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Stories
The Kindness of Strangers
In addition to the crew of committee members and supportive friends, the Center has been the recipient of some anonymous kindness in preparation for the festival. One of the last checklist items before the festival opens on Thursday was a series of posters and banners to decorate the Italian Academy itself. Printing oversize posters can be expensive. A large poster can be about $200. So I was pretty nervous when I went to my local shop and gave them a flash drive with about 15 posters--some of them to be mounted to foam core.
Sing With Us
Mormons a generation or two ago knew the music of Evan Stephens like the back of their hand. It was everywhere. Nearly two-thirds of the hymns in the early 20th century hymnal were composed by him. Conductor of the Mormon Tabernacle Choir, prolific composer of hymns, anthems, oratorios, and operettas, and a master choral teacher: Stephens was easily one of the most influential men of his era in the Church. How did this son of a Welsh coal miner, with almost no musical training become such a force?
On Carnegie Hall
I went by Carnegie Hall today, and I was surprised to see the poster for the Scott Holden recital in the beautiful outside display cases at Carnegie Hall. It was a proud moment, an arrival. When I first arrived in New York as a college student, I would scrape together $9 to buy a ticket on the back row of the balcony.
Our Secret Weapon
I'm not sure I should be revealing this, but we have a trade secret. Far away, in the land of snow-capped mountains and Jell-O, exists the most fantastic company. They do brilliant work. They are fast. They're nice. Their equipment is top-notch, state-of-the-art …
Collaboratives
I don't want to spoil too many of the surprises of the festival, but there are some really fun projects that will bring dozens of artists together to make linked visual images. These are thematically connected, and when you see them, I think you'll immediately understand the concept behind them …
Off to the printer
The last time I pulled an all-nighter was...let me think...never. This week though, with the help of a bottle of Dr. Pepper and quite a lot of chocolate, I stayed up all day, all night, and all the next day to put on the finishing touches for two publications due at the printer. The largest of these is the 660-page tome by film historian Randy Astle, Mormon Cinema: Origins to 1952. More about it another time, but I have to say that you will be in for a surprise. It is a major achievement in Mormon history.
Crunch time
With a little more than a month before the festival, this is crunch time. Publications must be at the printer...like right now. In order to have all five publications ready (five!), authors, artists, designers, and editors have been logging in some very long hours lately.
Hopi and Hope
I had the great privilege of interviewing composer/scholar/advocate Trevor Reed this week for a podcast. It was an amazing experience. I've known about his work for a while. Two years ago, I wrote an article for an online magazine (SquareTwo) that I titled, "Mormon Masterworks of the 21st Century." In it, I described ten Mormon composers' works. One of them was Reed's "Puhutawi."
It's About the Love
This delightful photograph of Richard and Claudia Bushman (taken by Jon Moe) is about as perfect a symbol as I can think of to explain what drives the Mormon Arts Center. It's about love--for art, but love for the people making it, viewing it, studying it, supporting it, and bringing it to the limelight, too. I've noticed over the couple of years working on these projects that this affection for each other is a powerful buoying force. When one of us is overwhelmed and down, another senses it and comes to the rescue.
The Pubs
Claudia Bushman is fond of telling us all about the value of publication. This makes perfect sense, given that she's written a mountain of books herself, but she was speaking more directly to the need to document history as it's happening. One of the Mormon Arts Center's priorities is publishing: old school, hold in your hand, turn-a-page books. Anybody who's ever written a book and seen it in print understands the thrill of it, but few can imagine what goes into making an object like that.
Getting the Word Out
It's been fun to finally show people a detailed listing of what's up for the Festival. Over the last week, we've placed posters and a couple of thousand takeaway cards with many people in local church congregations near New York City. I like to watch their reactions to the cards. They invariably turn to the listing of events and are taken aback at the breadth of it all.
One Great Whole
We were at an Advisory Board meeting for the Center in January, and J. Kirk Richards had an idea: what if we did something at the Festival that allowed multiple artists to make something together? At the 2017 Festival, we exhibited Kirk's multi-panel work, Cristo (2014), that brought together 161 paintings of different sizes together. These had been created by Kirk working with people in his community who were invited to show how they imagined Jesus Christ to appear; then Kirk reworked the images to unite them stylistically.