Singer/guitarist /composer Dean Wareham (formerly of Galaxy 500 and Luna) was commissioned by The Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh to compose music to accompany some of Warhol’s rarely seen silent-film portraits, which the artist called Screen Tests. These extraordinary documents of the 1960s New York art scene constitute a voluminous portrait gallery of well-known celebrities, Factory superstars and anonymous teenagers. The Screen Tests— four-minute black-and-white silent film portraits from the 1960s—were used, as were other Warhol films, as part of the light show for Warhol’s 1966 multimedia happening, the Exploding Plastic Inevitable, which showcased the radical art rock of the Velvet Underground.
Wareham’s pensive tenor and dreamy songs and Britta Phillips’ wistful harmonies make the perfect live soundtrack for Warhol’s simple yet transfixing films. The husband and wife team (who also scored the acclaimed feature film The Squid and the Whale) probe the subtle nuances of mood reflected in the Screen Tests’ portraits, including Lou Reed, Dennis Hopper, and Edie Sedgewick, lyrically and musically illuminating the shadowed psyches of the candidates for Factory Superstardom who willingly submitted to Warhol’s cool cinematic gaze.
I just "met" the visual artist Lewis Evans through Facebook (gotta love that thing), and along with some stunning paintings, he's offering a wonderful winter wonderland of extended studio hours, mulled wine and sale prices. I'll be checking it out as soon as I can squeeze out some precious pearls of time, and I suggest you do the same if you're into local galleries, getting to know professional artists, or just like to meander amongst lovely works of art. Or maybe you just like mulled wine, and that's fine with Lewis too. Lewis tells me,
"I like to work around people's energy and their connection with a piece and with me as the artist. If someone really loves a piece, I would always try to find a way to make it possible for them to have it, even if it seems too expensive for them....
I am planning to have the mulled wine from tomorrow. I will be doing it up till Christmas. I am normally closed on Sundays and Mondays, and I open from 11.00am to 5.00pm. However, I plan to open Monday 24th.
one cool word magazine has done it again. The little arts magazine that could spun a fantastic idea and wove it into cold hard cash as well as exposure for local visual artists.
Last night's event was a charity art show of local talents set against a backdrop of live acoustic music. As I made my way along the walls of original artwork, each stuck with a single push pin and brandishing a tiny piece of Scotch tape with a price ranging from $4 to $25 written on it, sold signs were appearing faster than I could gain on them. I would point to a lovely photograph or unusual sketch and murmur to my guy, "Ooh, I like that one," move away and low and behold, a sold sign would appear. I actually didn't even spot anyone putting them up, they just materialized and as they did, people would quickly look around to see if their second and third choices had been snagged. If their luck was anything like mine, they would be sorely disappointed.
