ART: "Meet Miss Subways!" Photography, History and Identity :: Fiona Gardner
[caption id="attachment_1555" align="alignleft" width="493" caption="Angela Vorsteg Norris Miss Subways March 1950"]
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If you're not from around here, you may not know that Meet Miss Subways is more than a Ferlinghetti poem.
And, as such, you may not know that
"Miss Subways was a title accorded to individual New York City women between 1941 and 1976. The woman who was "Miss Subways" at any one time appeared on posters placed on New York City Subway trains, along with a brief description of her. The program was run by the ad agency "New York Subways Advertising".
To be eligible, a woman had to be a New York City resident and herself use the subway. Winners were usually chosen by telephone-based voting, from among a group of contenders whose photos were all placed on the subways; the nominees were chosen by John Robert Powers, a modelling agent."
{thank you, Wikipedia!}
I'm a sucker for New York memorabilia, and photographic projects examining identity, place, and culture, so when I happened upon Fiona Gardner's series -- in which she documents, via striking, technicolor-esque present day portraits and tells the stories of former "Miss Subways," alongside the now-dated newspaper clippings introducing these "girls" to an adoring city -- I immediately rang her (um, or, since it's not 1960, I messaged her on facebook, where I found her through our mutual friend, painter and herbalist Michael Viola).
FIELD NOTES : JACOB PERKINS: From the Cannery, Pt 2
Straight from Kodiak -- our second installment from poet and artist, Jacob Perkins.
Here's an excerpt from PT 1 - to contextualize the images and drawings below. More words are incoming... he's on a fishing boat in Alaska, after all!
"Myself, I am Alaskan born. Summer is the season of the sockeye. For others it is re-shingling, re-siding, decking, painting, some kind of hometown gig you begrudge seasonally, out of that season. For me it is sockeye, and a gillnet, and a boat.
Whether or not you’re leaving your medium; the palette, the sound equipment, the studio, the computer; or if you’re lucky enough to bring them along, one thing is clear: summer is time to get down to some hard work, psychologically, ideologically, literally."
[caption id="attachment_1544" align="alignleft" width="612"]
A 45 pound Lingcod we caught in Kodiak[/caption]
EDITORIAL :: FIELD NOTES and the RHIZOME : the series grows wild and free
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"from the seemingly random the rhizome develops" - Bob Holman, June 23rd, 2012 @ Naropa SWP | intuitive responsive visualised field notes by Lynne DeSilva-Johnson[/caption]
Since the inauguration of the Field Notes series there has been a great rumbling -- not only of interest in the project [on deck: filmmakers, musicians, programmers, visual artists, activists...!] but also in the expansion of its attentions.
Given our proclivity towards community collaboration we eagerly sop up the runoff of creative juices that gathers like dew on you all in the morning! So, naturally, to the question, "could we also include ____?" the answer is, why NOT?
If you're new to Exit Strata, this is a good time to introduce you to our commitment to PROCESS: as much or more than we are excited to share and celebrate the products we create, we thrive and exist around the notion of creating community together via an intentional desire to the work of art. That is to say the WORK that is art, and the collaborative acts of craft across many disciplines that make this work so rich. We are not interested in what is NOT. We are interested in IS. Human attention, human questioning, universal energetic wanderings, coding, mathematical formulation, scientific inquiry, yoga, chanting, dance, film, music, sound, translation, fiction, poetry, prose, aphorism. Is it ART? is it art? is it Art? This is an interesting question for another time, but also a different question than it may appear to be. For our purposes, we are more interested in "does it inspire? does it help me and my community grow/think/learn/be better?" and to look at how the creative people (which doesn't necessarily mean "artists") in our midst use their notes to grow themselves and their work.
Above, you see a responsive notebook page of mine that ebbed and flowed, responding to the rhythms of a poetry reading that was introduced by Bob Holman, who spoke the words above: "from the seemingly random the rhizome develops." Something perhaps I never would have shared before this series, which brings some questions to the fore, for all of us:
What does your field-note-book look like?
Community : Submission Deadlines and Contests :: Center for Fiction, Consequence, Prairie Schooner, more
In our desire to be not only a portal and publisher for creative discipline and output, but also an empower-er and expander-er (er
PRINT! : Exit Strata Launch Party (Video)
Missed the Exit Strata: Print! No. #1 launch in May? Fear not, here's a a glimpse of what went down during our Readings/Performance segment of the festivities, courtesy of poet and friend Bill Considine.
SOUND: Billy Libby "Pitter Patter" EP
For those of you missed our Exit Strata: Print! No. #1 launch party, you also missed out on a rare acoustic session by singer/songwriter Billy Libby (although thankfully you can check out a video clip of the performance here).
Exit Strata Print! Launch in Brooklyn NY
In case you're just tuning in, Exit Strata: Print! No. 1, our inaugural print issue, was published in May with a rousing launch party at This Must Be The Place Gallery in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, NYC, center
Taking Stock/In Stock :: Editorial Updates AND at a Bookstore Near You
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clockwise from top left: Exit Strata PRINT! vol. 1 "brownie", PRINT! vol. 1 limited edition, blood atlas (DeSilva-Johnson), obsolete objects in the literary imagination (Pinder), limited edition vol.1 broadside[/caption]
You know how, just when you think that everything is about to slow down, and you're going to have time for all the things on your To-Do-list, which is looking more and more like an epic poem? And then, you know, it doesn't slow down at all?
Yeah. Then.
Well, that's kind of how it's been since the print launch...
FILM: ornana
A month ago, I left New York—drove from Brooklyn sixteen hours straight to Peachtree City, Georgia. When I pulled up, a few of my favorite people were on the back porch of a normally quiet suburban house. We were gathered to film another ornana short.
FIELDNOTES: Jacob Perkins : From the Cannery, pt 1
Field Notes: From the Inlet 
June 5th, 11 pm
Bed-Stuy, Brooklyn, NY
For starters:
Talk of caliopes. Caliopes. Stray cats mewling on stoopfronts and dumpsters, borne into alleys panting. The incoming exodus of pushcarts and their ices, spokes pumped with Mets cards, their winter quarters unknown. Hydrants relieved and their fittings revealed. New streams clearing out trashjams on the G line. Someone saying “someone painted something on some building and did you know?” Big talk about how soon and how bad and how long and how hot. Flat tops and tattoos and everything cut sharp for sweating. Piedmont creeping up from the south and backsweats drickling down.
If you haven’t heard enough of this garbage, just wait. All sorts of things are said about summer in the city and frankly, I will not have it. Whatever intrigue maintained the attention of your Alaskas, your Seattles, your Portlands and Minnesotas has surely dried up by the time you hit June, and if you’re one of them, and you’re lucky, it’s time to hit the road for a few months.
Myself, I am Alaskan born. Summer is the season of the sockeye. For others it is re-shingling, re-siding, decking, painting, some kind of hometown gig you begrudge seasonally, out of that season. For me it is sockeye, and a gillnet, and a boat.
