with automotive lacquer and entitled,Cream Puff, was given the Purchase Award in 1971’s SpringsMills Show and was deemed by the adjudicator, Perry Rathbone,director of the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, to be “a distin-guished work … subtle and poetic.”

That same year, gallery ownerBetsy Havens staged an exhibitionof Blue Sky’s work which con-sisted of, in large part,watercolor depictionsof South Carolina

beach scenes. Every painting in the showsold. A repeat performance two years

later resulted in another sold-outHavens show. Finally, it looked as ifthe artist had found his way tosucceed on his own terms. Yet despite his success, Sky felt troubled.

“Since about 1970 I had become prettymuch a party guy.” Sky says, recalling astring of time that centered on fast carsand alcohol that left him feeling empty.“But I reached a point where nothing was

satisfying; I knew there had to bemore. I read the Bible and said to

myself, what is this all about? Then Iwent into a little shop that was in Five Points called

the Joyful Alternative and asked for a book that would help meunderstand the meaning of life.”

Sky was directed to the book, The Autobiography of a Yogi, byParamahansa Yogananda; his reading of it signaled thebeginning of a spiritual journey that the artist says he is still on.

“I went celibate for seven years and became a vegetarian – I stillam,” he says. “For a while I ate mostly fruit and nuts … went fromweighing 180 pounds to 117 pounds when I was working onTunnelvision. But the most meaningful thing I did was learn to

practice Nirvikalpa Samadhi,” a type of intentional consciousnessthat allows the practitioner to meditate even while moving.

“I developed a ritual of walking a single rail of the railroadtracks every morning in the dark without looking down,” he says,explaining that he would begin his trek on the tracks at GreeneStreet in Five Points, even in icy weather. “At first I could only goabout 10 steps without falling; by the time I was done I could goa solid hour on the rail without falling off. I was fine-tuning mymind.”

Sky practiced this ritual every day for about 15 years, oftenwalking directly toward an on-coming train, balancing both hisbody and his fear, leaving the rails at the last safe moment to doso. He quit the practice only when he and his wife Lynn movedfrom their Green Street home. “I don’t actively meditateanymore,” he says, “But I still practice focusing – that’s whatpainting is for me. It is the ability to focus on something untilyou see it clearly. We think we already see things clearly,” he saysshaking his head, “but usually we don’t.”

“You can’t paint something until you really see it. Perceptionis everything, and manipulating perception is what my muralsare all about. If anyone looks at one of my murals, for example,and they say, ‘that’s a good mural,’ then I’ve failed,” he explains.“I want people to question their own perceptions.”

Sky’s own ability to question and study perception wasenhanced by the use of the semi-synthetic psychedelic drug,lysergic acid diethylamide, or LSD, as well as the occasionalingestion of psilocybin mushrooms. “You can’t paint while

undefined : book ten

“I developed a ritual of walking a single rail of the railroad tracks everymorning in the dark without looking down.”

32

you’re using these substances, butthey certainly blow the cobwebs out

of your mind when you approachpainting afterward,” he explains.

“If you look at my painting prior to1967, prior to LSD, then look at it

afterward, you’ll see an amazing transforma-tion,” he goes on, “It becomes extremely

colorful. Previously, I mostly saw and usedbrowns and grays; after LSD, there are colors

you haven’t seen before. It peels away veilsfrom your mind. As a defense mechanism

your mind protects you from reality – butLSD is less merciful. It shuts your controlcenter down and what you see is

unedited. As an artist I needed to see the channels ofpower that are flowing underneath the surface.”According to the artist, he eventually reached thepoint that he didn’t need the drugs anymore. “Theirwork on me was done,” he says.

It was about this time in 1974 that the artist,who still answered to his given name of WarrenJohnson, made the decision to legally change his name

to Blue Sky. “I felt like I was nolonger the

same personand I wanted my name to reflectthat transformation,” he says. And it was soonafter that he was moved to begin what may be thedefining project of his career – the 75 by 50 foot trompel’oeil mural, Tunnelvision; the first of its kind in SouthCarolina and a public art creation that put Columbia on themap for arts and oddities throughout the world. But odditywas not what the artist was going for.

“I wanted to paint something that would embody a passage-way for the transformation toward illumination that I had madein my own life, and I wanted to graphically demonstrate howmost people see enlightenment” he explains, “and it literallycame to me in a dream. I had tried three different times to getthe South Carolina Arts Commission to fund the painting of amural on the north wall of the Federal Land Bank on TaylorStreet, but I was turned down every time. Finally, I woke up onemorning and recalled a dream about the tunnels in themountains of the Blue Ridge Parkway, and it all fell into place inmy mind.”

On his fourth application to the SCAC, Sky was granted fund-ing in the amount of $3000 to paint the year-long project,virtually all of which went toward purchasing supplies. Paintingwith exterior acrylic latex enamel from the bucket of a one-manmoveable scaffold called the Sky-Car that he designed and builthimself, Sky painted to the music of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphonywith an eye toward authenticity and realism.

The 1975 unveiling of the painting garnered internationalattention. The following year the mural was featured in PeopleMagazine and Readers Digest and the artist was flooded withrequests to give talks and, most importantly, create more murals.

Uninterested in the attention, Sky left Columbia andtook temporary refuge in a Kriyamonastery in California. The Carmelarea of California has since servedoften as an interim sanctuary for theartist who disdains publicity butloves his art and coming back to hishome in Columbia.

Over the 35 years since he created what some, though notnecessarily Sky himself would consider his masterpiece – “Mybest work is yet to come,” he says – the artist has beencommissioned to create interior and exterior murals throughoutSouth Carolina as well as in other parts of the United States.Overflow Parking, painted in 1978 in Flint, Michigan, for example,uses trompe l’oeil to create the illusion of a parking lot thatextends up the wall of the local newspaper, the Flint Journal. InFort Pierce, Florida, the 15 by 20 foot mural Night Train suggestsa huge locomotive engine emerging from a downtown wall.

Appropriately controversial, some of Sky’s other local publicart displays have either appeared seemingly out of nowhere,disappeared into the earth, or required his home town’s not-always-patient art patrons to wait in exasperation for the unveiling.


Funded entirely by the artist himself, NEVERBUST is a 25foot long chain of welded steel links that are 5 feet indiameter and stretch between two historic buildings onColumbia’s Main Street. Though Sky had the consent of thebuilding owners to create the installation, he feared the citywould censor him if he went through the proper channels forapproval of such a project. So early on a Sunday morning in2000, he crept onto Main Street and installed the pre-constructed sculpture as a surprise to the waking city. Whenthe project finally went before the Landmark’s Commission itwas unanimously approved.

Busted Plug Plaza, on the other hand, which was installedin 2001, was a project kept under the literal wraps of a giantgray tarp for the 14 months it took the sculpture to becompleted. Weighing in at 675,000 pounds and more thanfour stories high, the sculpture of the fire hydrant in thecenter of the plaza qualifies as the world’s largest and islocated in the Tunnelvision parking lot along Taylor Street.

Kawasakisaurus is a 2003 site-specific sculptureinstallation in Columbia’s Vista on the corner of Senate andPulaski Streets on land owned by South Carolina Bank andTrust. Constructed from 16 carefully positioned abandonedmotorcycles and a Volkswagen Beetle fender, all encrustedwith cement and then painted the color of bleached bones,Kawasakisaurus creates the illusion of an archeological digsite for a stylized and fairly unusual fossilized dinosaur.Rather, it created the illusion. In 2007, representatives fromthe bank consulted Sky about moving the site-specific art to alocation along the coast of the state. They were willing to payfor the move but had no intentions of compensating the artistfor the reconstruction of the sculpture.

“Besides,” says Sky, “it is a site-specific piece of art. It wasconstructed for that site, and it was made from motorcyclesfound in the old razed City Garage that had previouslyoccupied the lot where the bank now stands.”

After a period of failed negotiations, the artist instructedbank officials to simply cover his work up with sod ratherthan move it, which, appallingly, they did.

South Carolinians are not short on good fortunes to take forgranted – cost of living, pristine beaches, and January thaws,for example – nor are we immune from the human tendency


So early on a Sunday morningin 2000, he crept onto

Main Street and installed thepre-constructed sculpture as a

surprise to the waking city.

to undervalue what we think we know well and possess inabundance. It is always the exchange rate that tells the taleso it’s not really surprising that, like a South Carolina peachin the dessert sun, some treasures gain value when removedfrom the place they were raised. Artists are no exception.

Hanging in the halls of the Smithsonian Institution,The White House, and the homes of unlikely collectors likeHenry Kissinger and others, are original paintings by localColumbia artist, Blue Sky. To read about his work inEnglish, consult the pages of such respected periodicals asThe Christian Science Monitor, Oxford American,House and Garden, orNational Geographic, notto mention dozens moreranging from Penthouse toWeekly Reader. But to readabout his work in otherlanguages, you’ll have to setaside some time as well as ashelf in your personal libraryto house the books andperiodicals that have coveredand continue to cover theartist and his work. There isMural Art by Kiriako Iosifidis,from Greece, Arte e Illusioneby Italy’s Anna Maria Giusti,and the Netherlander NicolaasMatsier’s Het Bedrogen Oogdekunst van de trompe-l'oeil,which depicts Blue Sky’sTunnelvision both within itspages and on the back cover. Thewriter Volker Barthelmeh, authorof Street Murals (which alsocontains Sky’s work) and otherbooks, even staged a galleryshowing of nothing but photographs and otherdepictions of Blue Sky’s Tunnelvision in his small town inGermany. The list continues in languages that range fromSwedish to Flemish to Chinese.


From top left:NEVERBUSTTunnelvisionOverflow ParkingZen Truck


Given the preponderance of international attention andaccolades bestowed on one of Columbia’s own artists, it mayseem surprising that Blue Sky is not universally held in higheresteem in our city, much less in the intimacy of our artscommunity. Yes, he was awarded the Order of the Palmetto byGovernor Hodges – South Carolina’s highest civilian honor – butthat was in 2000. In the more than ten years since, and withwhat many arts insiders consider to be a burgeoning if nascentrenaissance in Columbia’s local art scene, the popularity of oneof our most famous artists seems to have, if anything, dwindled.This state of affairs isn’t lost on the man himself.

“Up until about the last five years, I felt like Columbiasupported me,” he says. “Now maybe they are bored with me;maybe they think I am past my prime – that I don’t haveanything new to offer… But most of the work that I have donefor the city throughout my life I have ended up doing essentiallyfor free, and I’m okay with that. My father was an orphan who

grew up to become a firefighter – a public servant,” he pauses. “Iguess that’s how it’s ending up for me. I’m a public servant to acity that I love and that I call my home.”

Blue Sky reaches into his satchel to pull out two books; one awell-worn copy of a 1944 book of essays by Emerson, given tohim by his wife, Lynn, decades ago – “I must have read thisthrough 20 times,” he says, “It’s all you need to know” – theother, a copy of a new book just arrived from Belgium thatfeatures the top contemporary muralists in the world. Sky’swork is near the front, and again at the back.

“They listed me as one of the top muralists in the world inhere. No favors there, no politics. I feel honored and proud. Thereal world of art may just be a crapshoot,” he goes on. “But justthe same, it’s nice to be appreciated.”

“They listed me as one of the top muralists in the world in here. Nofavors there, no politics. I feel honored and proud. The real world ofart may just be a crapshoot,” he goes on. “But just the same, it’s niceto be appreciated.”

above: Grace - Rolls Royce right: La Femme Fatale


Years ago I wrote about pelicans, fireflies, seaturtles, andother wild creatures. A wildlife writer I was. The job tookme to strange outposts. One day I watched a biologist

drive yellow pine stakes into soggy earth the color of coffeegrounds. He explained drift fences to me.

“It’s a fence of canvas 18 inches high and as long as you like.Along the fence, we sink five-gallon buckets flush with theground every so often. Some creatures only come out at night,you know. Animals out and about crawl along it and drop intobuckets.”

And then an ominous note, “We do it in places where cata-clysmic change destroys the animals’ homes forever.” Standingup, he looked down the length of his fence. “At least we’ll knowwhat species used to live in this bog.”

There are drift fences for people too. We call them bars.

•••Another Thursday night. Arlene wets her finger and rubs it

along the rim of a cheap cocktail glass.“Someday it’ll sing a happy little tune for me,” she says. Arlene bores easily, drinks cosmopolitans, prefers sleeveless

black tops, and swears she’ll never marry again. Her one goal inlife is to have a baby fox—a red one. I can usually find her, thisdivorcée extraordinaire, habitué of the nightlife that she is. She’llbe at the bar fending off dilettantes, aloof, untamed, and unat-tainable. She drives men crazy and when they’ve had enough tor-ture, back into the night they go.

A sigh rides the blue smoke drifting from cherry red lips, andArlene tells me yet again why she left her husband. “He bored meto death. Can’t figure why I married him ... Nothing worse thanbeing young and green,” she said. “Unworldly. That’s the word.”

Arlene says she’s not getting older, just better. She says she’s notlike younger women who think life is all about finding a man withmoney. And she says she doesn’t want the messiness that comeswith relationships. Love à la carte.

“I’ll sleep with a man when I want to and at the end of theevening, he can go his way and I’ll go mine.”

Life without complications and messiness. That’s Arlene. Arlene’s seen drift fences galore and hundreds of biologists.

Men seek women and women seek men and often times thingsget mixed up along this crazy, upside down Boulevard of BrokenDreams.

Burdened with sad baggage, some drop in hoping to start anew.Others come to practice the art of seduction. Some are racon-

teurs and some are quiet. And many suffer a case of the blues aswide as the Mississippi Delta.

And some like Arlene just want a good deal.

•••“What do you do?” This leading question breaches walls. In

bars confessions pour forth as freely as the drinks. You’ll hear rev-elations and learn of tremendous defeats and victories. As trite asit sounds, “He left me for his secretary” is an all-too-familiar tale;it has its flip side though. One night a woman admitted to me thatshe had been sleeping with her husband’s boss a long time. Hesent her husband out of town with great frequency. Whenevershe asked him to.

Unexpected tales and events somewhat counterbalance thetales of love gone wrong.

One night I was having dinner with a woman at a nightspotwhen a man who looked like Jack Nicklaus sat next to us. LikeNicklaus, he was from Ohio. Turns out he was a diver, and whattales he told.

He and a co-worker were deep beneath the North Sea workingon an oil production platform when a distant-but-deep, thunder-ing rumble shook the sea. The volume grew, and the men didn’tknow what to make of it. Its crescendo unnerved them. Was it anundersea earthquake? Whatever it was, they knew it wasn’t good.On it came, closer and closer and thundering. Their heavy divingsuits trembled. Panic set in and then materializing from the cold,dense seawater, an apparition glided by: a Russian nuclear club,its red star unmistakable on the conning tower.

“Fast Eddie,” as I came to call him, turned to treasure hunting.In a second, he transported me from cold seawater to the sun-struck Caribbean. He had salvaged Spanish Doubloons, swords,and cannon balls.

“I’d love to see some Spanish Doubloons,” I said, thinking hewas a phony after that wild submarine tale. In a flash, he was outthe door. A few minutes later he came back and spreadDoubloons, a sea-encrusted sword, and cannon balls on thecounter. From nuclear subs to Spanish galleons as effortlessly asthrowing back a shot.

•••One evening, I met a native of Milan in a neighborhood pub—

a place with the potential for adventure thanks to the HamptonInn across the street. Ours was a chance meeting while havingdinner. A splendid brunette, a saleswoman, sat between us. After

fiction

story: Tom Poland

Drift Fences


that night we never saw her again. Even so, Paulo and I becamefriends. We began to meet and talk about life here and life in Italy,and our conversations revealed new worlds. We made it a habit tomeet often.

Cosmopolitan and a Casanova, Paolo adored women. Onenight he told me that he especially liked women with generousderrières—he held his hands apart the breadth of a sofa cushion.As he talked, a woman across the restaurant was leaning overtalking to a couple in a booth. She fit Paolo’s criterion.

“So, Paolo, that blonde? Is she your type?”Paolo sipped his Blue Moon, studied the woman. He put his

beer down, wiped crisp wheat beer from his lips, cocked his headas a curious dog does, and continued to appraise her. Then, hesaid, as earnest as a minister, “Noooooooo, eet does not have theprop-er ten-sion.”

•••Of course, not all moments along drift fences are so

adventurous or humorous. Life is but a sojourn and we are all,alas, sojourners.

There’s an iconic painting by Edward Hopper, Nighthawks, oneof American art’s most recognizable paintings, a painting of acouple and a man sitting at the bar of an all-night diner. One mansits alone. The people have spent a long night out on the town. It’slate. Very late. Something about that painting portrays lonelinessand if you’ve never seen it, you should. I, myself, find lonelinesstranscendent in an unexplainable way and so I like Nighthawks.

Whenever I look at Nighthawks and I do so often, I think oflonely people I’ve met. In particular I think of people whosuddenly vanish from the nightlife, killed by their habits. TheSicilian as Paolo called him, and the coughers who only had theirsmokes for companions.

“Unconsciously, probably, I was painting the loneliness of alarge city,” said Hopper. All isn’t doom and gloom. You meetpeople who are happy in pubs, sports bars, the old speakeasies ofyears gone by, but you cannot escape the sad and lonely. God blessthese hapless souls, these emotional drifters, the lost and thedamned.

The saddest are the ill-starred women in their late 40s andearly 50s who woke up one day to find themselves adrift on theBoulevard of Broken Dreams. Their husbands abandoned them inthe prime of life, but not for another woman as the old clichégoes. They died. For one, it was a heart attack. For another, astroke, and another, a car wreck.

Pleasant desperation cloaks these widows. They bathe in mis-ery. Life has forced them to begin anew, but alas, time is short,and, well, their best years are behind them. The mirror, she’s nofriend. Carla told me, “I never thought, at my age, that I’d bealone. I’m scared. I really don’t want to date again but I don’t wantto be alone.”

Tears welled up in her blue eyes, giving them a shimmer likewater running over lapis lazuli. I put my arm around her shoul-ders as she cried.

Carla is by no means alone. Her number is legion. Like autumnleaves, stunning women fall every day, coming down to earth inmore ways than one, and they know all too well what it means.

They wither and then ... winter arrives. One chilled night, the kind of night when frost paints a lattice-

work of ice across your windshield, I stayed longer than usual lis-tening to a widow, fresh from the graveside. Bereft? Sure, butdemanding too, pulling me close to her by my jacket. “I was mar-ried for many years,” she said and then in apology, “It’s been waytoo long for me.”

This woman jolted by love’s sudden loss walks through a cityrazed by war. Her world is unrecognizable, but she’s a survivor,hopeful of another chance, seeking an antidote for loneliness in adrift fence of all places, a place she looked on with disdain in herhaughty days.

•••To be human is to need the company of other humans, and life

alone night after night extracts a toll. “Loneliness and the feelingof being unwanted is the most terrible poverty,” said MotherTeresa.

Drift fences ... some people need to be surveyed now and then.Some need to feel they are regarded. Some need to escape theirformer life now that their home and all that’s familiar is about tobe destroyed.

Thus, some feel compelled to edge along life’s byways until theyspot a place where conversations flow like wine, where a lonelysoul can find a tonic for loneliness. It doesn’t matter who they areor what they do. Neglected wives, liberated widows, cuckolds, theestranged, the abandoned, the curious, the needy, the hormonal,the bored, those needing to prove themselves, those with agen-das, those seeking answers, and others need to be plucked,plucked from the bucket.

You loners, you drifters, you abandoned, you nighthawks, youknow that the loneliest time of the day takes place from 6 to 9p.m. That’s when the night creatures, a different sort of wildlife,begin to stir. Out they come, guided by a force they cannotresist—nocturnal nomads.

Lonely? Strike out and drop in. Pull up a stool and look around.Among the moody couples, along the clamorous bar, and in thecozy booths you’ll find spirits aplenty—not those in the glittering,beautiful bottles, but those in wandering souls—just come infrom a journey along the fence. So drink life in tonight. Join thePaolos, Fast Eddies, Carlas, and others. Learn of triumphs andtragedies. Add your narrative to the mix.

And Arlene? You’ll find her sipping those cosmopolitans sheloves so dearly. She’ll wet her finger and rub it along the rim ofyet another cheap cocktail glass. She’ll look about to see what thenight brings. As the first drink goes down, she sees worlds of pos-sibilities. Two, and the possibilities narrow. A few more and noth-ing matters except eluding the boring biologist next to her whodesires so desperately to pluck her from the bucket in this waystation along the Boulevard of Broken Dreams.

No stranger to drift fences, Southern writer Tom Poland has seen hisshare of nighthawks and drifters along the Boulevard of Broken Dreams.When he’s not out on assignment or working on a book, you can findhim somewhere along the boulevard. Check out his work at

tompoland.net

41 undefined : book nine

book columbia ,one one

Having Our Say, the Delany Sisters’ First Hundred Years by Sarah and Elizabeth Delany; with Amy Hill-Hearth. The One Book, One Columbia initiative encourages everyone in Columbia and all of Richland County to participate by reading Having Our Say, the Delany Sisters’ First Hundred Years by Sarah and Elizabeth Delany, with Amy Hill-Hearth. These women give a living history of their 100 years of life through their memories of growing up in the post-Reconstruction South, through Harlem’s Golden Age and into the 1990s.

Find out more at www.myRCPL.com/onebook.

Sisters’ First Hundred Yearseading participate by r

everyone in Columbia and all of Richland County to The One Book, One Columbia initiative encourages

with Amy Hill-Hearth. by Sarah and Elizabeth Delany; First Hundred Years Having Our Say, the Delany Sisters’

by Sarah and Elizabeth Sisters’ First Hundred YearsHaving Our Say, the Delany eading

everyone in Columbia and all of Richland County to The One Book, One Columbia initiative encourages

with Amy Hill-Hearth. by Sarah and Elizabeth Delany; First Hundred Years Having Our Say, the Delany Sisters’

e at www.myRCPL.com/onebook. Find out mor

the 1990s.ough Harlem’s Golden Age and into South, thr

owing up in the post-Reconstruction memories of grliving history of their 100 years of life thrDelany, with Amy Hill-Hearth. These women give a Sisters’ First Hundred Years

e at www.myRCPL.com/onebook.

ough Harlem’s Golden Age and into owing up in the post-Reconstruction

ough their living history of their 100 years of life thrDelany, with Amy Hill-Hearth. These women give a

by Sarah and Elizabeth Sisters’ First Hundred Years

oneoneoneoneoneoneoneoneoneoneoneoneone bookbookbookbookbookbookbookbookbook , , ,oneoneoneoneoneoneoneone ,bookbookbookbookbookbookbookbookbook ,book ,

columbiacolumbiacolumbiacolumbiaoneoneoneoneoneone columbiacolumbiacolumbiacolumbiacolumbiacolumbia

43 undefined : book teninterview: Sumner Bender

Wendell Culbreath

artist

is THE Dubber

Musician Wendell Culbreath was born in 1964 – the year of the dragon according to the Chinese ZodiacLunar Calendar. Dragons are known for their honesty as well as their stubbornness. They are brave,excitable, and inspire trust and confidence from everyone around them, and are viewed as the mosteccentric of all the eastern zodiacs. These statements all ring true for Wendell Culbreath, the man whosits, all in black, in a rolling chair tucked into the corner of the Richland County Public Library’s audiovisual room. His long dreaded locks are wrapped tightly in a head piece that juts out a foot behind himand slightly left of his head. The ease with which he sits radiates his nature – his groove and smooth-ness. His voice is deep and strong and he talks with a confidence that communicates that he is a force.His pinky ring is a lion’s head poised in mid growl, just like Culbreath himself – balanced, ready to talk,listen, and communicate like a beast on the prowl.

um: You grew up in inner-city Washington, DC. What was going on

in the mind of the 5-year-old Wendell Culbreath?

Dubs: I lived in a wonderful community there; it was very unified

and much different than it is today. There wasn’t all the violence andthe drugs, at least not for me at that age; those things didn’t comealong until round junior or high school for me – the early 80s. Youknew people … you knew your neighborhood.

um: Were you one of those kids who had posters on his wall?

Dubs: Oh man, the first poster I had on my wall was Michael

Jackson. When I was kid I grew out an afro like Michael, I had theboots that he wore, the vest, all that stuff. I also liked George Clintonand The Funkadelics, though – I’m still a huge Funkadelics fan.Another poster I had was KISS. I was part of the KISS Army – was ahuge KISS fan, went to their concerts and everything.

um: What was your favorite subject in school?

Dubs: Early on I was all about science, but then as I got older I

changed to history. The historical research intrigued me becausehistory is not always true. There are more sides to the story than justthe one you may be told. When I was in high school there was oneclass where I really needed a passing grade. See I was heavily into themusic scene in DC, called Gogo at the time, and I was also intounderground funk, and I spent too much of my time involved in itand that started to hurt my grades. I had to do a term paper for this

class and I ended up writing about Malcolm X. Doing that termpaper changed my life. I started to look at history, especiallyAmerican history, a lot differently. I started researching and tryingto figure out the different ways all these stories are told. And justgetting into a little bit of Malcolm’s story really opened up historyfor me

um: You go by the name, THE Dubber with a capital THE – what’s

that all about?

Dubs: I used to play with this group called The Dubbers of King

Selassie I out in LA. We had the opportunity to move back east. Wewere going back to DC where I thought we had a lot more opportu-nities and a good base spot to tour from. But it was hard because theother guys thought I had ulterior motives or something. Long storyshort, they left and I was stuck by myself. They kind of left me highand dry and I stopped doing music for a hot second. But I reallymissed performing. I realized that music is what I am here for –music is what makes me thrive.

um: After that momentary period of doubt what did you do to make

music happen for you again?

Dubs: Well I didn’t really force it. I knew a girl who invited me to

perform with her at an art show and … I got up there and I was allnervous, … but I did it and people really dug it. I mean they reallydug it. I was surprised. It just kind of started from there. I got acouple more offers to play shows and then people started asking if I


had any tracks of music for sale. And I hadn’t really thought about it. I wasn’t sitting backstrategizing on this – it just sort of flowed. I needed a name, I didn’t want to be WendellCulbreath, that’s not gonna stick for what I am doing. So I thought, man the Dubbers of KingSelassie I are over and I am the last man standing. So I deemed myself THE Dubber. CapitalT. Capital H. Capital E. THE Dubber.

um: Anyone who has ever talked with you has often heard you say, “Give Thanks.” Give

thanks for what?

Dubs: Well, I picked the phrase up through the Rastafarian culture. Saying give thanks is dif-

ferent than saying thank you. Thank you is just lip service; someone does something for youand that is the end of it. But when you say give thanks you are saying more. You did some-thing for me and I am thankful and I appreciate it, but don’t just say thanks and be done withit. Do the same. Take that good will and pass it on. Turn it around and spread it.

um: Let’s get morbid. If you died and could come back as a musical instrument, what would

it be?

Dubs: Easy, a guitar.

um: Is that the only instrument you play?

Dubs: Well, no, no I started out on the drums, but I was in DC in an apartment and you can’t

very well play drums in an apartment. Then I switched to bass guitar, and I borrowed mybuddy’s bass and broke a string. So this guy who owned the bass and his boys threatened tojump me and beat me up over the money for his bass strings. And I thought, whoa man it’sno big deal, but then when I went to buy the bass strings to replace the one I broke, I sawthat it cost thirty bucks for a pack of bass guitar strings. But right next to the bass strings wasa pack of regular guitar strings and they only cost three bucks. That, right there, is why Istarted playing the guitar.

um: Your new album is called Global Warning, with an n. Is that a play on the global warm-

ing weather phenomenon, i.e., global warming is heating up the earth the way you are heat-ing up the music scene?

Dubs: Exactly, I’m heating it up. Also, I am so revolutionary that revolutionaries don’t even

want to be around me. It’s like with Malcolm X. One day you realize that you are walkingdown a path that someone else has laid out for you, and you stop and step off that path andfind yourself alone. That is what makes you a revolutionary. I realized that, no matter what,you are always gonna be alone. No one is going to think and feel exactly the way you do. Areyou strong enough to hold your opinions and your thoughts when you start to feel the heatof everyone else; when you start to feel the criticism and the burn of those who don’t feelyou? If you can keep it up you might change a mind or two, and you might revolutionizesomeone else’s thinking.

Download GLOBAL WARNING from any online music source or visit THE Dubber’s Website at www.THEDubber.com


Laurie McIntoshLynn Parrott

An Exhibition of New Work

Gallery 80808March 24-29

Opening ReceptionThursday, March 24 • 6-9

808 Lady Street • Columbia, SC803.252.6134

Ivan Popov looks out across an empty dance floor atColumbia Classical Ballet studios, walls lined with woodenballet barres and mirrors, and though his perfectly postured

body is uncannily still, his eyes dance. Ridiculously tall, even sit-ting down, his almost intimidating blond hair is swept back fromhis face, nearly touching his shoulders. With his aquiline profile,the 28-year-old brings to mind old movie posters of men so mas-culine they wore togas and tights like it was the straight thing todo. A classically trained dancer in the strictest sense of the word,Popov came to dance in Columbia via the likes of the MariinskyBallet Theatre in Saint Petersburg, Russia, The Vienna StateBallet and, in the Unites States, the San Francisco Ballet.Interestingly enough, it is here where Popov feels most at home.

“I’ve never in my life seen so many crazy professional peopleas I see here,” he says in broken but accurate English. “And I seemyself among them.”

For a performer who grew up among a family of artists andgrew into a stellar career before he was even a man, this is pret-ty high praise.

It all started in Russia for Popov, whose father was the princi-pal dancer of the local ballet company in the town of Veronezhin the southwest corner of the country, near the Ukraine.Popov’s mother still works as a choreographer and his sister is aformer principal dancer with the Kremlin Ballet Theatre inMoscow.

“The night I was born they immediately took me to see myfather who was performing in a ballet at the time,” Popov says.“So they say I was born in the ballet theatre.”

Popov attended the Moscow State Ballet Academy for fiveyears before moving to Saint Petersburg where he studied at theVaganova Ballet Academy under Boris Bregvadze, the same bal-let teacher his father had studied under and, as Popov says, “ahuge star in Russian dance.” Bregvadze, who danced atLeningrad’s Kirov Academic Opera and Ballet Theatre, now thereclaimed Mariinsky Theatre, is in fact a legend among Russiandancers, notorious for only accepting students with the greatestpotential to excel in the discipline.

“Bregvadze seemed almost angry with me on the first day that

Ivan Popovis the Russian who belongs here.

dance



I went to dance for him,” Popov recalls. “He remembered myfather so he called me ‘Grandson’ and never let me out of hissight.”

Within three years Popov moved to the neighboring KirovBallet at the Mariinsky Theatre in Saint Petersburg to performprofessionally and was promoted to principal dancer at a faryounger age than is customary in Russia. “I became a principaldancer after only 14 or 15 performances, but I was young to dothis,” Popov says, explaining that most dancers in Russia do notbecome principals until after at least fifty exhibitions of their tal-ent.

Soon Popov was invited to join the Vienna State Opera Ballet,also as a principal dancer. “I accepted because dancing inVienna gave me the freedom to perform [the work of] a numberof choreographers whose work I would never be allowed to do inRussia,” he says, listing Sir Kenneth MacMillan’s L’histoire deManon, in which Popov danced the part of Des Grieux, and JohnCranko’s Onegin among the ballets he was most excited to per-form.

After three years, Popov received another call, this time fromHelgi Tomasson, artistic director of the San Francisco Ballet,inviting him to come to the United States specifically to dancewith French ballet luminary, Sofiane Sylve, formerly of theDutch National Ballet by way of the New York City Ballet.

“She is an amazing dancer,” Popov says. “It was an extremehonor to be sought out to be partnered with an artist like SofianeSylve.”

Once at the San Francisco Ballet, Popov found that he was lesslikely to be cast in the typically American-danced Balanchinedances: dances based on the work of Russian born dancer andchoreographer George Balanchine. Balanchine pioneered mod-ern ballet in the United States in the mid-twentieth century, butbased his choreography on the classical Russian technique hehad learned and practiced in his homeland and Europe.

“Finally, I asked to be allowed to try something from theBalanchine repertoire. I was given Balanchine’s The FourTemperaments, and I showed that I could do it well,” Popov says.Popov was so well-fitted for Balanchine choreography, in fact,that he was among a group of dancers from the San FranciscoBallet to receive an “Izzie” award, the Isadora Duncan Prize forensembles for their performance of Balanchine’s StravinskyViolin Concerto.

After dancing for a year in the United States, Popov returnedto Europe where he danced in Budapest with the HungarianNational Ballet, a 125-year-old company of 110 or more classical-ly trained dancers. Though he performed principal parts while inBudapest, Popov quickly began to miss the United States.

It was during a 2007 trip to Rome to compete in the PremioRoma Ballet Competition, that Popov met Mercedes Schindler,a young woman with a similar dance training background as hisown. Both artists won silver medals in their respective age cate-gories, but it didn’t take long for the two to recognize that theyhad even more in common – they were in love with each otherand they both wanted to dance in the United States.

“Several people recommended that I send my resume and aDVD of my performances to Radenko Pavlovich. He has a repu-

tation in Europe for helping non-American dancers come to theUnited States where they can have a career and a new home –which is what Mercedes and I were looking for,” Popov says.Radenko Pavlovich is the founder and artistic director ofColumbia Classical Ballet.

Pavlovich says he was delighted to receive Popov’s auditioninformation and immediately set about the task of bringing thecouple to Columbia. “I could tell he would be a perfect fit for ourcompany and for Columbia,” Pavlovich says.

“Radenko helped me get my visa to dance in America,” Popovsays nodding. “Without his help I could not have done this. Theysay it is easier to escape from Alcatraz than it is to get a visa towork in America. Not with Radenko helping you – it is muchsimpler.”

The couple bought a one-way ticket to the United States andarrived in the fall of 2010, just before the Columbia ClassicalBallet’s October performance of the ballet, Oz.

“It’s definitely good to have a dancer the caliber of Ivan inColumbia,” Radenko says. “We don’t have anyone else in thestate with the qualifications Ivan has. He works really hard andhe brings such artistry to the company. A lot of times youngerdancers are more concerned with showing off and seeing howmany pirouettes they can do … but Ivan is a surprisingly maturedancer for his age. I think he helps the other men in the compa-ny realize that there is more to being a great dancer than justpirouettes and athleticism. There is a sense of elegance, and Ivanhas that.”

Popov is equally as pleased with the ballet company and withColumbia in general. Popov lives near the dance studio on theForest Acres side of town where life is fairly simple. “I like it herea lot,” he says. “It is quiet, but that is the kind of atmosphere Iwant.”

What Popov likes the most though is his relationship with hisnew boss and mentor, Pavlovich. “After the first class I knew itwas a good place to be,” he says. “I see Radenko’s way of work-ing and I’m very happy to be here. In our profession, it is veryhard to meet somebody who sees things the way he does. He istrying to make me a better dancer for me, not for him.”

Popov continues in a quiet voice. “If you notice, after a balletperformance, he never wants to bow when the rest of the com-pany bows on the stage … he always wants to be behind thescenes. That is a good sign,” he says, leaning forward and nod-ding his head as if to buttress his assessment.

At this point, Pavlovich, who has been listening to the dancertalk from a doorway behind him, turns to walk to the lobby of hisstudio. He appears humbled, if not embarrassed.

“We have only been together for three months, but I feel astrong connection to Mr. Pavlovich,” Popov continues. “I havehad a lot of teachers before, but there is only one person, thewonderful Boris Bregvadze, who I trust as much as I trustRadenko Pavlovich.”

He looks over his shoulder toward the awkward sounds of hisnewest mentor who is obviously making noise in the next roomto avoid hearing what else the young man might say, and nodsagain, “I think I’m going to be here for a long time.”

story: Cynthia Boiter


To Catch the First NoteSouth Carolina Poets on the New Year

poetry

Winter Song, First Note

To listen for itis to wake at daylightand lie there on my back,eyes open, then closed,

wishing hardthe way a child wishesbefore the cake.Motionless so the sheets

won't swish, and my face toward the east window—the one, come spring, raised an inch

for the whole chorus.Hands by my side, spread open, palms upto catch the first note.

Susan Meyers, Summerville

Poem for the New Year

Seasons turn and nothing much is changed.Night wraps us like a shawl,

and we do not count its weight. Lying down to sleepI feel the rush of stars through space,

the dance and whirl of planets and their suns.Beside me now my husband breathes. The cat purrs

deep contentment from the sweep of sheet and blanketon our bed. All the forest trees are bending

toward this house, silent in the darkness,guardian and steep.

Phebe Davidson, Westminster

Discovery (remembering the new year)

Packed a spontaneous statement. Missed the morning ceremony. Left to search for the unopened door. Looked bythe creek. Applied for refugee status. Sang while concealing grief. Marched to the tune of a familiar but still distantdrummer (Thought his name was Hal). Made a pact with a leopard. Hoped to discover optimism. Expected to getvery far.

Brian Slusher, Greenville


The Spirit of Place

Winter’s last remnants now thin to white muslinon the distant blue cones still peaked in snow.A plane drones overhead while a steady spring warmthirons nerves to a calmness we thought would never come.New leaves cluster like small green fountains spurtingeverywhere from the trees. A slow breeze moves among themin long whispers like the soft abrasions of air we speak.The birds outside our five open windows built their nestslast week, their tweezer beaks arriving each time with a pinchof what will do. Now they persuade intruders away with song,and white globes speckled with dark stars lie gatheredin the secret woven palms of grass and string.With so much future present, our winter’s passportlongings for Tuscan hills and golden foreign lightseem to have drifted away with the clouds.Today it seems our best days could be lived anywhere,maybe, now, even here.

Fred Dings, Columbia

from After the Solstice (1993)New Yearremembering Jane Kenyon

And soul? The low places,distant swamp fields and the firstwhistles of hopeful chorus frogs.

Daffodils outside in the yard'ssloping back corner, witheredby frost.Hope for the warmdays, temperatures rise pastseventy, tubers stir again.And who's to mock such instinctsof the spirit to bloom?

The soul, that plunging coldfront, weighted closeto any landscape's angularity

John Lane, Spartanburg

It Was New Year’s Day When

the Astronomer explained the end of space and time.It’s very simple, he said. The universe will swelluntil it’s full; a wedding cake one layer too many. Then it will cave in on itself, running backwardsthe chorus played in reverse. What looks like fate turns out to be the middle. If you make a toast tonight, he said, toast to astronomyand stars born back from their throat-dark slumber. Toast to science. Toast to beginnings that will bringyou once more to this bright coast and these faces.Toast to the future when you’ll again hear the laughter of a friend, then your own punchline.

Elizabeth Breen, Columbia

Blossom

waits, folded within the mothy cloak of maybe. It presses its silken ear against the walls and listens for the whistle of next, when it will burst forth like a rowdy player on Homecoming Night, smashing through the banner held byshouting cheerleaders, the fragile sign that shatters crying GO FIGHT WIN this fresh cycle of lovely becoming.

Brian Slusher, Greenville


Friday, April 296 p.m. – 9 p.m.

First Citizens CenterColumbia, SC

(Corner of Main and Lady)

Juried Art Show Live Music & Performances

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